Transcribed from the 1885 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org The Clyde Mystery A Study in Forgeries and Folklore By Andrew Lang, M.A.
Oxford Hon.
Fellow of Merton College, LL.D.
St. Andrews D.Litt.
Oxford, D.C.L.
Durham Glasgow James MacLehose and Sons Publishers to the University 1905 GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
PREFACE The author would scarcely have penned this little specimen of what Scott called "antiquarian old womanries," but for the interest which he takes in the universally diffused archaic patterns on rocks and stones, which offer a singular proof of the identity of the working of the human mind.
Anthropology and folklore are the natural companions and aids of prehistoric and proto-historic archaeology, and suggest remarks which may not be valueless, whatever view we may take of the disputed objects from the Clyde sites.
While only an open verdict on these objects is at present within the competence of science, the author, speaking for himself, must record his private opinion that, as a rule, they are ancient though anomalous.
He cannot pretend to certainty as to whether the upper parts of the marine structures were throughout built of stone, as in Dr. Munro's theory, which is used as the fundamental assumption in this book; or whether they were of wood, as in the hypothesis of Mr. Donnelly, illustrated by him in the Glasgow _Evening Times_ (Sept. 11, 1905).
The point seems unessential.
The author learns from Mr. Donnelly that experiments in shaping piles with an ancient stone axe have been made by Mr. Joseph Downes, of Irvine, as by Monsieur Hippolyte Muller in France, with similar results, a fact which should have been mentioned in the book.
It appears too, that a fragment of fallow deer horn at Dumbuck, mentioned by Dr. Munro, turned out to be "a decayed _humerus_ of the _Bos Longifrons_," and therefore no evidence as to date, as post-Roman.
Mr. Donnelly also protests that his records of his excavations "were exceptionally complete," and that he "took daily notes and sketches of all features and finds with measurements."
I must mention these facts, as, in the book, I say that Mr. Donnelly "kept no minute and hourly dated log book of his explorations, with full details as to the precise positions of the objects discovered."
If in any respect I have misconceived the facts and arguments, I trust that the fault will be ascribed to nothing worse than human fallibility.
I have to thank Mr. Donnelly for permission to photograph some objects from Dumbuck and for much information.
To Dr. Munro, apart from his most valuable books of crannog lore, I owe his kind attention to my private inquiries, and hope that I successfully represent his position and arguments.
It is quite undeniable that the disputed objects are most anomalous as far as our present knowledge goes, and I do not think that science can give more than all I plead for, an open verdict.
Dr. Ricardo Severe generously permitted me to reproduce a few (by no means the most singular) of his designs and photographs of the disputed Portuguese objects.
A serious illness has prevented him from making a visit recently to the scene of the discoveries (see his paper in _Portugalia_, vol.
ii., part 1).
I trust that Dr. de Vasconcellos, from whom I have not yet heard, will pardon the reproduction of three or four figures from his _Religioes_, an important work on prehistoric Portugal.
To Dr. Joseph Anderson, of the National Museum, I owe much gratitude for information, and for his great kindness in superintending the photographing of some objects now in that Museum.
Dr. David Murray obliged me by much information as to the early navigation of the Clyde, and the alterations made in the bed of the river.
To Mr. David Boyle, Ontario, I owe the knowledge of Red Indian magic stones parallel to the perforated and inscribed stone from Tappock.
As I have quoted from Dr. Munro the humorous tale of the palaeolithic designs which deceived M. Lartet and Mr. Christie, I ought to observe that, in _L'Anthropologie_, August, 1905, a reviewer of Dr. Munro's book, Prof. Boule, expresses some doubt as to the authenticity of the _historiette_.
ILLUSTRATIONS 1.
Inscribed Stone, Langbank.
2.
Grotesque Face on Stone, Langbank.
3.
Late Celtic Comb, Langbank.
4.
Bronze Brooch, Langbank.
5.
_Churinga Irula_, Wooden Bull-roarers, Arunta Tribe.
6.
_Churinga Nanja_, Inscribed Sacred Stone, Arunta.
7.
Sacred Stone Uninscribed, Arunta.
8.
Collection of Arunta Sacred Stones.
9, 10.
Inscribed Perforated Stone from Tappock.
Age of Iron.
11.
Perforated and Inscribed Stone from Dunbuie.
12, 13.
Perforated Inscribed Stones from Ontario, Canada.
14.
Perforated Inscribed Stones from Portugal, Neolithic.
15.
Perforated Inscribed Stones from Portugal, Neolithic.
16.
Perforated "Cup and Duct" Stone, Portugal, Neolithic.
17, 18.
Large Slate Spear-head, Dumbuck.
19.
Stone Figurine of Woman, Dumbuck.
20, 21.
Cup and Duct Stones, Portuguese, Dolmen Site, Villa d'Aguiar.
22.
Stone Figurine of Woman, Portuguese, Dolmen Site, Villa d'Aguiar.
23.
Heart-shaped Stone, Villa d'Aguiar.
24.
Cupped Stone, Villa d'Aguiar.
25.
Stone Pendant, Men in Boat, Scottish.
Figures 1-4 from _Transactions_, with permission of Glasgow Archaeological Society.
Figures 5-8, Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_; with permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co. 9-11.
With permission of Scottish Society of Antiquaries.
12-13.
Bulletin of Board of Education of Ontario.
14-16.
_Religioes_, etc., L. de Vasconcellos.
17-19.
With permission of Mr. W. H. Donnelly.
20-24.
With permission of Sr. Ricardo Severo.
25.
With permission of Scottish Society of Antiquarians.
I--THE CLYDE MYSTERY The reader who desires to be hopelessly perplexed, may desert the contemplation of the Fiscal Question, and turn his eyes upon _The Mystery of the Clyde_.
"Popular" this puzzle cannot be, for there is no "demmed demp disagreeable body" in the Mystery.
No such object was found in Clyde, near Dumbarton, but a set of odd and inexpensive looking, yet profoundly enigmatic scraps of stone, bone, slate, horn and so forth, were discovered and now repose in a glass case at the National Museum in Queen Street, Edinburgh.
There, as in the Morgue, lies awaiting explanation the _corpus delicti_ of the Clyde Mystery.
We stare at it and ask what are these slate spear heads engraved with rude ornament, and certainly never meant to be used as "lethal weapons"?
What are these many-shaped perforated plaques of slate, shale, and schist, scratched with some of the old mysterious patterns that, in almost every part of the world, remain inscribed on slabs and faces of rock?
Who incised similar patterns on the oyster-shells, some old and local, some fresh--_and American_!
Why did any one scratch them?
What is the meaning, if meaning there be, of the broken figurines or stone "dolls"?
They have been styled "totems" by persons who do not know the meaning of the word "totem," which merely denotes the _natural_ object,--usually a plant or animal,--after which sets of kinsfolk are named among certain savage tribes.
Let us call the little figures "figurines," for that commits us to nothing.
Then there are grotesque human heads, carved in stone; bits of sandstone, marked with patterns, and so forth.
Mixed with these are the common rude appliances, quern stones for grinding grain; stone hammers, stone polishers, cut antlers of deer, pointed bones, such as rude peoples did actually use, in early Britain, and may have retained into the early middle ages, say 400-700 A.D.
This mixed set of objects, _plus_ the sites in which they were found, and a huge canoe, 35 feet long, is the material part of the Clyde Mystery.
The querns and canoe and stone-polishers, and bones, and horns are commonly found, we say, in dwellings of about 400-700 A.D.
The peculiar and enigmatic things are _not_ elsewhere known to Scottish antiquaries.
How did the two sets of objects come to be all mixed up together, in an old hill fort, at Dunbuie on Clyde; and among the wooden foundations of two mysterious structures, excavated in the mud of the Clyde estuary at Dumbuck and Langbank, near Dumbarton?
They were dug up between 1896 and 1902.
This is the question which has been debated, mainly in newspaper controversy, for nearly ten years.
A most rambling controversy it has been, casting its feelers as far as central Australia, in space, and as far back as, say, 1200 B.C.
in time.
Either the disputed objects at the Museum are actual relics of life lived in the Clyde basin many centuries ago; or the discoverers and excavators of the old sites are dogged by a forger who "dumps down" false relics of kinds unknown to Scottish antiquaries; or some of the unfamiliar objects are really old, while others are jocose imitations of these, or--there is some other explanation!
The modern "Clyde artists" are credited by Dr. Robert Munro with "some practical artistic skill," and some acquaintance with the very old and mysterious designs on great rocks among the neighbouring hills.
{4} What man of artistic skill, no conscience, and a knowledge of archaic patterns is associated with the Clyde?
The "faker" is not the mere mischievous wag of the farm-house or the country shop.
It is possible that a few "interpolations" of false objects have been made by another and less expert hand, but the weight of the problem rests on these alternatives,--the disputed relics which were found are mainly genuine, though unfamiliar; or a forger not destitute of skill and knowledge has invented and executed them--or--there is some other explanation.
Three paths, as usual, are open to science, in the present state of our knowledge of the question.
We may pronounce the unfamiliar relics genuine, and prove it if we can.
We may declare them to be false objects, manufactured within the last ten years.
We may possess our souls in patience, and "put the objects to a suspense account," awaiting the results of future researches and of new information.
This attitude of suspense is not without precedent in archaeology.
"Antiquarian lore," as Dr. Munro remarks by implication, _can_ "distinguish between true and false antiquities."
{5a} But time is needed for the verdict, as we see when Dr. Munro describes "the Breonio Controversy" about disputed stone objects, a controversy which began in 1885, and appears to be undecided in 1905.
{5b} I propose to advocate the third course; the waiting game, and I am to analyse Dr. Munro's very able arguments for adopting the second course, and deciding that the unfamiliar relics are assuredly impostures of yesterday's manufacture.
II--DR. MUNRO'S BOOK ON THE MYSTERY Dr. Munro's acute and interesting book, _Archaeology and False Antiquities_, {6} does not cover the whole of its amusing subject.
False gems, coins, inscriptions, statues, and pictures are scarcely touched upon; the author is concerned chiefly with false objects of the pre-historic and "proto-historic" periods, and with these as bearing on the Clyde controversy of 1896-1905.
Out of 292 pages, at least 130 treat directly of that local dispute: others bear on it indirectly.
I have taken great interest in this subject since I first heard of it by accident, in the October or November of 1898.
As against Dr. Munro, from whose opinions I provisionally dissent, I may be said to have no _locus standi_.
He is an eminent and experienced archaeologist in matters of European pre-historic and proto-historic times.
Any one is at liberty to say of me what another celebrated archaeologist, Mr. Charles Hercules Read, said, in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one else: a person designated as "---," and described as "a merely literary man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate."
{7} But though "merely literary," like Mr. "---," I have spent much time in the study of comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples.
Mr. "---" may not have done so, whoever he is.
Again, as "practised people" often vary widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that "the antiquities" are "as readable as print,"--if by "antiquities" he means antiquities in general.
At the British Museum I can show Mr. Read several admirable specimens of the art of faking, standing, like the Abomination of Desolation, where they ought not.
It was not by unpractised persons that they were purchased at the national expense.
We are all fallible, even the oldest of us.
I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and disputed "antiquities" of the Clyde sites, and in that case, his opinion that they are a "curious swindle" is of the most momentous weight.
But, as to practised opinion on antiquities in general, Dr. Munro and I agree that it is really very fallible, now and again.
The best authorities, he proves, may read antiquities differently.
He is not certain that he has not himself, on occasion, taken "fakes" for true antiques.
{8a} The _savants_ of the Louvre were lately caught by the notorious "tiara of Saitaphernes," to the pecuniary loss of France; were caught on April 1, 1896, and were made _poissons d'Avril_, to the golden tune of 200,000 francs (8000 pounds).
Again, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy betted a friend that he could not hoax them with a forged palaeolithic drawing.
They lost their bet, and, after M. Lartet's death, the forged object was published, as genuine, in the scientific journal, _Materiaux_ (1874).
{8b} As M. Reinach says of another affair, it was "a _fumisterie_."
{8c} Every archaeologist may be the victim of a _fumisterie_, few have wholly escaped, and we find Dr. Furtwangler and Mr. Cecil Smith at odds as to whether a head of Zeus in terra-cotta be of the fifth century B.C.
or, quite the contrary, of the nineteenth or twentieth century A.D. Verily all "practised people" do not find "antiquities as readable as print."
On the other hand, my late friend, Dr. A. S. Murray, Keeper of Classical Antiquities in the British Museum, "read" the Mycenaean antiquities erroneously, placing them many centuries too late.
M. de Mortillet reckoned them forgeries, and wrote of the discoverer, Dr. Schliemann, and even of Mrs. Schliemann, in a tone unusual in men of science and gentlemen.
The great palaeolithic discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, the very bases of our study of the most ancient men, were "read" as impostures by many "practised people."
M. Cartailhac, again, has lately, in the most candid and honourable way, recanted his own original disbelief in certain wall-paintings in Spanish caves, of the period called "palaeolithic," for long suspected by him of being "clerical" impostures.
{9} Thus even the most "practised people," like General Councils, "may err and have erred," when confronted either with forgeries, or with objects old in fact, but new to them.
They have _not_ always found antiquities "as readable as print."
Dr. Munro touches but faintly on these "follies of the wise," but they are not unusual follies.
This must never be forgotten.
Where "practised people" may be mistaken through a too confirmed scepticism, the "merely literary man" may, once in an azure moon, happen to be right, or not demonstrably wrong; that is my excuse for differing, provisionally, from "practised people."
It is only provisionally that I dissent from Dr. Munro as to some of the points at issue in the Clyde controversy.
I entered on it with very insufficient knowledge: I remain, we all remain, imperfectly informed: and like people rich in practice,--Dr. Joseph Anderson, and Sir Arthur Mitchell,--I "suspend my judgement" for the present.
{10} This appears to me the most scientific attitude.
Time is the great revealer.
But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment, and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde controversy are "spurious"; are what the world calls "fakes," though from a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them "forgeries."
They are reckoned by him among "false antiquities," while, for my part, I know not of what age they are, but incline I believe that many of them are not of the nineteenth century.
This is the extent of our difference.
On the other hand I heartily concur with Dr. Munro in regretting that his advice,--to subject the disputed objects at the earliest possible stage of the proceedings, to a jury of experts,--was not accepted.
{11a} One observation must be made on Dr. Munro's logical method, as announced by himself.
"My role, on the present occasion, is to advocate the correctness of my own views on purely archaeological grounds, without any special effort to refute those of my opponents."
{11b} As my view is that the methods of Dr. Munro are perhaps,--and I say it with due deference, and with doubt,--capable of modification, I shall defend my opinions as best I may.
Moreover, my views, in the course of seven long years (1898-1905) have necessarily undergone some change, partly in deference to the arguments of Dr. Munro, partly because much new information has come to my knowledge since 1898-99.
Moreover, on one occasion, I misstated my own view, and, though I later made my real opinion perfectly dear, some confusion was generated.
III--THE CLYDE CONTROVERSY It is necessary, after these prefatory remarks, to give an account of the rise of the Clyde controversy, and I may be pardoned for following the example of Dr. Munro, who adds, and cannot but add, a pretty copious narrative of his own share in the discussion.
In 1896, the hill fort of Dunbuie, "about a mile-and-a-half to the east of Dumbarton Castle, and three miles to the west of the Roman Wall," {12} was discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly: that is to say, Mr. Donnelly suggested that the turf might conceal something worth excavating, and the work was undertaken, under his auspices, by the Helensburgh Antiquarian Society.
As Mr. Donnelly's name constantly occurs in the discussion, it may be as well to state that, by profession, he is an artist,--a painter and designer in black and white,--and that, while keenly interested in the pre-historic or proto-historic relics of Clydesdale, he makes no claim to be regarded as a trained archaeologist, or widely-read student.
Thus, after Mr. Donnelly found a submarine structure at Dumbuck in the estuary of the Clyde, Dr. Munro writes: "I sent Mr. Donnelly some literature on crannogs."
{13a} So Mr. Donnelly, it appears, had little book lore as to crannogs.
He is, in fact, a field worker in archaeology, rather than an archaeologist of the study and of books.
He is a member of a local archaeological Society at Helensburgh on the Clyde, and, before he found the hill fort of Dunbuie, he had discovered an interesting set of "cup and ring" marked rocks at Auchentorlie, "only a short distance from Dunbuie."
{13b} Mr. Donnelly's position, then, as regards archaeological research, was, in 1896-1898, very like that of Dr. Schliemann when he explored Troy.
Like Dr. Schliemann he was no erudite savant, but an enthusiast with an eye for likely sites.
Like Dr. Schliemann he discovered certain objects hitherto unknown to Science, (at least to Scottish science,) and, like Dr. Schliemann, he has had to take "the consequences of being found in such a situation."
It must be added that, again like Dr. Schliemann he was not an excavator of trained experience.
I gather that he kept no minute and hourly-dated log-book of his explorations, with full details as to the precise positions of the objects discovered, while, again like Dr. Schliemann, he had theories of his own, with some of which I do not concur.
Dr. Munro justly insists on "the absolute necessity of correctly recording the facts and relics brought to light by excavations."
{14a} An excavator should be an engineer, or be accompanied by a specialist who can assign exact measurements for the position of every object discovered.
Thus Dr. Munro mentions the case of a man who, while digging a drain in his garden in Scotland, found an adze of jade and a pre-historic urn.
Dr. Munro declares, with another expert, that the jade adze is "a modern Australian implement," which is the more amazing as I am not aware that the Australians possess any jade.
The point is that the modern Australian adze was _not_, as falsely reported, in the prehistoric urn.
{14b} Here I cannot but remark that while Dr. Munro justly regrets the absence of record as to precise place of certain finds, he is not more hospitable to other finds of which the precise locality is indicated.
Things are found by Mr. Bruce as he clears out the interior of a canoe, or imbedded in the dock on the removal of the canoe, {15} or in the "kitchen midden"--the refuse heap--but Dr. Munro does not esteem the objects more highly because we have a distinct record as to the precise place of their finding.
IV--DUNBUIE To return to the site first found, the hill fort of Dunbuie, excavated in 1896.
Dr. Munro writes: "There is no peculiarity about the position or structure of this fort which differentiates it from many other forts in North Britain.
Before excavation there were few indications that structural remains lay beneath the debris, but when this was accomplished there were exposed to view the foundations of a circular wall, 13.5 feet thick, enclosing a space 30 to 32 feet in diameter.
Through this wall there was one entrance passage on a level with its base, 3 feet 2 inches in width, protected by two guard chambers, one on each side, analogous to those so frequently met with in the Brochs.
The height of the remaining part of the wall varied from 18 inches to 3 feet 6 inches.
The interior contained no dividing walls nor any indications of secondary occupation."
Thus writes Dr. Munro (pp.
130, 131), repeating his remarks on p. 181 with this addition, "Had any remains of intra-mural chambers or of a stone stair been detected it would unhesitatingly be pronounced a broch; nor, in the absence of such evidence, can it be definitely dissociated from that peculiar class of Scottish buildings, because the portion of wall then remaining was not sufficiently high to exclude the possibility of these broch characteristics having been present at a higher level--a structural deviation which has occasionally been met with."
"All the brochs," Dr. Munro goes on, "hitherto investigated have shown more or less precise evidence of a post-Roman civilisation, their range, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, being "not earlier than the fifth and not later than the ninth century."
{17} "Although from more recent discoveries, as, for example, the broch of Torwodlee, Selkirkshire, there is good reason to believe that their range might legitimately be brought nearer to Roman times, it makes no difference in the correctness of the statement that they all belong to the Iron Age."
So far the "broch," or hill fort, was not unlike other hill forts and brochs, of which there are hundreds in Scotland.
But many of the relics alleged to have been found in the soil of Dunbuie were unfamiliar in character in these islands.
There was not a shard of pottery, there was not a trace of metal, but absence of such things is no proof that they were unknown to the inhabitants of the fort.
I may go further, and say that if any person were capable of interpolating false antiquities, they were equally capable of concealing such real antiquities in metal or pottery as they might find; to support their theories, or to serve other private and obscure ends.
Thus, at Langbank, were found a bronze brooch, and a "Late Celtic" (200 B.C.?--A.D.)
comb.
These, of course, upset the theory held by some inquirers, that the site was Neolithic, that is, was very much earlier than the Christian era.
If the excavators held that theory, and were unscrupulous, was it not as easy for them to conceal the objects which disproved the hypothesis, as to insert the disputed objects--which do not prove it?
Of course Dr. Munro nowhere suggests that any excavator is the guilty "faker."
I now quote Dr. Munro's account of the _unfamiliar_ objects alleged to have been found in Dunbuie.
He begins by citing the late Mr. Adam Millar, F.S.A.Scot., who described Dunbuie in the _Proceedings S. A. Scot._ (vol.
XXX.
pp.
291-308.)
"The fort," writes Mr. Millar, "has been examined very thoroughly by picking out the stones in the interior one by one, and riddling the fine soil and small stones.
The same treatment has been applied to the refuse heap which was found on the outside, and the result of the search is a very remarkable collection of weapons, implements, ornaments, and figured stones."
There is no description of the precise position of any of these relics in the ruins, with the exception of two upper stones of querns and a limpet shell having on its inner surface the presentation of a human face, which are stated to have been found in the interior of the fort.
No objects of metal or fragments of pottery were discovered in course of the excavations, and of bone there were only two small pointed objects and an awl having a perforation at one end.
The majority of the following worked objects of stone, bone, and shell are so remarkable and archaic in character that their presence in a fort, which cannot be placed earlier than the Broch period, and probably long after the departure of the Romans from North Britain, has led some archaeologists to question their genuineness as relics of any phase of Scottish civilisation.
OBJECTS OF STONE.--Nine spear-heads, like arrow-points, of slate, six of which have linear patterns scratched on them.
Some are perforated with round holes, and all were made by grinding and polishing.
One object of slate, shaped like a knife, was made by chipping.
"This knife," says Mr. Millar, "has a feature common to all these slate weapons--they seem to have been saturated with oil or fat, as water does not adhere to them, but runs off as from a greasy surface."
Another highly ornamental piece of cannel coal is in the form of a short spear-head with a thickish stem.
The stem is adorned with a series of hollows and ridges running across it; radiating lines running from the stem to the margin.
Another group of these remarkable objects shows markings of the cup-and-ring order, circles, linear incisions, and perforations.
Some of these ornamentations are deeply cut on the naturally rough surfaces of flat pieces of sandstone, whilst others are on smooth stones artificially prepared for the purpose.
A small piece of flint was supposed to have been inserted into a partially burnt handle.
There are several examples of hammer-stones of the ordinary crannog type, rubbing-stones, whetstones, as well as a large number of water-worn stones which might have been used as hand-missiles or sling-stones.
These latter were not native to the hill, and must have been transported from burns in the neighbourhood.
There are also two upper quern stones.
MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS.--A number of splintered pieces of bone, without showing any other evidence of workmanship, have linear incisions, like those on some of the stones, which suggest some kind of cryptic writing like ogams.
There are also a few water-worn shells, like those seen on a sandy beach, having round holes bored through them and sharply-cut scratches on their pearly inner surface.
But on the whole the edible molluscs are but feebly represented, as only five oyster, one cockle, three limpet, and two mussel shells were found, nearly all of which bore marks of some kind of ornamentation.
But perhaps the most grotesque object in the whole collection is the limpet shell with a human face sculptured on its inner surface.
"The eyes," writes Mr. Millar, "are represented by two holes, the nose by sharply-cut lines, and the mouth by a well-drawn waved line, the curves which we call Cupid's bow being faithfully followed.
There is nothing at all of an archaic character, however, in this example of shell-carving.
We found it in the interior of the fort; it was one of the early finds--nothing like it has been found since; at the same time we have no reason for assuming that this shell was placed in the fort on purpose that we might find it.
The fact that it was taken out of the fort is all that we say about it."
Mr. Millar's opinion of these novel handicraft remains was that they were the products of a pre-Celtic civilisation.
"The articles found," he writes, "are strongly indicative of a much earlier period than postRoman; they point to an occupation of a tribe in their Stone Age."
"We have no knowledge of the precise position in which the 'queer things' of Dunbuie were found, with the exception of the limpet shell showing the carved human face which, according to a recent statement in the _Journal of the British Archaeological Association_, September, 1901, "was excavated from a crevice in the living rock, over which tons of debris had rested.
When taken out, the incrustations of dirt prevented any carving from being seen; it was only after being dried and cleaned that the 'face' appeared, as well as the suspension holes on each side."
So, this unique piece of art was in the fort before it became a ruin and otherwise presented evidence of great antiquity; but yet it is stated in Mr. Millar's report that there was "nothing at all of an archaic character in this example of shell-carving."
{21} I have nothing to do with statements made in _The Journal of the British Archaeological Association_ about "_a carved oyster shell_."
I stick to the limpet shell of Mr. Millar, which, to my eyes looks anything but archaic.
V--HOW I CAME INTO THE CONTROVERSY Thus far, I was so much to be sympathised with as never to have heard of the names of Dunbuie and of Mr. Donnelly.
In this ignorance I remained till late in October or early in November 1898.
On an afternoon of that date I was reading the proof sheets, kindly lent to me by Messrs. Macmillan, of _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_ by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, a work, now justly celebrated, which was published early in 1899.
I was much interested on finding, in this book, that certain tribes of Central Australia,--the Arunta "nation" and the Kaitish,--_paint_ on sacred and other rocks the very same sorts of archaic designs as Mr. Donnelly found _incised_ at Auchentorlie (of which I had not then heard).
These designs are familiar in many other parts of Scotland and of the world.
They play a great part in the initiations and magic of Central Australia.
Designs of the same class are incised, by the same Australian tribes, on stones of various shapes and sizes, usually portable, and variously shaped which are styled _churinga nanja_.
(_Churinga_ merely means anything "sacred," that is, with a superstitious sense attached to it).
They also occur on wooden slats, (_churinga irula_,) commonly styled "Bull roarers" by Europeans.
The tribes are now in a "siderolithic" stage, using steel when they can get it, stone when they cannot.
If ever they come to abandon stone implements, while retaining their magic or religion, they will keep on using their stone _churinga nanja_.
While I was studying these novel Australian facts, in the autumn of 1898, a friend, a distinguished member of Clan Diarmaid, passing by my window, in London, saw me, and came in.
He at once began to tell me that, in the estuary of the Clyde, and at Dunbuie, some one had found small stones, marked with the same archaic kinds of patterns, "cup-and-ring," half circles, and so forth, as exist on our inscribed rocks, cists, and other large objects.
I then showed him the illustrations of portable stones in Australia, with archaic patterns, not then published, but figured in the proof sheets of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's work.
My friend told me, later, that he had seen small stone incised with concentric circles, found in the excavation of a hill fort near Tarbert, in Kintyre.
He made a sketch of this object, from memory: if found in Central Australia it would have been reckoned a _churinga nanja_.
I was naturally much interested in my friend's account of objects found in the Clyde estuary, which, _as far as his description went_, resembled in being archaically decorated the _churinga nanja_ discovered by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia.
I wrote an article on the subject of the archaic decorative designs, as found all over the world, for the _Contemporary Review_.
{24} I had then seen only pen and ink sketches of the objects, sent to me by Mr. Donnelly, and a few casts, which I passed on to an eminent authority.
One of the casts showed a round stone with concentric circles.
I know not what became of the original or of the casts.
While correcting proofs of this article, I read in the _Glasgow Herald_ (January 7, 1899) a letter by Dr. Munro, impugning the authenticity of one set of finds by Mr. Donnelly, in a pile-structure at Dumbuck, on the Clyde, near Dumbarton.
I wrote to the _Glasgow Herald_, adducing the Australian _churinga nanja_ as parallel to Mr. Donnelly's inscribed stones, and thus my share in the controversy began.
What Dr. Munro and I then wrote may be passed over in this place.
VI--DUMBUCK It was in July 1898, that Mr. Donnelly, who had been prospecting during two years for antiquities in the Clyde estuary, found at low tide, certain wooden stumps, projecting out of the mud at low water.
On August 16, 1898, Dr. Munro, with Mr. Donnelly, inspected these stumps, "before excavations were made."
{25a} It is not easy to describe concisely the results of their inspection, and of the excavations which followed.
"So far the facts" (of the site, not of the alleged relics), "though highly interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early navigation of the Clyde basin present nothing very remarkable or important," says Dr. Munro.
{25b} I shall here quote Dr. Munro's descriptions of what he himself observed at two visits, of August 16, October 12, 1898, to Dumbuck.
For the present I omit some speculative passages as to the original purpose of the structure.
"The so-called Dumbuck 'crannog,' that being the most convenient name under which to describe the submarine wooden structures lately discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly in the estuary of the Clyde, lies about a mile to the east of the rock of Dumbarton, and about 250 yards within high-water mark.
At every tide its site is covered with water to a depth of three to eight feet, but at low tide it is left high and dry for a few hours, so that it was only during these tidal intervals that the excavations could be conducted.
On the occasion of my first visit to Dumbuck, before excavations were begun, Mr. Donnelly and I counted twenty-seven piles of oak, some 5 or 8 inches in diameter, cropping up for a few inches through the mud, in the form of a circle 56 feet in diameter.
The area thus enclosed was occupied with the trunks of small trees laid horizontally close to each other and directed towards the centre, and so superficial that portions of them were exposed above the surrounding mud, but all hollows and interstices were levelled up with sand or mud.
The tops of the piles which projected above the surface of the log-pavement were considerably worn by the continuous action of the muddy waters during the ebb and flow of the tides, a fact which suggested the following remarkable hypothesis: 'Their tops are shaped in an oval, conical form, meant to make a joint in a socket to erect the superstructure on.'
These words are quoted from a 'Report of a Conjoint Visit of the Geological and Philosophical Societies to the Dumbuck Crannog, 8th April, 1899.'
{26} The result of the excavations, so far as I can gather from observations made during my second visit to the 'crannog,' and the descriptions and plans published by various societies, may be briefly stated as follows.
The log-pavement within the circle of piles was the upper of three similar layers of timbers placed one above the other, the middle layer having its beams lying transversely to that immediately above and below it.
One of the piles (about 4 feet long) when freshly drawn up, clearly showed that it had been pointed by a sharp metal implement, the cutting marks being like those produced by an ordinary axe.
The central portion (about 6 feet in diameter) had no woodwork, and the circular cavity thus formed, when cleared of fallen stones, showed indications of having been walled with stones and clay.
Surrounding this walled cavity--the so-called 'well' of the explorers, there was a kind of coping, in the form of five or six 'raised mounds,' arranged 'rosette fashion,' in regard to which Mr. Donnelly thus writes: 'One feature that strikes me very much in the configuration of the structure in the centre is those places marked X, fig.
20, around which I have discovered the presence of soft wood piles 5 inches in diameter driven into the ground, and bounding the raised stone arrangement; the stones in these rude circular pavements or cairns are laid slightly slanting inwards.'
{27} From this description, and especially the 'slanting inwards' of these 'circular pavements' or 'cairns,' it would appear that they formed the bases for wooden stays to support a great central pole, a suggestion which, on different grounds, has already been made by Dr. David Murray.
The surrounding piles were also attached to the horizontal logs by various ingenious contrivances, such as a fork, a natural bend, an artificial check, or a mortised hole; and some of the beams were pinned together by tree-nails, the perforations of which were unmistakable.
This binding together of the wooden structures is a well-known feature in crannogs, as was demonstrated by my investigations at Lochlee and elsewhere.
{28a} It would be still more necessary in a substratum of timbers that was intended (as will be afterwards explained) to bear the weight of a superincumbent cairn.
Underneath the layers of horizontal woodwork some portions of heather, bracken, and brushwood were detected, and below this came a succession of thin beds of mud, loam, sand, gravel, and finally the blue clay which forms the solum of the river valley.
{28b} The piles penetrated this latter, but not deeply, owing to its consistency; and so the blue clay formed an excellent foundation for a structure whose main object was resistance to superincumbent pressure.
Outside the circle of piles there was, at a distance of 12 to 14 feet, another wooden structure in the shape of a broad ring of horizontal beams and piles which surrounded the central area.
The breadth of this outer ring was 7 feet, and it consisted of some nine rows of beams running circumferentially.
Beyond this lay scattered about some rough cobble stones, as if they had fallen down from a stone structure which had been raised over the woodwork.
The space intervening between these wooden structures was filled up in its eastern third with a refuse heap, consisting of broken and partially burnt bones of various animals, the shells of edible molluscs, and a quantity of ashes and charcoal, evidently the debris of human occupancy.
On the north, or landward side, the outer and inner basements of woodwork appeared to coalesce for 5 or 6 yards, leaving an open space having stones embedded in the mud and decayed wood, a condition of things which suggested a rude causeway.
When Mr. Donnelly drew my attention to this, I demurred to its being so characterised owing to its indefiniteness.
At the outer limit of this so-called causeway, and about 25 feet north-east of the circle of piles, a canoe was discovered lying in a kind of dock, rudely constructed of side stones and wooden piling.
The canoe measures 35.5 feet long, 4 feet broad, and 1.5 foot deep.
It has a square stern with a movable board, two grasping holes near the stem, and three round perforations (2 inches in diameter) in its bottom.
On the north-west border of the log-pavement a massive ladder of oak was found, one end resting on the margin of the log-pavement and the other projecting obliquely into the timberless zone between the former and the outer woodwork.
It is thus described in the _Proceedings of the Glasgow Philosophical Society_:{29} 'Made of a slab of oak which has been split from the tree by wedges (on one side little has been done to dress the work), it is 15 feet 3 inches long, 2 feet broad, and 3.5 inches thick.
Six holes are cut for steps, 12 inches by 10 inches; the bottom of each is bevelled to an angle of 60 degrees to make the footing level when the ladder is in position.
On one side those holes show signs of wear by long use.'
An under quern stone, 19 inches in diameter, was found about halfway between the canoe and the margin of the circle of piles, and immediately to the east of the so-called causeway already described.
I carefully examined the surface of the log-pavement with the view of finding evidence as to the possibility of its having been at any time the habitable area of this strange dwelling-place; but the result was absolutely negative, as not a single particle of bone or ash was discovered in any of its chinks.
This fact, together with the impossibility of living on a surface that is submerged every twelve hours, and the improbability of any land subsidence having taken place since prehistoric times, or any adequate depression from the shrinkage of the under-structures themselves, compels me to summarily reject the theory that the Dumbuck structure in its present form was an ordinary crannog.
The most probable hypothesis, and that which supplies a reasonable explanation of all the facts, is that the woodwork was the foundation of a superstructure of stones built sufficiently high to be above the action of the tides and waves, over which there had been some kind of dwelling-place.
The unique arrangement of the wooden substructures suggests that the central building was in the form of a round tower with very thick walls, like the brochs and other forts of North Britain.
The central space was probably occupied with a pole, firmly fixed at its base in the 'well,' and kept in position by suitable stays, resting partly on the stone 'cairns' already described, partly in wooden sockets fixed into the log-pavement, and partly on the inner wall of the tower.
This suggestion seems to me to be greatly strengthened by the following description of some holed tree-roots in Mr. Bruce's paper to the Scottish Antiquaries: {30} 'Midway between the centre and the outside piles of the structure what looked at first to be tree-roots or snags were noticed partly imbedded in the sand.
On being washed of the adhering soil, holes of 12 inches wide by 25 inches deep were found cut in them at an angle, to all appearance for the insertion of struts for the support of an upper structure.
On the outside, 14 inches down on either side, holes of 2 inches diameter were found intersecting the central hole, apparently for the insertion of a wooden key or trenail to retain the struts.
These were found at intervals, and were held in position by stones and smaller jammers.'
The outer woodwork formed the foundation of another stone structure, of a horseshoe shape, having the open side to the north or landside of the tower, which doubtless was intended as a breakwater.
By means of the ladder placed slantingly against the wall of the central stone building access could be got to the top in all states of the tides.
The people who occupied this watch-tower ground their own corn, and fared abundantly on beef, mutton, pork, venison, and shell-fish.
The food refuse and other debris were thrown into the space between the central structure and the breakwater, forming in the course of time a veritable kitchen-midden.
Besides the causeway on the north side, Mr. Bruce describes 'a belt of stones, forming a pavement about six feet wide and just awash with the mud,' extending westwards about twenty yards from the central cavity, till it intersected the breakwater.
{31} These so-called pavements and causeways were probably formed during the construction of the tower with its central pole, or perhaps at the time of its demolition, as it would be manifestly inconvenient to transport stones to or from such a place, in the midst of so much slush, without first making some kind of firm pathway.
Their present superficial position alone demonstrates the absurdity of assigning the Dumbuck structures to Neolithic times, as if the only change effected in the bed of the Clyde since then would be the deposition of a few inches of mud.
At a little distance to the west of these wooden structures there is the terminal end of a modern ditch ('the burn' of Mr. Alston), extending towards the shore, and having on its eastern bank a row of steppingstones; a fact which, in my opinion, partly accounts for the demolition of the stonework, which formerly stood over them.
So far, the facts disclosed by the excavations of the structures at Dumbuck, though highly interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early navigation of the Clyde basin, present nothing very remarkable or improbable.
It is when we come to examine the strange relics which the occupants of this habitation have left behind them that the real difficulties begin."
Dr. Munro next describes the disputed things found at Dumbuck.
They were analogous to those alleged to have been unearthed at Dunbuie.
They were "A number of strange objects like spear-heads or daggers, showing more or less workmanship, and variously ornamented.
One great spear-head (figure 1), like an arrow-point, is 11 inches long and 4.75 inches wide at the barbs.
The stem is perforated with two holes, in one of which there was a portion of an oak pin.
It has a flat body and rounded edges, and is carefully finished by rubbing and grinding.
One surface is ornamented with three cup-marks from which lines radiate like stars or suns, and the other has only small cups and a few transverse lines.
There are some shaped stones, sometimes perforated for suspension, made of the same material; while another group of similar objects is made of cannel coal.
All these are highly ornamented by a fantastic combination of circles, dots, lines, cup-andrings with or without gutters, and perforations.
A small pebble (plate XV.
no.
10) shows, on one side, a boat with three men plying their oars, and on the other an incised outline of a left hand having a small cup-and-ring in the palm.
The most sensational objects in the collection are, however, four rude figures, cut out of shale (figs.
5053), representing portions of the human face and person.
One, evidently a female (figure 2), we are informed was found at the bottom of the kitchen midden, a strange resting-place for a goddess; the other three are grotesque efforts to represent a human face.
There are also several oyster-shells, ornamented like some of the shale ornaments, and very similar to the oyster-shell ornaments of Dunbuie.
A splinter of a hard stone is inserted into the tine of a deer-horn as a handle (plate xiii.
no.
5); and another small blunt implement (no.
1) has a bone handle.
A few larger stones with cup-marks and some portions of partially worked pieces of shale complete the art gallery of Dumbuck."
It seemed as if some curse were on Mr. Donnelly!
Whether he discovered an unique old site of human existence in the water or on the land, some viewless fiend kept sowing the soil with _bizarre_ objects unfamiliar to Dr. Munro, and by him deemed incongruous with the normal and known features of human life on such sites.
VII--LANGBANK The Curse, (that is, the forger,) unwearied and relentless, next smote Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A.Scot., merely, as it seems, because he and Mr. Donnelly were partners in the perfectly legitimate pastime of archaeological exploration.
Mr. Bruce's share of the trouble began at Dumbuck.
The canoe was found, the genuine canoe.
"It was at once cleared out by myself," writes Mr. Bruce.
In the bottom of the canoe he found "a spear-shaped slate object," and "an ornamented oyster shell, which has since mouldered away," and "a stone pendant object, and an implement of bone."
{34} Such objects have no business to be found in a canoe just discovered under the mud of Clyde, and cleared out by Mr. Bruce himself, a man or affairs, and of undisputed probity.
In this case the precise site of the dubious relics is given, by a man of honour, at first hand.
I confess that my knowledge of human nature does not enable me to contest Mr. Bruce's written attestation, while I marvel at the astuteness of the forger.
As a finder, on this occasion, Mr. Bruce was in precisely the same position as Dr. Munro at Elie when, as he says, "as the second piece of pottery was disinterred by myself, I was able to locate its precise position at six inches below the surface of the relic bed."
{35} Mr. Bruce was able to locate _his_ finds at the bottom of the canoe.
If I understand Mr. Bruce's narrative, a canoe was found under the mud, and was "cleared out inside," by Mr. Bruce himself.
Had the forger already found the canoe, kept the discovery dark, inserted fraudulent objects, and waited for others to rediscover the canoe?
Or was he present at the first discovery, and did he subtly introduce, unnoted by any one, four objects of shell, stone, and bone, which he had up his sleeve, ready for an opportunity?
One or other alternative must be correct, and either hypothesis has its difficulties.
Meanwhile Sir Arthur Mitchell, not a credulous savant, says: "The evidence of authenticity in regard to these doubted objects from Dumbuck is the usual evidence in such circumstances .
.
.
it is precisely the same evidence of authenticity which is furnished in regard to all the classes of objects found in the Dumbuck exploration--that is, in regard to the canoe, the quern, the bones etc.--about the authenticity of which no doubts have been expressed, as in regard to objects about which doubts have been expressed."
{36a} Of another object found by a workman at Dumbuck Dr. Munro writes "is it not very remarkable that a workman, groping with his hand in the mud, should accidentally stumble on this relic--the only one found in this part of the site?
Is it possible that he was an unconscious thought-reader, and was thus guided to make the discovery" of a thing which "could as readily have been inserted there half-an-hour before?"
{36b} This passage is "rote sarcustic."
But surely Dr. Munro will not, he cannot, argue that Mr. Bruce was "an unconscious thought-reader" when _he_ "cleared out" the interior of the canoe, and found three disputed objects "in the bottom."
If we are to be "psychical," there seems less evidence for "unconscious thought-reading," than for the presence of what are technically styled _apports_,--things introduced by an agency of supra-normal character, vulgarly called a "spirit."
Undeterred by an event which might have struck fear _in constantem virum_, Mr. Bruce, in the summer of 1901, was so reckless as to discover a fresh "submarine wooden structure" at Langbank, on the left, or south bank of the Clyde Estuary opposite Dumbarton Castle.
The dangerous object was cautiously excavated under the superintendence of Mr. Bruce, and a committee of the Glasgow Archaeological Society.
To be brief, the larger features were akin to those of Dumbuck, without the central "well," or hole, supposed by Dr. Munro to have held the pole of a beaconcairn.
The wooden piles, as at Dumbuck, had been fashioned by "sharp metal tools."
{37} This is Mr. Bruce's own opinion.
This evidence of the use of metal tools is a great point of Dr. Munro, against such speculative minds as deem Dumbuck and Langbank "neolithic," that is, of a date long before the Christian era.
_They_ urged that stone tools could have fashioned the piles, but I know not that partisans of either opinion have made experiments in hewing trees with stone-headed axes, like the ingenious Monsieur Hippolyte Muller in France.
{38a} I am, at present, of opinion that all the sites are of an age in which iron was well known to the natives, and bronze was certainly known.
The relics at Langbank were (1) of a familiar, and (2) of an unfamiliar kind.
There was (1) a small bone comb with a "Late Celtic" (200 B.C.-?
A.D.) design of circles and segments of circles; there was a very small penannular brooch of brass or bronze; there were a few cut fragments of deer horn, pointed bones, stone polishers, and so forth, all familiar to science and acceptable.
{38b} On the other hand, the Curse fell on Mr. Bruce in the shape of two perforated shale objects: on one was cut a grotesque face, on the other two incomplete concentric circles, "a stem line with little nicks," and two vague incised marks, which may, or may not, represent "fragments of deer horn."
{38c} We learn from Mr. Bruce that he first observed the Langbank circle of stones from the window of a passing train, and that he made a few slight excavations, apparently at the end of September, 1901.
More formal research was made in October; and again, under the superintendence of members of the Glasgow Archaeological Society, in September, October, 1902.
No members of the Glasgow Committee were present when either the undisputed Late Celtic comb, or the inscribed, perforated, and disputed pieces of cannel coal were discovered.
Illustrations of these objects and of the bronze penannular ring are here given, (figures 1, 2, 3, 4), (two shale objects are omitted,) by the kindness of the Glasgow Archaeological Society (_Transactions_, vol.
v. p. 1).
The brooch (allowed to be genuine) "might date from Romano-British times, say 100-400 A.D. to any date up to late mediaeval times."
{39} Good evidence to date, in a wide sense, would be the "osseous remains," the bones left in the refuse at Langbank and Dumbuck.
Of the bones, I only gather as peculiarly interesting, that Dr. Bryce has found those of _Bos Longifrons_.
Of _Bos Longifrons_ as a proof of date, I know little.
Mr. Ridgeway, Disney Professor of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, is not "a merely literary man."
In his work _The Early Age of Greece_, vol.
i., pp.
334, 335 (Cambridge University Press, 1901), Mr. Ridgeway speaks of _Bos_ as the Celtic ox, co-eval with the Swiss Lake Dwellings, and known as _Bos brachyceros_--"short horn"--so styled by Rutimeyer.
If he is "Celtic" I cannot say how early _Bos_ may have existed among the Celts of Britain, but the Romans are thought by some persons to have brought the Celtic ox to the Celts of our island.
If this be so, the Clyde sites are not earlier (or _Bos_ in these sites is not earlier) than the Roman invasion.
He lasted into the seventh or eighth centuries A.D. at least, and is found on a site discovered by Dr. Munro at Elie.
{40a} Meanwhile archaeology is so lazy, that, after seven years, Dr. Bryce's "reports on the osseous remains" of Langbank and Dumbuck is but lately published.
{40b} { Figs.
1, 2: p40a.jpg} Dr. Bryce, in his report to the Glasgow Archaeological Society, says that "_Bos Longifrons_ has a wide range in time, from Neolithic down to perhaps even medieval times.
It was the domestic ox in Scotland for an unknown period, before, during, and for an unknown time after the Roman invasion.
.
.
.
The occurrence of extinct, probably long extinct, breeds, and these only, make the phenomena in this respect at Langbank exactly comparable with those observed at sites of pile buildings in Scotland generally, and thus it becomes indirect evidence against the thesis that the structure belongs to some different category, and to quite recent times."
{40c} { Fig.
3: p40b.jpg} The evidence of the bones, then, denotes any date except a relatively recent date, of 1556-1758; contrary to an hypothesis to be touched on later.
It follows, from the presence of _Bos_ at Elie (700 A.D.) that the occupants of the Clyde sites at Langbank may have lived there as late as, say, 750 A.D.
But when they _began_ to occupy the sites is another question.
{ Fig.
4: p40c.jpg} If Roman objects are found, as they are, in brochs which show many relics of bronze, it does not follow that the brochs had not existed for centuries before the inhabitants acquired the waifs and strays of Roman civilisation.
In the Nine Caithness Brochs described by Dr. Joseph Anderson, {41} there was a crucible .
.
.
with a portion of melted bronze, a bronze ring, moulds for ingots, an ingot of bronze, bits of Roman "Samian ware," but no iron.
We can be sure that the broch folk were at some time in touch of Roman goods, brought by traffickers perhaps, but how can we be sure that there were no brochs before the arrival of the Romans?
We shall return to the question of the disputable relics of the Clyde, after discussing what science has to say about the probable date and original purpose of the wooden structures in the Clyde estuary.
Nobody, it is admitted, forged _them_, but on the other hand Dr. Munro, the one most learned authority on "Lake Dwellings," or "Crannogs," does not think that the sites were ever occupied by regular "crannogs," or lacustrine settlements, Lake Dwellings.
VIII--THE ORIGINAL DATE AND PURPOSE OF DUMBUCK AND LANGBANK The actual structures of Langbank and Dumbuck, then, are confessedly ancient remains; they are _not_ of the nineteenth century; they are "unique" in our knowledge, and we ask, what was the purpose of their constructors, and what is their approximate date?
Dr. Munro quotes and discusses {43} a theory, or a tentative guess of Dr. David Murray.
That scholar writes "River cairns are commonly built on piled platforms, _and my doubt is_ whether this is not the nature of the structure in question" (Dumbuck).
A river cairn is a solid pile of stonework, with, perhaps, a pole in the centre.
At Dumbuck there is the central "well" of six feet in diameter.
Dr. Murray says that a pole "carried down to the bottom would probably be sunk in the clay, which would produce a hole, or well-like cavity similar to that of the Dumbuck structure."
{44} It is not stated that the poles of river cairns usually demand accommodation to the extent of six feet of diameter, in the centre of the solid mass of stones, and, as the Langbank site has no central well, the tentative conjecture that it was a river cairn is not put forward.
Dr. Murray suggests that the Dumbuck cairn "may have been one of the works of 1556 or 1612," that is, of the modern age of Queen Mary and James VI.
The object of such Corporation cairns "was no doubt to mark the limit of their jurisdiction, and also to serve as a beacon to vessels coming up the river."
Now the Corporation, with its jurisdiction and beacons, is purely modern.
In 1758 the Corporation had a "lower cairn, if it did not occupy this very spot" (Dumbuck) "it stood upon the same line and close to it.
There are, however, no remains of such cairn," says Dr. Murray.
He cites no evidence for the date and expenses of the demolition of the cairn from any municipal book of accounts.
Now we have to ask (1) Is there any evidence that men in 1556-1758 lived on the tops of such modern cairns, dating from the reign of Mary Stuart?
(2) If men then lived on the top of a cairn till their food refuse became "a veritable kitchen midden," as Dr. Munro says, {45} would that refuse exhibit bones of _Bos Longifrons_; and over ninety bone implements, sharpened antlers of deer, stone polishers, hammer stones, "a saddle stone" for corn grinding, and the usual _debris_ of sites of the fifth to the twelfth centuries?
(3) Would such a modern site exhibit these archaic relics, plus a "Late Celtic" comb and "penannular brooch," and exhibit not one modern article of metal, or one trace of old clay tobacco pipes, crockery, or glass?
The answers to these questions are obvious.
It is not shown that any men ever lived on the tops of cairns, and, even if they did so in modern times (1556-1758) they could not leave abundant relics of the broch and crannog age (said to be of 400-1100 A.D.), and leave no relics of modern date.
This theory, or suggestion, is therefore demonstrably untenable and unimaginable.
Dr. Munro, however, "sees nothing against the supposition" that "Dr. Murray is right," but Dr. Munro's remarks about the hypothesis of modern cairns, as a theory "against which he sees nothing," have the air of being an inadvertent _obiter dictum_.
For, in his conclusion and summing up he writes, "We claim to have established that the structures of Dunbuie, Dumbuck, and Langbank are remains of inhabited sites of the early-Iron Age, dating to some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries."
{46a} I accept this conclusion, and will say as little as may be about the theory of a modern _origin_ of the sites, finally discarded by Dr. Munro.
I say "discarded," for his theory is that the modern corporation utilised an earlier structure as a cairn or beacon, or boundary mark, which is perfectly possible.
But, if this occurred, it does not affect the question, for this use of the structure has left no traces of any kind.
There are no relics, except relics of the fifth (?)
to twelfth (?)
centuries.
In an earlier work by Dr. Munro, _Prehistoric Scotland_ (p. 439), published in 1899, he observes that we have no evidence as to the when, or how of the removal of the stones of the hypothetical "Corporation cairn," or "round tower with very thick walls," {46b} or "watch tower," which is supposed to have been erected above the wooden sub-structure at Dumbuck.
He tentatively suggests that the stones may have been used, perhaps, for the stone causeway now laid along the bank of the recently made canal, from a point close to the crannog to the railway.
No record is cited.
He now offers guesses as to the stones "in the so-called pavements and causeways."
First, the causeways may have probably been made "during the construction of the tower with its central pole," (here the cairn is a habitable beacon, habitable on all hypotheses,) or, again, "perhaps at the time of its demolition" about which demolition we know nothing, {47a} except that the most of the stones are not now _in situ._ Several authentic stone crannogs in Scotland, as to which we have information, possessed no central pole, but had a stone causeway, still extant, leading, _e.g._ from the crannog to the shore of the Ashgrove loch, "a causeway of rough blocks of sandstone slabs."
{47b} If one stone crannog had a stone causeway, why should this ancient inhabited cairn or round tower not possess a stone causeway?
Though useless at high water, at low water it would afford better going.
In a note to _Ivanhoe_, and in his Northern tour of 1814, Scott describes a stone causeway to a broch on an artificial island in Loch Cleik-him-in, near Lerwick.
Now this loch, says Scott, was, at the time when the broch was inhabited, open to the flow of tide water.
As people certainly did live on these structures of Langbank and Dunbuie during the broch and crannog age (centuries 5-12) it really matters not to our purpose _why_ they did so, or _how_ they did so.
Let us suppose that the circular wall of the stone superstructure slanted inwards, as is not unusual.
In that case the habitable area at the top may be reduced to any extent that is thought probable, with this limitation:--the habitable space must not be too small for the accommodation of the persons who filled up the eastern third of an area of from twelve to fourteen feet in breadth, and in some places a foot in thickness, with a veritable kitchen-midden, of "broken and partially burned bones of various animals, shells of edible molluscs, and a quantity of ashes and charcoal .
.
.
."
{48} But Dr. Munro assures me that the remains discovered could be deposited in a few years of regular occupancy by two or three persons.
The structure certainly yielded habitable space enough to accommodate the persons who, in the fifth to twelfth centuries, left these traces of their occupancy.
Beyond that fact I do not pretend to estimate the habitable area.
Why did these people live on this structure in the fifth to twelfth centuries?
Almost certainly, not for the purpose of directing the navigation of the Clyde.
At that early date, which I think we may throw far back in the space of the six centuries of the estimate, or may even throw further back still, the Clyde was mainly navigated by canoes of two feet or so in depth, though we ought to have statistics of remains of larger vessels discovered in the river bed.
{49a} I think we may say that the finances of Glasgow, in St. Kentigern's day, about 570-600 A.D., would not be applied to the construction of Dr. Munro's "tower with its central pole and very thick walls" {49b} erected merely for the purpose of warning canoes off shoals in the Clyde.
That the purpose of the erection was to direct the navigation of Clyde by canoes, or by the long vessels of the Viking raiders, appears to me improbable.
I offer, _periculo meo_, a different conjecture, of which I shall show reason to believe that Dr. Munro may not disapprove.
The number of the dwellers in the structure, and the duration of their occupancy, does not affect my argument.
If two natives, in a very few years, could deposit the "veritable kitchen midden," with all the sawn horns, bone implements, and other undisputed relics, we must suppose that the term of occupancy was very brief, or not continuous, and that the stone structure "with very thick walls like the brochs" represented labours which were utilised for a few years, or seldom.
My doubt is as to whether the structure was intended for the benefit of navigators of the Clyde--in shallow canoes!
IX--A GUESS AT THE POSSIBLE PURPOSE OF LANGBANK AND DUMBUCK The Dumbuck structure, when occupied, adjoined and commanded a _ford_ across the undeepened Clyde of uncommercial times.
So Sir Arthur Mitchell informs us.
{51a} The Langbank structure, as I understand, is opposite to that of Dumbuck on the southern side of the river.
If two strongly built structures large enough for occupation exist on opposite sides of a ford, their purpose is evident: they guard the ford, like the two stone camps on each side of the narrows of the Avon at Clifton.
Dr. Munro, on the other hand, says, "the smallness of the habitable area on both "sites" puts them out of the category of military forts."
{51b} My suggestion is that the structure was so far "military" as is implied in its being occupied, with Langbank on the opposite bank of Clyde by keepers of the ford.
In 1901 Dr. Munro wrote, "even the keepers of the watch-tower at the ford of Dumbuck had their quern, and ground their own corn."
{52a} This idea has therefore passed through Dr. Munro's mind, though I did not know the fact till after I had come to the same hypothesis.
The habitable area was therefore, adequate to the wants of these festive people.
I conjecture that these "keepers of the watch-tower at the ford" were military "watchers of the ford," for that seems to me less improbable than that "a round tower with very thick walls, {52b} like the brochs and other forts of North Britain," was built in the interests of the navigation of Clyde at a very remote period.
{52c} But really all this is of no importance to the argument.
People lived in these sites, perhaps as early as 400 A.D. or earlier.
Such places of safety were sadly needed during the intermittent and turbulent Roman occupation.
X--THE LAST DAY AT OLD DUMBUCK Suppose the sites were occupied by the watchers of the ford.
There they lived, no man knows how long, on their perch over the waters of Clyde.
They dwelt at top of a stone structure some eight feet above low water mark, for they could not live on the ground floor, of which the walls, fifty feet thick at the base, defied the waves of the high tides driven by the west wind.
There our friends lived, and probably tatooed themselves, and slew _Bos Longifrons_ and the deer that, in later ages, would have been forbidden game to them.
If I may trust Bede, born in 672, and finishing his History in 731, our friends were Picts, and spoke a now unknown language, _not_ that of the Bretonnes, or Cymri, or Welsh, who lived on the northern side of the Firth of Clyde.
Or the occupants of Dumbuck, on the north side of the river, were Cymri; those of Langbank, on the south side, were Picts.
I may at once say that I decline to be responsible for Bede, and his ethnology, but he lived nearer to those days than we do.
With their ladder of fifteen feet long, a slab of oak, split from the tree by wedges, and having six holes chopped out of the solid for steps, they climbed to their perch, the first floor of their abode.
I never heard of a ladder made in this way, but the Zunis used simply to cut notches for the feet in the trunk of a tree, and "sich a getting up stairs" it must have been, when there was rain, and the notches were wet!
Time passed, the kitchen midden grew, and the Cymri founded Ailcluith, "Clyde rock," now Dumbarton; "to this day," says Bede, "the strongest city of the Britons."
{54} Then the Scots came, and turned the Britons out; and St. Columba came, and St. Kentigern from Wales (573-574), and began to spread the Gospel among the pagan Picts and Cymri.
Stone amulets and stone idols, (if the disputed objects are idols and amulets,) "have had their day," (as Bob Acres says "Damns have had their day,") and, with Ailcluith in Scots' hands, "'twas time for us to go" thought the Picts and Cymri of Langbank and Dumbuck.
Sadly they evacuate their old towers or cairns before the Scots who now command the Dumbuck ford from Dumbarton.
They cross to land on their stone causeway at low water.
They abandon the old canoe in the little dock where it was found by Mr. Bruce.
They throw down the venerable ladder.
They leave behind only the canoe, the deer horns, stone-polishers, sharpened bones, the lower stone of a quern, and the now obsolete, or purely folk-loreish stone "amulets," or "pendants," and the figurines, which to call "idols" is unscientific, while to call them "totems" is to display "facetious and rejoicing ignorance."
Dr. Munro merely quotes this foolish use of the term totem by others.
These old things the evicted Picts and Cymri abandoned, while they carried with them their more valuable property, their Early Iron axes and knives, their treasured bits of red "Samian ware," inherited from Roman times, their amber beads, and the rest of their bibelots, down to the minutest fragment of pottery.
Or it may not have been so: the conquering Scots may have looted the cairns, and borne the Pictish cairn-dwellers into captivity.
Looking at any broch, or hill fort, or crannog, the fancy dwells on the last day of its occupation: the day when the canoe was left to subside into the mud and decaying vegetable matter of the loch.
In changed times, in new conditions, the inhabitants move away to houses less damp, and better equipped with more modern appliances.
I see the little troop, or perhaps only two natives, cross the causeway, while the Minstrel sings in Pictish or Welsh a version of "The Auld Hoose, the Auld Hoose, What though the rooms were sma', Wi' six feet o' diameter, And a rung gaun through the ha'!"
The tears come to my eyes, as I think of the Last Day of Old Dumbuck, for, take it as you will, there _was_ a last day of Dumbuck, as of windy Ilios, and of "Carthage left deserted of the sea."
So ends my little idyllic interlude, and, if I am wrong, blame Venerable Bede!
XI--MY THEORY OF PROVISIONAL DATE Provisionally, and for the sake of argument merely, may I suggest that the occupancy of these sites may be dated by me, about 300-550 A.D.?
That date is well within the Iron Age: iron had long been known and used in North Britain.
But to the non-archaeological reader, the terms Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, are apt to prove misleading.
The early Iron Age, like the Bronze Age, was familiar with the use of implements of stone.
In the Scottish crannogs, admirably described by Dr. Munro, in his _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings_, were found implements of flint, a polished stone axe-head, an iron knife at the same lowest level, finger rings of gold, a forged English coin of the sixth or seventh century A.D., well-equipped canoes (a common attendant of crannogs), the greater part of a stone inscribed with concentric circles, a cupped stone, and a large quartz crystal of the kind which Apaches in North America, and the Euahlayi tribe in New South Wales, use in crystal gazing.
In early ages, after the metals had been worked, stone, bronze, and iron were still used as occasion served, just as the Australian black will now fashion an implement in "palaeolithic" wise, with a few chips; now will polish a weapon in "neolithic" fashion; and, again, will chip a fragment of glass with wonderful delicacy; or will put as good an edge as he can on a piece of hoop iron.
I venture, then, merely for the sake of argument, to date the origin of the Clyde sites in the dark years of unrecorded turmoil which preceded and followed the Roman withdrawal.
The least unpractical way of getting nearer to their purpose is the careful excavation of a structure of wood and stone near Eriska, where Prince Charles landed in 1745.
Dr. Munro has seen and described this site, but is unable to explain it.
Certainly it cannot be a Corporation cairn.
XII--THE DISPUTED OBJECTS We now approach the disputed and very puzzling objects found in the three Clyde sites.
My object is, not to demonstrate that they were actually fashioned in, say, 410-550 A.D., or that they were relics of an age far more remote, but merely to re-state the argument of Dr. Joseph Anderson, Keeper of the Scottish National Museum, and of Sir Arthur Mitchell, both of them most widely experienced and sagacious archaeologists.
They play the waiting game, and it may be said that they "sit upon the fence"; I am proud to occupy a railing in their company.
Dr. Anderson spoke at a meeting of the Scots Society of Antiquaries, May 14, 1900, when Mr. Bruce read a paper on Dumbuck, and exhibited the finds.
"With regard to the relics, he said that there was nothing exceptional in the chronological horizon of a portion of them from both sites (Dumbuck and Dunbuie), but as regards another portion, he could find no place for it in any archaeological series, as it had 'no recognisable affinity with any objects found anywhere else.'"
"For my part," said Dr. Anderson, (and he has not altered his mind,) "I do not consider it possible or necessary in the meantime that there should be a final pronouncement on these questions.
In the absence of decisive evidence, which time may supply, I prefer to suspend my judgment--merely placing the suspected objects (as they place themselves) in the list of things that must wait for further evidence, because they contradict present experience.
It has often happened that new varieties of things have been regarded with suspicion on account of their lack of correspondence with things previously known, and that the lapse of time has brought corroboration of their genuineness through fresh discoveries.
If time brings no such corroboration, they still remain in their proper classification as things whose special character has not been confirmed by archaeological experience."
Sir Arthur Mitchell spoke in the same sense, advising suspension of judgment, and that we should await the results of fresh explorations both at Dumbuck and elsewhere.
{61} Dr. Murray said that the disputed finds "are puzzling, but we need not condemn them because we do not understand them."
Dr. Munro will not suspend _his_ judgment: the objects, he declares, are spurious.
XIII--METHOD OF INQUIRY I remarked, early in this tract, that "with due deference, and with doubt, I think Dr. Munro's methods capable of modification."
I meant that I prefer, unlike Dr. Munro in this case, to extend the archaeological gaze beyond the limits of things already known to occur in the Scottish area which--by the way--must contain many relics still unknown.
I "Let Observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru," to discover whether objects analogous to those under dispute occur anywhere among early races of the past or present.
This kind of wide comparison is the method of Anthropology.
Thus Prof. Rhys and others find so very archaic an institution as the reckoning of descent in the female line,--inheritance going through the Mother,--among the Picts of Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an institution already outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon descent in the male line.
Races do not, in fact, advance on a straight and unbroken highway of progress.
You find that the Kurnai of Australia are more civilised, as regards the evolution of the modern Family, than were the Picts who built crannogs and dug canoes, and cultivated the soil, and had domesticated animals, and used iron, all of them things that the Kurnai never dreamed of doing.
As to traces of Totemism in Scotland and Ireland, I am not persuaded by Professor Rhys that they occur, and are attested by Celtic legends about the connection of men and kinships with animals, and by personal and kinship names derived from animals.
The question is very obscure.
{63} But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements, in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design of the totem animal.
Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design, to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on.
{64a} Equivalent marks, such as spirals, and tracks of emu's feet, occur on sacred stones found round the graves of Australian blacks on the Darling River.
They were associated with rites which the oldest blacks decline to explain.
The markings are understood to be totemic.
Occasionally they are linear, as in Ogam writing.
{64b} Any one who is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's _Evolution of Art_.
{64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to represent bats.
{64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly derived, through several stages, from a representation of an alligator.
{64e} We cannot say whether or not the same pattern, found at Dumbuck, in Central Australia, and in tropical America, arose in the "schematising" of the same object in nature, in all three regions, or not.
Without direct evidence, we cannot assign a meaning to the patterns.
XIV--THE POSSIBLE MEANINGS OF THE MARKS AND OBJECTS My private opinion as to the meaning of the archaic marks and the Clyde objects which bear them, has, in part by my own fault, been misunderstood by Dr. Munro.
He bases an argument on the idea that I suppose the disputed "pendants" to have had, in Clydesdale, precisely the same legendary, customary, and magical significance as the stone churinga of the Arunta tribe in Australia.
That is not my theory.
Dr. Munro quotes me, without indicating the source, (which, I learn, is my first letter on the subject to the _Glasgow Herald_, Jan. 10th, 1899), as saying that the Clyde objects "are in absolutely startling agreement" with the Arunta _churinga_.
{65} Doubtless, before I saw the objects, I thus overstated my case, in a letter to a newspaper, in 1899.
But in my essay originally published in the _Contemporary Review_, (March 1899,) and reprinted in my book, _Magic and Religion_, of 1901, {66} I stated my real opinion.
This is a maturely considered account of my views as they were in 1899-1901, and, unlike old newspaper correspondence, is easily accessible to the student.
It is _not_ "out of print."
I compared the Australian marks on small stones and on rock walls, and other "fixtures in the landscape," with the markings on Scottish boulders, rock walls, cists, and so forth, and also with the marks on the disputed objects.
I added "the startling analogy between Australia and old Scottish markings _saute aux yeux_," and I spoke truth.
Down to the designs which represent footmarks, the analogy is "startling," is of great interest, and was never before made the subject of comment.
I said that we could not know whether or not the markings, in Scotland and Australia, had the same meaning.
As to my opinion, then, namely that we cannot say what is the significance of an archaic pattern in Scotland, or elsewhere, though we may know the meaning assigned to it in Central Australia, there can no longer be any mistake.
I take the blame of having misled Dr. Munro by an unguarded expression in a letter to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, {67} saying that, if the disputed objects were genuine, they implied the survival, on Clyde, "of a singularly archaic set of ritual and magical ideas," namely those peculiar to the Arunta and Kaitish tribes of Central Australia.
But that was a slip of the pen, merely.
This being the case, I need not reply to arguments of Dr. Munro (pp.
248250) against an hypothesis which no instructed person could entertain, beginning with the assumption that from an unknown centre, some people who held Arunta ideas migrated to Central Australia, and others to the Clyde.
Nobody supposes that the use of identical or similar patterns, and of stones of superstitious purpose, implies community of race.
These things may anywhere be independently evolved, and in different regions may have quite different meanings, if any; while the use of "charm stones" or witch stones, is common among savages, and survives, in England and Scotland, to this day.
The reader will understand that I am merely applying Mr. E. B. Tylor's method of the study of "survivals in culture," which all anthropologists have used since the publication of Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, thirty-five years ago.
XV--QUESTION OF METHOD CONTINUED What is admitted to be true of survivals in the Family among the Picts may also be true as to other survivals in art, superstition, and so forth.
I would, therefore, compare the disputed Clyde objects with others analogous to them, of known or unknown purpose, wheresoever they may be found.
I am encouraged in this course by observing that it is pursued, for example, by the eminent French archaeologist, Monsieur Cartailhac, in his book _Les Ages Prehistoriques de France et d'Espagne_.
He does not hesitate, as we shall see, to compare peculiar objects found in France or Spain, with analogous objects of doubtful purpose, found in America or the Antilles.
M. Cartailhac writes that, to find anything resembling certain Portuguese "thin plaques of slate in the form of a crook, or crozier," he "sought through all ethnographic material, ancient and modern."
He did find the parallels to his Portuguese objects, one from Gaudeloup, the other either French, or from the Antilles.
{69} Sir John Evans, again, compares British with Australian objects; in fact the practice is recognised.
I therefore intend to make use of this comparative method.
On the other hand, Dr. Munro denies that any of my analogies drawn from remote regions are analogous, and it will be necessary to try to prove that they are,--that my Australian, American, Portuguese, and other objects are of the same kind, apparently, as some of the disputed relics of the Clyde.
If I succeed, one point will be made probable.
Either the Clyde objects are old, or the modern maker knew much more of archaeology than many of his critics and used his knowledge to direct his manufacture of spurious things; or he kept coinciding _accidentally_ with genuine relics of which he knew nothing.
XVI--MAGIC Again, I must push my method beyond that of Dr. Munro, by considering the subject of Magic, in relation to perforated and other stones, whether inscribed with designs, or uninscribed.
Among the disputed objects are many such stones, and it is legitimate for me to prove, not only that they occur in many sites of ancient life, but that their magical uses are still recognised, or were very recently recognised in the British Folklore of to-day.
A superstition which has certainly endured to the nineteenth century may obviously have existed among the Picts, or whoever they were, of the crannog and broch period on Clyde.
The only _a priori_ objection is the absence of such objects among finds made on British soil, but our discoveries cannot be exhaustive: time may reveal other examples, and already we have a few examples, apart from the objects in dispute.
XVII--DISPUTED OBJECTS CLASSIFIED Dr. Munro classifies the disputed objects as _Weapons_, _Implements_, "_Amulets_" _or Pendants_, _Cup-and-Ring Stones_, "_Human Figurines or Idols_."
For reasons of convenience, and because what I heard about group 3, the "amulets or pendants" first led me into this discussion, I shall here first examine them.
Dr. Munro reproduces some of them in one plate (xv.
p. 228).
He does not say by what process they are reproduced; merely naming them .
.
.
"objects of slate and stone from Dumbuck."
Dr. Munro describes the "amulets" or "pendants" thus: "The largest group of objects (plate XV.)
consists of the so-called amulets or pendants of stone, shale, and shell, some fifteen to twenty specimens of which have been preserved and recorded as having been found on the different stations, viz., three from Dunbuie (exclusive of a few perforated oyster shells), eleven from Dumbuck, and one from Langbank.
Their ornamentation is chiefly of the cup-and-ring order, only a few having patterns composed of straight lines.
Some of them are so large as to be unfit to be used as amulets or pendants, such, for example, as that represented by no.
14, which is 9 inches long, 3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 inch thick.
The ornamentation consists of a strongly incised line running downwards from the perforation with small branch lines directed alternately right and left.
Any human being, who would wear this object, either as an ornament or religious emblem, would be endowed with the most archaic ideas of decorative art known in the history of human civilisation.
Yet we can have no doubt that the individual who manufactured it, if he were an inhabitant of any of the Clyde sites, was at the same time living in a period not devoid of culture, and was in possession of excellent cutting implements, most likely of iron, with which he manipulated wood, deerhorn, and other substances.
These objects are nearly all perforated, as if intended for suspension, but sometimes, in addition to this, there is a large central hole around which there is always an ornamentation, generally consisting of incised circles or semicircles, with divergent lines leading into small hollow points, the so-called cup-marks."
I shall return to the theory that the stones were "ornaments"; meanwhile I proceed to the consideration of "cup-marks" on stones, large or small.
XVIII--CUP MARKS IN CRANNOGS As to cup marks, or _cupules_, little basins styled also _ecuelles_, now isolated, now grouped, now separate, now joined by hollowed lines, they are familiar on rocks, funeral cists, and so forth in Asia, Europe, and North America (and Australia), as M. Cartailhac remarks in reviewing Dr. Magni's work on Cupped Rocks near Como.
{73a} "Their meaning escapes us," says M. Cartailhac.
These cups, or cupules, or _ecuelles_ occur, not only at Dumbuck, but in association with a Scottish crannog of the Iron age, admirably described by Dr. Munro himself.
{73b} He found a polished celt, {73c} and a cupped stone, and he found a fragmentary block of red sandstone, about a foot in length, inscribed with concentric circles, surrounding a cup.
The remainder of the stone, with the smaller part of the design, was not found.
Here, then, we have these archaic patterns and marks on isolated stones, one of them about 13 inches long, in a genuine Scottish crannog, of the genuine Iron age, while flint celts also occur, and objects of bronze.
Therefore cup markings, and other archaic markings are not unknown or suspicious things in a genuine pile structure in Scotland.
Why, then, suspect them at Dumbuck?
At Dumbuck the cups occur on a triangular block of sandstone, 14.5 inches long and 4 inches thick.
Another cupped block is of 21.5 inches by 16.5.
{74} No forger brought these cupped stones in his waistcoat pocket.
We have thus made good the point that an isolated cupped stone, and an isolated stone inscribed with concentric circles round a cup, do occur in a crannog containing objects of the stone, bronze, and iron ages.
The meaning, if any, of these inscribed stones, in the Lochlee crannog, is unknown.
Many of the disputed objects vary from them in size, while presenting examples of archaic patterns.
Are they to be rejected because they vary in size?
We see that the making of this class of decorative patterns, whether they originally had a recognised meaning; or whether, beginning as mere decorations, perhaps "schematistic" designs of real objects, they later had an arbitrary symbolic sense imposed upon them, is familiar to Australians of to-day, who use, indifferently, stone implements of the neolithic or of the palaeolithic type.
We also know that "in a remote corner of tropical America," the rocks are inscribed with patterns "typically identical with those engraved in the British rocks."
{75} These markings are in the country of the Chiriquis, an extinct gold-working neolithic people, very considerable artists, especially in the making of painted ceramics.
The Picts and Scots have left nothing at all approaching to their pottery work.
These identical patterns, therefore, have been independently evolved in places most remote in space and in stage of civilisation, while in Galloway, as I shall show, I have seen some of them scrawled in chalk on the flag stones in front of cottage doors.
The identity of many Scottish and Australian patterns is undenied, while I disclaim the opinion that, in each region, they had the same significance.
I have now established the coincidence between the markings of rocks in Australia, in tropical America, and in Scotland.
I have shown that such markings occur, in Scotland, associated with remains, in a crannog, of the Age of Iron.
They also occur on stones, large (cupped) and small, in Dumbuck.
My next business is, if I can, to establish, what Dr. Munro denies, a parallelism between these disputed Clyde stones, and the larger or smaller inscribed stones of the Arunta and Kaitish, in Australia, and other small stones, decorated or plain, found in many ancient European sites.
Their meaning we know not, but probably they were either reckoned ornamental, or magical, or both.
XIX--PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE DISPUTED OBJECTS AND OTHER OBJECTS ELSEWHERE On Clyde (if the disputed things be genuine) we find decorated plaques or slabs of soft stone, of very various dimensions and shapes.
In Australia some of these objects are round, many oval, others elongated, others thin and pointed, like a pencil; others oblong--while on Clyde, some are round, one is coffin-shaped, others are palette-shaped, others are pearshaped (the oval tapering to one extremity), one is triangular, one is oblong.
{77} In Australia, as on Clyde, the stones bear some of the archaic markings common on the rock faces both in Scotland and in Central Australia: on large rocks they are _painted_, in Australia, in Scotland they are _incised_.
I maintain that there is a singularly strong analogy between the two sets of circumstances, Scottish and Australian; large rocks inscribed with archaic designs; smaller stones inscribed with some of these designs.
Is it not so?
Dr. Munro, on the other hand, asserts that there is no such parallelism.
But I must point out that there is, to some extent, an admitted parallelism.
"The familiar designs which served as models to the Clyde artists"--"plain cups and rings, with or without gutter channels, spirals, circles, concentric circles, semicircles, horseshoe and harpshaped figures, etc.," occur, or a selection of them occurs, both on the disputed objects, and on the rocks of the hills.
So Dr. Munro truly says (p. 260).
The same marks, plain cups, cups and rings, spirals, concentric circles, horseshoes, medial lines with short slanting lines proceeding from them, like the branches on a larch, or the spine of a fish, occur on the rocks of the Arunta hills, and also on plaques of stone cherished and called churinga ("sacred") by the Arunta.
{78} Here is what I call "parallelism."
Dr. Munro denies this parallelism.
There are, indeed, other parallelisms with markings other than those of the rocks at Auchentorlie which Dr. Munro regards as the sources of the faker's inspiration.
Thus, on objects from Dumbuck (Munro, plate XV.
figs, 11 and 12), there are two "signs": one is a straight line, horizontal, with three shorter lines under it at right angles, the other a line with four lines under it.
These signs "are very frequent in Trojan antiquities," and on almost all the "hut urns" found "below the lava at Marino, near Albano, or on ancient tombs near Corneto."
Whatever they mean, (and Prof. Sayce finds the former of the two "signs" "as a Hittite hieroglyph,") I do not know them at Auchentorlie.
After "a scamper among the surrounding hills," the faker may have passed an evening with Dr. Schliemann's _Troja_ (1884, pp.
126, 127) and may have taken a hint from the passages which have just been cited.
Or he may have cribbed the idea of these archaic markings from Don Manuel de Gongora y Martinez, his _Antiguedades Pre-historicas de Andalucia_ (Madrid, 1868, p. 65, figures 70, 71).
In these Spanish examples the marks are, clearly, "schematised" or rudimentary designs of animals, in origin.
Our faker is a man of reading.
But, _enfin_, the world is full of just such markings, which may have had one meaning here, another there, or may have been purely decorative.
"Race" has nothing to do with the markings.
They are "universally human," though, in some cases, they may have been transmitted by one to another people.
{ Fig.
5: p80a.jpg} The reader must decide as to whether I have proved my parallelisms, denied by Dr. Munro, between the Clyde, Australian, and other markings, whether on rocks or on smaller stones.
{80a} { Fig.
6: p80b.jpg} It suffices me to have tried to prove the parallelism between Australian and Clyde things, and to record Dr. Munro's denial thereof--"I unhesitatingly maintain that there is no parallelism whatever between the two sets of objects."
{80b} { Fig.
7: p80c.jpg} XX--UNMARKED CHARM STONES It must be kept in mind that churinga, "witch stones," "charm stones," or whatever the smaller stones may be styled, are not necessarily marked with any pattern.
In Australia, in Portugal, in Russia, in France, in North America, in Scotland, as we shall see, such stones may be unmarked, may bear no inscription or pattern.
{81} These are plain magic stones, such as survive in English peasant superstition.
In Dr. Munro's _Ancient Lake Dwellings of Europe_, plain stone discs, perforated, do occur, but rarely, and there are few examples of pendants with cupped marks.
Of these two, as being cupped pendants, might look like analogues of the disputed Clyde stones, but Dr. Munro, owing to the subsequent exposure of the "Horn Age" forgeries, now has "a strong suspicion that he was taken in" by the things.
{82a} To return to Scottish stones.
In Mr. Graham Callander's essay on perforated stones, {82b} he publishes an uninscribed triangular stone, with a perforation, apparently for suspension.
This is one of several such Scottish stones, and though we cannot prove it, may have had a superstitious purpose.
Happily Sir Walter Scott discovered and describes the magical use to which this kind of charm stone was put in 1814.
When a person was unwell, in the Orkney Isles, the people, like many savages, supposed that a wizard had stolen his heart.
"The parties' friends resort to a cunning man or woman, who hangs about the [patient's] neck a triangular stone in the shape of a heart."
{82c} This is a thoroughly well-known savage superstition, the stealing of the heart, or vital spirit, and its restoration by magic.
This use of triangular or heart-shaped perforated stones was not inconsistent with the civilisation of the nineteenth century, and, of course, was not inconsistent with the civilisation of the Picts.
A stone may have magical purpose, though it bears no markings.
Meanwhile most churinga, and many of the disputed objects, have archaic markings, which also occur on rock faces.
XXI--QUALITY OF ART ON THE STONES Dr. Munro next reproduces two _wooden_ churinga (_churinga irula_), as being very unlike the Clydesdale objects _in stone_ {84a} (figures 5, 6).
They are: but I was speaking of Australian _churinga nanja_, of _stone_.
A stone churinga {84b} presented, I think, by Mr. Spencer through me to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (also reproduced by Dr. Munro), is a much better piece of work, as I saw when it reached me, than most of the Clyde things.
"The Clyde amulets are," says Dr. Munro, "neither strictly oval," (_nor are very many Australian samples_,) "nor well finished, nor symmetrical, being generally water-worn fragments of shale or clay slate.
.
.
."
They thus resemble ancient Red Indian pendants.
As to the art of the patterns, the Australians have a considerable artistic gift; as Grosse remarks, {85a} while either the Clyde folk had less, or the modern artists had _not_ "some practical artistic skill."
But Dr. Munro has said that any one with "some practical artistic skill" could whittle the Clyde objects.
{85b} He also thinks that in one case they "disclose the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art" (p. 231).
Let me put a crucial question.
Are the archaic markings on the disputed objects better, or worse, or much on a level with the general run of such undisputably ancient markings on large rocks, cists, and cairns in Scotland?
I think the art in both cases is on the same low level.
When the art on the disputed objects is more formal and precise, as on some shivered stones at Dunbuie, "the stiffness of the lines and figures reminds one more of rule and compass than of the free-hand work of prehistoric artists."
{85c} The modern faker sometimes drew his marks "free-hand," and carelessly; sometimes his regularities suggest line and compass.
Now, as to the use of compasses, a small pair were found with Late Celtic remains, at Lough Crew, and plaques of bone decorated by aid of such compasses, were also found, {85d} in a cairn of a set adorned with the archaic markings, cup and ring, concentric circles, medial lines with shorter lines sloping from them on either side, and a design representing, apparently, an early mono-cycle!
For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist.
If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde "pendants," which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories.
Either the Picts of Clyde, or whoever they were, repeated on stones, usually small, some of the patterns on the neighbouring rocks; or the modern faker, for unknown reasons, repeated these and other archaic patterns on smaller stones.
His motive is inscrutable: the Australian parallels were unknown to European science,--but he may have used European analogues.
On the other hand, while Dr. Munro admits that the early Clyde people might have repeated the rock decorations "on small objects of slate and shale," he says that the objects "would have been, even then, as much out of place as surviving remains of the earlier Scottish civilisation as they are at the present day."
{86} How can we assert that magic stones, or any such stone objects, perforated or not, were necessarily incongruous with "the earlier Scottish civilisation?"
No civilisation, old or new, is incapable of possessing such stones; even Scotland, as I shall show, can boast two or three samples, such as the stone of the Keiss broch, a perfect circle, engraved with what looks like an attempt at a Runic inscription; and another in a kind of cursive characters.
XXII--SURVIVAL OF MAGIC OF STONES If "incongruous with the earlier Scottish civilisation" the use of "charm stones" is not incongruous with the British civilisation of the nineteenth century.
In the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_ (Scot.)
(1902-1903, p. 166 _et seq._) Mr. Graham Callander, already cited, devotes a very careful essay to such perforated stones, circular or triangular, or otherwise shaped, found in the Garioch.
They are of slate, or "heather stone," and of various shapes and sizes.
Their original purpose is unknown.
The perforation, or cup not perforated, is sometimes in the centre, in a few cases in "near the end."
Mr. Graham Callander heard of a recent old lady in Roxburghshire, who kept one of these stones, of irregularly circular shape, behind the door for luck.
{88} "It was always spoken of as a charm," though its ancient maker may have intended it for some prosaic practical use.
{ Fig.
8: p88.jpg} I take the next example that comes to hand.
"Thin flat oolite stones, having a natural perforation, are found in abundance on the Yorkshire coast.
They are termed "witch stones," and are tied to door keys, or suspended by a string behind the cottage door, "to keep witches out."
{89} "A thin flat perforated witch stone," answers to an uninscribed Arunta churinga; "a magic thing," and its use survives in Britain, as in Yorkshire and Roxburghshire.
We know no limit to the persistence of survival of superstitious things, such as magic stones.
This is the familiar lesson of Anthropology and of Folk Lore, and few will now deny the truth of the lesson.
XXIII--MODERN SURVIVAL OF MAGICAL WOOD CHURINGA I take another example of modern survival in magic.
Dr. Munro, perhaps, would think wooden churinga, used for magical ends, "incongruous with the earlier Scottish civilisation."
But such objects have not proved to be incongruous with the Scottish civilisation of the nineteenth century.
The term _churinga_, "sacred," is used by the Arunta to denote not only the stone churinga nanja, a local peculiarity of the Arunta and Kaitish, but also the decorated and widely diffused elongated wooden slats called "Bull Roarers" by the English.
These are swung at the end of a string, and produce a whirring roar, supposed to be the voice of a supernormal being, all over Australia and elsewhere.
I am speaking of _survivals_, and these wooden churinga, at least, _survive_ in Scotland, and, in Aberdeenshire they are, or were lately called "thunner spells" or "thunder bolts."
"It was believed that the use of this instrument during a thunderstorm saved one from being struck by the thunner bolt."
In North and South America the bull roarer, on the other hand, is used, not to avert, but magically to produce thunder and lightning.
{91} Among the Kaitish thunder is caused by the churinga of their "sky dweller," Atnatu.
Wherever the toy is used for a superstitious purpose, it is, so far, _churinga_, and, so far, modern Aberdeenshire had the same _churinga irula_ as the Arunta.
The object was familiar to palaeolithic man.
XXIV--CONCLUSION OF ARGUMENT FROM SURVIVALS IN MAGIC I have made it perfectly certain that magic stones, "witch stones," "charm stones," and that _churinga irula_, wooden magical slats of wood, exist in Australia and other savage regions, and survive, as magical, into modern British life.
The point is beyond doubt, and it is beyond doubt that, in many regions, the stones, and the slats of wood, may be inscribed with archaic markings, or may be uninscribed.
This will be proved more fully later.
Thus Pictish, like modern British civilisation, may assuredly have been familiar with charm stones.
There is no _a priori_ objection as to the possibility.
Why should Pictish stones _not_ be inscribed with archaic patterns familiar to the dwellers among inscribed rocks, perhaps themselves the inscribers of the rocks?
Manifestly there is no _a priori_ improbability.
I have seen the archaic patterns of concentric circles and fish spines, (or whatever we call the medial line with slanting side lines,) neatly designed in white on the flag stones in front of cottage doors in Galloway.
The cottagers dwelt near the rocks with similar patterns on the estate of Monreith, but are not likely to have copied them; the patterns, I presume, were mere survivals in tradition.
The Picts, or whoever they were, might assuredly use charm stones, and the only objection to the idea that they might engrave archaic patterns on them is the absence of record of similarly inscribed small stones in Britain.
The custom of using magic stones was not at all incongruous with the early Pictish civilisation, which retained a form of the Family now long outworn by the civilisation of the Arunta.
The sole objection is that _a silentio_, silence of archaeological records as to _inscribed_ small stones.
That is not a closer of discussion, nor is the silence absolute, as I shall show.
Moreover, the appearance of an unique and previously unheard-of set of inscribed stones, in a site of the usual broch and crannog period, is not invariably ascribed to forgery, even by the most orthodox archaeologists.
Thus Sir Francis Terry found unheard-of things, not to mention "a number of thin flat circular discs of various sizes" in his Caithness brochs.
In Wester broch "the most remarkable things found" were three egg-shaped quartzite pearls "having their surface painted with spots in a blackish or blackish-brown pigment."
He also found a flattish circular disc of sandstone, inscribed with a duck or other water-fowl, while on one side was an attempt, apparently, to write runes, on the other an inscription in unknown cursive characters.
There was a boulder of sandstone with nine cup marks, and there were more painted pebbles, the ornaments now resembling ordinary cup marks, now taking the shape of a cross, and now of lines and other patterns, one of which, on an Arunta rock, is of unknown meaning, among many of known totemic significance.
Dr. Joseph Anderson compares these to "similar pebbles painted with a red pigment" which M. Piette found in the cavern of Mas d'Azil, of which the relics are, in part at least, palaeolithic, or "mesolithic," and of dateless antiquity.
In _L'Anthropologie_ (Nov. 1894), Mr. Arthur Bernard Cook suggests that the pebbles of Mas d'Azil may correspond to the stone churinga nanja of the Arunta; a few of which appear to be painted, not incised.
I argued, on the contrary, that things of similar appearance, at Mas d'Azil: in Central Australia: and in Caithness, need not have had the same meaning and purpose.
{95a} It is only certain that the pebbles of the Caithness brochs are as absolutely unfamiliar as the inscribed stones of Dumbuck.
But nobody says that the Caithness painted pebbles are forgeries or modern fabrications.
Sauce for the Clyde goose is not sauce for the Caithness gander.
{95b} The use of painted pebbles and of inscribed stones, may have been merely _local_.
In Australia the stone churinga are now, since 1904, known to be _local_, confined to the Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish, with very few sporadic exceptions in adjacent tribes.
{95c} The purely local range of the inscribed stones in Central Australia, makes one more anxious for further local research in the Clyde district and south-west coast.
XXV--MY MISADVENTURE WITH THE CHARM STONE As Dr. Munro introduces the subject, I may draw another example of the survival of charm stones, from an amusing misadventure of my own.
I was once entrusted with a charm stone used in the nineteenth century for the healing of cattle in the Highlands.
An acquaintance of mine, a Mac--by the mother's side, inherited this heirloom with the curious box patched with wicker-work, which was its Ark.
It was exactly of the shape of a "stone churinga of the Arunta tribe," later reproduced by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen.
{96} On the surfaces of the ends were faintly traced concentric rings, that well-known pattern.
I wrote in the _Glasgow Herald_ that, "_if_ a Neolithic amulet, as it appears to be, it _may_ supply the missing link in my argument," as being not only a magic stone (which it certainly was), but a magic stone with archaic markings.
{97a} At the British Museum I presently learned the real nature of the object, to my rueful amusement.
It had been the stone pivot of an old farm-gate, and, in turning on the upper and nether stones, had acquired the concentric circular marks.
Not understanding what the thing was, the Highland maternal ancestors of my friend had for generations used it in the magical healing of cattle, a very pretty case of "survival."
{ Figs.
9, 10: p96a.jpg} Writing on October 19th, I explained the facts in a letter to the _Glasgow Herald_.
A pseudonymous person then averred, in the same journal, that I had "recently told its readers that I had found the missing link in the chain that was to bind together the magic stones of the Arunta and the discs, images, and 'blue points' of the Clyde crannog man."
{ Fig.
11: p96b.jpg} I never told any mortal that I had "found the missing link!"
I said that "_if_" the stone be Neolithic, it "_may_" be the missing link in my argument.
Dr. Munro prints the pseudonymous letter with approval, but does not correct the inaccurate statement of the writer.
{97b} Dr. Munro, I need not say, argues with as much candour as courtesy, and the omission of the necessary correction is an oversight.
{ Figs.
12, 13: p96c.jpg} However, here was a survival of the use of charm stones, and I think that, had the stone been uninscribed (as it was accidentally inscribed with concentric circles by turning in its stone sockets), my friend's Highland ancestors might have been less apt to think it a fairy thing, and use it in cattle healing.
I trust that I have now established my parallelisms.
The archaic patterns of countries now civilised and of savage countries are assuredly parallel.
The use of charm stones in civilisation and savagery is assuredly parallel.
The application to these stones of the archaic patterns, by a rude race in Clydesdale, familiar with the patterns on rocks in the district, has in it nothing _a priori_ improbable.
XXVI--EUROPEAN PARALLELS TO THE DISPUTED OBJECTS I am not so sure as Dr. Munro is that we have not found small perforated stones, sometimes inscribed with archaic patterns, sometimes plain, even in Scotland; I shall later mention other places.
For the present I leave aside the small stone, inscribed with concentric horse-shoes, and found in a hill-fort near Tarbert (Kintyre), which a friend already spoken of saw, and of which he drew for me a sketch from memory.
In country houses any intrinsically valueless object of this kind is apt to fall out of sight and be lost beyond recovery.
Sir John Evans, however, in his work on _Ancient Stone Implements_, p. 463 (1897), writes: "A pendant, consisting of a flat pear-shaped piece of shale, 2.5 inches long, and 2 inches broad, and perforated at the narrow end, was found along with querns, stones with concentric circles, and cupshaped indentations worked in them; stone balls, spindle whorls, and an iron axe-head, in excavating an underground chamber at the Tappock, Torwood, Stirlingshire.
One face of this pendant was covered with scratches in a vandyked pattern.
Though of smaller size this seems to bear some analogy with the flat amulets of schist of which several have been discovered in Portugal, with one face ornamented in much the same manner."
For these examples Sir John Evans refers to the _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_.
{100a} If by "a vandyked pattern," Sir John means, as I suppose, a pattern of triangles in horizontal lines (such as the Portuguese patterns on stone plaques), then the elements of this form of decoration appear to have been not unfamiliar to the designers of "cups and rings."
On the cover of a stone cist at Carnwath we see inscribed concentric rings, and two large equilateral triangles, each containing three contingent triangles, round a square space, uninscribed.
{100b} The photograph of the Tappock stone (figs.
9, 10), shows that the marks are not of a regular vandyked pattern, but are rather scribbles, like those on a Portuguese perforated stone, given by Vasconcellos, and on a Canadian stone pendant, published by Mr. David Boyle (figs.
12, 13).
Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, "a pendant," found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an iron axe, and cup and ring stones.
Sir John sees no harm in the "pendant," but Dr. Munro rejects a "pear-shaped" claystone "pendant" decorated with "cup-shaped indentations," found at Dunbuie.
{101} It has a perforation near each end, as is common in North American objects of similar nature (see fig.
11).
Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong?
One of them seems to me to have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and, like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar objects of undisputed authenticity.
XXVII--PORTUGUESE AND OTHER STONE PENDANTS M. Cartailhac, the very eminent French archaeologist, found not in Portugal, but in the Cevennes, "plaques of slate, sometimes pierced with a hole for suspension, usually smaller than those of the Casa da Moura, not ornamented, _yet certainly analogous with these_."
{102a} These are also analogous with "engraved plaques of schist found in prehistoric sites of the Rio Negro," "some resembling, others identical with those shewn at Lisbon by Carlos Ribeiro."
But the Rio Negro objects appear doubtful.
{102b} Portugal has many such plaques, some adorned with designs, and some plain.
{102c} The late Don Estacio da Veiga devotes a chapter to them, as if they were things peculiar to Portugal, in Europe.
{103a} When they are decorated the ornament is usually linear; in two cases {103b} lines incised lead to "cups."
One plaque is certainly meant to represent the human form.
M. Cartailhac holds that all the plaques with a "vandyked" pattern in triangles, without faces, "are, none the less, _des representations stylisees de silhouette humaine_."
{103c} Illustrations give an idea of them (figs.
14, 15, 16); they are more elaborate than the perforated inscribed plaques of shale or schist from Dumbuck.
Two perforated stone plaques from Volosova, figured by Dr. Munro (pp.
78, 79), fall into line with other inscribed plaques from Portugal.
Of these Russian objects referred to by Dr. Munro, one is (his fig.
25) a roughly pear-shaped thing in flint, perforated at the thin end; the other is a formless stone plaque, inscribed with a cross, three circles, not concentric, and other now meaningless scratches.
It is not perforated.
Dr. Munro does not dispute the genuine character of many strange figurines in flint, from Volosova, though the redoubtable M. de Mortillet denounced them as forgeries; they had the misfortune to corroborate other Italian finds against which M. de Mortillet had a grudge.
But Dr. Munro thinks that the two plaques of Volosova may have been made for sale by knavish boys.
In that case the boys fortuitously coincided, in their fake, with similar plaques, of undoubted antiquity, and, in some prehistoric Egyptian stones, occasionally inscribed with mere wayward scratches.
For these reasons I think the Volosova plaques as genuine as any other objects from that site, and corroborative, so far, of similar things from Clyde.
{ Figs.
14, 15: p104.jpg} To return to Portugal, M. Cartailhac recognises that the _plain_ plaques of slate from sites in the Cevennes "are certainly analogous" with the plaques from the Casa da Moura, even when these are elaborately ornamented with vandyked and other patterns.
I find one published case of a Portuguese plaque with cups and ducts, as at Dumbuck (fig.
16).
Another example is in _Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia_, p. 109.
{104} However, Dr. Munro leaves the Cevennes Andalusian, and Portuguese plaques out of his argument.
M. Cartailhac, then, found inscribed and perforated slate tablets "very common in Portugues neolithic sepulchres."
The perforated holes showed signs of long wear from attachment to something or somebody.
One, from New Jersey, with two holes, exactly as in the Dunbuie example, was much akin in ornament to the Portuguese plaques.
One, of slate, was plain, as plain as "a bit of gas coal with a round hole bored through it," recorded by Dr. Munro from Ashgrove Loch crannog.
A perforated shale, or slate, or schist or gas coal plaque, as at Ashgrove Loch, ornamented or plain, is certainly like another shale schist or slate plaque, plain or inscribed.
We have shown that these occur in France, Portugal, Russia, America, and Scotland, not to speak of Central Australia.
My suggestion is that, if the Clyde objects are forged, the forger knew a good deal of archaeology--knew that perforated inscribed plaques of soft mineral occurred in many countries--but he did not slavishly imitate the patterns.
By a pleasant coincidence, at the moment of writing, comes to me the _Annual Archaeological Report_, 1904, of the Canadian Bureau of Education, kindly sent by Mr. David Boyle.
He remarks, as to stone pendants found in Canadian soil, "The forms of what we call pendants varied greatly, and were probably made to adapt themselves to _the natural shapes of water-worn stones_.
.
.
."
This is exactly what Dr. Munro says about the small stone objects from the three Clyde stations.
"The pendants, amulets, and idols _appear to have been water-worn pieces of shale or slate_, before they were perforated, decorated, and polished" (Munro, p. 254).
The forger may have been guided by the ancient Canadian pendants; that man knows everything!
Mr. Boyle goes on, speaking of the superstitious still surviving instinct of treasuring such stones, "For some unknown reason, many of us exhibit a desire to pick up pebbles so marked, and examples of the kind are often carried as pocket pieces," obviously "for luck."
He gives one case of such a stone being worn for fifty years as a "watch pendant."
Perforated stones have always had a "fetishness" attached to them, adds Mr. Boyle.
He then publishes several figures of such stones.
Two of these, with archaic markings like many in Portugal, and one with an undisputed analogue from a Scottish site, are reproduced (figs.
12, 13).
It is vain to tell us that the uses of such fetishistic stones are out of harmony with any civilisation.
The civilisation of the dwellers in the Clyde sites was not so highly advanced as to reject a superstition which still survives.
Nor is there any reason why these people should not have scratched archaic markings on the pebbles as they certainly cut them on stones in a Scottish crannog of the Iron age.
Dr. Munro agrees with me that rude scribings on shale or slate are found, of a post-Christian date, at St. Blane's, in Bute.
{107} The art, if art it can be called, is totally different, of course, from the archaic types of decoration, but all the things have _this_ in common, that they are rudely incised on shale or slate.
XXVIII--QUESTION AS TO THE OBJECTS AS ORNAMENTS OF THE PERSON Dr. Munro now objects that among the objects reckoned by me as analogous to churinga is a perforated stone with an incised line, and smaller slanting side lines, said to have been found at Dumbuck; "9 inches long, 3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 an inch thick."
{108} I wish that he gave us the weight.
He says, "that no human being would wear this as an ornament."
No human being wears any churinga "as an ornament!"
Nobody says that they do.
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of "a long stone churinga," and of "especially large ones" made by the mythical first ancestors of the race.
Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: _but the Arunta do not know why some are perforated_.
There is a legend that, of old, men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred _Nurtunja_ pole: and so they still have _perforated_ stone churinga, not usually more than a foot in length.
{109} If Dr. Munro has studied Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings.
I cannot tell the reason why, any better than the Arunta can; and, of course, I cannot know why the 9 inch stone from Dumbuck (if genuine) was perforated.
But what I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro's supposed impostor.
Not being "a semi-detached idiot" he must have known that no mortal would sling about his person, as an ornament, a chunk of stone 9 inches long, 3.5 broad, and 0.5 an inch thick.
Dr. Munro himself insists on the absurdity of supposing that "any human being" would do such a thing.
Yet the forger drilled a neat hole, as if for a string for suspension, at the apex of the chunk.
If he knew, before any other human being in England, that the Arunta do this very thing to some stone churinga, though seldom to churinga over a foot in length,--and if he imitated the Arunta custom, the impostor was a very learned impostor.
If he did _not_ know, he was a very lucky rogue, for the Arunta coincide in doing the same thing to great stone churinga: without being aware of any motive for the performance as they never suspend churinga to anything, though they say that their mythical ancestors did.
The impostor was also well aware of the many perforated stones that exist in Scotland, not referred to by Dr. Munro.
He perforated some which could not be worn as ornaments, just as the Arunta do.
We shall find that the forger, either by dint of wide erudition, or by a startling set of chance coincidences, keeps on producing objects which are analogous to genuine relics found in many sites of early life.
This is what makes the forger so interesting.
My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr. Munro.
He says that, "in applying these local designs" (the worldwide archaic patterns,) to unworked splinters of sandstone and pieces of waterworn shale and slate, "the manufacturers had evidently not sufficient archaeological knowledge to realise the significance of the fact that they were doing what prehistoric man, in this country, is never known to have done before."
{111} But, (dismissing the Kintyre and Tappock stones,) the "manufacturers" did know, apparently, that perforated and inscribed, or uninscribed tablets and plaques of shale and schist and slate and gas coal were found in America, France, Russia, and Portugal, and imitated these things or coincided in the process by sheer luck.
The "manufacturers" were, perhaps, better informed than many of their critics.
But, if the things are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality.
XXIX--WEAPONS Dr. Munro is less than kind to the forger in the matter of the "weapons" found at Dunbuie and Dumbuck.
They are "absolutely worthless as real weapons," he says, with perfect truth, for they are made of slate or shale, _not_ of hard stony slate, which many races used to employ for lack of better material.
{112a} { Fig.
16: p113a.jpg} The forger was obviously not thinking of dumping down _serviceable_ sham weapons.
He could easily have bought as many genuine flint celts and arrow-heads and knives as he needed, had his aim been to prove his sites to be neolithic.
So I argued long ago, in a newspaper letter.
Dr. Munro replies among other things, that "nothing could be easier than to detect modern imitations of Neolithic relics."
{112b} I said not a word about "modern imitations."
I said that a forger, anxious to fake a Neolithic site, "would, of course, drop in a few Neolithic arrow-heads, 'celts' and so forth," meaning genuine objects, very easily to be procured for money.
{ Figs.
17, 18: p113b.jpg} As the forger did not adopt a device so easy, so obvious, and so difficult of detection, (if he purchased Scottish flint implements) his aim was not to fake a Neolithic site.
He put in, not well-known genuine Neolithic things, but things of a character with which some of his critics were not familiar, yet which have analogues elsewhere.
Why did he do that?
As to the blunt decorated slate weapons, the forger did not mean, I think, to pass off these as practicable arms of the Neolithic period.
These he could easily have bought from the dealers.
What he intended to dump down were not practical weapons, but, in one case at least, _armes d'apparat_, as French archaeologists call them, weapons of show or ceremony.
The strange "vandyked" crozier-like stone objects of schist or shale from Portugal were possibly _armes d'apparat_, or heads of staves of dignity.
There is a sample in the American room at the British Museum, uninscribed.
I submit that the three very curious and artistic stone axeheads, figured by M. Cartailhac, {114} representing, one an uncouth animal; another, a hooded human head, the third an extremely pretty girl, could never have been used for practical purposes, but were _armes d'apparat_.
Perhaps such stone _armes d'apparat_, or magical or sacred arms, were not unknown, as survivals, in Scotland in the Iron Age.
A "celt" or stone axe-head of this kind, ornamented with a pattern of intercrossing lines, is figured and described by the Rev.
Mr. Mackenzie (Kenmore) in the _Proceedings_ of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (1900-1901, p. 310 _et seq._).
This axe-head, found near a cairn at Balnahannait, is of five inches long by two and a quarter broad.
It is of "soft micaceous stone."
The owners must have been acquainted with the use of the metals, Mr. Mackenzie thinks, for the stone exhibits "interlaced work of a late variety of this ornamentation."
Mr. Mackenzie suggests that the ornament was perhaps added "after the axe had obtained some kind of venerated or symbolical character."
This implies that a metal-working people, finding a stone axe, were puzzled by it, venerated it, and decorated it in their late style of ornament.
In that case, who, in earlier times, made an useless axe-head of soft micaceous stone, and why?
It could be of no practical service.
On the other hand, people who had the metals might fashion a soft stone into an _arme d'apparat_.
"It cannot have been intended for ordinary use," "the axe may have been a sacred or ceremonial one," says Mr. Mackenzie, and he makes the same conjecture as to another Scottish stone axe-head.
{115} Here, then, if Mr. Mackenzie be right, we have a soft stone axe-head, decorated with "later ornament," the property of a people who knew the metals, and regarded the object as "a sacred or ceremonial one," _enfin_, as an _arme d'apparat_.
Dr. Munro doubtless knows all that is known about _armes d'apparat_, but he unkindly forgets to credit the forger with the same amount of easily accessible information, when the forger dumps down a decorated slate spear-head, eleven inches long.
Believe me, this forger was no fool: he knew what he was about, and he must have laughed when critics said that his slate spear-heads would be useless.
He expected the learned to guess what he was forging; not practicable weapons, but _armes d'apparat_; survivals of a ceremonial kind, like Mr. Mackenzie's decorated axe-head of soft stone.
_That_, I think, was our forger's little game; for even if he thought no more than Dr. Munro seems to do of the theory of "survivals," he knew that the theory is fashionable.
"Nothing like these spear-heads .
.
.
has hitherto been found in Scotland, so that they cannot be survivals from a previous state of things in our country," says Dr. Munro.
{116a} The argument implies that there is nothing in the soil of our country of a nature still undiscovered.
This is a large assumption, especially if Mr. Mackenzie be right about the sacred ceremonial decorated axe-head of soft stone.
The forger, however, knew that elsewhere, if not in Scotland, there exist useless _armes d'apparat_, and he obviously meant to fake a few samples.
He was misunderstood.
I knew what he was doing, for it seems that "Mr. Lang .
.
.
suggested that the spear-heads were not meant to be used as weapons, but as 'sacred things.'"
{116b} I knew little; but I did know the sacred boomerang-shaped decorated Arunta churinga, and later looked up other _armes d'apparat_.
{116c} Apparently I must have "coached" the forger, and told him what kinds of things to fake.
But I protest solemnly that I am innocent!
He got up the subject for himself, and knew more than many of his critics.
I had no more to do with the forger than M. Salomon Reinach had to do with faking the golden "tiara of Saitaphernes," bought by the Louvre for 8000 pounds.
M. Reinack denies the suave suggestion that _he_ was at the bottom of this imposture.
{117a} I also am innocent of instructing the Clyde forger.
He read books, English, French, German, American, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
From the _Bulletino di Palaetnologia Italiana_, vol.
xi.
p. 33, 1885, plate iv., and from Professor Pigorini's article there, he prigged the idea of a huge stone weapon, of no use, found in a grotto near Verona.
{117b} This object is of flint, shaped like a flint arrow-head; is ten inches and a half in length, and "weighs over 3.5 pounds."
"Pigorini conjectured that it had some religious signification."
Inspired by this arrow-head of Gargantua, the Clyde forger came in with a still longer decorated slate spear-head, weighing I know not how much.
It is here photographed (figs.
17, 18).
Compare the decoration of three parallel horizontal lines with that on the broken Portuguese perforated stone (figs.
9, 10).
Or did the Veronese forger come to Clyde, and carry on the business at Dumbuck?
The man has read widely.
Sometimes, however, he may have resorted to sources which, though excellent, are accessible and cheap, like Mr. Haddon's _Evolution in Art_.
Here (pp.
79, 80) the faker could learn all that he needed to know about _armes d'apparat_ in the form of stone axe-heads, "unwieldy and probably quite useless objects" found by Mr. Haddon in the chain of isles south-east of New Guinea.
Mr. Romilly and Dr. Wyatt Gill attest the existence of similar axes of ceremony.
"They are not intended for cleaving timber."
We see "the metamorphosis of a practical object into an unpractical one."
{118} The forger thus had sources for his great decorated slate spear-head; the smaller specimens may be sketches for that colossal work.
XXX--THE FIGURINES Dr. Munro writes of "the carved figurines, 'idols,' or 'totems,' six in number," four from Dumbuck, one from Langbank.
{119a} Now, first, nobody knows the purpose of the rude figurines found in many sites from Japan to Troy, from Russia to the Lake Dwellings of Europe, and in West Africa, where the negroes use these figurines, when found, as "fetish," knowing nothing of their origin (_Man_, No.
7, July, 1905).
Like a figurine of a woman, found in the Dumbuck kitchen midden, they are discovered in old Japanese kitchen middens.
{119b} The astute forger, knowing that figurines were found in Japanese kitchen middens, knowing it before Y. Koganei published the fact in 1903, thought the Dumbuck kitchen midden an appropriate place for a figurine.
Dr. Munro, possibly less well-informed, regards the bottom of a kitchen midden at Dumbuck as "a strange resting place for a goddess."
{120a} Now, as to "goddess" nobody knows anything.
Dr. Schliemann thought that the many figurines of clay, in Troy, were meant for Hera and Athene.
Nobody knows, but every one not wholly ignorant sees the absurdity of speaking of figurines as "totems"; of course the term is not Dr. Munro's.
{ Fig.
19: p120a.jpg} We know not their original meaning, but they occur "all over the place"; in amber on the Baltic coast, with grotesque faces carved in amber.
In Russia and Finland, and in sites of prehistoric Egypt, on slate, and in other materials such grotesques are common.
{120b} Egypt is a great centre of the Early Slate School of Art, the things ranging from slate plaques covered with disorderly scratchings "without a conscience or an aim," to highly decorated _palettes_.
There is even a perforated object like the slate crooks of M. Cartailhac, from Portugal, but rather more like the silhouette of a bird, {121a} and there are decorative mace-heads in soft stone.
{121b} Some of the prehistoric figurines of human beings from Egypt are studded with "cups," _cupules_, _ecuelles_, or whatever we may be permitted to name them.
In short, early and rude races turn out much the same set of crude works of art almost everywhere, and the extraordinary thing is, not that a few are found in a corner of Britain, but that scarce any have been found.
{ Figs.
20, 21: p120b.jpg} As to the Russo-Finnish flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may "have served as household gods or personal amulets," and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby's as "the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose."
He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania.
"Idols and amulets were indeed universally used in prehistoric times."
{121c} "Objects which come under the same category" occur "in various parts of America."
Mr. Bruce {121d} refers to M. Reinach's vast collection of designs of such figurines in _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
v., 1894.
Thus rude figurines in sites of many stages are very familiar objects.
The forger knew it, and dumped down a few at Dumbuck.
His female figurine (photographed in fig.
19), seems to me a very "plausible" figurine in itself.
It does not appear to me "unlike anything in any collection in the British Isles, or elsewhere"--I mean _elsewhere_.
Dr. Munro admits that it discloses "the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art."
{122} I add that it discloses the hand of one not at all ignorant of genuine prehistoric figurines representing women.
But I know nothing analogous from _British_ sites.
Either such things do not exist (of which we cannot be certain), or they have escaped discovery and record.
Elsewhere they are, confessedly, well known to science, and therefore to the learned forger who, nobody can guess why, dumped them down with the other fraudulent results of his researches.
If the figurines be genuine, I suppose that the Clyde folk made them for the same reasons as the other peoples who did so, whatever those reasons may have been: or, like the West Africans, found them, relics of a forgotten age, and treasured them.
If their reasons were religious or superstitious, how am I to know what were the theological tenets of the Clyde residents?
They may have been more or less got at by Christianity, in Saint Ninian's time, but the influence might well be slight.
On the other hand, neither men nor angels can explain why the forger faked his figurines, for which he certainly had a model--at least as regards the female figure--in a widely distributed archaic feminine type of "dolly."
The forger knew a good deal!
Dr. Munro writes: "That the disputed objects are amusing playthings--the sportive productions of idle wags who inhabited the various sites--seems to be the most recent opinion which finds acceptance among local antiquaries.
But this view involves the contemporaneity of occupancy of the respective sites, of which there is no evidence.
.
.
."
{123a} There is no evidence for "contemporaneity of occupancy" if Dunbuie be of 300-900 A.D., and Dumbuck and Langbank of 1556-1758.
{123b} But we, and apparently Dr. Munro (p. 264) have rejected the "Corporation cairn" theory, the theory of the cairn erected in 1556, or 1612, and lasting till 1758.
The genuine undisputed relics, according to Dr. Munro, are such as "are commonly found on crannogs, brochs, and other early inhabited sites of Scotland."
{124a} The sites are all, and the genuine relics in the sites are all "of some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries."
{124b} The sites are all close to each other, the remains are all of the same period, (unless the late Celtic comb chance to be earlier,) yet Dr. Munro says that "for contemporaneity of occupancy there is no evidence."
{124c} He none the less repeats the assertion that they are of "precisely the same chronological horizon."
"The chronological horizon" (of Langbank and Dumbuck) "_seems to me to be precisely the same_, _viz._ a date well on in the early Iron Age, posterior to the Roman occupation of that part of Britain" (p. 147).
Thus Dr. Munro assigns to both sites "precisely the same chronological horizon," and also says that "there is no evidence" for the "contemporaneity of occupancy."
This is not, as it may appear, an example of lack of logical consistency.
"The range of the occupancy" (of the sites) "is uncertain, probably it was different in each case," writes Dr. Munro.
{124d} No reason is given for this opinion, and as all the undisputed remains are confessedly of one stage of culture, the "wags" at all three sites were probably in the same stage of rudimentary humour and skill.
If they made the things, the things are not modern forgeries.
But the absence of the disputed objects from other sites of the same period remains as great a difficulty as ever.
Early "wags" may have made them--but why are they only known in the three Clyde sites?
Also, why are the painted pebbles only known in a few brochs of Caithness?
Have the _graffiti_ on slate at St. Blane's, in Bute, been found--I mean have _graffiti_ on slate like those of St. Blane's, been found elsewhere in Scotland?
{125} The kinds of art, writing, and Celtic ornament, at St. Blane's, are all familiar, but not their presence on scraps of slate.
Some of the "art" of the Dumbuck things is also familiar, but not, in Scotland, on pieces of slate and shale.
Whether they were done by early wags, or by a modern and rather erudite forger, I know not, of course; I only think that the question is open; is not settled by Dr. Munro.
XXXI--GROTESQUE HEADS.
DISPUTED PORTUGUESE PARALLELS Figurines are common enough things in ancient sites; by no means so common are the grotesque heads found at Dumbuck and Langbank.
They have recently been found in Portugal.
Did the forger know that?
Did he forge them on Portuguese models?
Or was it chance coincidence?
Or was it undesigned parallelism?
There is such a case according to Mortillet.
M. de Mortillet flew upon poor Prof. Pigorini's odd things, denouncing them as forgeries; he had attacked Dr. Schliemann's finds in his violent way, and never apologised, to my knowledge.
Then a lively squabble began.
Italian "archaeologists of the highest standing" backed Prof. Pigorini: Mortillet had not seen the Italian things, but he stood to his guns.
Things found near Cracow were taken as corroborating the Breonio finds, also things from Volosova, in Russia.
Mortillet replied by asking "why under similar conditions could not forgers" (very remote in space,) "equally fabricate objects of the same form."
{127} Is it likely?
Why should they forge similar unheard-of things in Russia, Poland, and Italy?
Did the same man wander about forging, or was telepathy at work, or do forging wits jump?
The Breonio controversy is undecided; "practised persons" can _not_ "read the antiquities as easily as print," to quote Mr. Read.
They often read them in different ways, here as fakes, there as authentic.
M. Boulle, reviewing Dr. Munro in _L'Anthropologie_ (August, 1905), says that M. Cartailhac recognises the genuineness of some of the strange objects from Breonio.
But, as to our Dumbuck things, the Clyde forger went to Portugal and forged there; or the Clyde forger came from Portugal; or forging wits coincided fairly well, in Portugal and in Scotland, as earlier, at Volosova and Breonio.
In _Portugalia_, a Portuguese archaeological magazine, edited by Don Ricardo Severe, appeared an article by the Rev.
Father Jose Brenha on the dolmens of Pouco d'Aguiar.
Father Raphael Rodrigues, of that place, asked Father Brenha to excavate with him in the Christmas holidays of 1894.
They published some of their discoveries in magazines, and some of the finds were welcomed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos, in his _Religioes da Lusitania_ (vol.
i. p. 341).
They dug in the remote and not very cultured Transmontane province, and, in one dolmen found objects "the most extraordinary possible," says Father Brenha.
{128} There were perforated plaques with alphabetic inscriptions; stones engraved with beasts of certain or of dubious species, very fearfully and wonderfully drawn; there were stone figurines of females, as at Dumbuck; there were stones with cups and lines connecting the cups, (common in many places) and, as at Dumbuck, there were grotesque heads in stone.
(See a few examples, figs.
20-24).
Figures 20, 21, 24 are cupped, or cup and duct stones; 22 is a female figurine; 23 is a heart-shaped charm stone.
{ Fig.
22: p128.jpg} On all this weighty mass of stone objects, Dr. Munro writes thus: "Since the MS. of this volume was placed in the hands of the publishers a new side-issue regarding some strange objects, said to have been found in Portuguese dolmens, has been imported into the Clyde controversy, in which Mr. Astley has taken a prominent part.
In a communication to the _Antiquary_, April, 1904, he writes: 'I will merely say here, on this point, that my arguments are brought to a scientific conclusion in my paper, 'Portuguese Parallels to Clydeside Discoveries,' reported in your issue for March, which will shortly be published.
"I have seen the article in _Portugalia_ and the published 'scientific conclusion' of Mr. Astley (_Journal of B.A.A._, April and August, 1904), and can only say that, even had I space to discuss the matter I would not do so for two reasons.
First, because I see no parallelism whatever between the contrasted objects from the Portuguese dolmens and the Clyde ancient sites, beyond the fact that they are both 'queer things.'
And, secondly, because some of the most eminent European scholars regard the objects described and illustrated in _Portugalia_ as forgeries.
The learned Director of the Musee de St. Germain, M. Saloman Reinach, thus writes about them: 'Jusqu'a nouvel ordre, c'esta-dire jusqu'a preuve formelle du contraire je considere ces pierres sculptees et gravees comme le produit d'une mystification.
J'aimerais connaitre, a ce sujet, l'opinion des autres savants du Portugal' (_Revue Archeologique_, 4th S., vol.
ii., 1903, p.
431)."
I had brought the Portuguese things to the notice of English readers long before Mr. Astley did so, but that is not to the purpose.
The point is that Dr. Munro denies the parallelism between the Clyde and Portuguese objects.
Yet I must hold that stone figurines of women, grotesque heads in stone, cupped stones, stones with cup and duct, stones with rays proceeding from a central point, and perforated stones with linear ornamentation, are rather "parallel," in Portugal and in Clydesdale.
So far the Scottish and the Portuguese fakers have hit on parallel lines of fraud.
Meanwhile I know of no archaeologists except Portuguese archaeologists, who have seen the objects from the dolmen, and of no Portuguese archaeologist who disputes their authenticity.
So there the matter rests.
{130} The parallelism appears to me to be noticeable.
I do not say that the styles of art are akin, but that the artists, by a common impulse, have produced cupped stones, perforated and inscribed stones, figurines in stone, and grotesque heads in stone.
Is not this common impulse rather curious?
And is suspicion of forgery to fall, in Portugal, on respectable priests, or on the very uncultured wags of Traz os Montes?
Mortillet, educated by priests, hated and suspected all of them.
M. Cartailhac suspected "clericals," as to the Spanish cave paintings, but acknowledged his error.
I can guess no motive for the ponderous bulk of Portuguese forgeries, and am a little suspicious of the tendency to shout "Forgery" in the face of everything unfamiliar.
But the Portuguese things are suspected by M. Cartailhac, (who, however, again admits that he has been credulously incredulous before,) as well as by M. Reinach.
The things ought to be inspected in themselves.
I still think that they are on parallel lines with the work of the Clyde forger, who may have read about them in _A Vida Moderna_ 1895, 1896, in _Archeologo Portugues_, in _Encyclopedia dar Familiar_, in various numbers, and in _Religioes da Lusitania_, vol.
i. pp.
341, 342, (1897), a work by the learned Director of the Ethnological Museum of Portugal.
To these sources the Dumbuck forger may have gone for inspiration.
Stated without this elegant irony, my opinion is that the parallelism of the figurines and grotesque stone faces of Villa d'Aguiar and of Clyde rather tends to suggest the genuineness of both sets of objects.
But this opinion, like my opinion about the Australian and other parallelisms, is no argument against Dr. Munro, for he acknowledges none of these parallelisms.
That point,--a crucial point,--are the various sets of things analogous in character or not?
must be decided for each reader by himself, according to his knowledge, taste, fancy, and bias.
XXXII--DISPUTED OBJECTS FROM DUNBUIE The faker occasionally changes his style.
We have seen what slovenly designs in the archaic cup and ring and incomplete circle style he dumped down at Dumbuck.
I quote Dr. Munro on his doings at Dunbuie, where the faker occasionally drops a pear-shaped slate perforated stone, with a design in cupules.
Dr. Munro writes: "The most meaningless group--if a degree of comparison be admissible in regard to a part when the whole is absolutely incomprehensible on archaeological principles--consists of a series of unprepared and irregularly shaped pieces of laminated sandstone (plate xvi.)
similar to some of the stones of which the fort of Dunbuie was built, {132} having one of their surfaces decorated with small cup-marks, sometimes symmetrically arranged so far as to indicate parts of geometrical figures, and at other times variously combined with lines and circles.
Two fragments of bones, also from Dunbuie, are similarly adorned (plate xvi.
nos.
13, 14).
Eleven of the twelve sandstone fragments which make up the group were fractured in such a manner as to suggest that the line of fracture had intersected the original ornamentation, and had thus detached a portion of it.
If this be so, there must have been originally at least two or three other portions which, if found, would fit along the margin of each of the extant portions, just as the fragments of a broken urn come together.
Yet among these decorated stones not one single bit fits another, nor is any of the designs the counterpart of another.
If we suppose that these decorated stones are portions of larger tablets on which the designs were completed, then either they were broken before being introduced into the debris of the fort, or the designs were intentionally executed in an incomplete state, just as they are now to be seen on the existing natural splinters of stone.
The supposition that the occupiers of the fort possessed the original tablets, and that they had been smashed on the premises, is excluded by the significant fact that only one fragment of each tablet has been discovered.
For, in the breaking up of such tablets, it would be inconceivable, according to the law of chances, that one portion, and only one, of each different specimen would remain while all the others had disappeared.
On the other hand, the hypothesis that the occupiers of the fort carved these designs on the rough and unprepared splinters of stone in the precise manner they now come before us, seems to me to involve premeditated deception, for it is difficult to believe that such uncompleted designs could have any other finality of purpose.
Looking at these geometrical figures from the point of technique, they do not make a favourable impression in support of their genuineness.
The so-called cup-marks consist of punctures of two or three different sizes, so many corresponding to one size and so many to another.
The stiffness of the lines and circles reminds one more of ruler and compass than of the freehand work of prehistoric artists.
The patterns are unprecedented for their strange combinations of art elements.
For example, no.
9, plate xvi., looks as if it were a design for some modern machinery.
The main ornament on another fragment of sandstone (no.
12), consisting of a cross and circle composed of a series of cup-marls, seems to be a completed design; but yet at the corner there are lines which are absolutely meaningless, unless we suppose that they formed part of a more enlarged tablet.
Similar remarks apply to nos.
3 and 8."
Is it really contrary to "the law of chances" that, in some 1200 years of unknown fortunes, no two fragments of the same plates of red sandstone (some dozen in number) should be found at Dunbuie?
Think of all that may have occurred towards the scattering of fragments of unregarded sandstone before the rise of soil hid them all from sight.
Where is the smaller portion of the shattered cup and ring marked sandstone block found in the Lochlee crannog?
On the other hand, in the same crannog, a hammerstone broken in two was found, each half in a different place, as were two parts of a figurine at Dumbuck.
Where are the arms of the Venus of Milo, vainly sought beside and around the rest of the statue?
Where are the lost noses, arms, and legs of thousands of statues?
Nobody can guess where they are or how they vanished.
Or where are the lost fragments of countless objects in pottery found in old sites?
It was as easy for the forger to work over a whole plaque of sandstone, break it, and bury the pieces, as for him to do what he has done.
These designs make an unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular.
The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed.
For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind?
Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of Lough Crew?
On inspecting the pieces, in the Museum, the regularity of design seems to me to be much exaggerated in Dr. Munro's figures, by whom drawn we are not informed.
As to Dr. Munro's figure 12, it seems to me to aim at a Celtic cross and circle, while part of his figure 3 suggests a crozier, and there is a cross on figure 18, as on a painted pebble from a broch in Caithness.
The rest I cannot profess to explain; they look like idle work on sandstone, but may have had a meaning to their fashioner.
His meaning, and that of the forger who here changes his style, are equally inscrutable.
I return to a strange perforated pebble, an intaglio from Dumbuck.
{ Fig.
23: p136a.jpg} Dr. Munro quotes, as to this pebble, the _Journal_ of the British Archaeological Association: "In the September number of the _Journal_ (p. 282) we are informed that a slaty spear-head, an arrow-head of bone, and a sinker stone were found in the debris inside the canoe.
'In the cavity of a large bone,' says the writer, 'was also got an ornament of a peculiar stone.
The digger unearthed it from the deposit at the bottom of the canoe, about 14 feet from the bow and near to a circular hole cut in the bottom about 3.5 inches in diameter.'
What a funny place to hide a precious ornament, for I take this peculiar stone to be that with the human hand incised on one side and three men rowing in a boat on the other!
(see plate xv.
no.
10)."
{ Fig.
24: p136b.jpg} Here the place of discovery in the canoe is given with precision, and its place within the cavity of the bone is pronounced by Dr. Munro to be "funny."
As to the three men in a boat, the Rev.
Geo.
Wilson of Glenluce, on Feb. 14, 1887, presented to the Scots Antiquaries a bugleshaped pendant of black shale or cannel-coal 2.25 inches long, with a central groove for suspension.
On one side of the pendant was incised a sketch of two figures standing up in a boat or canoe with a high prow.
The pendant is undisputed, the pebble is disputed, and we know nothing more about the matter (see fig.
25).
{ Fig.
25: p136c.jpg} XXXIII--DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS In his judicious remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, (_Proceedings_, xxxiv.,) Dr. Joseph Anderson observed that opinions would probably vary as to certain among the disputed objects.
Among these are the inscribed oyster shells.
I see nothing _a priori_ improbable in the circumstance that men who incised certain patterns on schist or shale, should do so on oyster shells.
Palaeolithic man did his usual sporting sketches on shells, and there was a vast and varied art of designing on shells among the pre-Columbian natives of North America.
{137} We here see the most primitive scratches developing into full-blown Aztec art.
If the markings were only on such inscribed shells as mouldered away--so Mr. Bruce tells us--when exposed to light and air, (I do not know whether the designs were copied before the shells crumbled,) these conchological drawings would not trouble us.
No modern could make the designs on shells that were hurrying into dust.
We have Mr. Bruce's word for these mouldering shells, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing shells could not be incised by a hand of to-day, as shale, slate, schist, and sandstone can now be engraved upon, fraudulently.
But when, as Professor Boyd Dawkins writes, the finds include "two fresh shells .
.
.
unmistakable Blue Points," drilled with perforations, or inscribed, from Dunbuie, then there are only two possible alternatives.
1.
They were made by the faker, or 2.
They were "interpolated" into the Dunbuie site by somebody.
The forger himself is, I think, far too knowing a man to fake inscriptions on fresh shells, even if, not being a conchologist, he did not know that the oysters were American blue points.
I have written in vain if the reader, while believing in the hypothesis of a forger, thinks him such an egregious ass.
For Blue Points as nonexistent save in America, 1 rely on Prof. Boyd Dawkins.
As the public were allowed to break off and steal the prow of the Dumbuck canoe, it is plain that no guard was placed on the sites.
They lay open for months to the interpolations of wags, and I think, for my own part, that one of them is likely to have introduced the famous blue points.
Dr. Munro tells us how a "large-worked stone," a grotesque head, was foisted through a horizontal hole, into the relic bed of his kitchen midden at Elie.
"It lay under four inches of undisturbed black earth."
But it had been "interpolated" there by some "lousy tykes of Fife," as the anti-covenanting song calls them.
{139} It was rather easier to interpolate Blue Point oyster shells at Dunbuie.
On the other hand, two splinters of stone, inserted into a bone and a tyne of deer's horn, figured by Dr. Munro among Dumbuck and Dunbuie finds, seem to me rather too stupid fakes for the regular forger, and a trifle too clever for the Sunday holiday-maker.
These two things I do not apologise for, or defend; my knowledge of primitive implements is that of a literary man, but for what it is worth, it does not incline me to regard these things as primitive implements.
XXXIV--CONCLUSION _EXPLICIT_!
I have tried to show cause why we should not bluntly dismiss the mass of disputed objects as forgeries, but should rest in a balance of judgment, file the objects for reference, and await the results of future excavations.
If there be a faker, I hope he appreciates my sympathetic estimate of his knowledge, assiduity, and skill in _leger de main_.
I am the forger's only friend, and I ask him to come forward and make a clean breast of it, like the young men who hoaxed the Society for Psychical Research with a faked wraith, or phantasm of the living.
"Let it fully now suffice, The gambol has been shown!"
It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have really turned up in some numbers.
But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed.
The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence.
The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: _numbers_ of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early _Iron Age_.
Now such objects, save for a few samples, are only known,--and that in non-British lands,--in _Neolithic_ sites.
The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the _number_ of the disputed objects.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. Footnotes {4} _Archaeology and False Antiquities_, pp.
259-261.
By Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A.Scot.
Methuen & Co., London, 1905.
{5a} Munro, p. xii.
{5b} Munro, pp.
56-80.
Cf.
_L'Homme Prehistorique_, No.
7, pp.
214-218.
(1905.)
{6} Methuen, London, 1904, pp.
292.
{7} Munro, p. 178.
{8a} Munro, p. 55; cf.
his _Lake Dwellings in Europe_, Fig.
13, Nos.
17, 18, 19.
See _Arch.
and False Antiquities_, pp.
21, 22, where Dr. Munro acknowledges that he had been taken in.
{8b} Munro, pp.
41, 42.
{8c} Munro, pp.
275-279.
{9} _L'Anthropologie_, 1902, pp.
348-354.
{10} Munro, pp.
175-176.
{11a} Munro, p. 152.
{11b} Munro, pp.
28, 29.
{12} Munro, p. 130.
{13a} Munro, p. 155.
Letter of January 7, 1899.
{13b} Munro, p. 260.
{14a} Munro, p. 270.
{14b} Munro, p. 270.
{15} Bruce, _Proceedings of the Scots Society of Antiquaries_, vol.
xxxiv.
pp.
439, 448, 449.
{17} _Archaeologia Scotica_, vol.
v. p. 146.
{21} See pages 133, 166.
{24} March 1899, "Cup and Ring"; cf.
the same article in my _Magic and Religion_, 1901, pp.
241-256.
{25a} Munro, 133, 134, 150-151.
{25b} Munro, pp.
139, 140.
{26} See _Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, xxx.
268, and fig.
4.
{27} _Journal of the British Archaeological Society_, December 1898.
{28a} _Prehistoric Scotland_, p. 431.
{28b} See _Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, xxx.
fig.
4.
{29} Vol.
xxx.
270.
{30} Vol.
xxxiv.
p. 438.
{31} Mr. Alston describes this causeway, and shows it on the plan as "leading from the 'central well' to the burn about 120 fee to west of centre of crannog."
{34} _Proceedings Soc.
Ant.
Scot._ 1899-1900, p. 439.
{35} _Proc.
Scot.
Soc.
Ant._ 1900-1901, p. 283.
{36a} _Proceedings S.A.S._ vol.
xxxiv.
pp.
460-461.
{36b} Munro, p. 256.
{37} Munro, p. 146.
Mr. Bruce in _Trans.
Glasgow Archaeol.
Society_, vol.
v. N.S.
part 1. p. 45.
{38a} _L'Anthropologie_, xiv.
pp.
416-426.
{38b} Munro, p. 196.
{38c} Munro, 147, 148.
{39} Munro, p. 218.
{40a} Munro, pp.
219-220.
{40b} Munro, p. 219.
{40c} _Transactions_, _ut supra_, p. 51.
{41} _Proc.
Soc.
Ant._ 1900-1901, pp.
112-148.
{43} Pp.
135, 177, 257-258, and elsewhere.
{44} Munro, pp.
177, 257, 258.
{45} Munro, p. 139.
{46a} Munro, p. 264.
{46b} These phrases are from Munro, _Arch.
and False Antiquities_, pp.
138-139.
{47a} Munro, p. 139.
{47b} Munro, _Prehistoric Scotland_, p. 420.
{48} Munro, p. 130.
{49a} See page 246 of Dr. Munro's article on Raised Beaches, _Proc.
Roy.
Soc.
Edinburgh_, vol.
xxv.
part 3.
The reference is to two Clyde canoes built of planks fastened to ribs, suggesting that the builder had seen a foreign galley, and imitated it.
{49b} Munro, pp.
138, 139.
{51a} _Proceedings Scot.
Soc.
Ant._ vol.
xxxiv.
p. 462.
{51b} Munro, p. 147.
{52a} _Proc.
Soc.
Ant.
Scot._ 1900-1901, p. 296.
{52b} Munro, p. 138.
{52c} These structures, of course, were of dry stone, without lime and mortar.
By what name we call them, "towers," or "cairns," is indifferent to me.
{54} Beda, book 1, chap.
i.
{61} _Proceedings Soc.
Scot.
Ant._ 1899-1900, vol.
xxxiv.
pp.
456-458.
{63} See Prof. Zimmer's _Das Mutterrecht der Pickten_, Rhys's _Celtic Britain_, _Rhind Lectures_, and in _Royal Commission's Report on Wales_, with my _History of Scotland_, vol.
i. pp.
12, 14.
{64a} _Bureau of Ethnology's Report_, 1896-97, p. 324.
See also the essay on "Indian Pictographs," _Report of Bureau_, for 1888-89.
{64b} MSS.
of Mr. Mullen, of Bourke, N.S.W., and of Mr. Charles Lang.
{64c} Scott, London, 1895.
{64d} _Op.
cit._ p. 178.
{64e} _Op.
cit._ p. 172.
{65} Munro, p. 246.
{66} Longmans.
{67} Munro, p. 177.
{69} Cartailhac, _Ages Prehistoriques_, p. 97.
{73a} _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
xiv.
p. 338.
{73b} _Proc.
S.A.S._, 1878-1879.
{73c} _Op.
cit._ pp.
208, 210.
{74} Bruce, _ut supra_, p. 446.
{75} _Bureau of Ethnology_, _Report of_ 1888-1889, p. 193.
{77} Munro, plate xv.
p. 228, p. 249, cf.
fig.
63, p. 249.
{78} Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, figs.
20, 21, 22, 133; _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, figs.
89, 92, 80, 81.
{80a} I have no concern with an object, never seen by Dr. Munro, or by me, to my knowledge, but described as a "churinga"; in _Journal of British Archaeological Association_, Sept. 1904, fig.
4, Munro, p. 246.
{80b} Munro, p. 246.
{81} See Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, fig.
21, 6; _Northern Tribes_, fig.
87.
{82a} Munro, p. 55, referring to _Ancient Lake Dwellings_, fig.
13, nos.
17, 18, 19.
{82b} _Proceedings Scot.
Soc.
Ant._ 1902, p. 168, fig.
4, 1903.
{82c} Lockhart, iv.
208.
{84a} Munro, p. 247.
{84b} Munro, fig.
62, p. 248.
{85a} _Debut de l'Art_, pp.
124-138.
{85b} Munro, p. 260.
{85c} Munro, p. 230.
{85d} Munro, pp.
204, 205.
{86} Munro, p. 260.
{88} _Op.
cit._ p. 172.
{89} Nicholson, _Folk Lore of East Yorkshire_, p. 87, Hull, 1890.
{91} Haddon, _The Study of Man_, pp.
276, 327.
{95a} _Man_, 1904, no.
22.
{95b} For the Caithness brochs, see Dr. Joseph Anderson, _Proc.
Soc.
Scot.
Ant._, 1900-1901, pp.
112-148.
{95c} _Native Tribes of North Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 274, 1894.
{96} _Northern Tribes_, p. 268, fig.
87, 1904.
{97a} _Glasgow Herald_, letter of October 17th, 1903.
{97b} Munro, pp.
251-253.
{100a} Vol.
vii.
p. 50, cf.
_Proceedings Scots Society of Antiquaries_, vol.
vi.
p. 112, and, in Appendix to the same volume, p. 42, plate xix.
{100b} Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_, p. 88.
{101} Munro, p. 249, fig.
63.
{102a} _Les Ages Prehistoriques_, p. 100; cf.
J. L. de Vasconcellos' _Religioes da Lusitania_, vol.
i. p. 69.
Lisboa, 1897.
{102b} _Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve_, i.
298.
Estacio da Veiga, Lisboa, 1886.
{102c} _Religioes_, i.
69-70.
{103a} _Antiguedades_, vol.
ii.
429-481.
{103b} _Religioes_, i.
168.
{103c} _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
xiv.
p. 542.
{104} By Gongora de Martinez.
Madrid, 1868.
{107} Munro, pp.
232, 234.
{108} Munro, p. 228.
{109} _Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.
141-145.
{111} Munro, pp.
260, 261.
{112a} Munro, p. 158, pp.
223-227.
{112b} Munro, p. 261.
{114} _Op.
cit._, p. 111-114.
{115} _Proceedings_, vol.
xxiii.
p. 272.
{116a} Munro, p. 255.
{116b} _Ibid_.
{116c} _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 150.
{117a} _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
xiv.
p. 362.
{117b} Cf.
Munro, p. 57.
{118} _Op.
cit._, p. 84.
{119a} Munro, p. 230.
{119b} _L'Anthropologie_, vol.
xiv.
p. 548.
Dr. Laloy's review of Mr. Y. Koganei, _Ueber die Urbewohner von Japan_.
Tokyo, 1903.
{120a} Munro, p. 141.
{120b} See Cappart, _Primitive Art in Egypt_, p. 154, translated by A. S. Griffiths.
Grevel, London, 1905.
{121a} Cappart, p. 90, fig.
60, p. 92, fig.
62.
{121b} _Ibid_.
p. 95, fig.
66.
{121c} Munro, p. 80.
{121d} _Op.
cit._, p. 449.
{122} Munro, p. 231.
{123a} Munro, p. 262.
{123b} Dr. Murray in Munro, pp.
257-258.
{124a} Munro, p. 148.
{124b} Munro, p. 264.
{124c} Munro, p. 262.
{124d} Munro, p. 220.
{125} Munro, pp.
231-235.
{127} Munro, pp.
56-73.
{128} _Portugalia_, i. p. 646.
{130} See Sr. Severo in _Portugalia_, vol.
ii.
part i., 1905.
{132} All the specimens of this group were disinterred from the ruins of this fort.
{137} See an interesting and well-illustrated paper in _Report of Bureau on Ethnology_, U.S., vol.
ii.
{139} Munro, _Proc.
Soc.
Ant.
Scot._, 1900-1901, pp.
291-292.
Note: The spelling of some place names in the index differs from that given in the main text.
HOW TO OBSERVE IN ARCHAEOLOGY Suggestions for Travellers in the Near and Middle East THE BRITISH MUSEUM 1920 CONTENTS Preface.
By Sir F. G. Keynon PART I Chapter I.
INTRODUCTORY.
By G. F. Hill Chapter II.
METHOD.
By W. M. Flinders Petrie LIST OF THE CHIEF BRITISH INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIETIES CONCERNED WITH THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST LIST OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOINT COMMITTEE PART II INTRODUCTORY NOTE Chapter I.
FLINT IMPLEMENTS.
Chapter II.
GREECE PROPER.
By T. P. Droop Chapter III.
ASIA MINOR.
By J. G. C. Anderson and J. L. Myres Chapter IV.
CYPRUS.
By J. L. Myres Chapter V. CENTRAL AND NORTH SYRIA.
By D. G. Hogarth Chapter VI.
PALESTINE.
By R. A. S. Macalister Chapter VII.
EGYPT.
By W. M. Flinders Petrie Chapter VIII.
MESOPOTAMIA.
By H. R. Hall APPENDIX SUMMARIES OF LAWS OF ANTIQUITIES INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES Some Hieroglyphic Signs liable to be confused with each other Flint Implements Types of Greek Pottery, &c. Greek Alphabets Asia Minor Pottery types Hittite Inscriptions, &c. Bilingual (Greek and Cypriote) Dedication to Demeter and Persephone from Curium Syrian Pottery.
Syrian Weapons, &c. West Semitic Alphabets West Semitic Numerals Palestinian Pottery types Egyptian Pottery types Mesopotamian Pottery, Seals, &c. Cuneiform and other Scripts PREFACE This Handbook is intended primarily for the use of travellers in the Near and Middle East who are interested in antiquities without being already trained archaeologists.
It is the outcome of a recommendation made by the Archaeological Joint Committee, a body recently established, on the initiative of the British Academy and at the request of the Foreign Office, to focus the knowledge and experience of British scholars and archaeologists and to place it at the disposal of the Government when advice or information is needed upon matters connected with archaeological science.
The Committee is composed of representatives of the principal English societies connected with Archaeology, and it is hoped that it may be recognized as the natural body of reference, both for Government Departments and for the public, on matters connected with archaeological research in foreign lands.
It represents no one institution and no one interest.
Its purpose is to protect the interests of archaeological science, to secure a sane and enlightened administration of antiquities in the lands which are now being more fully opened to research, and to promote the advance of knowledge in the spheres to which its competence extends.
One means of serving this cause is to provide information for the guidance of travellers in the lands of antiquity.
Much knowledge is lost because it comes in the way of those who do not know how to profit by it or to record it.
Accordingly, just as the Natural History Museum has issued a series of pamphlets of advice to the collectors of natural history specimens, so it has been thought that a handbook of elementary information and advice may be found of service by travellers with archaeological tastes; and the Trustees of the British Museum have undertaken the publication of it.
The handbook has been prepared by a number of persons, whose competence is beyond dispute; and the thanks of all who find it useful are due to Mr. G. F. Hill (who has acted as general editor as well as part author), Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, Mr. D. G. Hogarth, Prof. J. L. Myres, Mr. J. G. C. Anderson, Mr. J. P. Droop, Prof. R. A. S. Macalister, Mr. H. R. Hall, Mr. A. J.
B. Wace, Mr. 0.
M. Dalton, Mr. R. L. Hobson, Mr. E. J. Forsdyke, Mr. A. H. Smith, Mr. R. A. Smith, Mr. A.
B. Cook, and Prof. G. A. Cooke.
Each contributor has been left considerable latitude as to the method of treatment of the subject allotted to him, and no attempt has been made to bring the various sections into uniformity of pattern.
Owing to Prof. Petrie's absence in Egypt, it has not been possible to submit final proofs of his contributions to him.
Suggestions for improvement in future editions will be welcomed, and will no doubt be forthcoming as the result of experience.
Meanwhile it is hoped that this little book will accompany many travellers in foreign lands, and that the labour expended on it will bear fruit in the improved observation and record of archaeological data, in establishing sound principles for the administration of antiquities, and in enforcing proper methods of excavation and conservation.
It may also be found of service by those who study the results of research as they appear in museums.
F. G. KENYON.
PART I CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The hints which it is the object of this volume to convey are not meant for experienced archaeologists.
They are rather addressed to those who, while anxious to observe and record the antiquities which they may see on their travels, are likely, owing to lack of training, to miss things that may be of importance, or, having observed them, to bring home an imperfect record.
It is hoped also that they may catch the attention of some of those who are not interested in the subject, but, coming into possession of antiquities, may unwittingly do incalculable harm by allowing them to be destroyed or dispersed before any record has been made.
Most, if not all, of the countries with which we are concerned, have their Laws of Antiquities.
It cannot be too strongly insisted that those laws, even if they might be better than they are, should be obeyed by the traveller.
He should familiarize himself with their main provisions, which are summarized in an Appendix.
The traveller who makes it his object to loot a country of its antiquities, smuggling objects out of it and disguising the sources from which they are obtained, does a distinct dis-service to archaeological science.
Although he may enrich collections, public or private, half or more than half of the scientific value of his acquisitions is destroyed by the fact that their provenance is kept secret or falsely stated.
Such action is equivalent to tearing out whole pages from a history and destroying them for ever, for each antiquity, whatever it may be, is in its way a part of history, whether of politics, arts, or civilization.
For the same reason anything like unauthorized excavation, especially by unskilled hands, is gravely to be deprecated.
To dig an ancient site unskilfully or without keeping a proper record is to obliterate part of a manuscript which no one else will ever be able to read.
The tendency of recent legislation is to allow more generous terms in the matter of licences for export to excavators and collectors, and the harsher provisions of some of the existing laws are likely soon to be amended.
Before leaving home, the traveller will be well advised to make inquiries at the museums or at the head-quarters of the archaeological societies which concern themselves specially with the places which he intends to visit.
A list of these museums and societies is appended to this section (p. 26).
It is hardly necessary to warn him that archaeological training cannot be acquired in a few days, and that he will have to buy his experience in various ways; but the more time he can devote to working through the collections in this country, the more useful will be his observations abroad.
He will be able to learn what kind of antiquities it is especially desirable to look for, not merely with the object of filling gaps in the public collections, but for the advancement of archaeological knowledge in general.
The object of archaeological travel and excavation is not to collect antiquities so that they may be arranged according to the existing catalogues of museums, but to collect fresh information to amplify and correct what we now know, to make our knowledge of the past more complete and useful.
On arrival in the country of his choice, he is recommended to continue at the National Museum the study, which we suppose he has already begun in the museums at home, of the kind of antiquities which he is likely to come across.
But he should also take an early opportunity of getting into touch with the local British Archaeological School or other similar institution, where he will receive advice what to look for and where and how to look, and assistance in procuring suitable equipment.
Thus the traveller who starts from Athens or Jerusalem should apply at the British School of Archaeology.
He may there, it he desires, receive instruction in any of the methods described in Chapter II, in which a little practical demonstration is worth pages of print, and will be given all possible assistance in obtaining such articles of equipment as are available on the spot.
(Photographic supplies and all scientific instruments should be brought out from England.)
The best maps of the district will also be accessible for examination (but the traveller is recommended to make inquiries in this respect before leaving England); the libraries will provide the literature dealing with the routes he proposes to take; and such a collection as the type-series of pottery and the Finlay collection of prehistoric antiquities at the British School at Athens may be useful to supplement his previous studies at museums, and enable him to observe with intelligence the potsherds, &c., that he may find on an ancient site.
In return, he will be expected to report his results either to the School or to some other scientific society or museum at home.
It should be unnecessary to remind him that the conditions of the law of the land relating to the reporting of discoveries to the competent authorities should be strictly observed.
Such authorities should also be informed of any destruction or removal of monuments which may be noticed.
Another matter which should not be neglected is the obtaining of such licences as may be required by law for the acquisition in the country or export therefrom of objects of antiquity.
Advice on this matter can be obtained at the local School or National Museum.
It is possible that the traveller will begin his journey at a point other than the capital.
Inquiries should be made at the London headquarters of the Schools concerning residents at such places who may be able to give advice to intending travellers.
The traveller will doubtless bring back with him such antiquities as he is permitted to export.
A word of general advice on this matter may not be out of place here.
The essential value of antiquities, apart from their purely artistic interest, lies in the circumstances in which they are found.
The inexperienced traveller is apt to pick up a number of objects haphazard, without accurately noting their find-spots, and even, getting tired of them, as a child of flowers that he has picked, to discard them a mile or two away.
If the first act is a blunder, the second is a crime; it is better to leave them lying in place.
For the same reason, it is highly desirable that objects found together (e.g.
the contents of a tomb) should as far as possible be kept together, or at least that accurate record of the whole group should be made, since the archaeological value of a find may depend on a single object, apparently of small importance.
Nothing, for instance, is more common, or more distressing to the numismatist, than the division of a hoard of coins among various persons before they have been examined by an expert.
If they must be divided, good impressions should at least be made by one of the methods described in Chapter II, and, if the coins are of gold or silver, the weights should be noted.
This should be done even if the coins, to the inexperienced eye, appear to be all alike.
The knowledge that any coin from a hoard may be of greater value than a similar coin found singly may induce finders to report such finds before dispersing them.
What applies to coins is equally applicable, in various ways, to all classes of antiquities.
It is assumed that the primary object of the traveller is not speculation in the pecuniary value of the antiquities that he may acquire, although he may be not unreasonably inclined to recover some of his expenses by disposing of objects which do not appeal to him.
Should that be so, although the authorities of public museums obviously cannot be agents or valuers in such transactions between the owner and private collectors, they are as obviously willing to consider offers which are made to their museums in the first instance and, if the objects are not required by them, to advise the owner in what quarter he may be likely to meet with a purchaser.
CHAPTER II METHOD 1.
Outfit.
Each traveller will require to provide for his special interests; but for any archaeological work the following things are desirable.
Notebooks of squared paper.
Drawing-blocks of blue-squared paper.
Paper for wet squeezes, and for dry squeezes.
Brush for wet squeezes (spoke brush).
One or two so-metre tapes.
A few bamboo gardening canes for markers in planning.
Divide one in inches or centimetres for measuring buildings.
A steel rod, 3 ft. x 1 inch for probing.
Fieldglass, or low-power telescope.
Prismatic compass with card partly black, to see at night.
Large and small celluloid protractors for plotting angles on plans.
Plotting-scale, tenths of inches and millimetres.
Maps of the district, the best available.
Aneroid barometer, if collecting flints; small size; can be tested by observing in a tall lift, or by putting in a tumbler and pressing the hand air-tight over the mouth.
The zero error, or absolute values, are not wanted for levelling, only delicacy in small variations.
Magnifiers, a few pocket size; will also serve for presents.
Indelible pencils, pens, and ink in strong corked pocket bottle.
Reservoir pens dry up too much in some climates.
China ink for permanent marking.
Strips of adhesive paper, about a inch and a inches wide, to put round objects for labelling.
Strong steel pliers, wire-cutting.
A few pocket-knives will serve for presents.
It is best to carry money in a little bag or screw of paper, loose in the jacket pocket, it in a risky district.
It can then be dropped on any alarm and picked up afterwards.
Photographic.
[1] In the selection of a camera much will depend upon the nature of the work to be undertaken, the conditions of travel, and the climate to which the camera will be exposed.
For accurate work a stand camera is always to be preferred to one of the hand variety, and care should be taken to choose an instrument that is strongly made and of simple construction.
The essentials of a good stand camera are that it shall be rigid, possess a rising and falling front, a swing back, and bellows which will be capable of extension to fully double the focal length of the lens to be used with it.
[1]Prof. Petrie is not responsible for this section, which is due to the kind assistance of some professional photographers.-ED.
The rising and falling front gives a power of modifying the field of view in a vertical direction.
The swing back preserves the verticality of architectural subjects.
In some cases, when used with the pivots vertical, it is a help in focussing the subject.
The possible extension of the distance between the lens stop and the ground glass to twice the focal length (which is as a rule the distance between the same points, when a distant object is in focus) enables a small subject to be reproduced in natural size.
For work abroad where extremes of temperature or excessive variations have to be contended with, a special tropical camera is supplied by most of the leading makers.
Its well-seasoned hard wood and metalbound joints render it suitable for hard wear, and reduce the risk of leakage through warping or shrinkage.
The tripod stand should be of the so-called threefold variety, with sliding legs which can be adapted to broken ground.
If a loose screw is used for attaching the camera to the stand, a spare screw should be kept in reserve.
It is important that this stand should be strongly made, and light patterns subject to undue vibrations in the wind should be discarded.
For photographing small objects in the studio, a small table is more convenient than a tripod support.
If the camera will not sit flat on the table, a bed can easily be designed for it.
Better work will be done if this is prepared in advance than if an improvised support is used.
As regards the size of the outfit, quarter-plate (3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches) will usually be found to be large enough for the traveller.
For anything in the nature of studio work in a museum or in connexion with an excavation a half-plate camera (6 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches) is more satisfactory.
Where a hand camera is preferred it should be one capable of adjustment of focus, and here again, strength and simplicity should be looked for.
It should be provided with effective tripod legs, for studied exposures.
Plates or flat films are preferable to roll fills [2] which are difficult to manipulate away from home.
Flat films are less bulky and less breakable than glass, and can be sent by post.
They are supplied by the makers in packs of 12 for daylight loading into a film-pack adapter, which must be provided to take the place of the ordinary dark slides for glass plates.
The lens should be a modern anastigmatic by a good maker.
A focal length of about six inches will be best for a quarter-plate camera.
A bad lens makes success impossible even by accident.
[2] Transcriber's note: 'fills' in the original text is possibly a misprint for 'films'.
The stops will probably be of the Iris pattern, incorporated in the lens and so not likely to be lost, as often happens with loose stops.
A few words on the theory and use of the stops and on the F-notation may be of service.
The speed of a photographic lens depends on the ratio of the effective aperture to the focal length.
Thus any two lenses used at apertures of F/8, that is at apertures having diameters one-eighth of their respective focal lengths, should be of the same speed, though both lenses and apertures may be very different.
In a given lens, the speed varies directly with the area of the aperture admitting the light, that is with the square of the diameter of the aperture.
The series of stops usually employed is calculated so that each aperture is half the area of the preceding.
Stated in terms of the focal length they are known as F/5.6, F/8, F/11.3, F/16, F/22.6, F/32, &c. Since the squares of those numbers, 31.4, 64, 127.7, 256, 510.7, 1024 are approximately each twice the preceding number of the series, the apertures, F(ocal length), divided by the successive numbers as denominators, are each half the area of the preceding and require twice the exposure, F/16 requires twice the 'exposure of F/11.3, and four times that of F/8, and so throughout the scale.
Stops are used to regulate either 'depth of focus' or length of exposure.
The 'depth of focus' means the distance before and behind the point in theoretically accurate focus, at which objects are sufficiently focussed, for the purpose the photographer has in view.
This length is greatest when only the central portion of the lens is in use.
It is greatest with a pinhole, and least with a full aperture.
Hence a small stop is required if the picture is to include near and far objects, while a large aperture may be used if all the subject is far enough away to be in clear focus--say more than 25 feet--or if it is a flat surface.
The small stop is also required when the rising front or the swing back is in use.
The power of regulating the time of exposure is convenient for shortening long exposures in dark interiors, or for lengthening inconveniently short exposures in a bright light.
In practice it will be best to become familiar with the use of about three stops, say the full aperture (perhaps F/5.6 or F/8), F/16, and F/32.
For judging long exposures, the use of an actinometer (issued in many inexpensive forms) is helpful.
A telephoto attachment increases the photographer's power of rendering distant details on a large scale.
The results are greatly superior to enlargements of a small plate.
It is, however, useless in a wind, unless the camera is specially supported, and is otherwise rather tricky to use.
The traveller is strongly advised to master its management at home.
It should be adjusted by the maker to the camera for which it is intended.
Unless a photographer's dark room can be had the developing of the bulk is best left until the return home, but tests should be made to see that the exposures are correct.
A piece of ruby fabric or ruby paper tied over an electric light will give a safe light after dark, and 'Scalol' or some such one-solution developer which requires merely the addition of water, will give all that is needed for developing.
For fixing use 4 oz.
hypo to a pint of water.
In warm climates, use cold water.
If it is not cool enough, the gelatine of the negatives may give trouble.
In that case, get colder water, and use an alum bath.
If water is precious, plates can be sufficiently washed by moving them forward in succession, through half-dozen soup plates filled with water.
If habitual use is not made of tabloid developers, &c., it is advisable to have some in reserve, for use in the case of broken bottles and spilt solutions.
Useful notes and maxims.
An over-exposed plate gives no dark shadows in the print.
An under-exposed plate gives no high lights.
When in doubt, choose the risk of over-exposure.
To test the safety of your camera--Half draw the shutter, and expose part of the plate in the camera, in the sunshine, without uncapping the lens, and develop.
To test the safety of your red light--Expose a plate, divide it into two, develop half in the dark, and half for the same time, with the same solution by the light you are testing, and compare the results.
This test is worth making, as photographers are apt to give themselves much discomfort from exaggerated caution.
2.
Itinerary.
Where there are efficient maps the only need is to mark in the position of any antiquities, by cross-bearings to clear points, with the compass, drawn in with a sharp pencil.
Where the maps are too small, or deficient, a continuous register of time should be made, noting the minute of starting and of stopping; this over known distances will serve to give the value over the unknown.
Note whether mounted or walking, and the compass bearing of the track; also the bearings of known points around, whenever stopping.
Without any known bearings pacing and compass used carefully may go over the roughest ground without five per cent.
error in the day.
It is better when on unknown ground to plot a map as you go, so that no misunderstanding of notes can arise after.
If a squared block cannot be used, at least draw the bearings and distances roughly, writing in the amounts.
This should be plotted up accurately in the evening.
A photograph may be unintelligible later in its detail.
It is best where known features, a temple, tombs, &c., are in a view, to sketch the outline when photographing, and write in the details, so as to give a key to the photograph.
Inquire about antiquities whenever stopping.
When camping, villagers usually come up to see who it is; then tell them the directions of the places around.
They will ask how you know; show them the map, and they are puzzled; talk over all the names a few miles round, and then anything notable in the district may be remarked, and inquiries made.
Several men together help each other to remember, and bring out more remarks.
Sometimes an intelligent man will describe all the antiquities he knows in the district: this should be followed closely on the map, and difficulties resolved at once, so as to get a clear record noted.
Of course, enormous exaggerations are met with, and not one report in ten will prove to be anything.
Tracking up the source of bought antiquities is one of the best methods, and the one by which Naukratis was found.
If travelling by camel, it is practicable to diverge widely on foot, if objects are looked for well ahead.
A foot track diverging 4.5 degrees, and then converging likewise, will easily keep in touch with a baggage camel.
Fix on the camping-place in the morning, and let every one know of it, so that if accidentally parted all can rejoin by night.
3.
Recording.
Buildings or ruins.
Fix position by bearings to mapped points; also note bearings of any prominent feature near by, which may serve for finding the position again.
Sketch a plan, always north up in the book, note bearing of main wall, and then measure with bamboo rod all original dimensions, with some diagonals to fix angles; do not forget the thickness of the walls.
It is best for a long length to stretch a tape, pegged down by the ring, and pulled tight by hand: read off all positions of doors, windows, cross-walls, &c., on one long length, and not as separate short lengths.
If possible plot the measures on squared paper as you go, and then any errors or omissions will be checked at once.
'E.
and O.E.'
has no place in a plan.
Town mounds.
Estimate height over bare land outside; eye height is a trifle over five feet.
At the foot of the mound see where the horizon cuts the shoulder of it to find eye height; walk up to that point, and sight another five feet; so on, till you see over the top.
If there is any section, by a stream side, or digging, or land-slip, look for strata, stone or brick walls and floor levels, and for any distinctive potsherds; observing levels as before.
Look all over the top for potsherds, to find the latest period of the town.
Look around the mound for any early potsherds.
Sherds on the slopes are worth less; as they have probably slipped down.
Red burnt brick in Egypt is all Roman or Arab; in Greece and Asia Minor, red brick and mortar is Roman, Byzantine, or later.
Walk to the middle of the site or mound, and see its extent.
Then walk round the wall line, or circuit of it, pacing and compass noting, to sketch the shape and size of the site: especially look for any straight lines of wall showing.
Sometimes a mud-brick wall may be entirely denuded away, yet the position is shown by the sharp edge of the strew of potsherds on the surface.
Look for any slag-heaps; these are the remains of lime burning, and show where stone buildings existed; sometimes foundations still remain.
Look for any recent pits or trenches; these show where stone or burnt brick has been dug out in modern times, and may give the position and plan of a temple or church.
See if any rubbish mounds can be traced outside of the town site; usually marked by a gentle walk-up slope, and a steep thrown-down slope, and mainly consisting of pottery, e.g.
Monte Testaccio at Rome, and mounds east of Cairo.
Town sites rise in Egypt about forty inches a century, by the dust, rubbish, and decay of mud-brick buildings.
In Palestine the rise is five feet a century, owing to the rains.
Cemeteries.
These have generally been more or less plundered; if recently, the pits show; if anciently, there are scraps of pottery lying about.
If there are pebbles or marl thrown up from deep levels, there is evidence of tombs, and they may be unplundered.
Blown sand or grass may hide all trace of tombs.
Sometimes the whole masonry of a tomb may have been removed, and the gravel filling-in have spread so uniformly that there is no sign of building, although a course or two of stone may yet remain under the surface.
The surface of ground should be closely looked over at sunrise or sunset to show up the slight hollows or ridges by the shadows.
After rain differences will often appear in the drying of the ground.
Ask any one near a site if he knows of any one getting stones, or bronze, or plunder from tombs.
Anything found will probably be greatly exaggerated, and no clear idea of the time of finding can be reached; yet any such detail may be useful.
Any large town site must have a cemetery, which is near it in most cases.
In Egypt the towns being in the inundated land, the cemeteries are at some miles distant on the desert.
The prehistoric cemeteries may be anywhere; the historic cemeteries are usually round the ends of the dyke roads, which were thrown up in the early dynasties as irrigation dams, and still serve as the roads of the country.
In Greek lands cemeteries are always outside a town, usually by the side of the roads.
Caves should always be carefully explored; the roof and sides searched for inscriptions or carvings; rock pockets in the sides examined; and the floor dug over for potsherds and any small objects.
If there are different strata these should be each removed separately, and the depth and positions of objects noted.
4.
Methods of Planning.
Though we cannot here give full technical details of all the methods for plans and surveys, it will be useful to state the scope of each method, so that they may be kept in mind, and whichever is best suited to the individual and his work may be provided for.
1.
Plain pacing.
After pacing lengths of a few hundred feet, up and down hill and flat, tape the distances, and learn true value of pace.
Careful pacing can be done to one or two per cent.
of the whole; and properly used, in triangles, may give a useful plan.
2.
Pacing and compass.
This covers large spaces quickly, but the compass is less accurate than the pace.
3.
Tape.
Lines of taping must be well planned, with triangle ties to secure the angles.
Pulling up straight is difficult in a wind, especially on broken ground, and one per cent.
error is quite possible then.
When working alone peg the tape down by the ring, or round a stone.
4.
Tapes and cross lines.
Stretch two strings crossing squarely on the ground: fix the square by laying a squared drawing block below and looking at strings over it.
Two helpers each hold a tape, zero on a string, and the two tapes are held together by the observer and read off, giving the distance to each string; this is to be plotted at once on squared paper, and the plan is completed in detail as it progresses, without any notebook or later plotting.
The helpers must be capable of holding the tape square to the string.
Good for sites up to two hundred or three hundred feet.
5.
Plane table.
Excellent for some ground, where objects are visible from a distance: otherwise it requires a marker put up at every point to be fixed.
Cumbrous to carry, much slower than 4.
6.
Box sextant, used as giving angular accuracy to any of the foregoing; most useful with taping, and in following.
7.
Sextant and three points.
The most rapid accurate method is to adopt three points visible all over the ground (as trees or chimneys) or set up three markers.
Find shape and size of this triangle.
Then at any point take two angles visible between the points, and this fixes position of observer.
A large site may have forty points fixed in two hours thus to about 1 in 1000.
For detail and plotting see Petrie, _Methods and Aims in Archaeology_.
8.
Theodolite.
For the most accurate work a theodolite is used, giving points to about 1 in 5000.
It is almost essential for any astronomical meridian or latitude.
None of these methods necessitate any helper, except 4 which needs two helpers.
The observation is from the point to be fixed in 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7; but it is _to_ the point, needing signals or visible features on the points, in 5, 6, and 8, and for those methods a large stock of rods must be taken, and the whole ground gone over, before the work of observation; such methods take far more time than the others.
The able surveyor will know by instinct how to use all the inferior methods as supplements to the higher, whenever time demands and accuracy allows.
When first searching a site, note the direction of any wall to the horizon point, and so see if other walls are parallel.
In all cases a plumb line is wanted for alining foundations and scattered blocks.
Always carry six feet of thin string, and pick up the nearest suitable stone for a weight, up to three or four pounds in a wind.
5.
Drawing and Copying.
Inscriptions.
If there is any chance of being interrupted by any claimant, or by crowds, always make a hand copy at once, as quickly as possible.
After a squeeze or photograph is taken, yet the hand copy is often of value to explain positions of squeeze slips or detail of photographs.
If there is no chance of interruption, then a carefully drawn copy full size should be made.
For this a dry squeeze is the ground work.
Lay a sheet of thin paper, such as thin wrapping or plain paper, on the stone, and press all the letters over with the fingers, so as to make a sharp bend; a break in the deep hollows does not matter.
Then, putting the paper on a drawing-board or sheet of millboard, cock it up so that the shadow of the squeeze is seen, and draw over the lines (starting at right base), referring to the stone whenever uncertain.
This is the only right way to copy hieroglyphics by hand.
Note that the edges are usually rather worn, and the drawn lines should be inside the squeeze lines.
If the stone is large, several lesser sheets are best.
Where there is writing, or the relief is too faint to squeeze, put the paper immediately below the first line, and draw it sign for sign, so that the spacing is preserved and no omission is possible.
Fold back the paper as each line is copied, and so always keep the copying close below the line of inscription.
If the signs are in an alphabet that is not familiar, refer to the table of alphabets.
Sculpture Sculpture in low relief can be copied best by dry squeeze.
As the connexion of the sheets used should be exact, put up the first sheet truly vertical, and mark little pencil crosses at the corners on the stone.
Then the corners of successive sheets should be fitted into the angles of the crosses.
When inking in the pencil drawings, do not carry the lines within two inches of the edges of the sheets.
Then place sheets edge to edge, adjust them to fit as best they may, weight them heavily with books, turn back one edge and weight it, and then slip a strip of wetted adhesive paper half-way under the edge that is down; at once liberate the edge that is up, and dab (not rub) both heavily down on the adhesive.
This makes a joint free of cockling, and when dry the inking can be completed across the joint.
Where there is any colour remaining on sculpture or inscription, only dry squeezing is permissible.
Where signs are worn or decayed it is needful to try various lighting.
This can be done in the open air, by shading the part by the hands placed around it as a sort of tube, the head blocking out the light over the tube.
Then quickly raise a hand alternately, so as to reverse the oblique lighting, and watch the effect on the sign.
If the stone has not too tender a face, careful washing often brings out an inscription; and in such cases it is usually far easier to copy from a wet than from a dry stone.
If reliefs have been much weathered they can be made plain for photographing by laying horizontal and covering with sand; on wiping away the sand from the relief the ground will be left flat sand, so hiding the confused hollows of weathering.
The safest way for drawings to travel is to post them at the nearest post direct to where they will be worked up.
The Postal Union takes rolls of 21 cm.
thick, 60 cm.
long, up to 5 kilos as parcels, or rolls of 10 cm.
thick, 75 cm.
long, up to 2 kilos by book post open at ends.
This is far better than carrying rolls by hand.
Wet squeezing.
Where there is no colour, and the stone is strong and not crumbling, a wet squeeze is the best copy.
There are three purposes for it, and the method differs for each; (1) thin single sheet kept fresh on the outer face for photographing later; or (2) single sheet well beaten in and patched, depending on pricking the outlines and hand-copy from it, or blacking over the relief on the inner side and photographing; or (3) double sheet hard beaten, and patched in the hollows, for plaster casting afterwards.
For (1) there is no need to get an impression of the hollows to the bottom, and the face of the paper should be smooth.
A soft paper, with little or no size, and a soft clothes-brush will do well for this.
The sheet should cover the whole inscription, or have as few joints as may be.
The stone should be dabbed with a wet brush so as to saturate the face, the sheet of paper well soaked in water laid upon it, taking care not to leave bubbles, and then dabbing firmly with the brush will drive the paper into the hollows.
If the stone is polished or very smooth, it is needful to peel off the paper while wet by holding two corners, and lay it reversed on a flat surface to dry; if left on the stone the contraction will destroy the impress.
Out of doors the paper can be held down by pebbles around it, or by sand on the edges, to prevent the wind catching it.
(2) The stronger squeeze should be of a tough paper with moderate sizing.
Cut the paper to the form of the stone.
Thrust it into a pail of water, knead it about vigorously, roll it into a ball and pummel it, so as to break the grain and let the water well into it.
Then wet the stone, shake out the paper like a wet handkerchief, full of creases, lay it on the stone and begin to beat it in with a hard, long spoke-brush.
A few strokes round the edge will catch it down so that the wind does not disturb it.
Then begin to beat it heavily along the top edge; beat it to a pulp, and patch with strips left soaking in the water wherever breaks occur.
If the stone is porous the paper may part from it, especially if expanded by beating; the only course then is to slush more water on the face so that it will go through the breaks and hold the paper down again.
It may be needful to slit the paper to let the water go below it.
Beat down again, enough to fix it.
(3) For casting purposes a final backing sheet, moderately beaten on, is needed to hold the squeeze together and stiffen it.
Either (2) or (3) can be left on the face of the stone till quite dry, and then carefully detached by lifting up from one corner, and slipping a dinner-knife or a slip of wood under the paper to lift any part that sticks.
Stiff squeezes as (3) must be packed flat; thin, as (1) and sometimes (2), may be rolled in a large curve, but this always deteriorates a squeeze.
For plaster casting, a squeeze should be heated on a stove and brushed over with melted paraffin, or better wax, sufficient to cover the face without choking the finer detail.
Before each cast the face should be lightly oiled with a tuft of wool.
Small objects.
These can be copied by a thin paper squeeze, and the squeeze may be mounted by pasting a card and lightly pressing the squeeze back down on it.
This will take out all cockling and make it lie flat for photographing.
Tin-foil is very handy for squeezes, and may be saved from chocolate for this.
Press it firmly on a coin or seal with a tuft of wool, or beat it with a soft tooth-brush, being careful to avoid creases.
The foil should then be floated on water, hollow back up, and blazing sealing-wax dropped into it to back it.
The resulting positive can be then stuck on card.
For plaster casts of coins the face should be dusted with French chalk, as also a smooth bed of plasticine; the coin can then be pressed in safely without any possible risk, and afterward plaster cast in the mould.
Sealing-wax is said to be sharper, but there is a risk of its sticking to the coin.
If it is used, breathe hard on the coin, or wet it, before impressing; and when first set lift it slightly to detach it, and then replace till cold.
Or tin-foil may be used, as in making positives; but, instead of floating on water, press plasticine on the foil while it is still on the object.
For curved surfaces, as cylinders, any of these methods can be used; the plasticine is the more successful.
In all casting of plaster on a small scale, use a soft camel-hair brush.
Mix the plaster in the palm of the hand with a knife, take up some of the wettest to brush over the face of the moulds (a dozen scarabs or small coins done at once); then put he brush in water, and take up thicker plaster with a pocket-knife to drop on as a backing.
This avoids air bubbles without using too weak a plaster.
Copying hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Where possible a wet or a dry squeeze should be taken of any inscription.
When hand copying is necessary, the main matter is to get the cartouches of king's names accurately, and the date at the beginning, examining specially whether single strokes, I I I I, have been connected above, n n, forming the ten sign.
The main difficulty for any one not knowing the 800 signs is to distinguish between those that are alike, especially when damaged.
For this purpose the commonest signs that may be confused are here placed together, so that the essential points of difference may be noticed.
A small cross is placed here by small points of distinction which might escape notice.
[Illustration I: SOME HIEROGLYPHIC SIGNS LIABLE TO BE CONFUSED WITH EACH OTHER] 6.
Photography.
The camera and material have been described under outfit.
Lighting and preparation of objects is a main element of success.
When first looking over any ruins, make a list of every view wanted, with the time of day when the sun will be right for it.
Then follow the time-table, and so get the best lighting all in one day.
For movable stones or figures place them in half-shade, as a doorway, and then tilt every way until the best lighting is found, fix them in that position, and then set up the camera square with them.
The camera should usually be fixed to look downward vertically, and then variation up to 40 degrees can be got by the legs.
Hold the camera in the right position, keeping the legs off the ground, and then drop the legs to find their own place; thus very skew positions can be fixed quickly.
Small objects are best laid on black velvet, and taken vertically.
Scraps of charcoal are useful to prop them in exact positions.
A sheet of white paper stuck on a leg of the stand may be useful to prevent shadows being too heavy.
Where outline, and not flat detail, is wanted, then a light ground is best; the most perfect is a sheet of ground glass with white paper a foot or two below it.
If the ground glass cannot be had, a good substitute-also useful for a camera glass-is plain glass with a sheet of tissue paper (or the packing paper of films) stuck on with paraffin wax.
The dressing of objects to show up clearly is often needful.
Incised objects can be filled in with charcoal powder if light, or chalk if dark; in any case a coarse powder, so as not to stain the object.
For faint cutting on glass or crystal go over the lines with 'China ink in a pen, so as to cover them.
Harden the ink in the sun, and then gently wipe with a damp finger until all the excess is removed and only the roughness of the lines remains black.
On large objects light dust or sand is often useful, to make relief clearer.
For objects in a bad light, or in the interior of tombs, reflected light must be used.
Lids of biscuit tins serve well; a lid in the sun sixty feet off, and another lid reflecting the light on to a wall, will suffice for a two minutes' exposure of a slow plate.
Three or four successive reflections into a totally dark chamber will suffice in five or six minutes.
When an important subject cannot be revisited it is well to take duplicates; the camera should be shifted laterally a few inches for a near object, or a few feet for a distant view, and then the two films will form a stereograph, if both succeed.
In arranging groups of small objects, put together what will go in a three-inch circle, and minor pieces around, and then the best in the middle can be printed direct on lantern slides.
7.
Preservation and Packing.
While travelling little can be done for preserving objects.
Papyrus rolls should be wrapped at once in a damp handkerchief, to be carried, and then wrapped in paper, packed in a tin box, and filled round with cotton wool.
Small papyri can be safely damped in a wet cloth, and flattened out between the leaves of a book; secure one edge straight in the hinge, and gradually press flat and secure by advancing leaves over it.
Glass, if perfect, should be packed in tins with wool; old food or tobacco tins do well for tender things.
Flint implements and coins, though hardy, should be saved from grinding by wrapping in waste paper.
Ivory, if it has been buried, is very liable to flake.
The cure is to soak it in paraffin wax; but temporarily it is secured by winding cotton thread round it in many directions.
Some anoint it with vaseline, but if vaseline penetrates the ivory, it will not take up paraffin or gelatine later.
Tender wood may be likewise saved.
A much-cracked glazed jar was packed by winding string round it in all directions, with tufts of wool under the string.
A whole mummy in most fragile condition, so that it could not be lifted, was made up solid with 40 lb.
of paraffin wax which was melted out of it afterwards in England, making hardly any change.
If contracted burials should be preserved, dust carefully, splash on about 5 lb.
of paraffin wax heated to smoking-point.
When cold, detach from soil, turn over, paraffin the lower side, and build up weak parts with a sludge of melted paraffin and sand, nearly chilled.
About 8 to 10 lb.
of wax will do the whole.
The skull should be packed separately.
Pad all hollows of the body with soft rag to spread pressure in packing.
Paraffin wax is the best preservative as it is tough, and may be used as a coat over an object for safety.
When not needed it can be cut away, or melted away, and cleaned off completely with benzol.
It should be melted in an iron saucepan, as solder will give way if it is superheated.
As it melts at about 120 degrees F., and boils at about 600 degrees F., it can be greatly superheated, and used when smoking, so as to penetrate deeply into wood or porous material.
It is perfect for strengthening skulls; most rotten examples slopped with paraffin, and finally soused for a few seconds so as entirely to cover the bone in and out, will travel safely, if not crushed.
Boxes must always have corner posts, inside or out; see that the sides are nailed up to the edges to the posts, or the lid or bottom may part by the side splitting.
See that all nails--except for the lid--are driven slanting alternately one way and reversed, this prevents sides or bottom drawing off.
Nail the lid with many short nails, so that it can be raised without splitting.
To secure heavy objects in a mixed box, an inverted rough stool is the best, the cross piece on the object below, and the sides coming up to the lid.
If cross bars are nailed in a box, damage may be done to an object in forcing the bars loose.
It is often best to put heavy and light things in the same box, to equalize weights in journeying; if well secured, a mixed boxful travels well.
Be very careful that a wedge-shaped stone cannot force itself loose by repeated jolts, or it may split a box.
Slabs of stone ire best packed in open shallow boxes face down on straw or wool, secured by a few diagonal cross bars on the top, as then they do not need to be opened for customs.
All stones of regular form should be supported at a fifth of the length from each end.
No bedding on a box is worth anything, as the box will bend more than the stone, and the strain will all come on the middle.
Very heavy blocks are best with sacking on the face, and roped round in various parts.
Pottery is most difficult to pack safely.
For large jars, mark the points of contact on the box, and nail on cushions of old cloth stuffed hard with straw, so as to pad the jar on all sides; make sure that it cannot twist about into a diagonal position off the pads.
Long boxes, five or six feet, with three or four cross divisions, are best.
Begin packing, say four pots with straw, at one end of the box, press up a cross board tight on them, and nail through the sides: then another batch likewise; about one inch thick of hard-pressed straw is needful at each contact.
Twist straw into rough bands, and wind it round each pot.
Fill up corners to prevent the bands shifting loose.
Empty small tins make good stuffing for blank spaces.
Old newspapers torn to bits and rolled into balls make good packing for pots and hold them firmly, but this method is dangerous if the packing becomes wetted.
Pots should always be packed tight.
Old sacking or cotton stuff may be tied on over the mouth of large pots, to prevent straw slipping in, and loosening the packing.
Bronzes and coins should not be cleaned in any way, till in a settled work place.
8.
Forgeries and.
Buying.
Most travellers wish to buy some things of interest, and in remote districts they may do good service in rescuing important objects which may be wanted in museums.
Forgeries are ubiquitous, even in most obscure places in the hands of peasants, either supplied by dealers, or casually obtained, often in good faith.
It is best to inquire of local collectors and museums as to the kinds of forgeries met with.
The following notes are to show the novice how far he may go safely.
Bronze figures with a thick red patina, which scales off readily sometimes, or with thick green patina cracked, or hard green or brown patina, are safe.
Thin green patina, or bare brown or black metal is dubious.
Papyri in roll, flexible though fragile, in known Greek or Egyptian writing, are fairly safe.
Lumps stuck together, brown and scrappy, are made up.
Coins cannot be safely bought unless patinated, copper or silver.
Only an expert can judge of gold or 'clean silver.
Jewellery of small size, as earrings and bracelets, is generally safe, if the age of the design is known.
Modern wire is always drawn, ancient is irregular.
Look for concretions of lime in the hollows, and for the dull face of old gold.
If once cleaned there is little to distinguish old from modern gold.
Stone vases if turned are Roman or modern.
The ancient irregularities should be studied from specimens.
Scarabs with nacreous or decomposed glaze in the hollows (as in the deep cuts at the side) are safe; also, if there are natural cracks by age, which would prevent modern cutting.
There is a large variety of skilful forgeries.
Stone statuettes: a skilled forger may be paid up to 100 pounds for a figure to order.
Only an expert can judge.
Never buy in the dusk or in dark rooms.
When buying never have any one at hand who calls attention to things, nor let any attendant interfere.
Seem entirely unconcerned.
Get the reputation of never advancing on offers, or bargaining; let taking or leaving things at once be the rule.
Time and delays are money to the traveller, and it is worth much to save time in haggling.
Your donkey-boy will soon spread your character.
When offering for single things to a peasant, put the money by the side of the antiquity, and say that he must take one or the other: fingering the cash is irresistible, and no time is lost.
If it is likely that the source of an object will not be truly stated, the way is to make the best guess you can, and say it dogmatically: the pleasure of setting you right will often bring out the truth, or if you guessed right it will gain you credit and break down reserve.
As a principle it is well to be looked on as a liberal buyer, so as to encourage the offer of antiquities.
A little more thus spent will be a trifling extra on the whole journey, and may largely increase the results in objects and information for future work.
Though prices can only be learned by practice, and they vary in time and place, yet the following scale may be taken as fairly safe.
Bronze figures if good work, inches high squared = shillings: except in bad state, or Osiris, or bad clumsy work, or votive animals.
Papyri or parchment, continuous text, 1 pound a square foot, accounts, half or a third.
Jewellery, between weight in coin and double that, according to work.
Scarabs, common but fair 2s., names 2s.-5s.
; up to 5 pounds or 10 pounds if beautiful.
Engraved gems, small common Roman, 2s.-4s.
in London, more in East; for a fair Greek 1 pound-10 pounds.
Coins often higher in the East than in London.
In Greek lands copper coins may be bought by weight, and picked over at leisure, and the worthless coins rejected.
For single coins fix a price, say half a franc, and offers of large numbers may come in, from which the best can be chosen and the rest refused.
Glass vases, blown, inches high squared at 4d.
or 6d.
each.
Coloured glass double or triple.
Ushabtis, poor 1s.-4s., fair 5s.-10s., fine blue or engraved 1 pound10 pounds.
LIST OF THE CHIEF BRITISH INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIETIES CONCERNED WITH THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST.
LONDON.
BRITISH MUSEUM, Bloomsbury, W.C.1.
Director, Sir F. G. Kenyon, K.C.B., P.B.A.
Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, Litt.D.
Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities (including Prehistoric Antiquities, Ethnology, and Oriental Antiquities) Sir Hercules Read, F.B.A., P.S.A.
Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, A. H. Smith M.A.
Keeper of Coins, G. F. Hill, F.B.A.
Keeper of MSS., J. P. Gilson, M.A.
Keeper of Oriental MSS.
and Printed Books.
L. D. Barnett, Litt.D.
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, S. Kensington, S.W.7.
Director, Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith, C.V.O.
Assistant Keeper of Architecture and Sculpture, E. R. D. Maclagan.
Assistant Keeper of Ceramics, C. H. Wylde.
Keeper of Metalwork, W. W. Watts.
Keeper of Textiles, A. F. Kendrick.
Keeper of Woodwork, E. F. Strange, C.B.E.
BRITISH ACADEMY, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W.1.
Secretary, Sir I. Gollancz, Litt.D.
BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS, 19 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1, Secretary, John Penoyre, C.B.E.
BRITISH SCHOOL IN JERUSALEM, c/o.
Palestine Exploration Fund, 2 Hinde St., Manchester Square, W. 1.
Secretary, Miss R. Woodley.
BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME, 19 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.
Secretary of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, E. J. Forsdyke.
PALESTINE EXPLORATION FUND, 2 Hinde St., Manchester Square, W.1 Secretary, E. W. G. Masterman, M.D.
EGYPT EXPLORATION SOCIETY, 13 Tavistock Square, W.C.1.
Secretary, Miss Jonas.
EGYPTIAN RESEARCH ACCOUNT AND BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN EGYPT.
Hon.
Director, Prof. W. M. F. Petrie, F.R.S., F.B.A., University College, Gower St., W.C.1.
SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON, Burlington House, W.1.
Secretary, C. R. Peers, F.S.A.
ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, 74 Grosvenor St., W. 1.
Secretary, Miss Eleanor Hull.
SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF HELLENIC STUDIES, 19 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.
Secretary and Librarian, John Penoyre, C.B.E.
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS, 9 Conduit St., W.1.
Secretary, Ian MacAlister.
SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF ROMAN STUDIES, 19 Bloomsbury Square, W.C.1.
Secretary, Miss Margaret Ramsay.
ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, 50 Gt.
Russell St., W.C.1.
Secretaries, H. S. Harrison, T. A. Joyce, O.B.E.
ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY, 22 Russell Square, W.C.1.
Secretaries, J. Allan, Lt. Col. W. Morrieson.
ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore, S. W. 7.
Secretary, A. R. Hinks, F.R.S.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOINT COMMITTEE.
Hon.
Secretary, G. F. Hill, British Museum, W.C.1.
CAMBRIDGE.
MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.
Curator, Baron A. von Hugel.
FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM.
Director, S. C. Cockerell, M.A.
OXFORD.
ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM.
Keeper, D. G. Hogarth, C.M.G., F.B.A.
ATHENS.
BRITISH SCHOOL.
Director, A. J.
B. Wace.
JERUSALEM.
BRITISH SCHOOL.
Director, Prof. J. Garstang.
ROME.
BRITISH SCHOOL, Valle Giulia.
Director, Thomas Ashby, D.Litt.
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOINT COMMITTEE Society or other Body.
Representatives.
British Academy Sir F. G. Kenyon, K.C.B.
(Chairman of Committee).
Prof. Percy Gardner.
Sir W. M. Ramsay.
Royal Anthropological Institute Sir Everard Im Thurn.
Prof. Arthur Keith.
Society of Antiquaries Sir Arthur Evans.
Sir Hercules Read.
Royal Institute of British Architects Prof. W. R. Lethaby.
Prof. A. G. Dickie.
Royal Asiatic Society F. Legge.
R. Sewell.
British School at Athens J. P. Droop.
Byzantine Research Fund Sir Hercules Read.
Egypt Exploration Society Sir F. G. Kenyon, K.C.B.
Dr. Alan Gardiner.
Egyptian Research Account Prof. Flinders Petrie.
Prof. Ernest Gardner.
Society for the Promotion A. H. Smith.
of Hellenic Studies G. F. Hill (Hon.
Sec.
of Committee).
British School at Jerusalem Prof. Flinders Petrie.
D. G. Hogarth, C.M.G.
Royal Numismatic Society Prof. C. Oman, M.P.
G. F. Hill.
Palestine Exploration Fund Dr. G. Buchanan Gray.
Prof. A. G. Dickie Society for the Promotion of Miss Gertrude Bell.
Roman Studies O. M. Dalton.
-------------------------------------------British Museum Sir F. G. Kenyon, K.C.B.
Victoria and Albert Museum Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith, C.V.O.
PART II INTRODUCTORY NOTE The aim of the special sections contained in Chapters III-VIII is to describe, not the objects usually to be seen in Museums, but only such things as will be found lying out on mounds and sites, and as are more or less distinctive of a period.
Thus certain comparatively trivial objects are named, because they are peculiar to a period, and likely to be found in a casual passage over a site, whereas other objects, common to several periods, are ignored.
Only the distinctive, key objects are mentioned.
The great features of Greek Art, for instance, are not dealt with in Chapter II; nor are coins, the probabilities of finding them being too slender, and the possibilities too wide.
Nevertheless, coins when found should be carefully quoted.
Pottery naturally takes the largest place, as it was abundant, and its fragments are a good guide to period, and being practically indestructible and of no intrinsic value are most likely to be met with.
The difference between pottery made with the use of the wheel and that made without is important to be noted.
The use of the wheel can usually be detected through the slight inequalities of the clay that make a series of parallel lines on the inner surface.
The diagrammatic representations of the pot-forms characteristic of various periods or of other objects ranging through a civilization the main features of which can be shown in outline will, it is hoped, be found useful.
Simplified tables of alphabets, intended to make it possible roughly to identify the script, if not the date, of an inscription, are also given.
CHAPTER I FLINT IMPLEMENTS See Diagrams, [Illustrations II: Flint Implements] As the development of Flint Implements follows more or less the same course in all the districts with which this volume deals, a general description is given here, to avoid repetition in the special sections.
The earlier periods of man are so remote that geological changes, wet, and decay, have removed nearly all his works except the flint tools.
It is to these chiefly that we must look for our knowledge of his abilities.
Flints are nearly all that we have for the early stages, to supply what arts, history, and literature give in later stages.
To preserve and educe all we possibly can obtain from their situation, and purpose, is a main duty to history.
To destroy or confuse the evidence, by removing specimens without a record, or by shifting them to a different place, is a crime in science.
As there is no temptation to ignorant peasants to move flints until they are induced by collectors, so the whole fault of the wreckage that has taken place in many sites lies on the plundering collector.
No money or reward should be given for any flints; a few fine specimens may be lost, but vastly more harm would be done by encouraging mere raiding.
The periods and styles that are now recognized are shown on the diagram--and their conditions were: Style Climate Sea level Eolithic (Pliocene) ?
Rostrocarinate (Crag) ?
Strepyan warmer lower Chellean warm low Acheulian cooler rising Mousterian cold high Aurignacian less cold lower Solutrean warmer low Magdalenian colder rising Neolithic as present Differences of heat may be 20 degrees or 30 degrees + or Differences of level may be 600-800 ft. + or The information required of all observers is the level and conditions of all flint tools that they may see or collect.
Gravels containing tools may be surface gravels on a plateau; note then the level, and the relation of them to any cliffs; do they end abruptly at a cliff edge, showing that the valley was filled up; or do they fade away to the edge, showing that they are older than the valley erosion?
Gravels may be the filling up of a valley which was previously eroded; note the highest level at which they can be traced; often little pockets of deposit, or traces of sandy strata, can be found clinging high up on cliffs; also note the depths in the gravel at which any tools are found.
Any shells or bones in the gravels are of the greatest value; the depth at which they are found should be written on them at once, with the locality.
Surface flints should have levels noted on them.
If sharp they show that probably submergence has not reached that level since; if worn, then water has been up to a higher level, from which they have been washed down.
Levelling may be read from a contour map, if there is such available.
In most countries it must be done by reading feet on an aneroid barometer, set with zero of level scale to 30 ins.
or 760 mm.
Then visit as soon as possible some point where a level is marked on the map, as a hill top, and read the barometer.
This will give the correction to be made to all the previous notes.
If there is no level recorded, get down to a stream bed (the larger the better) and read it there, recording the exact place on the map.
The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean.
Guard that the wind does not blow against any keyhole in the case.
Pencil all levels and localities on flints as soon as found.
Ink in the notes on the least prominent parts of the flint, in small capital letters, when in camp, with waterproof China ink.
Styles of flint work.
The Eoliths are worn pebbles, chipped as if for scraping.
The Rostrocarinate flints found at the base of the Crag are long bars with a beak-end, suited for breaking up earth.
The human origin of both of these classes is contested.
Flints of Strepy type are nodular and partly trimmed into cutting edges, the smooth surface being left as a handle.
The Chelles types are remarkable for regularity and fine bold flaking; the worn butt (though best for handling) was eventually flaked away to obtain an artistic uniform finish.
The St. Acheul series has finer flaking, the crust being completely removed: there is a tendency to ovate or almond shapes, and the edges are often curved, the reverse S-curve being preferred, They diminish in size towards the end of the period.
The Chelles and St. Acheul series are core implements, made by detaching flakes; and the succeeding (Le Moustier) method is to use the flakes, generally for scraping.
The LA, EM the diagram is transitional from St. Acheul to Le Moustier.
The form marked M is the predecessor of the Solutrean form next below it.
The Aurignacian is a smaller flake industry, with many lumps more or less conical, and often with careful parallel flaking or fluting.
The Solutre culture brought in a new style, particularly thin blades with delicate surface flaking which seems to have reappeared in the late Neolithic.
The pointed borers, certain arrow-heads and minutely chipped rods of flint are characteristic of the period, and flints of this age are found on the Egyptian and Syrian deserts.
Longer blades, sometimes very coarse, with ends worn by scraping, mark the period of La Madeleine.
They are found in prehistoric Egyptian graves, along with Neolithic knives and lances.
As a technical advance on flaking by blows or pressure, grinding and incidental polishing of flint implements are regarded as characteristic of the Neolithic period; and the practice may have started in areas devoid of flint, where it was necessary to utilize local material that could not be flaked like flint.
In Europe generally, polished celts belong to the Megalithic or latest division of the Neolithic, but this implement appeared much earlier, and in a sense succeeded the Palaeolithic hand-axe.
The latter is not known to have been hafted, and its working edges were at the pointed end; whereas in Neolithic times the implement had become an axe in the modern sense, with the pointed end inserted in a haft, and the cutting edge removed to the broader end.
There are many other Neolithic types, used with or without a haft, and only a small proportion were finished by grinding on sandstone.
CHAPTER II GREECE [See the diagrams of flint implements, [Illustration II] of pottery, [Illustration III]; and of alphabets, [Illustration IV]] The Periods into which the subject must be divided are roughly as follows: I. Prehistoric down to about 1000 B.C.
II.
Prehistoric Greek down to about 700 B.C.
III.
Archaic Greek 700-500 B.C.
IV.
Classical Greek 500-300 B.C.
V. Hellenistic after 300.
VI.
Roman.
VII.
Byzantine.
I. PREHISTORIC A.
NORTH GREECE.
NEOLITHIC.--Neolithic settlements on low mounds (_maghoules_) rising from the plains.
Stone implements.
Axes, hammers, chisels, querns, &c. Flint chips, bone needles, obsidian.
Pottery.
Hand-made burnished, yellow, brown, black or red.
Handles rare.
Holes in rim, or lugs pierced for suspension, Earliest remains show painted sherds.
Long period of unpainted ware followed.
Patterns irregular, rectangular and curved.
No naturalism.
(Figs.
1 and 2.)
Ware differs slightly with locality.
In Thessaly fine red ware undecorated contemporary with red decoration on white.
Chocolate paint on deep buff follows.
Incised ware, geometric patterns white rubbed in.
Figurines.
Rude clay.
Steatopygous.
This civilization extended from northern edge of Thessaly as far south as Chaeronea.
Use of bronze before end uncertain.
Civilization undisturbed by Aegean culture that spread over southern Greece until just before both were swept away by iron-using people.
B. CRETE, AEGEAN, SOUTH GREECE.
CRETE.
NEOLITHIC.
Black or red burnished pottery.
BRONZE AGE.
Early Minoan.
Painted pottery, dark paint on light ground, geometric designs.
Unpainted, surface mottled red and black.
Middle Minoan.
circa.
3000 B.C.--White designs geometric on dark ground.
Orange and crimson added.
Pottery very thin and fine (Kamares ware).
Patterns very various but not naturalistic except in rare instances.
(Figs.
3 and 4; hatched lines=red.)
Late Minoan.
circa.
1500 B.C.--Return to use of light ground.
Brown lustrous paint, fine surface to clay.
Decoration naturalistic, flowers, cuttle-fish, shells, spirals, ripple patterns, white and orange dots and bands occasionally super-imposed on dark glaze (Figs.
7, 10, and 12).
White and orange disappear.
Decoration stiffer and more conventional.
AEGEAN.
NEOLITHIC.
Nothing known.
BRONZE AGE.
Contemporary with Early Minoan.
Pottery with geometric patterns normally dark on light buff or reddish coarse clay.
Sometimes red or white on black burnished clay.
Marble figurines 'fiddle-shaped' from Naxos and Paros (III, Fig.
6).
Contemporary with Middle Minoan.
Pottery with very pale sometimes greenish clay, and grey black totally unlustrous paint.
Patterns mainly geometric.
Rather sparse decoration.
Later, with addition of red, decoration becomes fully naturalistic.
Lilies and birds in red and black (Melos) (III, Figs.
5 and 9; hatched lines=red).
Beaked jugs (III, Fig.
5) most characteristic shape of this period.
Cretan influence strong in Middle Minoan completely drowned local efforts in first Late Minoan days.
Thenceforward local ware imitative.
SOUTH GREECE.
NEOLITHIC.
Nothing known.
BRONZE AGE.
Geometric Ware with matt paint and pale clay corresponding to that of islands found in Argolid and Boeotia.
'Urfirnis' Ware.
Hand-made.
Whole vase covered with thin semilustrous wash varying from red-brown to black.
Sometimes mere smears.
Mainly found in Boeotia, but extends north to valley of Spercheius and south to Argolid.
Date uncertain, but in Boeotia evidence that it ended before rise of 'Minyan' ware.
'Minyan Ware.'
Grey unpainted pottery, polished.
No decoration except (rarely) incised lines.
Usually wheel-made.
Characteristic shapes: Goblet with tall ringed stem (III, Fig.
15); wide open cup with high handles.
Appears to range Between Middle Minoan II and Late Minoan III.
Most frequent in Boeotia to which it owes its name.
Found as far north as Thessaly and as far south as Crete.
Local imitations, obvious but distinct, found with imported specimens (Melos).
Provenance unknown; connexion with Troy suspected.
'Mycenaean.'
The Cretan civilization swept over South Greece in the first Late Minoan period.
Characterized by exuberance both in shape and ornament (III, Figs.
11, 12, 13, 16, 17).
Bulk of what is likely to be found is of latest period when style has become conventionalized.
Compare Fig.
11 (Mycenaean) with III, Fig.
7 Late Minoan I.
Characteristic shapes high goblet and 'stirrup' vase (III, Figs.
17 and 16).
Female clay figurines common (III, Fig.
14), also animals, oxen.
Objects Characteristic of Aegean Civilization.
Seal Stones.
Round or bean-shaped, pierced for suspension, usually soft stone, e.g.
slate or steatite.
Sometimes hard, as hematite or rock crystal.
Carved with naturalistic designs: lions, (III, Fig.
8), stags, bulls, cows or hinds suckling their young, cuttle-fish, dolphins, &c. Two animals ranged like heraldic supporters characteristic.
Obsidian.
Natural glass, volcanic, black.
Source Melos.
Used for knives throughout Bronze Age.
Chips of Knife or razor blades, and sometimes the cores from which these were flaked, may be picked up on any Bronze Age site, and even on Thessalian neolithic settlements.
Glistening black unmistakable.
Terra-cotta lamps.
The characteristic lamp of the Aegean civilization is open, as opposed to the Greek and Roman lamp where the body is partly covered in.
Walls.
Cyclopean walls of huge irregular stones.
Also good square-cut masonry.
'Corbelling' system for arches, each layer of stones projecting inwards over the one below.
Also used for the vaults of 'Beehive' Tombs towards end of period.
[Illustration III: TYPES OF GREEK POTTERY, ETC.]
II.
PREHISTORIC GREEK Geometric or Dipylon Period.
Pottery.
Iron Age.
circ.
1000 B.C.--Absolute break in continuity from what preceded.
No naturalism.
Prevalence of geometric patterns (III, Figs.
18 and 19).
Not much variety.
Meanders, lozenges, and zigzags.
Circles joined by tangents replace Mycenaean spirals.
Ornament crowded.
Rows or single specimens of long-legged water birds.
Human figures rare, rude angular silhouettes.
Local characteristics discernible (e.g.
between ware of Thessaly, Attica, Boeotia, Delphi, Argolid, Laconia, Thera, and Crete), but strong family resemblance.
(Lower specimen III, Fig.
19 characteristic of Boeotia.)
Dark paint on natural clay (sometimes lightened by a white slip, e. g. Laconia) differs distinctly from Mycenaean.
Shapes fewer and curves less flowing.
Amphorae, plates, bowls, and jugs.
Trefoil lip to jug first appears.
Terra-cotta loom weights from now onwards often pyramidal in form and glazed.
Bronzes.
Figurines.
Three types:-Human, rare (as on vases).
Quadrupeds, mainly horses.
Cylindrical muzzle and narrow cylindrical belly (III, Fig.
23).
Birds.
Long neck and legs, flat bill and body.
Stands to above, flat, square or round, with open-work snake or spiral.
Pins (to fasten dress at shoulder).
Long head with small bosses like strung beads sometimes separated by discs (III, Fig 21).
Sometimes larger flat disc at end of head (often missing) Pin itself usually iron, rarely extant.
Brooches.
1.
Spiral type.
Of wire coiled into spirals.
Made of one, two, or three wires crossing with two, four, or six spirals respectively.
Boss at centre.
Spectacle type (two spirals) common.
In 'spectacle' type (sometimes very large) spiral purely utilitarian, giving spring to the pin.
With four or more spirals the additions are ornament, noteworthy in view of absence of spirals on pottery.
2.
Bow type.
(a) High arched bow solid.
(b) Arched bow hollowed like boat inverted.
This type often has flat plate attached to one end, lower edge of which is bent to form catch.
Plate incised, crossed leaves, ships, horses, or men.
(c) Arched bow consisting of crescent-shaped plate, similar incised decoration.
Paste Beads.
A type pyramidal, dark with yellow spirals round corners, much resembling 'bull's eye' sweets, was common in Laconia (III, Fig.27).
Terra-cotta Figurines.
Series of rude horses sometimes with riders characteristic of end of period.
Chiefly from Boeotia.
Painted like pottery, but chiefly in lines.
III.
ARCHAIC GREEK A. Orientalising.
Pottery.
700 B.C.--Influence from Asia Minor.
Recrudescence there of spirit of Mycenaean art?
Lions, stags, sphinxes, sirens, either in procession or arranged in pairs like heraldic supporters.
Stylized plant motifs in decoration.
Rays (or flower petals) rising from foot most characteristic (III, Figs.
24, 26, and 28).
Use of purple paint to supplement black both for details of figures and for band decoration.
Geometric ornament (though perhaps with a difference) survives to fill blank spaces on backgrounds of scenes.
Varieties of style.
Beasts drawn in silhouette, heads outlined, eyes, &c., drawn in, early, and mainly in the islands (III, Fig.
29).
Later whole figures in silhouette with details incised, particularly identified with Corinthian and Boeotian and Laconian styles (III, Fig.
26).
Styles most likely to be found on the mainland are 'ProtoCorinthian' and 'Corinthian'.
'Proto-Corinthian' (also called Argive Linear).
Small vases, very fine pale clay.
Decoration chiefly horizontal lines very fine.
Rays from feet.
Sometimes silhouette animals round shoulder.
Characteristic shapes: pear-shaped aryballoi, and lekythi with conical body, long neck, and trefoil lip (III, Figs.
24 and 25).
'Corinthian'.
Clay pale buff to warm biscuit colour.
Rays round foot.
Purple bands.
Rows of usual animals.
Incisions.
Details in purple.
Ground ornaments, incised rosettes more or less carefully drawn.
These in great profusion leaving very little bare space.
(III, Fig.
26; hatched lines=purple.)
Throughout this period desire for a light ground was felt, and where the natural colour of the clay did not give sufficient contrast it was covered with a strip of cream-or white clay (e.g.
Rhodian, Naucratite, Laconian; see III, Fig.
28, Early Laconian Vase).
Terra-cotta Figurines.
Series that culminates with Tanagra figures of fourth century begins.
May be said always to be a step in advance of contemporary sculpture if any.
Statuettes rare at this date, but relief heads on flat plaques or on vase handles common.
Treatment of hair usually resembles Restoration wig (III, Fig.
20).
Rosette frequent on shoulders represents head of bronze (rarely silver or gold) shoulder pin.
Bronzes.
Pins (to fasten dress at shoulder).
Three large bosses increasing in size as they near head replace many small equal bosses of preceding period.
Disc heavier (III, Fig.
22).
Brooches.
Spiral type has disappeared.
Couchant lion type with snake tail has been found at Olympia and Sparta.
In general brooches cease to be common.
Plaques (doubtless affixed to wood).
Relief patterns of guilloches or rows of bosses.
Figure scenes similar to those on pottery.
Characteristic of seventh century.
Chance of picking up slight.
Inscriptions.
Earliest extant examples of use of Greek script on stone may date from this period.
For developments, see tables of alphabets, Illustration IV.
[Illustration IV: GREEK ALPHABETS] B.
Black Figured Period.
600 B.C.--Predominance of Attic pottery.
Decay of local styles.
Introduction of red colouring into clay and of superlative Attic black glaze.
Figure scenes (battle scenes and scenes from mythology) largely predominate.
Black silhouettes, details marked with fine incisions, additions of purple and white (latter for linen and flesh of women).
Elaborate palmettos characteristic (III, Fig.
31).
IV.
CLASSICAL GREEK Red Figured Period.
525 B.C.
Same clay and glaze, but whole vase covered with glaze and figures reserved showing in colour of clay, details being added with fine-drawn lines of glaze.
White Attic Vases.
The older style of figures drawn in outline on a light ground (e. g. Naucratite and Rhodian ware), the space within outlines being filled more or less with wash of colour, survived in Athens side by side with the more usual black glazed ware, and in the fifth century was particularly affected for the class of funerary lekythi, vases made for offering at a tomb (III, Fig.
30).
Outlines at first drawn in black, then golden brown, lastly a dull red.
Miscellaneous.
Walls.
Sixth century.
Characteristic type of polygonal wall, each irregular stone very carefully fitted to its neighbours.
Fortifications usually built with square towers and bastions projecting from the curtain.
Round watch towers here and there to be met with.
Bricks.
Baked bricks rarely used till Roman days.
Bricks stamped by King Nabis (early second century) have been found at Sparta.
Terra-cotta roof tiles (sometimes with stamped inscriptions) largely used.
Laconian Pottery Characteristics.
Fragments of black glazed Attic ware are the class of remains easiest to pick up on any Greek inhabited site, except perhaps in Laconia, where perhaps for political reasons the local style was never ousted and pursued its natural process of decay until Hellenistic times.
Use of white slip over pink clay complete at end of seventh century, then partial; abandoned by beginning of fifth century.
Characteristic patterns, squares, and dots (III, Fig.
28) seventh century; lotus and pomegranates sixth century and fifth century.
500 B.C.--After the end of the fifth century, manufacture of vases at Athens decayed.
Supply chiefly from South Italy.
Growing use of additional white (rare in Attic red figure vases), sometimes addition of detail in yellowish brown, and a general coarseness of execution, mark the change.
Terra-cotta figurines (figures of everyday life, mostly female; headquarters Tanagra in Boeotia) prevalent.
V. HELLENISTIC 300 B.C.
Side by side with decay of red-figure style appear two classes of vase that became very prevalent.
(1) White designs, often floral, on totally black ground of inferior dull glaze.
(2) Black ware decorated not by paint but by moulded figures and patterns.
Also the handles of unpainted jars with stamped impressions (buff clay) not uncommon.
Provenance mainly Rhodes.
VI.
ROMAN Hellenistic ware (2) is forerunner of Samian or Aretine red pottery with moulded designs.
Very widespread in Greece in Imperial days.
VII.
BYZANTINE AGE Remains as far as the scope of this section is concerned are few.
Fragments of pottery may be found at Sparta.
These bear strong resemblance to the contemporary wares found in Egypt belonging to the early Mohammedan period.
Transparent lustrous glaze.
Ground usually pale yellow or cream, sometimes pale green.
Designs childish in character.
Lions, birds, human figures painted in brown under the glaze or incised through.
CHAPTER III ASIA MINOR [See the diagrams of pottery, Illustration V: ASIA MINOR POTTERY] 1.
Introductory.
Travellers are more likely to make new discoveries elsewhere than on the actual sites of ancient towns and villages.
In many cases the site is found to be entirely bare of all remains except sometimes small fragments of pottery.
In general, inscribed and other stones have been carried away to serve as building material for mosques, houses, fountains, bridges, &c., or as headstones for graves in cemeteries or for other utilitarian purposes.
It is, therefore, in and near modern villages and towns that inscriptions are chiefly to be found, as well as smaller antiquities, such as clay tablets, pots or fragments of them, terra-cotta figures, coins, and so forth.
The smaller articles may sometimes be found in the bazaars, but they are usually in the hands of individuals.
It should not be assumed that inscriptions which are exposed to public view have all been copied; moreover, new stones are constantly being turned up, especially where building is going on and where there are old sites or cemeteries close at hand.
Great numbers of inscribed stones are hidden away in private dwellings, where they are difficult of discovery and of access.
Travellers should take advantage of opportunities that may offer of examining antiquities in private houses, and of visiting sites or monuments about which information may be received, particularly if they are a little off the beaten track.
Reward will often come in the shape of valuable discoveries, of which many remain to be made.
Cilicia in particular has been imperfectly explored, and interesting monuments and inscriptions, particularly Hittite, may be found there.
2.
Pottery Fabrics.
It is not yet possible to describe fully or accurately the succession of styles, or even to assign all known fabrics to their proper periods.
For this reason, even the most fragmentary specimens are of interest, provided only that: (1) the outer surface is fairly well preserved, (2) the place of discovery is known.
All fragments showing a rim or spout, handles or part of a base, should be preserved until they can be compared with a more perfect specimen.
The following fabrics, however, are widely distributed, and usually seem to have flourished in the order in which they are here described: A. Hand-made wares, rough within, but smooth or burnished surface, selfcoloured (drab or brown), or intentionally coloured black (by charred matter in the clay, or by a smoky fire), or red (by a clear fire, sometimes aided by a wash or 'slip' of more ferruginous clay).
Sometimes a black ware is 'overfired' to an ashy grey.
In such wares ornament is rare, and consists mainly of (a) incised dots, dashes, or lines, in simple rectilinear patterns (chevrons, zigzags, lozenges), often enhanced by a white chalky filling (V, Figs 58); (b) ridges or bosses modelled in the clay surface, or adhering to it.
The forms are plump and globular, often round-bottomed or standing on short feet.
Rims are absent or ill-developed; necks actually prolonged into trough-spouts or long beaks; handles are very simple and short.
Vases are sometimes modelled like animals, or have human faces or breasts (V, Figs.
1-4).
These wares begin in the Stone Age, and seem to predominate in the early and middle Bronze Age.
Locally they may have lasted even later, but the use of the potter's wheel spread rapidly in the early Bronze Age.
B. Hand-made wares of light-coloured clay, with painted decoration, usually in black or reddish-brown.
The paint is generally without glaze, but sometimes is decayed and easily washes off.
The forms and ornaments resemble those of class A, but are less rude and more varied.
Distinct rims and standing-bases appear, and spouts give place to a pinched lip.
C. Hand-made wares of black or other dark clay, with painted decoration in white or ochre.
These fabrics are rather rare, and the paint is easily washed off.
The forms follow those of class B.
Classes B and C seem to begin early in the Bronze Age, and are gradually replaced by the corresponding wheel-made fabrics of class D. D. Wheel-made pottery begins in the Bronze Age, and is distinguished by its symmetrical forms, and by the texture of the inner surface, especially about the rim and base, where the potter's fingers have grazed the whirling clay.
Self-coloured wares still occur, and are sometimes elegant ('bucchero' ware); but the improved furnaces now permit general use of light-coloured clays, suited to painted decoration.
Glazed paint is still rare, and may be taken as probable token of date not earlier than the end of the Bronze Age.
The glazepainted wares of the Greek island-world occasionally wandered to the mainland a little earlier than this, but not far from the coast.
On wheel-made pottery the ornament is either (a) applied while the pot is on the wheel, and consequently limited to lines and bands following the plane of rotation, or (b) added afterwards, free-hand, usually between such bands, and especially on the neck and shoulder.
Simple rectilinear schemes are commonest (panels, lozenges, and triangles, enriched with lattice and chequers) (V, Figs.
9, 10, 11, 12); with these in the Early Iron Age appear little targets of concentric circles drawn mechanically with compasses (V, Figs.
13-15); also, by degrees, birds (V, Fig.
16), animals, and simple plant designs (rosettes, lotus, palmette), and occasionally human figures.
But as a rule, the mainland pottery is very simply decorated, and insular imports are rare, except within the area within Greek colonization.
In the Later Iron Age or Historic Period, from the seventh century onward, the pot-fabrics of Asia Minor rapidly assimilate two main classes of foreign fashions, Greek and Oriental.
E. The Oriental types (mainly from Syria) are all plump and heavy looking, usually in coarse buff or cream-coloured ware, almost without paint.
The Greek forms are more graceful, varied, and specialized; light-coloured clays predominate, with simple bands of black ill-glazed paint, absorbed by the inferior clays.
After Alexander's time the Greek and the Oriental forms became confused; the general level of style and execution falls, painted decoration almost disappears, and the outer surface is often ribbed by uneven pressure of the fingers on the whirling clay.
This fashion is a sign of late Hellenistic or Graeco-Roman date.
F. Meanwhile, the black-glazed Greek (mainly Athenian) wares spread widely for table use, and were imitated locally from the fourth century onwards.
The clay is pale or reddish (genuine Greek fabrics are usually quite red within) and the glaze thick, black, and of a brilliant glassy smoothness.
Imitations are of all degrees of inferiority.
G. Other late fabrics have smooth ill-glazed surfaces, of various red, brown, or chocolate tints, over hard-baked dull-fractured paste not unlike modern earthenware, but usually dark-coloured.
These wares begin in the Hellenistic period, and go on into the Roman and early Byzantine Ages.
They have sometimes a little ornament in a hard white or cream 'slip' which stands up above the surface of the vase.
These fabrics are all for table use, or for tomb-furniture, and are usually of small size.
H. Pottery with vitreous glaze like modern earthenware only appears on Byzantine and Turkish sites.
There a few late Greek and Roman fabrics of glazed ware, mostly of dark brown and olive-green tints; but they are rare, and usually found in tombs.
The earlier glazes are applied directly to the clay; later a white or coloured slip is applied first, and a clear siliceous glaze over this.
3.
Inscriptions and Monuments.
A. Hittite Civilization.
(See figures, Illustration VI: Hittite Inscriptions, etc.)
(1) From 2000 B.C.
onwards baked clay tablets with cuneiform (or wedge-shaped) writing (Illustration VI, Fig.
1) to be found anywhere in Eastern Asia Minor, within the Halys bend and south of it, in Southern Cappadocia, in Cilicia, and in North Syria up to the Euphrates.
(2) 1000-700 B.C.
probably: inscriptions generally cut on stone, dark and hard (black basalt), or on the living rock, in hieroglyphic writing.
The hieroglyphs are either cut in relief (VI, Fig.
4) or incised (VI, Fig.
2).
Found in the same region and sporadically west of the Halys.
(3) From 1400 B.C.
and 900 B.C.
onwards monuments and sculpture.
Human figures are short and thick, generally wearing boots with toes turned up (VI, Fig.
3.)
Found in the same regions as the inscriptions and also west of the Halys to the sea.
B. Lydian inscriptions.
From about 500 B.C.
Letters mostly like Greek capitals (sometimes reversed); (Illustration IV, at bottom).
C. Lycian inscriptions and monuments.
From about 500 B.C.
inscriptions, sometimes with a Greek translation.
(IV, at bottom.)
Monuments, mostly with inscriptions, are generally tombs in stone, built to imitate wood, with the ends of beams projecting or showing.
D. Greek antiquities.
(1) Early period to 323 B.C.
the great Greek colonies on the seaboard and in the coast valleys really formed an outlying part of Greece, and for them the section on Greece should be consulted.
(2) Periods of Seleucid and Pergamene rule, 323-130 B.C.
Inscriptions of these periods to be found mostly in the coastal region, rarely on the plateau.
Chiefly royal ordinances, thank offerings, municipal honorary inscriptions, decrees, covenants, and the like.
(3) Graeco-Roman period, 130 B.C.-A.D. 400.
Language of inscriptions remains normally Greek, though the lettering gradually assumes a different character from century to century, steadily deteriorating.
The Phrygian language, written in Greek letters, survives for several centuries in epitaphs, part of the inscription often being in Greek.
Latin inscriptions are not common except in Roman colonies during the earlier centuries of their existence.
Elsewhere they are chiefly official documents of various kinds (e.g.
imperial ordinances, milestones usually of columnar shape with the Emperor's titles, boundary stones, &c.), or expressions of homage to Emperors, honorary inscriptions to governors and other officials, dedications, epitaphs, &c. Sometimes a Greek version is added.
Latin inscriptions of the Republican period (recording decrees of the Senate) are extremely rare.
[ILLUSTRATION VI: HITTITE INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.]
CHAPTER IV CYPRUS [The traveller will find the _Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum_, by J. L. Myres and M. Ohnefalsch-Richter (Oxford, 1899) indispensable for the study of Cypriote Antiquities.
Reference may also be made to Myres, _Catalogue of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus_ (New York, 1914).
They contain numerous illustrations of types, and make diagrams for the present section unnecessary.]
The principal classes of ancient remains are as follows: Settlements.
These are usually much devastated by the removal of building materials to more recent habitations; or are obscured by modern towns and villages on the same site.
All foundations in squared masonry, or composed of unusually large stones, should be noted and protected as far as possible.
The frequent presence of large building stones, and especially of architectural fragments, in recent house-walls probably indicates the neighbourhood of an ancient building: and all reconstructions and fresh foundation-trenches should be kept under observation.
The present Antiquity Law provides for the inspection and custody of ancient remains so exposed: the Curator of Ancient Monuments is charged with the supervision of all buildings and monuments above ground; the Keeper of Antiquities for the custody of movable objects, and for the registration of those already in private possession.
Taking into consideration the utility of good building material to the present owners of such sites, active co-operation to preserve ancient masonry is not to be expected, unless local patriotism and expectation of traffic from tourists can be enlisted in support of Government regulations.
Architectural fragments found in reconstruction are often best preserved by arranging that they shall be built conspicuously into one of the new walls, well above ground-level, or transferred to the nearest church or school-house.
Sanctuaries usually consist of a walled enclosure containing numerous pedestals and bases of votive statues and other monuments.
Usually only the foundation-walls are of stone, as the same sun-dried brick was commonly used in ancient as in modern times for the superstructure.
Such sites are often vary shallow, and when they occur in the open country are liable to be disturbed by ploughing, when the smaller statuettes and terra-cotta figures may be turned up in considerable numbers.
As most of our knowledge of the sculpture, as well as of the religious observances, of ancient Cyprus is derived from such sites, all such indications should be reported at once to the Keeper of Antiquities, and arrangements made for the site to be examined with a view to excavation before it is cultivated further.
The sculpture on these sites begins usually in the seventh century B.C.
; before that period terra-cotta figures were in use as far back as the ninth or tenth century.
Figures of 'Mixed Oriental' style, resembling Assyrian or Egyptian work, give place about 500 B.C.
to a provincial Greek style, which passes gradually into Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman.
The material is almost invariably the soft local limestone, and the workmanship is often clumsy; but even the coarser examples should be treated carefully, as they were sometimes completed in colours which are easily destroyed by too vigorous washing.
The first cleaning should be with gently running water only.
Tombs are of all periods, and are found not only around historical sites and actual ruins, but also in localities where the settlement to which they belonged has wholly disappeared.
Though simple graves were always in use among the poorest folk, the commonest form of tomb at all periods is a rock-cut chamber entered by a door in one side, to which access is given by a shaft or sloping passage (_dromos_) cut likewise in the rock.
The earliest are but a few feet from the surface, just deep enough to ensure a firm roof to the chamber; later the depth is as much as 12 or 15 feet.
Occasionally the chamber, and even the passage, is built of masonry and roofed with stone slabs or a corbel vault, and the simple door-slab gives place to a stone door, hinged, or sliding in a grooved frame.
Cremation was occasionally practised in the Hellenistic Age, but the regular custom was to bury the body; during the Bronze Age in a sitting or a contracted posture, in all later periods lying at full length.
Stone coffins (_sarcophagi_), with a lid, were used occasionally by the rich from the sixth century onwards, and wooden coffins in the Graeco-Roman period.
There is always as rich a tomb-equipment as the mourners could afford, of personal ornaments, wreaths, provisions, weapons, and other gear, especially pottery; and terra-cotta figures of men, animals, furniture, and other objects for the use of the deceased.
In Graeco-Roman tombs pottery is supplemented or replaced by glass vessels, and coins are frequent, and are important evidence of date.
Most of our knowledge of Cypriote arts and industries comes from this tomb-equipment, which should therefore if possible be preserved entire and kept together, tomb by tomb; not neglecting the skeletons themselves, which are of value to indicate changes in the island population.
The position of tombs was often marked by gravestones above ground; these remain scattered in the surface soil, or collected to block the entrances to later tombs.
They are frequently inscribed.
A very common form in Greco-Roman times is the _cippus_, a short column, like an altar.
Pottery and other objects from tombs, and also from settlements, is classified as follows: Stone Age: not clearly represented in Cyprus; but some of the earliest tombs (with rude varieties of red hand-made ware) contain no metallic objects, and may belong to the latest neolithic period.
Stone implements are very rare, and should be carefully recorded, with a note of the spot where they were found.
Bronze Age, early period (before 2000 B.C.
): polished red ware, hand-made, sometimes with incised ornament filled with white powder.
Bronze Age, middle period (2000-1500 B.C.
): polished red ware, and also white hand-made ware with painted linear ornament in dull black or brown.
Bronze Age, late period (1500-1200 B.C.
): degenerate polished red and painted white ware; wheel-made white ware with painted ornament in glazed black or brown, of the 'Late Minoan' or 'Mycenaean' style introduced from the Aegean; various hand-made wares of foreign styles, probably from Syria or Asia Minor.
In these periods, weapons, implements, and ornaments are of copper (with bronze in the 'late' period); gold occurs rarely; terra-cotta figures are few and rude; engraved seals are cylindrical like those of Babylonia.
Early Iron Age: wheel-made pottery, either white or bright red, with painted geometrical ornament in black (supplemented on the white ware with purple-red); there is also a black fabric imitating metallic forms.
The early period (1200-1000 B.C.)
marks the transition from bronze to iron implements, with survival of Mycenaean decoration on the pottery, and replacement of cylindrical by conical seals.
The middle period (1000-750 B.C.)
has purely geometrical decoration: terra-cotta figures are modelled rudely by hand, and painted like the pottery.
The late period (750-500 B.C.)
shows foreign influences from Greece and from Phoenicia or Egypt, competing with and enriching the native geometrical style.
Scarab seals, blue-glaze beads, and other personal ornaments, and silver objects, appear.
Terra-cotta figures stamped in a mould occur side by side with modelled.
Hellenic Age, with increasing influence of Greek arts and industries.
Early or Hellenic period (500-300 B.C.
): the native pottery degenerates, and Greek vases and terra-cottas are imported and imitated; jewellery of gold and silver is fairly common and of good quality; with engraved seals set in signet rings: the bronze mirrors are circular, with a handle-spike.
Middle or Hellenistic period (300-50 B.C.
): the native pottery is almost wholly replaced by imitations of forms from other parts of the Greek world, especially from Syria and Asia Minor: large handled wine-jars (_amphorae_) are common: terra-cottas and jewellery also follow Greek styles: coloured stones are set in rings and ear-rings.
Late or Graeco-Roman period (50 B.C.-A.D. 400): pottery is partly replaced by vessels of blown glass: clay lamps, red-glazed jugs, so called 'tear-bottles' of spindle-shapes, ear-rings of beads strung on wire, bronze rings and bracelets, circular mirrors without handles, and bronze coins are characteristics.
Byzantine Age (after A.D. 400): Christian burial in surface graves supersedes the use of rock-hewn tombs: funerary equipment goes out of use, except a few personal ornaments, which are of mean appearance, and may bear Christian symbols.
Domestic pottery is coarse, ungraceful, and frequently ribbed on the outside.
Clay lamps have long nozzles, and Christian symbols.
Glass becomes clumsy and less common; and glazed bowls and cups come into use.
Occasional rich finds of silver plate (salvers, cups, spoons, &c.) and personal ornaments, have been made among Byzantine ruins.
On mediaeval and later sites, various glazed fabrics of pottery are found, and occasionally examples of the glazed and painted jugs, plates, and tiles known to collectors as 'Rhodian' or 'Damascus' ware.
Inscriptions occur on settlement-sites, in sanctuaries and associated with tombs: usually cut on slabs or blocks of soft limestone, though marble and other harder stones were used in Hellenistic and Roman times.
Besides the ordinary Greek (see Illustration IV), and Roman alphabets the Phoenician alphabet (see Illustrations X and XI) was in use at Kition (Larnaca), in the great sanctuaries at Idalion (Dali), and occasionally elsewhere; and from early times until the fourth century a syllabary peculiar to Cyprus, often very rudely hewn, in irregular lines, on ill-shaped blocks.
Such 'Cypriote inscriptions' (see accompanying Illustration VII) are of great value and interest, and have been often overlooked among building material drawn from old sites.
In all doubtful cases, a 'squeeze' should be made by one of the methods described in the first part of this volume and submitted to the Keeper of Antiquities.
The stamped inscriptions on the handles of wine-jars are worth preserving, as evidence for the course of trade.
Coins were issued in Cyprus from the sixth century onward; first in silver; later (in the fourth century B.C.)
occasionally in gold, and from the fourth century commonly in copper.
A Ptolemaic coinage succeeded in the third century that of the local rulers; the Roman coinage, with inscriptions sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Latin, lasts from Augustus to the beginning of the third century.
Coins of the Byzantine Emperors and of the Lusignan Kings are common.
[ILLUSTRATION VII: BILINGUAL (GREEK AND CYPRIOTE) DEDICATION TO DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE FROM CURIUM.]
CHAPTER V CENTRAL AND NORTH SYRIA [See the diagrams of flint implements, Illustration II; of pottery and weapons, &c., VIII & IX; of alphabets, X & XI.]
The following notes are to be accepted as only a rough and imperfect guide, since no part of Syria, north of Palestine, has been widely or minutely explored, and the archaeology of the earliest period, in Central Syria, for example, is almost unknown.
The periods into which the archaeological history of Syria should be divided are roughly, as follows: I. Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age, to about 2000 B.C.
II.
Bronze Age or Early Hittite, to about 1100 B.C.
III.
Iron Age or Late Hittite, to about 550 B.C.
IV.
Persian Period, to about 330 B.C.
V. Hellenistic Period, to about 100 B.C.
VI.
Roman Period.
VII.
Byzantine Period.
I. Neolithic.
No purely Neolithic sites yet known, but lowest strata of remains at Sakjegozu and Sinjerli, on the Carchemish citadel, and in certain kilns at Yunus near by, and also pot-burials among house remains are of this Age.
(But see Chapter VIII, Mesopotamia, whose Neolithic period is similar.)
Stone implements: as in Greece, including obsidian of very clear texture, probably of inner Asiatic, not Aegean production.
Bone needles and other implements.
Pottery.
Four varieties have been observed: (1) buff ground with simple linear decoration applied direct on the gritty body-clay in lustreless pigments, black, chocolate-brown, or red, according to the firing; (2) greenish-buff face, hand-polished, with polychrome varnish decoration of vandykes and other geometric motives; (3) monochrome, black to grey, not burnished, but sometimes decorated with incised linear patterns; (4) plain red or buff (e.g.
large urns in which Neolithic burials were found on the Carchemish citadel).
All pottery hand-made.
Figurines: rude clay and stone figurines are likely to occur, but have as yet been found very rarely in Neolithic strata.
Copper implements: traces observed at Carchemish: to be looked for.
II.
Bronze Age (Early Hittite).
(a) Early period to about 1500 B.C.
Cist-graves made of rough stone slabs, near crude brick houses.
Conjunction of such slabs with bricks would be an indication of an early Bronze Age site.
Rare pot-burials survive.
Implements.
Spear-heads of long tapering form rounded sharply at the base which has long tang (IX, Fig.
5): poker-like butts (IX, Fig.
2): knives with curved tangs: 'toggle' pins: all bronze (but a silver toggle-pin has been found) (IX, Figs.
1,8).
Pottery.
All wheel-made but rough: light red or buff faced of reddish clay: decoration rare and only in simple zigzags or waves in reddish-brown pigment: long-stemmed vases of 'champagne-glass' form are common (VIII, Fig.
4): rarely a creamy slip is applied to the red clay.
(b) Later period.
Cist-graves apart from houses, in cemeteries.
Implements.
Long narrow celts often riveted: spear-heads, leaf-shaped or triangular (IX, Figs.
3, 6, 10): axe-heads with socket, swelling blade and curved cutting edge: pins both 'toggle' and unpierced, straight and bent over.
Pottery.
Wheel-made, well potted, and commonly _ring-burnished_, the process beginning at the base of a vase and climbing spirally: little painted decoration: face usually dusky brown over pinkish body clay, but red and yellow-white faced wares also found: shapes, mostly bowls, open and half closed: ring feet, but no handles to vases: only occasionally lug-ears (IX, Figs.
1,2,3,5,6).
Rims well turned over belong to the latest period, in which elaborate ring-burnishing is common.
Beads, &c. Diamond-shaped, with incised decoration, in clay or stone, common.
Pendants, &c., of shell, lapis lazuli, cornelian, crystal.
Cylinders, of rude design like Babylonian First Dynasty, in stone and bone.
Spindle-whorls in steatite and clay.
[ILLUSTRATION VIII: SYRIAN POTTERY] III.
Iron Age (Late Hittite).
To this belong the mass of 'Hittite' remains in Syria.
Graves are unlined pits, with urn burials, the corpse having been cremated.
Cylinders, &c., showing traces of fire, will belong to this Age.
Implements and weapons.
Arrow-heads of bronze: spear-heads of bronze and iron: axes, knives, and picks of iron (miniature models occur in graves): daggers of iron.
_Fibulae_, of bronze, semicircular and triangular (as in Asia Minor) (IX, Figs.
4, 9, 11): plain armlets of bronze: pins, spatulae, &c., of bronze: thin applique ornaments.
Bronze bowls (gilt) with gadroon or lotus ornament (moulded) in later period.
Steatite censers, in form of a cup held by a human hand, are not uncommon (IX, Fig.
7).
Pottery.
Tall narrow-mouthed urns, bath-shaped vessels, and bell-kraters common (VIII, Fig.
10): trefoil-mouth _oenochoae_ and _hydriae_; also _amphorae_ (VIII, Fig.
7).
In earlier period, white or drab slipped surface with geometric patterns (rarely rude birds) in black.
In later period, pinkish glaze with geometric patterns in black-brown, concentric circles being a common motive.
Tripod bowls in unslipped 'kitchen' ware (VIII, Fig.
8).
Blue or greenish glazed albarelli, with white, brown, or yellow bands, occur (as in Rhodes).
Figurines.
Drab clay, painted with red or black bands and details.
Two types: (a) Horsemen; (b) Goddesses of columnar shape, often with flower headdresses, and sometimes carrying a child.
Seals, &c. Scarabs with designs of Egyptian appearance: cylinders, steatite or (more commonly) glazed paste, lightly and often scratchily engraved: hard stone seals finely engraved: flattened spheroids in steatite with Hittite symbols on both faces, inscriptions being often garbled.
Inscriptions.
Most of those in Hittite script, both relieved and incised, found in Syria, are of this Age, but chiefly of the earlier part of it (cf.
Illustration VI).
Those in Semitic characters begin in this Age; and to its later part (8th-7th cents.)
belong important Aramaic inscriptions, e.g.
the Bar-Rekub monuments of Sinjerli (Shamal).
See tables of letter-forms appended to Palestine section, Illustrations X & XI.
IV.
Persian Period.
Imported Egyptian and Egypto-Phoenician objects (bronze bowls as in Age III: scarabs: figure-amulets), Rhodian (pottery), Attic (coins, small black-figure vases, &c.).
Weapons and implements.
Iron.
Long swords: spearheads, socketed, often with square or diamond mid-rib: short double-edged daggers with round pommels: chapes (bronze) with moulded or beaten relief-work: knives, small and slightly curved: arrow-heads (usually bronze and triangular): horsebits (usually bronze) with heavy knobbed side-bars: ear-rings, wire armlets and pins (generally plain) of bronze: _fibulae_ as in Age III: circular mirrors, plain, of bronze: anklets of heavy bronze: kohl-pots, bronze, of hollow cylindrical form, with plain sticks.
Pottery.
As in Age II, plain, polished, rarely ring-burnished, but of less careful workmanship (VIII, Fig.
9.)
Glazed albarelli, 'pilgrimbottles', aryballi, &c., (as in Age III) common.
White-yellow slipped ware with bands of black survives rarely from Age III.
Stone vessels.
Bowls on inverted cup-shaped feet not uncommon (VIII, Fig.
11).
Beads and seals.
Eye-beads in mosaic glass, and other glass beads (hard stone and bronze more rarely): conoid seals in hard crystalline stones, usually engraved with figure praying to the Moon-god: also soft stone, glass and paste conoids.
Scarabs and scaraboids in paste.
Cylinders become scarce.
V. Hellenistic.
VI.
Roman.
VII.
Byzantine.
Most of the characteristic Syrian products of all these Periods do not differ materially from those found in other East Mediterranean lands, e.g.
Greece and Asia Minor.
The change to Persian (Sassanian) types comes in the late seventh century A.D. Two classes of objects, examples of the first of which are mostly of Age III, but may be Persian, Hellenistic, or even Roman, are very commonly met with in Syria: 1.
Figurines, single or in pairs or threes, of bronze or terra-cotta, representing cult-types.
Most common is a standing god with peaked cap, short tunic, and arm raised in act of smiting: a seated goddess also common: figures of animals, especially a bull; and phallic objects (these mainly Roman).
2.
Glass plain (iridescent from decay), ribbed, or moulded, in great variety of forms-bowls, jugs, cups, &c. Mostly late Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine, and especially common and of fine quality in the Orontes valley.
Parti-coloured glass (with white or yellow bands and threads) is earlier (Persian Period).
Painted and enamelled glass with gilt or polychrome designs is later (ninth to fifteenth century, Arab).
[ILLUSTRATION IX: SYRIAN WEAPONS, ETC.]
CHAPTER VI PALESTINE [See the diagrams of flint implements, Illustrations II; pottery, XII; alphabets, XIV & XV.]
I.
General Principles.
1.
Study of the pottery of the country, not merely from books but from actual specimens, is an absolutely essential preliminary.
Without an acquaintance with this branch of Palestinian archaeology, so thorough that any sherd presenting the least character can be immediately assigned to its proper period, no field research of any value can be carried out.
(See further V below.)
2.
A knowledge of the various Semitic alphabets is necessary for copying inscriptions.
Unless the traveller be also acquainted with the languages he had better be cautious about copying Semitic inscriptions; without such knowledge he runs the risk of confusing different Semitic letters, which often closely resemble one another.
He should, however, be able to make squeezes and photographs.
The following are the languages and scripts which may be found in Palestinian Epigraphy.
Egyptian, in Hieroglyphics.
Greek.
Babylonian Cuneiform.
Latin.
Assyrian Cuneiform.
Arabic, in Cufic script.
Hebrew, in ancient script.
Arabic, in modern script.
Hebrew, in square character.
Armenian (in mosaic Phoenician.
pavements, also graffiti Moabite.
in Church of Holy Aramaic.
Sepulchre).
Tables of the chief alphabetic and numeral forms of the West Semitic scripts are given in Illustrations X & XI; for the Greek, see Illustration IV.
3.
The traveller should have had practice in making measured drawings of buildings.
4.
For some branches of work a good knowledge of Arabic is indispensable--not the miserable pidgin jargon usually spoken by Europeans, nor yet the highly complex literary language, which is unintelligible to the ordinary native, but the colloquial of the country, spoken grammatically and properly pronounced.
Work done through dragomans is never entirely satisfactory, because it requires the unattainable condition that the dragoman should be as much a scientific student of anthropology and of archaeology as the traveller himself.
5.
The student for whom these pages are written should not attempt any excavation, unless he has been trained under a practical excavator, and has learnt how work, which is essentially and inevitably destructive of evidence, can be made to yield profitable fruit.
There is plenty of work that can be done on the surface of the ground without excavation.
[Illustrations X & XI: Table of West Semitic Alphabets & Numerals.]
II.
Sites of Towns and Villages.
1.
Nomenclature.
The sites of ancient towns and villages are usually conspicuous in Palestine, and are recognized in the local nomenclature.
They are denoted by the words _tall_, plural _tulul_, meaning 'mound', and _khirbah_, plural _khirab_ meaning 'ruin'.
These words are commonly spelt in English _tell_ and _khirbet_ (less correctly _khurbet_) and we use these more familiar forms here.
As a rule, though not invariably, the sense of these terms is distinguished.
A tell is a site represented by a mound of stratified accumulation, the result of occupation extending over many centuries, and easily recognizable among natural hillocks by its regular shape, smooth sides, and flat top.
A khirbet is a field of ruins in which there is little or no stratification.
Nearly all the sites of the latter type are the remains of villages not older than the Byzantine or Roman period.
2.
Identification of ancient sites.
This is a task less easy than it appears to be, and many of the current identifications of Biblical sites call for revision.
Similarity of name, on which most of these identifications depend, is apt to be misleading; in many cases sites identified thus with Old Testament places are not older than the Byzantine Period.
[1] This similarity of name may sometimes be a mere accident; it may also sometimes be accounted for by a transference of site, the inhabitants having for some special reason moved their town to a new situation.
In such cases the tell representing the older site may perhaps await identification in the neighbourhood.
In attempting to establish identifications, the date of the site, as determined from the potsherds, and its suitability to the recorded history of the ancient site in question, are elements of equal importance with its name.
[1] An example is Khirbet Teku'a, long identified with the Biblical Tekoa.
Note: The traveller should be cautioned against embarking on the study of place-names, identification of scriptural sites, &c., before mastering the principles of Arabic phonetics.
Many of the attempts made at rendering the names of Palestinian place-names in European books are simply grotesque.
The following are the chief pitfalls: (1) Confusion of the vowels, the pronunciation of which is obscure.
(2) The consonant _'ain_, to which the untrained European ear is deaf, and which in consequence is often omitted.
Less frequently it may be over-conscientiously inserted in a place where it does not exist.
Sometimes the _'ain_ and its associated vowel are transposed (as _M'alula_ for _Ma'lula_) making unpronounceable combinations of consonants.
(3) The letter _kaf_, often dropped in pronunciation, and therefore often omitted.
(4) The letter _ghain_, which an unaccustomed ear confuses with either _g_ or _r_.
(5) The reduplicated letters, which a European is apt to hear and to write as single.
(6) The nuances between the different _d_, _h_, _k_, _t_, and _s_ sounds.
3.
Surface-exploration of a tell.
The stratification can rarely be studied on the surface only: superficial indications of this are obscured by the plough, weather, vegetation, and the activities of modern natives who grub for building-stone and for the chance of buried treasure.
Only by trenching can the strata be exposed.
An exception to this rule is afforded by _Tell el-Hesy_ (Lachish) explored by Dr. Petrie in 18901: here the erosion of a stream had exposed enough of the strata for a reconnaissance.
In the majority of cases the most that a visitor can hope to do is to pick up stray antiquities on the surface of the ground, and ascertain therefrom the limits of date.
The chief clue is afforded by the pottery (see below, V), sherds of which, large and small, are strewn in considerable numbers on every ancient site.
Scarabs, seals, bronze implements, iron fragments, beads, bone ornaments, and the like may also be noticed.
A trained eye is essential even for such surface finds: one man may walk over a mound and find nothing, another may walk in his steps and gather quite an interesting harvest of small objects.
Surface indications of buried buildings (or rather foundations) may be noted both on the top and on the sides of a tell.
Lines of wall may not infrequently be traced.
Often the vegetation growing on the surface indicates the presence of structures underneath (either by burnt-up patches amid luxuriant growths, or vice versa).
4.
Surface exploration of a khirbet.
The task here is, generally sneaking, simpler.
In a khirbet there is usually no great depth of accumulation; indeed, the bare rock frequently crops up in the middle of such a site.
There is, therefore, as a rule only one historical period represented.
Potsherds, coins (Roman, Jewish, Byzantine, early Islamic, sometimes Crusader), tesserae of mosaic pavements, fragments of iron nails, beads, minute metal ornaments (as bronze wire finger-rings) are to be picked up on khirbet sites.
The remains of walls are usually more easily traceable in khirbet than in tell sites, though much damage has been done by quarrying for modern buildings.
These walls should be carefully examined: buildings other than mere houses (churches, synagogues, baths) may sometimes be detected.
Cisterns should be noted.
Some of these are not very obvious and the traveller should be on his guard against falling into them.
All stones should be examined, as there is a chance of finding inscriptions.
5.
In all work on ancient sites the investigator must make a point of noting everything, irrespective of its apparent importance, and of carefully training a critical judgement in interpreting his observations.
It is impossible to lay down general principles that govern every case completely: every site presents its own individual problems.
III.
Rock-cut Tombs.
1.
All Palestine is honeycombed with rock-cut tombs, which form a fascinating and inexhaustible field of study.
Unfortunately all that are in the least degree visible have long ago been rifled, and in recent years those pests, the curio-hunting tourists, have done incalculable harm by stimulating the native tomb-robber and dealer.
2.
The explorer of rock-cut tombs must be indifferent to mud, damp, evil smells, noxious insects, and other discomforts, and he must be prepared to squeeze through very narrow passages, much clogged with earth.
He is recommended to be on his guard against scorpions and snakes.
3.
A plan and vertical section of the tomb should be drawn.
The measurements should be taken carefully, not only for the sake of the accuracy of the plan, but also for metrological purposes.
4.
The rock outside the entrance of the tomb-chamber should be examined.
It often shows rebating or other cutting, designed to receive the foundations of a masonry mausoleum (resembling in general style the rock-hewn monuments in the Kedron Valley at Jerusalem).
As a rule such structures have been entirely destroyed for the sake of their stones.
5.
The tool-marks of the tomb-quarriers should be examined, as they sometimes reveal interesting technical points.
6.
Every inch of the surface of the excavation, inside and out, must be examined for ornaments, symbols, or inscriptions.
These may be either cut or painted, and often are very inconspicuous.
Ornaments are usually floral in type, though in late tombs figure-subjects are occasionally to be found.
Symbols are either Jewish (the sevenbranched candlestick) or Christian (the cross, A-omega, or the like).
Inscriptions are not necessarily formally cut: they are sometimes mere scratched graffiti, which would be sure to escape notice unless carefully looked for (as in the so-called 'Tombs of the Prophets' on the Mount of Olives).
7.
Dating of tombs.
The savage rifling to which Palestinian tombs have been subjected has much reduced the material available for dating them.
The following general principles apply to Southern Palestine: those in Northern Palestine and Syria still await a more exact study: The earliest tombs known in the country were mere natural caves, into which the dead were cast, often very unceremoniously.
In the Second Semitic Period (circa 1800-1400 B.C.)
hewn chambers began to be used.
These are in the form of cylindrical shafts with a doorway at the bottom leading sideways into the burial-chamber.
Natural caves are still frequently used.
In the Third Semitic Period (circa 1400-1000 B.C.)
the shaft: form disappears and an artificial cave, rudely hewn out, takes its place.
The entrance is in the side of the chamber, though not necessarily at the level of the floor.
Rude shelves for the reception of the bodies are sometimes, but not always, cut in the sides of the chamber.
In the Fourth Semitic Period (circa 1000-550 B.C.)
the tombchambers are of the same kind, but are as a rule smaller.
In Southern Palestine the well-made tomb-chambers, such as are to be seen in great numbers around Jerusalem, are all post-exilic.
There is an immense variety in plan, some tombs being single chambers, others complications of several chambers.
The late excavation absurdly called the 'Tombs of the Kings' at Jerusalem is quite a labyrinth of rockcut chambers.
In exploring such a structure a careful search should be made for devices for deluding thieves: special precautions are sometimes taken to conceal the entrance to inner groups of chambers.
There are some interesting examples of this in the cemetery in the _Wadi er-Rababi_, south of Jerusalem.
However, all tombs of this period fall into two groups, _kok_ tombs and _arcosolium_ tombs.
In the former the receptacles for bodies are of the kind known by the Hebrew name _kokim_--shafts, of a size to accommodate one body (sometimes large enough for two or three) driven horizontally into the wall of the chamber.
In the normal _kok_ tomb-chamber there are nine _kokim_, three in each wall except the wall containing the entrance doorway.
But there are many other arrangements.
In the 'Tombs of the Judges' there is a double row of _kokim_ in the entrance chamber.
The explorer should not forget that a _kok_ sometimes contains a secret entrance to further chambers at its inner end.
In _arcosolium_ tombs the receptacles are benches cut in the wall, like the berths in a steamer's cabin.
These are sometimes sunk, so as to resemble rock-cut sarcophagi.
The late tombs round Jerusalem are in the form of caves driven horizontally into the hill-sides.
Further south, e.g.
in the region round Beit Jibrin, they are more frequently sunk vertically, the entrance being in the roof of the burial chamber, or approached by a square shaft (a reversion to the Second Semitic form, except that these latter have _round_ shafts).
IV.
Caves.
The history of the artificial caves hewn in the soft limestone of Palestine, is quite unknown.
The caves of the neighbourhood of Beit Jibrin provide ample material for several months' exploration.
Though the caves are labyrinthine there is little fear of an explorer losing his way: he should, however, be well provided with lights, as it would be extremely awkward to be left in the innermost recess of a cave consisting of ten or a dozen chambers united by narrow creeppassages, without adequate illumination.
There are occasionally unexpected and dangerous pitfalls: and hyenas and serpents often shelter in the caves.
The present writer has explored many of them entirely alone, but this is, on the whole, not to be recommended.
Besides planning the cave, its walls should be searched for inscriptions, &c. It should be remembered, however, that these may have been added at any time and do not necessarily belong to the original excavation.
Symbols, apparently of a phallic nature, are sometimes cut on the walls, as well as crosses and other Christian devices, and Cufic inscriptions.
Frequently the walls are pitted with the loculi of a columbarium, which, however, appear to be too small to receive cinerary urns and must be intended for some other purpose.
V. Pottery.
Owing to the importance of the subject a special section on Pottery is given here, and the two accompanying plates (XII) show some of the commonest types of vessels.
But the student cannot learn all he will need to know of Palestinian pottery from a few pages of print.
A representative series of specimens will be found in the Jerusalem Museum: he may supplement his study of these by the perusal of reports on excavations, such as Petrie, _Tell el-Hesy_ (pp.
40-50); Bliss, _A Mound of Many Cities_ (passim); _Excavations in Palestine_ (pp.
71-141); Macalister, _Excavation of Gezer_ (vol.
ii, pp.
128-239; and plates); Sellin, _Jericho_; Schumacher, _Tell et-Mutasellim_.
Pre-Semitic Period (down to circa 2000 B.C.).
Ware hand-modelled, without wheel, coarse, gritty, and generally soft-baked and very porous.
The section of a clean fracture is usually of a dirty yellowish colour, resembling in appearance coarse oatmeal porridge.
Bases usually flat, loop-handles or wavy handles on the bodies of the vessels: mouths wide and lips curved outward.
The body of the vessel often decorated with drip lines or with a crisscross, in red paint.
First Semitic Period (circa 2000-1800 B.C.).
Similar to the last: but the potter's wheel is used, and horizontal painted and moulded rope-like ornament also found.
Combed ornament and burnished lines frequent.
Second Semitic Period (circa 1800-1400 B.C.).
During this period imports from Egypt, Crete, the Aegean Sea, and especially Cyprus were common, and potsherds originating in those countries are frequently to be picked up: also local imitations of these foreign wares.
The ware of this period is on the whole wellrefined and well-modelled: the most graceful shapes, in jugs and bowls, belong to it.
Elaborate polychrome decoration, including figures of birds.
But little moulded ornament.
Third Semitic Period (circa 1400-1000 B.C.).
The same foreign influences are traceable, but rather as reminiscent local imitations than as direct imports.
Late Minoan [Mycenaean] sherds are, however, frequent.
The shapes of vessels are less artistic than in the preceding period: the painted ornament is also degenerated, being traced in wiry lines rather than in the bold wash of the preceding period.
Fourth Semitic Period (circa 1000-550 B.C.).
Late Cypriote imports.
The local ware very poor, coarse, gritty, inartistic.
No painted ornament except mere lines: clumsy moulded ornament frequent.
Post-Exilic and Hellenistic Period (circa 550-100 B.C.).
Imports from Greece (sometimes fragments of black or red figured vases, or lekythoi) and from the Aegean Islands (especially wine-jars from Rhodes: stamped handles of such are frequent).
The native ware is easily recognizable by its smoothness and hardness; when struck with a stick a sherd emits a musical clink.
The vessels are very fair imitations of classical models, occasionally with painted ornament, but more frequently moulded.
Roman and Byzantine Period (circa 100 B.C.-A.D. 600).
The unmistakable character of the ware of this period is the ribbed surface, with which nearly all vessels are decorated.
Fragments of ribbed pottery are strewn almost over all Palestine.
Ornament consisting of repeated impressions of stamps now begins to appear.
Lamps with decoration, inscriptions, Christian or Jewish symbols common.
Glass vessels also frequent.
Arab Period (circa A.D. 600 onwards).
The early Arab ware often bears painted decoration singularly like that on Second and Third Semitic pottery, but a fatty soapy texture characterizes the Arab ware, which is absent from the earlier sherds.
There is likewise a complete absence of representation of natural forms (birds and the like).
In or about the Crusader period the use of ornamental glaze makes its appearance.
[Illustration XII: PALESTINIAN POTTERY TYPES] VI.
Sanctuaries.
The hill-top shrines, now consecrated to saints of Islam, are doubtless in origin ancient Canaanite high places.
There is here a rich but a very difficult field for investigation.
The difficulty lies in (a) gaining the confidence of those to whom the sanctuaries are holy, and (b) guarding against wilful or unconscious deception.
Only long residence and frequent intercourse, with the Muslim population will make it possible for any one to obtain really trustworthy information as to the traditions or the sites of these ancient sanctuaries.
A knowledge of Arabic is essential for a study of the sites themselves, as there are frequently inscriptions cut or painted on the walls which should be studied.
The casual traveller cannot hope to carry out researches of any value on these ancient sites.
Sometimes the buildings are Crusaders' churches transformed.
The one really certain fact as to masonry dressing in Palestine may here conveniently be noticed--that Crusader structures are built of wellsquared stones with a plane surface finished off with a dressing consisting of very fine diagonal lines.
Once seen, this masonry dressing is absolutely unmistakable.
Buildings thus identified as Crusader should be examined for masons' marks.
VII.
Miscellaneous.
The following are some other types of ancient remains with which the traveller may meet almost anywhere in Palestine: (1) Prehistoric (Stone Age) sites.
Marked by being strewn with flint implements and chips: see a fine collection in the Museum of the Assumptionists (Notre-Dame de France) at Jerusalem.
Specimens should be collected and the site mapped.
(2) Dolmens.
Frequent east of Jordan; rare, though not unknown, in Western Palestine.
Should be measured, photographed, described, and mapped.
(3) Rock-cuttings of various kinds, which should be measured, planned, and mapped.
Among these the commonest are: (a) Cisterns (usually bottle-shaped, a narrow neck expanding below).
(b) Cup-markings, common everywhere.
Often associated with cisterns.
(c) Wine and olive presses: there is a great variety in form, but they generally consist of two essential parts--a shallow _pressingvat_ on which the fruit was crushed, and a deeper _receiving-vat_ in which the expressed juice was collected.
The vats are often lined with cement containing datable potsherds, and are sometimes paved with mosaic tesserae.
(d) Quarries.
(4) Sacred trees and bushes, recognized by the rags with which they are festooned.
Should be photographed and mapped, and their legends ascertained, subject to the cautions given above under the head of Sanctuaries.
(5) Castles and churches, usually of the Crusader period: early Saracenic buildings.
Should be recorded by means of plans, photographs, measured drawings, and written descriptions.
(6) Mosaic pavements, usually belonging to Byzantine buildings; should be recorded by means of coloured drawings.
CHAPTER VII EGYPT [See the diagrams of flint implements, Illustration II; pottery, Illustration XIII; and the table of hieroglyphic signs liable to be confused with each other, Illustration I] First Prehistoric Age, 8000?-7000?
B.C.
Cemeteries of round or oval pits on the desert; no towns known.
Red faced pottery, often with lustrous black top, earliest with patterns of white slip lines: all hand-made.
Block figures of ivory or paste.
Combs with long teeth and animal tops.
Second Prehistoric Age, 7000?-5500 B.C.
Graves, square pits.
Red faced, and much coarse brown pottery.
Buff with red painting of cordage, spirals, and ships.
Pot forms copied from stone.
Some pots globular with wavy ledge handles, changing to cylinders with wavy band.
Slate palettes in all prehistoric periods.
Early Dynasties, 5500-4700 B.C.
Towns and cemeteries.
Great mastabas of brick.
Wooden coffins begin.
Great jars; hard, wheel-made pottery.
Glazed tiles, &c. Stone bowls common.
Cylinder sealings on clay.
Pyramid Period, IV-Vl Dynasties, 4700-4000 B.C.
Sculptured stone tomb-chapels.
Diorite bowls.
Thick brown pot offering bowls.
Limestone statues, painted.
Cornelian amulets in strings.
Vl-XI Dynasties, 4200-3600 B.C.
Copper mirrors begin.
Buttons, wide face, un-Egyptian work.
Pottery models of houses placed on grave edge.
Middle Kingdom, Xll-XIII Dynasties, 3600-2900 B.C.
Brick pyramids.
Large rock tomb-chapels, painted.
Hard drab pottery.
Alabaster kohl-pots, good forms.
Globular beads, large; cornelian, amethyst, and green glaze.
Scroll pattern scarabs.
XIV-XVII Dynasties.
2900-1600 B.C.
Small flasks with handles, black with pricked patterns.
Coarsely cut scarabs.
Shell beads.
New Kingdom XVIII-XXI Dynasties, 1587-952 B.C.
Small painted tombs.
Pottery, red face black edge to 1500; buff, red and black lines to 1400; blue bands 1400-1200.
Hard polished drab, about 1400-1350.
Glass beads, &c., abundant 1400-1300.
Glaze deep blue 1500, brilliant blue 1400, poor blue 1300, green 1200: deep blue ushabtis 1100, pale and rough 1000.
Ushabtis, stone or wood engraved 1550-1450, pottery 1450 to very coarse 1250, wood very coarse by 1250; glazed fine 1300, decline to small rough lumps 800.
Beads, minute coloured glaze and stone to 1450, thin discs 1450-1350, coloured pastes red and blue 1450 to 1300, yellow glass mainly 13001200, poor glaze after 1200.
Alabaster kohl-pots, clumsy forms to 1450; tubes of stone, glaze, wood, or reed 1450-1200.
Bubastites, XXII-XXV Dynasties, 950-664 B.C.
Clumsy large jars, widening to bottom, small handles.
Green glazed figures of cat-head goddess, cats, pigs, and sacred eyes; coarse glass beads, yellow and black: copper wire bracelets.
Glass beads with blue spots in circles of brown and white.
Scarabs coarse and worst at 750.
Fine work revived at 700 by Ethiopians.
Glazes dull, dirty, green.
Glass unknown.
Coffins very roughly painted.
Saites, XXVI-XXX Dynasties, 664-342 B.C.
Pottery clumsy, mostly rough: some thin, smooth red.
Greek influence; silver coins from 500 onward.
Iron tools beginning.
Glaze pale greyish and olive: some fine blue at 350.
No glass.
Bronze figures common.
Ushabtis with back pier and beard; fine 650 to poor at 350.
Ptolemies, 332-30 B.C.
Pottery clumsy and small.
Many Rhodian jars with Greek stamped handles.
Glazes, dark violet and yellow-green.
Glass revived for inlay figures in shrines: minute mosaic begins.
Glazed beads scarce, no scarabs.
Large copper coins, silver tetradrachms, base in later time, and concave on reverse.
Romans, 30 B.C.-A.D. 641.
The earlier half, to A.D. 300.
Large brown amphorae, peg bottoms; ribbed after 180, wide ribbing at first, then narrower.
Glass blown; fine white and cut facets in 1st cent.
; hollow brims 2nd-4th; stems and pressed feet, 3rd-4th.
Glass mosaic 1st cent.
; coarser wall mosaic 2nd cent.
Glaze coarse blue, on thick clumsy bowls and jugs.
Red brick buildings as well as mud brick, coins: billon tetradrachms in 1st cent., almost copper in 2nd, small copper dumps in 3rd, leaden tokens from A.D. 180 to 260.
Some large copper in 1st and 2nd, thinner than the Ptolemaic.
Potsherds used for writing receipts and letters.
Abundance of moulded terracottas, and small lamps.
Roman, Second Period, A.D. 300-641.
The Constantinian Age brings in new styles.
Much salmon-coloured hard pottery, mainly platters and flat dishes.
Brown amphorae soft and smaller, with narrow ribbing.
No glaze.
Much very thin glass.
Coins: little thin flat copper, as in rest of Empire, ending about 450.
No Egyptian coinage, except a very few rough lumps from Justinian to Heraclius, I+B on back.
Letters written on potsherds and flakes of limestone.
Red brick the material for all large buildings.
Limestone capitals of debased leafage.
Rudely cut relief patterns in wood.
Coarsely carved and turned bone or ivory.
Pottery in Byzantine Age with white facing and rudely painted figures.
Textiles, with embroidery in colours, and especially purple discs with thread designs of the earlier Arab period.
A characteristic of late Roman and Arab mounds is the organic smell.
Muhammadan Period.
Seventh to fifteenth centuries.
Characterized by great amounts of glazed pottery.
Smaller antiquities found in cemeteries or on ruined sites, the earliest transitional, and related to Coptic examples of the same kinds.
Pottery: lamps at first continue Christian forms and are unglazed; afterwards long spouted lamps of dark green glaze.
Fragments of vessels, &c., from the rubbish heaps of old Cairo are glazed; a typical faience has a soft sandy body of light colour with painted designs in blue or blue and brown with transparent glaze.
Those of the Mamluk period, and probably some of earlier date, show a general resemblance to Western Asiatic contemporary wares, due to importation of potters from Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia (between twelfth and fifteenth centuries).
Other varieties have decoration in metallic lustre on an opaque white tin glaze; others again have monochrome glazes imitating imported Chinese wares.
Inscriptions very rare.
Glass: if found, is in fragments; rich coloured enamel designs are seldom earlier than the thirteenth century.
Textiles: chiefly found in small pieces; the colours rich; ornament consisting of geometrical designs and Cufic inscriptions.
Any silk, or printed patterns, should be secured.
No information about papyri is given here, for the reason that any site containing them should not be touched except by a trained excavator.
[ILLUSTRATION XIII: EGYPTIAN POTTERY TYPES] CHAPTER VIII MESOPOTAMIA [See the diagrams of flint implements, Illustration II; pottery and brick-forms, Illustration XIV; cuneiform signs, and other scripts Illustration XV].
Mesopotamian antiquities are nearly always found in Tells, or artificial mounds, which are the sites of ancient towns or temples.
The surrounding plain for a distance of several hundred yards out, whether steppe-desert or untilled land, will usually be found to be productive of antiquities, either a few inches or few feet deep or, in the case of the dessert, actually lying upon the surface.
These are usually the result of rainstorms washing out antiquities from the tell itself.
Each tell or ganglion of connected tells usually has a number of small subsidiary tells round about it, the sites of small isolated buildings or villages connected with the central settlement.
Originally the settlements were built upon natural rises of the ground which stood up as islands in the fen-country.
Visitors should give the local names of tells in Arabic characters, when possible, so that mistakes in transliteration into English may be avoided.
Antiquities bought in the neighbourhood of a tell should be noted as coming from that neighbourhood.
Depredations by Arabs (or by others!)
should be noted, and reported to the nearest Political Officer or Inspector of Antiquities.
The barbarous practice of forcibly dislodging inscribed bricks from walls, as trophies and 'souvenirs', which has unhappily been common during the war, should never be imitated and always discountenanced as much as possible.
Other good spots for antiquities than tells are rare.
In the mountainous and stony country of the North we may meet with rocksculptures, as at Bavian, and these should always be recorded by a traveller, even if he is not certain that they have not been remarked before: something new may turn up at any time.
Antiquities acquired in the neighbourhood of such monuments should be noted, and their precise place of origin ascertained, if possible, as in this way the site of some ancient settlement adjoining the monument may be identified.
The open ruin-fields, or _Khurbas_, characteristic of Palestine are not usual, except in the case of Parthian or Sassanian palace ruins such as Ctesiphon, Hatra, or Ukheidhir, which were often abandoned almost as soon as they were built, so that no later population could pile up rubbish-heaps or graves above them.
In order to aid the visitor to get some idea of the age of a tell or other site from the antiquities found on its surface and its neighbourhood, and so to be able to give some idea of what is likely to be found in it, the following hints have been drawn up.
In the first place, most of the surface remains, are, as elsewhere, pottery sherds.
These should tell us their date by their appearance.
It must be said, however, that our experience on the subject of the development of Mesopotamian pottery is limited.
Owing to the attention of Assyriologists having been so long focussed on the study of the cuneiform records, to the neglect of general archaeology, we have nothing like the knowledge of these things that we have in Egypt or in Greece.
Such minutiae of information as our common knowledge of ceramic development in Egypt or in Greece gives us with regard to these countries, enabling us to date sites with great accuracy, are not vet available for Mesopotamia.
And if for this reason all possible information as to the objects found on archaeological sites is desirable, it is also impossible yet to give the visitor any absolute guide to the distinctive appearance of pottery at every period.
The main periods are known.
The 'prehistoric', the Sumerian, the late Babylonian, and the Parthian styles are easily distinguishable.
If a visitor is able to tell us that such-and-such a mound is prehistoric or is Parthian, or that settlements of both periods existed on it, this is what we want.
One of the most general of criteria with regard to pottery is whether it is glazed or not.
If glazed, it is, generally speaking, late.
Other things besides pottery are of course found, and the presence or the absence of metal, and the occurrence of stone implements, are important.
But it must be remembered that stone was used long into the 'Bronze' Age, and contemporaneously with copper.
There is no sudden break between the two periods.
Fragments of shell and mother-of-pearl, often with incised designs, are very characteristic of the earliest period.
Coins are of late date; a tell with coins on it is certain to contain buildings as late as the fourth or third century B.C.
(though it may also contain far older buildings as well).
One of the most useful criteria of age is: Bricks.
The form of the brick is a very good guide to date.
The Babylonians used both kiln-baked and crude bricks.
The oldest type, whether baked or crude, is plano-convex in form, and uninscribed.
The mortar is bitumen.
Later on rectangular bricks, often square, made in moulds, were introduced.
These usually bore the name of the royal builder.
Later on bricks became generally oblong and much like our own.
In the sixth century the square shape was revived.
Both shapes were in use at the Nebuchadnezzar period.
Glazed bricks were then common.
Under the Persians mortar took the place of bitumen.
Under the Parthians and Sassanians, bricks were yellow, oblong, small, and very hard.
Details will be found below, The names of various excavated sites are given in brackets as the 'classical' sources of information on certain points, and as the places from which type-antiquities have come to our Museums.
Ancient names are in capitals; museums in italics.
I. PREHISTORIC (?)
AGE: Chalcolithic (aeneolithic) period, before 3500 B.C.
Until quite recently no traces of the Stone Age had been discovered in Babylonia other than a few possible palaeoliths lying on the surface of the desert: all traces of a Neolithic Age were supposed to have been buried beneath the alluvium of the valley.
In Assyria, however, neolithic traces in the shape of obsidian flakes had been discovered by the late Prof. L. W. King in the course of his excavation of the mound of Kuyunjik (NINEVEH), besides fragments of painted pottery resembling those from the earliest deposits in Asia Minor and those found by the American geologist Pumpelly in his diggings in the _kurgans_ of Turkestan, (to which he assigned an extremely remote date B.C.).
In Persia, and about the head of the Persian Gulf, somewhat similar pottery was discovered by de Morgan and the other French excavators at Susa, Tepe Musyan, Bandar Bushir, and other places: here again the dates were put at a very remote period.
With the exception of a few flint saw-blades from Warka [1], Fara, Zurghul, and Babylon [2], no similar remains had been found in Babylonia until, in 1918, Capt.
R. Campbell Thompson, exploring on behalf of the British Museum, discovered flint and obsidian flakes and painted pottery lying on the surface of the desert at Tell Abu Shahrein (ERIDU), and also at Tell Muqayyar (UR).
The continued excavations carried out by Mr. H. R. Hall for the Museum in 1919 have produced more of the same evidence from both places, besides a new 'prehistoric' site at Tell el-Ma'abed or Tell el-'Obeid near Ur.
It seems that these antiquities date from the very end of the neolithic, or rather to the succeeding 'chalcolithic', age; whether they are really prehistoric, as regards Babylonian history, must until more evidence from stratified deposits is found remain undecided.
They prove the occupation of the head of the Persian Gulf at the beginning of history by a people whose primitive art was closely akin to that of early Elam, and distinct from that of the Sumerians.
[1] Found by Loftus in 1854: their early date was not recognized at the time.
[2] Koldewey, _Excavations at Babylon, E.T._, p. 261, fig.
182.
Koldewey curiously speaks of the saw-blades as 'palaeolithic.'
They are, of course, nothing of the sort.
Characteristics: flint, chert, obsidian, green and red jasper, and quartz-crystal flakes, arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades.
Chert and limestone rough hoe-blades (easily mistaken for palaeolithic implements; they are, however, much flatter); polished serpentine or jasper celts; lentoid (lentil-shaped), amygdaloid (almond-shaped), and discoid beads of cornelian, crystal, obsidian, &c., unpolished; nails of translucent quartz and obsidian (obviously imitations of metal types); hard grey pottery sickles, pottery cones of various sizes, and pottery objects like gigantic nails bent up at the ends; pottery painted with designs in black, usually geometrical (see illustration XIV, Fig.
1), but sometimes showing plant-forms or even animals.
This ware is often very fine, so much so as to look as if wheelmade.
The shapes are chiefly bowls (often closely resembling early Egyptian stone bowl types), pots with suspension-handles or lugs, and spouted 'kettles'.
All these objects are at Shahrein and el-'Obeid found lying on the desert surface at the distance of 50 or 100 yards from the tell; they are supposed to have been washed out of the lower strata of the latter by rains.
Objects of this kind should be recorded from any site, and the neighbourhood of a desert tell should always be searched for them.
[ILLUSTRATION XIV MESOPOTAMIAN POTTERY, SEALS, ETC].
[ILLUSTRATION XV: CUNEIFORM AND OTHER SCRIPTS].
II.
EARLY BRONZE (Copper) AGE: First Sumerian (pre-Sargonic) Period; c. 3500-3000 B.C.
Earliest Sumerian civilization.
Typical sites.
Older strata at Telloh (LAGASH); Fara (SHURUPPAK); Tell 'Obeid (ancient name as yet unknown); Shahrein (ERIDU).
Characteristics.
Writing.
First appearance of script, already conventionalized from pictographs.
Cut on stone and incised on clay tablets and bricks of characteristic early style.
Brick buildings, with crenellated walls (until the discovery of Tell 'Obeid supposed to date only from the later Sumerian period) of typical plano-convex bricks, baked or crude, usually with thumb-mark down length of convex side (Shahrein), or with two thumb-holes (for carrying the brick when wet?
), or vent-holes ('Obeid); at first uninscribed, later with long inscriptions; measuring 10 x 6 x 2-2 1/4 ins.
(Shahrein), and 8 x 6 x 2-2 1/4 ins.
('Obeid); poorly shaped and baked (see XIV, Fig.
3).
Bitumen used for mortar; laid very thick.
Hard white stucco on internal faces of crude brick house walls, often decorated with red, white, and black painted horizontal stripes (Shahrein.)
Pottery.
Wheel and hand-made; drab, fine or coarse paste, unpainted and usually undecorated.
Typical shapes: (see XIV, Figs.
2 abc) mostly handleless vases, and cups, and spouted 'kettles' (again often resembling early Egyptian types).
Metals: Copper.
Extensive use: large copper figures of animals, heads cast, bodies of copper plates fastened by nails over a core of clay with a mixture of bitumen and straw; the figures have eyes, tongues, and teeth of red and white stone and nacre (Tell 'Obeid); goat's head with inlaid eyes of nacre (Fara).
Otherwise ordinary treatment of eye shows a number of wrinkle lines round it, and it is always disproportionately large (bull's heads, Tell 'Obeid and Telloh).
Small fragments of copper or bronze on the surface of a tell should never be neglected, as there may be enough in any fragment to give an idea of possible archaic remains within the tell.
Silver.
Rare.
Fine engraved vase of Entemena (Telloh, _Louvre_).
Gold.
Not uncommon.
Copper nails with gold-plated heads (Shahrein).
Stone.
Portrait figures in round (Bismaya, Telloh, &c.), usually representing men, with face and head shaven; very prominent large curved nose; usually squatting with arms crossed, sometimes standing; only garment a kilt apparently made of locks of natural wool.
Usually inscribed in archaic characters on back of shoulders.
Material: a grey or a white limestone most usual; tufa and dolerite also used.
Reliefs: large stelae (Stele of the Vultures; Telloh, _Louvre_, fragment in _B.
M._), completely inscribed; small relief plaques, inscribed (Telloh, _Louvre_).
Flint carved and engraved cylinderseals, of limestone, black basalt, jasper, diorite, &c. Vases, bowls, and cups (usually fragmentary), of white and pink limestone and breccia.
Maceheads of breccia, granite, &c., of same type as the early Egyptian (Shahrein).
Shell.
Very largely used for decoration; small plaques of nacre often engraved with scenes of men worshipping, &c. (Telloh); tessellated pillars with nacre plaques ('Obeid).
Seal-cylinders of shell.
Wood.
Rarely survives; small beams plated with copper ('Obeid).
Burials.
Pottery coffins with lids, mat burials; bodies contracted; funerary furniture, copper, stone or pottery drinking cups held near mouth: copper weapons, fish-hooks, net weights; beads of agate, lapis, shell (unpolished); colour-dishes, (Fara).
(The idea that the Babylonians ever burnt their dead is now discredited; the supposed 'fire-necropoles' at Zurghul, &c., are not substantiated.)
The burials are hard to distinguish from similar contracted interments of later date, except that the furniture is more abundant in early times and mat graves are unusual in later days Mounds of this age may be known by the occurrence on the surface of scraps of oxydized copper, nails, &c.; shell-fragments; undecorated light drab sherds; and the typical small plano-convex bricks.
III.
MIDDLE BRONZE AGE.
1.
Early Semitic or Akkadian (Sargonid) period; c. 3000-2500 B.C.
Characteristics.
Less crude style of art: development of writing (see XIV, Fig.
1); first inscribed clay tablets of usual style; beginnings of cuneiform, developed from the archaic semi-pictographic character.
Bricks still plano-convex; stamped inscriptions begin.
Stone maceheads of same type as earlier.
Large and well-cut cylinder-seals of fine limestone, lapis, diorite, granite, and shell are characteristic of the period: they are generally of an easily recognizable form (reel-shaped) with sides showing a marked concavity (see XIV, Fig.
5).
The great development of art is shown by the stele of Naram-Sin (_Louvre_) found at Susa.
Not many mounds of this period have been dug.
2.
Later Sumerian (Gudea) and early Semitic Babylonian (Hammurabi) periods; c. 2500-1800 B.C.
Characteristics.
Typical 'Gudea' style of sculpture, in round and relief (Telloh, _Louvre_); materials hard diorite, dolerite and basalt as well as limestone: characteristic treatment of eye with heavily marked brows: elaborate tiaras and head-dresses of female figures, &c. Very high development.
Regular use of cuneiform on clay tablets and cones (see XV, Figs.
13-15); non-cuneiform character (in a developed form) still used in brick stamps (XV, Fig.
10) and on stone monuments.
Bricks (XIV, Fig.
4) now rectangular and well made, either square (14 ins., usually, by 2 1/2 ins.
thick) or oblong (11 1/2 x 8 x 2 1/2 ins., or 10 x 5 x 2 1/2 ins.)
with stamps or incised inscriptions of Ur-Engur, Dungi, Bur-Sin, Gudea and other kings (XV, Fig.
10), from Ur, Shahrein, Telloh, Niffer, &c. Bricks of Bur-Sin from Shahrein often have inscription-stamps also on the smaller sides (thickness).
Great buildings of crude and baked brick (Telloh, Ur); temple-towers (ziggurats) of crude brick faced with burnt brick (Ur, Shahrein, Niffer).
Town ruins of Hammurabi's age (Babylon): crude brick: plans always confused and haphazard.
Bitumen still used for mortar.
Burials, contracted, often in double pots (mouth to mouth), sealed with bitumen.
With the bodies are found large numbers of agate and cornelian beads, unpolished.
Mounds of this period may be recognized by the typical square or oblong bricks (often with thumb-holes), with stamps of kings' names, &c., in non-cuneiform characters, or with hand-incised inscriptions in early cuneiform, made while the clay was wet; clay tablets or cones inscribed in early cuneiform; copper nails (those with goldplated heads found at Shahrein may also date from this time); drab or black pottery sherds with impressed or incised designs, generally rough and evidently made with a piece of stick or the thumb-nail; rough stone quern-slabs with rubbers, grinding and hammer-stones, &c.; and the burials described above (these, however, also occur in later times).
IV.
LATER BRONZE AGE: Kassite, Middle Babylonian, and Early Assyrian periods; c. 18001000 B.C.
Characteristics.
Stabilization of Babylonian art; typical 'Kassite' cylinder-seals with straight sides (XIV, Fig.
6); disappearance of old non-cuneiform character with gradual disuse of Sumerian; early stone-cut inscriptions in cuneiform (see XV, Fig.
16; an Elamite inscription).
Occasional and rare appearance of glazed pottery (imitation of Egyptian), and multi-coloured glass; early Assyrian sculpture (those unversed in minutiae of Mesopotamian art will only be able to tell this earlier work from the later by the earlier style of the accompanying inscriptions).
Not many mounds of this period have been dug.
V. EARLY IRON AGE: 1.
Late Babylonian and Assyrian periods; c. 1000-540 B.C.
Characteristics.
Flourishing period of Assyrian art and writing (for details see the archaeological books, which are very full on this period).
Mounds may be known by the occurrence of fragments of granite or basalt bowl-querns, often with feet; pieces or whole vases of the multi-coloured opaque glass usually called 'Phoenician' (which are already found in the preceding period); alabaster pots; straightsided cylinder seals (see XIV, Fig.
6); Syrian conical seals of steatite (XIV, Fig.
7); small and rude clay figures of deities, such as Ishtar or Papsukal (the guardian of buildings), and animals, such as horses, sheep, doves, ducks, &c.; bronze pins, often with birds on the heads; baked clay tablets of the fine Kuyunjik type (see XV, Fig.
12; script, Fig.
17); pottery lamps with long protruding curved nozzles; pottery vases simple and undecorated save by incised lines, as for many centuries past (for types see XIV, Figs.
9 a b c d); light-blue glazed ware introduced from Egypt towards end of period; polychrome glazed ware with designs of rosettes, chevrons) &c., somewhat earlier; large pots without feet common for storage of grain and oil, sometimes for tablets: mouth often closed with a brick.
Stone pithoi are also found.
Vertical drains or sinks, made of a number of pottery cylindrical drums, fitting on top of or into one another, are found everywhere on town-mounds of this period; visitors should avoid tumbling into them, as they are often open or only covered by a very thin crust of earth.
Usually they are perforated to allow of soaking into the surrounding earth, and are, when excavated whole, generally found capped by, a beehive-shaped perforated cover.
Sometimes these drains were made of old pots with their lower parts broken off, and fitted into one another.
Secular buildings were of burnt brick; sacred buildings usually of crude brick, from religious conservatism.
Crude bricks nearly always oblong; burnt bricks square (14 ins.)
or oblong (9x6x3 ins.).
The burnt brick of Nebuchadnezzar's time is extraordinarily fine and hard, and the bitumen-mortar so finely spread as to be almost invisible (Babylon).
Walls of this reign have a rock-like solidity and tenacity that should make them easily recognizable.
Those of immediately preceding reigns show the bitumen far more clearly, and the bricks are usually not as finely made as Nebuchadnezzar's; at Babylon the latter's work is thus at once distinguishable from that of Nabopolassar.
A typical brickinscription of Nebuchadnezzar is illustrated above, XV, Fig.
11.
It is in the revived archaic script, always used for this purpose by the late Babylonian kings.
Use of coloured glazed brick is characteristic of period; often relief figures of animals are made up of glazed bricks each specially moulded for its proper position and numbered (Ishtar Gate, Babylon).
Royal palaces were often decorated with reliefs depicting conquests, &c., carved on slabs of alabastrine marble placed along the brick walls, with great statues of humanheaded bulls (_Cherubim_), &c. (Nimrud [CALAH], Kuyunjik [NINEVEH], Khorsabad.
_Brit.
Mus._ and _Louvre_.)
Burials usually in drab clay pot-coffins (larnakes) with covers; bodies still contracted; funerary furniture scanty, consisting chiefly of pins, beads, an occasional cylinder-seal, and a few pots (XIV, Figs.
9 a b c d).
Ribbed pots with blue (weathered green) glaze, often pitched both within and without, were also employed towards the end of the period, inverted over the bodies.
Also anthropoid pottery sarcophagi, an idea imported from Egypt.
Child burials in bowls.
Iron objects sometimes buried with the dead; often found in palace-ruins (weapons, horse-furniture, &c.).
Bronze commonly used for gates, door, bolts, &c. (Gates of Shalmaneser's palace; _Brit.
Mus._).
2.
Persian (Achaemenian) period: c. 540-330 B.C.
This period is distinguished from the former by the less frequent use of bronze, the introduction of coinage, and the development of the simplified Persian cuneiform writing (never on tablets, only on stone monuments; see XV, Fig.
18).
Bitumen ceased to be used as mortar in buildings.
Persian walls (e. g. the Apadana at Babylon) are easily distinguished by the use of clay mortar, and the unusual thickness of the mortar-courses between the bricks.
Burials in shallow trough-like pottery coffins, with the bodies at full length, but with the knees slightly flexed (these continued during the next period).
VI.
MIDDLE IRON AGE: 1.
Greek and Parthian periods; c. 330 B.C.-220 A.D. Characteristics.
Sudden degeneration and disappearance of the ancient native civilization and art; imitation of Greek culture, Greek buildings (theatre at Babylon), and inscriptions; Greek legends on Parthian coins; Parthian kings call themselves 'Philhellenes'; Graeco-Roman architecture imitated (Hatra).
Graeco-Roman terracottas, pottery lamps, pilgrim-flasks and bone-carvings; classical seal gems; Roman glass; fragments of imitation of classical sculpture in marble (the material being adopted as well as the style); and, of course, coins--these are characteristic remains found on mounds of this period.
About l00 B.C.
the use of cuneiform was given up; clay tablets were no longer used.
Aramaic became the usual form of writing; ink used on sherds; wax tablets.
Small bowls often found with ink-written incantations in Judaeo-Aramaic (see XV, Fig.
19).
Mounds of this period are perhaps most easily recognized by the quantities of deep-blue glazed sherds found lying about on them.
The glaze is rather thin, laid on a coarse drab ware, and is often cracked.
The blue is very fine, rivalling the old Egyptian.
Burials of this period are often found in (besides the shallow pottery coffins mentioned above) rectangular oblong boxes of thin coarse ware with light friable blue glaze (Babylon), or (later) in slipper-shaped coffins (possibly Sassanian) of the same ware, rudely decorated with human figures (warriors) in relief, on panels (Warka).
The blue glaze has often changed to a dark green, especially in the case of the Warka slipper-coffins.
The lids are cemented to the coffins.
Internments are now full length, the old custom of contraction having been entirely abandoned [1].
Gold ornaments and pieces of gold leaf, gold fillets, &c., are not unfrequently found with the bodies, besides armlets, toe and finger rings, &c., of silver and bronze, the finger-rings usually of ordinary Roman types; pottery, lamps, and glass vessels.
These coffins are often in brick vaults, usually placed haphazard in the ground, as in earlier times.
Bricks small, hard, and yellow.
[1] The western custom of cremation was never adopted, in spite of the Hellenization of culture.
It offended both Babylonian and Iranian sentiment, although the Parthians were never very orthodox followers of Ahuramazda, and venerated (at least platonically) the most popular deities of the Greek pantheon.
2.
Sassanian Period; c. 220-650 A.D. Characteristics.
Reaction towards Oriental motives in art: a typical _antika_ of the period is the Sassanian seal of cornelian, chalcedony, or haematite, in shape sometimes a ring, more often a flat sphere with one-third cut off to form a seal-base, perforated for stringing (see XIV, Fig.
8), and inscribed in Pehlevi (see XV, Fig.
20) a script that to the unitiated looks very like Cufie Arabic: the language is Old-Persian, which was spoken by the court officials at Ctesiphon, the language of the people being Aramaic.
Sculpture barbarized, but with a picturesque character of its own (Nakhsh-iRustam, Tak-i-Bostan), sometimes reminiscent of Indian work.
Architecture: Parthian-Roman traditions (Ctesiphon).
Pottery usually glazed blue (thicker glaze).
Unglazed bowls with Hebrew and Mandaitic magical inscriptions.
Bronze no longer used except for coins.
Objects from mounds very like those of preceding age, but less of Roman origin.
Not much known of burials; the Warka slipper-coffins usually regarded as Parthian may possibly be of early Sassanian age.
VII.
LATER IRON AGE: Muhammadan Period; c. 650-1500 A.D.[1] Characteristics.
Development of art under Persian influence till Tartar conquest in thirteenth century: the destruction and depopulation of the country at that time brought all real artistic development to an end.
Flourishing period: the 'Abbasid Khalifate: ninth century: Harun al-Rashid.
Ruins of the ancient city and palaces of Samarra: halls with modelled and painted plaster-decorations, not only geometrical but also (Persian heterodox influence) representing trees, birds, &c. No more sculpture in round or relief of human figures or animals.
The only survival of classical tradition would appear to be to some extent in architecture: Greek architects.
Coins: thin gold, and silver, with Cufic inscriptions only (see XV, Fig.
21).
Mounds of this period may be known by fragments of marblecarving with Cufic inscriptions, plasterwork, Arab and Persian vase and tile fragments in thick blue, green, yellow, or brown glaze, metallic lustre-glaze, &c., variegated glass bangles, and rings; bits of cloudy white glass (from lamps); fragments of wood, carved and inlaid with bone, nacre, &c., in geometrical patterns; textile fragments, (which are naturally not commonly found in older mounds), &c. Nothing is said with regard to burials as these may not be touched.
[1] The limit of age which constitutes an 'antiquity' for legal purposes is fixed in most antiquity-laws at 1500 A.D.
APPENDIX LAWS OF ANTIQUITIES The following brief notes on the Laws of Antiquities in force in the various territories with which this book is concerned must not be taken as absolving the traveller from the necessity of consulting the full text of the laws.
At the time of going to press, the Turkish Law presumably prevails in such parts of the Turkish Empire as are not occupied by the troops of the Entente; in the remainder, temporary regulations are in force which will doubtless be modified when the new governments are established; and it is possible that the Turkish Law itself may be brought into greater harmony with modern ideas.
The Greek Law of Antiquities.
[Greek], 24 July 1899, Athens, [Greek] 1889.
All antiquities found are the property of the Government and are controlled by an Archaeological Commission, consisting of the Ephor General of Antiquities and the ephors of the archaeological collections in Athens.
Fixed antiquities must be reported by the discoverer to the Ephor General or one of the ephors of antiquities or other official.
Damaging of ruins or remains of monuments is forbidden.
Owners of the land on which portable antiquities desirable for the National Museums are found are compensated to the extent of half their value.
Any person who finds antiquities on his land must report them within five days, on pain of confiscation.
The same applies to any one who finds antiquities on another person's land, or in any other way comes into possession of antiquities.
Informers against breaches of the law are rewarded by the amount of the compensation due to those who keep the law.
Objects not considered worth keeping by the Museums are returned to the owner of the land.
Excavations, even on private property, must be authorized by the Ministry of Education.
The Government has the right of expropriating land for purposes of excavation.
In Government excavations, the owner of the land receives one-third of the value of the objects considered worth keeping by the Museums.
Secret excavation is punished by confiscation of the finds, imprisonment and temporary loss of civil rights.
In authorized excavations by a landowner or his representative the excavator receives half the value of the finds taken by the Museums.
Any one attempting to excavate on another man's land is punished by imprisonment.
Antiquities found in the country may not be exported (on pain of imprisonment or fine and temporary loss of civil rights) without permission, which is only granted for objects not considered by the Archaeological Commission to be of use to the Museums.
Such objects on export are subject to a tax of 10 percent.
_ad valorem_ unless declared entirely valueless by the Commission.
Antiquities imported into the country must be declared in the Customs House and reported to the Ephor General of Antiquities, a descriptive catalogue in duplicate being sent, and cannot be reexported without permission, which is obtained by producing the articles with the original catalogue to the Ephor General; if not reported they are regarded as having been found in the country.
The Turkish Law of Antiquities.
Loi sur les Antiquites promulguee le 29 Sefer 1324 (10 Avril 1322).
Extrait du _Levant Herald_ du 8, 9, 11 et 13 Juin 1906.
Constantinople, Imprimerie du _Levant Herald,_ Pera, 1906.
Antiquities are controlled by the Director-General of the Imperial Museums and a Commission, the Directors of Public Instruction in the provinces acting as agents.
All ancient monuments and objects (including those of Islamic date) are the property of the Government.
Any fixed antiquities discovered must be reported under pain of fine within 15 days to the official in charge of antiquities, or in his absence to the nearest civil or military official.
Punishment by fine and imprisonment is inflicted for destroying or injuring monuments, measuring or making impressions without authorization.
Transportable antiquities found on a man's land must be reported by him within a week.
The landowner receives half the value of objects thus reported and bought by the State; objects not reported are confiscated, and the landowner fined.
This clause applies to those who find antiquities on land belonging to other private persons or to the State.
Excavation is the exclusive privilege of the Museums, but firmans may be obtained by scientific societies and specialists.
Unauthorized excavation is punished by imprisonment and confiscation.
The State has the right of making preliminary soundings and of expropriation.
Applications for leave to excavate must be made to the Minister of Public Instruction.
All finds belong to the State.
Unauthorized dealing in antiquities is punishable by fine, imprisonment, and confiscation.
Exportation of antiquities found in the Empire is forbidden.
Antiquities imported must be reported to the directorate of antiquities, and may not be sent from one part of the Empire to another, or re-exported, without permission from the Director-General.
The Cypriote Law of Antiquities.
To Consolidate and Amend the Law relating to Ancient Monuments and Antiquities, and to provide Museums.
Law no.
IV of 1905.
See Sir J. T. Hutchinson and S. Fisher, _The Statute Laws of Cyprus,_ 1878-1906 (London, 1906), pp.
595-608.
Objects later than the Turkish conquest, and coins of Byzantine or later times, are not deemed to be antiquities.
All undiscovered antiquities of movable character are the property of the Government; all immovable antiquities are also the property of the Government, unless some person shall be the owner of them.
All antiquities must be reported by the person in possession of them to the Museum Committee, on pain of confiscation; antiquities found except in the course of authorized excavations must be reported within five days to the District Commissioner, One-third of such movable antiquities is taken by the Government, one-third by the finder, and one-third by the owner of the land.
Damage to ancient monuments is punished by fine or imprisonment or both.
Unauthorized excavation, even on land belonging to the excavator, and the purchasing of objects illegally excavated, are punished by fine or imprisonment or both.
Application for leave to excavate must be made to the Chief Secretary for Government.
All antiquities found in excavation belong to the Government; only duplicates, and objects not required by the Museum, are given to the excavator.
The Government has the right to expropriate land for the purpose of excavations.
The Museum Committee may acquire the interests of any private person in an antiquity on payment of compensation.
If the sum agreed on is not paid within six months, the Museum Committee loses all right to its acquisition.
Export of antiquities is forbidden except with the permission of the High Commissioner, which is granted only for objects not required by the Museum or for antiquities the interests in which the Museum Committee has failed to acquire in the manner described.
The Egyptian Law of Antiquities.
La Nouvelle Loi sur les Antiquites de l'Egypte et ses annexes.
Service des Antiquites.
Le Caire, Imprimerie de l'Institut francais d'archeologie orientala.
1913.
All antiquities belong to the State.
The State has the right of expropriating ground containing antiquities.
Transportable antiquities when found must be reported to nearest administrative authority or agents of the Service of Antiquities: the finder receives half the objects thus reported or their value.
Excavation, dealing in antiquities, and exportation are forbidden unless under authorization.
Destruction of and damage to antiquities is punishable by fine and imprisonment.
Applications for leave to export or to excavate should be made to the Director-General of Service of Antiquities.
A tax of 1 1/2 per cent.
is levied on the declared value of objects passed for export.
Leave to excavate is granted only to savants recommended by Governments or learned societies, or to private persons presenting proper guarantees.
The excavator pays the cost of guarding the site.
The Government takes half the portable objects found.
General Principles of a Model Law of Antiquities for the Near and Middle East.
The following statement of Principles which should form the foundation of the Laws of Antiquities to be enacted for the various Provinces formerly under Turkish rule was drawn up by an International Committee in Paris and recommended to the Commission for regulating the Mandates under the League of Nations.
It follows closely the Recommendations of the Archaeological Joint Committee on the same subject.
It was proposed at the same time that the Treaty with Turkey should enjoin the adoption by that Power of a Law of Antiquities on the same lines: Principes du reglement devant etre adopte par chacune des Puissances mandataires.
1.
'ANTIQUITY' signifie toute construction, tout produit de l'activite humaine, anterieur a l'annee 1700.
2, Toute personne qui, ayant decouvert une antiquite, la signalera a un employe du Departement des Antiquites du pays, sera recompensee suivant la valeur de l'objet, le principe a adopter devant etre d'agir par encouragement plutot que par menace.
3.
Aucun objet antique ne pourra etre vendu sauf au Departement des Antiquites du pays, mais si ce Departement renonce a l'acquerir la vente en deviendra libre.
Aucune antiquite ne pourra sortir du pays sans un permis d'exportation dudit Departement.
4.
Toute personne qui, expres ou par negligence, detruira ou deteriorera un objet ou une construction antique, devra etre passible d'une peine a fixer par l'autorite du pays.
5.
Aucun deblaiement ni aucune fouille ayant pour objet la recherche d'antiquites ne seront permis sous peine d'amendc, sauf aux personnes autorisees par le Departement des Antiquites du pays.
6.
Des conditions equitables devront etre fixees par chaque Puissance mandataire pour l'expropriation temporaire ou permanente des terrains qui pourraient offrir un interet historique ou archeologique.
7.
Les autorisations pour les fouilles ne devront etre accordees qu'aux personnes qui offrent des garanties suffisantes d'experience archeologique.
Aucune des Puissances mandataires ne devra, en accordant ces autorisations, agir de facon a ecarter, sans motif valable, les savants des autres nations.
8.
Les produits des fouilles pourront etre divises entre le fouilleur et le Departement des Antiquites de chaque pays dans une proportion fixee par ce Departement.
Si, pour des raisons scientifiques, la division ne semble pas possible, le fouilleur devra recevoir, au lieu d'une partie de la trouvaille, une juste indemnite.
INDEX Abu Shahrein, 85, 88, 90.
Achaemenian period in Mesopotamia, 93.
Aegean, prehistoric age in the 36 f: pottery in Palestine, 73.
Aeneolithic; see Chalcolithic.
Akkadian period, 90.
Alphabets: see Inscriptions.
Aramaic inscriptions, 62, 66; in Mesopotamia, 93.
Archaeological Joint Committee, 38.
Arches, corbelled, 40.
Arcosolium tombs, 71 f. Asia Minor, 47 ff.
Assyrian period, 91.
Attic pottery, 44 f. Babylon.
85, 90, 92 f. Babylonian period, 91.
Bandar Bushir, 85.
Barometer, 10, 33.
Bavian, 83.
Beads: Cypriote, 56: Egyptian, 78 f.; Greek, 41; Hittite, 60; Mesopotamian, 88 ff.
; Syrian, 64.
Belt Jibrin, 73.
Bitumen in Mesopotamia, 84, 88.
Black-figured Greek pottery, 44.
Bricks, 14 f.; in Egypt, 82; in Mesopotamia, 84-93.
Bronze Age: in Asia Minor, 48; in Cyprus, 56; in Greece, 36 f.; in Mesopotamia, 88; in Syria, 60.
Bronze, forgeries in, 24.
Brooches (fibulae): Greek, 40, 44; in Syria, 61 f. Bubastites, 79.
Buildings, recording of, 14.
Burials: see Tombs.
Buying, advice about.
24 f. Calah, 92.
Camera, 10 f. Casting in plaster, 19.
Caves, 15, 72.
Cemeteries, 15, 55, 70, 78: see also Tombs.
Chalcolithic period: in Mesopotamia, 85: in Syria, 59 f. Cisterns in Palestine, 77.
Coins; in Cyprus, 58; in Egypt, 79; in Mesopotamia, 84, 92 ff.
; forgeries of, 24; making impressions of, 19 f; recording finds of, 9.
Combs, Egyptian, 78.
Committee, Archaeological Joint, 28.
Compass, prismatic, 10.
Copper: in Mesopotamia, 88 f.; in Syria, 60.
Copying, 17 ff.
Corbelled arches, 40.
'Corinthian' pottery, 41.
Crete, 36; pottery from, in Palestine, 73.
Crusaders' churches in Palestine, 76.
Ctesiphon, 84, 94.
Cuneiform inscriptions: in Asia Minor, 51; in Mesopotamia, 90 ff.
Cup-markings in Palestine, 77.
Cyclopean walls, 40 Cylinders and cylinder-sealings: in Cyprus, 56; in Egypt, 78; Hittite, 60, 62, 64; in Mesopotamia, 89 ff.
Cyprus, 54 ff.
; Law of Antiquities, 97; pottery from, in Palestine, 73.
Dipylon period, 40.
Dolmens in Palestine, 77.
Drawing and copying, 17 f. Egypt, 78-82; Law of Antiquities, 98.
Egyptian hieroglyphics, 20; pottery in Palestine, 73; scarabs imitated in Syria, 62; stone bowls, Mesopotamian pottery types resembling, 88.
Eridu, 85, 88.
Excavations: laws controlling, 95 ff.
; unauthorized, 7.
Fara, 85, 88 f. Fibulae: see Brooches.
Figurines: Cypriote, 55; Greek, 35, 40 f., 44 f.; Syrian, 60, 62, 64.
Finds, importance of not breaking up, 9.
Flint implements, 29 ff.
: see also Stone Age.
Forgeries, 24 f. Geometric bronze age ware in Greece, 36; period, 40.
Glass; in Cyprus, 57; in Egypt, 78 ff.
; in Mesopotamia, 91; in Syria, 64.
Glaze, Egyptian, 78 f.; imitated in Babylonia, 91.
Greece, 35 ff., Law of Antiquities, 95.
Hatra, 84.
Hebrew alphabets, 66.
Hieroglyphics, copying of, 17, 20; Hittite, 51, 62.
Hill sanctuaries in Palestine, 76.
Hittite antiquities: in Asia Minor, 51; in Syria, 59 ff.
Inscriptions: copying of, 17, 20 f.; Aramaic, 63, 66, 93; cuneiform, 51, 87, in Cyprus, 57, Greek, 44, 51 f; Hittite, 51, 62; Latin, 53; Lycian,51; Lydian, 51; in Palestinian tombs, 71; Semitic, 62, 66 f., 87.
Institutions, archaeological, 26 f. Iron Age: in Asia Minor, 50; in Cyprus, 56; in Greece, 40; in Mesopotamia, 91-93; in Syria, 60, 62.
Itinerary, recording of, 13 f. Jewellery, forged, 24.
Kassite period, 91.
Khirbet (khirbah), 68 ff.
Khorsabad, 92.
Kohl-pots, 62,78 f. Kok tombs, 71 f. Kuyunjik, 85, 92.
Laconian pottery, 45.
Lagash, 88.
Lamps, Aegean, 37.
Latin inscriptions in Asia Minor, 53.
Laws of Antiquities, 7, 95 ff.
Levelling, 33.
Licences for acquiring antiquities, 9.
Lycian inscriptions and monuments, 51.
Lydian inscriptions, 51.
Ma'abed, Tell el-, 85.
Mastabas, 78.
Mapping, 13.
Mesopotamia, 83 ff.
Minoan Age.
36; pottery in Palestine, 73.
'Minyan' ware, 37.
Mortar, bitumen, 84, 90, 92.
Mosaic, 77, 79.
Mounds, 14: see also Tell.
Muqayyar, Tell, 85.
Museums, use of, 7 f. 'Mycenaean' Age, 37; pottery in Palestine, 73.
Naksh-i-Rustam, 94.
Neolithic Age: see Stone Age.
Niffer, 90.
Nimrud, 92.
Nineveh, 85, 92.
Numerals, West Semitic, 67.
'Obeid, Tell el-, 85, 88 f. Obsidian: Aegean, 37; Mesopotamian, 85, 88.
Olive-presses in Palestine, 77.
Orientalizing Greek antiquities, 41, 44.
Outfit, 10 f. Packing of antiquities, 22 f. Palestine, 65 ff.
Papyri, forged, 24.
Paraffin-wax, 22 f. Parthian period in Mesopotamia, 93.
Pehlevi script, 93 f. Persian period: in Mesopotamia, 92; in Syria, 62.
Photography, 10 f., 21 f. Phrygian inscriptions, 55.
Pins: Greek, 40, 44; Hittite, 60, 62; Mesopotamian, 91.
Place-names, Eastern, 68 f., 83.
Planning, 14, 16 f. Plaster casting, 19 f. Pottery, _passim_; hand-made and wheel-made, 29, 49 f; importance of, 29.
84; packing of, 23.
Preservation of antiquities, 22 f. 'Proto-Corinthian' pottery, 41.
Ptolemaic period, 79.
Red-figured Greek pottery, 44.
Rhodian jar-handles: in Egypt, 79; in Palestine, 73.
Rock-cut tombs, 70 f. Rock-sculptures in Mesopotamia, 83.
Saites, 79.
Samarra, 94.
Sanctuaries: in Cyprus, 54 f.; in Palestine, 76.
Sargonid period, 90.
Sassanian period, 93 f. Scarabs: in Cyprus, 56; in Egypt, 78; in Syria, 62, 64; forged, 24.
Schools of archaeology, 8, 26 f. Sculpture, squeezing of, 18.
Seals: Aegean, 37; Hittite, 62; Mesopotamian, 86, 89, 91; Sassanian, 93; Syrian, of Persian period, 64: see also Cylinders, Scarabs.
Semitic inscriptions, 62, 65-7, 87.
Shahrein, Tell Abu, 85, 88, 90.
Shuruppak, 88.
Sinjerli, 59, 62.
Sites, identification of, 68.
Societies, archaeological, 8, 26 f. Squeezing, 17 ff.
Stone Age, 29 ff.
; in Asia Minor, 48; in Cyprus, 56; in Greece, 35 f.; in Mesopotamia, 84 f., 88; in Palestine, 76; in Syria, 59 f. Sumerian period, 88 ff.
Susa, 85.
Syria, Central and North, 59ff.
Tak-i-Bostan, 94.
Tall: see Tell.
Telephotography, 12.
Tell (mound), 68 f., 83.
Telloh, 88 ff.
Tepe Musyan, 85.
Terra-cottas; see Figurines.
Trees, sacred, 77.
Tombs and burials: in Cyprus, 55; in Mesopotamia.
89-94; 'of the Kings', at Jerusalem, 71; rockcut, in Palestine, 70 f.; in Syria, 59 f: see also Cemeteries.
Turkish Law of Antiquities, 96.
Ukheidir, 84.
Ur, 85, 90.
'Urfirnis' ware, 37.
Ushabtis, 78 f. Warka, 85, 93 f. Wine-presses in Palestine, 77.
Zurghul, 85, 89.
[Illustration: THE LATER CAVE-MEN] Industrial and Social History Series _By KATHARINE ELIZABETH DOPP, Ph.
D._ _The Extension Division of The University of Chicago.
Author of "The Place of Industries in Elementary Education"_ #Book I.
THE TREE-DWELLERS.# THE AGE OF FEAR.
Illustrated with a map, 14 full-page and 46 text drawings in half-tone by HOWARD V. BROWN.
Cloth.
Square 12mo.
158 pages.
_For the primary grades._ #Book II.
THE EARLY CAVE-MEN.# THE AGE OF COMBAT.
Illustrated with a map, 16 full-page and 71 text drawings in half-tone by HOWARD V. BROWN.
Cloth.
Square 12mo.
183 pages.
_For the primary grades._ #Book III.
THE LATER CAVE-MEN.# THE AGE OF THE CHASE.
Illustrated with 27 full-page and 87 text drawings in half-tone by HOWARD V. BROWN.
Cloth.
Square 12mo.
197 pages.
_For the primary grades._ #Book IV.
THE EARLY SEA PEOPLE.# FIRST STEPS IN THE CONQUEST OF THE WATERS.
Illustrated with 21 full-page and 117 text drawings in half-tone by HOWARD V. BROWN and KYOHEI INUKAI.
Cloth.
Square 12mo.
224 pages.
_For the intermediate grades._ _Other volumes, dealing with the early development of pastoral and agricultural life, the age of metals, travel, trade, and transportation, will follow._ _TO_ The Children Who Are Asking for More About the Cave-Men I DEDICATE THIS BOOK [Illustration: "_A feeling of awe came over them while they worked._"--PAGE 172.]
THE LATER CAVE-MEN KATHARINE ELIZABETH DOPP _Lecturer in Education In the Extension Division of the University of Chicago_ [Illustration] RAND McNALLY & COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK LONDON _Copyright, 1906_ By KATHARINE ELIZABETH DOPP _Entered at Stationers' Hall_ Edition of 1928 [Illustration: THE RAND McNALLY PRESS RMN & Co] Made in U. S. A.
* * * * * [Illustration: PREFACE] The series, of which this is the third volume, is an attempt to meet a need that has been felt for several years by parents and physicians, as well as by teachers, supervisors, and others who are actively interested in educational and social progress.
The need of practical activity, which for long ages constituted the entire education of mankind, is at last recognized by the elementary school.
It has been introduced in many places and already results have been attained which demonstrate that it is possible to introduce practical activity in such a way as to afford the child a sound development--physically, intellectually, and morally--and at the same time equip him for efficient social service.
The question that is perplexing educators at the present time is, therefore, not one regarding the value of practical activity, but rather one of ways and means by which practical activity can be harnessed to the educational work.
The discovery of the fact that steam is a force that can do work had to await the invention of machinery by means of which to apply the new force to industrial processes.
The use of practical activity will likewise necessitate many changes in the educational machinery before its richest results are realized.
Yet the conditions that attend the introduction of practical activity as a motive power in education are very different from those that attended the introduction of the use of steam.
In the case of steam the problem was that of applying a new force to an old work.
In the case of practical activity it is a question of restoring a factor which, from the earliest times until within the last two or three decades, has operated as a permanent educational force.
The situation that has recently deprived the child of the opportunity to participate in industrial processes is due, as is well known, to the rapid development of our industrial system.
Since the removal of industrial processes from the home the public has awakened to the fact that the child is being deprived of one of the most potent educational influences, and efforts have already been made to restore the educational factor that was in danger of being lost.
This is the significance of the educational movement at the present time.
As long as a simple organization of society prevailed, the school was not called upon to take up the practical work; but now society has become so complex that the use of practical activity is absolutely essential.
Society to-day makes a greater demand than ever before upon each and all of its members for special skill and knowledge, as well as for breadth of view.
These demands can be met only by such an improvement in educational facilities as corresponds to the increase in the social demand.
Evidently the school must lay hold of all of the educational forces within its reach.
In the transitional movement it is not strange that new factors are being introduced without relation to the educational process as a whole.
The isolation of manual training, sewing, and cooking from the physical, natural, and social sciences is justifiable only on the ground that the means of establishing more organic relations are not yet available.
To continue such isolated activities after a way is found of harnessing them to the educational work is as foolish as to allow steam to expend itself in moving a locomotive up and down the tracks without regard to the destiny of the detached train.
This series is an attempt to facilitate the transitional movement in education which is now taking place by presenting educative materials in a form sufficiently flexible to be readily adapted to the needs of the school that has not yet been equipped for manual training, as well as to the needs of the one that has long recognized practical activity as an essential factor in its work.
Since the experience of the race in industrial and social processes embodies, better than any other experiences of mankind, those things which at the same time appeal to the whole nature of the child and furnish him the means of interpreting the complex processes about him, this experience has been made the groundwork of the present series.
In order to gain cumulative results of value in explaining our own institutions, the materials used have been selected from the life of Aryan peoples.
That we are not yet in possession of all the facts regarding the life of the early Aryans is not considered a sufficient reason for withholding from the child those facts that we have when they can be adapted to his use.
Information regarding the early stages of Aryan life is meager.
Enough has been established, however, to enable us to mark out the main lines of progress through the hunting, the fishing, the pastoral, and the agricultural stages, as well as to present the chief problems that confronted man in taking the first steps in the use of metals, and in the establishment of trade.
Upon these lines, marked out by the geologist, the paleontologist, the archæologist, and the anthropologist, the first numbers of this series are based.
A generalized view of the main steps in the early progress of the race, which it is thus possible to present, is all that is required for educational ends.
Were it possible to present the subject in detail, it would be tedious and unprofitable to all save the specialist.
To select from the monotony of the ages that which is most vital, to so present it as to enable the child to participate in the process by which the race has advanced, is a work more in keeping with the spirit of the age.
To this end the presentation of the subject is made: First, by means of questions, which serve to develop the habit of making use of experience in new situations; second, by narrative, which is employed merely as a literary device for rendering the subject more available to the child; and third, by suggestions for practical activities that may be carried out in hours of work or play, in such a way as to direct into useful channels energy which when left undirected is apt to express itself in trivial if not in anti-social forms.
No part of a book is more significant to the child than the illustrations.
In preparing the illustrations for this series as great pains have been taken to furnish the child with ideas that will guide him in his practical activities as to illustrate the text itself.
Mr. Howard V. Brown, the artist who executed the drawings, has been aided in his search for authentic originals by the late J. W. Powell, _director of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C._; by Frederick J. V. Skiff, _director of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago_, and by the author.
Ethnological collections and the best illustrative works on ethnological subjects scattered throughout the country have been carefully searched for material.
Many of the text illustrations of this volume are reproductions of originals found in the caves and rock shelters of France.
K. E. D. _October, 1906._ * * * * * [Illustration: CONTENTS] PAGE _Dedication_ 7 _Preface_ 8 _Contents_ 12 _Illustrations_ 13 THE LATER CAVE-MEN THE AGE OF THE CHASE PAGE The Reindeer Start for their Summer Home 15 Chew-chew 20 Fleetfoot's Lessons 23 After the Chase 27 Why the Cave-men Made Changes in their Weapons 32 How the Cave-men Made Delicate Spear Points 36 The Return of the Bison 41 The First Bison Hunt of the Season 46 What Happened when the Children Played with Hot Stones 50 Why the Children Began to Eat Boiled Meat 54 The Nutting Season 56 Why Mothers Taught their Children the Boundary Lines 62 What Happened to Fleetfoot 65 How the Strangers Camped for the Night 69 Fleetfoot is Adopted by the Bison Clan 72 How the Cave-men Protected Themselves from the Cold 77 How the Children Played in Winter 81 Overtaken by a Storm 84 How Antler Happened to Invent Snowshoes 88 How Antler Made Snares 92 How Spears Were Changed into Harpoons 97 How the Cave-men Hunted with Harpoons 101 How the Cave-men Tested Fleetfoot and Flaker 105 Fleetfoot and Flaker See a Combat 109 What Happened when Fleetfoot and Flaker Hunted the Bison 111 What the Cave-men did for Flaker 115 How Flaker Learned to Make Weapons of Bone 118 How Flaker Invented the Saw 121 The Reindeer Dance 124 Fleetfoot Prepares for his Final Test 128 Fleetfoot Fasts and Prays 132 The Meeting of the Clans 139 What Happened when the Clans Found Fleetfoot 143 Fleetfoot's Return 147 Willow-grouse 150 How Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse Spent the Winter 153 How Willow-grouse Learned to Make Needles 157 How Flaker Became a Priest and a Medicine Man 161 How the Cave-men Learned to Boil and to Dry Foods 165 The New Home 168 How the Clans United to Hunt the Bison 173 How Things Were Made to Do the Work of Men 178 How the Cave-men Rewarded and Punished the Clansmen 182 _Suggestions to Teachers_ 185 [Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS] FULL PAGE PAGE "_A feeling of awe came over them while they worked_" Frontispiece "_Pigeon boiled meat and gave it to the men, and they all sounded her praises_" 14 "_The reindeer swam through the deep water and waded out to the opposite bank_" 17 _Chew-chew telling stories to Fleetfoot_ 21 "_Then Scarface threw, and all the horses took fright_" 25 "_Chew-chew took her basket and started up the dry ravine_" 29 "_She took a flint point and scratched the men's arms until she made big scars_" 31 "_Straightshaft saw the herd at sunrise and made a sign to the men_" 42 "_At the close of the day there was not a little valley in the surrounding country that did not have a herd of two or three hundred bison_" 45 "_With a quick snort he turned and charged_" 47 "_Chew-chew tried to teach the children how to know the hissing sound_" 53 "_All the women and children went nutting_" 57 _The wild hogs were having a feast_ 59 "_Mothers taught their children what the boundaries were_" 63 "_A big man caught him, and put him upon his shoulder_" 67 "_The tent was an old oak, which reached out long and low-spreading branches_" 70 "_Greybeard asked Fleetfoot to drop the hot stones in the water again_" 76 "_When the men saw the new garment they wondered how it was made_" 79 "_But many could find no protection, so they turned about and faced the storm_" 87 "_And so the Cave-men tested the boys in many different ways_" 104 "_Then their antlers crashed in a swift charge_" 108 "_They looked so much like wolves that they got very close before the bison threatened_" 113 "_What the Cave-men did for Flaker_" 116 "_People began to wander away from their old homes_" 129 "_It was the melting of this glacier which fed the little stream_" 136 "_Greybeard, now old and feeble, walked all the way to the spot_" 171 _After the bison hunt_ 181 TEXT _A reindeer_ 16 _A stone ax_ 24 _A stone knife_ 32 _A laurel leaf_ 32 _Laurel leaf-shaped spear point_ 32 _A stone scraper_ 34 _A shaft-straightener_ 35 _A delicate spearhead_ 36 "_When the Cave-men held the flint in the hand, the hand yielded to the light blow_" 37 "_While Scarface placed the punch he sang in low tones_" 37 _Straightshaft using a flaker_ 38 _A flaker_ 39 _An ibex_ 43 _A bear's tooth awl_ 51 _A scraper_ 73 _A skin stretched on a frame_ 73 _A hammer of reindeer horn_ 74 _A cave-man's glove_ 80 _A stone maul_ 89 _Fur gloves_ 90 _A snowshoe_ 91 "_Then she set snares on the ground and fastened them to strong branches_" 94 "_Antler learned to protect the cord by running it through a hollow bone_" 94 "_So it ran along and nibbled the bait until its sharp teeth cut the cord_" 95 _A chisel-scraper_ 98 _A barbed point_ 99 _A harpoon_ 100 _Chipper using a spear-noose_ 102 _A Cave-man's carving of a "hamstrung" animal_ 114 _A wedge or tent pin_ 119 _The head of a javelin_ 120 _A small antler_ 121 _A knife with two blades, a saw, and a file, all in one_ 122 _A Cave-man's dagger_ 123 _A Cave-man's mortar stone_ 125 _A drum_ 126 _The engraving of a cave-bear_ 131 _A stone borer_ 134 _A necklace of fossil shells_ 139 _A throwing-stick_ 145 _An Irish deer_ 146 _A fragment of a Cave-man's baton, engraved_ 147 _A Cave-man's nose ornament_ 149 _A Cave-man's baton, engraved_ 149 _An Eskimo drawing of reindeer caught in snares_ 151 "_A piece of sandstone for flattening seams_" 152 _A reindeer snare_ 152 _Three views of a Cave-man's spearhead_ 154 "_It was during this time that the Bison clan learned to use the throwing-stick_" 155 _Harpoons with several barbs_ 156 _A bone awl_ 157 _A bone pin_ 157 _A large bone needle_ 157 _A bone from which the Cave-men have sawed out slender rods for needles_ 158 _A piece of sandstone used by the Cave-men in making needles_ 158 _A flint comb used in rounding and polishing needles_ 158 _A flint saw used in making needles of bone_ 158 _A short needle of bone_ 159 _A flint comb used in shredding fibers_ 159 _A long fine needle of bone_ 159 _Two views of a curved bone tool_ 160 _A Cave-man's engraving of two herds of wild horses_ 162 _A Cave-man's carving of horses' heads_ 163 _A Cave-man's engraving of a reindeer_ 163 _Harpoons of reindeer antler_ 166 _A flint harpoon with one barb_ 167 _A spoon-shaped stone_ 167 _A baby's hood_ 169 "_In summer he played in the basket cradle_" 169 _First step in coiled basketry_ 170 _Second step in coiled basketry_ 170 _Three rows of coiled work_ 170 _A water basket_ 172 _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent showing the interior structure_ 175 _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent showing the exterior_ 175 _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent with covering pulled one side so as to show the ends of the poles which support the roof_ 175 _Framework showing the best kind of a tent made by the Cave-men_ 176 _A tent pin_ 176 _Handle of a Cave-man's hunting-knife with engraving_ 182 _A hunter's tally_ 183 _Fragment of Cave-man's baton_ 183 _Engraving of a seal upon a bear's tooth_ 184 _A Cave-man's hairpin, engraved_ 184 [Illustration: "_Pigeon boiled meat and gave it to the men, and they all sounded her praises._"--_Page 166._] * * * * * THE LATER CAVE-MEN THE AGE OF THE CHASE I _The Reindeer Start for their Summer Home_ Every winter the reindeer came to the wooded hills where the Cave-men lived.
No matter how deep the snow, they always found food.
Sometimes they stretched their slender necks and ate moss from the trees.
Again they scraped up the snow with their forefeet and found dry grass.
The reindeer liked cold weather.
They liked the north wind that brought the snow.
As soon as the snow began to melt, they started toward the mountains.
In the high valleys among the mountains, there was snow all the year round.
One morning the Cave-men awoke and found the south wind blowing.
All the people were glad; for they knew it would drive the winter away.
The reindeer sniffed the warm wind and knew it was time to go.
Each leader signaled to his herd.
And soon the wooded hills were dotted with small herds moving toward the ford.
Straightshaft saw what the reindeer were doing and he signaled the news to the men.
Then the Cave-men gathered around Scarface, who was to lead them in the hunt.
The children had listened to all that was said about the great herd.
They could scarcely wait to see it.
Fleetfoot pulled his grandmother's hand and started up the cliff.
Chew-chew wanted to see the herds meet at the reindeer ford.
All the women wanted to see the great herd before it went away.
So they all climbed the cliff where they could get a good view.
When the children saw a herd near the river, they clapped their hands and shouted.
Then Chew-chew pointed out many herds and they all danced for joy.
The scattered herds were coming slowly down the little valleys.
Each followed a handsome leader headed toward the ford.
[Illustration: _A reindeer._] "Look!"
said Chew-chew as the leader of a herd plunged into the river.
The herd plunged too, for reindeer know it is best to follow their leader.
The reindeer swam through the deep water and waded out to the opposite bank.
Then the frightened creatures hurried on toward the well-known ford.
[Illustration: "_The reindeer swam through the deep water and waded out to the opposite bank._"] "Why did the reindeer jump into the river?"
asked Fleetfoot of Chew-chew.
Before she could answer Eagle-eye pointed to a big cave-bear.
The cave-bear was going into a thicket when Fleetfoot heard his mother say, "Cave-bears and hyenas hide in the thickets.
They lie in wait for the herds."
Scarface seemed to be lying in wait on some rocks by an evergreen tree.
He had stopped on his way to the reindeer pass to see what had frightened the herd.
While the men were going to the pass, the reindeer were gathering at the ford.
Several herds of two or three hundred each were already there.
Other herds were coming.
The flat sandy banks on one side of the river were already covered with reindeer.
Soon the ford was filled, and the reindeer began to press up the narrow river valley.
When at last all the herds from the wooded hills were gathered at the ford, the handsomest leader of all stepped forth to lead the way.
After looking around to see if an enemy was near, he started up the well-trodden trail through the narrow river valley.
Slowly the great herd began to move.
To those watching from the cliff, it looked like a moving forest.
Those in advance were soon out of sight, and were going toward the pass.
Meanwhile the men had reached the pass where the bravest ones hid at the farther end.
There they waited to spear the reindeer, while others hid behind rocks near the entrance to drive the reindeer on.
While the women and children watched from the cliff a signal came from the men.
It was a call for the women to come and carry the reindeer to the cave.
The younger women went, but Chew-chew stayed and watched with the children.
At length the Cave-men returned.
The men brought trophies and the women brought heavy loads of meat.
They found Chew-chew and the children still watching from the cliff.
There they all watched for a long, long time; for not until the sun was low down in the sky had the last of the reindeer left the ford.
#THINGS TO DO# _Model a large river valley with many little valleys in it.
Show where the small herds were.
Model the cliffs along the river and show the flat sandy banks on one side, and the narrow valley with steep sides on the other._ _Find rocks and make the reindeer pass.
Make the trail from the ford through the narrow valley to the pass._ _Play the story this lesson tells._ _Draw one of these pictures_:-_The reindeer stretched their slender necks and ate moss from the trees._ _The reindeer sniffed the warm wind and knew it was time to go._ _Fleetfoot pulled his grandmother's hand and started up the cliff._ _The cave-bears and hyenas hide in the thickets._ _Hunting at the reindeer pass._ _Show how Eagle-eye loaded a reindeer upon her back.
Model Eagle-eye in clay so as to show how she carried the reindeer._ II THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If you have read the story of "The Early Cave-men," tell how the cave that was flooded was made.
Can you think of any other way in which a cave might be made?
If you have ever seen a shallow hole in a cliff, see if you can find out how it was made.
If such a hole was made in a very soft rock what would happen to it?
What would happen to a hole made in a hard rock?
See if you can find a piece of limestone.
What do we use limestone for?
If we wanted a house of limestone, what would we do to get it?
When the Cave-men wanted a limestone house, what did they do?
_Chew-chew_ Chew-chew was the oldest woman in the cave at the Fork of the River.
She was not as strong as she once had been; but she was still able to lead the women in their work.
Her sons' wives carried the heaviest burdens, but Chew-chew still carried heavy loads.
Chew-chew was the wisest woman in the cave.
When the other women did not know what to do, they always asked Chew-chew.
The bravest men were always glad to get Chew-chew's advice.
The children thought nobody could tell such stories as Chew-chew told.
Chew-chew and all of her children belonged to the Horse clan.
All the children in those days took the clan name of their mother.
Chew-chew's sons had captured wives from the Reindeer clan.
And so the children in Chew-chew's cave belonged to the Reindeer clan.
It thus happened that in every cave there were people of different clans.
But since Chew-chew was the oldest woman in the cave, we shall call the people at the Fork of the River by the name of the Horse clan.
[Illustration: _Chew-chew telling stories to Fleetfoot._] Chew-chew often told the children about her first home.
She told them about the cave near the River of Snow, which was much like the cave which sheltered them.
She told them about the wide shelving rocks which were like the ones above their cave.
And she told how frightened her people were the day a rock fell near the mouth of their cave.
No one knew at the time what made the rock fall.
No one knew there was no need of being afraid.
Some one said that the god of the cliff was angry and that he had pushed the rock down.
Everybody believed the story.
So nobody dared go near the cave.
But the Cave-men needed a shelter.
So they offered gifts to the god of the cliffs.
When they thought he was satisfied, they all went back to the cave.
And after a while they used the big rock as a table for their work.
Chew-chew wanted the children to grow to be brave and wise.
So she told them stories of the bravest and wisest people of her clan.
She told them stories about their grandfathers who were the heroes of the olden times.
And Fleetfoot never grew tired of hearing about the wonderful things which his grandfathers did.
And so Chew-chew taught the children all she thought they ought to know.
And they looked into her eyes and listened to all that she said.
#THINGS TO DO# _If there are cliffs or shelving rocks near by, go and see them.
Find places where you think caves may form.
Find out why it is that the rocks shelve.
Why does a shelving rock sometimes break and fall to the ground?_ _Model the cliffs which you find.
Model a cave which is formed in a cliff._ _Tell a story which you think Chew-chew might have told to the children._ _Play one of these plays:_-_Chew-chew telling stories to the children._ _What the people did when the rock fell near the mouth of the cave._ _Draw a picture of something which you have played._ III THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why did Chew-chew tell the children stories about their forefathers?
Why do we like to hear such stories?
Do you think that the later Cave-men will hunt in just the same way that the early Cave-men did?
What change took place in the animals while the Cave-men were learning to be good hunters?
What change did the Cave-men have to make in their hunting on account of this?
Of all the animals you know, which are the fastest runners?
Can you think how they became fast runners?
_Fleetfoot's Lessons_ When the men were at home, Fleetfoot liked to stay with them.
He liked to watch them make spears; he liked to watch them run races; he liked to listen to the stories they told about the wild animals.
When the men went out to hunt, Fleetfoot wanted to go with them.
But he was a little boy, and had to stay at home.
Sometimes he went with his mother when she went to dig roots; sometimes he went with her to gather twigs for baskets.
But the safest place for little children was not far from the fire.
So Fleetfoot stayed at home nearly all the time.
While the children played near the cave, Chew-chew broke fagots with a stone ax.
When she was ready to sit down, they all gathered around her.
They knew that that was one of the times when Chew-chew told them stories.
[Illustration: _A stone ax._] This time Chew-chew began with a story of the early Cave-men.
She told of animals that stood their ground and fought instead of running away.
She told about the strong spears and axes made to conquer the wild beasts.
She told of brave and daring deeds of the heroes of olden times.
None of the animals feared man before he had fire.
And for a long time afterward none of them feared him without a torch.
But the early Cave-men made strong weapons after they had fire.
They struck hard blows with their stone axes, which the animals learned to fear.
Grass-eating animals feared beasts of prey long before the Tree-dwellers lived.
Wild horses learned to run fast by trying to escape from packs of wolves.
They learned to keep sentinels to watch while the herd fed.
All the grass-eating animals learned to do this.
The sentinels signaled at a sign of danger, and then the herd ran; and so their enemies learned to hunt by following the chase.
When Chew-chew was tired of telling stories, she marked out a path for a race.
Then she showed the children how to get a fair start, by standing abreast and holding a stick.
The children learned to keep in step until they reached the real starting place.
Then they dropped the stick and ran.
And they all clapped their hands and cheered the one who won the race.
[Illustration: "_Then Scarface threw, and all the horses took fright._"] After the children had raced a long time, they came back to Chew-chew for another story.
And this time she told them stories about the men of their own clan.
They often chased the animals from early morn until noon.
At first they got very tired when they went on a long chase.
But the more they practiced running, the better they hunted in the real chase.
When the story was ended, the children climbed the cliff.
Chew-chew went with them and they all looked at the wild horses going up the trail.
The horses had been to the river to drink and now they were going away.
They were following their leader up the trail which led to the grassy plains.
Chew-chew knew where the men were lying in wait and she pointed out the spot.
The children looked just in time to see Straightshaft throw his spear.
Then Scarface threw, and all the horses took fright.
Up hill and down, through bushes and briars, the horses galloped away.
The Cave-men followed the wounded ones, hurling their spears as they ran.
The chase was long and weary, and some of the wounded horses escaped.
But the men returned with many trophies and the women brought heavy loads of meat.
The trophies the Cave-men prized the most were the heads of the wild horses.
They kept these trophies near the cave, and they thought that they were charms.
The Cave-men thought that the horses' heads would bring more horses to the hunting grounds.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tell a story about the age of combat.
Tell a story about the age of the chase.
Draw a picture to illustrate each story._ _Show on your sand-map where the men were lying in wait for the horses.
Model the trail which the horses followed._ _What chasing game do you know how to play?
Can you think how some of these games first started?_ _Why do people not try to run as fast in a long race as in a short one?_ _Model in clay something which you might name "The Age of Combat.
"_ IV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT How do you feel after you have had a long, hard chase?
What does your mother tell you to do when you come in dripping with sweat?
How do you think the Cave-men learned to take care of themselves?
When they were lame and stiff, do you think they would know what made them so?
Think of as many things as you can that they might do to make themselves feel better.
_After the Chase_ When the long, hard chase was over, the Cave-men were tired and dripping with sweat.
All but Scarface threw themselves upon the cold ground to rest.
It was Scarface who blew the whistle which called the women to the spot.
It was he who guarded the carcasses until the women came.
And while the women skinned the horses he sat on a log to rest.
It was sunset when they reached the cave.
All joined in a feast upon horse flesh, then they slept until break of day.
It was then that the men groaned with pain.
Their muscles ached, and they were so lame that they could scarcely move.
Scarface alone of all the men was not suffering with pain.
Perhaps you can tell what made the men lame.
None of the Cave-men knew.
Everybody thought that an angry god was trying to punish them.
And so the men tried to drive the god away by raising fearful shouts.
Then they asked Chew-chew's advice, and Chew-chew took her basket and started up the dry ravine.
There she found bitter roots which she gathered and carried home.
No one knew at that time how to steep roots, for people had not learned how to boil.
So Chew-chew chopped the roots with a stone chopper and laid them upon hot stones.
And while the men breathed the bitter fumes, Chew-chew threatened the angry god and commanded him to go away.
In a few days the men were well and it was almost time to go hunting again.
Straightshaft feared the angry god.
He talked with the men and they wondered why it was that Scarface escaped.
They looked at his deep scar which a tiger's claw had made.
And then they looked at the trophies of Scarface which he wore about his neck.
Every Cave-man admired the deep scar of the bravest man in the clan.
Every man wished that he, too, could show such a scar as that.
And the men began to wonder if the scar was a kind of a charm.
[Illustration: "_Chew-chew took her basket and started up the dry ravine._"] The more the men talked about the scar, the more they wanted scars.
They talked with Chew-chew about it, and at last decided to let her make scars.
So Chew-chew muttered prayers to the gods, and asked them not to hurt the Cave-men.
Then she took a flint point and scratched the men's arms until she made big scars.
Years afterward, when people made scars, they stained them with all sorts of things.
Sometimes they stained the scars with juices of plants, and sometimes they colored them with paints.
The Cave-men thought they could protect themselves by scars, and by all sorts of charms.
So they kept on making scars, and they hunted for all sorts of charms.
But no matter how many charms they wore, they often were lame and stiff.
Some one must have noticed that they were more apt to be lame after sitting on the cold ground while they were warm.
For after a while the custom grew of never sitting on the bare ground while they were warm.
#THINGS TO DO# _Draw or paint a pattern which you think the Cave-men might have tattooed upon their arms.
Where do we put the pictures which we make?_ _Find and name as many roots and herbs as you can that are used as medicines._ _What animals have you seen eating herbs?_ _What mistakes did the Cave-men make when they tried to cure themselves?_ [Illustration: "_She took a flint point and scratched the men's arms until she made big scars._"] V THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What way can you use a spear besides thrusting it with one or both hands?
What changes do you think the Cave-men made in their spearheads when they began to throw spears?
What changes do you think they made in the shafts?
How do you think the Cave-men made straight shafts for their spears?
What do we do with wood when we wish to bend it?
_Why the Cave-men made Changes in their Weapons_ [Illustration: _A stone knife._] While the Cave-men were resting from the hunt, they did a great many things.
They practiced running; they hunted for stuff to make new weapons; they worked upon their weapons and trophies; they learned new hunting dances.
No matter what they did, they always asked their gods to help.
[Illustration: _A laurel leaf._] [Illustration: _Laurel leaf-shaped spear point._] All the later Cave-men learned to make light spears and javelins.
The clumsy spear which served Strongarm so well was not what Scarface needed.
But in the days of the early Cave-men the heavy spear was a good weapon.
Strongarm cared as much for his spear as you do for your dog.
It was like a friend in time of need.
Few animals could withstand Strongarm's blow when he grasped his spear in one or both hands and lunged forward with all his might.
His spear was a powerful weapon.
But Strongarm lived in the age of combat when people fought animals at close range.
The later Cave-men did not make light spears and javelins all at once.
They began by throwing heavy spears.
Chew-chew could tell of many a hunter who lost his life throwing a spear.
Sometimes it was because the spear was too heavy to throw with enough force.
Sometimes it was because the shaft was crooked and the spear did not go to the right spot.
When the Cave-men practiced throwing, they did not stand still and throw.
They took aim and threw as they ran.
That was the kind of practice they needed for the real chase.
The mark, too, was a moving mark.
It was made of a bundle of branches, or an old skin stuffed with leaves.
While one man dragged it by a long cord, the others ran after it, throwing their spears.
A Cave-man could wound an animal with a spear, but he could not give a deadly blow.
There was always danger of the wounded animal turning upon the hunter.
A skilled hunter with a good spear ran little risk in throwing it.
But not all the Cave-men had enough skill.
Not all of the Cave-men made good enough weapons to be thrown with a sure aim.
And so the Cave-men learned new ways of making and using spears.
Perhaps they did not want to do it.
But they had to do it or die.
So you see why the men and boys spent most of their time in learning to follow the chase.
Even the women and girls learned to hunt and to make all sorts of weapons.
Long before Scarface lived the Cave-men began to make lighter spears.
The straighter they made the shaft, the easier it was to hit the mark.
And so the Cave-men began to vie with one another in making the straightest and smoothest shafts.
[Illustration: _A stone scraper._] When they cut the sticks for the shafts the Cave-men made gifts to the wood-gods, and asked for the straightest and toughest branches that grew on the trees.
Then they cut the branches carefully and carried them home to the cave.
There they peeled them from butt to tip and smoothed them with stone scrapers.
Sometimes they rubbed them with fat and laid them away to dry.
It was hard work to make a crooked stick straight.
But the Cave-men tried many ways and at last they learned to make as beautiful shafts as ever have been made.
When the Cave-men pulled the shaft back and forth on the sandstone, they made deep grooves in it.
We have found pieces of grooved sandstone that the later Cave-men used.
Sometimes they would clamp a crooked stick between a grooved piece of sandstone and a flat bone.
Then they would pull and twist, and pull and twist, and pull and twist that stick back and forth until the crooked place was made straight.
[Illustration: _A shaft-straightener._] When Scarface was very old he made a shaft-straightener of a piece of reindeer horn.
He carved the head of the reindeer upon it, and made a hole for the shaft.
Then he thrust the crooked stick through the hole and turned the shaft-straightener round and round as we turn a wrench, until he straightened the shaft.
#THINGS TO DO# _See if you can find a good branch for a shaft.
If you have a right to cut the branch, see if you can make it into a shaft._ _Find a stone which you can use for a scraper.
What else can you use as a scraper?_ _If you do not care to make a shaft, make something else out of the stick which you straighten._ _Name the things which you have at home or at school made of wood._ _Make a collection of the different kinds of wood which you know._ _Which of these are soft wood?
What do we use soft wood for?
Which are hard?
What do we use hard wood for?_ VI.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Can you think why the Cave-men used stone for their spear points and knives before they used bone or horn?
What tools did the Cave-men need in making flint spear points?
Why did the Cave-men have to learn to strike gentle blows in making their weapons?
Can you think of any way of removing little pieces of flint besides striking them off?
_How the Cave-men made Delicate Spear Points_ Perhaps you have seen very beautiful Indian arrows.
Perhaps you have wished you could make such arrows yourself.
The later Cave-men first made such weapons and no people since have ever been able to make more beautiful ones.
The early Cave-men did not need such beautiful spear points.
Rough points of flint and heavy stone axes were the weapons they needed most.
It was not until the Age of the Chase that people shaped stone into beautiful forms.
[Illustration] Scarface always used flakes of flint for the points of spears and javelins.
But in earlier times, people did not know how to strike off flakes of flint.
They put the flint on a hard rock and struck it with a heavy blow.
They smashed the flint, for the hard rock did not yield.
They had not learned to let the flint break in its own way.
When the Cave-men held the flint in the hand, the hand yielded to the light blow.
The flint broke in its own way.
But the sharp edges cut the men's hands.
So they covered the palms of their hands with rawhide and kept from getting hurt.
When they worked in this way, they had no trouble in striking off flakes for spear points and knives.
When the men worked on their flint points, Fleetfoot liked to play near the workshop.
He liked to watch Straightshaft strike off flakes with a hammer-stone and punch.
He liked to listen to the song that Scarface and Straightshaft sang.
[Illustration: "_When the Cave-men held the flint in the hand, the hand yielded to the light blow._"] Scarface and Straightshaft always sang when they worked with the hammer-stone and punch.
While Scarface placed the punch he sang in low tones.
And when he was ready for Straightshaft to strike, he sang so as to let him know.
Then Straightshaft took up the song and marked the time for each blow.
[Illustration: "_While Scarface placed the punch he sang in low tones._"] The men always sang when they worked together.
If one man stopped when it was his turn to sing, the other did not know what to do.
Besides marking the time, the song helped the men to measure the force of each blow.
It helped them to strike off tiny flakes so as not to break the point.
So, at length, the Cave-men began to think that the song they sang was a charm.
While the men struck off large flint flakes, Fleetfoot played not far away.
He played while they hafted long narrow flakes for knives, but when they began to chip spearheads, he came and watched them at their work.
He listened to the song of Scarface and Straightshaft, while they shaped a fine spearhead.
At length the spearhead was ready for the finishing touches.
So Straightshaft dropped his hammer-stone and picked up a queer little tool.
He called it a flaker, and he used it to press off tiny flakes from the beautiful point.
[Illustration: _Straightshaft using a flaker._] When Straightshaft had finished, he dropped the flaker and Fleetfoot picked it up.
And he asked Straightshaft if he might use it to press off little flakes.
Straightshaft let him try, but Fleetfoot was not strong enough to press off hard flint flakes.
So he listened to the story that Scarface told of the young man who first made a flaker.
Holding up a little bone flaker, Scarface turned to the men and said: "When I was a boy, no one pressed off flakes of flint.
No one had a flaker.
We hammered off flint flakes.
"One summer when there were plenty of salmon, the neighboring clans had a great feast.
Nimble-finger came.
I saw him.
I heard him speak.
The third day of the feast I saw him flake flint."
[Illustration: _A flaker._] As Scarface went on he told how Nimble-finger invented the flaker.
He did it one day when he was making a bone handle for a knife.
When he was scraping a bone with a flint scraper he happened to press off a flint flake.
Nimble-finger did not know how it happened.
He tried again and again.
At last he pressed off another flake; and this time he knew that he did it by pressing the point of the bone against one edge of the flint.
Nimble-finger never finished that bone-handled hunting knife.
But he showed the people how to make a flaker.
He became an inventor; for he gave the world a tool it had never had before.
When the people returned from the feast many forgot about the flaker.
Others longed for delicate spear points like those Nimble-finger made.
So, at length, they tried to make flakers of their own.
Some tried to make them of wood; but the wood was too soft to break the stone.
Others tried to make them of ivory; but ivory was too hard to get a hold.
At length all the Cave-men made flakers of antler and bone, for they were hard enough to break the stone and soft enough to get a hold.
When Scarface finished, Fleetfoot began to talk about Nimble-finger.
He asked Scarface, "Where does Nimble-finger live?
Does he always come to the great feasts?"
To the child's questions Scarface replied, "While Nimble-finger was still a young man he went far away.
For many years he lived far north in a cave beside the River of Stones.
But years have come and gone since then.
If he still lives, he is an old man; but of that I know not."
#THINGS TO DO# _If you can find a piece of flint strike off a flake with a hammer-stone.
Strike off a flake with an angular stone.
Strike off a flake by using a hammer and punch._ _Sort out the flakes that are good for knives.
Put handles on them.
Sort out the flakes that are good for making into spearheads.
See if you can strike off tiny flakes until the large flake looks like a spearhead._ _Find something which you can use as a flaker.
When you have made one, see if you can use it._ _Make a collection of stones which you can chip or flake.
Tell all you know about each of those stones._ _Think of Scarface as he was telling the story.
Draw the picture._ VII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do our horses and cattle eat?
Where do we get their food?
What do wild cattle and horses eat?
See if you can find out whether wild cattle or horses have ever lived in a place where the ground is covered with snow part of the year.
Did you ever see cattle pawing the ground?
Did you ever see horses pawing the ground?
Did you ever see them paw the snow?
See if you can find out something about the great herds of bison that used to live in this country.
What has become of them?
Can you think why bison live in herds?
What officers does a herd of bison have?
Can you think how the officers of a herd of bison are chosen?
_The Return of the Bison_ Ever since the reindeer went away the Cave-men had been looking for the return of the bison.
Each summer the herds came up the valley to feed on green grass and tender shoots.
Each winter they went to the forests of the lowlands where they found shelter from the cold.
The snow was now gone from the wooded hills and the days were warm again.
The dingy brown coats of the hillsides were changing to the palest green.
The buds were beginning to swell.
Everything seemed to say that summer was coming.
Each day the Cave-men watched for signs of the coming of the great herd.
Each night they danced the bison dance and tried to make the bison come.
One morning Straightshaft climbed the cliff and looked far up and down the valley.
Looking north he could see the River of Stones with high cliffs on one or both banks.
He could see dense forests of evergreen that grew on the low banks.
He could see hills and valleys beyond the cliffs where many wild animals lived.
Looking south, near at hand, was the Fork of the River where Little River joined the River of Stones.
Here the cliffs were not very high; farther down, they became lower, and at last there were no cliffs.
The edge of the lowland forest where the bison wintered could be seen far away.
Grassy lowlands near the forests stretched farther than the eye could see.
It was here that the bison and cattle found the best winter pastures.
It was in the lowland forests that they found shelter from the cold.
[Illustration: "_Straightshaft saw the herd at sunrise and made a sign to the men._"] Straightshaft looked toward the lowlands, hoping to see a bison.
Mammoths were feeding not far away, and beyond were woolly rhinoceroses.
But there was not one bison.
[Illustration: _An ibex._] As Straightshaft watched the second day, chamois and ibexes played on the hills.
Herds of horses came from the grassy uplands and returned after drinking at the ford.
But no sign of a bison yet appeared.
The third day Straightshaft saw a black spot in the distance.
It was far down on the river trail.
As he watched, it became larger and larger.
And then Straightshaft knew that it was a bison coming in advance of the great herd.
The morning of the fourth day the great herd came.
A powerful bison led the way.
Strong sentinels guarded either side.
The herd followed blindly, galloping eight or ten abreast.
Straightshaft saw the herd at sunrise and made a sign to the men.
Those who saw it passed it along, and soon all the people had seen the sign.
Then everybody climbed up a hill or a high cliff and watched the coming of the bison.
Nearer and nearer the great herd came, like a sea of tossing manes and horns.
The earth trembled beneath their tread and the air was filled with their bellowing.
When the bison reached the ford, the foremost creatures stopped to drink.
But the solid mass, pressing on from the rear, crowded them up the river.
Soon the ford was packed with struggling beasts.
Some tried to escape by swimming up the river.
Others swam down the stream.
And still the solid mass from the rear kept crowding on and on.
At length the herd divided.
One part followed the river trail, while the other went up the narrow valley.
Whenever a herd reached a branching valley, a big bison led off a small herd.
This happened many a time.
And at the close of the day there was not a little valley in the surrounding country that did not have a herd of two or three hundred bison.
#THINGS TO DO# _Play you are a herd of bison, and show how the herd marched.
Show how it divided.
Show how you think it would come together again._ _Show in your sand-box where Straightshaft stood while he watched.
Show the trails the bison followed._ _Think of the herd as it galloped up the river trail.
Draw the picture._ _Make such a sign as you think Straightshaft made._ _Plan a bison dance._ VIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If you were to hunt bison, what would you want to know about them?
In what ways can bison notice signs of danger?
In what ways can they help one another?
Watch animals, and see if they give signs to one another.
What weapons do you think the Cave-men would take when they went to hunt the bison?
How could the Cave-men help one another in hunting?
How might one man hinder the others?
[Illustration: "_At the close of the day there was not a little valley in the surrounding country that did not have a herd of two or three hundred bison._"] _The First Bison Hunt of the Season_ And now the great herd of bison had come, and the Cave-men were eager to hunt them.
While they were getting ready to start they kept up this merry song:-_The bison have come;_ _The bison have come;_ _Now for the chase!_ _Now for the chase!_ _Bring axes and spears;_ _Bring axes and spears;_ _Now for the chase!_ _Now for the chase!_ When Scarface climbed the cliff he saw three herds of bison.
The first was feeding in an open space; the second was on a hillside, and the third was in a narrow valley close by a deep and hidden ravine.
This was a place where the Cave-men liked to hunt.
So they agreed to follow Scarface through the hidden ravine.
Scarface led the way, and all the men followed.
Not a leaf rustled beneath their tread.
Not a twig broke as they crept up the side of the deep ravine and looked out at the herd.
Everybody wanted to get the yearlings or young cows, for their flesh was tender and sweet.
But the cows and young bison were in the center of the herd.
They were guarded by the sentinels, whose flesh was hard and tough.
And so the Cave-men wondered how to get a young bison.
They wondered if the vigilant leader was more than a match for them.
They watched his signals, and saw fresh sentinels take the places of the hungry ones.
They noticed how quickly the bison obeyed every signal the leader gave.
[Illustration: "_With a quick snort he turned and charged._"] At last the Cave-men decided to attack the leader first.
They waited till he was not more than a stone's throw away.
Then Scarface gave the signal and the men made a bold attack.
Straightshaft hurled his spear with all his might, then turned to give place to the others.
The leader was taken by surprise.
The men had crept up so quietly that not till the spear whizzed through the air did he suspect danger.
With a quick snort he turned and charged.
Straightshaft ran, but the others met the charge.
They hurled their spears and dealt heavy blows with their stone axes.
Before the leader could give the alarm he lay stretched out on the ground.
The sentinels looked for a signal.
Meanwhile the cows and yearlings tried to make their escape.
Then each of several sentinels tried to lead.
But the frightened herd did not know which one to follow.
Some of the bison rushed one way and some rushed another.
Then there was a general stampede.
They gored one another with their sharp horns.
They trampled one another under their feet.
They were too frightened to know what they were doing.
It was then that the Cave-men singled out the young bison.
When they had secured them for their prize, they started toward the cave, singing-_To-day we went hunting._ _We crept up the ravine;_ _We surprised the leader of the bison._ _He made a charge upon us--_ _We have his horns for a headdress._ _We killed many a young bison;_ _We have plenty of tender meat._ Perhaps one of the sentinels became leader of the herd that very day.
Perhaps several battles were fought to see which sentinel was the strongest.
For bison never follow a leader that is not stronger and wiser than themselves.
#THINGS TO DO# _Show in your sand-box where each of the three herds was feeding._ _Make a plan for hunting the herd that was feeding in an open space._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_The Cave-men creeping up the banks of the steep ravine._ _The charge of the leader._ _The stampede._ _Deciding which bison shall be leader of the herd._ _Make a song to sing in getting ready to hunt the way you have planned.
Make a song to sing on your return._ _Model a large, strong bison._ IX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Watch water when it is boiling, and see if you can tell what happens.
Why would it be harder for people to learn to boil than to roast?
What kind of dishes did the Cave-men have?
What would happen to them if they were put over the fire?
What does your mother do, when she wants to find out whether the flatiron is hot enough to iron?
When the Cave-men first learned to boil water, do you think they would think of boiling food?
What might make them think of boiling food?
_What Happened when the Children Played with Hot Stones_ Again the Cave-men went out to hunt.
Again the women went out to gather roots and berries.
Only Chew-chew and the children were left near the cave.
Chew-chew was curing the skins which the women had brought home.
Some of them were stretched out on the ground.
Others were stretched on frames.
Many of these were ready to be rolled up and put away.
While the skins were drying, Chew-chew had time for other work.
She wanted to finish her basket, and so the splints must be put to soak.
At a sign from Chew-chew, Fleetfoot went to the river for a bag of water.
While he was gone, Chew-chew began to make a place to put it.
She dug a shallow hole in the ground and lined it with a skin.
When Fleetfoot came back they patted down the skin.
Then they poured the water into the skin-lined hole, and put the splints to soak.
While Chew-chew worked at her basket, Fleetfoot played near at hand.
Often he came to his grandmother's side and talked about many things.
At length Chew-chew, holding up a skin, turned to Fleetfoot and said, "Do you know what animal wore this skin?"
[Illustration: _A bear's tooth awl._] "One of the reindeer we saw at the ford," quickly responded Fleetfoot.
"Where have all the reindeer gone?"
was Chew-chew's next question.
"To the cave of the Big Bear of the mountains," came the prompt answer.
While Chew-chew and Fleetfoot talked the children played near the cave.
Pigeon was playing with stones which she had gathered and tossed into the fire.
In trying to get them out again she burned her fingers, and began to cry.
When Chew-chew saw what had happened, she told Fleetfoot to play with Pigeon.
And Fleetfoot played with Pigeon, and he showed her how to lift hot stones without getting burned.
The children played and carried hot stones with tongs made of sticks.
They ran back and forth between rows of skins until Pigeon dropped a hot stone into the hole.
No sooner had Pigeon dropped the stone than she screamed, "A snake!
a snake!"
And she ran to her grandmother and sobbed, while she hid her face in her chubby arm.
Chew-chew thought that a snake was crawling about.
Fleetfoot helped her look under all the skins.
They looked for some time, but they found no trace of a snake.
Then Chew-chew asked Pigeon to tell her all about it.
And Pigeon said, "A big snake hissed and made me drop the stone."
Just then Fleetfoot dropped a hot stone and something went "s-s-s-s-s-s." Pigeon screamed again, but a hearty laugh from Chew-chew showed there was nothing to fear.
Chew-chew knew that the hissing sound was not the hiss of a snake.
It was the sizzling of the water when it touched the hot stone.
And so Chew-chew tried to teach the children how to know the hissing sound.
She picked up hot stones and dropped them into the water.
Each time a stone was dropped, the hissing sound was heard; and the children learned to know the sound, and they were no longer afraid.
As Chew-chew kept on dropping the hot stones, she did not notice all that happened.
She thought only of teaching the children, so that they would not be afraid.
But at last such a strange thing happened, that even Chew-chew was afraid.
The water no longer was still.
It kept moving like the angry water in the rapids of the river.
A thin mist began to rise, and a strange voice came from the water, saying:-"_Bubble, bubble, bubble; Bubble, bubble, bubble._" At the sound Chew-chew was filled with fear.
She was afraid the gods were angry.
She looked about for an offering, and found a piece of bison meat.
She dropped the meat into the water, hoping to appease the angry god.
[Illustration: "_Chew-chew tried to teach the children how to know the hissing sound._"] The bubbling ceased, but Chew-chew was still afraid.
So she called the children together, and took them into the cave.
When the men and women came home that night, Chew-chew told them what had happened.
They went to the spot and saw the meat, which they thought the god had left.
Then they listened in silence as Chew-chew told them the story again and again.
#THINGS TO DO# _Choose some one for each of the parts and dramatize the story._ _Draw pictures which will show what happened._ _See if you can boil water by dropping hot stones into it._ _Show in your sand-box how the skins were stretched out, and how the skin-lined hole was made._ X THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think Chew-chew might learn by dropping the meat into the hot water?
What kind of boiling-pots did people first use?
Why didn't they hang their boiling-pots over the fire?
_Why the Children Began to Eat Boiled Meat_ The more Chew-chew thought about the bubbling sound, the more she wanted to hear it again.
She wondered what the god wanted to say, and if he was asking for food.
She wondered if she could make friends with him by giving him something to eat.
Chew-chew talked with Eagle-eye and at length they tried to make friends with the god.
They prepared a place for the water by making a skin-lined hole.
Eagle-eye poured the water into the hole, while Chew-chew dropped in a piece of meat.
Then they looked and listened for a sign, but no sign was made.
They tried it again and again, but still there was no sign.
At length Chew-chew thought of the hot stones she had dropped when she heard the voice.
So she and Eagle-eye heated stones and dropped them into the water.
As they did it they muttered prayers to the gods and asked them to protect the Cave-men.
Before the women had dropped many stones, the children crowded around.
Nobody was frightened this time when the hissing sound was heard.
But their eyes opened wide when the water began to bubble.
Chew-chew dropped the meat into the water as an offering to the god.
Everybody watched as she dropped the meat.
Everybody breathed more freely when the bubbling ceased.
And Chew-chew said, "The god is pleased with the offering of meat."
Many times after that Chew-chew dropped hot stones into the water, and offered meat to the god.
But when she did it she never thought that she was cooking meat.
She thought she was helping the Cave-men by winning the favor of the god.
Sometimes when the children were hungry, Chew-chew let them tear off strips of partly boiled meat.
Sometimes she let them drink the broth from bone dippers and horns.
The children liked to eat the boiled meat and to drink the rich broth.
But they always thought the meat and broth were what the god had left.
#THINGS TO DO# _Make tongs out of sticks and see if you can lift small objects with them._ _Watch water when it boils, and tell where the steam comes from._ _Where does it go?
Hold a cold plate over the steam and see what happens.
Where do the drops of water on the plate come from?_ _When water stands in the open air, what becomes of part of it?_ _Why do we hang clothes out on the clothes-line to dry?_ _What becomes of the water that was in the clothes?_ _Tell what you think happens just as clouds form.
See if you can do something that will show what happens at the time._ _What happens to the clouds just as it begins to rain?_ XI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why would the grass-eating animals go from place to place during the summer?
What do you think the Cave-men would do when the herds went away?
At what season of the year are nuts fit to gather?
Is there any place near by where you have a right to go nutting?
What animals eat nuts?
What animals store nuts?
Do you think the Cave-men would gather many nuts?
_The Nutting Season_ Summer passed as summers had passed before.
When the bison went to the higher lands, the Cave-men followed them.
When they started toward their winter pastures, the Cave-men came home.
[Illustration: "_All the women and children went nutting._"] It was the nutting season when they returned.
All the beech, walnut, and butternut trees were heavily laden that year.
The ground underneath their branches was nearly covered with nuts.
Slender hazel bushes bent under their heavy loads.
Wild hogs and bears had begun to harvest the nuts before the Cave-men returned.
Each day they went to the trees and ate the nuts that had fallen.
When Eagle-eye saw what they were doing, she said, "Bring your bags and baskets and come.
If we do not look out the hogs will get the best of the nuts this year."
Then all the women and children went nutting.
They gathered the nuts that lay upon the ground and put them in their baskets.
Some climbed trees and shook the branches until they got a shower of nuts; others took their digging sticks and beat the heavily laden branches.
The children had a feast that day.
They sat down under the trees and cracked all the nuts they could eat.
They gathered handfuls and helped their mothers fill baskets and skin bags.
They climbed the trees and they laughed and played all day long.
When the women first came to the trees, they heard the wild hogs in the distance.
Once a big hog came up and tried to eat the nuts out of a basket.
But Eagle-eye chased him with a big stick and drove him away from the spot.
When Eagle-eye was coming back from the chase, she saw other trees heavily laden.
She called to the women, and they came to the spot and forgot all about the nuts they had gathered.
[Illustration: _The wild hogs were having a feast._] It was Chew-chew who first thought of the pile of nuts they had left on the ground.
It was she who ran to the trees and found the wild hogs having a feast.
Chew-chew struck one of the hogs with her digging stick.
He was munching the nuts she had gathered.
He turned away and she struck another; then the first hog came back.
Chew-chew soon found that unless she had help the hogs would eat all the nuts, for as fast as she drove one hog away another one came back.
Chew-chew screamed for help and the women came with their digging-sticks.
The women drove the hogs away, but they returned again and again.
And so the women learned to keep a close watch while they were gathering nuts.
But in spite of all their trouble, they had a good time that day.
It was not until they were starting home that they found that a serious thing had happened.
They did not know all about it then, and some of them never knew.
It was all about Fleetfoot.
When Eagle-eye looked for him, he was nowhere to be seen.
At first she thought he was with Chew-chew, but Chew-chew had not seen him since morn.
Fleetfoot had played near his mother nearly all day.
He had cracked nuts; he had climbed trees; he had mimicked the squirrels; he had scattered burrs in the rabbits' paths, and he had done all sorts of things.
But now Fleetfoot was lost, and everybody began to hunt for him.
Eagle-eye found the stones he had left only a short time before.
She found his tracks and followed them until they crossed the boundary of the hunting ground.
There she lost all trace of him.
She called, but the "caw-caw" of a crow was the only answer.
The men heard her call, and came to join in the search.
But in spite of all they could do, they did not find the child.
And so the Cave-men thought they would never see Fleetfoot again.
They thought he had lost his way in the forest and had been killed by a cave-bear.
For a few days they mourned for the child, then they spoke no more of him.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tell a story of what happened one time when you went nutting._ _Name all the nuts you can that grow on trees.
Name those that grow on bushes.
Where do peanuts grow?_ _Dramatize this story._ _Draw a picture of the part you like the best._ XII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why do people put up such signs as "Keep off," "Do not trespass"?
Why do people build fences around their land?
Do you think the Cave-men could hunt wherever they chose?
Why did each clan have its own hunting ground?
What kind of boundaries did the hunting grounds have?
Why was it not safe to go on the land of a stranger?
Why did mothers teach their children the boundary lines?
What do you think some mothers mean when they tell their children that the "Bogie-man" will get them?
_Why Mothers Taught their Children the Boundary Lines_ Each day brought so many hard things to do that most of the Cave-men forgot Fleetfoot.
But his mother and grandmother did not forget him.
They often thought of the boy they had lost.
Other mothers were afraid they might lose their children.
So they tried to keep them from running away.
Most of all, they tried to keep them from running across the boundary line.
When Pigeon tried to run away, Eagle-eye would say, "The cave-bear will get you."
Mothers tried all sorts of ways to keep their children from danger.
Each clan had its own hunting ground.
The people who lived together shared it, but no one else was allowed to hunt on the land.
It was not even safe to cross the land of a stranger.
Sometimes the Cave-men had to do it.
Sometimes they had to call upon their neighbors for help.
But since there were people who had lost their lives when trying to cross the land of strangers, the Cave-men learned to use signs to show what they wanted.
They carved pictures upon sticks, which told what we might tell in a letter.
When a stranger carried a message-stick, it was safe for him to do his errand.
People knew what he wanted and why he came, so they let him go on his way unharmed.
But when a stranger had no message-stick, his life was not safe in a strange land.
[Illustration: "_Mothers taught their children what the boundaries were._"] And so people learned to stay on their own lands and mothers taught their children what the boundaries were.
They taught the children to name them over and over again.
They taught them to know how the boundaries looked.
For a long time Pigeon had to tell her mother each day the boundaries of the hunting grounds.
She would stand on the cliff and point north to the narrow valley, then south to Little River.
Then she pointed to a high ridge of hills toward the east and west to the River of Stones.
While Pigeon was so small that Eagle-eye had to take her by the hand, her mother took her to the boundaries.
Eagle-eye had taught her so well that she knew them as soon as she saw them.
Perhaps you have heard the story told about mothers who taught their children the boundary lines.
It is told that mothers used to be so anxious to have their children remember the boundaries that they whipped them at each one.
Then the story is told that in later times instead of beating the children, people let them beat the boundaries.
Some day you may be able to learn more about the strange customs of beating the boundary lines.
#THINGS TO DO# _Mark out in your sand-box the boundary lines of the hunting ground of the Horse clan.
Show a good place for another hunting ground._ _Ask some one to read you the story, "The Goblins will get you if you don't watch out."
What do you think the story means?_ _Climb a hill, or look out of a high window, and see if you can find land which at one time was a good hunting ground._ _See if you can make a message-stick._ XIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think had happened to Fleetfoot?
If strangers found him, what do you think they would do with him?
_What Happened to Fleetfoot_ Perhaps you have been wondering what happened to Fleetfoot.
Perhaps you would like to know how he happened to wander away from his clan.
It happened in this way.
He cracked all the nuts he could eat; he climbed trees; he threw sticks and stones; he watched the wild hogs eating nuts; he listened to the whistle which Scarface blew to call the men to the hunt.
He wished that he could blow the whistle and hunt with the men.
Then a rabbit hopped across his path and stopped and looked at him.
How Fleetfoot longed to catch the rabbit and to hold him in his hands!
He stood perfectly still; he could hear himself breathe; he tried to breathe more quietly, for he did not want to frighten the rabbit.
The rabbit started.
How Fleetfoot wished he would go down the path where he had scattered burrs!
But the rabbit took another path and Fleetfoot ran to catch him.
He was almost sure he could lay his hands on the rabbit's stumpy white tail.
The rabbit was too quick for him, yet Fleetfoot did not give up.
He started on a hard chase and forgot about everything else.
Up hill and down the rabbit ran and Fleetfoot followed after.
Not until the rabbit was out of sight did Fleetfoot give up the chase.
Then he stopped and rested a while and tried to get his breath.
While Fleetfoot was resting he looked at the squirrels which were chattering in the trees.
He watched them hold nuts with their forepaws while they gnawed through the shells.
He listened to their chattering and then he wandered on.
Fleetfoot did not know that he had crossed the narrow valley.
He did not know that he had wandered into a strange land.
He thought nothing about where he was until some time had passed.
But after a while everything seemed still, and Fleetfoot began to feel lonesome.
And so he turned around to go back to the women and children.
Fleetfoot walked and walked, but he did not find them.
He called, but no answer came.
So he wandered on and on.
Soon Fleetfoot knew he was in a spot he had never seen before.
Everything seemed strange.
He looked this way and that; but he could not tell which way to go.
And so the lost child wandered farther and farther away from home.
He was choking down a sob when he caught sight of some women with packs upon their backs.
Fleetfoot thought he had found his people going home with their loads of nuts.
He ran and called to his mother.
A strange woman stopped and looked at the child.
Then she gave a signal to her clan.
Fleetfoot was within reach of the strange woman before he saw his mistake.
He tried to run away.
But he could not do it.
A big man caught him and lifted him up and put him upon his shoulder.
Strange men, women, and children crowded around and stared into his face.
[Illustration: "_A big man caught him, and put him upon his shoulder._"] Bighorn asked him where he lived; but Fleetfoot was too frightened to speak.
He remembered the stories Chew-chew had told about strange clans.
He wondered what the strangers would do.
How he wished he were safe at home!
But poor Fleetfoot did not see his home again for many long years.
He was in a strange land, and soon he was traveling with the strangers far away from his home.
A woman, whose name was Antler, took charge of Fleetfoot.
She took him by the hand until he was too tired to walk.
Then she carried him until they came to the place where they camped for the night.
#THINGS TO DO# _Choose some one for each of the parts and see if you can act out this story.
Draw pictures to illustrate the story._ _Name the wild animals you can find in your neighborhood.
Notice what they eat.
Do they help or harm the people near where they live?_ _Model one of these animals in clay._ XIV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What kind of a shelter do you think the people will have for the night?
Think of as many easy ways as you can of making a shelter out of trees.
_How the Strangers Camped for the Night_ The camping place was an old one.
It had been used many times.
The strange clan always used it on their way to and from the lowland plains.
It was under a big oak tree, and near a spring of fresh water.
When the strangers reached the camp, Greybeard took charge of Fleetfoot.
The women quickly unloaded their packs, and began to build a tent.
It did not take long to make the tent, for it was almost ready-made.
It was an old oak, which reached out long and low-spreading branches.
The branches had been bent to the ground many times, and now they nearly touched it.
So all that the women had to do was to fasten the ends firmly.
They did it by rolling a stone over the end of a branch, and sometimes they tied the end of a branch to a peg which they had driven in the ground.
All the Cave-men made such tents in the summer when they were away from the caves.
When the branches were not thick enough for a shelter, the women broke saplings and leaned them against the tree.
While Chipper worked at a spearhead, the other men were moving about.
Bighorn feared that Fleetfoot's clan might follow their tracks.
Long after Fleetfoot fell asleep, the strangers talked quietly.
They held their ears close to the ground and listened.
They went and looked at Fleetfoot, now fast asleep.
Then they all sat down by the fire.
[Illustration: "_The tent was an old oak, which reached out long and low-spreading branches._"] At length the men turned to Greybeard.
And Greybeard spoke to them and said, "When I was young my clan lived in a cave near Sweet Briar River.
Every year, in the salmon season, the neighboring clans met at the rapids.
The Horse clan came from the Fork of the River, where the Sweet Briar joins the River of Stones.
They may live there still.
This boy may belong to them."
"Do you think they will follow us?"
asked Bighorn.
Greybeard looked up, but did not speak.
He seemed to be trying to think.
At length he turned to the men and said, "Sleep until the moon sets; I'll watch and wake you."
So the Cave-men went to the tent and slept while Greybeard kept watch.
Not a sound escaped his ear that night.
Not a leaf rustled that he did not hear.
Not a twig broke, as wild animals passed, but that he found out what it meant.
As Greybeard watched in the moonlight he heard many a familiar sound.
Now he heard the roar of a tiger, and again the "hoo-hoo" of an owl; now the howling of hyenas, and again an eagle's scream.
Among all these sounds Greybeard heard nothing that seemed to come from the lost child's clan.
But when the moon was set he roused the people, and under cover of the darkness they hurried toward home.
They let Fleetfoot sleep, for fear he might answer if he were called.
And so the child slept while he was hurried away through the darkness.
At daybreak, when he awoke, he found himself in a new home.
#THINGS TO DO# _See if there is a tree in your neighborhood that could be made into such a tent as the Cave-men made._ _Find a thick branch and make such a tent in your sand-box._ _Draw one of these pictures:--_ _The council of the clan before going to sleep._ _Greybeard watching in the moonlight._ _Hurrying home under cover of the darkness._ _Fleetfoot awakes and finds himself in his new home._ _Act out part of this story and let some one guess what it is._ _Write as many calls of the birds as you know.
Model one of the birds in clay.
If you know its nest, model that._ XV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT How do you think Fleetfoot felt the first few days he was with the strange clan?
What do you think he will learn of them?
What do you think he can teach them?
_Fleetfoot is Adopted by the Bison Clan_ For a few days Fleetfoot missed his mother and Chew-chew more than he could tell.
He missed little Pigeon, too.
He missed the people he had always seen.
But he said very little about them.
It was Greybeard who told him that he was now living with the Bison clan.
Not all of the people belonged to that clan, but there were more of that clan than of any other.
And so they were known as the Bison clan.
At first Fleetfoot was afraid of the men and large boys.
Most of all he was afraid of Bighorn, for it was Bighorn who captured him.
But before one moon had passed, he was adopted by the Bison clan.
And soon after that, he began to feel at home.
Greybeard told him stories, and gave him little spears.
Antler was kind to him, and the children were always ready to play.
[Illustration: _A skin stretched on a frame._] Fleetfoot liked to play with the children.
He liked to play with Flaker best of all.
Flaker was Antler's child, and he was about the size of Fleetfoot.
[Illustration: _A scraper._] As the days became cold, the women worked upon skins.
There was not a smooth spot near the cave which was not covered with a skin.
Fleetfoot watched Antler as she cut little slits in the edges.
He helped stretch the skins out on the ground and drive little pegs through the slits.
He watched her stretch a skin on a frame and put it near the fire.
Antler scraped a skin until the fat was off, and the inner skin was removed.
Then she roughened it by scraping it crosswise, so as to make it flexible.
When Fleetfoot saw Antler roll the skins in a loose roll, he asked if she was going to chew them.
Antler smiled as she asked Fleetfoot how his mother softened skins.
Fleetfoot showed how his mother did it.
And he told Antler about Chew-chew.
He told her that Chew-chew got her name because she learned to chew the skins.
While Antler and Fleetfoot were talking, all the women and children gathered around.
They wanted to see what they were doing, and to hear what Fleetfoot said.
Then Antler said to the women and children, "These skins are ready to soften.
Come, join hands and show Fleetfoot how we soften hard skins."
[Illustration: _A hammer of reindeer horn._] What a noisy time they had for a little while!
Each group wanted to finish first.
Some of them stamped the skins, and kept time by singing.
Others pounded the skins with their hands, and still others pounded with hammers of reindeer horn.
They had such a merry time that Fleetfoot could not keep still.
He was soon stamping and singing as well as any one.
When the skins were softened, Antler told Fleetfoot that once her people chewed the skins.
But since they had found an easier way, they chewed only the edges they wished to sew.
And so Fleetfoot began to learn lessons of the Bison clan.
But once he was the teacher.
It was when he showed Flaker what happened the day Pigeon played with hot stones.
Flaker told his mother, and Antler told Greybeard.
And then Greybeard asked Fleetfoot to drop the hot stones in the water again.
All the Cave-men gathered around to see what Fleetfoot did.
When the steam began to rise from the water, they stepped back.
But when they saw that the child was not afraid, they came forward cautiously.
When the water began to bubble, they were all filled with fear.
They looked upon Fleetfoot in silence.
They called him a wonderful child.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tell a story about dressing skins.
Draw pictures which will show all that is done in dressing the skin._ _Dramatize the part of the story that tells what Fleetfoot taught the Bison clan.
Draw a picture of it._ _Make a song that people might sing in stamping upon the skins._ _Make a song to sing while beating the skins._ XVI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What kind of clothes do you wear in winter?
What do you think the Cave-men wore?
Can you think how they learned to fit skins to their bodies?
What part of an animal's skin could they use for sleeves?
What part could they use for leggings?
How do you think they learned to make mittens and gloves?
How many ways do you know of fastening garments?
Which of these do we use?
Which of these do you think the Cave-men used?
What did they use instead of a needle?
What kind of thread did they have?
[Illustration: "_Greybeard asked Fleetfoot to drop the hot stones in the water again._"] _How the Cave-men Protected Themselves from the Cold_ One morning Fleetfoot started out of the cave, but a cold wind drove him back.
Snow had fallen during the night, and the air had grown very cold.
It was not fit for a bare-backed boy to go out on such a day.
So Fleetfoot stayed in the cave all day long.
All the Cave-men stayed in the cave nearly all the day.
Once Chipper went out and found fresh tracks.
He followed the tracks until he came within close range of a reindeer.
But his bare arms shook with the cold, and he missed his aim.
The next day was bitterly cold.
The river was frozen almost into silence.
Only the ripples of the swiftest currents laughed aloud at the frost.
The snow was deep on the hillsides.
It was deeper in the valleys, and the narrow ravines were almost filled with snow.
The third day was still very cold and everybody was hungry and cross.
The children were crying for food, and since Antler had nothing to give them, she was trying to get them to play.
At length the children began to take turns at playing they were cave-bears.
Now it was Fleetfoot's turn to be the bear, and when Antler saw him she laughed.
The Cave-men looked up in surprise.
Everybody was so hungry and cross it seemed strange to hear any one laugh.
But Antler really was laughing.
Fleetfoot had found a cave-bear's skin on a ledge in the cave.
He had wrapped it around him so that he looked like a little cave-bear.
The children kept calling him "little bear," and he was trying to act like one.
Soon all the people were laughing.
They forgot, for the time, how hungry they were.
And the next day they had meat, for it was warm enough to go hunting.
Many times after that the children played cave-bear.
Many times the people laughed when they saw the children dressed in cave-bears' skins.
Once when Antler looked at them, she got an idea about making clothes.
When Antler took a large skin and wrapped it around her, Fleetfoot thought that she was going to play "bear."
But Antler was not playing.
She was thinking of the cold days when the children had no food.
She was thinking that if she could make a warm dress, perhaps she could go out in the bitter cold.
Antler talked with Birdcatcher about it, and Birdcatcher helped her fit the skin.
Birdcatcher fitted the skin of the head over Antler's head so as to make a warm hood.
Then she run a cord through the slits along the edges and tied the ends under Antler's chin.
Antler fastened the skin down the front with buckles.
She covered her arms with the skin of the forelegs.
She cut off the skin that hung below the knees, and afterward used it to make a pair of leggings.
When the garment was fitted, Antler took it off.
Then the women sat down and worked until it was done.
They punched holes through the edges with a bone awl.
Then they threaded the sinew through the holes in an "over-and-over seam."
[Illustration: "_When the men saw the new garment, they wondered how it was made._"] When the men saw the new garment, they wondered how it was made.
So Antler and Birdcatcher showed them how it was done, and helped them to make warm garments of their own.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's glove._] And so all the Cave-men soon had warm garments of fur.
Sometimes they fastened them with buckles, and sometimes they used bone pins.
They made long leggings of soft skins, and moccasins for their feet.
Perhaps you can think how they learned to make mittens and gloves.
We know that they had warm mittens and gloves, for we have found pictures they made of them.
When they dressed in their warm fur garments, the Cave-men did not fear the cold.
If they wanted food, they put on their garments and went wherever they pleased.
#THINGS TO DO# _If you can get a small skin, fit it to a doll the way you think the Cave-men fitted skins to their bodies.
If you cannot get a skin, cut a piece of cloth so as to make it the shape of a skin, and show how the new suit was made._ _Find as many things as you can that you can use for pins, buttons, and buckles._ _Find as many ways as you can of sewing a simple seam.
When you go to a museum notice how the seams are sewed.
Why do you think people invented new stitches?
Visit a shoemaker and notice how he sews._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_The cold wind drives Fleetfoot into the cave._ _Playing "Cave-bear.
"_ XVII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT How do you think the children played in the winter?
What do you play in the winter?
How do you think the Cave-men would hunt when there was only a light fall of snow?
How would they hunt when the snow was deep?
How would they hunt when there was a hard crust on the snow?
_How the Children Played in Winter_ When the children saw their fathers and mothers go out of doors, they, too, wanted to go.
But they had no warm clothing, so their mothers tried to keep them in doors.
Sometimes Fleetfoot and Flaker teased to go out and play in the snow.
And when the days were warm enough, Antler let them go out and play.
But on very cold days they had to stay in the cave.
The children had good times in the cave.
They played many animal games.
They played they were grown men and women, and they made believe do all sorts of work.
They peeked out of the cave many times each day.
They heard their fathers and mothers talk.
And they listened to Greybeard's stories.
And so the children always knew what the men and women were doing.
After a heavy fall of snow, they knew they would trap the animals in the drifts.
When a hard crust formed, they knew they would dig pitfalls.
Antler often wished that the children might play out doors every day.
Greybeard wanted the boys to learn to make pitfalls and traps.
But neither Antler nor Greybeard had thought of making clothing for little children.
The day Antler thought of making clothes for the boys, was the day they ran away to the pitfall.
It was soon after Chipper came to the cave and said that two reindeer were in the pit.
When the boys heard what Chipper said, they were playing they were Bighorn and Chipper.
They had tied the skins of wolves' heads over their heads, and they let the rest of the skins hang down as if they were capes.
When the news came about the reindeer, everybody was excited.
Everybody hurried to the pitfall so as to see the reindeer.
Nobody noticed the boys steal out of the cave.
Nobody noticed them run to the pitfall.
But soon after she started, Antler saw the tracks of their bare feet.
She guessed at once where the boys had gone.
And it was then that she thought of making them clothing.
While the children slept that night, Antler talked with the women.
And when morning came, the women took skins and made the children warm clothes and moccasins.
When the children put on their wolf-skin suits, they looked like a pack of wolves.
Sometimes they played they were wolves.
Then they chased make-believe wild horses.
Sometimes when the children were playing in the snow, they found the antlers of a full-grown stag.
The children began to look for the antlers of the full-grown stags in early winter.
But they knew that the other reindeer kept their antlers until early spring.
An old stag's antlers were large and strong, and the children liked to find them.
They would pick them up and hold them in their hands and would then make believe they were Cave-men trapping reindeer in the snow.
One day Greybeard showed Fleetfoot and Flaker how to trap the reindeer in the snow.
He showed them how to dig a pitfall in the drifts.
The boys found a large drift near the trail and they cut out a large block of snow.
They hollowed a deep pit under the crust which they took pains not to break.
Then they fitted the block of snow in its place, thus covering the pit.
To make sure that the reindeer would come to the pitfall they scattered moss over the thin crust.
Then Greybeard taught them to say, "_Come down to the river, reindeer;_ _Come down to the river to drink._ _Come eat the moss I have spread for you,_ _Come and fall into my trap._" All the Cave-men believed that these words would charm the reindeer to the spot.
They always muttered such lines as charms when they went out to hunt.
And so Greybeard taught the boys the lines, for he wanted them to know all the Cave-men's charms.
#THINGS TO DO# _Name the animals which you know by their tracks.
Draw a picture of the tracks you know best._ _Tell a story about hunting an animal by tracking it._ _Next time there is a heavy fall of snow, play hunting animals by driving them into the drifts._ _See if you can show in your sand-box how the pitfall was made._ _See if you can think of a way of having real drifts in your sand-box._ _Draw a picture of the children playing with the antlers of the reindeer._ _Draw a picture of the reindeer in the pitfall._ XVIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Do you know whether we can tell what the weather is going to be?
Have you ever heard any one talking about the signs of the weather?
What signs do you know?
Notice animals and see how they act before a storm.
Notice what animals and birds are here in summer that are not here in winter.
Are any here in winter that are not here in the summer?
Why did the bison go away from the Cave-men's hunting grounds each winter?
When they went away would they go in large or small herds?
If the weather kept pleasant how do you think they would travel?
What would they do if it looked like a storm?
Notice the animals that live near you and see whether they turn their heads or backs toward the storm.
_Overtaken by a Storm_ Winter passed and summer came and now it was almost gone.
The cattle had gone to the forests in the lowlands where they spent the winter.
Straggling lines of bison were moving down the valley.
Now and then they stopped a few days to eat the tall grass.
Then they slowly moved onward toward the lower lands.
The days were like the Indian summer days which we sometimes have in late autumn.
Everybody enjoyed each day as it came, and thought little about the coming cold.
But one morning the sky was gray and gloomy, and the sun could not pierce through the heavy clouds.
The air was cold and now and then a snowflake was falling.
There was no meat at the cave, and everybody was hungry.
So Bighorn said to the men, "Let's hunt the bison to-day."
The men crowded around, for they were always glad to go hunting with Bighorn.
As soon as he had shown them his plan, they took their weapons and started toward the herd.
Bighorn expected to find the herd feeding quietly on a hillside.
But, instead, the bison were tossing their horns, sniffing the air, and looking this way and that.
Bighorn saw that the bison were restless and that he could not take them by surprise.
"We shall have a hard chase," said he to the men, "if we get a bison to-day."
The men stood still for a moment, for they did not know what to do.
Fine snowflakes were now falling and the dark clouds threatened a heavy storm.
But the men were hungry and they were not ready to give up the hunt at once.
"Listen!"
said Bighorn, as a low rumbling sound came from the upper valley.
The Cave-men put their ears to the ground and heard a sound like distant thunder.
As they listened it came nearer and nearer and the ground seemed to shake.
The Cave-men were not afraid.
They knew what the sound meant.
The bison, too, knew what it meant.
They knew that winter was coming, and that it was time for them to be gone.
They knew that the laggard herds were racing with the storm.
And so the sentinels of the scattered herds gave signals to the bison.
And before the Cave-men were on their feet, the bison had started toward the ford.
Louder and louder the rumbling sound grew as the great herd galloped on.
The snow was now falling thick and fast, and a cold northwest wind was blowing.
But in spite of the wind and the snow, the Cave-men pressed on toward the ford.
Bighorn still hoped to get a bison as the great herd passed.
By the time the herd reached the ford, the wind had become a strong gale.
The air was so thick with the snow that it nearly blinded the men.
Then Bighorn turned and said to the men, "We must find a shelter from the storm."
The bison, too, tried to find a shelter.
Some of them hugged up closely to the sheltered side of the cliffs.
Others sought cover in the ravines.
But many could find no protection, so they turned about and faced the storm.
[Illustration: "_But many could find no protection, so they turned about and faced the storm._"] The Cave-men wished they were safe at home, but they dared not go through the storm.
They huddled together and felt their way to a spot where the snow did not drift.
There they lay down in the snow and waited for the storm to cease.
#THINGS TO DO# _Name some bird that migrates.
Tell all that you know about the way it migrates._ _When you go out to play, show how the bison migrated in warm weather.
Show how they migrated in cold weather._ _Show in your sand-box where the deep drifts would be.
Show places where the snow would not drift.
If you cannot be sure about where the drifts would be, see if you can find out by watching the storms during winter._ _If the Cave-men are buried in the snow, how do you think they can get air to breathe?
How can they tell when the storm is over?_ XIX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think those who stayed in the cave will do during the storm?
Can you think of any way by which they could get food?
Did you ever walk on snowshoes?
How do you think people came to make snowshoes?
_How Antler Happened to Invent Snowshoes_ Antler saw the coming storm and at once she thought of the fire.
She called to the women.
And soon they were all breaking branches with stone axes and mauls.
The children piled the fagots together and carried them to the cave.
[Illustration: _A stone maul._] The snow was falling fast before they finished their work.
They watched the storm for a little while and then went into the cave.
The children were hungry and asked for meat.
But there was no meat in the cave.
Antler tried to get the children to play and to forget that they were hungry.
And the children played for a little while, but they soon grew tired.
And so Antler gathered the children together and began to tell them stories.
As the storm raged fiercer and fiercer, Antler told stories of other storms.
She had braved many storms on the wooded hills and the children liked to hear her stories.
Among the stories she told that day was the story of the Big Bear.
She said that the Big Bear lived in a cavern away up in the mountain.
She said that he kept watch of the game and that sometimes he shut the game in his cavern.
Antler said she had often heard the Big Bear above the voice of the storm.
And Fleetfoot, listening for his voice, thought he heard it in the wailing of the storm.
In spite of the stories Antler told, the day was long and dreary.
The next day was still more dreary, for the children were crying for food.
Toward the close of day they were very tired, and soon they fell asleep.
Most of the women slept that night, but there was no sleep for Antler.
She could not sleep when the children were hungry and when the men were out in the storm.
She stayed awake and watched and listened all through the long dark night.
[Illustration: _Fur gloves._] Toward morning the storm began to slacken, and Antler gave a sigh of relief.
She felt sure that many bison were floundering in the drifts.
She hoped they were not far away from the cave.
So she dressed in her fur garments and took a large knife and an ax.
And at break of day she set out hoping to find a bison.
But the snow was very deep and Antler could scarcely walk.
She was faint from hunger and cold.
For a while she struggled through the drifts, but soon her strength failed, and she sank down in the snow.
As Antler lay in the deep drifts, she seemed powerless to move.
The thought of the hungry children, however, made her turn to the gods.
Then the branches of spruce trees seemed to urge her on.
And so Antler took courage and grasping a strong branch of a friendly spruce struggled through the deep snow.
She stepped upon the partly buried branches and they helped her on her way.
A bison, floundering in a drift, filled her heart with hope.
But when she started toward the bison, Antler sank down once more into the drifts.
So again she turned to the friendly trees, and again she reached out to them for aid.
And she broke branches from the trees and bound them to her feet.
Starting once more, Antler walked as if on winged feet.
She ran over the deep drifts.
And since she could hunt as well as the men, she soon had plenty of meat.
As Antler was strapping her load upon her back, she heard a familiar voice.
Quickly she turned, and her heart beat fast as she listened to hear it again.
And seeing the men struggling through the drifts, she knelt and gave thanks to the gods.
Soon Antler arose and laid down her load; and breaking a handful of branches, she hurried over the drifts and met the Cave-men.
[Illustration: _A snowshoe._] When the men saw Antler gliding over the drifts they wondered if it was one of the gods.
Not until Antler spoke were they really sure it was she.
And not until she showed them how to tie the branches to their feet did they understand what she had done.
And even then they did not know that Antler had invented the snowshoe.
Many people worked upon snowshoes before fine snowshoes were made.
For when people heard what Antler had done, they tried different ways for themselves.
Of course all the people were glad when Antler returned with the men.
They feasted and told stories all day long.
And afterward the children played they were hunters overtaken by a storm, and they made little snowshoes and learned to walk over the drifts.
#THINGS TO DO# _The next time there is a storm listen to it and see if you can hear what the Cave-men thought was the voice of the Big Bear.
See if you can tell what it is that makes the music of the storm._ _Listen to the music of the birds and see if you can give their songs and calls._ _What other animals do you hear calling one another?
See if you can give their calls._ _Tell a story of some storm you have seen._ _Draw one of these pictures;_-_Antler praying to the gods for help._ _A bison floundering in the drift._ _Antler bringing aid to the men._ _Find a picture of a snowshoe, and tell how you think it was made._ _Find something which you can use for making snowshoes.
Make a pair, and use them when you have a chance._ _See if you can find out why the snowshoe keeps one from sinking in the snow._ XX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why would the women be apt to make traps before the men did?
What animals did the men hunt most?
How did they hunt them?
What animals did the women hunt most?
How?
How many kinds of knots can you tie?
Which of these knots slip?
Which of these knots would be the best to use in a trap?
_How Antler made Snares_ While Fleetfoot and Flaker were little boys, they learned a few lessons in trapping.
The men seldom trapped at that time, but the women trapped in several ways.
Antler was only a little girl when she learned to catch birds with a seed on a string.
She was called Snowflake then and she lived in another cave.
Snowflake's mother taught her to do all the things that little girls needed to know.
She learned to hunt for roots and berries, to catch birds, and to make traps, besides learning to make tents, to prepare skins, and to make them into garments.
It would take too long to tell all the things that little girls learned in those days.
Snowflake learned her lessons well and she found new ways of doing things.
It was when she found a reindeer caught in the vines that she took the first step in making a snare.
She had started to the hillside to dig roots and had gone only a little way when she heard something pulling and tugging among the vines.
She peeked through the branches to see what it was, and there stood a beautiful reindeer.
His antlers were caught in the tangled vines and he was trying to get loose.
Snowflake's heart went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, when she saw the reindeer.
But she kept going nearer, and the reindeer pulled and pulled until he was strangled by the vines.
When Snowflake came to the cave dragging the handsome reindeer, the people shouted for joy.
And when they had knocked off the beautiful antlers, they gave them to Snowflake and changed her name.
Whenever she went to the spot where the reindeer was caught she always looked for another reindeer.
But the reindeer kept away from the spot.
So, at length, Antler thought of cutting vines and fastening them to branches.
Then she learned to tie knots that would slip and tighten when pulled.
And, after a while, she used the slipknots in making many kinds of snares.
[Illustration: "_Then she set snares on the ground and fastened them to strong branches._"] Antler watched the birds until she knew the spots where they liked to alight.
Then she set snares on the ground and fastened them to strong branches.
The birds, alighting on the spot, caught their feet in the snare.
When they tried to fly away, they pulled the slipknot which held them fast.
[Illustration: "_Antler learned to protect the cord by running it through a hollow bone._"] Some of the birds were frightened away, and did not return to the spot.
So Antler tried to coax them back by scattering seeds near the snare.
Once Antler set a snare in a rabbit path just high enough to catch the rabbit's head.
A rabbit was caught, but he nibbled the cord and ran off with the snare.
And so Antler learned to protect the cord by running it through a hollow bone.
There was no better trapper than Antler among all the Cave-men.
It was she who taught the boys and girls how to make and set traps.
When the marmots awoke from their long winter's sleep, all the children learned to catch them in traps.
They learned to loosen the bark of a tree without breaking it except along one edge.
They used the bark as a leadway to a trap which they set near a marmot's hole.
After placing the noose inside the bark, they fastened it to a bent sapling.
[Illustration: "_So it ran along and nibbled the bait until its sharp teeth cut the cord._"] When the children went to the trap, they clapped their hands and shouted.
Then they took the marmot out of the trap and carried it to the cave.
And they made a great noise when Bighorn said, "You will soon be very good trappers."
Then the children wanted to catch another marmot, so Antler went with them and showed them how the trap worked.
The marmot coming out of his hole smelled the bait on the string.
So it ran along and nibbled the bait until its sharp teeth cut the cord.
Then the sapling sprang up and jerked the snare upward.
And the weight of the marmot, pulling downward, drew the slipknot tight.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tie a slipknot at one end of a string, and show how to set it for snaring birds.
Show how to set it for snaring rabbits.
Find a hollow stick or a bone to protect the snare from the rabbit's teeth.
Show how the marmot trap was set._ _Tell how you catch mice.
Tell how you catch flies._ _What animals do you know that sleep during the winter?
How can they live so long without eating?_ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Snowflake finds a reindeer caught in the vines._ _Antler teaches the children to set traps._ _Model a marmot in clay._ _Name all the animals you know that burrow in the ground.
Watch one of them and find out what it does._ XXI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why would the Cave-men be apt to lose many spears and javelins?
How could they keep from losing the shafts?
Can you think of how they might find a way of saving their spearheads?
Find a picture of a barbed spearhead.
Why did people begin to make barbs?
_How Spears were Changed into Harpoons_ None of the clans could make better weapons than the men of the Bison clan.
Since boyhood, Greybeard had been known for his delicate spear points and knives.
No workshop in all the valley was better known than his.
But even Greybeard's weapons sometimes were known to fail.
Even his spear points sometimes were lost in the chase.
For several days the men were at home making new weapons.
They never made spears and javelins with sharper and finer points.
They never made straighter and smoother shafts.
When they started out to hunt, they were proud of their new weapons.
All the Cave-men expected that before the day passed, they would have new trophies and fresh meat.
The women, trapping birds on the hillsides, listened from time to time.
They expected to hear Bighorn's whistle when the animals were ready to be skinned.
But the day passed, and no signal came.
At sunset the men returned, but they were gloomy and silent.
They brought no trophies, and they spoke not a word of the chase.
No wonder the men were gloomy and silent.
Their precious spears and javelins had been lost in the chase.
It was not because the men were careless.
It was not because they were not skillful in making spears and javelins.
It was because these weapons, when thrown from the hand, could not strike deadly blows.
The Cave-men had thrown at the wild horses with a sure aim.
Their javelins and spears went right to the mark.
When the horses ran, the Cave-men followed.
But in spite of all they could do, the wild horses were soon out of sight.
Some of the horses received ugly wounds and carried the weapons far away.
Others received slight wounds; they brushed off the spears and javelins, which fell and were lost in the tall grass.
[Illustration: _A chisel-scraper._] Time and again, hunted animals had escaped with only a wound.
Wounded animals had often escaped with a spear or javelin.
But never before had so many animals escaped with so many precious weapons.
Of course there was nothing for the Cave-men to do but to make new weapons.
But it took a long time to season the sticks for straight and smooth shafts.
It took patience and skill for the Cave-men to make delicate flint points.
Perhaps this was why the Cave-men learned to retrieve the weapons they threw.
Ever since the Cave-men had learned to make spears, they had lashed the head to the shaft.
They thought that this was the only way to make a good spear.
Chipper was the first Cave-man who invented a new way.
Chipper was all alone in the workshop.
He had finished a spear point which he held in his hand.
Without thinking what he was doing, he slipped the tang into a hollow reed which he picked up from the ground.
If it had not been for a hungry wolf, he might have thought no more about it.
But the wolf had smelled the meat which was on the ground close to the workshop.
Hearing a sound, Chipper looked just in time to see the wolf spring toward the meat.
The spear flew from Chipper's hand before he stopped to think.
And Chipper sprang upon the wolf and engaged in a hand-to-hand fight.
At the first sound of the combat the Cave-men rushed to the spot.
There they found that Chipper had already secured his prize.
While the Cave-men looked at the wolf, Chipper told them what had happened.
He showed them the reed which he had used in hurling his new spear point.
The men looked at the hollow reed and tried it to see how it worked.
Other reeds were on the ground.
So the men fitted spearheads into the reeds and practiced throwing that way.
They played with the reeds the rest of the day.
[Illustration: _A barbed point._] When they worked at their weapons again, Chipper, alone, tried a new way.
He made a loose shaft with a socket in the end.
During the next chase they lost many weapons.
Chipper lost many spearheads; but he always found his loose shaft.
When the Cave-men noticed that Chipper never lost his shaft they began to make loose shafts.
And they got the idea of a barbed spearhead from a wound which was made by a broken point.
They found such a point deep down in the wound of a bison.
The sharp edge had caught in the bison's flesh.
And every movement of the bison had driven the spearhead deeper.
[Illustration: _A harpoon._] It was by paying attention to such little things that the Cave-men learned to make barbed spears.
When the Cave-men learned that barbed spearheads made very dangerous wounds, they were willing to take the trouble of making the barbed points.
But no Cave-man was willing to lose one of his barbed spear points.
Perhaps that is why the men began to tie the barbed heads to the loose shaft.
When they first did this, they did not know that their spears had become harpoons.
#THINGS TO DO# _Find a hollow reed and use it for a shaft.
Make a shaft with a socket in it.
Fit a spearhead into the socket.
Change the spear so as to make a harpoon._ _Draw a picture of the chase of the wild horses._ _Think of a wild horse running very fast.
See if you can model a wild horse in clay so as to show that it has great speed._ XXII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why was the harpoon a better weapon for hunting than the spear or javelin?
What could hunters do to keep smooth shafts from slipping from their hands?
What is the harpoon used for to-day?
Why do animals become more cunning after they are hunted?
_How the Cave-men Hunted with Harpoons_ Once again the Cave-men went out to hunt the wild horses.
Once again they took new weapons.
But instead of spears and javelins they carried barbed harpoons.
From a high hill they saw the horses on the edge of a grassy upland.
They hurried over the wooded hills and crept through the tall grass.
When Bighorn gave the signal the sentinels pricked up their ears.
But before they could give the alarm, the men had thrown their harpoons.
The frightened horses crowded upon one another.
Snapping sounds of breaking shafts, sharp cries of wounded horses, and loud shouts of Cave-men added to their terror.
The snorting of the sentinels warned the Cave-men back.
A signal from the leader brought order to the herd.
It began to move as though it were one solid mass.
Away the herd galloped, striking terror to all creatures in the way.
But the wounded horses soon lagged.
In vain they tried to keep up.
At each step the shaft of the harpoon swung under their feet.
At each step the barbed head pierced deeper and deeper.
So the Cave-men had little trouble in finishing the chase.
Perhaps you think the Cave-men had no trouble in hunting after that.
They had less trouble for some time, and they all prized their harpoons.
But on cold days, when their hands were stiff, the smooth shafts slipped from their grasp.
When they used shafts with knobs and large joints, it was easy to keep a firm hold.
So the men made shafts with larger knobs and they put girdles around the smooth shafts.
[Illustration: _Chipper using a spear-noose._] At their games of throwing spears and javelins, Bighorn was almost sure to win.
It was partly because he had large hands and very strong fingers.
By bending one finger like a hook and striking the butt of the shaft, he could send a harpoon straight to the mark.
Chipper's hands were not very large.
His fingers were not so strong as Bighorn's.
But Chipper was a bright young man, and he found a way of using a spear-noose so that he could throw as well as Bighorn.
The spear-noose was a simple thing.
Chipper made it by tying a noose in each end of a cord.
When he used it, he slipped one noose around his thumb and the other around one finger.
Then he grasped the spear near the butt and slipped the cord around the knob.
The spear-noose was a great help to hunters whose hands were not large and strong.
Every time the Cave-men made new weapons, they worked very well for a short time.
But as soon as the animals learned about them, they became more cunning in getting away.
Wild horses kept sentinels on knolls and hilltops so that they could see an enemy from afar.
They guarded their herds so carefully that the Cave-men could scarcely get near enough to hit them with their harpoons.
And so the Cave-men returned many times bearing no trophies.
They returned many times giving no signal for the women to come for fresh meat.
#THINGS TO DO# _Take a harpoon and show how the shaft would swing against the feet of an animal that had been hit by the head._ _Make a girdle around a smooth shaft, or make a shaft with a knob or large joint near the butt._ _Make a spear-noose and show how Chipper used it._ _Think of the wild horses during the first few minutes after the men threw their harpoons.
See if you can draw a picture of them._ XXIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Think of as many hard things as you can that the Cave-men had to do.
Why did they have to do these things?
What kind of men did the Cave-men have to be?
Think of as many ways as you can that the Cave-men would use to teach the boys.
What tests do you think they would give the boys?
[Illustration: "_And so the Cave-men tested the boys in many different ways._"] _How the Cave-men Tested Fleetfoot and Flaker_ Winters came and went, and Fleetfoot and Flaker grew to be large boys.
They watched the men; they heard them talk; they learned what a Cave-man had to do.
Greybeard told them stories of brave hunters that lived long ago.
He told them about the animals they must learn to hunt.
The boys listened to the stories.
And they thought there was no animal too fierce for them to fight.
They thought there was no river too swift for them to cross.
They thought there was no mountain too steep for them to climb.
But the boys had not learned how fierce a bison can be.
They had never crossed a raging river nor climbed a mountain peak.
The men knew that the boys needed to try their strength before they could be really strong.
They knew they must do brave deeds before they could be really brave.
They knew they must suffer patiently before they could have self-control.
And so the Cave-men tested the boys in many different ways.
If the boys stood the tests, the Cave-men shouted praises; but if they showed any sign of fear, the Cave-men jeered at them.
Sometimes the boys were given nothing to eat until they brought food from the hunt.
And even then they were not always allowed to touch the food which was near.
When the boys were fasting, the Cave-men tempted them with food.
And if the boys took even a bite, they failed in the test.
So Fleetfoot and Flaker learned to fast without a word of complaint.
One of the hardest things which the boys had to do was to make their own weapons.
At first, Greybeard helped them; but, later, they had to do their own work.
So the boys learned to go to the trees that had the best wood for shafts.
They learned to cut, and peel, and scrape, and oil, and season, and polish the sticks before they were ready to use.
No wonder the boys became tired before all this work was done.
Then they worked very carefully before they could make good spearheads.
They hunted for the best stones and learned to shape them very well.
When they forgot and struck hard blows, they spoiled the flint points.
Then Greybeard would tell them that the strongest and bravest hunters were those who could strike the gentlest blows.
It was work of this kind that was harder for the boys than chasing a wild horse or a reindeer.
If they had not known that they must have weapons, they would not have had patience to do it.
While the boys worked at their weapons, they thought of what they would do with them.
They thought of the trophies they would bring home and what the people would say.
And they learned to sing at their work and to mark the time for each blow.
And so they managed to keep at work until the weapons were done.
One day when the boys were flaking spear points, Fleetfoot turned to Flaker and said, "Do you know who made the first flaker?"
"Yes," answered Flaker, "it was Greybeard."
"No, no!"
said Fleetfoot, "Nimble-finger did it."
Greybeard heard Fleetfoot speak his name and he came to the spot.
Then it was that Fleetfoot learned that Greybeard was Nimble-finger.
After that Fleetfoot took great pains to learn how to flake flint points.
He watched Greybeard as he worked and he listened to all he said.
Before many years had passed, the boys could make good weapons.
They knew every spot on their own hunting ground.
They knew the wild animals that lived there and what they liked to do.
They knew each animal by its track.
Each sound of the woods, each patch of light, they learned to read as you read a book.
#THINGS TO DO# _Name things you will have to learn before you are full-grown._ _What kind of tests do you have to take?_ _Tell a story of the way the Cave-men tested Fleetfoot and Flaker._ _Tell a story of all that you think happened the day that Fleetfoot learned that Greybeard was Nimble-finger._ _Name the birds you can tell by their song.
Name those you can tell by sight._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Testing Fleetfoot and Flaker._ _Fleetfoot and Flaker in the workshop._ _Fleetfoot discovers Nimble-finger._ [Illustration: "_Then their antlers crashed in a swift charge._"] XXIV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What animals would the Cave-men see just before winter?
Which of these live in herds?
How are the leaders of the herds chosen?
What kind of a voice does the reindeer have when it is good-natured?
What kind of a voice does it have when it is angry?
_Fleetfoot and Flaker see a Combat_ One day just before winter, Fleetfoot and Flaker went out on the hills.
The reindeer were coming back and the boys wanted to see them.
They had gone only a little way, when they saw two handsome stags.
Each wanted to be leader of the reindeer herd, and so they were trying their strength.
The stags stood head to head, their red eyes blazing like fire.
Their hair stood on end.
They stamped their hoofs on the hard ground.
They hissed fierce blasts to and fro.
Slowly and carefully they changed their position, still keeping head to head.
Each reindeer knew that the lances of the other could strike deadly blows.
Each reindeer had fought too many battles to expose himself to such blows.
And so the stags eyed each other, getting more angry all the while.
Louder and fiercer sounded their blasts.
Then their antlers crashed in a swift charge.
They pulled and pushed with all their might in a life and death struggle.
Not until their strength was exhausted did they stop a moment to rest.
Then they tried to draw apart, but they found they could not do it.
Each stag was held a prisoner by the antlers of the other.
In vain the handsome creatures pulled and pushed.
Each was held fast.
And the boys, seeing their chance, secured both of the reindeer.
Perhaps it was well for the reindeer that the boys were there.
At least, the boys saved them from a more horrible death.
Reindeer caught in this way have suffered from hunger and thirst many days before death came.
The boys admired the beautiful reindeer as they lay stretched out on the ground.
They felt of their polished antlers that had dealt many powerful blows.
And they wished they had such weapons as these to use all of the time.
#THINGS TO DO# _Show how the reindeer stood in the combat and how they changed their positions.
Draw the picture._ _Take a flat surface of clay and see if you can model a reindeer so that it will stand out a little from the surface._ _Tell a story of what you think happened at the cave after the boys killed the reindeer._ XXV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If you have ever seen a cat hunt, tell how she does it.
Can you think why cats do not hunt together?
Do dogs hunt alone, or with one another?
How do wolves hunt?
In what ways can animals help one another in hunting?
What animals do wolves hunt to-day?
What animals did the wolves hunt in the time of the Cave-men?
_What Happened when Fleetfoot and Flaker Hunted the Bison_ When summer came, Fleetfoot and Flaker watched the bison from day to day.
The wolves, too, watched the bison.
One day the boys saw two wolves hunt a bison that had strayed from the herd.
The wolves walked boldly up toward the bison until they were only a few paces away.
Then they went cautiously.
The bison paid no attention at first; but when the wolves came closer, he stamped his foot and shook his horns.
Any animal could know that the bison meant, "It is dangerous here.
Keep away!"
But the wolves had a plan and they carried it out.
The smaller wolf kept the bison's attention by making believe attack from the front.
This gave the big wolf a chance; and he cut the large muscles of the bison's knees with his sharp teeth.
The bison was thus crippled so badly that the wolves were more than a match for him.
"I wonder if we could get a bison," said Flaker as the boys watched the wolves at their feast.
"Let's try," said Fleetfoot.
"But how can we get close up," said Flaker, "without frightening the bison away?"
"Let's dress in wolf-skins," said Fleetfoot, "and make believe we are wolves."
And the boys dressed in wolf-skins and took their best hunting knives.
They watched the herd until they saw a large bison stray away.
Then the boys approached the bison, and they looked so much like wolves that they got very close before the bison threatened with his horns.
Then the boys made the attack.
Flaker took the part of the little wolf and attacked the bison's head.
Fleetfoot took the part of the big wolf and tried to cripple the bison.
But the boys had not counted upon the bison's tough skin.
They had not counted upon his muscles, which were as hard as boards.
Flaker's dagger glanced off at one side and merely scratched the bison.
But it made the creature so angry that he charged upon Flaker.
Meanwhile Fleetfoot was doing his best to cut the hard muscles of the bison's knee.
He forgot about everything else until he had lamed one of the forelegs.
It was then that the bison charged and that Flaker called for help.
And then Fleetfoot tried to rescue Flaker by drawing the bison's attention away.
Fleetfoot did this just in time to save Flaker's life.
He struck at the Bison's head, then dodged in time to escape his horns.
He dodged again and again until he was almost exhausted.
The bison limped, but he seemed as strong and as furious as ever.
Once again the bison charged, and again Fleetfoot dodged.
Then a spear whizzed past Fleetfoot's head and a voice called, "Climb a tree."
[Illustration: "_They looked so much like wolves that they got very close before the bison threatened._"] Fleetfoot never remembered running to the tree.
He never remembered climbing it.
But for many days he seemed to see himself in the tree and the bison just beneath.
For many days he seemed to hear Greybeard's welcome voice.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's carving of a "hamstrung" animal._] Greybeard and Fleetfoot stayed in the trees until the bison started up the ravine.
Then they climbed down from one of the trees and hurried to see what had happened to Flaker.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tell something that you have learned from watching an animal._ _Mention as many things as you can that you think the Cave-men learned from animals._ _Straighten and bend your elbow or knee so as to find where the strong muscles are._ _Tell why the Cave-men tried to cut the strong muscles of the bison's knee.
We say when we cut these large muscles that we have "hamstrung" the animal._ _Look at the picture of a Cave-man's carving of an animal which has been "hamstrung."
Can you tell what animal it is?_ _Think of the two wolves coming up toward the bison.
Model one of them in clay.
See if the children can guess which one it is._ XXVI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think had happened to Flaker?
If any of his bones were broken, do you think the Cave-men could set them?
Do you think there were doctors when the Cave-men lived?
Who would do the work which doctors do to-day?
_What the Cave-men did for Flaker_ Fleetfoot ran ahead of Greybeard and found Flaker on the ground.
Fleetfoot stooped and looked into his face.
He called him by name.
No answer came.
Then Fleetfoot asked Greybeard if Flaker was dead.
Greybeard shook his head as he bent down and laid his hands upon the boy.
He examined his wounds, then said to Fleetfoot, "Let's carry him down to the cool spring."
So Greybeard and Fleetfoot lifted Flaker and carried him gently down to the spring.
There they bathed his face and the ugly wounds with fresh cool water.
They bound his wounds with strips of the skins that the boys wore that day.
When Greybeard tried to set the broken bones, Flaker began to moan.
He opened his eyes for a moment; then he fell back in a swoon.
Then Greybeard sent Fleetfoot to the cave for help.
And Fleetfoot hurried and told Antler; and Antler, picking up some little things which she knew she would need, and telling the women to follow quickly with a large skin, went with Fleetfoot to the spot where Flaker lay.
Greybeard was watching beside the boy when Antler arrived.
He helped her set the broken bones and then they prepared to carry him home.
[Illustration: _What the Cave-men did for Flaker._] Taking the skin which the women brought, Antler stretched it upon the ground.
Then the women helped her lift the boy and lay him upon the skin.
Gently they laid him upon the stretcher.
Softly they stepped as they carried him home.
They tended him carefully many days.
Flaker's wounds soon healed.
But when he was strong enough to walk, the Cave-men saw that he was lame.
Flaker was always lame after that.
The bones had slipped out of place and now it was too late to reset them.
Afterwards the Cave-men learned better ways of setting broken bones.
They found better ways of holding them in place while they grew together.
Perhaps the Cave-men learned this by watching the wild animals.
Some birds, when they break a leg, hold the bones in place with wet clay.
Sometimes we use a plaster cast, but the Cave-men knew nothing about such a way.
The days seemed long to Flaker while he was getting well.
Everybody was kind to him, but it seemed hard to keep quiet when everybody else was moving about.
When Fleetfoot went out to hunt, Flaker wanted to go too.
But he could not go, and so Fleetfoot used to tell him everything that happened.
#THINGS TO DO# _Show how the women helped Antler put Flaker upon the skin.
Show how they carried him home.
Draw one of the pictures._ _Find out why a child's bones will grow together more easily than an old person's bones.
See if you can find out what bones are made of.
Soak a bone in acid and see what happens to it.
Burn a bone and see what happens to it.
Why do a child's bones break less easily than an old person's?_ _If there is a spring in your neighborhood, go and see it.
Find out where the water comes from._ XXVII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If Flaker is lame, how will he be able to get food?
What do you think he can do that will be useful to the clan?
Do you think the Cave-men took as good care of the sick, and the lame, and the old people, as we do?
What could they do for them?
Why did the men use weapons more than tools?
Why did the women use tools more than weapons?
Think of as many tools as you can that the women used.
_How Flaker Learned to Make Weapons of Bone_ Before Flaker was hurt he and Fleetfoot had planned to do many things.
But now Flaker was lame, and all the Cave-men knew he would never be able to hunt.
When Flaker first knew it, he was very sad.
And so Fleetfoot tried to comfort him.
Each day he brought him a bird or a rabbit, and he told him all that had happened.
For a while Flaker thought that if a man could not hunt, there was nothing else for him to do.
But soon he found there were many things to do besides going out to hunt.
Flaker began by doing a few little things to help Fleetfoot.
He helped him flake heads for harpoons and javelins and make strong shafts.
When Greybeard and Fleetfoot praised his work, Flaker was very happy.
And so Flaker busied himself in the workshop when the men went out to hunt.
Sometimes Chipper helped him, and often Greybeard worked with him.
When Flaker was tired he would look at the trophies which were fastened on the wall near the cave.
He was always glad to see the locked antlers of the two stags.
As he looked at the strong antlers, he could almost see the handsome stags.
He thought of them standing head to head ready to strike deadly blows.
And he wished he had had such powerful weapons to meet the bison's charge.
[Illustration: _A wedge or tent pin._] The children wanted to be good to Flaker and so they brought him the antlers they found.
They liked to play with the antlers, and their mothers used them in many ways.
They had learned to cut them with choppers and chisels, and sometimes they cut them with stone knives.
All the women used the small prongs of the antlers.
They used them as wedges in prying the bark loose from the sap-wood of young trees.
All the women had learned to make hammers of antler by making two cuts near the base.
And sometimes they used the broad end of the brow antler instead of a stone chisel.
Once when Flaker was watching Antler, he thought she was making a dagger.
But Antler had not thought of making a dagger.
She was making a hammer and wedge.
When she had finished, she dropped the long beam of the antler upon the ground and went away with her tools.
Flaker kept his eyes fixed upon the long beam.
The more he looked at it, the more it looked like a dagger.
At length he reached and picked it up.
Then he took his knife and began to cut it.
[Illustration: _The head of a javelin._] That night when Fleetfoot came home, Flaker gave him a dagger of reindeer horn.
Fleetfoot showed it to Bighorn, who took it, then tossed it on the ground.
Bighorn had never seen such a dagger.
He thought a good dagger had to be made of stone.
So he made fun of Flaker's weapon, then thought no more about it.
But Greybeard and Chipper did not make fun of the weapons Flaker made.
They tried the dagger next day, and found that it stood the test.
So they asked Flaker to make each of them daggers and javelins of reindeer horn.
#THINGS TO DO# _Tell all you know about the antlers of full-grown stags.
Tell all you know about the antlers of other reindeer._ _Look at the antlers in the pictures on pages 16, 17, 108, and 121.
Find the part that would make such a wedge as is shown on page 119.
Find the part that would make such a hammer as is shown on page 74.
Find a part for a chisel or scraper.
Find the long beam that was used in making such a dagger as is shown on page 123.
Do you think that Flaker's first dagger was carved in this way?
Can you tell why the Cave-men carved their weapons?_ _Act out the part of this story you like best._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Flaker watching for Fleetfoot's return._ _The children bringing antlers to Flaker._ _The women at work making tools._ _Fleetfoot showing the dagger to Bighorn._ _Greybeard and Chipper asking Flaker to make daggers._ _Make as many simple tools as you can out of bone or horn.
Find ways of using them._ XXVIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think Flaker used in cutting the antler?
What tools will he need to use in making weapons of bone or horn?
What do you think the first saws were?
How do you think people came to use saws?
How large do you think they were?
What are files used for?
Can you think what the first files were like?
What do you think they were used for?
_How Flaker Invented the Saw_ [Illustration: _A small antler._] How glad Flaker was when Greybeard and Chipper asked him to make them some daggers!
He looked at all the antlers the children had brought.
He thought of the reindeer he had seen with antlers such as these.
He remembered the handsome reindeer with their deadly weapons, and at length he chose the large antlers which had belonged to a handsome stag.
Flaker looked at the long beams and decided to use them for daggers.
He took his knife to cut off the prongs, but he could scarcely cut them with a knife.
Flaker knew that the women cut the prongs with a chopper, but a chopper was a woman's tool.
And Flaker wanted to be like the men.
And so he kept working with his knife, but he wished he had taken a beam which the women had left.
[Illustration: _A knife with two blades, a saw, and a file, all in one._] When he was tired using his knife, he played with some flint flakes.
He ran his fingers over the sharp edges.
Then he carelessly pressed off tiny flakes.
But Flaker soon tired of this and he picked up the antler again.
He pushed a flint flake back and forth upon one of the prongs of the antler.
Flaker was simply playing at first; but when he saw that the flint was cutting, his play became real work.
And he kept on pushing and pulling the flake until the prong fell to the ground.
Then he sawed off other prongs, but he did not know he was sawing.
Flaker had never seen a saw and he did not know what it was.
He did not know that when he pressed off the tiny flakes he made the teeth of a flint saw.
But Flaker had made a saw.
It was only the rough edge of a flint flake.
No doubt such rough edges had been made many times before.
But Flaker learned to use the rough edge by pushing and pulling it back and forth.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's dagger of carved antler._] When Flaker sawed the prongs from the beam, some of the places were rough.
So he rubbed them with the face of the flint until he made them smooth.
When Flaker did this, the flake, which had been only a knife, became a file as well as a saw.
Greybeard and Chipper tried the new daggers and found that they were sharp and strong.
And the next time they went on the chase they took the new weapons along.
Bighorn saw the new weapons, but he said little about them.
For Bighorn knew better than to make fun of weapons Greybeard used.
Nothing pleased Flaker more than to be able to help Greybeard.
And so he cherished the new tool that he used in shaping reindeer horn.
Sometimes he showed it to Greybeard, who was always kind to the boys.
But even the wise old man had no idea of what a wonderful tool it was.
The other Cave-men saw the tool, but they thought very little about it.
They cared a great deal about the weapons they used in the chase.
But few of the Cave-men ever thought of making anything they did not need right away.
And so little was said about the new tool which was a knife with two blades, a saw, and a file, all in one.
Nobody dreamed at that time that the little tool was the forerunner of a great change.
#THINGS TO DO# _If you can strike off a large flint flake with three faces, see if you can make it into a knife-saw-file._ _Look at the picture, or at the real tool you have made, and find the plain face that can be used as a file._ _Find the two edges which can be used as knives.
Find the edge which has a crest of teeth, and which can be used as a saw._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_The women chopping prongs from the beam of the antler._ _Flaker sawing the prongs off the antler._ XXIX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Can you think why the females and the young males of the reindeer herd could drive the old stags away during the winter?
Could they do it in the summer?
Why can the reindeer walk easily in the snow or on slippery places?
What is it that makes the clicking sound when reindeer walk or run?
Why were the Cave-men careful to make no mistake in the dance?
_The Reindeer Dance_ Fleetfoot did not hunt with the men, but he learned many things from them.
In early winter, he heard them tell stories of dangerous encounters with ugly stags.
When the old stags shed their antlers, he saw the men dance the reindeer dance.
Fleetfoot mimicked the reindeer's movements and the grunting sounds they made.
But he was not allowed to join with the men in dancing the reindeer dance.
Only brave men were allowed to join in the dance.
Only the bravest men were allowed to lead.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's mortar stone for grinding paint._] But Fleetfoot stood near and saw everything that was done.
Some of the men put on headdresses made of the antlers of the reindeer.
Others put on reindeer suits without the headdress of antlers.
Those that were to be the Cave-men painted their faces and carried trophies.
Fleetfoot wished that he could have a headdress and take part in the dance.
He wondered how long he would have to wait before he could dance with the men.
He wondered how many brave things he must do before he would rank as a man.
And when Fleetfoot saw the men standing in silence while Greybeard made offerings to the gods, he looked at the brave old man and wondered how a man could be so wise.
Then he thought of Chew-chew's stories of brave men of olden times.
At length Fleetfoot saw Flaker, who was sitting all alone.
He went and sat beside him and they watched the men dance.
The men had finished dressing, and the women were seated on the ground.
They had rolls of skin, and rude drums, and rattles of reindeer hoofs.
At a signal from Bighorn, a group of men came dancing to the music of the rattles.
They moved about and made low grunting sounds as though they were a reindeer herd.
Then the music changed.
The women drummed upon skins and hummed in a weird way.
They tried to show by the sound of the music the coming of a storm.
[Illustration: _A drum._] At the first sound of the weird music, the reindeer pricked up their ears.
Then the larger reindeer that had lost their antlers started off to make-believe higher lands.
There they made believe paw the snow until they found the moss.
As the music of the storm grew louder, the herd followed to the higher lands.
And with many an angry threat they drove the old stags away.
Then the drumming and humming became fainter, and at last the sounds died away.
But still the faint clicking of the rattles marked each step of the men in the dance.
Another signal from Bighorn marked the change to a new scene.
Trails were marked upon the ground and sticks placed for hills and streams.
While the reindeer pretended to feed, a group of Cave-men appeared.
Bighorn, who was still the leader, sent Little-bear to watch where the trail crossed the hills.
Chipper was sent to lie in wait at the spot where the trail crossed the river.
And Bighorn, himself, took his stand at the point where the trails crossed.
When the men took their places, others crept back of the herd.
Only the light music of the rattles sounded as the reindeer moved about.
As the men came nearer the reindeer herd, the sentinels showed signs of fear.
The clicking of the rattles was quicker.
The herd became thoroughly alarmed and the women shook the rattles and made a loud din.
Then the reindeer started on their old trails and came near the spots where the men were hid.
The clicking of the rattles marked the time for the running, and the beating of the drum showed when javelins were hurled.
Soon the shouts of the men and the rattles and drums made a loud noise.
All the Cave-men enjoyed the dance.
They danced it without a mistake.
And so they felt sure that the god of the reindeer would give them success in the chase.
#THINGS TO DO# _Model in your sand-box the spot where the reindeer dance was danced._ _Model the trails where the Cave-men thought the reindeer would run when alarmed._ _Make rattles of something which you can find, and show how to mark time with them._ _If you can get a skin, see if you can stretch it over something so as to make a drum.
Try different ways, and tell which is best._ _Dramatize this lesson._ _Draw a picture to illustrate it._ XXX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Can you think why hunters frequently have famines?
At what season of the year would they be most likely to have a famine?
Can you think why they did not preserve and save food in times of plenty?
If game should be scarce on a hunting ground, do you think all of the people could stay at home?
What do you think would happen at such a time?
Have you ever heard that the Indians used to be afraid of having their pictures taken?
Why were they afraid of it?
_Fleetfoot Prepares for His Final Test_ Toward the close of winter rumors of famine came to the Bison clan.
Several times people came from neighboring clans and asked Antler for food.
There was plenty of meat in the cave, so she gave to those who asked.
The strangers soon went away, and the Bison clan forgot about them.
The next summer game was scarce on several of the old hunting grounds.
There was not enough food for all.
People began to wander away from their old homes.
Small groups of men, women, and children, set out in different directions.
Game was still plenty on the lands of the Bison clan.
When the neighbors knew this, they came to hunt on these lands.
The day Fleetfoot went away to fast, strange people came and camped.
The next day the Bison clan drove them away.
A few days later other strangers came, and they, too, were driven away.
Bighorn was angry when the strangers first came, but soon he became alarmed.
Just as the men and women were holding a council to consider what to do, the strangers disappeared.
Not until Fleetfoot returned did the Bison clan know who they were or why they came.
[Illustration: "_People began to wander away from their old homes._"] Before Fleetfoot went away to fast, he had been curious about the Big Bear.
He had heard many stories about the Big Bear ever since he was a child.
He had heard that the Big Bear guarded the game and kept the animals in the rocky cavern.
He had wondered if he could climb the mountains and find the cave of the Big Bear.
Before Flaker was hurt, the boys had planned to go to the mountains.
They had planned to make friends with the Big Bear and learn where he kept the game.
They had planned to climb the highest peaks and see what there was beyond.
Once, when the boys asked Greybeard if they might go to the mountains, Greybeard said, "No, no, my children!
Wait a while.
You are not yet old enough to go."
And so the boys waited, but they still talked about going to the cavern of the Big Bear.
After Flaker was hurt they still planned, but they planned for Fleetfoot to go alone.
One day when the boys were talking together, Greybeard came to Fleetfoot and said, "The time you have waited for has come.
Prepare for your final test."
This was glad news for Fleetfoot.
At last he was to have a chance to prove himself worthy to rank with the men.
Flaker rejoiced with Fleetfoot, yet he could not help feeling sad.
The Bison clan had decided that Fleetfoot should go to a quiet spot.
There he was to fast and pray until he received a sign from the gods.
And when he had done their bidding, he was to return for his final test.
This test once passed, Fleetfoot would be counted one of the men.
Before Fleetfoot went, Greybeard instructed him in the use of prayers and charms.
Antler gave him a magic powder and showed him how to prepare it from herbs.
And the men told him of their tests, and the signs they received from the gods.
Flaker had listened to every word that Greybeard had said.
He had thought of all the dangers which Fleetfoot might encounter.
And he wondered if there was not a way to protect Fleetfoot from harm.
Flaker knew that the reindeer dance was a prayer of the Cave-men to their gods.
He knew each movement in the dance was to help the gods understand.
He felt sure that the gods would help Fleetfoot if he could make them understand.
And so he determined to make a prayer which Fleetfoot could carry with him.
[Illustration: _The engraving of a cave-bear on a pebble._] Perhaps you will think that the prayer Flaker made was a very strange prayer.
But many people in all parts of the world have made such prayers.
It was a prayer to the Big Bear of the mountains.
Flaker scratched it upon a smooth pebble with a flint point.
It was a picture of the Big Bear, and Flaker made it so that Fleetfoot could control the actions of the Big Bear.
When Flaker gave the prayer to Fleetfoot he told him to guard it with great care.
Fleetfoot took the prayer and promised to keep it near his side.
Then the boys made an offering to the Big Bear and asked him to guide the way.
When at length Fleetfoot was ready to start, Greybeard spoke these parting words: "Forget not the offerings to the gods, and remember they must be made with true words and a faithful heart."
#THINGS TO DO# _Show in your sand-box where you think the mountains were.
Model them and show that they were almost covered with snow.
Show good places for neighboring hunting grounds._ _Tell why game might be scarce in some hunting grounds and plenty in others._ _Dramatize this story.
Draw pictures which will show what happened.
See if you can engrave some animal upon wood or soft stone._ XXXI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Where do you think Fleetfoot will go while he is away from home?
Find a picture of a glacier, and see if you can tell how a glacier is made.
In what places does the snow stay all the year round?
If a great deal of snow falls each year, what do you think will become of it?
Find out whether there have ever been glaciers near where you live.
If there have, see if you can find any traces of them.
_Fleetfoot Fasts and Prays_ None of the Cave-men knew where Fleetfoot would go to fast and pray.
He scarcely knew himself, but all the time he kept thinking of the Big Bear of the Mountains.
And so he turned his steps toward the high mountain peaks.
He followed the bison trail, for that was a sure guide.
It led up the river a long way, and then skirted a dark forest.
He crossed the river and went to the forest.
There he sought out a lonely spot where he stayed several days.
As soon as he had made a fire, Fleetfoot made offerings to the gods.
His offerings were fish he caught in the river and birds he caught in snares.
Although Fleetfoot offered meat to the gods, he did not taste it himself.
When he was ready to sleep, he rubbed a pinch of wood-ashes upon his breast and prayed thus to the fire god: "O fire god, hover near me while I sleep.
Hear my prayer.
Grant good dreams to me this night.
Grant me a sign that thou wilt aid me.
Lead my feet in the right way."
The first night Fleetfoot had no dreams.
The second night he dreamed he was a child again and that he lived in his old home.
The third night he dreamed of the Big Bear of the Mountains.
He thought that he climbed the mountain crags and went to the Big Bear's cave.
He dreamed that the Big Bear spoke to him and asked him whence he came.
Then strange people seemed to come out of the cave and wave their weapons in a threatening way.
After that Fleetfoot remembered nothing except that the Big Bear seemed like a friend.
At daybreak Fleetfoot awoke, and at once he thought of his dream.
He took the pebble from a little bag.
Then he made an offering to the bear as he spoke these words: "O Big Bear!
O mighty hunter!
Show me the way to thy caverns.
Show me where thou keepest the game.
Give me strength to meet all dangers.
Fill my enemies with fear."
Then, remembering what Greybeard had said, Fleetfoot gave offerings to all the animals he hoped to kill.
In this way he thought the gods would help him when he went out to hunt.
As soon as the offerings were made, Fleetfoot looked for a sign from the gods.
The winds began to blow.
Dark clouds began to climb the sky.
Then the thunders pealed through the heavens.
[Illustration: _A stone borer, used in making a necklace._] Fleetfoot, faint from his long fast, took courage from these signs.
The winds seemed to be messengers bearing his prayer to the gods.
The dark clouds seemed to be the enemies he would meet on the way.
The peals of thunder sounded to him like promises of strength.
The bright lightning in the sky flashed a message of hope.
A flock of swallows circling near seemed to point the way.
And so Fleetfoot refreshed himself and started toward the mountains.
It would take too long to tell all the things that happened to Fleetfoot before he returned.
One of the first things he did was to kill a cave-bear and take the trophies.
When Fleetfoot started out again, he wore a necklace of bear's teeth.
He wore them partly because they were trophies and partly because they were charms.
Fleetfoot followed the trail along the edge of the forest until he reached a ridge of hills.
Behind him lay the River of Stones and all the places he had known.
Before him lay a pretty valley about a day's journey across.
To his left the snow-covered mountain peaks shone with a dazzling light.
He stopped only to sleep and to make offerings to the gods.
Fleetfoot was full of courage, and yet he was weak from his fast.
He longed to be strong against all foes.
He longed to be a great hunter.
He longed to strengthen his people and to meet the dangers which threatened his clan.
At midday he reached the river, where he sat down to rest.
Then he went up the little river, which flowed over a rocky bed.
Fleetfoot followed the river until he came to a spot where it seemed to end.
Great masses of snow and ice covered the river bed.
Farther up they reached the top of the cliffs and stretched out into the valley.
It was the melting of this glacier which fed the little stream.
Fleetfoot stood and gazed at the glacier with its rough billows of snow and ice.
He looked at the green forests which stretched to its very edge.
He looked at the great ice sheets which covered the mountain peaks.
He looked at the bare crags which jutted out from the rocks.
And he wondered if the Big Bear's cave was in one of these rocks.
[Illustration: "_It was the melting of this glacier which fed the little stream._"] Then he crossed the stream and approached the cliff on the opposite side.
There he found a cave, and he looked about, but he found no one at home.
As Fleetfoot was looking about, he began to think of Chew-chew.
Everything upon which his eyes rested seemed to speak of her.
And yet he could not remember seeing the place before.
Night came again and Fleetfoot slept.
Again he saw the Big Bear in his dreams.
Again he saw the enemies of his clan, and again he dreamed of his old home.
For several days Fleetfoot explored the country near the mountains.
He found several good hunting grounds, but he did not find the Big Bear.
As the days passed it seemed to Fleetfoot that he was no longer alone.
He heard no steps, and he saw no tracks; yet he felt sure that some one was near.
One morning, when he awoke, there was some one watching him through the thick leaves.
He grasped his spear and was ready to throw, when he heard a merry laugh.
Then a lovely maiden appeared with dark and glossy hair.
Her eyes shone with the morning light and her breath was as fresh as the dew.
Fleetfoot dropped his spear and stepped forward to greet the girl.
A moment they gazed in each other's eyes, and then they knew no fear.
They sat on a mossy bank where they talked for a long, long time.
And Fleetfoot learned that she was called Willow-grouse and that her people were away.
Before he could ask her more, she inquired from whence he came.
And then she asked him what had brought him so far away from his home.
While Fleetfoot was telling his story, Willow-grouse listened with sparkling eyes.
When he had finished, her eyes fell, and she seemed to be buried in thought.
Willow-grouse knew that her own people were plotting against the Bison clan.
She wanted Fleetfoot to stay with her; and she feared that if she told him what her people were doing, he would go away.
For a few minutes Willow-grouse kept silent; but, at length, she decided to speak.
She told Fleetfoot of the famine of the springtime and of the scarcity of game.
She told how the people separated and traveled far and wide.
Many of her own people had been to the grounds of the Bison clan.
Now the clans were at the rapids.
But as soon as the salmon season was over, they were going to attack the Bison clan.
When Fleetfoot heard what Willow-grouse said, he gave up his search for the Big Bear.
He decided to go to the salmon feast and learn what the clans were doing.
He hoped he could do this and still have time to warn the Bison clan.
#THINGS TO DO# _See if you can find a way of making a glacier in your sand-box._ _Model a river valley whose upper part is filled with a glacier.
Show where the bed and banks are covered with snow and ice.
Show where the cliffs are covered.
Show where the ice-sheets are.
Show on the sand-map Fleetfoot's journey to the place where he fasted.
Show the remainder of his journey._ _Draw pictures of the following:_-_Fleetfoot prays to the fire-god._ _Fleetfoot receives signs from the gods._ _Fleetfoot standing on the ridge of hills._ _Fleetfoot's meeting with Willow-grouse._ XXXII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Can you think why the salmon feast was at the rapids of the river?
Show in your sand-map a place where rapids might be.
If there is a river near you which has rapids, go to the spot and see if you can tell what it is that makes the rapids.
Show in your map the hunting grounds of the clans which met at the rapids.
Find the trails they would follow in going to the rapids.
Find out all you can about the habits of the salmon.
[Illustration: _A necklace of fossil shells._] _The Meeting of the Clans_ At his parting from Willow-grouse, Fleetfoot gave her a necklace of fossil shells.
Then saying, "We shall meet when the new moon comes," he started on his way.
He followed Sweet Briar River on his way to the meeting of the clans.
At sunset he knew he was nearing the place where Willow-grouse said they had met.
He could hear the roaring of the rapids, and above this sound, the shouts of the clans.
Fleetfoot waited for the cover of darkness, for he did not wish to be seen.
Then he approached cautiously toward the spot where the camp fire crackled and blazed.
In the light of the flames dark trunks of oaks and fir trees stood out of the blackness.
Then moving forms appeared on the banks and lighted the clans seated around the fire.
At first Fleetfoot did not go near enough to see the faces distinctly.
But he could tell from the various movements that they were preparing for a dance.
All eyes seemed fixed on an old woman who was offering gifts to the gods.
She lifted hot stones from the fire and dropped them into a basket of water.
Then she took a piece of salmon and dropped it into the water.
As Fleetfoot watched the old woman, he thought of Chew-chew and his old home.
Then he wondered if all women would look like Chew-chew when they grew old.
When the offerings were made, the men began a war dance.
Some were dressed in masks of horses, and others wore masks of reindeer and cattle.
When the men took off their masks, Fleetfoot looked as if in a dream.
For among the strangers moving about there appeared familiar forms.
For a few minutes Fleetfoot could not tell whether he was awake or asleep.
What he saw seemed very real, and yet it seemed like a dream.
He had almost forgotten his own people.
He had not seen them since the day he was lost.
And now, only a few paces away, stood Scarface and Straightshaft.
Then other familiar forms appeared moving near the fire.
And among the women who had beaten the drums were Chew-chew and Eagle-eye.
When Fleetfoot saw his mother and Chew-chew, he almost shouted for joy.
He wanted to go and speak to them, but something seemed to hold him back.
Then his heart began to beat so loud and so fast that Fleetfoot was afraid he would be discovered; so he hurried away from the spot to a hollow tree where he spent the night.
For a long time he lay awake thinking about what to do.
He could not go back to Willow-grouse and leave his work undone.
He could not make himself known to Cave-men who were planning to attack the Bison clan.
He could not return to the Bison clan without learning the enemies' plans.
And so Fleetfoot took the pebble from its bag and asked the Big Bear for aid.
Then he fell asleep and did not awake until the break of day.
All through the day he watched the clans.
He saw them fish at the rapids and feast and play around the fire.
He saw them go to a smooth spot near the bank where they played games.
When night came he said to himself, "I'll watch the dance and learn their plans."
Scarface offered gifts to the gods before the dance began.
As he performed the magic rites, all the people were still.
Every eye was turned toward the old man.
No one suspected danger.
Fleetfoot, watching from a safe retreat, had heard a rustling sound.
And, looking in the direction from which the sound came, he saw a big tiger in a neighboring tree.
The tiger had crept out on a strong branch and was watching for his prey.
The eyes of the big cat snapped fire as they followed each movement that Scarface made.
There was not a moment to be lost.
The tiger was about to spring.
Fleetfoot's spear whizzed through the air and dealt a powerful blow.
Another followed, but with less force although Fleetfoot hurled it with all his might.
With a cry of rage the tiger turned, and leaving Scarface upon the ground, he sprang toward Fleetfoot.
And the Cave-men grasped their weapons and rushed to the spot.
They found the tiger dying from the effect of the first blow.
They watched his death struggles.
Then they looked for the man who had hurled a spear that struck a death blow.
If Fleetfoot had not been struck senseless, he might have made his escape.
But as it happened, the Cave-men found him lying on the ground, and they raised him up and carried him to a spot near the bright camp-fire.
#THINGS TO DO# _Show on your sand-map where the clans had camped.
Show where you think Fleetfoot watched.
Show where the ceremonies were performed._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Fleetfoot bids farewell to Willow-grouse._ _The clans seated around the camp-fire._ _Fleetfoot watching the dance._ _Fleetfoot saves Scarface's life._ _Watch a cat as it springs upon a mouse, and then think of the tiger as he sprang upon Scarface.
Model it in bas-relief._ XXXIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think the people will do with Fleetfoot?
Can you think of any way that Fleetfoot might prevent them from attacking the Bison clan?
_What Happened when the Clans Found Fleetfoot_ While Chew-chew and Eagle-eye were attending to Scarface, others took care of Fleetfoot.
They knew nothing about him except that he had saved Scarface's life.
Everybody wanted to see him; and so a great crowd gathered around.
People looked at the strange young man as he lay pale and still on the ground.
They looked and looked again, then said, "How like he is to Scarface."
Eagle-eye had not forgotten Fleetfoot.
She never spoke of him, but she still hoped that he was alive and that she would see him again.
When strangers came she always inquired for tidings of the lost boy.
And so when Eagle-eye heard what the people said, she pushed her way through the crowd.
The moment she saw him, she cried, "Fleetfoot!"
and then bent over his lifeless form.
Chew-chew, hearing Eagle-eye's cry, hurried to the spot.
She knelt by his side and murmured his name, and thought of Scarface when he was young.
Those who stood near turned and asked, "Who is Fleetfoot?"
Many of the people had never heard of him.
Others had heard of Eagle-eye's boy.
All were curious to know more about the strange young man.
All were anxious to know if he was dead or alive.
Fleetfoot was not dead.
He was only stunned by the tiger's blow.
When Eagle-eye bathed him with cold water, he began to show signs of life.
When at length he opened his eyes, he knew that he was recognized.
When those who stood near found out who the young man was, they shouted the tidings to those who were farther away.
Then the people rejoiced and thanked the gods for thus befriending them.
Before Fleetfoot slept that night, he wondered how the meeting would end.
He wondered if he could find a way to prevent an attack upon the Bison clan.
And, turning once more to the Big Bear, he soon fell asleep.
Next morning the people caught salmon just below the rapids.
They feasted a while and then played games in which Fleetfoot took part.
When the games were over, the young men crowded around him.
They asked him how he could throw a spear so as to strike a deadly blow.
Fleetfoot told all he knew about the use of spears and harpoons, but he scarcely knew himself how he had thrown with such force.
But he took two spearheads in his hand, just as he had held them when he saw the tiger.
He threw one at a mark and the spear went with such force that the young men shouted for joy.
Then they all practiced throwing until they could throw in the same way.
It was in this way that people learned to hurl weapons with a throwing-stick.
Instead of hurling one spear by resting the butt against the barb of another, as Fleetfoot had done when he threw at the tiger, they learned to shape sticks for throwing spears, and they called them "throwing-sticks."
[Illustration: _A throwing-stick._] The older men watched as Fleetfoot showed the young men how he threw spears and harpoons.
And soon they all agreed to ask Fleetfoot to lead in the dance that night.
Scarface invited him to lead, and Fleetfoot accepted.
He was glad to lead in a real hunting dance, but he was still more glad to have a chance to prevent an attack upon the Bison clan.
And so he resolved to plan a dance which would make them forget their plan.
When the time came to begin the dance, Fleetfoot was ready to lead.
He knew that the men all wanted to find good hunting grounds.
So he showed them where to find such grounds and what trails to follow.
[Illustration: _An Irish deer._] A few days later he went with the people to these very grounds.
There they hunted the bison herds and the Irish deer.
And when each of the clans had chosen a place to camp, Fleetfoot bade them farewell.
Then it was that the bravest young men came forward and said that they would follow him.
And so the young men agreed to be brothers and to help one another in times of need.
They agreed upon signs which they should use when they wanted to meet.
And when Fleetfoot started homeward, the young men escorted him.
Of the adventures on the way to the Bison clan's cave there is little time to tell.
All the young men were faithful.
And as they journeyed on their way, they recalled Fleetfoot's brave deeds in a victory song.
#THINGS TO DO# _Show how the people acted from the time Fleetfoot threw his spear until they knew who he was.
Draw pictures which will illustrate the story._ _Make such a hunting dance as you think Fleetfoot led.
Show in your sand-map the places where the hunting grounds were._ _Name all the running games you know.
Tell how you play one of them.
Draw a picture of the Cave-men playing games._ _Make a throwing-stick._ _Look at the picture of the Irish deer and tell how it appears to differ from other deer you know.
For what do you think it uses its large and heavy antlers?_ XXXIV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What do you think Flaker will do while Fleetfoot is gone?
What do you think the Bison clan will do when Fleetfoot returns?
Which do you think will be the greater man--Fleetfoot or Flaker?
What things do you think Fleetfoot will do?
What do you think Flaker will do?
_Fleetfoot's Return_ [Illustration: _A fragment of a Cave-man's baton, engraved with the heads of bison._] Flaker missed Fleetfoot more than he could tell.
Awake, he thought of his dangerous journey.
Asleep, he was with him in his dreams.
Many, many times each day he prayed for Fleetfoot's safe return.
Ever since the strangers had camped on their lands, the Bison clan had been anxious.
When questioned about it, Greybeard was sad and Bighorn shook his head.
So the women were trying to arouse their courage, and Flaker was carving prayers.
When Fleetfoot announced his return, it was Flaker who heard his whistle.
It was he who shouted the glad tidings to all the Cave-men.
And though he was lame, he was the first who ran ahead to greet him.
Fleetfoot and his companions had halted on a hillside not far from the cave.
It was from this hill that Fleetfoot whistled so as to announce his return.
Here his companions waited, while Fleetfoot advanced alone.
While Fleetfoot greeted his friends and showed them his wonderful necklace, his companions chanted his brave deeds in a victory song.
It was thus that the Bison clan learned of Fleetfoot's brave deeds.
It was thus that they learned of his courage which came from fasting and prayer.
When the song was ended, Bighorn advanced with Fleetfoot, and together they escorted the brave young men to the cave of the Bison clan.
There they feasted, and rested, and played games until it was time for Fleetfoot's last test.
Meanwhile the young men became acquainted with Flaker.
Fleetfoot had told them about him.
He had shown them the dagger Flaker made and the engraving of the Big Bear.
And so the young men were glad to see him and make him one of their brotherhood.
When the time came for Fleetfoot's last test, he asked permission to speak.
And when Bighorn nodded his head, Fleetfoot told the people the story of how he and Flaker had worked and played together.
He told of Flaker's bravery the day he was hurt by the bison.
He told of Flaker's poniard which he used to kill the cave-bear.
He told of the tools which Flaker had made for working bone and horn.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's nose ornament._] Then he said that the people of the Bison clan had taught them to worship the gods.
He said that Flaker had the favor of the gods and that his prayers would bring success.
And he urged the Cave-men, on account of these things, to forget that Flaker was lame, and to admit him into the ranks of the full-grown men.
The Cave-men listened to what Fleetfoot said and they all gave assent.
And when they made ready to receive Fleetfoot, Flaker was brought forward.
The nose of each of the boys was pierced and they were given nose ornaments.
On account of his bravery Fleetfoot was given a baton which showed that he might lead the men.
And Flaker, too, received a baton, but his was to show that he could lead in the worship of the gods.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's baton engraved with wild horses._] And so every one knew that Fleetfoot and Flaker were brave young men.
They had passed the tests that had been given for courage, and patience, and self-control.
Fleetfoot's companions stayed at the cave until the ceremonies were ended.
Then they renewed their vows to help one another and took leave of the Bison clan.
And Fleetfoot, having done his duty, was free to return to Willow-grouse.
#THINGS TO DO# _See if you can make such a victory song as you think the young men sang.
See if you can make the speech which Fleetfoot made for Flaker._ _Dramatize this lesson, and then draw a picture of the part you like the best._ _See if you can make a baton._ XXXV THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Why do you think people began to live in places where there were no caves?
Can you think what kind of a shelter they might find?
Find out all you can about the difference between the winter and summer coat of some animal you know.
Which skins do you think would be used for curtains and beds?
Which skins would be used for clothing?
Which for the heavy winter coats?
_Willow-grouse_ Soon after the salmon feast, Willow-grouse saw her people again.
When they went away, no one knew why she stayed behind.
When they returned, no one noticed how eager she was to hear all that was said.
So Willow-grouse kept her secret from every one in the clan.
Many days the people hunted; but, at length, there were signs of the coming cold.
It was then that the wise men gave an order to prepare for the journey to the winter home.
All but Willow-grouse obeyed; but she heeded not what was said.
It was not because she did not hear the command.
It was not because she did not care to live with her own people.
It was simply because she remembered Fleetfoot and was waiting for his return.
And so, when the women chided her for being a thoughtless girl, they little thought that Willow-grouse was making plans of her own.
In the confusion of packing, nobody noticed that she stayed behind, and many moons passed before they learned what Willow-grouse did.
As soon as her people were out of sight Willow-grouse began to make ready for Fleetfoot.
There was no cave near at hand, but there were high overhanging rocks.
Under one of these the people had camped.
They found the roof and back wall of a dwelling ready-made.
So they simply camped at the foot of the rock and built their camp-fire.
Willow-grouse knew that the bare rock was a good shelter in summer.
But she also knew that it would soon be too cold to live in such an open space.
So she cut long poles and braced them under the roof so as to make a framework for front and side walls.
Then she covered the framework with plaited branches, and left a narrow doorway which she closed with a skin.
It was hard work to make the rock shelter, but Willow-grouse did not mind it.
She kept thinking of Fleetfoot all the time, and she hoped the rock shelter would be their new home.
[Illustration: _An Eskimo drawing of reindeer caught in snares._] When Willow-grouse looked at her dress, she saw it was much the worse for wear.
So she set snares in the reindeer trails and caught two beautiful reindeer.
[Illustration: "_A piece of sandstone for flattening seams._"] The soft summer skins of the reindeer had short, fine hair.
Willow-grouse scraped and pounded them and then polished them with sandstone.
Willow-grouse took great pains in making her new garments.
She flattened the seams with a piece of sandstone until they were nice and smooth.
Then she gathered fossil shells from the rocks and trimmed the neck and sleeves.
And she made a beautiful headband and belt, and pretty moccasins for her feet.
[Illustration: _A reindeer snare._] And when the time drew near for Fleetfoot's return, Willow-grouse dressed in her new garments.
She put on the necklace of fossil shells and thought of Fleetfoot's last words.
Fleetfoot kept his promise.
When the new moon came he appeared.
Then Willow-grouse became his wife and he lived with her in their new home.
#THINGS TO DO# _Look at the picture of a rock shelter on page 14._ _Find some large rocks and put them in your sand-box so as to show a natural rock shelter.
Make a framework for front and side walls, and see if you can make it into a warm hut.
Model the upper valley._ _Find a piece of sandstone which you can use in polishing skins._ _Dress a doll the way you think Willow-grouse dressed.
Dress a doll the way you think Fleetfoot dressed._ _Find pretty seeds and shells which you can use in trimming belts and headbands.
Before sewing the seeds or shells on the band, lay them so as to make a pretty pattern.
After you have made your pattern draw it on paper, so that you can look at it while you are trimming the band._ XXXVI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Look at what you have modeled in your sand-box and see if you can tell in what parts of the valley the snow will be deepest.
When the snow is very deep, what do the wild animals do?
What do the people do?
Can you think how people learned to use poison in hunting?
Does the poisoned weapon poison any part of the animal's flesh?
Why do people try to be careful not to leave poison around?
_How Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse Spent the Winter_ When Willow-grouse was living alone, she had to hunt for her own food.
Sometimes she caught animals in traps, and sometimes she hunted with spears and harpoons.
When the wounded animal escaped, Willow-grouse was disappointed.
So she tried all sorts of ways to make sure of the game.
One day she happened to use a harpoon which had been thrust into a piece of decayed liver.
She wounded a reindeer with the harpoon and the animal soon died.
[Illustration: _Three views of a Cave-man's spearhead with a groove to hold poison._] And so Willow-grouse soon learned to mix and to use poisons.
When Fleetfoot made simple spearheads of antler, she helped him make grooves to hold the poison.
When they used poison on their weapons, they were sure of the game without a long chase.
They lived happily in the rock shelter until the middle of winter.
Then heavy snowstorms came and the wild animals went away.
Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse were left without food.
They ate a piece of sun-dried meat which Willow-grouse had left in a tree; and when that was gone, they put on their snowshoes and started toward the south.
Before many days had passed, they arrived at the cave of the Bison clan.
There they were made so welcome that they stayed for two moons.
It was during this time that the Bison clan learned to use the throwing-stick.
While Fleetfoot taught the use of the throwing-stick, Flaker made wonderful harpoons.
And as fast as Fleetfoot found new ways of using weapons in hunting, Flaker invented new weapons for the men to use.
Ever since Fleetfoot had been away, Flaker had been working at harpoons.
He had made harpoon heads with two or three barbs, and now he was trying to make a harpoon with four or five barbs on each side.
It took a long while to make a harpoon with many beautiful barbs.
It took more patience to make it than most of the Cave-men had.
For when Flaker traced a regular outline of the harpoon on one side of the antler, he traced the same outline upon the other side.
Then he cut upon these lines, and he shaped the barbs one by one, until he had made them all of the same shape and size.
[Illustration: "_It was during this time that the Bison clan learned to use the throwing-stick._"] He finished the base of the head with a large ridge near the end so as to make it easy to attach it to the shaft.
Then he traced Fleetfoot's property-mark upon it, and thought that it was done.
But Willow-grouse, who had been watching him, spoke up and said, "No, there is one thing more.
You must put a groove in each of the barbs to carry the magic poison."
And so, although Willow-grouse learned a great deal from watching Flaker use his tools, she taught him something he did not know.
When the harpoon was really finished, Flaker gave it to Fleetfoot.
And all the Cave-men gathered around to see the new harpoon.
When everybody had seen it, Fleetfoot placed the harpoon upon his throwing-stick and hurled it again and again.
To the people who stood near, the barbs carried the harpoon through the air like the wings of a bird.
The deep grooves which held the poison carried sure death with each wound.
And the throwing-stick with which it was hurled helped in getting a firm hold and a sure aim.
[Illustration: _Harpoons with several barbs._] #THINGS TO DO# _Find a piece of soft wood and trace the outline of a harpoon upon it.
See if you can whittle a harpoon with barbs._ _Experiment until you can tell whether you like to have a ridge on the base of the harpoon head._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-"_Heavy snowstorms came and the wild animals went away._" _Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse find some dried meat in a tree._ _Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse arrive at the cave of the Bison clan._ _Flaker working at the barbed harpoon._ "_The barbs carried the harpoon through the air like the wings of a bird._" XXXVII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT How did people sew before they had needles?
What bones do you think the Cave-men would use first in making needles and awls?
Why would people want the hardest bones for needles?
[Illustration: _A bone pin._] [Illustration: _A large bone needle._] See if you can find out where the hardest bones are found.
See if you can think of all the things that would have to be done in making a needle out of a piece of ivory or a large bone.
Why do we sometimes wax thread?
What do you think the Cave-men would use instead of wax?
Why did the Cave men make holes in their awls?
What were the first holes which they made in their needles used for?
How do you think they would think of carrying the thread through the needle's eye?
Why do we use thimbles when we sew?
When do you think people began to use thimbles?
What do you think the first thimbles were like?
_How Willow-grouse Learned to Make Needles_ [Illustration: _A bone awl._] Willow-grouse soon made friends with the women.
They admired the clothing she wore, and they wanted to learn how to polish skins and to make beautiful clothing.
So Willow-grouse showed the women how to polish skins and to make them into beautiful garments.
While the women sewed with bone awls, Willow-grouse watched Flaker, who was sawing a bone with a flint saw.
It was soon after this that Willow-grouse learned to make needles of large hard bones.
The first ones she made were not very beautiful needles.
They were not so smooth nor so round as the awls she had made of bird's bones.
But she made a beginning and after a while all the women learned to make fine needles.
[Illustration: _A bone from which the Cave-men have sawed out slender rods for needles._] [Illustration: _A piece of sandstone used by the Cave-men in making needles._] They made the needles of a hard bone which they took from the leg of a horse.
They traced out the lines they wished to cut just as Flaker traced the harpoon.
Then they sawed out slender rods and whittled one end to a point.
The other end they made thin and flat, for this was the end where the hole was made.
They made the rods round and smooth by drawing them back and forth on a piece of soft sandstone.
This made long grooves in the sandstone, which became deeper and deeper every time the sandstone was used.
Then they polished the rods by drawing them back and forth between the teeth of a flint comb.
[Illustration: _A flint comb used in rounding and polishing needles._] The first needles had no eyes.
They were more like awls and pins, than needles.
Perhaps the first eyes were made in needles to keep them from getting lost.
[Illustration: _A flint saw used in making needles of bone taken from the leg of a horse._] It was hard work to saw the bone rods and to round and polish them.
No wonder the women did not want to lose them.
No wonder they bored little holes in the thin flat end and hung them about their necks.
[Illustration: _A short needle of bone._] It may have been Willow-grouse who first discovered that the eye of the needle could carry the thread.
She may have discovered it when she was playing with a needle she carried on a cord.
At any rate, the women soon learned to sew with the thread through the needle's eye.
And then they began to make finer needles with very small eyes.
[Illustration: _A flint comb used in shredding fibers._] These fine needles were used at first in sewing the softest skins.
They were used, too, in sewing trimming on beautiful garments.
But when the women sewed the hard skins, instead of a needle they used a bone awl.
[Illustration: _A long fine needle of bone._] At the meeting of the clans in the salmon season, the Cave-men wore their most beautiful garments.
And soon the clans began to vie with one another in wearing the most beautiful skins.
And the women hunted for the choicest sands to use in polishing their needles.
They still gave the first polish with a piece of sandstone or a gritty pebble.
But when they gave the last polish the women used a powder of the finest sand.
Instead of beeswax, the women used marrow which they kept in little bags.
Instead of a thimble, they used a small piece of leather.
And instead of pressing the seams with a hot iron, they made them smooth with a rounded stone.
From the tough sinews of the large animals, every Cave-man made his own thread.
All the children learned to prepare sinew and to shred the fibers with a jagged flint comb.
#THINGS TO DO# _Find bones which you can make into needles.
See if you can find a piece of flint for a saw._ _Find a piece of sandstone with which you can polish your needle._ _Make a collection of the different kinds of sand in your neighborhood and tell what they can be used for._ _Make a collection of needles and find out how they were made._ XXXVIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If the animals went away in search of shelter from the storms, do you think the Cave-men would know where they went?
What do you think they would say when they noticed that the animals had gone?
[Illustration: _Two views of a curved bone tool used by the Cave-men in polishing skins._] How did the Cave-men learn what they knew?
Why did they make more mistakes than people do to-day?
What changes did the Cave-men see take place in the buds?
in seeds?
in eggs?
When they found shells in the hard rocks instead of in the water, what do you suppose they would think?
Have you ever heard any one say "It rained angleworms?"
Have you ever heard any one say that cheese or meat had "changed to maggots?"
Can you tell what really happened in each of these cases?
Can you see how stories of animals that turned into men could be started?
Is there anything that we can learn from these stories?
_How Flaker Became a Priest and a Medicine Man_ The winter was long and stormy.
Wild animals found little food.
Herds of horses and reindeer went to the lowland forests.
Game was scarce on the wooded hills.
Few horses or reindeer were seen near the caves.
The trails were filled with snow and everything seemed to tell of the coming of a famine.
The people ate the frozen meat that was left near the caves, and when they found they could get no more they began to pray to their gods.
"O, Big Bear," they prayed, "send us thine aid.
Help us now or we die.
Drive the horses and reindeer out of thy caverns.
Send them back to our hunting grounds."
When the first rumor of famine came, Fleetfoot took down his drum.
And he set out over the hills to call a meeting of the brotherhood.
At the first sound of the drumbeat, the people knew what it meant.
Everybody felt a gleam of hope.
The young men passed the signal along and fresh courage came to the hearts of the people in the neighboring clans.
Buckling their hunger-straps around them, the young men started at Fleetfoot's call.
They met near the Bison clan's cave.
There they told of the heavy snowstorms and the disappearance of the herds.
They told of the beginnings of famine and considered ways of finding food.
Some said, "Let us leave the old hunting grounds for our elders.
Let us take wives and go to far away lands."
Others said, "No, let us dwell together and let each clan keep its own hunting ground."
"But how can we dwell together," said one, "when there is not food enough for all?"
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's engraving of two herds of wild horses._] The silence which followed the young man's question showed that no one could reply.
It was then that Fleetfoot turned to Flaker and asked him to speak what was in his mind.
And Flaker arose, and turning his eyes toward the heavens, he raised his baton, whereupon all the young men were silent.
Then he turned to the young men and said, "The gods will surely provide food for the hungry Cave-men."
"But the people need food and game is scarce," said one of the brave young men.
"How can we prevent the famine?
How can we make the gods understand?"
"Remember the Big Bear," said Flaker.
"He heard our prayer when we made his likeness on stone.
Let us make likenesses of the animals.
The gods will then understand our prayers and send many herds to our hunting grounds."
Saying this, Flaker picked up a flint point and a flat piece of stone and quickly engraved two herds of wild horses.
The young men believed in the power of magic.
And when they saw Flaker engraving the herds, they believed the wild horses would come.
And so they all tried to make the likeness of an animal they wished to hunt.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's carving of horses' heads._] When they had made offerings to the gods, the young men were ready to go out to hunt.
Flaker stayed at the cave, but it was he who directed them in the right way.
He remembered all that the Cave-men had said about the reindeer and the wild horses.
And so when they started Flaker said, "Follow the trail to the dense forests."
It so happened that just as the young men were starting to hunt, the herds were coming back from the forests.
And so the young men had great success, and soon all the Cave-men had plenty of food.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's engraving of a reindeer._] When the young men returned to their homes, they had strange stories to tell.
They said that Flaker had brought back the herds by his wonderful magic.
They showed the engravings they had made and told of their magical power.
And so wherever stories of Fleetfoot's bravery went, stories of Flaker's magic were told.
And just as Fleetfoot worked to learn all the arts of the hunter, so Flaker worked to learn the arts which made him both a priest and a medicine man.
Flaker listened to all the stories that were told by the best hunters.
He questioned them eagerly and learned many things which the hunters themselves soon forgot.
He learned the haunts of the wild animals in the various seasons.
He knew where to look for the best feeding grounds and the places of shelter from storms.
And so when the fame of Flaker was noised about among all the clans, people came from near and from far to make gifts and to get his advice.
#THINGS TO DO# _Find soft wood or stone and see if you can engrave some animal on it._ _Find a stick with branches and carve the head of some animal upon the end of the short branches._ _Dramatize this story._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Fleetfoot starting out with his drum._ _Flaker speaking to the young men of the brotherhood._ _Flaker inquiring of returning hunters about the game and the feeding grounds._ _Strangers coming with gifts to get Flaker's advice._ XXXIX THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Think of as many simple ways of catching fish as you can.
How do you think the Cave-men fished?
What do you think people mean when they say that some one is living a "hand-to-mouth" life?
How do you think people learned to dry meat, fish, or fruit?
Why would the people honor the one who taught them to preserve food by drying it?
Can you think of anything which could be used as food when it was boiled, that would not be a good food eaten raw?
Name a bitter vegetable.
What happens to the water in which a bitter vegetable is boiled?
Name a sweet vegetable.
What happens to the water in which a sweet vegetable is boiled?
What do you mean by "parboiling?"
Do you think the Cave-men will learn how to boil food?
_How the Cave-men Learned to Boil and to Dry Foods_ Again the salmon feast came, and again the neighboring clans camped at the rapids.
This time they caught more salmon than they had ever caught before.
And this was the summer that the Cave-men began to dry salmon and to fish with harpoons.
It was Willow-grouse who thought of drying salmon, and carrying it to the caves.
She remembered the berries dried on the bushes, and the dried meat she found in a tree.
No doubt all the Cave-men had eaten dried meat many times before.
Often the Cave-men left strips of meat hanging from the trees.
Anybody could leave meat which he did not care to eat.
Anybody could eat meat which had been dried in the sun.
But not every one was bright enough to think of drying meat.
Chew-chew had never dried meat, nor had any of the women.
It was enough for them to prepare the meat which they needed day by day.
Few of the people ever thought of laying up stores for the morrow.
They lived a "hand-to-mouth" life.
But Willow-grouse remembered the famines.
She knew food was scarce in the early spring.
And when she saw the river full of salmon, she thought of the sun-dried meat.
And so Willow-grouse caught some salmon and cleaned them and hung them on the branches of a tree.
And when they had dried, she took them down and the Cave-men said that dried salmon were good.
And so all the people caught salmon and dried them in the sun.
The first few days the people fished as they had fished before.
They waded in the water and caught salmon with their hands, or they stunned them with clubs or with stones.
But soon the men began to catch salmon by spearing them with barbed harpoons.
[Illustration: _Harpoons of reindeer antler used for fishing._] Afterward the Cave-men fished with harpoons which had barbs on only one side.
Perhaps they first used a broken harpoon.
Perhaps they found they could throw with a surer aim when the barbs were on only one side.
At any rate, the Cave-men used harpoons with barbs on one side for fishing, while they used harpoons with barbs on both sides when they went out to hunt.
It was about the time of the salmon feast that people began to boil food.
Pigeon first boiled food to eat.
She remembered the broth and partly boiled meat which Chew-chew said the gods had left.
And she boiled meat and gave it to the men, and they all sounded her praises.
For a while the only boiling pot Pigeon used was a hole in the ground which she lined with a skin.
Then she used a water-tight basket for boiling little things.
[Illustration: _A flint harpoon with one barb._] Pigeon always boiled by dropping hot stones into the water.
She had never heard of a boiling-pot which could be hung over the fire.
She had never heard of a stove.
The Cave-men knew nothing about such things as stoves.
It would have done them no good if they had, for their boiling-pots could not stand the heat.
So instead of putting the boiling-pot over the fire, the Cave-men brought the fire to the boiling-pot by means of hot stones.
In times of famine, Pigeon learned to boil all sorts of roots and leaves.
Many bitter plants, when boiled, were changed so that they tasted very well.
Some plants which were poison when eaten raw were changed to good foods by being boiled.
[Illustration: _A spoon-shaped stone made and used by the Cave-men._] And so the young women had their share in procuring food for the clans.
While the young men invented new weapons for hunting, and tried to control the animals by magic, the young women learned to preserve foods and to keep them for times when game was scarce.
When the end of the salmon feast came, the people had dried many salmon.
It was soon after this that the young men captured wives and took them to new hunting grounds.
And one of the very bravest young men was the one who captured Pigeon.
#THINGS TO DO# _Find some kind of raw food which you can dry.
Dry it and tell what happens.
What dried foods do we eat?
In what kind of a place do we keep dried foods?_ _Find the best way of boiling bitter vegetables.
Tell what happens when you boil them.
Find the best way of boiling sweet vegetables._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Catching salmon just below the rapids._ _Drying salmon._ _Pigeon boiling meat for the Cave-men._ XL THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Do you think that any of the young men and their wives would live with Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse?
Where do you think Flaker will live?
Can you think why Willow-grouse would take great pains to embroider her baby's clothing?
Why would Willow-grouse want pretty colors?
Think of new ways she might find of getting pretty colors.
How could she get the color out of plants into the stuff she wished to color?
Why was it easier to make pretty dyes after people knew how to boil?
_The New Home_ A year or so passed and Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse were settled with their kinsfolk in a new rock shelter.
Its framework was covered with heavy skins instead of woven branches.
Heavy bone pegs and strong thongs served to keep the skins in place.
Flaker and other young men with their wives lived in the rock shelter.
There were little children, too, and tiny babies.
[Illustration: _A baby's hood._] Willow-grouse had a baby and she thought he was a wonderful child.
She dressed him in the softest skins which she embroidered with a prayer.
And she hung a bear's tooth about his neck because she thought it was a charm.
In winter she put him in a skin cradle and wrapped him in the warmest furs.
In summer he played in a basket cradle which Willow-grouse wove on a forked stick.
In all that Willow-grouse did, she always asked the gods for help.
The baskets she made for boiling food, were also prayers to the gods.
[Illustration: "_In summer he played in the basket cradle which Willow-grouse wove on a forked stick._"] She searched for the choicest grasses and spread them on a clean spot to dry.
No one knew so well as Willow-grouse when to gather the twigs.
She knew the season when they were full-grown and gathered them before the sap had hardened.
She gathered them when the barks peeled easily and when the rich juices flowed.
When the twigs were gathered the women soaked them and peeled off the bark.
They left some of the twigs round, but others they made into flat splints.
Sometimes they stained them with the green rind of nuts, and sometimes they dyed them with pretty dyes.
[Illustration: _First step in coiled basketry._] [Illustration: _Second step in coiled basketry._] Instead of weaving the baskets, Willow-grouse sewed them with an over-and-over stitch.
In this way she made the soft grasses into a firm basket.
She began by taking a wisp of grass in the left hand and a flat splint in the other.
She wound the splint around the wisp a few times then turned the wrapped portion upon itself.
When she had fastened it with a firm stitch, again she wound the splint around the wisp and took another stitch.
[Illustration: _Three rows of coiled work._] Sometimes Willow-grouse made baskets for boiling food, and sometimes she made them for carrying water.
The baskets she prized most were the ones into which she put a prayer.
The prayer was a little pattern which she made for a picture of one of the gods.
Sometimes it was a wild animal and sometimes it was a bird.
Sometimes it was the flowing river and sometimes a mountain peak.
And sometimes it was a flash of lightning, and sometimes it was the sun.
All the Cave-men wanted the gods to be friendly and they wanted them to stay near.
That is why they took so much pains in making pictures of them.
That is why that soon after the rock shelter was made they engraved a reindeer upon the wall.
[Illustration: "_Greybeard, now old and feeble, walked all the way to the spot._"] Greybeard, now old and feeble, walked all the way to the spot.
Fleetfoot and Flaker wanted him to perform the magic rites.
[Illustration: _A water basket._] Not all the people who lived there were allowed to take part in the ceremonies.
Only the grown people were allowed to see the first part.
And only the wisest and bravest ones went into the dark shelter.
For a moment, those who went in stood in silence waiting for a sign.
Then, by the light of a torch, Fleetfoot chiseled a reindeer on the hard rock, and Greybeard, holding a reindeer skull, murmured earnest prayers.
A feeling of awe came over them while they worked.
They began to feel that the god of the reindeer was really there with them.
They asked the god to take good care of those who lived in the rock shelter, and to send many herds of reindeer to the Cave-men's hunting grounds.
#THINGS TO DO# _Make a rock shelter with walls of skin instead of plaited branches.
Use bone pegs to keep the curtains drawn tight._ _Find a forked stick and several smaller ones and make a framework for a basket-cradle.
If you cannot weave such a cradle as the one shown in the picture, make one in some other way and fasten it to the framework._ _Find grasses and splints and see if you can make a sewed mat or basket.
Make a simple pattern for your mat._ _Look at the picture of a water basket.
Why do you think it was made to bulge near the bottom?
Why was the bottom made flat?
Why was the neck made narrow?
Why were handles put on this basket?
Tell or write a story about this basket._ _Turn to the frontispiece and find a picture with this legend: "A feeling of awe came over them while they worked.
"_ XLI THINGS TO THINK ABOUT What might happen that would lead the Cave-men to work together?
At what times might the clans help one another?
Think of as many ways as you can of making tents out of poles and skins.
_How the Clans United to Hunt the Bison_ In spite of all the Cave-men did to appease the wrath of the gods, it seemed to them that a powerful god was trying to do them harm.
Soon after the bison came, the grass near the caves disappeared.
Then the herds scattered and the Cave-men said, "The god has driven them away."
As the word passed from cave to cave, all the people were frightened.
Wise men shook their heads and looked about in despair.
Then it was that the younger men spoke of Fleetfoot and Flaker.
Scarface knew of Fleetfoot's courage.
And when he heard of Flaker's magical power, he sent messengers, bearing gifts, to invite them with their people to a meeting of the clans.
Fleetfoot and Flaker accepted the gifts and made ready to go.
The women made a stretcher for Flaker.
And when they had buried their household treasures, all set out to the meeting of the clans.
They arrived at the Fork of the River where Fleetfoot had lived when he was a child.
There the frightened clans had gathered to seek aid against a common foe.
When the people saw Flaker upon the stretcher, their voices were hushed and all was still.
And when Flaker, arising, fixed his eyes upon something that no one else could see, they scarcely breathed.
They were sure that something was going to happen.
Instead of offering gifts, Flaker threatened the angry god.
He made faces at him; he shook his fists, and he made a great noise.
And the people, becoming excited, joined Flaker in making threats.
They made faces, they joined hands, they danced about and they made such a horrible noise that they began to feel that the god was frightened and that he had gone away.
When the ceremony was ended, the people hoped to find the herds.
Scarface asked for young men to go ahead and act as scouts.
Several young men at once stepped forward from different parts of the circle of the clans.
And Scarface selected Fleetfoot and Blackcloud to go in search of the herds.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent showing the interior structure._] The people listened as Scarface spoke thus to the young men: "Go follow the tracks; listen to each sound; find where the herds are feeding.
Do not frighten them away.
Return quickly and report what you have seen.
If you speak not the truth when you return, may the fire burn you; may the lightning strike you; may the Big Bear shut you in his dark cavern!"
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent showing the exterior._] The scouts nodded their heads, and looked to Flaker for a sign.
And Flaker, turning to the scouts, said, "The gods will lead you.
Follow where the green grass is cropped.
Follow where the grass is trampled.
These are the signs which the gods will give to show that you are on the right way."
The scouts departed.
The first day the clans made ready to move.
The second day the scouts returned and brought news of the herds.
The third day all the clans were traveling toward the fertile plains.
[Illustration: _A Cave-man's engraving of a tent with covering pulled one side so as to show the ends of the poles which support the roof._] Fleetfoot and Blackcloud led the way and at midday caught sight of the herds.
At once, Fleetfoot gave the signal and Scarface ordered the clans to stop.
Then the men prepared to attack the herds, while the women built the tents.
There were no large trees in sight, but there were a few small ones.
A grassy plain stretched all around for a long, long way.
And so the women built their tents out of slender saplings.
[Illustration: _Framework showing the best kind of a tent made by the Cave-men._] Most of the women made a framework by leaning poles against the branch of a tree.
The roof and the walls of such a tent were one and the same thing.
Willow-grouse and her companions tried a different way.
It was by trying different ways in the different places where they camped, that the women at length learned to make tents with the roof separated from the wall.
The Cave-men made pictures of some of these tents upon a piece of antler.
[Illustration: _A tent pin._] When the men parted from the women, they considered ways of attacking the herd.
It was hard to approach it on the grassy plain without being seen.
And the men knew that if the herd was alarmed, it would gallop far away.
At length Fleetfoot showed the Cave-men a plan for surrounding the herd.
And he asked who would volunteer to follow two leaders in separate lines.
All the bravest men volunteered, for they were eager to make an attack.
Fleetfoot placed them in two lines and told them what each one was to do.
Fleetfoot led one of the lines through the grass to the right, and Blackcloud led the other to the left.
They crept softly through the tall grass until they had surrounded the herd.
Approaching the herd cautiously, they drew nearer and nearer together.
Fleetfoot gave the signal to attack when they were about a spear's throw away.
At once the harpoons whizzed through the air and struck many a mortal blow.
The bison were taken by surprise and they attempted to escape.
But no sooner had they run from one side than they were attacked from the other.
Many a bison was killed that day and many others were wounded.
Many of the Cave-men carried away marks of an ugly bison's horns.
But all of the people had food and all the people were happy.
And to show that they honored both Fleetfoot and Flaker they bored holes through their batons.
#THINGS TO DO# _Make such a stretcher as you think the women made to carry Flaker._ _Make tents whose roof and walls are one and the same thing.
Make a tent whose roof and walls are separated.
Tell how you think people learned to make such perfect tents._ _Dramatize one of the following scenes and then draw a picture to illustrate it:_-_The fear of the people at the disappearance of the herds._ _Bearing gifts to Fleetfoot and Flaker._ _Flaker threatening the angry god._ _Sending the scouts._ _Surrounding the herds._ _Showing honors to Fleetfoot and Flaker._ XLII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT If there were not men enough to surround a herd can you think of anything the Cave-men might do to drive them where they wanted them to go?
How do we get animals into traps?
Why do you think people first began to make fences and walls?
How do you think they used them?
Why do we have fences?
What do we use them for?
_How Things were Made to Do the Work of Men_ When the clans returned to their own hunting grounds, they could not surround the large herds.
There were not enough men in one cave to hunt in this way.
Sometimes they partly surrounded a herd and drove the animals over a cliff, but unless the herd was near the cliff, there were not enough men to drive them.
And so the men tried to coax the animals to the edge of the cliff.
Sometimes they did it by imitating the cries the animals made.
Sometimes they did it by dressing so as to look like the animals themselves.
But even then they often failed to get the animals into their trap.
It was when Fleetfoot saw a bison frightened by a feather that he thought of making things do the work of live men.
The greater part of the day the bison fed some distance from the cliff.
Fleetfoot wanted to find a way of driving them up to the very edge.
The bison drive which he invented was the way he succeeded in doing it.
It was shaped like a letter #V# with the point cut off.
The sides were piles of brush, or stones, or vines stretched from tree to tree.
At the edge of the cliff where they started, the sides were only a short distance apart.
But the farther out they extended, the farther they were apart.
Men, women, and children joined in making the bison drive.
They piled stones and heaped up brush, and they hunted for long vines.
Then they hunted for feathers and bits of fur, which they tied along the lines.
Flaker performed the magical ceremony before the hunt began.
Fleetfoot dressed in a bison's skin so as to coax the herd along.
Women and children hid behind piles of stone and brush.
And the men formed themselves in line far out from the cliffs in the rear of the herd.
Everybody kept still until Fleetfoot's signal sounded.
Then the men sprang up and with loud shouts they ran after the herd.
The bison saw Fleetfoot in disguise; and, thinking he was one of the herd, they followed where he led.
When the bison came near a pile of stones a woman or child frightened them.
When they came near the fence of vines they were frightened away by the feathers and fur.
And so the herd kept on toward the steep cliff.
And with loud shouts and drumbeats, with the clatter of weapons and hard hoofs, the bellowing herd galloped madly on toward the steep cliff.
Then Fleetfoot, throwing off his disguise, slipped under one of the lines; but the frantic herd rushed headlong to the brink of the precipice.
Then, seeing the danger, the foremost ones attempted to escape.
But the maddened herd pressed blindly on and pushed them over the cliff.
After such a hunt as this, there was food enough for many days.
Very likely the women dried meat during this time.
#THINGS TO DO# _Model in your sand-box a good place for the bison drive.
Make the drive and show what happened from first to last._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-_Bison feeding some distance from the cliff._ _Building a bison drive._ _Fleetfoot leading the herd._ _The bison at the edge of the cliff._ _Drying meat._ XLIII THINGS TO THINK ABOUT Can you think why people make rules and laws?
Why do we have them?
What kind of rules and laws do you think the Cave-men made?
What laws do you think they would make about hunting animals?
What laws would they make about the use of plants?
What people did the Cave-men honor most?
What must any one do to be honored?
What were some of the signs that a man was honored?
When dangerous work needs to be done, what kind of men and women are needed?
[Illustration: _After the bison hunt._] _How the Cave-men Rewarded and Punished the Clansmen_ Again the clans went to hunt on the fertile plains.
Again the women built the tents while the men went out to hunt.
But before the tents were finished, the women heard the thunder of the galloping herd.
Angry shouts followed, and the women began to feel alarmed.
All the men were angry with Blackcloud.
He had frightened the herd away.
Fleetfoot had planned to surround the bison as they were surrounded before.
But a stronger and braver young man than Blackcloud, helped Fleetfoot lead the lines.
[Illustration: _Handle of a Cave-man's hunting-knife with engraving of a man hunting the bison._] Nobody dreamed that Blackcloud would do it.
Everybody knew that each one must be careful not to frighten the herd.
The men crept quietly through the grass when they saw a bison browsing near the line.
But when Blackcloud saw a young cow, he rushed forward and made an attack.
The loud bellow of the wounded cow gave the alarm to the herd.
And before the Cave-men could stop them, the bison were galloping madly away.
And so all the men were angry with Blackcloud.
Bighorn wanted to have him flogged.
Others wanted to kill him.
He dared not come near them for many days.
No one would hunt with him, and no one would give him food.
[Illustration: _A hunter's tally._] Afterward, when he begged to be taken back, the people let him come.
But first they gave him a hard flogging in the presence of the clan.
As years passed, the custom grew of making rules for the hunt.
And those who broke any of the rules were punished by the clan.
Every day the Cave-men recited the brave deeds of the clan.
They watched every one carefully, so as to know who the brave men were.
Those who were found most useful to the clan were given special honors.
And when a man did a very brave deed he was given a hole in his baton.
Brave hunters, besides keeping trophies, engraved a record of their brave deeds.
Sometimes they kept a hunter's tally, and sometimes they engraved the animal they killed.
[Illustration: _Fragment of Cave-man's baton engraved with reindeer._] Many of the Cave-men engraved these records upon the weapons they used in the chase.
They believed that the weapons which had such engravings were of great value for their magical powers.
The wise men, who led the people, engraved their records upon their batons.
Others engraved them upon their trophies or upon bone hairpins which they used in their hair.
[Illustration: _Engraving of a seal upon a bear's tooth._] The engraving of a seal upon a bear's tooth probably recorded a trip to the sea, while the rude sketch of the mammoth made on the mammoth's tusk, probably recorded a great hunt.
By all these signs of brave deeds, the Cave-men knew who the brave men were.
And these same records help to tell the story of THE LATER CAVE-MEN.
#THINGS TO DO# _Write out some of the rules you have helped make for your games._ _Do you think the rules are good ones?_ _See if you can engrave or carve an ornament on some weapon you have made.
Before doing it, think what you would like to have the ornament mean._ _Draw one of these pictures:_-"_All the Cave-men were angry with Blackcloud._" _Engraving records upon trophies and batons._ _Tell a story of how bone hairpins came to be used._ _Tell a story of the Cave-men's trip to the sea._ _Tell a story of a mammoth hunt._ [Illustration: _A Cave-man's hairpin engraved with wild horses._] * * * * * [Illustration: SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS] "The Industrial and Social History Series," of which this is the third number, emphasizes, first of all, the steps in the development of industrial and social life.
But in addition to its use as a series of text-books in history or social science, it has a place as a mode of approach to the different subjects included in the curriculum of the elementary school.
Whether the work suggested under "Things to Think About" and "Things to Do" is carried out in the period devoted to the study and recitation known as history (possibly some may prefer to call it reading), or in those periods devoted to geography, nature study, language, constructive work, and art, is largely a question of administration.
The point for the teacher to make sure of is that the interests of the child which are aroused through the use of the books be utilized not merely in history, but in geography, nature study, reading, language, constructive work, and art.
If this is done, subjects which too long have been isolated from the interests of real life, will become the means of stimulating and enriching all of the activities of the child.
The list of references and the tabulated facts presented in _The Early Cave-men_, pp.
159-165, will be of service to the teacher who wishes to engage in a further study of the subject.
SPECIAL SUGGESTIONS _Lesson I._ It seems best to let the child read the first story before asking questions.
Afterwards, however, the following questions may be of service: Did you ever see a reindeer?
Where do reindeer live now?
Where were the reindeer at the time of the Tree-dwellers?
Where were they at the time of the early Cave-men?
(See _The Tree-dwellers_, pp.
125-129, and _The Early Cave-men_, pp.
163-167.)
Why did the reindeer come to the wooded hills by the caves at the time of the Cave-men?
Why do reindeer live in herds?
Name other animals that live in herds.
Do you think the reindeer herds would stay near the caves all the year?
Should any child inquire how we know that it was once very cold here, tell him of the tracks that the glaciers made, and of the work of the glaciers in grinding hard rocks so as to make fertile soil.
Let the children turn to the picture of a glacier on page 136, and let them hunt for a rock which has markings made by glacial action.
But reserve the fine points of this topic for a later period.
The children will be helped to get a conception of the great number of reindeer in a herd partly through the story, partly through illustrations, and partly through tearing reindeer from paper and mounting them so as to represent great herds.
The child's experiences in seeing processions or large numbers of people assembled can also be used in forming a picture of the large number of reindeer that met at the ford.
In this and in succeeding lessons, which refer to the women carrying the fresh meat to the cave, remember that animals no larger than the reindeer were carried to the cave.
Larger animals, such as the wild horse, the cow, and the bison, were divided on the spot.
The bones having the greater amount of flesh were removed from the carcass and carried to the cave where the flesh was eaten and the bones left.
Three women could carry the flesh of one bison without the skin.
When the skins were good they were carried to the cave.
In addition to the skin and the flesh the Cave-men prized the head as a trophy and also as a means of gaining control over the animals by sympathetic magic.
All the skulls were broken, probably for the sake of removing the brains, which are usually considered a delicacy among primitive peoples.
_Lesson II._ Help the children to see that when people had no books, the person who knew most was of great service to the clan.
The older people, because they had more experience, took the place of books.
That is one reason why people were glad to take care of older and wiser people than themselves, when the latter were no longer able to do hard work.
_Lesson III._ This lesson illustrates one form which education among primitive peoples takes.
Relate what is given regarding the speed of the wild horse in the lessons on pp.
61-71, in _The Tree-dwellers_, which show the influence of such flesh-eating animals as wolves in developing the speed of the wild horse on the grassy uplands.
_Lesson IV._ This lesson illustrates the ideas of primitive peoples regarding sickness and methods of treating the sick, which consisted largely of ceremonies for driving the "angry god," the "evil spirit," away.
In dealing with a superstition of primitive peoples always try to lead the child to discover the mistaken idea which gave rise to it.
_Lesson V._ Let the children experiment in making straight shafts.
The value of this work is not in the product--the shaft--but in its power to arouse the inventive spirit, to call forth free activity, and to yield an experience which lies at the basis of a great variety of subjects.
_Reference_: Katharine E. Dopp, _The Place of Industries in Elementary Education_, pp.
133, 140, 145.
_Lesson VI._ In most places throughout the United States there is some one who has a small collection of Indian arrows.
If the children can see some of these arrows or other flint implements, it will add greatly to their interest in this subject.
In places where flint can be found, the children should collect specimens and experiment in chipping and flaking off small pieces.
Where no flint is to be found, it is possible to get good specimens by exchanging materials with children in other localities.
_References_: Katharine E. Dopp, _The Place of Industries in Elementary Education_, pp.
72, 138-140.
_Lessons VII and VIII._ The habit horses have of pawing the ground is thought to be a survival of the ancient habit of pawing snow away from the grass.
The horses and reindeer stayed in the neighborhood of the caves all through the winter, going to protected places only in times of severe storms.
The bison and wild cattle, on the contrary, went to the lowland plains and forests at the close of summer, and returned only after the snow had melted.
Since few children now have the opportunity to observe the bison, and no child has the opportunity to see great herds, they must rely upon books, pictures, and other symbols as sources for the necessary facts.
In bringing the sources of knowledge to the children, the teacher should remember that the modern European bison, which is a descendant of the aurochs of Pleistocene times, the species of bison we are considering, is smaller than the ancient form.
The Pleistocene bison of Europe was similar to the American type that lived in the woodlands.
Although the teacher should make use of available materials in supplying herself with information regarding the bison, the following summary is presented, especially for those who do not have access to public libraries.
The bison are naturally shy, avoiding the presence of man; they have a keen sense of smell, and hence man has difficulty in approaching a herd, except from the leeward side.
They have little intelligence, are sluggish and timid, rarely attacking man or beast, except when wounded or in self-defense.
In migrating they travel in large herds, but when feeding they separate into herds of about two or three hundred each.
The leader maintains his position by superior intelligence and brute force.
If he fails in duty he is punished.
Scouts go ahead of the herd in search of new pastures; and guards, or sentinels surround the herd and guard it while feeding and during the night.
When the guards have been on duty awhile, they give place to fresh guards.
In case of danger, the guards give a signal of alarm by tossing up the head and bellowing furiously.
At this the leader gives a signal and the herd starts off at once.
Bison run swiftly for a short distance, but are not able to continue a rapid flight.
They can run faster than cattle, however, and when pursued always run against the wind.
When surprised or wounded, they turn upon their assailants and attack them furiously, fighting with horns and hoofs.
They show their rage by thrusting out the tongue, lashing the tail, and projecting the eyes.
At such times they are fierce and formidable.
The enemies of the bison are the carnivorous animals.
A herd of bison has no cause to be afraid of wolves or bears, but solitary bison are often killed by these creatures.
The cry of a bison resembles that of a groan or grunt.
In case the leader is killed and no bison is able to assert his authority, there is great confusion until the question of leadership is settled.
_References_: Richard Irving Dodge, _The Plains of the Great West_, pp.
119-147.
W. T. Hornaday, _The Extermination of the American Bison_, in "The Smithsonian Report of the U. S. National Museum," 1887, pp.
367-548.
Poole's Index will supply references to magazines, and the encyclopedias and natural histories will furnish further facts.
_Lessons IX and X._ Boiling is such a common process that one seldom thinks of the importance of the discovery of the art.
These lessons will show the child how people may have learned to boil and the explanation they would be apt to give of the changes which take place during the process.
Boiling was undoubtedly used as a religious ceremony long before it was used for cooking food.
_Lessons XI and XII._ If possible let the children take a field trip in connection with these lessons.
If there are no nuts or wild fruits to gather, let the children gather fruits from a garden or some of the products of the farm.
The particular conditions in which the children are placed will determine the form this lesson shall take.
At any rate, there will be an opportunity to observe birds, squirrels, or rabbits.
_Lessons XIII and XIV._ The shelter described is a very early form and is important as a step in the evolution of shelter.
The remains found give ample evidence that such a form was adopted by the Cave-men of France.
_Lesson XV._ It was a common practice among primitive peoples to adopt a child or even a grown person into the clan.
The custom is important as revealing one method of introducing new ideas at a time when means of communication were undeveloped.
The description of the method of softening skins by beating and treading upon them illustrates the common use of rhythm and song as a means of holding the attention to what otherwise would be tedious work.
_Lessons XVI and XVII._ The data for these lessons is taken from drawings made by the Cave-men and from the results of anthropological research among primitive peoples.
It will be best not to confine the children to any one mode of clothing, but to allow them to express their own ideas regarding the first forms used.
_Lesson XVIII._ In connection with this lesson the children will be interested in observing the signs of a storm, the actions of animals before and during a storm, methods they adopt to protect themselves, as well as the animals and birds which migrate from the place where the children live.
_Lesson XIX._ Let the children think of ways in which snowshoes might be invented, and the things the Cave-men would be able to do after having the snowshoes.
_Lesson XX._ The invention of traps requires more forethought than the invention of weapons and was at a later date.
The accidental catching of animals in natural traps, such as vines, pot-holes, soft places in the marshes and cliffs, offered a suggestion; and the tediousness of lying in wait, on the one hand, and the danger of a direct conflict with large animals, on the other, offered a strong motive for the use of nature's suggestions in the way of traps.
Undoubtedly women made a large use of traps in catching the smaller animals before men gave much attention to this mode of hunting.
If the children make as many simple traps as they can think of and arrange them in the order of their complexity, they will be able after a few months to work out a fairly complete series in the evolution of traps.
_Lesson XXI._ This lesson illustrates the constant interaction between man's inventions and the animal's habits.
A new invention which gives man greater power in hunting, makes the animals more timid, more watchful, more skillful in escaping from man's presence.
Hence, man is constantly stimulated to make new inventions, in order to be successful in the hunt.
_Reference_: Katharine E. Dopp.
_The Place of Industries in Elementary Education_.
(See Index under _Animals_ and _Traps_.)
_Lesson XXII._ No animal was more difficult to hunt than the wild horse.
Herds of horses were organized under a leader and sentinels which were very alert in detecting the least sign of danger; and as soon as the alarm was given, the herds would run with great speed until they were out of sight.
When unable to escape they would fight furiously with hoofs and teeth.
When in need of a new pasture, scouts--the old, experienced, wise, cautious, and observant members of the herd--would be sent out to search for good feeding grounds and to report to the herd.
_Lesson XXIII._ Help the children to see that, although the children of the caves did not go to such schools as we have, they had lessons to learn and tests to take.
Those who lived together had to learn to work together.
Each one must learn to be patient, brave, and self-controlled.
The thoughtless, impatient, and cowardly were apt to prevent the capture of wild animals in the hunt, and to risk the lives of their clansmen.
Hence, from early childhood the old men and women gave attention to teaching the children, preparing them for the tests which must be passed before they ranked with the men and women.
_Lesson XXIV._ Instances of stags meeting death by having their horns interlocked are well known.
_Lesson XXV._ Encourage the children to notice the difference between those animals which live in herds and those which lead a solitary life.
Although the dog has changed greatly since it was domesticated, a study of the dog will be helpful in understanding the habits of packs of wolves.
Jack London's _Call of the Wild_, and Ernest Thompson Seton's stories will be helpful in this connection.
The cat, having changed less than the dog, will furnish the child with a good type of carnivorous animals that lead a solitary life.
_Lesson XXVI._ From an examination of the skeletons which have been referred to the late Pleistocene period, it is evident that the Cave-men were able to treat wounds and to set bones.
"No one could have survived such wounds as we have described," writes Mr. Nadaillac, "but for the care and nursing of those around him, such as the other members of his tribe.
The wounded one must have been fed by the others for months; nay more, he must have been carried in migrations, and his food and resting place must have been prepared for him."
_Lesson XXVII._ There was little difference between weapons and tools until the period of the later Cave-men.
A piece of chipped stone served as a tool and a weapon.
The children learned when they read _The Tree-dwellers_ how people used the tools in their bodies and how they supplemented these by the use of natural tools, such as sticks, stones, shells, bones, and horns.
In reading _The Early Cave-men_ they learned how people chipped flint and bound strong handles to heavy spear points and axes.
At this time they can learn how people came to make use of new materials--materials which require the use of _tools_ in shaping into weapons.
Tools had been used by women from a very early time.
The digging-stick, the hammer-stone, the chopper, the knife, and the bone awl are tools which every woman used.
Men, on the contrary, were more interested in weapons than in tools, and it is quite likely that the first steps which led to the differentiation of tools from weapons was made by a man who had been wounded and thus disabled for the hunt.
The incident of Bighorn making fun of the bone dagger is introduced to illustrate the conservative tendency which is still present in society, a tendency less powerful now than in early times, yet strong enough to keep many people out of sympathy with the forces which work for progress.
Let the children examine a real antler, if possible, and notice its fitness for being made into a variety of tools and weapons.
If no antler can be found let them examine the picture of one, so as to determine what part of it is used in making a dagger, a hammer, a baton, a tent peg, and an awl.
_Lesson XXVIII._ The invention of the flint saw marks an important step in the evolution of both tools and weapons.
Without the saw it would have been impossible to use such material as bone, horn, and ivory.
It is interesting to notice that the saw was at first not clearly differentiated from the file and the knife, the three tools being united in one piece of flint.
_Lesson XXIX._ In representing the action of a story by means of pantomime, let the children choose a leader who shall take charge of the action.
Where this has been tried the results have been very satisfactory.
The children, because they feel the responsibility, are stimulated to their best thought.
The pleasure they take in the play leads them to a far more careful study of the book than they would make without this stimulus.
In addition to this, it leads them to be alert in making use of various sources of knowledge.
_Lesson XXX._ Hunting peoples, because they live a hand-to-mouth life, have either a feast or a famine.
Game was so plentiful during the late Pleistocene period that we may suppose that the Cave-men usually had plenty of food.
The time when a famine was most likely to occur was early spring, before the grass furnished food for the herds which came a little later.
When food supplies begin to fail, the clan breaks up into smaller groups, and, in case of great scarcity, each of these groups subdivides so that food may be found.
The worship of the bear and other large animals can be traced back to a very ancient period.
It undoubtedly originated in the Pleistocene period when man first stood in fear of these animals and tried to win their favor by offering gifts.
_Lesson XXXI._ In Central France, the region from which the greater part of the data used in this book is derived, small glaciers were to be found in the upper portions of the mountain valleys, but they did not extend far down the river valleys.
In other places, however, glaciers extended far down into the lowlands.
While this is not the place for a thorough study of the glacier, it is possible for the children of primary grades to understand certain phases of the subject.
The teacher who attempts to make clear the formation of the glacier may find the following quotation from Prof. Shaler helpful: "When a glacial period comes upon a country, the sheets of ice are first imposed upon the mountain tops, and then the ice creeps down the torrent and river beds far below the snow line, in a manner now seen in Switzerland and Norway.
As long as the ice streams follow the torrent-channels, they act in something like the fashions of the flowing waters--to gouge out the rocks and deepen the valleys; but as the glacial period advances and the ice sheet spreads beyond the mountains enveloping the plains as well, when the glacier attains the thickness of thousands of feet, it disregards the valleys in its movements and sweeps on in majestic march across the surface of the country.
As long as the continental glaciers remain the tendency is to destroy the river valleys.
The result is to plane down the land and, to a certain extent, to destroy all preëxisting river valleys."
If this subject is studied while snow is on the ground it will be interesting to the children to experiment out of doors in making glaciers.
If there are no hills present the children can readily make small hills on their playground and the falling and partial melting of the snow will do the rest.
_Lesson XXXII._ Neighboring clans are accustomed to meet at the rapids of a river during the salmon season.
At such places, and in all places where abundant sources of food are to be found, neighboring clans participate in feasting, dancing, and general merrymaking.
Just as scarcity of food tends to separate people, so abundance of food tends to draw them together.
At such gatherings people of different clans exchange ideas, learn new ways of doing things and become accustomed to act in larger groups for the accomplishment of a common purpose.
_Lesson XXXIII._ On the side of invention the throwing-stick is a point to be emphasized in this lesson.
On the side of social coöperation, the organization of the brotherhood is the point of interest.
Such organizations are characteristic of primitive peoples, and similar organizations among children are of common occurrence.
_Lesson XXXIV._ This lesson serves to bring out the contrast between Fleetfoot, the brave, active young man, who is beginning to develop the arts which require great personal bravery and force, and Flaker, the crippled young man, whose ability is directed toward the development of tools and the arts which later make him a priest and medicine man.
Originally, there was no sharp distinction between the priest and the medicine man.
One person performed both functions, and in many cases this person was a woman.
Later, those who made use of supplication and entreaty constituted the priesthood, while those who attempted to frighten the gods were known as medicine men.
_Lesson XXXV._ Overhanging rocks were made use of for natural shelters from the earliest times.
The improvement of the natural shelter by the addition of front and side walls was a later step and was doubtless an invention of woman.
The motives for such an invention may be found in the fact that in many places near good hunting grounds there were not enough caves to shelter the people.
Under such circumstances, as well as in districts where no caves abound, women would not be slow to take advantage of the overhanging rocks and to use their ingenuity in converting them into comfortable habitations.
Let the children compare summer and winter skins, if possible; if not, let them notice the difference between the horse's coat in winter and summer.
_Lesson XXXVI._ To help the children to realize the importance of the discovery of the use of poison, let the children think of the many advantages which the Cave-men enjoyed because they could use it.
The dependence of man upon animals for his food supply is shown here.
The disappearance of the herds caused Fleetfoot and Willow-grouse to leave the rock-shelter.
This is the beginning of a series of events which culminates in a famine.
With this in mind, the teacher can emphasize the points which lead up to the famine.
_Lesson XXXVII._ Let the children bring together from various sources the materials and tools required to make needles by the processes of the Cave-men.
Do not require the children to make needles, but permit them to experiment with the materials so as to understand the subject.
If the children label and arrange the collection they make in an orderly way, the work itself will be of great value to them, and the collection will constitute an interesting feature in the children's industrial museum.
_Lesson XXXVIII._ Such a lesson as this ought to be helpful in freeing the child from superstitions without putting him out of sympathy with people who entertain them.
In their origin superstitions are unsuccessful attempts to explain the phenomena of life.
In spite of the fact that many of the beliefs of mankind have been false, they have served a useful purpose in the development of the individual and in uniting individuals into social groups.
The art of the Cave-men, as illustrated in this and in other lessons, shows a belief in sympathetic magic, a belief that is universal among primitive peoples.
The fear formerly entertained by the American Indians of having their photographs taken was due to a belief in sympathetic magic.
The one who possessed the likeness was supposed to have some mysterious power over the person.
Help the children to distinguish between the things the Cave-men did which really helped and those which they thought helped.
Notice that Flaker actually learned a great deal about the topography of the country, the location of the best hunting grounds, the movements and habits of the herds, and, because of this, was often able to give the Cave-men good advice.
The magical ceremonies he practiced were of use to him in getting the people to believe in his wonderful power.
(See, also, notes under _XXXIV_.)
_Lesson XXXIX._ Although there was a great variety and abundance of fish, not all the Cave-men used fish.
From the remains which have been found, however, we know that different clans used nearly all the varieties of fish which still may be found in our rivers and lakes; and we may readily believe that a salmon stream would be held as property common to all the neighboring tribes, as it is to-day among hunting and fishing peoples.
Fishing tackle of the Cave-men was very crude.
Fish were sufficiently abundant, however, to be caught with the hands or by means of stones and clubs.
A fish hook made of a bear's tooth, by removing the enamel and crown and lessening the thickness by rubbing, has been found.
The barbed harpoons, which were originally made for hunting, were later used in spearing fish.
Harpoons with barbs on both sides were well adapted for throwing through the air, while those with barbs on one side were better adapted for use in the water.
An experiment with a pencil in a glass of water will show the child that the part in the water is not where it appears to be, and from this he can readily reach the conclusion given above.
_Lesson XL._ If one will notice the clothing and the cradles of the North American Indians in a museum, he cannot fail to observe that care was taken in their preparation.
They are comfortable and, in many cases, beautiful.
We may well believe from what is known that among all primitive peoples the beauty, especially that of ornamentation, was for the sake of some supposed magical power.
The representation of an animal was supposed to secure the especial protection of that animal, which was worshiped as a god.
The bear's tooth, which was pierced and strung about the neck of an infant, served a useful purpose when the child was cutting teeth, and it was supposed to be a charm which served to protect the child.
_Lesson XLI._ The strongest motives for coöperation were doubtless the common need of protection from dangerous beasts of prey and the need of adopting methods of hunting wild animals which required the united efforts of many people.
Notice that the different batons and fragments of batons represented in this book differ in the number of holes bored through them.
It is thought that the number of holes indicated the rank of the owner.
Although many theories are given regarding the use of batons, the one which seems most tenable to the author is that which views them as marks of distinction and instruments used in magical ceremonies and in hunting dances.
_Lesson XLII._ The method of hunting herds by surrounding them is a coöperative method suitable to such regions as grassy plains, and comparatively level tracts which are sparsely wooded.
The drive, on the contrary, is adapted to regions where steep cliffs are to be found.
It is a natural development of the earlier method of hunting by taking advantage of the proximity of animals to steep cliffs.
In that case man's part was to lie in wait until a favorable opportunity presented itself for frightening the animals over.
The lesson in _The Tree-dwellers_ on "How the Hyenas Hunted the Big-nosed Rhinoceros," and the one in _The Early Cave-men_ on "Hunting the Mammoth," illustrate early stages of this method.
Notice that there is a new principle employed in this lesson--that of the decoy--and that the method of hunting by means of the drive makes use of various ideas worked out before.
_Lesson XLIII._ The experience of children in games is sufficient to enable them to realize the necessity of making laws and rules for regulating the conduct of the members of the group.
This lesson should serve to connect this narrow experience with that of the race.
Many of the representations of the Cave-man's art, as shown in the illustrations of this book, might well have been made the subjects of special lessons.
The limits of this book, however, forbid further expansion.
* * * * * Industrial and Social History Series _By KATHARINE ELIZABETH DOPP, Ph.
D._ _Lecturer in Education in the Extension Division of the University of Chicago.
Author of "The Place of Industries in Elementary Education.
"_ WHAT THE BOOKS ARE _Book I._ #THE TREE-DWELLERS.# THE AGE OF FEAR.
_Illustrated with a map, 14 full-page and 46 text drawings in half-tone by Howard V. Brown.
Cloth, square 12mo, 158 pages.
For the primary grades._ This volume makes clear to the child how people lived before they had fire, how and why they conquered it, and the changes wrought in society by its use.
The simple activities of gathering food, of weaving, building, taming fire, making use of stones for tools and weapons, wearing trophies, and securing coöperative action by means of rhythmic dances, are here shown to be the simple forms of processes which still minister to our daily needs.
_Book II._ #THE EARLY CAVE-MEN.# THE AGE OF COMBAT.
_Illustrated with a map, 16 full-page and 71 text drawings in half-tone by Howard V. Brown.
Cloth, square 12mo, 183 Pages.
For the primary grades._ In this volume the child is helped to realize that it is necessary not only to know how to use fire, but to know how to make it.
Protection from the cold winters, which characterize the age described, is sought first in caves; but fire is a necessity in defending the caves.
The serious condition to which the cave-men are reduced by the loss of fire during a flood is shown to be the motive which prompts them to hold a council; to send men to the fire country; to make improvements in clothing, in devices for carrying, and in tools and weapons; and, finally, to the discovery of how to make fire.
_Book III._ #THE LATER CAVE-MEN.# THE AGE OF THE CHASE.
_Illustrated with 27 full-page and 87 text drawings in half-tone by Howard V. Brown.
Cloth, square 12mo, 197 Pages.
For the primary grades._ Here is portrayed the influence of man's presence upon wild animals.
Man's fear, which with the conquest of fire gave way to courage, has resulted in his mastery of many mechanical appliances and in the development of social coöperation, which so increases his power as to make him an object of fear to the wild animals.
Since the wild animals now try to escape from man's presence, there is a greater demand made upon man's ingenuity than ever before in supplying his daily food.
The way in which man's cunning finds expression in traps, pitfalls, and in throwing devices, and finally in a remarkable manifestation of art, is made evident in these pages.
_Book IV._ #THE EARLY SEA PEOPLE.# FIRST STEPS IN THE CONQUEST OF THE WATERS.
_Illustrated with 21 full-page and 117 text drawings in half-tone by Howard V. Brown and Kyohei Inukai.
Cloth, square 12mo, 224 pages.
For the intermediate grades._ The life of fishing people upon the seashore presents a pleasing contrast to the life of the hunters on the wooded hills depicted in the previous volumes.
The resources of the natural environment; the early steps in the evolution of the various modes of catching fish, of manufacturing fishing tackle, boats, and other necessary appliances; the invention of devices for capturing birds; the domestication of the dog and the consequent changes in methods of hunting; and the social coöperation involved in manufacturing and in expeditions on the deep seas, are subjects included in this volume.
_Other volumes, dealing with the early development of pastoral and agricultural life, the age of metals, travel, trade, and transportation, will follow._ _Write us for detailed information regarding these books and a complete list of our up-to-date publications._ #RAND McNALLY & COMPANY# EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS CHICAGO NEW YORK LONDON
[Illustration : BULLETIN 249 WASHINGTON, D.C. 1968] MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY _Papers 52-54 On Archeology_ SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION WASHINGTON, D.C. 1968 _Publications of the United States National Museum_ The scholarly and scientific publications of the United States National Museum include two series, _Proceedings of the United States National Museum_ and _United States National Museum Bulletin_.
In these series, the Museum publishes original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of its constituent museums--The Museum of Natural History and the Museum of History and Technology--setting forth newly acquired facts in the fields of anthropology, biology, history, geology, and technology.
Copies of each publication are distributed to libraries, to cultural and scientific organizations, and to specialists and others interested in the different subjects.
The _Proceedings_, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication, in separate form, of shorter papers from the Museum of Natural History.
These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume.
In the _Bulletin_ series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects.
_Bulletins_ are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation.
Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum of Natural History have been published in the _Bulletin_ series under the heading _Contributions from the United States National Herbarium_, and since 1959, in _Bulletins_ titled "Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology," have been gathered shorter papers relating to the collections and research of that Museum.
The present collection of Contributions, Papers 52-54, comprises _Bulletin_ 249.
Each of these papers has been previously published in separate form.
The year of publication is shown on the last page of each paper.
FRANK A. TAYLOR _Director, United States National Museum_ Papers _Page_ 52.
Excavations at Clay Bank in Gloucester County, Virginia, 1962-1963 1 Ivor Noël Hume 53.
Excavations at Tutter's Neck in James City County, Virginia, 1960-1961 29 Ivor Noël Hume 54.
The "Poor Potter" of Yorktown 73 Part I: Documentary Record C. Malcolm Watkins Part II: Pottery Evidence Ivor Noël Hume Index 113 Papers 52-54 On Archeology CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY: PAPER 52 EXCAVATIONS AT CLAY BANK IN GLOUCESTER COUNTY, VIRGINIA, 1962-1963 _Ivor Noël Hume_ HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 4 ARCHEOLOGICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL EVIDENCE 8 METHOD OF EXCAVATION 10 ARCHEOLOGICAL STRATIGRAPHY 11 THE ARTIFACTS 12 CONCLUSIONS 14 [Illustration: Figure 1.--DETAIL FROM AUGUSTINE HERMAN'S MAP OF VIRGINIA which was published in 1673.]
_Ivor Noël Hume_ Excavations at CLAY BANK in Gloucester County, Virginia, 1962-1963 _This paper describes and analyzes artifacts recovered from the Jenkins site at Clay Bank, Gloucester County, Virginia.
The building which overlay the excavated cellar hole does not appear on any known map.
Among the number of interesting objects recovered was a large stem and foot from an elaborate drinking glass or candlestick of fine quality English lead metal.
It was found in association with crude earthenwares, worn out tools, and broken and reused clay tobacco pipes, suggesting that this material was derived from various sources._ THE AUTHOR: _Ivor Noël Hume is director of archeology at Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution._ Early in January 1962 a brick foundation was discovered at Clay Bank in Gloucester County following the removal of a walnut tree beside the residence of Mr. William F. Jenkins.
The tree was of no great antiquity but the foundation beneath it was thought by Mr. Jenkins to be worthy of archeological examination.
The author, therefore, visited the site late in the same month and found that the brick footings were certainly of colonial date.
From the small collection of ceramics and other artifacts also exposed by the tree, there was reason to suppose that the building had ceased to exist late in the 17th or perhaps early in the 18th century.
The site lay on the north bank of the York River on rising ground immediately west of Clay Bank landing.
Little or nothing was known about the property in the colonial period and it was apparently identified on no known maps or land plats.
However, the fact that it was adjacent to part of the 18th-century Page family plantation (whose mansion house had been included in previous archeological work[1]) and because the Clay Bank site gave promise of yielding information regarding domestic life in the late 17th century, the author decided to undertake limited excavation in the area of the structure.
With the assistance of local volunteer labor and the archeological staff of Colonial Williamsburg, two trenches were dug, one exposing a larger area of the brick foundation, and the other parallel to it some 11 feet to the west in the direction of the river.
The first cutting revealed the remains of a massive brick chimney measuring 10 feet 2 inches by 6 feet using oystershell mortar and laid in English bond.
The brickwork was not bonded to, or abutting against, any wall foundation and it was therefore presumed that the building to which it belonged had stood on piers.
The second trench cut through mixed strata of sand, black soil, and scattered oystershells extending downward to a depth of at least 3 feet 9 inches, at which level a thick layer of shells was found.
In the top of the shell stratum were fragments of glass wine bottles of the late 17th century and parts of an iron can.
It was clear that the trench was not wide enough to enable the artifacts to be studied in situ or removed in safety, and consequently work was halted until the project could be developed into an area excavation.
Both the stratigraphy and the similarity in date of artifacts from top to bottom of the test trench strongly indicated that we were cutting through one deposit, probably the filling of a cellar belonging to the same building as the large brick chimney to the east.
Remembering the huge quantities of artifacts that had been recovered from a single hole at neighboring Rosewell, it was hoped that yet another significant contribution would be made to the archeology of colonial Virginia.
But in the final analysis the Clay Bank site was to prove less rich and less historically important (owing to a lack of adequate documentation) than had been anticipated.
On the credit side, however, it did contribute new facts relating to building construction in 17th-century Virginia, as well as yielding a series of closely dated tools and miscellaneous artifacts, plus one piece of glass that is not only without parallel in America, but which is of sufficient importance to merit a place in the annals of English glass.
For this one object alone, the Clay Bank project would have been eminently worthwhile.
Historical Background Archeology may be termed the handmaiden of history in that it is truly the servant of the historian, providing information that is not to be gleaned from documentary records.
At best it is a poor substitute for the written word, but when the two are used together the pages of history may acquire an enlivening new dimension.
This is particularly true of American colonial history where the documentation often is extremely full.
Unfortunately Gloucester County was one of those whose Court Records were destroyed during the Civil War, and it is difficult and often impossible to establish property histories over an extended period of time.
However, it is debatable just how much of the blame can be laid at the doors of war, as many of the county's colonial records had already been destroyed in a fire at the clerk's office of the Gloucester courthouse in 1820.
No acceptable evidence has been found to definitely identify the original owner or the name of the building revealed by the 1962 excavations, though it has been supposed that the adjacent "Ardudwy" (the present home of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins) was originally named "New Bottle" and was built by Robert Porteus at the beginning of the 18th century.
It was hoped that artifacts found on the site might provide evidence to support the Porteus association, but nothing conclusive was forthcoming.
The only conceivable shred of evidence, thin to the point of transparency, was provided by a handsome 17th-century latten spoon bearing a thistle as its touchmark, suggesting, perhaps, that it was made by a Scots craftsman.
As the family of Edward Porteus, the emigrant and father of Robert Porteus, came from New Bottle in Scotland, it might be argued that the spoon was among Edward's possessions when he arrived in Virginia.
Such a deduction is readily assailable, but it is no more so than much other "documentation" relating to the Porteus family in Virginia.
The distinguished Gloucester County historian, Dr. William Carter Stubbs undertook considerable research into the history of the Porteus family, the results of which may be summarized as follows: Edward Porteus was living in Gloucester County by 1681 in which year he married the widow of Robert Lee.
He died in 1694 leaving a widow and one son, "Capt."
Robert Porteus who became heir to "New Bottle" plantation.
Robert married the daughter of John Smith of "Purton" and after her death he married a daughter of Governor Edmund Jennings of "Rippon Hall" in York County.
His two wives bore him 19 children, the best known of whom was Beilby Porteus who was born in 1731 after Robert had returned to England (in about 1727) to live at York.
Beilby Porteus became Bishop of Chester and then of London, and died in 1808.
Robert lived on in York until his death in 1758.
[2] The location of "New Bottle" has been the subject of dispute for many years, and as the recent excavations have done nothing to resolve the matter, it is not necessary to explore the conflicting opinions and evidence in detail.
It is enough to recall that the _Vestry Book of Petsworth Parish_[3] clearly places Robert Porteus in the Second Precinct which extended from Bennit's Creek up the York River to Jones' Creek.
The First Precinct had begun at Clay Bank Creek and had reached to Bennit's Creek.
Today most of these names have been changed; Clay Bank Creek is marked as Aberdeen Creek, the creek at Clay Bank which was apparently originally known as Bennit's Creek now has no name at all, and only Jones' Creek remains the same.
The only extant map that shows both Clay Bank Creek and Bennit's Creek is the Augustine Herman map of Virginia and Maryland published in 1673 (fig.
1).
But this shows Bennit's Creek as being as long as the present Jones' Creek, while the latter is omitted from the map altogether.
However, as the parish records delineating the bounds of the precincts in 1709 refer to both Bennit's Creek and Jones' Creek there cannot have been any confusion between them.
It is therefore reasonably well established that the Porteus property lay between those creeks, which would place it north of the modern community of Clay Bank and south of Jones' Creek.
Although it has not been proved that the Porteus land included the York River frontage, it is reasonable to suppose that it did.
Thus, if that conjecture is accepted, it becomes highly probable that the present "Ardudwy" and the adjacent early foundation are on what were once Porteus acres.
[4] The Porteus family continued to own this or other land in the Second Precinct until at least 1763 as the bounds of that precinct were ordered to be processioned in 1751, 1755, 1759 and 1763 beginning "on the Land of Robt Porteus Esqr.
"[5] As Robert Porteus never returned to Virginia after 1727 and died in 1758, it must either be assumed that the plantation was taken over by a son or that it was operated by a tenant or manager on "Capt."
Robert Porteus' behalf.
In the absence of any other documentation indicating the presence of any members of the Porteus family in Gloucester after October 1725,[6] the latter construction seems most reasonable.
The continuing references to Robert Porteus' land in the Second Precinct until 1763 may be explained as referring to the estate of the late Robert Porteus.
[Illustration: Figure 2.--PLAN OF EXCAVATIONS in relation to the existing house.]
[Illustration: Figure 3.--PLAN OF EXCAVATED AREAS and structural remains.]
Even if the modern Jenkins property is accepted as having been part of the Porteus plantation it does not necessarily follow that either the excavated foundation or the much modernized "Ardudwy" represent the remains of the Porteus house.
However, there may be some grounds for arguing that the foundation and cellar hole were part of the house of Edward Porteus the emigrant.
According to legend, Robert Porteus' property had once belonged to a Dr. Green at whose house Nathaniel Bacon died in 1676.
[7] Clues to the appearance of Robert Porteus' house are provided by an entry in the _Petsworth Parish Vestry Book_ for November 12, 1704.
There it was recorded that the churchwardens drew up an agreement "... wth Ezra Cotten for ye building of a gleebhouse & a kitchen ye Sd house to be of ye Same Dementions as Mr Robt Pourtees.
& to be framed on Good white oak Sills and to Stand upon blocks & to be lathd.
wth Goo[] oak lathes and Shingled wth Good Siprus Shingles The Sd house to be 36 foot in Length & 20 foot wide, ye Roof to be 18 Inches Jet and to have two outside Chimnies and two Closets adjoyning to them, and all things Ells pertaining according to ye Dementions of ye above Sd Robt Pourtees house, Viz, ye above Sd Kitchin to be foot Long & foot wide"[8] The two important features of these instructions are the measurements of the building and the fact that it was raised on blocks and, therefore, did not have a walled basement beneath it.
But while the measurements are stated to be those of the Porteus House, it does not necessarily follow that the elevation of the glebe house on blocks also drew its precedent from that source.
[9] However, if it did, then the modern "Ardudwy" could not have been the Porteus home as this building not only measures 47 feet 3 inches by 15 feet 10 inches, but it is also built over a substantial brick-walled basement.
On the other hand, the excavated cellar hole (though apparently having ended its life prior to about 1700) was almost certainly part of a building built on blocks or piers.
It seems reasonable to suggest that Ezra Cotten was assumed by the churchwardens to know more about the Porteus House than was given in their specifications, in which case it might be supposed that he had actually built that house.
By extension it might also be assumed that the job had been completed a comparatively short while before the building of the glebe house was proposed.
Therefore, if it can be established that Robert Porteus built himself a new house not too long before November 1704, it would probably follow that he had lived in his father's old house until that time.
If Edward's house was then destroyed, it would certainly add further support to the theory that the excavated remains are part of that building.
Unfortunately, there seems little likelihood of obtaining any additional information regarding either the site of, or the appearance of Robert Porteus' house.
The glebe house does not survive, having been abandoned in 1746,[10] and the only other potential source of information has seemingly been lost.
The Reverend Robert Hodgson in his _The Life of the Right Reverend Beilby Porteus_[11] stated that the bishop possessed "... a singular picture which, though not in the best style of coloring, was yet thought valuable by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as a specimen of the extent which the art of painting had reached at that time in America: and he himself very highly prized it, as exhibiting a faithful and interesting representation of his father's residence."
This last statement is assumed to be hearsay as Beilby Porteus was born in England in 1731 and did not, as far as we know, ever visit Virginia.
Attempts to find the picture have met with no success[12] and in all probability it has long since been destroyed or at best, robbed of its identity.
Archeological and Architectural Evidence It is not within the purpose of this paper to include an architectural study of "Ardudwy."
Neither the building's measurements nor its basement lend credence to the belief that it was once the home of Robert Porteus.
In addition, the 1704 specification called for exterior chimneys while those of "Ardudwy" are interior.
The basement walls use shell mortar and include bricks of widely varying sizes, but although many of them have an early appearance, they may well have been reused from elsewhere.
Interior details such as mantels and doors would seem to date from the early 19th century.
What little of the framing that is visible is pegged but is liberally pierced with both wrought and cut nails.
All in all, it seems probable that "Ardudwy" was built in the very late 18th or early 19th century.
Archeological evidence supports this belief in that the property is richly scattered with artifacts of the late 17th century and of all dates after about 1800, but has yielded very few items that can be attributed to the 18th century.
All appearances point to the abandoning of the immediate area as a habitation site after the destruction of the excavated building around 1700.
The subsequent building of "Ardudwy" so close to the early house may be assumed to be coincidental, though the site is certainly a desirable and obvious location for a residence.
Little information as to the above ground appearance of the 17th-century structure was forthcoming, partly because it had almost certainly stood on piers or blocks, and partly because the excavations were restricted by limitations of time, labor, and the desire of the owners to retain at least something of their garden.
Neither extensive probing nor a soil resistivity survey revealed evidence of a second chimney, nor did they give any clues as to the total length or breadth of the cellar hole.
The back wall of the chimney had been deliberately dismantled and only a thin skin of brickbats and mortar on the bottom of the robber trench survived to mark its position.
It is therefore quite possible that another chimney was dismantled with sufficient completeness to elude discovery by either of the exploratory methods used.
[Illustration: Figure 4.--THE CHIMNEY and underhearth foundation.]
The jambs of the partially surviving chimney (fig.
4) were laid in English bond and were 1 foot 7 inches thick and 4 feet 4 inches long.
[13] The interior width of the fireplace measured 7 feet, which was large by 18th-century domestic standards, but not uncommon in the 17th century before separate kitchens became the rule.
[14] Both jambs were built into the side of the cellar hole and were seated on a bed of small rocks, but the robbed back-wall had rested only on the natural sandy clay at a depth of 2 feet 3 inches below the modern grade.
In front of the chimney, and rising from the cellar floor, was a massive brick-walled underhearth 7 feet 6 inches wide and projecting out from the fireplace to a distance of 5 feet.
A curious and still unexplained feature of the underhearth was a 4-by 3-inch channel running across the top of the surviving foundation for a distance of 6 feet 9 inches, starting at the south face and terminating 9 inches short of the north.
This channel had been bricked over and the remaining bricks had dropped into it (fig.
5) presumably after a wooden beam, which once occupied the space, had rotted or burned out.
Traces of burned or carbonized wood lay on the clay bottom of the channel, but the bricks over it displayed no evidence of fire.
The only conceivable explanation for the presence of the wood must be that it was part of a frame used to hold the block of natural sandy clay together while the underhearth wall was being erected around it.
As the underhearth foundation would have originally risen at least another 2 feet 6 inches above the timber to the floor level of the house, the wood would not have been in danger of igniting from the heat of the domestic fire.
But if the house ultimately burned, it is possible that the exposed end of the timber might have caught fire and slowly been consumed along its entire length.
The cellar hole had been cut into natural sandy clay to an average depth of 5 feet 3 inches below the modern grade.
Its backfilling was predominantly of the same sandy clay and, consequently, the exact edge of the cellar hole was sometimes hard to determine.
It was probably because of this similarity between the natural subsoil and the cellar's fill that the feature failed to show up in the soil resistivity survey.
Owing to previously mentioned limiting factors, only the southeast corner of the cellar hole was found and only parts of the south and east walls were traced out.
Consequently, it can merely be said that the cellar exceeded 27 feet in east/west length and 11 feet 2 inches in width (fig.
3).
Three post holes were found against the south face, while the rotted remains of another vertical post were found north of the chimney supporting a much-decayed horizontal board that had served to revet the east face.
A broad-bladed chisel (fig.
14, no.
6) was found behind the board where it had probably been lost while the timbering was being installed.
Further slight traces of horizontal boards were found along the south face, suggesting that the soft sides of the large cellar hole had been supported in this way.
But it was not possible to determine whether the boards had been placed only on sections of the wall that seemed in danger of sliding in or whether the entire interior had been sheathed with planks.
The south side of the cellar hole sloped outwards at an approximate 65 percent angle and the traces of boards lay against it.
[15] However, it was not possible to tell whether the vertical posts had been similarly sloped, but it is reasonable to assume that they would have done so.
[Illustration: Figure 5.--DETAIL OF COLLAPSED BRICKS in the underhearth.
(_Photo courtesy of E. DeHardit._)] Parts of the cellar's wooden floor still survived (figs.
6 and 7) and comprised boards ranging in width from 5 to 7 inches laid over sleepers or joists 4 to 6 inches wide.
The height of the underlying timbers could not be determined as the weight of the cellar fill might be assumed to have pressed the floorboards down as the wood of the sleepers decayed.
Only occasional floorboards survived and the channels left by decayed sleepers did not extend across the full width of the excavated cellar.
From these facts it was deduced that the boards had been cut from woods of different types, some of which had decayed more completely than others, and that the sleepers were made from short and sometimes roughly cut lengths of timber.
These sleepers may, in fact, have served only as a base for anchoring the ends of floorboards, as was certainly the case northwest of the underhearth where the nails from the ends of five boards had dropped through into the channel left by the decayed sleeper.
It may be supposed, therefore, that the sleepers' location would have been dictated by the vagaries of board length rather than by the design of a planned, measured foundation and that they served as ties for the floor, rather than joists raising it off the natural clay beneath.
In addition to the remains of the carefully laid floor, another much-decayed board, 10 inches wide, and of uncertain thickness, was found running north/south immediately west of the underhearth.
This board was partially covered by mortar, suggesting that it had been set on the dirt during the building of the brick structure.
The filling of the cellar in the vicinity of the chimney and underhearth comprised a single massive deposit of sandy clay, scattered through which were numerous iron nails, isolated oystershells and occasional fragments of pottery, glass, and tobacco-pipe stems.
A similar unified filling was encountered at the western end of the excavation, but towards the middle a large and irregular deposit of oystershells was sealed within the sand at a depth of 4 feet 6 inches sloping upward to 3 feet 6 inches towards the south wall.
The shell layer averaged from 6 to 9 inches in thickness and was found to contain many of the more important artifacts.
[Illustration: Figure 6.--REMAINS OF WOODEN FLOOR BOARDS in the cellar.
(_Photo courtesy of E. DeHardit._)] On the wooden floor of the cellar lay a thin 1/2-to 1-inch layer of wood ash, mortar, and occasional brickbats.
Had this accumulation been considerably thicker it might have suggested that the building above had been destroyed by fire.
But although the presence of this skin of debris could not be explained, it was far from sufficient to support such a conclusion.
The topsoil over the entire area had been disturbed to a depth of at least 1 foot, presumably by deep plowing.
Over the cellar fill, humus and a sandy loam extended to a depth of 1 foot 8 inches at the south edge and to 2 feet 1 inch in the middle.
The bottom of this stratum contained nothing but late 17th-or early 18th-century artifacts, including an important and well-preserved latten spoon.
[16] A small 19th-century disturbance cut into the south cellar edge towards the west end of the excavation, but caused little disturbance to the main fill.
Another, much larger, late 19th-century trash deposit had been dug into the fill to the northwest of the chimney and this had reached to a depth of 3 feet 6 inches below the modern grade.
The removal of the walnut tree had created a similar disturbance immediately south of the refuse deposit, while a trench for a 20th-century water pipe had cut yet another slice through the same area.
None of these disturbances had caused any damage to the lower filling of the cellar.
DATING EVIDENCE FOR THE CELLAR The majority of the excavated artifacts were scattered throughout the cellar fill and were of similar types from top to bottom of the deposit.
These objects included wine-bottle and drinking-glass fragments, potsherds of English and perhaps Portuguese tin-enamelled earthenware, and more that 600 tobacco-pipe fragments, all of them indicating a terminal date of about 1700.
A quantitative analysis of the tobacco-pipe stem fragments using the Binford formula[17] provided a mean date of 1698.
Method of Excavation Digging was initially confined to the immediate vicinity of the chimney foundation (Area B on fig.
3) and to the previously described test trench (A).
An east/west trench (D) was next dug to link the two and to isolate the disturbed areas of the tree hole and 19th-century pit in Areas C and G. Owing to a shortage of labor and the rigors of the weather, it was necessary to confine the digging to small areas which could be completed in a single day's work.
Consequently, it was not possible to clear the whole area, as one part would be back-filled during the digging of the next.
Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, the owners of the property, were extremely tolerant of the damage that was done to their gardens, but after the clearance of the large area E, they indicated that the project had gone far enough.
Nevertheless, they were persuaded to permit the cutting of another smaller test area to the west (F), but when this, too, failed to find the westerly extremity of the cellar, the project was abandoned.
Subsequently, relatives of the owners cut into the exposed north face of area E and extracted a number of potsherds and other fragmentary objects from the sand filling.
[18] The undercutting of the bank extended to a distance of 1 foot 6 inches without encountering the north edge of the cellar, thus showing that the total width was in excess of 14 feet.
Extensive probing all around the total area of excavation failed to produce any further traces of the building, though the 1 foot 8 inches of topsoil and sandy loam was found to be bedded on numerous small deposits of oystershells and scattered brickbats.
Test holes found that all the located deposits north and west of the existing house had been laid down or disturbed in the 19th century.
Five test traverses with a soil resistivity meter west and south of the excavation area produced numerous anomalies which, when checked out, all failed to be associated with the 17th-century cellar.
It seemed that the misleading readings were caused by variations in the density and moisture-retaining qualities of the natural sandy clay subsoil.
Early in 1963, while planting a small tree to the south of the existing house, Mr. Jenkins encountered a stratum of oystershells at approximately 8 inches below the present grade.
(Fig.
2, Area K.) A series of small test holes was subsequently dug to the south and southeast of the house, and showed that the layer of shells (average thickness 4 inches) overlay the subsoil and was spread over an area at least 15 by 10 feet.
A small number of 19th-century pottery fragments were found mixed into the stratum, but the vast majority of the artifacts comprised bottle glass and earthenwares of similar types to those encountered in the cellar hole excavation.
[19] The most important item was a pewter spoon handle of late 17th-century character (fig.
15, no.
27) stamped with the initial "M." The presence of this obvious domestic refuse was not satisfactorily explained, but it is concluded that it was originally deposited on the land surface and later disturbed by cultivation.
[Illustration: Figure 7.--REMAINS OF DECAYED BOARD on floor in front of underhearth.
(_Photo courtesy of E. DeHardit._)] Landscaping work towards the York River west of the house had yielded a few widely scattered fragments of colonial and Indian pottery as well as numerous 19th-century sherds.
The colonial material was predominantly of late 17th-or early 18th-century date, but two sherds of Staffordshire combed dishes were of a type unlikely to date before about 1720.
No archeological digging was undertaken in these areas.
Archeological Stratigraphy Each excavated area was given an identifying letter (fig.
3) and each stratum a number.
Thus an artifact marked "B2" was found in the archeological area that contained the chimney and was recovered from the top stratum of sandy loam and clay.
It should be noted that not all layers and deposits tabled below were encountered in any one excavation area, while some were confined to single locations.
1.
Topsoil and brown loam to 1 foot 8 inches over cellar hole.
2.
Sandy loam merging into top of sandy clay fill or silting, spreading over edges of cellar hole and sealing the chimney remains.
About 1690-1700 with some top disturbance.
3.
Main sandy clay fill, extending to oystershell deposit in central areas.
About 1690-1700.
3A.
Sandy clay fill extending to within 6 inches of floor in Area B, against wall north of chimney.
The same as Strata 3-5 but without the oystershell layer that divided them elsewhere.
About 1690-1700.
3B.
Sandy clay as above, but from areas where Stratum 4 was absent.
About 1690-1700.
4.
Oystershell deposit in Areas A, C and E, sealed by sandy clay Stratum 3.
About 1690-1700.
5.
Sandy clay under oystershell layer, reaching to cellar floor.
About 1690-1700.
6.
Ash and sand layer on remains of cellar floor; principal artifacts concentrated against south face of cellar hole in Areas D and E. About 1690-1700.
6A.
Similar layer to Stratum 6, confined to Area B north of the chimney and underhearth foundation.
About 1690-1700.
(The same number is given to a chisel found behind a horizontal wall board at this level, but which may have been deposited when the cellar was built rather than at its date of abandonment.
Fig.
14, no.
6.)
7.
Objects lying in slots left by rotted-floor sleepers.
About 1690-1700.
8.
Late disturbance at southwest corner of excavation, Area E. 19th century.
9.
3-inch layer of light-grey soil beneath Stratum 2 extending down to top of oystershell layer (4) from southwest; confined to Areas E and F. About 1690-1700, possibly disturbed at upper west edge.
10.
Unstratified material from all areas of the cellar-hole excavation, derived from frost disturbances and the results of removing the walnut tree.
11.
Finds from oystershell and artifact layer beneath topsoil southeast of the existing house.
About 1690-1700 with a few much later intrusions.
(Area K, fig.
2.)
12.
Surface finds recovered from field west of existing house.
The Artifacts The collection of objects from the Clay Bank cellar hole is important for a small number of rare items and because the deposit provided accurate dating for a much larger group of less impressive artifacts.
Unfortunately, neither category included pieces that were of much help in establishing anything of the history of the property.
A small cannonball of the 3-pound type used by light fieldpieces of the minion class was found in the top of the sand stratum (D3) against the south face of the cellar.
Guns of this caliber may well have been used during Bacon's Rebellion, and there might be some who would care to use the excavated ball to support the legend that Bacon died at Clay Bank.
The ball, it has been argued, could have been left behind by Bacon's forces when they vacated the site in the fall of 1676.
However, such a conjecture, based on so little evidence, can hardly be taken seriously.
The single clue pointing to a Porteus family association, the latten spoon with its presumed Scottish mark, hardly merits any more serious consideration than the cannonball.
Somewhat more tenable, however, may be the suggestion furnished by two artifacts, that the cellar hole was in the vicinity of a cooper's workshop.
The objects in question were a "chisel" (fig.
14, no.
7) used specifically for driving down barrel hoops, and a race knife (fig.
12, no.
3), a tool frequently used by coopers to mark the barrels.
No documentary evidence has been found to indicate the presence of a cooper in the Second Precinct of Petsworth Parish in the late 17th century though the Vestry Book does contain an entry for October 4th, 1699, ordering an orphan to be indentured to a cooper in King and Queen County.
[20] Other tools from the Clay Bank cellar included spade and hoe blades, a large wedge, and a carpenter's chisel, a range of items that did nothing to support a coopering association, but which did tend to indicate that the artifacts might have come from a variety of sources.
The pottery included a high percentage of coarse earthenwares, among which were fragments of two, or possibly three, lead-glazed tygs and a similarly glazed cup (fig.
15, nos.
7, 8, and 9), all objects that would have been best suited either to a yeoman's household or to a tavern.
The large quantity of tobacco-pipe fragments present might support the latter construction but the dearth of wine-bottle pieces does not.
Numerous fragments of English delftware were found scattered through the filling from top to bottom, most of them in very poor condition.
While none of the pieces was of particularly good quality, a medium-sized basin with crude chinoiserie decoration in blue, is of some importance.
The vessel (fig.
15, no.
1) is of a form that is extremely rare from the 17th century, but which clearly was the ornamental ancestor of the common washbasins of the 18th century.
[21] In marked, and even staggering contrast to the assemblage of cheap and utilitarian earthenware, was the presence of a massive lead-glass stem from a "ceremonial" drinking glass or candlestick, a form undoubtedly made in London in the period 1685-1695 (fig.
10).
Although the double-quatrefoil stem units and central melon knop are paralleled by existing glasses, the heavily gadrooned foot is seemingly unknown.
This last feature gives the foot such weight that it has led Mr. R. J. Charleston, Keeper of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to suggest that the stem may come from a candlestick (fig.
11) rather than from a large, covered glass.
However, no parallels for such a candlestick are known.
One might be tempted to believe that a glass candlestick would be more likely to have been brought to 17th-century Virginia than would a seemingly pretentious, covered, "ceremonial" drinking-glass.
But in 1732, Thomas Jones[22] of Williamsburg made a settlement upon his wife in case of his death, and among the possessions listed were "6 glass decanters, 6 glasses with covers...."[23] Covered glasses ceased to be popular after about 1720 when fashions in glass were turning from the icy sparkle of mass towards more delicate and lighter designs.
It is possible, therefore, that the Jones' glass might have been of the general type indicated by the Clay Bank stem.
But be this as it may, there is no doubt that the excavated stem is the finest piece of glass of its period yet discovered in America, and that it is sufficiently important to be able to add a paragraph to the history of English glass.
Other glass objects included the powdered remains of a small quatrefoil-stemmed wineglass, a form common in the period 1680-1700.
[24] Like so many glasses of its type, the metal was singularly impermanent when buried in the ground, and little or nothing could be salvaged of it.
Also present were fragments of at least seven wine bottles of the short-necked, squat-bodied forms of the late 17th century, as well as one fragment of a short-necked and everted-mouthed case bottle.
A few fragments of cylindrical pharmaceutical bottles were also found as was a well-preserved bottle of similar metal but in wine-bottle shape (fig.
9 and fig.
15, no.
19).
Such bottles are thought to have been used for oils and essences, and their manufacture seems to have been confined to the period about 1680-1720.
Tobacco-pipe fragments (fig.
16) were plentiful throughout the cellar fill and provided a useful range of bowl forms as well as a key to the dating of the deposit.
All the bowls were of types common in the last years of the 17th century, a period in which the two English bowl styles of the second half of the century (one evolving with a spur and the other with a heel) merged together into the single spurred form of the 18th century.
[25] In addition, the Clay Bank cellar contained examples of bowls with neither heel nor spur, a style never popular in England, and which seems to have been developed specifically for the American market initially copying the shape favored by the Indians.
No fewer than 648 stem fragments were recovered from the cellar and their stem-hole diameters, using J. C. Harrington's chart,[26] indicated a manufacture date in the period 1680-1710.
Because pipes are considered to have had a short life, it is generally assumed that the dates of manufacture and deposition are not far apart.
Other artifacts from the deposit, notably the large glass stem, the wine bottles, small wineglass and, of course, the pipe bowl shapes, together suggested a terminal date for the group within the period 1690-1700.
Using the Binford formula,[27] the 648 stem fragments suggested a mean date of 1698.
Experience has shown that the formula is likely to be accurate to three or four years either way on a sampling of that size.
[28] The presence of the same maker's initials, I·F, on pipe bowls at different levels of the cellar fill strongly pointed to a homogeneity of deposition.
Although it is impossible to identify the owners of the initials with any certainty, it is worth noting that there was a Josiah Fox making pipes in Newcastle-under-Lyme in and after 1683 whose initials are the same as those most common in the Clay Bank cellar.
The I·F mark was somewhat unusual in that it was impressed between two X's across the top of the stem (fig.
16, no.
11).
All other marks, save one, were in the normal position, to left and right of the heels.
These comprised W F (William Ferry, Marlborough, about 1700?
), or perhaps W.P., II I (Henry Jones, London, 1688?
)[29] and V R. The remaining mark, S A (fig.
16, no.
14) occurred on the bases of two bowls with neither heels nor spurs.
From the oystershell layer south of the existing house came a bowl fragment ornamented with the name of a well-known Bristol pipe-making family, I TIPPET, in a raised cartouche on the side.
This was probably Jacob Tippett whose name appeared in the Bristol Freedom Rolls in 1680.
[30] In addition to the few marked bowls, two stems were of interest in that they had been ground or pared down to enable the pipes to be used again, one being only 2-1/4 inches in length (fig.
16, nos.
12 and 13).
Such frugality might be construed as being associated with a household of small means.
Also present were a few brown stem fragments and part of one decorated bowl (fig.
8, no.
9) of Virginia, possibly Indian, manufacture.
Conclusions The importance of the Jenkins site cellar hole lies solely in its provision of a valuable group of closely dated artifacts.
The excavations failed to reveal either the size of the building or any indication of its original ownership and purpose.
The structure does not appear on any known map nor can it be equated with any specifications contained in the _Vestry Book_ of Petsworth Parish or any other documentary source now available.
Much local legend and speculation has been considered and regretfully rejected in the absence of any supporting evidence.
The site does lie in the Second Precinct of Petsworth Parish and it has been established that the Porteus family did own land therein.
Consequently it is quite possible that the Jenkins site was once part of that tract.
But it does not necessarily follow that the cellar hole was part of the Edward Porteus family residence.
A _terminus post quem_ of about 1700 for the filling of the cellar hole has been well established on the archeological evidence.
The structure itself is represented by the large cellar hole which had been floored and walled with boards and vertical posts, and by the massive chimney at the east end.
The absence of any abutting walling, coupled with our inability to find any traces of other foundations, strongly suggests that the building stood on piers or wooden blocks.
The artifacts include a number of extremely interesting objects; but the curious juxtaposition of the large glass stem (figs.
10 and 11) with crude earthenwares, worn-out tools and broken and reused clay tobacco pipes makes it probable that the refuse was derived from different sources.
Whereas the iron objects resting on the cellar floor may have been in the building when it was destroyed, it is clear that the large oystershell deposit (and therefore, the glass stem that it contained) must have been brought from elsewhere.
It might therefore be deduced that the excavated structure had been a kitchen building or, perhaps, an overseer's house rather than the home of the owner of the glass stem.
The dearth of 18th-century colonial artifacts on the Jenkins property seems to indicate, at best, a less intensive occupation after the destruction of the building that overlay the excavated cellar hole.
It seems improbable, therefore, that the existing "Ardudwy" was in existence before the late 18th century.
Illustrations The objects illustrated in figures 8 through 16 are representative of the principal artifacts found in the Clay Bank excavations.
The dating given below refers to the objects' period of manufacture; their terminal or throwaway date is determined by their archeological contexts, which are indicated by area and stratum designations.
(See p. 11, Archeological Stratigraphy, and fig.
3.)
FIGURE 8 1.
Marly fragment from small plate, English delftware, decorated in blue with chinoiserie design, probably of Chinamen, rocks, and grasses.
The background color has a very pale-blue tint, unlike the pure whites and pinkish whites that are generally associated with London pieces of the period.
The closest parallel for this sherd is in the Bristol City Museum in England[31] and is attributed to Brislington.
An example of the style, attributed to Lambeth and dated 1684 is illustrated by F. H. Garner in his _English Delftware_;[32] but unlike the Clay Bank fragment, the central decoration does not reach to the marly.
About 1680-1690.
E4.
(Fig.
15, no.
6.)
2.
Handle fragment from chamberpot or posset pot, English delftware, decorated with irregular horizontal stripes in blue.
The handle is pronouncedly concave in section, and lacking ornament on its edges (as usually occurs on posset pots)[33] a chamberpot identification seems most likely.
The form ranges from the late 17th century at least through the first quarter of the 18th.
E2.
3.
Mug or jug, lower body and base fragment only, English delftware, white inside, with manganese stipple on exterior.
Probably Southwark, first half of the 17th century.
E4.
(Fig.
15, no.
4).
4.
Basin, English delftware, wall fragments only illustrated (for full reconstruction see fig.
15, no.
1), the glaze, pale blue, ornamented with central chinoiserie design of similar character to no.
1.
The wall was decorated with narrow horizontal bands and a wide foliate zone below the everted rim.
The bowl is important in that it is one of the earliest extant examples of the simple washbasin form that was to become common throughout the 18th century.
About 1680-1690.
Illustrated sherds A3, C3, F2.
5.
Basal fragment of plate, tin-glazed earthenware, decoration of uncertain form in two tones of blue outlined in black.
Portuguese?
17th century.
C4.
6.
Base fragment from globular jug, English brown salt-glazed stoneware, probably from same vessel as no.
7.
Late 17th or early 18th century.
C3.
7.
Neck fragment from bulbous mug or jug, decorated within multiple grooving,[34] ware and date as above.
A3.
8.
Tyg fragments, black lead-glazed, red-bodied earthenware (sometimes called Cistercian ware), the body decorated with multiple ribbing.
(For reconstruction see fig.
15, no.
7.)
Such drinking vessels were made with up to six or eight handles, but two was the most usual number and those were placed close together as indicated here.
The form was prevalent in the period 1600-1675, though taller examples were common during the preceding century.
[35] A3, C3.
9.
Tobacco pipe bowl, pale-brown ware, burnished, and decorated with impressed crescents and rouletted lines, local Indian manufacture?
[36] Second half of 17th century.
E4.
10.
Body fragment of cord-marked Indian cooking pot, Stony Creek type,[37] light red-tan surface flecked with ocher and with a localized grey core.
Middle Woodland.
B1.
11.
Projectile point, buff quartzite, broad stem and sloping shoulders.
Late archaic.
E9.
[Illustration: Figure 8.--FRAGMENTS OF ENGLISH DELFTWARE, stoneware, earthenware, and Indian objects.]
[Illustration: Figure 9.--BOTTLE OF GREEN GLASS in the form of a miniature wine bottle.]
FIGURE 9 A small glass bottle in wine-bottle style but probably intended for oil or vinegar, and fashioned from a pale-green metal comparable to that used for pharmaceutical phials and flasks.
The base has a pronounced conical kick, but is not appreciably thicker than the walls of the body.
The mouth is slightly everted over a V-sectioned string rim.
On the yardstick of wine-bottle evolution such a bottle is unlikely to have been manufactured prior to 1680 or later than about 1720.
E5.
(See also fig.
15, no.
19.)
FIGURES 10 and 11 Stem and foot fragment from an elaborate drinking glass or candlestick, English lead metal of splendid quality.
The solid stem is formed from two quatrefoil balusters between which is a melon knop with mereses above and below.
The stem terminates in two mereses of increasing size and is attached to an elaborately gadrooned foot, only part of which survives.
Any suggestion that the foot is actually part of the base of the bowl is negated by the presence of a rough pontil scar inside it, as well as by the fact that the surviving fragment spreads out at so shallow an angle that no other construction is possible.
[Illustration: Figure 10.--AN ELABORATE STEM of English glass, London, about 1685-1695.]
The stem form is most closely paralleled by two goblets illustrated in W. A. Thorpe's _History of English and Irish Glass_,[38] one of which contains within its stem an English fourpenny piece of 1680.
Because no known goblet exhibits the high, gadrooned foot of the Clay Bank example, it has been suggested that the stem may be that of a candlestick.
[39] While this is certainly a reasonable supposition, it must be added that neither have examples of candlesticks been found in this form.
(For conjectural reconstruction see fig.
11.)
Although it is extremely unfortunate that no upper fragments were found, there is no doubt as to the date of the surviving section, nor is there any denying that it is on a par with the best English glass of its period.
London, about 1685-1695.
Height of fragment 5-1/4 inches.
E4.
[Illustration: Figure 11.--THE CLAY BANK STEM RECONSTRUCTED as both a drinking glass and a candlestick.
Height of fragment is 5-1/4 inches.
About 1685-1695.]
FIGURE 12 1.
Spoon, latten, tinned, the bowl oval and the handle flat with a trilobed terminal.
The back of the bowl possesses an extremely rudimentary rat-tail that is little more than a solid V slightly off-center at the junction of stem and bowl.
The maker's mark inside the bowl bears the initials W W flanking a thistle, perhaps suggesting a Scots origin for the spoon.
Last quarter of 17th century.
E2.
2.
Cutlery handle, bone, roughly round-sectioned at its junction with the iron shoulder but becoming triangular towards the top.
A4.
3.
Race knife, steel, a tool used by coopers and joiners to inscribe barrels and the ends of timbers.
At one end is a tapering, round-sectioned tang to which a wooden handle was attached; beside this, and probably originally recessed into the wood, is a rectangular-sectioned arm, terminating in a small blade curved over at the end.
The arm is hinged at the shoulder of the tool and could be folded back to inscribe large arcs and to be used as an individual cutting instrument.
At the other end is a small blunt spike with spiral grooving and raised cordons, and a small fixed knife with a curved blade that could be used to cut in the opposite plain to that of the moveable arm.
The arm is stamped with the maker's name WARD.
Attempts to identify an English toolmaker of that name working in the second half of the 17th century have been unsuccessful.
The tool is well made and possesses a surprising amount of decoration on the shoulders, in the shape of faceting at the corners and sculpturing of the flat surfaces.
[40] E4.
(See also fig.
15, no.
22.)
[Illustration: Figure 12.--LATTEN SPOON and other small finds.]
[Illustration: Figure 13.--CHEEKPIECE FROM BIT, saw set, and other iron objects.]
4.
Gimlet, iron, the shaft drawn out at the top to grip the wooden handle, the spoon-shaped blade is badly distorted but the terminal worm still survives in part.
B6A.
5.
Tack, brass, probably from trunk or upholstery, convex head roughly trimmed, diameter 1/2 inch.
C3.
6.
Boss, cast brass, from cheekpiece of bridle; the slightly dished edge and central nipple appear to have been ornamental devices more popular in the 17th than in the 18th century.
[41] This object overlay the robbed rear-chimney foundation at its northeast corner.
B2.
7.
Strainer fragment, brass or bronze; the edge flat and therefore not part of a colander, probably originally attached to an iron handle.
Diameter approximately 8-1/2 inches.
E2.
FIGURE 13 1.
Object of uncertain purpose, iron, the pointed "blade" without cutting edge and 1/8 inch in thickness, the tang drawn out, rectangular in section and clenched at the end.
A2.
2.
Object similar to the above,[42] but heavier, the tang wider than the thickness of the "blade," 3/8 inch and 3/16 inch respectively.
E4.
3.
Knife blade, iron, small flaring shoulders and round-sectioned tang.
The blade is of unusual shape and may have been honed down to its present size.
C4.
4.
Saw wrest or saw set, iron, used to grip and bend the teeth of saws sideways to enlarge the width of the cut and thus prevent the blade from binding.
[43] C2.
5.
Object of uncertain purpose, iron, comprising a flat strip 5/8 inch in width at one end and tapering to 9/16 inch at the other which exhibits a small right-angled flange before turning upwards and back on itself, narrowing to a thinner strip measuring 5/16 inch in width, and forming a loop.
The base strip has a small notch at its broad end.
[44] C3.
6.
Cramp(?
), iron, perhaps intended to be set in mortar and used to join masonry; rectangular in section and drawn down almost to a point at either end.
E4.
7.
Cheekpiece from snaffle bit, iron, incomplete, angular knee with hole for linking element between rein and bit.
This is a 17th-century characteristic common at Jamestown[45] but rare among the many bits from Williamsburg.
E2.
8.
Staple, iron, both points broken and the back somewhat bowed, probably as a result of having been driven.
C3.
FIGURE 14 1.
Eye of hoe, iron, possibly a grub hoe similar to no.
2, in an advanced state of decay with the blade represented only by the narrow triangular spine; no trace of a maker's mark.
C3.
2.
Grub hoe, iron, the eye and part of the blade surviving, the spine thick and narrow, no maker's mark.
The form has no published parallel either from Jamestown or Williamsburg.
An example with similar shoulders, but with a V-shaped blade edge, was found on the Challis pottery kiln site in James City County in a context of about 1730.
[C.S.21F; unpublished.]
E4.
3.
Broad hoe, iron, with eye and part of the originally D-shaped blade surviving; the spine shallow, short and flat, with clearly impressed maker's initials I H within an oval.
Circular and oval marks are common in the 17th century but are rare in the 18th.
[46] E4.
4.
Hoe blade, iron, from which the eye and spine appear to have been removed.
It cannot be ascertained whether the blade is part of a cut-down broad hoe or whether it was always roughly square in form.
The latter shape was well represented in a cache of agricultural tools of uncertain date found in excavations at Green Spring in James City County.
[47] E4.
5.
Stirrup, iron, rectangular footplate with its surface hammered to increase the grip, the sides round-sectioned but flattened towards the leather-loop which is drawn out into ornamental ears.
The style was common in the late 17th century.
E4.
6.
Forming chisel, iron, socketed for attachment to a wooden handle, the socket and shaft square-sectioned, the blade 2-1/4 inches wide and the cutting edge improved by a welded plate of superior metal extending 1-7/8 inches up the blade.
Found behind a wallboard at floor level.
B6A.
7. Cooper's chisel, iron, the blade 1-3/4 inches in width and with a groove running the length of the 1/8-inch broad edge to grip the edge of the hoop while hammering it into place.
The shaft is round-sectioned and spreads into a flat mushroom head.
C4.
8.
Wedge, iron, of large size, rectangular head measuring 2-3/8 inches by 1-7/8 inches, length 7-3/8 inches and weight 4 pounds.
The head shows no evidence of heavy usage and consequently there is no clue as to why such an object should have been thrown away.
A close parallel (7-1/4 inches in length) was found at Ste Marie I in Canada on the site of the early Jesuit settlement of 1639-1649.
[48] B3A.
9.
Spade, iron edge from wooden blade, the upper edge of the metal split and the extended sides possessing small winglike projections, and nails at the ends which together served to attach the iron to the wood.
Iron edges for wooden spades are not included in the artifact collections from 18th-century Williamsburg, but were plentiful in various sizes in mid-17th-century contexts at Mathews Manor in Warwick County.
[Unpublished.]
C3.
10.
Projectile, solid iron, cast in a two-piece mold, diameter 2-3/4 inches, weight 3 pounds 1 ounce.
This is possibly a ball from a minion[49] whose shot weight is given in Chambers' _Cyclopaedia_ (1738) as 3 pounds 4 ounces, the difference possibly being occasioned by the Clay Bank specimen's decayed surface.
D3.
FIGURE 15 1.
Basin, English delftware, reconstruction on basis of rim, body and base fragments, about 1680-1690.
(Fig.
8, no.
4) A3, B1, B3, C3, C4, E2, F2, H3.
2.
Basin as above, lower body fragments.
3.
Basin as above, base fragment.
4.
Mug or jug, lower body fragment, manganese stippled.
First half of 17th century(?).
(Fig.
8, no.
3.)
E4.
5.
Plate, English delftware, rim and base fragments (also section), decoration in two tones of blue, the fronds outlined in black.
London(?).
About 1670-1700.
A3, E3.
6.
Plate, English delftware, about 1680-1690.
(Fig.
8, no.
1.)
E4.
7.
Tyg, black lead-glazed red ware, double handled; height conjectural.
17th century.
(Fig.
8, no.
8.)
A3, B3, B6A, C3, C4, E3, E9, F3, G2, G3A, H3, 10.
8.
Tyg, rim sherd only, brown lead-glazed red ware, thinner than no.
7 and its ribbing not extending as close to the mouth; diameter approximately 4-1/2 inches, 17th century.
B1.
9.
Mug, black lead-glazed red ware, thin-walled bulbous body; handle conjectural.
The form's closest published parallel is a red ware example which was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, in 1914, and bore the legend MR. THOMAS FENTON in white slip below the rim.
The piece was identified as Staffordshire, about 1670.
[50] A comparable mug was found in 1964 in excavations at Mathews Manor in Warwick County in a context of the second quarter of the 17th century.
[W.S.199; unpublished.]
A3, G3A, H3.
10.
Rim sherd from large pan, red body liberally flecked with ocher, thin lead glaze, the rim folded and flattened on the upper edge.
This fragment is of importance in that it is almost certainly made from the local Tidewater Virginia clay, yet the rim technique has not been found on any of the pottery kiln sites so far located.
Date uncertain.
K11.
[Illustration: Figure 14.--IRON TOOLS, STIRRUP, and cannon ball.]
[Illustration: Figure 15.--DRAWINGS OF POTTERY, glass, and metal objects.]
11.
Rim sherd from pan or wide bowl, red ware with greenish-brown lead glaze, the rim thickened and undercut.
This form, and variants on it, were common from the mid-17th century and on through the 18th, and they are therefore impossible to date on stylistic grounds alone.
Probably English.
C4.
12.
Rim sherd from large shallow pan, red ware with yellowish-green lead glaze; the rim thickened, folded and undercut, the upper surface flattened and with a pronounced ridge at its angle with the bowl; diameter approximately 1 foot 6 inches.
Dating considerations as no.
11.
Probably English.
E4.
13.
Rim sherd from storage jar, red ware with brown lead glaze, the rim thickened, folded, and flattened on the top; diameter approximately 10-1/2 inches.
The form was common from about 1650 to 1750.
Probably English.
E2.
14.
Storage jar or pipkin, pale-pink ware flecked with ocher and occasional granules of quartz, a clear lead glaze imparts an orange color to the surface, and is locally streaked with green.
The rim is heart-shaped in section, having a groove along its upper surface, and the body is extremely finely potted.
There is good reason to suppose that this vessel is of Virginia manufacture, in which case the 17th-century colony possessed a potter of greater ability than any of those whose kilns have yet been found.
Another fragment of this pot, or one identical to it, was found to the southeast of the existing house.
C4, E4, 10, K11.
15.
Rim sherd from wide bowl of Colono-Indian[51] pottery, grey shell-tempered ware with stick-or pebble-burnished reduced surface, the rim everted and flattened.
The ware is contemporary with the European artifacts from the site and is the earliest datable fragment yet recovered.
A3.
16.
Rim sherd from bowl of Colono-Indian pottery, buff shell-tempered ware with stick-or pebble-burnished oxidized surface, the rim everted, flattened and very slightly dished.
K11.
17.
Wine bottle, olive-green glass in an advanced state of decay, the neck short and broad and the mouth slightly everted over a roughly applied string rim, the body squat and slightly broader at the shoulder than at the base, a domed basal kick and no obvious pontil scar.
This is a composite drawing illustrating the shape typical of the bottles from the Clay Bank site cellar hole.
The two fragments cannot be proved to be part of the same bottle.
About 1680-1700.
Neck A2.
Body F3.
18.
Wine bottle, half-bottle size, olive-green glass in an advanced state of decay, the form similar to the above but slightly weaker in the shoulder.
About 1680-1700.
C4.
19.
Bottle, in form of miniature wine bottle, the glass a pale green similar to that used in the making of pharmaceutical phials.
(Fig.
9.)
About 1680-1720.
C4.
20.
Base of pharmaceutical bottle, pale-green glass with pronounced conical kick and rough pontil scar, the metal very thin.
The principal dating characteristics of these bottles are the shapes of the mouths and the slope of the shoulders; in the absence of those, no close dating is possible.
[52] C4.
21.
Ring, iron, round section, considerable evidence of wear at one point on the inside edge suggesting that this object had been attached to a link of chain or perhaps has been held by a staple or eye.
Such rings are frequently to be found attached to stalls in stables.
B6A.
22.
Race knife, the dashed outline indicating the angle of the hinged blade in its open position.
(See fig.
12, no.
3.)
E4.
23.
Object of uncertain purpose, iron, slightly convex on the upper face, flat behind, and with a small, flat tongue projecting from the rear.
A much rusted lump adhering to the front may conceal a similar projection or it may have simply attached itself in the ground.
C3.
24.
Collar, iron, four unevenly spaced nail holes for attachment to a wooden shaft having an approximate diameter of 3-1/2 inches.
D6A.
25.
Object of uncertain purpose, iron, rectangular-sectioned bar narrowing to a small blade-like ear at one end and flattened into the opposite plain at the other, apparently for attachment.
E4.
[Illustration: Figure 16.--DRAWINGS OF TOBACCO-PIPE BOWL SHAPES from Clay Bank and Aberdeen Creek.]
26.
Staple or light handle for a small box, the narrow ends perhaps originally clenched and since broken.
C3.
27.
Handle of spoon, pewter, a heart-shaped terminal above two small lobes, the letter M stamped with a well-cut die close to the edge, and a roughly incised cross below it.
A late 17th-century terminal form.
K11.
FIGURE 16 1.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, clay, white surface and grey core, the bowl heavy and bulbous, large flat heel, rouletted line below the mouth, stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch.
(See no.
19 for possible parallel.)
About 1650-1690.
E7.
2.
Tobacco-pipe bowl and incomplete stem, clay, white surface and grey core, cylindrical bowl form with shallow heel extending from the fore edge of the bowl, initials V R on either side of heel, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
About 1680-1700.
E4.
Another example from B6A.
3.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, clay, white surface and grey core, form similar to No.
2, but the heel slightly more pronounced and with rouletted line below the mouth, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
About 1680-1700.
A3.
4.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, form similar to no.
2, but more slender and the heel smaller, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
About 1675-1700.
E7.
5.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, evolved form of no.
2, the bowl at a more pronounced angle to the stem, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
About 1690-1720.
A3.
6.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, the bowl shape a cross between no.
2 and the more elegant and slender style of no.
7, pronounced and somewhat spreading heel with maker's initials H I on either side, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
About 1670-1700.
A3.
7.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, clay, white surface and grey core, narrow "swan-neck" form with small heel that is almost a spur, rouletted line below the mouth, stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1680-1700.
E4.
Another example (not illustrated) bears the maker's initials WP (or R) on the sides of the heel,[53] stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
A3.
8.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, form similar to no.
7 except that the bowl is not quite as long and the fore edge of the heel is less pronounced, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch, about 1680-1700.
A3.
9.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, the bowl broader and at a sharper angle to the stem than in the preceding examples, the heel shallow and its fore edge extending from the bowl as in nos.
2-5, stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch, about 1690-1720.
A3.
This example is significant in that it represents the evolutionary merging of the cylindrical and bulbous bowl forms, with their varying heels and spurs, into a single bowl shape that persisted through the 18th century.
It should be noted that the illustrated bowl retains the thin-walled circular mouth common to most examples of its period.
The mouth often becomes more oval and the walls thicker in specimens dating later into the 18th century.
10.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, more or less cylindrical rouletted line below the mouth, and with neither heel nor spur.
The absence of these last features is thought to have been dictated by English pipemakers catering for the American Indian market and initially copying aboriginal forms.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1680-1700.
H3.
11.
Fragment of tobacco-pipe bowl and stem, clay, white surface and pink core to bowl, but burnt white through stem; bowl shape apparently similar to no.
10, stamped initials across top of stem at the fracture, I·F flanked on either side by a period and a cross,[54] stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch.
E4.
12.
Tobacco-pipe bowl and stem fragment, white clay, the form very similar to no.
10 but without rouletting below the mouth.
The pipe is of interest in that the stem fracture has been pared down after breaking to create a new mouthpiece and a stem only approximately 2-1/4 inches in length.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1680-1700.
C4.
13.
Tobacco-pipe stem fragment, white clay, broken off at junction with bowl and pared down at the other end as no.
12 thus creating a 3-inch stem.
Hole diameter 6/64 inch, date indeterminate.
B6A.
14.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, bowl shape similar to no.
2 but without heel; maker's initials on the base of the bowl, almost certainly SA though the companion initial has been lost from the other side.
[55] Stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch, about 1680-1700.
C4.
15.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, clay, white surface and grey core, slightly more evolved than no.
10 being more sharply angled at its junction with the stem as well as being slightly longer and narrower in the bowl.
Note that this pipe still possesses the rouletted line below the mouth that tends to be characteristic of 17th-century examples.
Stem-hole diameter 5/64 inch, about 1690-1710.
A3.
16.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, clay, white surface and grey core, essentially similar to no.
15, but longer in the bowl and even more angled at its junction with the stem.
Stem-hole diameter 6/64 inch, about 1690-1710.
B3A.
(Nos.
17-21 are surface finds from an as yet unexcavated site on farmland owned by Miss Elizabeth Harwood, approximately a mile and a quarter south of Clay Bank, and north of Aberdeen Creek.
They are included here as examples of earlier 17th-century occupation in the Clay Bank area, and because one of the stem fragments from this site bears the same X·I·F·X mark as appears on five examples (no.
11) from the Jenkins site cellar hole.)
17.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, flat broad heel, the bowl somewhat bulbous in the mid section, neat rouletted line below the mouth.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1630-1670.
18.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay with slipped surface, the bowl shape characteristic of the mid-17th century, flat heel, and roughly applied rouletted line below the mouth; maker's mark VS stamped on upper surface of stem.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1650-1690.
19.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, fragment only, clay, white surface and grey core, the bowl extremely bulbous and with a pronounced flat heel.
Maker's mark VS stamped on the upper surface of the stem; dies different to those used for no.
18, but undoubtedly the same maker.
This is important in that it illustrates the wide difference in bowl shapes produced, apparently contemporaneously, by a single maker.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1650-1690.
20.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay, the bowl and early form of no.
3 ornamented on the sides with six molded dots in high relief,[56] the heel similar to no.
17 though slightly deeper.
Stem-hole diameter 8/64 inch, about 1640-1670.
21.
Tobacco-pipe bowl, white clay with slipped surface, heavy bulbous bowl and flat heel with the maker's mark M B on the base; a narrow rouletted line around the bowl mouth.
Stem-hole diameter 7/64 inch, about 1650-1680.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am greatly indebted to Mr. and Mrs. William F. Jenkins for drawing the Clay Bank site to my attention, for permitting me to do considerable damage to their garden in the course of its excavation, and for generously presenting the illustrated artifacts to the Smithsonian Institution.
I also owe much to their daughter Mrs. William DeHardit for valuable historical information as well as for her constant and vigorous assistance with the actual digging.
I am equally grateful to my wife, Audrey Noël Hume, and to Mr. John Dunton of Colonial Williamsburg for their part in the excavation, also to Mr. A. E. Kendrew, senior vice president of Colonial Williamsburg, and Mr. E. M. Frank, its resident architect, for their comments on both the chimney foundation and on the age of the existing house.
I am also indebted to Mrs. Carl Dolmetsch of Colonial Williamsburg's research department for her pursuit of cartographic evidence.
In addition I wish to express my thanks to Mr. R. J. Charleston, keeper of ceramics and glass, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for examining and commenting on the glass, and to Mr. W. D. Geiger, director of craft shops, Colonial Williamsburg, for similar assistance in identifying the tools.
Finally, I am indebted to Miss Elizabeth Harwood of Aberdeen Creek for permission to illustrate examples of tobacco pipes found on her land, and to Colonial Williamsburg for subsidizing the preparation of this report.
_May 1965_ I. N. H. U.S. Government Printing Office: 1966 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 20402 Price 30 cents FOOTNOTES: [1] IVOR NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia 1957-1959" (paper 18 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), pp.
153-228.
Hereafter cited as _Rosewell_.
[2] DR. & MRS. WILLIAM CARTER STUBBS, _Descendants of Mordecai Cooke and Thomas Booth_ (New Orleans, 1923), p. 14 (footnote).
[3] _Vestry Book of Petsworth Parish, Gloucester County, Virginia 1677-1793_, annotated by C. G. Chamberlayne, The Library Board (Richmond, 1933), p. 97.
Hereafter cited as _Vestry Book_.
[4] _Records of Colonial Gloucester County Virginia_, compiled by Polly Cary Mason (Newport News, 1946), vol.
1, p. 86.
The Gloucester rent roll of 1704 showed Robert Porteus owning 892 acres and Madam Porteus (presumably his widowed mother) with 500 acres.
The latter may have been situated elsewhere in the parish and have been property inherited by her at the death of her first husband, Robert Lee.
[5] _Vestry Book_, pp.
284, 295, 304, 318.
[6] _Vestry Book_, October 6, 1725, pp.
186-187.
"Petso Parish Detter this Year in Tobacco ... To Robert Portuse Esqr for Keeping Two barsterd Children vizt John & Watkinson Marvil 01333 1/2."
[7] _William & Mary Quarterly_ (1896), ser.
1, no.
5, p. 279.
"Oldmixon says that Bacon died at Dr. Green's in Gloucester, and Hening describes this place in 1722 as 'then in the tenure of Robert Porteus Esq.'"
But as Robert Porteus purchased additional land in 1704, Dr. Green's home site may not have been the same as that of Edward Porteus.
[8] _Vestry Book_, p. 85.
The kitchen measurements are absent.
[9] _Vestry Book_, pp.
74-75.
At a previous vestry meeting on 28th June, 170[2?]
details of the proposed glebe house were given as follows: "Six & thirty foot Long & twenty foot wide with two Outside Chemneys two 8 foot Square Clossetts planckt above & below, with two Chambers above Staires and ye Staires to Goe up in ye midst of ye house with 3 Large Glass windows Below Stair [] Each to have 3 Double Lights in ym with a Glass window in Each Chamber above Staires Each to have 3 Lights in ym & Each Clossett to have a window in it and Each window to have 3 Lights."
There is no evidence that these specifications were derived from Robert Porteus' house.
[10] _Vestry Book_, p. 273.
May 28, 1746: "Ordered this Present Vestry, have thought it Better to Build a New Glebe house rather then to Repair the old one...." Then follow specifications for the new building.
[11] ROBERT HODGSON, _The Life of the Right Reverend Beilby Porteus D.D._ (London, 1823) pp.
3-4.
Hodgson describes Newbottle in the following terms: "It consisted chiefly of plantations of tobacco; and on one of these, called Newbottle (from a village of that name near Edinburgh, once belonging to his family, but now in the possession of the Marquis of Lothian), he usually resided.
The house stood upon a rising ground, with a gradual descent to York river, which was there at least two miles over: and here he enjoyed within himself every comfort and convenience that a man of moderate wishes could desire; living without the burthen of taxes, and possessing, under the powerful protection of this kingdom, peace, plenty, and security."
[12] A request for information was published in the English magazine _Country Life_ (May 24, 1962), vol.
131, no.
3403, p. 1251.
This yielded a reply from the Reverend W. B. Porteus of Garstang Vicarage, Mr. Preston, Lancashire.
He noted that Bishop Beilby Porteus was buried at Sundridge in Kent and that prior to the Second World War family connections of the Bishop's wife named Polhill-Drabble still lived in that village and were deeply interested in their lineage.
The Rev.
Porteus feared that Mr. and Mrs. Polhill-Drabble were now dead, and as I have been unable to trace them, I assume that this is the case.
[13] Seven courses surviving, top at 2 ft. 2 in.
below modern grade.
Shell mortar.
Specimen bricks: 9 in.
by 4-1/8 in.
by 2-7/8 in.
(salmon) and 7-1/2 in.
by 4-1/4 in.
by 2 in.
(dark red).
[14] A late 17th-or very early 18th-century house at Tutter's Neck in James City County, measuring 42 ft. 3 in.
by 19 ft. 1 in., possessed a chimney at either end with dimensions of 9 ft. 11 in.
by 4 ft. 11 in.
and 9 ft. 9 in.
by 5 ft.
The jambs varied in thickness from 1 ft. 6 in.
to 1 ft. 11 in.
See footnote 22.
[15] ALBERT C. MANUCY, "The Fort at Frederica," Notes in _Anthropology_ (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1962), vol.
5, pp.
51-53.
An excavated powder magazine of 1736 exhibited similar construction.
[16] E2.
Figure 12, no.
1.
[17] See footnote 27.
[18] The undercutting is shown on the plan (fig.
3, area H) as a straight-edged unit.
This has been done for the sake of neatness, but it should be noted that there was actually a series of holes that presented an extremely ragged appearance.
[19] An unusual lead-glazed earthenware rim sherd from a jar was probably from the same pot as other fragments (fig.
15, no.
14) found in the cellar hole.
[20] _Vestry Book_, p. 56.
"Necholas Lewis" indentured to "Henry Morris of Straten Major in ye County of King and Quine ... to Learn ye said orphant ye art of Coopery."
[21] _Rosewell_, fig.
26, nos.
1-4.
[22] Thomas Jones was the younger brother of Frederick Jones, whose James City County home site at Tutter's Neck was excavated in 1961.
See IVOR NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Tutter's Neck in James City County, Virginia, 1960-1961" (paper 53 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_; U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249; Washington: Smithsonian Institution), 1965, fig.
20, no.
8.
Hereafter cited as _Tutter's Neck_.
A fragment of a lead-glass gadrooned Romer of the same period as the Clay Bank stem was found on the Tutter's Neck site.
[23] MARY STEPHENSON, "Cocke-Jones Lots, Block 31" (MS., Research Dept., Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, 1961), p. 6.
[24] _Tutter's Neck_, fig.
17, no.
17; also I. NOËL HUME, "Some English Glass from Colonial Virginia," _Antiques_ (July 1963), vol.
84, no.
1, p. 69, figs.
4 and 5.
[25] IVOR NOËL HUME, _Here Lies Virginia_ (New York: Knopf, 1963), fig.
105.
[26] J. C. HARRINGTON, "Dating Stem Fragments of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Clay Tobacco Pipes," _Archeological Society of Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin_ (September 1954), vol.
9, no.
1.
[27] Mathematical formula based on Harrington's chart, prepared by Lewis H. Binford, University of Chicago.
See LEWIS H. BINFORD, "A New Method of Calculating Dates from Kaolin Pipe Stem Samples," _Southeastern Archaeological Newsletter_ (June 1962), vol.
9, no.
1, pp.
19-21.
[28] AUDREY NOËL HUME, "Clay Tobacco-Pipe Dating in the Light of Recent Excavations," _Archeological Society of Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin_ (December 1963), pp.
22-25.
[29] ADRIAN OSWALD, "The Archaeology and Economic History of English Clay Tobacco Pipes," _Journal of the Archaeological Association_ (London, 1960), ser.
3, vol.
23, pp.
40-102.
[30] ADRIAN OSWALD, "A Case of Transatlantic Deduction," _Antiques_ (July 1959), pp.
59-61.
[31] W. J. POUNTNEY, _Old Bristol Potteries_ (Bristol, 1920), pl.
3 (lower left), and p. 37.
[32] F. H. GARNER, _English Delftware_ (London, 1948), pl.
26B.
[33] For a posset pot with these handle characteristics attributed to Brislington, 1706-1734, see W. M. WRIGHT, _Catalogue of Bristol and West of England Delft Collection_, (Bath: Victoria Art Gallery, 1929), pl.
3.
[34] For shape parallel (but not body) see _Tutter's Neck_, fig.
18, no.
21.
[35] BARNARD RACKHAM, _Mediaeval English Pottery_ (London: 1948), pl.
94.
BARNARD RACKHAM, _Catalogue of the Glaisher Collection of Pottery and Porcelain_ (Cambridge, 1935), no.
20, pl.
3A.
GRISELDA LEWIS, _A Picture Book of English Pottery_ (London, 1956), fig.
23.
[36] J. C. HARRINGTON, "Tobacco Pipes from Jamestown," _Archeological Society of Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin_ (Richmond: June 1951), fig.
4.
[37] I am indebted to Dr. B. C. McCary of the Archeological Society of Virginia for the identification of the prehistoric Indian artifacts.
CLIFFORD EVANS, "A Ceramic Study of Virginia Archeology," (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 160; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1955), p. 69.
[38] W. A. THORPE, _A History of English and Irish Glass_ (London, 1929), vol.
2, pl.
29 and 31, no.
2.
[39] See p. 13.
[40] HENRY C. MERCER, "Ancient Carpenters' Tools," _Bucks County Historical Society_ (Doylestown, Pa., 1951), p. 51 and fig.
49.
JOHN L. COTTER, "Archeological Excavations at Jamestown, Virginia," _U.S.
National Park Service Archeological Research Series_, no.
4 (Washington, 1958), p. 174, pl.
72 top.
[41] COTTER, no.
1, p. 176, pl.
74 top.
[42] These objects are extremely common on 18th-century sites.
_Rosewell_, p. 224, and fig.
36, no.
8.
_Tutter's Neck_, fig.
16, no.
12.
[43] MERCER, op.
cit., p. 295ff.
[44] Two larger examples were found in a cache of metal objects deposited in about 1730 and found on the Challis pottery kiln site in James City County.
Two more were encountered in excavations on the Hugh Orr house and blacksmith shop site on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg where they apparently dated from the mid-18th century.
[45] CARL GUSTKEY, "Sir Francis Wyatt's Horse," _The National Horseman_ (April 1953), [no pagination] fig.
2.
[46] The majority of marked 18th-century hoes excavated in Virginia exhibit rectangular stamps, while postcolonial marks tend to be stamped on the blades rather than the raised spines and without any die edge being impressed.
[47] LOUIS R. CAYWOOD, "Green Spring Plantation," _Archeological Report_, Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission (Yorktown: United States National Park Service, 1955), pl.
9 (bottom).
[48] KENNETH E. KIDD, _The Excavation of Ste Marie I_ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949), p. 108 and pl.
24b.
[49] See p. 12 for a consideration of the ball's possible significance.
[50] _Catalogue of Exhibition of Early English Earthenware_, Burlington Fine Arts Club (London, 1914), p. 29 and fig.
41.
[51] IVOR NOËL HUME, "An Indian Ware of the Colonial Period," _Archeological Society of Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin_ (September 1962), vol.
17, no.
1, p. 5.
[52] IVOR NOËL HUME, "A Century of London Glass Bottles, 1580-1680," _The Connoisseur Year Book_ (London, 1956), p. 102, fig.
14 right.
[53] A William Partridge was named in the Bristol Freedom Roll for 1689, cf.
OSWALD, op.
cit.
(footnote 30), p. 88.
[54] _Ibid._, p. 70.
Perhaps Jacob Fox, Bristol Freedom Roll for 1688, or John Fletcher, Chester Freedom Roll 1673, or Josiah Fox of Newcastle-under-Lyme who was working in 1684.
Other examples with this mark occur in groups A3 and A4, also on the Harwood property (surface find) close to the north bank of Aberdeen (Clay Bank) Creek.
See p. 14.
A single unstratified example has been found in Williamsburg, coming from disturbed topsoil behind Capt.
Orr's Dwelling on Duke of Gloucester Street.
[55] Oswald lists no maker with these initials in the appropriate period.
However, a bowl impressed on the back with the initials S A over the date 1683 was found in the river Thames at Queenhithe (London) and is in the author's collection.
See also D. R. ATKINSON, "Makers' Marks on Clay Tobacco Pipes Found in London," _Archaeological News Letter_ (London, April 1962), vol.
7, no.
8, p. 184; no.
24; and fig.
2, no.
24.
See also _Rosewell_, p. 221 (footnote 96).
[56] A pipe with similar ornament is in the author's collection of examples from the river Thames at London.
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY: PAPER 53 EXCAVATIONS AT TUTTER'S NECK IN JAMES CITY COUNTY, VIRGINIA, 1960-1961 _Ivor Noël Hume_ LOCATION OF THE SITE 32 HISTORY OF THE SITE 32 THE EXCAVATION 42 THE RESIDENCE 43 THE KITCHEN 45 THE REFUSE PITS 46 ANIMAL REMAINS 51 THE ARTIFACTS 52 CONCLUSIONS 55 [Illustration: FIGURE 1.--_Top_: HYPOTHETICAL ELEVATIONS based on foundations discovered on Tutter's Neck site.
_Bottom_: Conjectural reconstruction based on elevations of the Tutter's Neck site, about 1740.
Elevations by E. M. Frank, director of architecture, Colonial Williamsburg; conjectural drawings by R.
Stinely.]
_Ivor Noël Hume_ Excavations at TUTTER'S NECK in James City County, Virginia, 1960-1961 _Land clearance for reforestation of property leased from Williamsburg Restoration, Inc., resulted in the exposure of numerous fragments of early 18th-century pottery and glass.
Partial excavation of the site, known as Tutter's Neck, revealed foundations of a small colonial dwelling and outbuilding, both of which had ceased to exist by about 1750._ _This paper describes and analyzes the artifacts recovered from refuse pits on the site.
These artifacts, which have been given to the Smithsonian Institution, are closely dated by context and are valuable in the general study of domestic life in early 18th-century Virginia._ THE AUTHOR: _Ivor Noël Hume is director of the department of archeology at Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution._ In the summer of 1959 the Chesapeake Corporation undertook land-clearance operations prior to reforestation on property leased from Williamsburg Restoration, Inc., lying to the east of College Creek, which runs into the James River below Jamestown Island (see fig.
2).
In the course of this work the foundations of a small and hitherto unrecorded colonial residence were bulldozed and largely destroyed.
In the spring of 1960, Mr. Alden Eaton, director of landscape construction and maintenance for Colonial Williamsburg, while walking over the razed area, picked up numerous fragments of early 18th-century pottery and glass which he later brought to the writer for identification.
As the result of this find a survey of the site was undertaken, and two colonial foundations were located and partially excavated.
[57] The area available for study was limited by the need to cause as little disturbance as possible to the newly planted seedlings, by a shortage of time and labor, and by the remarkable speed with which the ground became overgrown with locust trees and infested by mayflies and mosquitoes.
The location of the excavation area, nearly a mile from the nearest road, and off a track pitted with mud-filled depressions, made access impossible during most of the winter months; consequently, work was possible only in the spring and fall of 1960.
By the summer of 1961 both the approach and the site itself had become completely overgrown.
Regardless of these limitations it was possible to obtain full details of the surviving remains of both the dwelling and its associated kitchen, as well as recovering a number of informative groups of domestic artifacts from trash pits under and around the latter structure.
Fortunately, the presence of seal-adorned wine bottles in two pits provided data that led to the identification of one of the owners of the property, and thence to a reconstruction of the history of the site in general.
It should be noted that whereas the colonial artifacts that have been excavated from Marlborough and Rosewell provide a useful range of household items of the middle and third quarters of the 18th century, respectively, the Tutter's Neck material belongs only to the first 40 years of that century, with the emphasis largely upon the first decade.
This last is a phase of Tidewater archeology about which little is known, falling as it does after the end of the Jamestown era and at the beginning of the Williamsburg period.
Although, of course, Williamsburg was already being built at the turn of the century, so intensive was the occupation in the following 75 years that few archeological deposits of the city's early days have remained undisturbed.
The fact that the Tutter's Neck site was abandoned before 1750, and never again occupied, consequently enhances its archeological importance.
Location of the Site The site lies on a steeply sloping promontory at the junction of Kingsmill and Tutter's Neck Creeks, which flow as Halfway Creek into College Creek approximately 1,050 yards to the west.
The house stood on the crown of the slope facing west, some 260 yards from the junction of the creeks, and thus possessed a commanding position.
Perhaps, at that time, there was a clear view of all vessels passing up College Creek--the main waterway to Williamsburg from the James River.
As the crow flew, the house stood approximately three miles from Williamsburg, but by road the route was close to four miles to the eastern edge of the town.
While the largest ships generally unloaded their cargoes at landings on the James, the smaller vessels would often carry their cargoes up College Creek to College Landing, about a mile and a quarter from Williamsburg.
It seems reasonable to suppose that Halfway Creek was also navigable for these vessels on the high tide.
In view of the fact that the curve of the creek's main stream today touches the southern edge of Tutter's Neck, it is likely that a landing existed there in the 18th century.
However, no traces of such a landing are now visible.
History of the Site There was no known record of the existence of the houses when the Chesapeake Corporation stripped the site in 1959.
The only colonial map of the area, the so-called Desandrouin map of 1781 (fig.
4), shows the neck covered by thick woodland, but indicates two or more buildings some distance to the east.
These sites also lay within the bulldozed area, but, paradoxically, no traces of these have been found.
Comparison of the Desandrouin map with the aerial photograph (fig.
3) will show that a small, marsh-flanked stream flowed across the back of the Neck in the 18th century and emptied into Kingsmill Creek.
This stream has since silted up and has cut a new channel that causes it to open into Tutter's Neck Creek to the north of the house site.
[Illustration: FIGURE 2.--THE TUTTER'S NECK SITE in relation to College Creek and the James River.]
[Illustration: FIGURE 3.--AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH of Tutter's Neck taken soon after bulldozing and before the Jones site (arrow) was found.
Photo courtesy City of Williamsburg.]
The Desandrouin map suggests that the buildings on Tutter's Neck had ceased to exist by 1781, and this conjecture is supported by the artifacts from the site, none of which date later than mid-century.
Considerable difficulty in establishing the lifespan of the house and outbuilding has resulted in part from the fact that any evidence for a terminus ante quem had been stripped away by the bulldozing and in part from the absence of any maps that identify this promontory as Tutter's Neck.
Indeed the entire premise is built upon the discovery of wine-bottle seals in one refuse pit beneath the kitchen chimney and in another approximately 125 feet southeast of the house.
These seals, bearing the initials "F I," were identified as having belonged to Frederick Jones, who later became Chief Justice of North Carolina.
The identification was arrived at on the evidence of the will of David Bray, of James City County, that was contested in 1732.
In the legal action, reference was made to "... one messuage,[58] plantation, piece or parcel of land," known as Tutties Neck, or "three hundred acres, more or less, lying and being in the parish of Bruton."
This land was stated to have been purchased by Bray's mother, Judith Bray, from Frederick Jones; it then was obtained by John Randolph and passed by him in exchange to Thomas Bray.
[59] [Illustration: FIGURE 4.--DETAIL OF COLONEL DESANDROUIN'S MAP of 1781.
Arrow indicates Jones site.]
Thus we know that Frederick Jones had owned a 300-acre tract known as Tutties Neck.
Consequently, the discovery of bottle seals bearing the initials "F I" in the vicinity of a "messuage" at the mouth of Tutter's Neck Creek was not without significance.
Further corroboration was provided by a letter of 1721 from Frederick Jones to his brother Thomas, in Williamsburg, regarding the incorrect marking of merchandise on the former's account "marked by mistake F I.
"[60] It was common practice for plantation owners to use the same shipping marks that they used for their wine-bottle seals, and therefore it may be assumed that Jones also owned bottles bearing the initials "F I."
Having established with reasonable certainty that the site in question was the "Tutties Neck" that had been purchased by Judith Bray from Frederick Jones, the next step was to attempt to piece together the history of the site both before and after that transaction.
Unfortunately, during the Civil War the James City County records were removed for safekeeping to Richmond where they were destroyed.
This loss makes any research into the early documentary history of the county extremely difficult, and in many cases well nigh impossible.
Source material must be drawn from family papers and from passing references in the records of other counties.
Although the history of Tutter's Neck has many significant facts missing, it is surprising that the record is as full as it is.
The first reference occurs in 1632 (or 1642) when mention is made of "great neck at the barren neck, next adjoining to Tutties neck, a branch of Archers hope creek.
"[61] Similar references to "Tutteys" neck and "lutteyes" neck occurred in 1637[62] and in 1646.
[63] Later, in 1679, a deed of sale from Edward Gray to William South of Gloucester County refers to a parcel of land at "Tuttis Neck.
"[64] The same spelling was used in 1682 in the will of Otho Thorpe, of the Parish of All Hallows at the Wall in London, who left to his cousin John Grice and Grice's two elder children his plantation in Virginia called "Tuttis Neck.
"[65] John Grice is recorded as having been a justice in James City County in 1685 and 1694.
[66] No further references to Tutter's Neck are to be found until 1711 when Frederick Jones obtained 100 acres commonly called "Lutties neck,"[67] escheated land,[68] from one Mathew Brown.
It is at this point that we run into trouble, for the contents of the pits in which the Jones bottles were found included many items of the late 17th century and none dating later than the first decade of the 18th century.
The pit beneath the kitchen chimney also contained a bottle bearing the seal of Richard Burbydge and dated 1701.
[69] The inference, therefore, was that Frederick Jones was on the site during the first years of the 18th century.
Jones came from England in 1702,[70] having inherited considerable estates from his father, Capt.
Roger Jones.
In 1704 he is shown in the Virginia Quit Rent Rolls as possessing 300 acres in James City County, 500 acres in New Kent County, and 2,850 acres in King William County.
[71] Were it not for the purchase of 1711, it would be reasonable to assume that the 300 acres in James City County were the same that Jones sold to Judith Bray at some unspecified date prior to 1722, the year of his death.
[Illustration: FIGURE 5.--Plan of excavated features.]
We know that as early as 1703 Frederick Jones had interests in North Carolina, because it was in that year that one Jeremiah Goodridg brought suit against him and he was then described as "late of London.
"[72] In 1707 Jones received a grant of 4,565 acres in what are now Jones and Craven Counties in North Carolina.
[73] At that time he was living in or near Williamsburg--presumably on his 300 acres in James City County; in 1705 he was a vestryman of the Parish of Bruton with its church in Williamsburg,[74] and in the same year both he and David Bray were listed as being among the directors for the building of Williamsburg.
[75] It would seem that he was a man of consequence in the county at that time.
Among the papers of the Jones family are indentures dated 1708 transferring property in both King William and New Kent Counties from Frederick to his brother Thomas Jones,[76] and it may well be construed that this transfer occurred at the time that Frederick moved to North Carolina.
In the same year his plantation in Chowan Precinct, North Carolina, described as "land whereon the church now stands" was chosen as the site for a glebe.
[77] This is presumably the same Chowan County plantation on which Jones died in 1722.
[Illustration: FIGURE 6.--FREDERICK JONES' WINE-BOTTLE SEALS showing matrix variations: 1, initials from single matrix, with right side of "I" poorly formed (same die as fig.
7, left); 2, initials from separate matrices, with large serifs on "F" and small serifs on "I"; 3-5, initials from separate matrices, with small serifs on both letters; 6, 7, initials from separate matrices, with heavy serifs on both letters.
Seal 5 came from Pit A; all others from Pit B.
The use of single-letter matrices suggests a 17th-century date for the bottles' manufacture, while the presence of various die combinations makes it probable that the bottles were not all made at the same time.
It is likely that the bottles were among Jones' possessions when he emigrated to Virginia in 1702.]
In 1711 Frederick Jones and others residing in North Carolina appealed to Governor Spotswood of Virginia for help against the Indians.
[78] In the same year his name again occurs on an address to Spotswood concerning Colonel Cary's rebellion.
[79] Almost a year to the day later, he is recorded as applying at a council meeting for the return of salt carried from his house ostensibly for "Supporting ye Garrisons.
"[80] In July 1712 Jones acquired an additional 490 acres in North Carolina.
[81] All of this evidence points to his being well settled in his new home by 1712.
[Illustration: FIGURE 7.--WINE BOTTLES of Frederick Jones and Richard Burbydge, from Pit B.
For scale see figure 19.]
The colony of North Carolina developed more slowly than did Virginia.
The first permanent English settlement in North Carolina was on the Chowan River in about 1653, with the population being drawn from Virginia.
In 1663 the settled area north of Albemarle Sound became Albemarle County, when Charles II granted the territory to eight proprietors, in whose families it remained until an act of Parliament in 1729 established an agreement with seven of them (the eighth refused to sell) and thus turned the territory into a royal colony.
Consequently, when Jones moved south, North Carolina was still in its infancy, a haven for piracy and beset by private feuds and troublesome Indians.
In the years 1711-1712 occurred an Indian uprising of proportions comparable to those that had threatened the life of the Virginia Colony 90 years before.
[82] It was this massacre of 1712 and its effect on the Jones family that occasioned the foregoing apparent digression into the early history of North Carolina.
The war with the Tuscarora Indians had begun in 1711 at about the time that Jones and his neighbors had appealed to Virginia for aid, and it was not to end until 1713 when the greater part of the defeated tribe moved north to New York to become the sixth part of the Iroquois Confederation.
In October 1712 Jones' plantation was attacked; but in a letter from the president of the council, Pollock, to the Governor of South Carolina, it was stated that the attackers were "... beat off, none killed of our people.
"[83] Although there was no loss of life, it would appear that the effect on Jones' plantation was considerable.
In the Journal of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg it was recorded that on November 5, 1712, "Frederick Jones, who some years ago removed two slaves out of this colony into North Carolina, his plantation having been totally ruined by the hostilities there; asks permission to bring his said negroes back again without paying duty.
"[84] Although the petition was granted, there is no indication that Jones did, in fact, return.
The important phrase in this notice of petition is the "who some years ago," for it seems probable that this refers to the time when Jones left James City County to settle in North Carolina.
Working on the assumption that "some years ago" would be unlikely to refer to a period of time short of three or four years, it can be construed that the date of removal fell in 1708 or 1709 at the latest.
However the evidence is interpreted, it still remains curious that Jones should have purchased the 100 acres of "Lutties Neck" in 1711 and that he should sell a 300-acre tract known as "Tutties Neck" to Judith Bray, when in fact he appears to have possessed a total of 400 acres in James City County, only one of which is known to bear a name resembling Tutter's or Tutties' Neck.
The only reasonable construction must be that Mathew Brown's escheated acres adjoined 300 acres that already constituted Tutter's Neck.
But even then there remains the problem of why only "by estimation, three hundred acres, more or less"[85] were sold to Mrs. Bray.
No evidence has been found to show what became of the remaining 100 acres, and the only Virginia property mentioned in Frederick Jones' will of April 9, 1722, was described as "lying in King William County in Virginia, commonly called Horns Quarter.
"[86] It is unfortunate that the direst gap in the documentary evidence spans much the same period as does the archeological data.
However, the genealogy of the Bray family is of some assistance, providing clues even if it cannot offer direct answers.
When Thomas Bray died on August 2, 1751, he was described as "Col. Thomas Bray, of 'Little Town,' next to 'Kingsmill,' on James River.
"[87] That property, lying to the east of the Kingsmill tract, can be traced back as far as 1636, and it is known to have been owned by the Pettus family in the latter part of the 17th century.
[88] In about 1697 James Bray, son of James Bray, Sr., of Middle Plantation (later Williamsburg) married Mourning, widow of Thomas Pettus, Jr., and so acquired the "Little Town," or "Littletown," tract.
[89] This James Bray had three children, of whom Thomas was the eldest and thus became heir to his father's estate.
James Bray, Jr., had two brothers (as well as a sister).
The eldest son, Thomas, died intestate.
David, the youngest of the three, married Judith (b.
1679, d. Oct. 26, 1720), by whom he had one son, David, Jr.,[90] who married Elizabeth Page (b.
1702, d. 1734) and had no heir.
The previously discussed transaction of 1732 following the death of David Bray, Jr., whereby Thomas Bray obtained the "Tuttie's Neck" acres that had been purchased at an unspecified date by Judith Bray,[91] would suggest that Frederick Jones retained the title until 1717.
This may be deduced on the grounds that Mrs. Bray would have been unlikely to have purchased land while her husband, David Bray, Sr., was still alive.
Thus Jones would seem to have sold Tutter's Neck between 1717 and 1720 when Judith Bray died.
Thomas Bray, as stated above, lived at Littletown, and there is no likelihood that he ever resided at Tutter's Neck.
He married Elizabeth Meriwether and by her had one child, a daughter named Elizabeth who married Col. Philip Johnson.
[92] The daughter died in 1765, and when her husband followed her in 1769 "six hundred acres, with the appurtenances, called and known by the name of Tutty's neck" were offered at auction.
[93] It was presumably at this time that the Tutter's Neck land was added to the neighboring Kingsmill plantation of Lewis Burwell.
William Allen, of Surry County, purchased Littletown in 1796, and in 1801 he added Kingsmill to his holdings along, one supposes, with Tutter's Neck; for in the inventory made at Allen's death in 1832 the latter property was listed as comprising 923 acres and valued at $2,330.00.
[94] As the archeological site under consideration was not occupied beyond the colonial period, there is no need to pursue its history through the 19th century.
It is enough to note that Tutter's Neck is included in parcel no.
4 of the Kingsmill Tract now owned by Williamsburg Restoration, Inc. Part of this parcel is leased to the Chesapeake Corporation through whose courtesy excavation was made possible.
CAPTAIN ROGER JONES AND FREDERICK JONES The discovery of the Tutter's Neck site and its artifacts associated with Frederick Jones arouses interest in the man himself and his place in colonial America.
While those facets of his career directly relating to Tutter's Neck have been outlined above, a few additional facts may serve to round out our picture of the man.
In 1680 Capt.
Roger Jones of London came to Virginia with Lord Culpeper and was given the task of suppressing piracy in Chesapeake Bay.
His efforts in this direction resulted in considerable personal gain and he was able to amass extensive Virginia property.
Eventually Roger Jones' activities caused so many complaints that he relinquished his office and returned to London.
In 1692 a letter of petition from the Council of Virginia to the Earl of Nottingham, King William's principal Secretary of State, complained bitterly about the ravages by pirates to ships carrying supplies to the colony and in particular about the conduct of Roger Jones.
This petition, signed by Francis Nicholson and others of the Council, contained the following enlightening passage: ".... Capt Roger Jones, some time an Inhabitant of this Country, but at present residing in London.
A man that, from noething, pretends in a few years to have gained a great Estate, & since he has declared his disaffection to yr Maty before his leaveing this Country, by refuseing to serve in any office, or take the usuall Oaths wee pray yor Lordshps leave to give you his true caracter.
He came into this Country a souldier under the L Culpeper; was by his Ldsp made Captaine of a small sloope wh was to have been furnished with twelve men, & was ordered to cruise in our great Bay, to look out for & seize all unlawfull Tradrs, &c. But ye Captaine having learnt to cheate ye King very early, never had above 8 men, altho he constantly received pay for 12 men, for wh ye Lord Culpeper endeavoured to call him to Acct., as well as for his adviseing, trading with & sheltering severall Pyrates & unlawfull Traders, instead of doeing his duty in seizing them.
By which means ye sd.
Jones laid ye foundation of his p'sent great Estate, as he gives out he is master of.
"[95] In 1701 Roger Jones died in Stepney, London, and was buried at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, the home of his wife Dorothy (née Walker) by whom he had two sons.
The elder son, Frederick, inherited the larger share of the estate,[96] and both he and his brother Thomas arrived in Virginia in 1702.
Thomas remained in the colony throughout his life, but, as already shown, Frederick decided that North Carolina was more to his liking.
In about 1708 Frederick disposed of most of his Virginia holdings and moved south, taking with him at least two Negro slaves and his wife Jane, whom he had married while in Williamsburg.
[97] There is no doubt that Frederick Jones prospered in North Carolina, and in 1717 he was appointed Chief Justice for the colony,[98] replacing the previous Secretary and Chief Justice, Tobias Knight, who had resigned in disgrace.
The latter had made the mistake of being too open an accomplice of Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, the pirate.
There is reason to suppose that even if Governor Eden did not personally profit from Teach's activities, he was fully aware that the pirate made his winter quarters in a North Carolina inlet.
Teach was not finally cornered until November 22, 1718, in the famous exploit of Lieutenant Maynard off Ocracoke Inlet.
[99] Jones had by then been in office for at least a year and he was doubtless aware of the Governor's sympathies.
Indeed, with his own father's example to guide him, Jones was clearly an excellent choice for Chief Justice if leniency towards piracy was a prerequisite for the job.
Although there is no evidence that Jones profited from Blackbeard's operations, the records show that he was quite prepared to turn the trust of his office to his own advantage.
In the end it was a comparatively small manipulation that proved his undoing.
In 1721 one Daniel Mack Daniel murdered, by drowning, a certain Ebanezar Taylor and carried off his goods and money to a total of £290.0.0d.
When Mack Daniel was apprehended the money was passed for safekeeping to Frederick Jones, who apparently pocketed it.
On April 4, 1722, the following entry appeared in the _Colonial Records of North Carolina_:[100] It's the Opinion of this Board that the money lodged in the said Collo ffredk Jones hands late Cheif Justice for the appearance of Robert Atkins and Daniel Mackdaniel at the Genl Court ought to have been deliverd to the present Cheif Justice with the Genl Court Papers & Records.
Orderd that the said Collo ffredrick Jones late Cheif Justice doe immediately pay to Christopher Gale Cheif Justice or his Order whatever moneys he has in his hands lodged as aforesaid ... in case of failure hereof the Attorney Genl is hereby Orderd to take proper measures for the recovery thereof.
At the session of July 31 to August 4, 1722, Jones was due to appear to answer the charge that he had failed to relinquish the money.
But when the session opened, it was reported that Colonel Jones was dead.
[101] He had made his will only five days after the initial order of April 4 had been issued.
[102] Frederick Jones was in many respects a worthy and upright member of the North Carolina Council, or so one would gather from the opinion of Hugh Jones (no relation), who wrote: "Col. Frederick Jones, one of the Council, and in a good post, and of a good estate in North Carolina, before his death applied to me, desiring me to communicate the deplorable state of their Church to the late Bishop of London.
"[103] Frederick Jones presumably thought no better of the state of education in the colony, for we know that in the period 1719-1721 two of his sons were at school in Williamsburg.
[104] The Excavation As stated in the introduction, the area and intensity of the excavations were limited by time and prevailing local conditions.
Being aware of these restrictions from the outset, no attempt was made to undertake the total clearance of either the residence or kitchen.
Instead, carefully restricted cuttings were made across the foundations to obtain the maximum information with the minimum effort, at the same time retaining sufficiently large undisturbed areas to merit total clearance of the site at some future date.
As the area is now covered by fast-growing trees it is unlikely that such an operation would be feasible within the next 15 or 20 years.
In the meantime, however, Colonial Williamsburg has erected concrete markers (see fig.
5) to record the positions of both buildings.
[105] No excavation of any sort would have been undertaken at this time had not the foundations been so extensively and irreparably mutilated by the 1959 bulldozing.
The loss of all the topsoil and the scooping of the upper courses of the foundations into banks to serve as windbreaks had done such damage that it was essential that something be done before the new growth took hold.
[106] The operation should be correctly described, therefore, as a rescue project rather than an archeological excavation in the classic manner.
Initial work on the site was confined to a survey of the area and the recovery of artifacts such as ceramics, glass, and brickbats scattered on the top of the disturbed clay.
The principal concentration of artifacts was encountered in the brick-strewn vicinity of the residence and kitchen, though neither feature was immediately discernible.
This scatter was flanked on the west by a windbreak of humus, clay, and fallen trees, and had run out before reaching a parallel windbreak to the east.
Finds extending in the direction of the latter break included English white salt-glazed sherds as well as bottle fragments of the second quarter of the 18th century.
A similar scatter of later artifacts was found extending down the southern slope of the neck at that extremity of the two breaks.
In no instance were any fragments of white salt glaze found in stratified deposits, and it must be assumed that they emanated from the disturbed topsoil.
To the southeast of the eastern windbreak on ground sloping towards the secondary stream was found a scatter of brick dust extending over an area approximately 12 ft. by 14 ft., in the center of which was a concentration of large over-burnt brick fragments with reddened clay beneath.
No evidence of any laid bricks was encountered, and it is possible that this was the site of brickmaking rather than of a structure.
The only datable artifact found in the vicinity was the base of a wine bottle of the first quarter of the 18th century that was lying in the silted bottom of a nearby rain-washed gully running towards the stream.
Close to the southern extremity of the east windbreak was found a refuse pit (Pit A) containing a quantity of late 17th-century or early 18th-century wine-bottle fragments, among them one with the seal "F I."
Some 70 feet northwest of this pit was located an area of laid brickbats that measured 4 ft. 6 in.
by 4 ft. 6 in.
; around the edges of this area were found a few fragments of early 18th-century wine bottles and one bottle base of the mid-century.
This last was the latest fragment found on the site.
No explanation for the presence of the brickbats was forthcoming, and no further brick deposits were encountered in the vicinity.
Beyond the west windbreak and in line with the residence were found numerous glass and pottery fragments of the first and second quarters of the 18th century, none of them in situ.
It was presumed that they stemmed from the vicinity of the residence and were spread about by the bulldozing before the windbreaks were pushed up.
Over and above the artifacts and features listed above, no other evidence of colonial occupation was discovered except in the immediate vicinity of the two buildings.
The location of the structures was at once apparent on the evidence of large quantities of disturbed bricks and mortar scooped into east-west furrows by the bulldozers.
Careful probing in the two largest concentrations of brickbats soon located sections of the foundations of both buildings.
It was then a simple matter to trace out the plans of each building before any digging was undertaken.
This done, test cuttings were made at the corners and across the chimney foundations.
Subsequently, additional cuttings were made within each building to determine whether or not either possessed a cellar.
In the course of this work on the smaller of the two structures, numerous refuse pits were located that helped to provide a terminus post quem for its construction.
Each of these pits was treated as an individual feature and will be discussed in detail in its proper place.
The Residence The house, as previously stated, was built on a north-south axis with its west face looking toward College Creek.
It looked eastward along the track that led to the road linking Williamsburg with Burwell's Ferry (Kingsmill) on the James River.
The residence possessed exterior measurements of 42 ft. 3 in.
by 19 ft. 1 in.
with a chimney foundation at the south measuring 9 ft. 9 in.
by 5 ft. and another, at the north, measuring 9 ft. 11 in.
by 4 ft. 11 in.
These chimneys had sides of varying thicknesses: 1 ft. 7 in., 1 ft. 9 in., 1 ft. 6 in., 1 ft. 11 in., 2 ft., and 1 ft. 6 in.
The east and north foundations of the house itself were a brick and a half (1 ft. 1 in.)
in thickness, but the south wall was only one brick thick (9 in.
), although the two foundations were bonded into one another at the southeast corner.
An even more curious situation was provided by the west wall which extended south from the northwest corner at a thickness of 1 ft. 1 in.
and for a distance of 24 ft. 3 in., whereupon it stopped.
At this point the three surviving courses were stepped back, indicating that although there was no flush end, the bond had not been intended to continue.
At a point 9 in.
farther south, one brick and two bats were found continuing on the same line.
No further trace of a west wall was found until a point was reached 8 ft. from the southwest corner.
Here, stepping down as did the northern section, the foundation continued to the corner, rising to a height of four courses, but only one brick in thickness.
[107] Neither the break in the west foundation nor the curious variation in the thickness of the foundations has been explained.
It was suspected that the building might have possessed a porch chamber extending to the west, but no westerly projecting foundations abutted against the stepped ends of the west wall.
The presence of the west windbreak made any further excavation in that direction impossible, and it could be argued that a porch chamber might not have had foundations as deep as those of the house proper.
If this were so, then it is conceivable that they were dismantled along with the rest of the building in the mid-18th century and that any remaining traces have been destroyed by the bulldozing.
A single fragment of a polychrome Bristol delftware charger, with nails and window-glass fragments, was found in the builder's trench at the southern extremity of the northern section of the west foundation (deposit T.N.
27).
[108] The sherd is attributed to the period about 1680-1700, and it is the only clue as to the construction date of the residence.
In loose fill inside the foundation in the same general area as the above find were located part of a lead-glass tumbler and the front of an iron padlock.
The tumbler fragment could not date before the first quarter of the 18th century, and might be later.
Two test cuttings were made inside the building in the hope of locating a cellar, but none was found.
However, a neck of a wine bottle dating no earlier than about 1740 was discovered amid the debris of the house (T.N.
28).
It should be noted that this debris showed no indication of burning.
It was apparent that the house had been of frame construction resting on brick foundations laid in English bond.
It was a little over twice as long as it was broad, and appeared even longer when seen with its massive exterior chimneys at either end.
Such a house would probably have been a story and a half in height, having an A roof with dormers probably facing both east and west.
[109] Fragments of small panes and lead window cames found in the excavations suggest that the windows were leaded and therefore of casement type.
On the first floor there probably were two rooms, a hall and chamber--perhaps divided by a central passage with exterior doors at either end.
Prior to the building of the separate kitchen, the hall may have been used for cooking.
Above, there were probably two rooms approached by a staircase leading from the passage.
This reconstruction assumes, of course, that no porch chamber existed on the west side.
Since no evidence of a dirt or brick floor was encountered, it is assumed that the floors were of wood.
Beyond establishing, from foundation widths, that the building was of frame construction, it must be noted that no archeological evidence of the above-grade appearance of the building was forthcoming.
Mr. E. M. Frank, director of architecture for Colonial Williamsburg, whose conjectural elevation provides the frontispiece to this paper, points out that the roof may have been made from lapping oak strips some four feet in length, as were found at the Brush-Everard House in Williamsburg.
He further suggests that the weatherboards could also have taken the form of similar split-oak strips, precedent for which survives in the west wall of the John Blair House, also in Williamsburg.
A house of the above proportions and character was a little better than many a yeoman's home in England, although it owed its origins to those same homes.
It was larger than the smaller houses of Jamestown, but only just as large as the smaller houses of Williamsburg, whose sizes were regulated by an Act of Assembly in 1705.
The Tutter's Neck residence differed from most of the Williamsburg houses in that it had no cellar.
While it was a perfectly adequate house for a Williamsburg citizen of average means and status, one might be tempted to assume that it would not long have sufficed as the home of Col. Frederick Jones who, in North Carolina, aspired to 6 children and 42 slaves.
[110] On the other hand, it may be noted that the Carters of "Corotoman" on the Rappahannock, one of the wealthiest families in Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century, had lived in a rather similar house prior to the building of an imposing and larger brick mansion.
The latter burned in 1729, whereupon Robert "King" Carter moved back into the old 17th-century house.
Carter's inventory made at the time of his death in 1732, and now in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society, identifies the rooms in the "Old House" as comprising a dining room, chamber over the dining room, lower chamber, chamber over the lower chamber, and a porch chamber.
This last strongly suggests that the "Old House" was of 17th-century date.
As other buildings named in the inventory are noted as being of brick (probably advance buildings for the burnt mansion), it may be assumed that the "Old House" was of frame construction and so might well have been of the same class as the Tutter's Neck residence.
A further similarity is to be found in the fact that the Carter inventory lists no cellars beneath the "Old House."
The Kitchen Like the residence, this subsidiary building was not without its unusual features, the most obvious being the position of the massive chimney standing against the main east-west axis of the building instead of at one of the ends, the normal position.
Thus, instead of being supported by the A of the roof, the chimney was freestanding above the first floor with the pitch of the roof running away from it.
The building possessed external measurements of 25 ft. 4-1/2 in.
by 16 ft. 7-1/2 in.
; the foundations, laid in English bond, were one brick (9 in.)
thick.
The chimney abutted against the north wall, measured 10 ft. by 5-1/2 ft.; its sides were 11 ft., 1 ft. 9 in., and 11 in.
thick.
[111] Such a building would have stood to a height of a story and a half with one room on the first floor and a rude attic above, probably approached from a ladder.
Cuttings across the foundations showed that the bricks were unevenly laid.
At one point in the south wall the bricks jogged out to a distance of two inches, as though the foundation had been laid from both ends and failed to meet correctly in the middle.
There was no possibility that this unevenness could have been caused by settling or root action after building, for the builder's trench was filled with clearly defined burnt clay that also followed the jog.
The same red clay was packed in the builder's trench all around the kitchen building.
It was also used to span soft depressions resulting from refuse pits dug and filled with trash before the building was erected.
For some unexplained reason the kitchen was constructed over an area that previously had been set aside for the burying of domestic refuse.
The largest and earliest of the five pits excavated was situated partially beneath the massive kitchen chimney, whose foundation, not surprisingly, had settled into the pit.
Another rectangular pit in the middle of the building was not only topped with a pad of red clay but was partially covered by a cap or pier of laid brickbats that perhaps served as a support for floor joists.
The presence of the pits sealed beneath the kitchen provided two pieces of information: that the site had been occupied for some time before its construction, and that it was not built before about 1730 or 1740--this on the evidence of a wine bottle found at the bottom of Pit D. If this was the first separate kitchen building erected on the site, it must be assumed that the cooking was originally carried on in one of the first-floor rooms of the residence.
However, the fact that the archeological excavations were so limited makes any conjecture of that kind of dubious value.
The unusual construction of the kitchen and its situation in the trash area at a skew with the residence might prompt the conclusion that it was built without much consideration for the beauty of the whole.
It is probable that the kitchen was erected after the house had ceased to be the residence of the owner or a tenant of the Tutter's Neck acres, and that the dwelling was then a slave quarter.
Such a conclusion is supported by the presence in Pits D-F, of numerous fragments of Colono-Indian pottery, a ware produced by Tidewater Indians in pseudo-European forms and probably intended for the use of the slave population.
The construction date of the kitchen in the decade 1731-1740 would place it in the ownership of Col. Thomas Bray, who resided at Littletown (see p. 40).
Thus the Tutter's Neck residence is at best unlikely to have been any more than the quarters of an overseer, or, at worst, communal housing for slaves working in that area.
Such a conclusion would help to explain the fact that the majority of artifacts found in the site's later deposits were of dates much earlier than their contexts would suggest.
Many items of pottery and cutlery were of late 17th-century date, though found in refuse pits of about 1730-1740.
This would not be so surprising were it not for the fact that few, if any, such items have been found in excavations at Williamsburg, a town that was firmly established throughout the period covered by the Tutter's Neck occupancy as determined by the excavations.
But if the kitchen site was used as a slave quarter, it would be logical to expect that such things as pottery and cutlery would have been old before being relegated to that location.
A graphic example is provided by the latten spoon from Pit D that dates from the period about 1660-1690 (fig.
15, no.
13) and which had seen such service that it had been worn down to half its bowl size before being discarded.
The Refuse Pits A total of six refuse pits were excavated, five of them entirely or partially sealed beneath the foundations of the kitchen.
All five consequently predated that structure, though Pit B (see fig.
5) was probably 20 years earlier than the others.
Pits C-F, on the other hand, were probably all dug within a short time of each other.
They were approximately the same size and depth and were situated within a few inches of one another, although none overlapped its neighbor.
It may be deduced, therefore, that the pits were dug in such close succession that the outlines of the preceding pits were still visible to the digger.
It is possible that they may have been privy pits.
Concrete evidence indicating the close relationships between these pits was provided by fragments of the same Colono-Indian bowl found in both Pit D and Pit E. PIT A This deposit (T.N.
31) was located farthest from the buildings, being situated, as previously noted, about 125 feet southeast of the residence on the south slope of the neck.
As elsewhere on the site, the topsoil over the pit had been removed, leaving only the lower portions of the dirty yellow clay deposit intact.
This pit measured 8 ft. by 5 ft. and extended to a depth of only 1 ft. 2 in.
into the surrounding natural yellow clay.
A tree stump obscured a small part of this oval pit, but it is believed that its presence prevented few, if any, artifacts from avoiding recovery.
The finds comprised two or three sherds of coarse pottery of no identifiable form, part of the base of an English delftware mug ornamented with sponged manganese, one clay pipe of about 1700, and fragments of at least 18 wine bottles of the period about 1690-1710.
One of these fragments bore an "F I" seal from the same matrix as another found in Pit B.
The location of Pit A so far from the house and in a totally different area from the only other pit of the same date (Pit B) suggests that there was little consistency in the deposition of trash in the early years of the century.
It is possible that the pits were created when tree stumps were removed and were filled with trash no matter where they happened to be.
The fact that modern tree roots invariably sought the richer soil of the pits' contents makes it quite probable that there are numerous other pits on the site that are still hidden beneath standing trees or cut stumps.
Dating: There is little doubt that Pit A was filled during the first decade of the 18th century.
PIT B This pit (T.N.
30) was approximately circular, with a diameter of 9 ft. 4 in.
and a maximum depth of 2 ft. 8 in.
It was covered by part of the kitchen's north wall and by the whole of the east side of the kitchen chimney.
It was apparent that the builders knew that the pit was there, for a considerable number of brickbats were laid under the foundation of the chimney's northeast corner in an entirely abortive attempt to prevent it from settling.
It is probable that the pit was initially a stump hole, there being a large quantity of dirty, greenish-gray clay at the bottom from which no artifacts were recovered (see fig.
8.)
It is probable that this clay was redeposited when the stump and attached roots were dug out.
Subsequently, the remaining concavity served as a rubbish pit into which more than 120 broken wine bottles were thrown.
All these bottles belonged to the same period (1690-1710) as those in Pit A, and among them were five seals marked "F I" and one seal bearing the legend "Richard Burbydge 1701.
"[112] [Illustration: FIGURE 8.--Section through the filling of Pit B.]
Other finds included fragments of English delftware, among them a very large polychrome charger that had been intended as a wall or dresser ornament, and a most unusual saucer-shaped vessel, ornamented with splashes of blue, that resembles a reversed form of the London copies of Nevers faïence.
[113] Additional finds included North Devon[114] and other coarse earthenwares, a millefiori bead, and an English wineglass in the Hawley Bishop style dating about 1690.
Dating: The evidence of the bottles indicates a filling date in the first decade of the 18th century.
PIT C Covering the top of this pit was a layer of reddish clay, the same type of clay that was used in the backfilling of the builders' trench around the kitchen foundations.
The clay was directly covered by brick rubble from the building's destruction stratum.
From between the clay and rubble (T.N.
15) came fragments of an iron saw some 17 in.
long and a brass harness fitting of unusual form.
Set into the clay level was the base of a brick pier made from brickbats and intended to provide added support over the soft filling of a pit measuring approximately 6 ft. by 4 ft. 3 in.
and having a total depth of 2 ft. 6 in.
The walls were carefully trimmed and the bottom was flat, leaving no doubt that this cavity was dug as a refuse pit and was not a converted stump hole.
The red clay described above gave way to a yellow clay beneath the brick pier from which level (T.N.
16) came a few unimportant pottery fragments, a shoulder fragment from a wide-mouthed jar, and an iron harness buckle.
Beneath this stratum was encountered the main pit filling, comprising a thick stratum of wood ash (T.N.
17) which blended towards the corners of the pit into pale clay (T.N.
18) that has probably silted in from the sides.
From the ash deposit came part of a sickle, the bowl of a much-decayed pewter spoon, objects of turned bone, tobacco pipes, and a silvered-brass harness ornament.
Somewhat surprisingly, the stratum also contained part of a plate comparable to the delftware charger from Pit B, though the date of the deposit was probably 20 or more years later.
The silted clay at the bottom of the pit included numerous clay-pipe fragments whose stem holes, following the Harrington theory, pointed to a date in the period about 1735-1750.
Other finds included coarse earthenwares from Yorktown, delftware, and part of a pewter spoon handle.
Dating: About 1740.
PIT D This was a rectangular rubbish pit measuring approximately 5 ft. 10 in.
by 4 ft. and having a maximum depth of 2 ft. 8 in.--measurements closely resembling those of Pit C, which was situated only one foot to the east.
Stratigraphy also followed much the same sequence: Four inches of brick rubble on the top (T.N.
26), then 6 inches of red clay (T.N.
22) overlying the main fill of wood ash and becoming mixed with silted clay at the bottom (T.N.
23).
The red clay had mixed with the top of the pit fill and a number of artifacts spanned the division of the strata, among them a rim sherd from a polychrome delftware charger (about 1670-1690) and part of an inverted baluster wineglass stem of the beginning of the 18th century.
[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--BOWL OF BUFF-COLORED EARTHENWARE with a brown lead glaze and with "ELIZABETH GOODALL 1721" inscribed in slip.
Probably Staffordshire.
Height, 7-1/2 in.
This bowl parallels one of similar ware found at Tutter's Neck (fig.
19, no.
9).
Colonial Williamsburg, Department of Collections, no.
1960-430.]
The primary ash deposit, which proved to be the richest on the site, included delft drug-jar fragments, porringers and bowls, Westerwald tankard sherds, brown stoneware, Yorktown coarse wares, and much Colono-Indian pottery.
Small finds included pewter spoons, scissors, part of a sword guard, iron dividers, and a sickle and table knives of late 17th-century character.
Tobacco-pipe fragments pointed to a dating in the third decade of the 18th century, as also did a single wine bottle found at the bottom of the pit.
Dating: About 1730-1740, on the above evidence.
PIT E This deposit lay some 3 feet to the west of Pit D, and it was found on the last day of excavation.
Consequently time only permitted a test hole (measuring 1 ft. 9 in.
by 1 ft. 9 in.)
to be made into the pit at its northwest corner, from which point horizontal probing indicated that the pit measured 4 ft. by 2 ft. 8 in.
and was shown by the test cut to be 2 ft. 9 in.
deep.
Unlike the other pits in this series, the contents consisted of a single brown-soil deposit (T.N.
24) containing brickbats, oystershells, and a small quantity of ceramics, notably the base of an ornamental delftware cup and a large part of a Yorktown earthenware bowl.
Of significance was a fragment of Colono-Indian pottery that joined onto a bowl found in Pit D, indicating that both deposits were of the same date.
Additional finds included pipe fragments and an iron horseshoe.
Dating: About 1730-1740, principally on evidence of matching sherds of Indian pottery.
PIT F This was an oval pit situated 2 feet north of Pit C. Being only partially within the area of excavation and owing to its close proximity to the poorly preserved north foundation of the kitchen, this deposit was only partially excavated, i.e., an area 4 ft. 2 in.
by 3 ft. 9 in.
The pit had a depth of 1 ft. 10 in.
and contained a deposit of ash mixed with dirty clay (T.N.
19).
From this filling came several pieces of Colono-Indian pottery, polychrome delftware, Yorktown earthenwares, Chinese porcelain, part of a heavy wineglass knop, and one minute sherd of white salt glaze on which the pit's terminal dating is based.
Dating: About 1730-1740.
OTHER DEPOSITS YIELDING ARTIFACTS ILLUSTRATED Deposits T.N.
1, T.N.
2.--Deposit T.N.
1 was in a 6-inch stratum of rich black soil outside the northwest corner of the kitchen and partially covered by a large tree stump.
While some of the black dirt overlay the corner foundation, its looseness suggests that it was pushed there during the bulldozing.
No traces of the stratum extended inside the kitchen, and the artifacts were consistently of dates prior to the construction of the building.
Finds included a pewter spoon handle, brown stoneware with a rare white interior, a tobacco-pipe bowl with maker's initials "H S," a wineglass stem comparable to that from pit B, and panes of window glass measuring 2-1/8 in.
by 1-7/8 in.
and 1-5/8 in.
by 2-7/16 in.
Deposit T.N.
2 was a 2-inch layer of burnt clay flecked with wood ash.
It lay beneath the black soil level and probably was deposited when the kitchen was built.
Consequently, the upper level can only have been laid down after that time.
Finds included one sherd of Spanish majolica and a fragment of a tobacco-pipe bowl bearing the name of Tippet, a family of Bristol pipemakers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
[115] Dating: It is assumed that the clay (T.N.
2) was contemporary with the construction date of the kitchen (about 1730-1740) and that the black fill (T.N.
1) was deposited soon afterward.
Deposit T.N.
3.--A continuation of the red clay inside the kitchen chimney.
Finds include one Rhenish "Bellarmine"[116] sherd and a pewter spoon handle.
[Illustration: Figure 10.--FRAGMENTS OF SIMILARLY ORNAMENTED 17TH-CENTURY DELFTWARE from Tutter's Neck, London, and Holland: 1, with blue and orange decoration, from Tutter's Neck, Pit B; 2, with blue decoration, from Tutter's Neck, Pit D; 3, bowl waster with blue, orange, and green decoration, from Toolley Street kiln site, London; 4, plate with blue decoration from Toolley Street site; 5, plate decorated in blue, orange, and green, from Dutch Limburg.
The Netherlands dish, earlier than the English examples, clearly indicates the source of the border design.]
[Illustration: Figure 11.--INTERIOR BASES OF DELFTWARE SALTS with identical Carolian profiles.
_Left_, from Tutter's Neck, Pit D; _right_, from the Thames at London.
Diameter of each base is 1-3/4 in.]
Dating: Same as T.N.
2, about 1730-1740.
Deposit T.N.
4.--A stratum of black soil overlying the red clay outside the southwest corner of the kitchen foundation.
Finds include wine-bottle fragments dating about 1690-1710, brown stoneware, Yorktown coarse earthenware, and English delftware sherds.
Dating: After kitchen construction, probably in the same decade, about 1730-1740.
Deposit T.N.
10.--Black humus mixed with plaster and brickbats outside the west wall of the residence's north chimney.
The only find of importance is a well-preserved, two-tined, iron table fork.
Dating: The stratum represents the destruction level of the residence, and the scant dating evidence recovered from T.N.
18, etc., suggests that the building had ceased to exist by 1750, or possibly a few years earlier.
Deposit T.N.
27.--The field number covers two deposits that blended together in their upper levels.
They comprise the back filling of the builder's trench against the residence's west foundation (see p. 44)--from which came a single delftware charger sherd of about 1680-1700--and a stratum of black humus mixed with mortar and plaster representing the destruction layer of the house.
The bulldozing had caused considerable disturbance to both layers, but it can be safely accepted that the delft sherd belonged to the construction date of the residence and that a lead-glass tumbler base and an iron-padlock fragment came from the destruction stratum.
Dating: The construction date for the house relies on the insufficient evidence of the single delftware sherd mentioned above, i.e., after about 1680.
The destruction dating comes not from the items noted here but from the bottle neck discussed under T.N.
28, after about 1740.
Deposit T.N.
28.--A test cutting inside the residence on the line of the supposed central hallway that revealed 9 inches of humus mixed with mortar and plaster resting on natural clay.
From the above level came one bottle neck of about 1740.
On this evidence and on the evidence of unstratified sherds found in the occupation area, it is assumed that the complex had been abandoned by the middle of the 18th century.
Dating: After about 1740.
Animal Remains Animal bones and marine items were largely confined to the refuse pits previously discussed, although a few garbage bones and oystershells had been spread around the site in the course of the bulldozing.
Bones from the pits comprised the usual range of ox, pig, and deer remains that are to be found amid the garbage of most colonial sites.
A group of the less readily identifiable bones were submitted to the Smithsonian Institution for examination and the following identifications were provided: Left humerus, wild duck, (white-winged scoter, _Melanitta deglandi_).
From T.N.
17.
Fibula of pig (_Sus scrofa_), domestic.
From T.N.
17.
Shaft of humerus, domestic goose.
From T.N.
22.
Mandible of possum (_Didelphis_ sp.
_marsupialis_, subsp.
_virginiana_), edible.
From T.N.
22.
Mandible of "marine gar," or needlefish, of the Belonidae family, probably _Strongylura marina_ (Walbaum), a very common sea fish in this area, which runs in fresh water, and is frequently eaten.
From T.N.
24.
[Illustration: FIGURE 12.--COLONO-INDIAN CUP excavated at Williamsburg which is comparable to a fragment from Tutter's Neck (fig.
18, no.
17).
Height, 3-7/8 in.]
Also submitted for examination were specimens from a number of scallop shells, which were plentiful in Pits C and D, and examples of mussel and clam shells from Pit C. The identifications were as follows: Fresh water mussel of a type eaten by the Indians, _Elliptio complanatus_.
From T.N.
18.
Fossil clam, _Glycymeris_ sp.
From T.N.
18.
Fossil scallop of a variety no longer living in this area.
From T.N.
22.
The identification of the scallop as being fossil was somewhat surprising in view of the prevalence of such shells in Pits C and D. However, it should be noted that Pit E (T.N.
24) contained a fragment of fossil whale rib.
Such bones are plentiful in the Tidewater marl beds and are frequently found on the shores of the James and York Rivers.
The Artifacts TOBACCO PIPES Pipes (fig.
14) were not plentiful, no more than 100 fragments being found in any one deposit.
The datable bowls and fragments of pipes closely followed the site's two periods as indicated by the various refuse pits; that is, examples from Pits A and B date from around 1700-1720, and those from the rest of the pits are of types loosely attributed to the period of about 1710-1780.
On the evidence of association and by the use of the Harrington system of stem-hole dating, there is no reason to date any of the pipes later than the first half of the 18th century.
A few deposits yielded a sufficient number of stem fragments to provide tentative dating, as follows: -------------------+--------+---------------------------+--------|_No.
of_| _Stem diameters_ | _Deposit_ | _frag-_+---------------------------+ _Date_ | _ments_| 4/64" 5/64" 6/64" 7/64"| -------------------+--------+---------------------------+--------Pit B (T.N.
30) | 91 | 29% 60% 11% |1700-1720 Pit C (T.N.
17, 18)| 82 | 17% 78% 5% |1730-1750 Pit D (T.N.
23) | 49 | 16% 63% 21% |1730-1740 Kitchen (T.N.
1) | 55 | 57% 43% |1720-1740 -------------------+--------+---------------------------+--------It should be noted that in all cases the samplings are too small for accuracy and that they are based on Mr. Harrington's elementary chart which he, himself, claims to be no more than a point of departure for a new approach to the dating of tobacco-pipe fragments.
Nevertheless, the above results do follow fairly closely the dating of the groups arrived at on the evidence of stratigraphy and on the study of associated artifacts of all types.
Since this report was first written, Lewis Binford of the University of Chicago has developed a mathematical formula based on Harrington's chart which enables one to arrive at a mean date for the deposition of a group of pipes.
Audrey Noël Hume has subsequently demonstrated that a sampling of approximately 900 fragments is needed to maintain consistent results, and that the degree of accuracy rapidly falls off when dealing with groups of pipes dating earlier than 1670 and later than 1760.
[117] Fortunately, the Tutter's Neck pipes, though few in number, do fall within the period of greatest accuracy.
The following table illustrates the relationships between dates arrived at on the basis of all artifactual and documentary evidence (I), by the use of the Harrington chart (II), and by the Binford formula (III).
--------------------+-----------+-----------+------_Deposit_ | _I_ | _II_ | _III_ --------------------+-----------+-----------+------Pit B (T.N.
30) | 1702-1710 | 1700-1720 | 1709 Pit C (T.N.
17, 18) | ca.
1740 | 1735-1750 | 1745 Pit D (T.N.
23) | 1730-1740 | 1730-1740 | 1739 Stratum (T.N.
1) | ca.
1740 | 1720-1740 | 1724 --------------------+-----------+-----------+------The discrepancy in the dating of layer T.N.
1 must be explained by the fact that the soil and its contents were dug from somewhere else and redeposited outside the kitchen building.
Had this stratum predated the building, it would undoubtedly have been found on both sides of the foundation and would not have overlaid the red clay level (T.N.
2) which was similar and probably identical to that sealing pits C and D, the latter containing a wine bottle of about 1740 (fig.
19, no.
18).
The following maker's marks were found on pipes: [Sidenote: R M] One initial on either side of the heel.
Two examples (see fig.
14, no.
3).
The initials are not uncommon on pipes of the same shape found at Williamsburg and Rosewell Plantation.
[118] There were at least seven pipemakers with these initials working in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
[119] T.N.
30, Pit B.
[Sidenote: H S] One initial on either side of the heel.
One example (fig.
14, no.
5).
Other pipes with these initials have been found at Williamsburg and Rosewell Plantation.
Maker not known.
T.N.
1.
[Sidenote: I S] One initial on either side of the heel.
One example (fig.
14, no.
6).
The mark is not recorded among previous finds from either Jamestown or Williamsburg.
At least five makers with these initials were working in Bristol in the appropriate period.
T.N.
17, Pit C. [Illustration: FIGURE 13.--1, IRON SAW FRAGMENTS found under the Tutter's Neck kitchen (T.N.
15); 2-5, iron sickle, padlock, scissors, and dividers, respectively, from various deposits on the site (see figs.
15, 16).]
[Sidenote: RICH ARDS AYER] Richard Sayer.
Two examples had the name stamped on bases of flat heels; five others had the stamp on the upper sides of stems (see fig.
14, no.
1).
All seven stamps occur on glazed pipes of good quality.
No previous examples of his pipes have been found at either Jamestown or Williamsburg.
Possibly Richard Sayers who is recorded by Oswald as having been working at Newbury in about 1700.
T.N.
30, Pit B.
[Sidenote: ...IP ...ET] This fragmentary stamp on a molded cartouche on the side of a bowl came from a context of about 1730-1740 (T.N.
2) and was presumably made by the Robert Tippet of Bristol who became a freeman in 1713 and whose pipes have been found in Williamsburg contexts dating as late as the mid-18th century.
[120] [Sidenote: RICH TYLER] Presumably Richard Tyler, but the last two letters of the surname are unclear.
The stamp appears on a stem fragment within an oval of impressed square dots.
Oswald lists a Richard Tyler who was working at Bath in about 1700.
Stem-hole diameter, 5/64 in.
Unstratified.
[Sidenote: W] Fragment from base of bowl of pipe with neither heel nor spur, probably similar in shape to no.
4 of figure 14.
The first of a pair of initials molded on either side of the base.
[121] Stem-hole diameter, 7/64 in.
Unstratified.
METAL OBJECTS Metal items (figs.
15-17) from the site provide a valuable series of common domestic and agricultural objects of a period that has as yet received little study.
The majority of the principal items came from a single refuse pit beneath the kitchen (Pit D, T.N.
23) and although deposited in the second quarter of the 18th century they are generally of earlier date.
The surprising preponderance of late 17th-century items in this and other contexts tends to support the theory that the house served as a quarter toward the end of its life and that the furnishings, tools, and utensils consequently were already worn and old-fashioned when provided for use by the slaves.
CERAMICS Like the metal items, the ceramics are predominantly of the late 17th and early 18th century, though frequently found in contexts of the second quarter of the latter century.
The quality and variety of the wares is somewhat surprising, the finds including some items that are today of considerable rarity.
Notable among them is the saucer in a reversed "Nevers" style that is seemingly without parallel (fig.
18, no.
8), a London delftware "charger" of massive proportions and uncommon design (fig.
18, no.
10), a lead-glazed Staffordshire bowl fragment (see fig.
19, no.
9), and part of a brown-surfaced white stoneware jug that may have come from the factory of John Dwight of Fulham near London.
[122] The majority of the delftwares have the appearance of London manufacture, rather than that of Bristol or Liverpool.
As a broad generalization it may be claimed that the former trend in Virginia was characteristic of the 17th century but was reversed in the 18th.
An unusually large percentage of Colono-Indian pottery was present, predominantly in pits dating from the second quarter of the 18th century.
The same contexts also yielded a high proportion of lead-glazed earthenware cream pans manufactured at Yorktown, presumably at the factory of William Rogers that may have been operating as early as 1725.
[123] Although all the items found on the Tutter's Neck site emanate from contexts of 18th-century date, most of the delftwares and some of the stoneware items are without parallel in nearby Williamsburg, the 18th-century cultural and economic center of Virginia that lay only three miles away.
Once again, therefore, the artifacts point to a 17th-century survival and perhaps, by projection, to a low standard of living.
An indication of a terminal date for the life of the site is provided by the total absence of English white salt-glazed stoneware from all except one stratified deposit (Pit F), a ware that does not seem to have reached the colonies before the third decade of the 18th century,[124] most of it arriving after about 1740.
It must be recorded, however, that fragments of this later period were found scattered on the surface, but it was impossible to determine whence they came.
GLASS BOTTLES Wine bottles[125] provided the key to the entire excavation, first by possessing seals (fig.
6) that identified the owner of the property and secondly by providing dating evidence for the construction of the kitchen; thus there was avoided an error of dating that would otherwise have been inevitable.
In addition, the group of bottles from Pit B (T.N.
30) provided a valuable series of specimens of varying shapes, all of which were in use together at the beginning of the 18th century.
(See fig.
19, nos.
11-20.)
A few small fragments of green pharmaceutical phials were also recovered, but none was sufficiently large to merit illustration.
TABLE GLASS Although wine-bottle glass was plentiful, table glass was comparatively scarce.
It was confined to the three wineglasses illustrated as nos.
16-18 of figure 17, a 17th-century wineglass-stem fragment similar to no.
17 of figure 17 (see footnote 94), heavy tumbler-base fragments of typical 18th-century type (from T.N.
24, 27), and a fragment from a fine gadrooned Romer of late 17th-century date (fig.
20, no.
8).
Conclusions The Tutter's Neck excavations represented the partial exploration of a small colonial dwelling and outbuilding, both of which ceased to exist by about 1750.
On the basis of the excavated artifacts the intensity of occupation seems to fall into two periods, the decade of about 1701-1710 and within the years about 1730-1740.
Documentary evidence indicates that these periods relate to the respective ownerships of Frederick Jones and Thomas Bray.
While the groups of artifacts from refuse pits are closely dated by context and are consequently valuable in the general study of domestic life in early 18th-century Virginia, the history of the site is less well served.
The limited nature of the excavation, the loss of the overburden through bulldozing, and the destruction of the James City County court records during the Civil War serve to leave a number of important gaps in the chronology.
It is to be hoped that at such time as the new trees have grown up and have been cut there will be archeologists ready and waiting to complete the excavation of this small but historically interesting site.
Illustrations The illustrated items are confined to those that are sufficiently complete or readily identifiable as to be of value to archeologists, curators, and historians who may find comparable items elsewhere.
In the interest of brevity, repetitive or unstratified objects have been omitted, although occasional exceptions have been made in the latter category where it is considered that the objects are of significance to the study of the structures or the possessions of Tutter's Neck residents, whether or not they can be closely dated.
The drawn objects are divided by type and are arranged in chronological order within each group where variations of date are apparent.
In most instances the archeological evidence of the date at which the artifacts were deposited in the ground is more accurate than is the overall date range of individual items.
Thus the fact that a delftware form that was developed about 1700 continued to be manufactured until about 1740 would give us, in the absence of archeological evidence, a manufacture date of about 1700-1740, but there would be no indication of the length of the object's actual life.
On the other hand, the archeological evidence tells us only when the object was discarded, and not when it was made.
To avoid confusion, the descriptions of the artifacts only indicate the periods in which the objects were first made and/or were most popular, and then only when such dates are clearly at variance with the archeological termini.
Each description ends with the Tutter's Neck field number that indicates the source of the item and provides the terminus post quem for its context.
Table 1 provides a summary of the foregoing report for use in conjunction with the artifact illustrations.
TABLE 1.--_Location and terminal dates of deposits._ --------------+-------------------------+----------------_Field Number_| _Deposit_ | _Terminal Date_ (T.N.)
| | --------------+-------------------------+----------------1 | Kitchen | c. 1740 2 | " | c. 1730-1740 3 | " | c. 1730-1740 4 | " | c. 1740 8 | kitchen vicinity | Unstratified 10 | residence | c. 1740-1750 15 | kitchen | c. 1740 16 | " | c. 1730-1740 17 | Pit C | c. 1725-1735 18 | " " | c. 1725-1735 19 | Pit F | c. 1730-1740 22 | kitchen | c. 1730-1740 23 | Pit D | c. 1730-1740 24 | Pit E | c. 1730-1740 27 | residence | c. 1740_ff_1750 28 | " | c. 1740-1750 29 | slope south of residence| c. 1750-1760 30 | Pit B | c. 1702-1710 31 | Pit A | c. 1702-1710 32 | residence vicinity | Unstratified --------------+-------------------------+----------------FIGURE 14.
TOBACCO-PIPE PROFILES 1.
Pipe with bowl shape reminiscent of the 17th century but with the lip horizontal instead of sloping away from the stem as characteristic of the earlier forms.
Mouth somewhat oval; spur small; the clay very white and glazed.
Marked on the stem with the name Richard Sayer.
Stem-hole diameter 6/64 in.
Oswald Type 9d.
[126] T.N.
30.
2.
Fragmentary bowl of cylindrical form, having a shallow heel from which the fore-edge of the bowl springs forward.
This is a late 17th-century form.
No mark.
Stem-hole diameter 6/64 in.
T.N.
30.
3.
Bowl of basic 18th-century form, but the narrow profile is indicative of an early date within the period.
Letters "R M" molded on either side of the heel.
Stem-hole diameter 5/64 in.
T.N.
30.
[Illustration: FIGURE 14.--TOBACCO-PIPE PROFILES.
Same size.]
4.
Bowl with neither heel nor spur, but the angle of the bowl comparable to that of no.
2.
No mark.
Stem-hole diameter 5/64 in.
T.N.
31.
5.
Bowl apparently similar to no.
3, but with the lip missing; smaller heel with molded initials "IIS," but the letters poorly formed and almost illegible.
Stem-hole diameter 6/64 in.
T.N.
1.
6.
Bowl slightly fatter than the above, initials "IS" clearly molded on the small heel, the "I" very thick.
Stem-hole diameter 4/64 in.
T.N.
17.
7.
Bowl with neither heel nor spur, an evolved 18th-century form in the style of no.
6 but somewhat larger.
This is clearly a later variation of no.
4.
[127] Stem-hole diameter 5/64 in.
T.N.
19.
8.
Base of bowl and stem fragment, of red clay and of local Virginia manufacture.
[128] Apparently a 17th-century form, but found here in an 18th-century context.
Stem-hole diameter 10/64 in.
T.N.
18.
[Illustration: FIGURE 15.--CUTLERY and other small finds.
One-half.]
FIGURE 15.
CUTLERY AND OTHER SMALL FINDS 1.
Table knife, iron, with sway-backed and round-ended blade, thin, winglike shoulders, the tang slightly turned over at the end but originally 1-1/2 in.
in length.
A late 17th-century to early 18th-century blade form.
[129] T.N.
23.
2.
Table knife, iron, smaller but similar form to no.
1, but with the blade end less rounded.
The tang is bent at right angles at approximately its midsection, a presumably fortuitous feature that has been omitted from the drawing.
T.N.
23.
3.
Table knife, iron, with incomplete blade and broken tang; the blade narrow and somewhat sway-backed, the shoulders extending into a double collar below a somewhat heavy tang.
The closest parallel is believed to have been made around 1700.
[130] T.N.
23.
4.
Table knife, iron, with the blade much worn and the tip missing, long and heavy shoulders, possibly of octagonal form.
This knife is of a form typical of the 17th century.
[131] T.N.
23.
5.
Table fork, iron, two-tined, with the long octagonal shank common in the 17th century,[132] terminating in a rectangular-sectioned tang.
T.N.
10.
6.
Table knife, iron, with incomplete blade originally with upswept and rounded end, but seemingly used after the end was lost.
Back of blade hipped and terminating in octagonal shoulders and rectangular-sectioned tang.
Early 18th century.
T.N.
28.
7.
Terminal of pewter spoon handle, a weak form of the "split end" or "trifid" terminal of the late 17th century.
[133] Scratches on the upper surface can be read as the initials "I H." Early 18th century.
T.N.
1.
8.
Terminal of pewter spoon handle, spatula form, the handle broad and thin.
A broad arrow mark (perhaps a rough, merchant's mark) is rouletted onto the upper surface.
On the reverse, an Arabic figure 2, marked in a multiplicity of small scratched arcs, is sufficiently large as to make use of the entire area of the terminal.
T.N.
18.
9.
Pewter spoon handle, with spatula terminal, in an advanced stage of decay and broken off at the junction with the bowl; probably rat-tailed.
T.N.
3.
10.
Bowl and broken handle of pewter rat-tail spoon, the rat-tail being unusually long and thin after sharply constricting at the heel of the bowl.
The handle is narrow and oval in section and could very well have ended in a terminal section of the same type and length as no.
9.
T.N.
23.
11.
Pewter spoon, normal rat-tail bowl, apparently with spatula handle terminal.
This spoon was intact when found, but was in so advanced a state of decay that the weaker sections at both ends lay powdered in the ground and could not be restored.
T.N.
23.
12.
Pewter spoon bowl and section of straight handle.
Bowl is of oval form with rudimentary rat-tail; the handle is rectangular in section.
The handle form is characteristic of the 17th century.
[134] The spoon is in an advanced stage of decay but appears to have been crudely formed, the bowl being very shallow.
T.N.
17.
13.
Latten or brass spoon bowl and section of handle, tinned; the bowl oval but worn away by long use.
Maker's mark in the bowl: a spoon flanked by the initials "RS" within two rings between which is the legend "DOVBLE WHITED.
"[135] The form is typical of the second half of the 17th century.
T.N.
23.
14.
Blade sections of iron scissors.
T.N.
23.
15.
Blade and incomplete handle from pair of scissors.
The blade terminates at an angle of 30° in the manner of modern tailors' scissors, a shape that was common in the 17th century and less so in the 18th.
The loop of the handle takes the form of a broad but thin-sectioned band set at a right angle to the blade, an early characteristic.
[136] T.N.
23.
16.
Pair of iron scissors with one blade broken, of similar type to the above.
The loop and shaft of the left section are much more substantial than the right, suggesting that although the components were found attached they were not originally made for each other.
T.N.
23.
17.
Left side of iron casing for a fleam.
An example of similar shape and size was found in excavations at Jamestown.
T.N.
23.
18.
Pair of iron dividers with bulb terminal and tines somewhat convex on the outside faces.
[137] T.N.
23.
19.
Iron key with round-sectioned loop: stem round-sectioned and narrow at junction with loop and becoming much wider in midsection, then tapering again as it approaches the web.
The pin is solid and terminates in a small nipple; the web is divided and much decayed, with the fore-section represented by only a small fragment that is much thinner than its companion.
It would appear that the key had been violently wrenched in a lock, resulting in the breaking of the web and the twisting and fracturing of the loop.
T.N.
23.
20.
Small tool of uncertain purpose, perhaps an awl.
Broad and flat at one end, in the manner of a screwdriver or drill shank, and becoming round-sectioned and narrowing to a point at the other end.
T.N.
30.
21.
Iron spoon bit with flattened shank terminal.
Spoon convexo-concave in section, saucered upwards at the lower end to the same height as the walls of the trough, and terminating in a worm or twist of two surviving revolutions.
[138] T.N.
23.
22.
Iron quillon and knuckle bow mounting from sword.
[139] T.N.
23.
FIGURE 16.
BUILDERS HARDWARE AND OTHER METAL ITEMS 1.
An object of uncertain purpose, made from sheet iron rolled at the sides over a wire to provide round-sectioned edges and more roughly folded for the same purpose at the lower edge.
The central hole has been deliberately cut.
The object, whose shape resembles the terminal from a cheekpiece of a snaffle bit, has been broken at the narrow end, suggesting that it was too light in construction to have been intended for such a purpose.
T.N.
19.
2.
Tang and part of blade from an iron sickle.
Blade is triangular in section, and the cutting edge commences approximately 2-1/2 in.
from the haft.
T.N.
23.
3.
Blade fragment from sickle of larger size than the above, triangular in section, and bearing some indication that the back has been hammered.
T.N.
17.
4.
Front plate and part of mechanism of bag-shaped padlock.
The keyhole cover is now missing but originally it was hinged, and not pivoting as has been common on locks since the second half of the 18th century.
[140] The bolt, which survives, is fitted with a spring at the rear and has two wards projecting from its midsection.
T.N.
27.
5.
Chest or coffin handle, iron.
Handhold is 1/2 in.
in width at its widest point and tapers at either end.
The terminals, of disk form, serve to hold the handle at right angles to the wood of the chest.
Such handles were attached by means of cotter pins.
The form was common in the 17th century.
[141] T.N.
24.
6.
Iron spike of large size, measuring 5-5/8 in.
in (surviving) length, 1/2 in.
by 7/16 in.
at the broken top, and approximately 1/2 in.
by 1/4 in.
at the bottom.
This was the largest spike found on the site.
T.N.
22.
7.
Iron spike with heavy square head.
Length 4-3/4 in.
; shaft at head measures 7/16 in.
by 5/16 in.
and is spatula-ended.
T.N.
23.
8.
Ring-headed bolt.
Collar beneath the loop, with the shaft round-sectioned and 1-13/16 in.
of threading above the pyramidical point.
The nut measures approximately 7/8 in.
by 5/8 in.
[142] T.N.
17.
9.
Iron bolt or rivet with large thin head 1-1/4 in.
in diameter; shaft end probably broken.
T.N.
23.
[Illustration: FIGURE 16.--BUILDERS' HARDWARE and other metal items.
One-half.]
10.
Iron rivet with large head approximately rectangular in shape and measuring 1-3/8 in.
by 1-3/16 in.
Shaft originally round-sectioned but now much decayed and showing evidence of having spread at its flat terminal.
T.N.
23.
11.
Tube of sheet iron.
Wider at one end than the other, having an aperture of 3/8 in.
at the narrow end and approximately 7/8 in.
at the other end.
Possibly the nozzle from a pair of bellows or, conceivably, a large ferrule; however, there seem to be no holes for mounting the iron to wood.
The object has been hammered at its wide end, causing the metal to spread and roll and the entire object to buckle and yawn at its midsection.
T.N.
23.
12.
An object of uncertain purpose sometimes described as a door or shutter latch.
The blade section is neither pointed nor sharpened, and the shank or tang is slightly spread at the end.
[143] T.N.
18.
13.
Fragment of object of uncertain purpose.
Sheet iron is folded over at one edge to grip an iron strap, only a small section of which survives.
T.N.
23.
14.
Iron hasp from trunk or chest lock; has rectangular keeper and rolled terminal for lifting.
[144] T.N.
18.
15.
Iron strap with rectangular #T#-shaped terminal at one end and pierced by a 7/8 in.
rivet at the other end; of uncertain purpose.
T.N.
23.
16.
Ward plate, possibly from large padlock, iron.
T.N.
22.
17.
Ward plate from large rimlock.
Lugs at either end serve as rivets that pass through iron supports extending back from the front plate.
T.N.
17.
18.
Bolt, iron, from large rimlock.
The head is approximately 1/2 in.
thick.
Two wards extending from the shaft show that, to lock, the bolt moved from right to left.
Unstratified.
19.
Bolt, iron, from large rimlock.
The head is approximately 1/2 in.
thick.
The remains of two wards extend from the shaft and show that, to lock, the bolt moved from left to right.
T.N.
18.
20.
Harness buckle, iron.
Almost square-sectioned, with the tang round-sectioned, flattened at the top, and rolled around the buckle.
T.N.
16.
21.
Harness buckle, iron.
The tang side is round-sectioned, the other sides flattened.
The tang is pointed, square-sectioned in the shaft, and possesses an ornamental ridge below the point at which it rolls over the frame.
[145] T.N.
23.
22.
Harness buckle, iron, much decayed.
Frame and tang apparently square-sectioned, the former perhaps unintentionally constricted at one side.
T.N.
23.
FIGURE 17.
OBJECTS OF IRON, BRASS, BONE, AND GLASS 1.
Ring, iron, with evidence of wear at one side; possibly a handle or a chain terminal.
T.N.
23.
2.
Loop, iron, with the ends perhaps originally meeting; possibly a handle or a chain terminal.
T.N.
19.
3.
Horseshoe, iron.
Rudimentary key-hold type, much decayed but with slight traces of fullering, probably eight nail holes, four on each side.
The lug at left terminal would seem to have been created by the loss of a fragment of the outer edge.
This is a typical 17th-century form, but one that continued into the 18th century.
[146] T.N.
24.
4.
Handle from scythe, iron.
The wooden shaft was approximately 1-5/8 in.
in diameter at point of contact.
T.N.
24.
5.
Part of snaffle bit, jointed mouthpiece lozenge-shaped junction of bit and rein loop.
T.N.
23.
6.
Fragment of iron pot, with two molded cordons on the body.
T.N.
30.
7.
Leg from iron pot, five-sided and tapering to a point.
[147] Base of pot approximately 1/8 in.
thick.
T.N.
8.
8.
Leg with trifid or cloven foot, from iron pot.
Legs of this type narrow above the foot and spread again towards the point of junction with the pot base.
It was at the narrow midsection that the illustrated leg broke.
The form was common in the 17th century.
T.N.
18.
9.
Tapering iron strap of uncertain purpose.
Two small nail holes at the broad end and two larger holes down the length of strap.
T.N.
19.
[Illustration: FIGURE 17.--OBJECTS of iron, brass, bone, and glass.
One-half.]
10.
Strap similar to the above.
Slightly constricted at midsection but otherwise without taper; positioning of nail holes as in no.
9.
The strap is bent in opposite directions at either end, the bend at the right extremity passing through the line of the nail holes, indicating that the bending occurred when the object was used for a purpose other than that for which it was originally intended.
T.N.
23.
11.
Shoe buckle, iron.
Badly decayed, but traces of both iron tines and back loop remain.
The frame sides were probably originally only 3/16 in.
to 1/4 in.
wide.
T.N.
23.
Shoe buckles of iron are very rarely encountered.
12.
Harness ornament, brass.
Originally silver-plated or tin-plated, of shell form; five tangs that protrude from the back--four in the area of the shell and one at the tail--were folded over to grip the leather, fragments of which still survived when the fitting was found.
The form was common in the 18th century,[148] but most examples found in Virginia are much less angular than is this example.
T.N.
17.
13.
Harness fitting, brass, with rectangular loop at right angles to the ornamental plate, probably a strap retainer.
T.N.
15.
14.
Bone tube or nozzle, possibly part of a syringe.
Internal bore spreads from 1/8 in.
at the narrow, broken end, to 3/8 in.
at the other end.
The increase in bore begins at a point 3/4 in.
from the wide end.
The latter terminates on the exterior in a collar above six encircling grooves, below which the tube is trumpet-shaped and ornamented with two shallow incised rings.
T.N.
17.
15.
Bone tube of uncertain purpose.
Trimmed at the narrow end to fit within a collar or extension; the wider end spreading and convex, the interior of this end with spiral groove to create threading to house a screw-ended plug or extension.
T.N.
17.
16.
Wineglass stem.
Heavy and solid inverted baluster with small fortuitous tear; the lead metal a smoky gray with an almost frosted appearance resulting from surface decay.
[149] The bowl, though large, was comparatively thin at its junction with the stem and probably, therefore, was of funnel form.
Late 17th century.
T.N.
22.
17.
Light wineglass.
Pale straw-colored metal;[150] inverted baluster stem is hollow and gently tooled into quatrefoil form at its junction with the bowl,[151] the latter setting firmly into the top of the stem.
The conical foot with central pontil mark is thin and was undoubtedly folded.
This is an important 3-piece glass of a type sometimes attributed to Hawley Bishop, George Ravenscroft's successor at the Henley-on-Thames glasshouse.
[152] About 1680-1700.
T.N.
30.
18.
Wineglass stem.
Sparkling lead metal; the stem comprising a solid, inverted baluster beneath a massive cushion knop, the base of the bowl nestling firmly within the latter.
Late 17th century to early 18th century.
[153] T.N.
4.
FIGURE 18 ENGLISH DELFTWARE 1.
Bowl with everted rim ornamented with crudely overlapping ovals and diamonds in blue; interior of bowl decorated with rings of the same color.
The conjectural base and foot are derived from larger bowls of similar form found in excavations at Williamsburg.
The glaze is thick, and very white.
Late 17th century to early 18th century.
T.N.
30.
2.
Rim sherd from bowl of form similar to the above, but the blue decoration on the interior of the bowl and the rim plain.
T.N.
23.
3.
Hemispherical bowl.
The foot conjectural, decorated in blue on the exterior with a stylized foliate border made up almost entirely from groups of straight lines.
There is a trellis border above the missing foot, and the interior is decorated with a double blue line at the same height, and with a single line 5/8 in.
below the rim.
This last is decorated with red, imitating the red-brown slipped line that frequently occurs on Chinese export porcelain.
Second quarter of 18th century.
T.N.
17; one sherd from T.N.
16.
[Illustration: FIGURE 18.--ENGLISH DELFTWARE, Indian pottery, and stonewares.
One-fourth.]
4.
Drug jar.
Flat and slightly everted rim, straight body section, and spreading base; the bottom slightly domed and the glaze thin.
Ornamented in pale blue with groups of horizontal lines and a body zone decorated with linked ovals created by the drawing of two overlapping wavy lines.
Probably of London manufacture and of 17th-century date.
[154] T.N.
30.
5.
Porringer.
Slightly everted rim and handle with heart-shaped aperture; body slightly bulbous and incurving to a straight foot; the glaze thick and gray.
Probably of London manufacture.
[155] Late 17th century to early 18th century.
T.N.
23.
6.
Shallow ointment pot or jar.
Rim flattened, undercut, and slightly everted; base markedly domed, thick pinkish-white glaze.
Almost certainly of London manufacture and dating from latter part of 17th century.
T.N.
30.
7.
Ointment pot.
Thin, slightly everted rim over a bulbous body; the foot slightly spreading beneath it and slightly conical beneath; the glaze thick and gray.
18th century.
T.N.
23.
8.
Saucer.
Conjectural reconstruction derived from base and rim sherds.
The base thick; the foot solid and only slightly raised, but the rim thin and with a much more even finish.
The piece has a thick white glaze with a slight pink cast and is haphazardly splashed with blue.
The technique would appear to be the reverse of the London copies of Nevers faïence whereon white dots are splashed over a blue ground.
[156] This object appears to be without parallel in published sources, but may tentatively be given the same dating as the London white on blue, i.e., about 1680-1690.
[157] T.N.
30.
9.
Pedestal base from a small salt.
Base conical within; glaze thick and very white; bowl decorated internally with profile portrait of a cavalier.
This extremely unusual item was, by a remarkable coincidence, paralleled by an identical fragment found by the writer on the foreshore of the River Thames at Queenhithe in London.
The two are shown together in figure 11.
About 1660-1680.
[158] T.N.
23.
10.
Large dish or charger reconstructed on the basis of base and rim fragments.
Diameter approximately 1 ft. 3 in.
The rim turns gently downward beyond the wide marly, and the foot is squat and slightly spread.
The glaze is thick and white, and the rim decoration takes the form of broad rings of blue enclosing a marly zone ornamented with an alternating lozenge and diamond motif created from two rows of interlocking arcs, the upper painted in orange and the lower in blue.
The decoration of the center of the dish is uncertain, but was painted in the same two colors, perhaps in a stylized pomegranate design.
Such dishes are frequently decorated on the rim edges with dashes of blue that give them the name "blue dash chargers,"[159] but there is sufficient glaze surviving on this example to indicate that there was no such ornament.
Another somewhat unusual feature is that the back of the dish is tin-glazed; the majority of such dishes were coated on the reverse with a thin yellow or yellowish-green lead glaze.
Such dishes were frequently used as wall or dresser ornaments and not for use at table; consequently, the footrings are generally pierced for suspension.
No suspension holes occur on the small sections of the footring that survive on this example.
The dish is believed to be of London manufacture on the evidence of wasters found in the Borough of Southwark,[160] London (see fig.
10), though the style is clearly of Dutch origin.
[161] About 1670-1690.
T.N.
30.
[162] 11.
Rim fragment from plate.
The glaze slightly pink, narrow marly decorated with alternating lozenge and diamond motif in light blue (see no.
10) bordered by a single and double line of the same color.
At least two concentric circles adorned the floor of the plate, but no evidence of the central design survives.
Early 18th century.
T.N.
23.
12.
Pedestal foot and base of salt or cup.
The foot conical and shelved internally; the bowl flat-based and with the rolled terminal of a small handle at one side; the glaze somewhat gray.
The foot decorated with three somewhat irregularly drawn rings in light blue; the bowl ornamented with rudimentary floral devices; and the handle terminal decorated with two horizontal bars of dark blue, perhaps beneath a vertical, stalked flower.
Late 17th century(?).
T.N.
24.
INDIAN POTTERY 13.
Bowl with flattened and slightly everted rim.
Colono-Indian[163] pottery, pebble-or stick-burnished, with pink surface; extensive tool marks on the exterior; the ware flecked with red ocher and few traces of shell.
T.N.
23, T.N.
24.
[164] 14.
Shallow bowl or pan with flattened and everted rim.
Colono-Indian pottery; the ware buff and heavily shell-tempered and retaining traces of surface burnishing.
T.N.
23.
15.
Rim and wall fragment of bowl with roughly flattened and everted rim.
Colono-Indian pottery, the body pale buff and finely shell-tempered.
T.N.
19.
16.
Rim sherd from bowl of local Indian pottery.
Lip thickened and slightly incurving; body pink to buff and coarsely shell-tempered; the exterior stick-burnished.
T.N.
19.
17.
Rim and wall fragment of cup or small bowl, the rim slightly everted by tooling beneath it.
Colono-Indian pottery; body pinkish buff with traces of red ocher in the clay; exterior surface highly burnished.
It is possible that the fragment came from a vessel comparable to that shown in figure 12, which was found in excavations at Williamsburg.
[165] T.N.
23.
BROWN SALT-GLAZED STONEWARES 18.
Body and handle terminal fragments from pint (?)
tankard.
Mottled purplish-brown exterior and reddish-brown interior; the rim conjectural and the lower body and basal section modeled on no.
19.
Probably of English manufacture, London or Bristol.
[166] T.N.
1, T.N.
4.
19.
Basal and wall fragments of pint (?)
tankard.
Similar in form to the above.
Two fragments present, one with the beginning of the red slip that becomes mottled brown in firing, a feature that normally extends from the midsection upwards to the rim.
The lower body is gray, as is the interior; the foot is ornamented with a ridge, cordon, and double ridge.
T.N.
17.
20.
Rim sherd of quart (?)
tankard.
Burnt; the rim thinned from the inside and ornamented on the outside with a single groove; dark purplish-brown mottling on the exterior, a little of the slip from which extends over the interior of the rim.
T.N.
23.
21.
Jug or drinking pot.
Bulbous body with good quality tooling at the shoulder; handle with single groove down the spine; the base and neck conjectural, but modeled after the forms produced by Dwight of Fulham in the late 17th century.
[167] The ware is a pale gray and appears white beneath the internal salt glaze.
It is possible that this is an example of the use of the white salt-glazed body conceived by Dwight, and that it may have come from his factory.
The refined clay enables the ware to be thinly and finely potted.
T.N.
1.
22.
Neck, shoulder, and handle-terminal fragments of jug.
The neck ornamented with multiple grooving; the handle terminal pressed into the body with one finger; the glaze a rich purplish brown, reddish brown inside.
[168] A common form manufactured in London at the close of the 17th century and made elsewhere, including Yorktown, certainly through the second quarter of the 18th century.
[169] T.N.
23.
GERMAN SALT-GLAZED STONEWARE 23.
Large (Westerwald) tankard, base and lower body sherds only.
Stylized foliate and geometric ornament incised and filled with cobalt on an extremely pale-gray body; multiple cordons and grooves above the base; two concave bands filled with blue; the base slightly rising and scored with haphazard lines before firing.
T.N.
23.
FIGURE 19 COARSE EARTHENWARES 1.
Cream pan of Yorktown (?)
earthenware.
[170] The rim rolled; spout conjectural, based on others from the same group; base slightly rising; exterior of body above base displaying potting rings and knife work; body containing small quantities of quartz grit, pink-cored and yellow at the edges; exterior unglazed but orange-pink slipped, and the interior lead-glazed a ginger brown mottled with iron.
T.N.
24.
2.
Cream pan.
The rim thickened, incurving and undercut; ware as of no.
1, but the internal glaze a darker brown; approximate diameter, 14 in.
T.N.
18.
3.
Cream pan.
Similar to no.
1 but with spout (from which the above was copied), and the exterior slip somewhat more orange in color.
T.N.
23.
4.
Cream pan.
With spout and rolled rim; the ware red-bodied, flecked with quartz grit and red ocher; exterior a deep red to black; internal glaze a dark greenish brown; approximate diameter, 14-3/4 in.
T.N.
23.
5.
Cream pan.
The rim thickened, incurving, and undercut; body pale buff; exterior with pale-orange slip; internal glaze a lustrous purple, presumably somewhat overfired.
Fragments with this colored glaze are among the many possible wasters from Yorktown.
Diameter approximately 14 in.
T.N.
23.
6.
Cream pan.
Unusual, shouldered rim sherd, perhaps intended to take a cover; red body with ginger-brown glaze; probably English.
T.N.
4.
7.
Storage jar, body fragments only.
Decorated with medial grooves and applied trails pressed in piecrust style beneath the missing rim; the body gray-cored and red at the edges, coated with a light-brown glaze flecked here and there with pale green.
Presumably English.
T.N.
30.
8.
Rim fragment from small cup or pot.
Hard yellow body coated with a pale treacly glaze.
Probably Staffordshire.
T.N.
18.
9.
Large cylindrical jar or bowl.
The wall vertical, undercut above the slightly spread foot.
Hard yellow body as above, coated with thick treacly and streaky brown glaze of a color much later often associated with Bennington.
A rim sherd from the same deposit is slightly everted, but since the glaze is much lighter the piece may not belong to the same vessel.
Base diameter approximately 10-1/2 in.
Probably Staffordshire.
An example recently purchased by Colonial Williamsburg (fig.
9) is dated 1721.
T.N.
30.
10.
Storage jar.
The rim everted and ridged internally, probably to seat a lid; gravel tempered, pale-pink earthenware; internal dark apple-green glaze.
[171] West of England manufacture.
T.N.
30.
GLASS BOTTLES 11.
Wine bottle of early short-necked form.
Olive-green metal; flat string-rim; the mouth everted over rim.
About 1680-1700.
T.N.
30.
12.
Wine bottle with squat body, short and broad neck, and roughly applied string-rim; olive-green metal.
The body type may normally be dated around 1700, but some examples are 10 or 15 years earlier.
[172] T.N.
30.
13.
Wine bottle of olive-green metal.
Squatter than the above, but the neck somewhat taller and the shoulder less angular; probably little variation in date.
[173] T.N.
30.
[Illustration: FIGURE 19.--COARSE EARTHENWARES and glass bottles.
One-fourth.]
14.
Wine bottle of squat form, olive-green metal.
The neck taller than in no.
12 and the string-rim smaller and V-shaped.
[174] Seal, on the shoulder, bears the legend "Richard Burbydge 1701."
T.N.
30.
15.
Wine bottle of squat form, olive-green metal.
Somewhat bulbous and the shoulder weak, the string-rim broad and flat.
[175] A slightly earlier form than no.
14.
The bottle has a seal on its shoulder with the initials "F I" (Frederick Jones) stamped from a single matrix.
[176] T.N.
30.
16.
Wine bottle of somewhat unusual form.
The metal thin olive green has turned black through decay which has almost entirely destroyed the metal.
The body round-shouldered, and bulbous in the early manner; but the neck tall and the string-rim almost round-sectioned rather than V-shaped as one might expect of a bottle of this basic form.
Were it not for the soft curve of the body and the shape of the string-rim this bottle might be attributed to the third decade of the 18th century.
Note brass wire, still attached to neck, that held cork in place.
T.N.
30.
17.
Wine bottle of half-bottle size.
The metal as in no.
16; shoulder angular; neck somewhat writhen with a broad and flat string-rim of 17th-century character.
Without the last feature (and its context) this bottle might be thought to date as late as 1725.
T.N.
30.
18.
Wine bottle, olive-green metal.
Short cylindrical body with conical basal kick, straight neck, and down-tooled string-rim.
Dated examples occur in the late 1730's, but are more common in the following decade.
T.N.
23.
19.
Wine-bottle neck of olive-green metal in an advanced state of decay.
Wide mouth with everted lip and large round-sectioned string-rim of unusual character.
The angular shoulder suggests that the neck comes from a body comparable to that of no.
12.
T.N.
31.
20.
Pickle jar, everted-mouth fragments only.
Olive-green metal in an advanced stage of decay, originally with square body in the manner of the more common case bottles.
[177] T.N.
18.
FIGURE 20.
MISCELLANEOUS SMALL FINDS 1.
Harness ornament, plated brass.
(See fig.
17, no.
12.)
T.N.
17.
2.
Harness fitting, brass.
(See fig.
17, no.
13.)
T.N.
15.
3.
Brass button.
Hollow cast; both back and front convex; the back with two molding holes on either side of the flat-sectioned brass loop, which spreads directly from the back without any intermediary shank.
Such buttons were common in the second half of the 17th century and the first quarter of the 18th century.
[178] Diameter, 3/4 in.
T.N.
23.
4.
Brass curtain ring.
The shape cast and then roughly filed flat on either side.
This method of manufacture is typical of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Diameter, 1 in.
T.N.
24.
5.
Ornamental brass band from shaft or hilt of uncertain form.
The band has become flattened and folded, and the condition of the metal precludes regaining its original shape.
However, the band is almost certainly a truncated cone, ornamented with a roughly cutout and scored foliate decoration at the narrow end and plated with a thin band of silver at the other end.
Length, 1-3/16 in.
T.N.
18.
6.
Millefiori or chevron bead of yellow and black glass, almost certainly Venetian.
[179] The bead is flattened on its pierced axis and has a diameter of 3/8 in.
This example is probably of 17th-century date, but the technique can be traced back to Roman times.
T.N.
30.
7.
Chinese export porcelain-cup fragment.
Decorated in underglaze blue, rough chevron ornament below the rim on the interior.
Diameter approximately 3 in.
T.N.
23.
[Illustration: FIGURE 20.--MISCELLANEOUS small finds.]
8.
Lower bowl fragment of lead-glass Romer ornamented with gadrooning or pillar molding.
This is undoubtedly the finest glass fragment from the site; it would not have been out of place in the best English household.
[180] About 1685.
T.N.
30.
9.
Indian projectile point of honey-colored quartzite.
The edges slightly serrated, and the base slightly concave; the tip missing, but total length originally about 43 mm.
Holland Type C.[181] T.N.
16.
10.
Indian projectile point of red quartzite.
Eared or corner-notched variety; original length approximately 45 mm.
Holland Type O.
[182] This is an unstratified item discovered on the bared clay surface on the promontory of Tutter's Neck overlooking the junction of Tutter's Neck and Kingsmill Creeks.
U.S. Government Printing Office: 1966 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C., 20402--Price 70 cents FOOTNOTES: [57] I am indebted to Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., for permitting the partial excavation of the site, for its generosity in offering to present the bulk of the artifact collection to the United States National Museum, and for its financial assistance in the preparation of this report.
I am also much indebted to Audrey Noël Hume and John Dunton who represented the full extent of our field team, and to the latter for his work in the preservation of the iron and other small finds.
My gratitude is also extended to A. E. Kendrew, senior vice president of Colonial Williamsburg, and to E. M. Frank, resident architect, the late S. P. Moorehead, architectural consultant, and Paul Buchanan, all of Colonial Williamsburg, for their help in the interpretation of the architectural remains.
Further thanks are extended to Thaddeus Tate of the College of William and Mary for his valued council throughout the operation and for reading and commenting on the final report.
I also greatly appreciate comments made by C. Malcolm Watkins, curator of cultural history at the Smithsonian Institution, in regard to the European artifacts; the help with the Indian material provided by Ben C. McCary, president of the Archeological Society of Virginia; and suggestions for historical sources made by H. G. Jones, state archivist, North Carolina.
Finally, my thanks are extended to Alden Eaton who first found the site and without whose interest another relic of Virginia's colonial past would have been lost.
[58] "_Mesuage_, in Common law, is used for a dwelling-house, with Garden, Courtilage, Orchard, and all other things belonging to it" (E. PHILLIPS, _The New World of Words_, London, 1671).
[59] WILLIAM WALLER HENING, _Statutes at Large ... A Collection of All the Laws of Virginia ..._, vol.
4 (Richmond, 1820), p. 371.
[60] Papers of the Jones Family of Northumberland County, Virginia, 1649-1889 (MSS.
Division, Library of Congress), vol.
1.
[61] "Patents Issued During the Royal Government," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (January 1901), ser.
1, vol.
9, no.
3, p. 143.
In the 17th century prior to the building of the College of William and Mary, College Creek was known as Archer's Hope Creek, after the settlement of Archer's Hope at its mouth.
[62] There was a patent dated February 6, 1637, to "Humphry Higgenson" for 700 acres "called by the name of Tutteys neck, adj.
to Harrop ... E. S. E. upon a gr.
swamp parting it from Harrop land, W. S. W. upon a br.
of Archers hope Cr.
parting it from Kingsmells neck, W. N. W. upon another br.
of sd.
Cr.
parting it from land of Richard Brewsters called by the name of the great neck alias the barren neck & N. N. W into the Maine woods."
Richard Brewster's 500 acres were described as beginning "at the great Neck alias the barren neck, adj.
to Tutteys Neck a br.
of Archers hope Cr.
parting the same, S. upon a br.
of sd.
Cr.
parting it from Kingsmells Neck...." _Cavaliers and pioneers.
Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants 1623-1800_, abstracted and edited by Neil M. Nugent (Richmond: Dietz Printing Co., 1934), vol.
1, pp.
80, 81.
[63] On July 19, 1646, a patent was granted to Richard Brewster for "750 acres, Land & Marsh, called the great Neck of Barren Neck, next adjoining to lutteyes neck."
"Patents Issued ...," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (July 1901), ser.
1, vol.
10, no.
1, p. 94.
[64] "Notes from Records of York County," _Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine_ (July 1924), vol.
6, no.
1, p. 61.
[65] "Virginia Gleanings in England," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ (October 1904), vol.
12, no.
2, p. 179.
[66] "List of Colonial Officers," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ (January 1901), vol.
8, no.
3, p. 328; and "Lightfoot Family," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (October 1894), ser.
1, vol.
3, no.
2, p. 104.
[67] "Patents Issued ...," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (January 1904), ser.
1, vol.
12, no.
3, p. 186.
For similar spelling see note 7, above.
[68] "Escheat, in Common-law, signifieth lands that fall to a Lord within his Manor, by forfeiture, or the death of his Tenant without Heirs; it cometh from the French word Escheire, to fall" (PHILLIPS, _New World of Words_).
[69] On August 14, 1710, Richard Burbydge was among those who signed a report on the inspection of the vessel _Jamaica Merchant_, lying at anchor in the upper district of the James River, at the precept of Governor Spotswood.
The inspectors were sworn by Capt.
John Geddes, a justice of the peace for James County.
(_Calendar of Virginia State Papers and other Manuscripts, 1652-1781_, edit.
Wm.
P. Palmer, M.D., Richmond, 1875, vol.
1, p.
141.)
This is the only reference to Burbydge that has been found.
[70] L. H. JONES, _Captain Robert Jones of London and Virginia_ (Albany, 1891), p. 34.
[71] "Virginia Quit Rent Rolls, 1704," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, vol.
31, no.
2 (April 1923), p. 157; vol.
31, no.
3 (July 1923), p. 222; vol.
32, no.
1 (January 1924), p. 72.
[72] _Colonial Records of North Carolina_, edit.
William L. Saunders (Raleigh 1886), vol.
1, p. 590.
[73] ALONZO T. DILL, "Eighteenth Century New Bern," _North Carolina Historical Review_ (January 1945), vol.
22, no.
1, p. 18.
[74] "Bruton Church," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (January 1895), ser.
1, vol.
3, no.
3, p. 180.
[75] HENING, _Statutes at Large_, vol.
3 (Philadelphia, 1823), p. 431.
[76] Papers of the Jones Family ..., vol.
1.
[77] _Colonial Records of North Carolina_, vol.
1, p. 680.
[78] Ibid., pp.
837, 838.
[79] Ibid., p. 787.
[80] Ibid., p. 866.
[81] Ibid., p. 864.
[82] HUGH T. LEFLER AND ALBERT R. NEWSOME, _The History of a Southern State, North Carolina_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), pp.
56-60.
[83] _Colonial Records of North Carolina_, vol.
1, p. 864.
[84] "Notes from the Journal of the House of Burgesses, 1712-1726," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (April 1913), ser.
1, vol.
21, no.
4, p. 249.
[85] HENING, _Statutes at Large_, vol.
4 (Richmond, 1820), p. 371.
[86] Papers of the Jones Family ..., vol.
1.
[87] "Diary of John Blair.
Copied from an Almanac for 1751, Preserved in Virginia Historical Society," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (January 1899), ser.
1, vol.
7, no.
3, p. 151, note 2.
[88] CONWAY ROBINSON, "Notes from Council and General Court Records," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ (October 1906), vol.
14, no.
2, p. 188, note 3.
[89] "Bray Family," _William and Mary College Quarterly_ (April 1905), ser.
1, vol.
13, no.
4, p. 266.
[90] Ibid.
[91] HENING, _Statutes at Large_, vol.
4 (Richmond, 1820), p. 371.
[92] "Bray Family," pp.
266-267.
[93] HENING, _Statutes at Large_, vol.
8 (Richmond, 1821), pp.
460-464.
[94] Inventory of William Allen, in Surry County Wills, no.
6, 1830-1834, pp.
341-344.
[95] _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, vol.
1, p. 39.
[96] The will of Roger Jones is preserved in the Public Records Office in London, but it is published in full in L. H. JONES, _Captain Robert Jones_, pp.
196-200.
[97] L. H. JONES, _Captain Robert Jones_, p. 34.
[98] DILL, "Eighteenth Century New Bern," p. 18.
[99] SAMUEL A. ASHE, _History of North Carolina_ (Greensboro: C. L. Van Noppen, 1908), vol.
1, pp.
200-204; and LEFLER and NEWSOME, _History of a Southern State_, pp.
63-64.
[100] _Colonial Records of North Carolina_, vol.
2, p. 472.
[101] Ibid., p. 475.
[102] Text of the will is given in L. H. JONES, _Captain Robert Jones_, pp.
200-205.
[103] HUGH JONES, _The Present State of Virginia_ [1724], edit.
Richard L. Morton (Virginia Historical Society, 1956), p. 104.
[104] "The Cocke Family of Virginia," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ (October 1897), vol.
5, no.
2, p. 192.
[105] Two concrete fenceposts have been set up on the north-south axis of the residence, the posts being driven immediately beyond the respective chimney foundations.
Two additional posts have been erected on the east-west axis of the kitchen.
[106] As the work progressed, access to the site became increasingly difficult, necessitating the abandoning of transport farther and farther from the scene of operations.
However, in the winter of 1960-1961, after all save the last trench had been dug, the Chesapeake Corporation crew drove a new road through the neck, a road which in fact cut right through the middle of the archeological area.
By great good fortune the road passed between the two buildings without doing much more damage than had already been done by the earlier bulldozing.
[107] The builders had made use of oystershell mortar.
Specimen bricks ranging in color from pale salmon to a purplish red have the following measurements: 8-7/8 in.
by 4-1/4 in.
by 2-1/4 in.
and 8-7/8 in.
by 4-1/8 in.
by 2-1/2 in.
[108] The "T.N."
number in parentheses represents the field number of the Tutter's Neck deposit.
[109] A house of similar character was photographed at Yorktown in 1862; see A. LAWRENCE KOCHER and HOWARD DEARSTYNE, _Shadows in Silver_ (New York: Scribner, 1954), p. 82, fig.
3, no.
17.
The Bracken House in Williamsburg also is similar; see MARCUS WHIFFEN, _The Eighteenth-Century Houses of Williamsburg_ (Williamsburg, 1960), p. 57, and figs.
5, 6.
[110] Negroes belonging to the estate of Frederick Jones are listed in Papers of the Jones Family, vol.
1, November 29, 1723.
[111] Oystershell mortar was used.
Sample bricks are pale salmon to overfired red and measure 8 in.
by 3-7/8 in.
by 2-1/2 in.
and 8-3/4 in.
by 3-3/4 in.
by 2-1/2 in.
[112] IVOR NOËL HUME, "The Glass Wine Bottle in Colonial Virginia," _Journal of Glass Studies_ (Corning Museum, 1961), vol.
3, p. 99, fig.
3, type 6.
[113] See F. H. GARNER, _English Delftware_ (London: Faber and Faber, 1948), p. 15 and fig.
30a.
[114] See C. MALCOLM WATKINS, "North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century" (paper 13 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963).
[115] ADRIAN OSWALD, "A Case of Transatlantic Deduction," _Antiques_ (July 1959), vol.
76, no.
1, pp.
59-61.
[116] For an example of comparable shape and date, see figure 6 of IVOR NOËL HUME, "German Stoneware Bellarmines--An Introduction," _Antiques_ (November 1958), vol.
74, no.
5, pp.
439-441.
[117] J. C. HARRINGTON, "Dating Stem Fragments of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Clay Tobacco Pipes," _Quarterly Bulletin Archeological Society of Virginia_ (September 1954), vol.
9, no.
1, no pagination.
AUDREY NOËL HUME, "Clay Tobacco Pipe Dating in the Light of Recent Excavations," ibid.
(December 1963), vol.
18, no.
2, pp.
22-25.
LEWIS H. BINFORD, "A New Method of Calculating Dates from Kaolin Pipe Stem Samples," _Southeastern Archeological Newsletter_ (June 1962), vol.
9, no.
1, pp.
19-21.
[118] See IVOR NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia, 1957-1959" (paper 18 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), p. 222, fig.
35, no.
7, and p. 220.
[119] ADRIAN OSWALD, "The Archaeology and Economic History of English Clay Tobacco Pipes," _Journal of the British Archaeological Association_ (London, 1960), 3d series, vol.
23, p. 83.
[120] OSWALD, loc.
cit.
(footnote 59).
[121] NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 220, footnote 96.
[122] See: J. F. BLACKER, _The A B C of English Salt-Glaze Stoneware from Dwight to Doulton_ (London: S. Paul & Co., 1922), p.
34ff.
; and IVOR NOËL HUME, "Bellarmines and Mr. Dwight," _Wine and Spirit Trade Record_ (December 17, 1956), pp.
1628-1632.
[123] C. MALCOLM WATKINS and IVOR NOËL HUME, "The 'Poor Potter' of Yorktown" (paper 54 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249, by various authors), Washington: Smithsonian Institution, in press.
[124] The earliest known importation is indicated in _Boston News-Letter_ of January 17, 1724 (G. F. Dow, _The Arts and Crafts in New England, 1704-1775_, Topsfield, Massachusetts: The Wayside Press, 1927, p. 82).
[125] The common term "wine bottle" is used here for the sake of convenience, though it should be realized that bottles were not specifically shaped to contain wine but were used for any and all liquids from beer to oil.
[126] ADRIAN OSWALD, "English Clay Tobacco Pipes," _Archeological News Letter_ (April 1951), vol.
3, no.
10, p. 158.
The type is attributed to the period about 1700-1750, with the distribution mainly in the southwest of England.
[127] See NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 220, footnote 96.
[128] See J. C. HARRINGTON, "Tobacco Pipes from Jamestown," _Quarterly Bulletin Archeological Society of Virginia_ (June 1951), vol.
5, no.
4, no pagination.
[129] See J. F. HAYWARD, _English Cutlery_ (London: Victoria and Albert Museum handbook, 1956), pp.
15-16, pl.
13b.
[130] Ibid., p. 16, pl.
17c.
[131] For a similar example, see J. PAUL HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_ (Washington: National Park Service, 1957), p. 34, second knife from bottom.
[132] The 18th-century shanks tend to be bulbous either below the shoulder or at the midsection.
[133] A complete spoon with this type terminal was found in excavations at Green Spring Plantation near Jamestown; see LOUIS R. CAYWOOD, _Excavations at Green Spring Plantation_ (Yorktown, Virginia: Colonial National Historical Park, 1955), pl.
11, "G.S.
153."
For a Scottish silver spoon with this type terminal see _The Connoisseur_ (April 1910), vol.
26, no.
104, and _Catalogue of the Guildhall Museum_ (London, 1908), pl.
81, no.
16.
[134] A spoon handle with a shaft of similar type was found at Jamestown.
It bears the mark of Joseph Copeland, a pewterer of Chuckatuck, Virginia, in 1675.
See JOHN L. COTTER, _Archeological Excavations at Jamestown, Virginia_ (Washington: National Park Service, 1958), pl.
87, fig.
at right.
[135] See _Catalogue of the Guildhall Museum_, pl.
71, fig.
3 (for bowl shape) and fig.
5 (for mark).
[136] As the 18th century progressed, loops tended to be more round-sectioned.
By the end of the colonial period most loops display their greatest width on the same plane as that of the blade.
See NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 198, fig.
21, no.
13.
[137] For a similar example see HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_, p. 57.
[138] See H. C. MERCER, _Ancient Carpenters' Tools_ (Doylestown, Pa.: Bucks County Historical Society, 1951), p. 182.
[139] See NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 198, fig.
21, no.
14.
[140] Both the baglike shape of the lock and the hinged keyhole cover are indicative of a date in the late 17th century or early 18th century.
[141] HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_, p. 26.
[142] A similarly headed object, but slotted at the other end to hold a linchpin, was found at Jamestown and considered to be an item of marine hardware.
HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_, p. 85.
[143] For similar example see NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 224, no.
8.
[144] For similar example see HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_, p. 20, fig.
at top left.
[145] Another example with similar frame, but with a broader tang and no ornamental ridge, was found in the same context.
[146] See NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 224, no.
10, and _Archaeology in Britain_ (London: Foyle, 1953), p. 107, fig.
23, no.
17.
[147] It is possible that this leg originally spread out into a foot in the style of no.
6.
See HUDSON, _New Discoveries at Jamestown_, p. 30, fig.
at left.
[148] For similar examples, see NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 200, fig.
22, nos.
6, 7.
[149] For a parallel of the stem form only, see GEORGE BERNARD HUGHES, _English, Scottish and Irish Table Glass from the Sixteenth Century to 1820_ (London: Batsford, 1956), fig.
35, no.
1.
A rather similar baluster shape, about 1695, is shown in E. M. ELVILLE, "Starting a Collection of Glass," _Country Life_ (June 11, 1959), vol.
125, no.
3256, p. 1329, fig.
1.
A tavern glass, attributed to the period 1685-1690, whose baluster has a large tear, but which otherwise is a good parallel, is shown in _The Antique Dealer and Collector's Guide_ (April 1954), p. 29, fig.
at left.
[150] The metal was tested for lead with positive results.
[151] A slightly larger stem from a glass of similar form was found outside the kitchen in deposit T.N.
1; not illustrated.
[152] For a glass of comparable form, but of soda metal, see G. B. HUGHES, "Old English Ale Glasses," _Wine and Spirit Trade Record_ (April 15, 1954), p. 428 and fig.
1.
[153] For a similar stem shape attributed to the last decade of the 17th century see A. HARTSHORNE, _Old English Glasses_ (London, 1897), p. 245, pl.
34.
[154] The association of color and style of decoration coupled with the relationship of diameter to height as displayed here is generally indicative of early date.
In the 18th century, jars of this diameter tended to be taller, less spread at the base, and with the blue decoration much darker.
[155] Waste products from London delftware kilns were used to build up the north foreshore of the River Thames between Queenhithe and Dowgate in the City of London.
Among the many fragments recovered from this source were biscuit porringer handles of a type similar to the Tutter's Neck example.
The manner in which the rim is folded over the handle seems to be a London characteristic, Bristol examples more often being luted straight to the rim.
The Thames material was deposited in the late 17th century and probably came from a pottery on the Bankside on the south side of the river.
[156] A very small porringer rim sherd of this ware was found at Tutter's Neck in context T.N.
24; not illustrated.
[157] See GARNER, _English Delftware_, p. 15, fig.
30a.
[158] Dating based on the Carolian appearance of the figure.
[159] E. A. DOWMAN, _Blue Dash Chargers and other Early English Tin Enamel Circular Dishes_ (London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1919).
[160] From a kiln site found during building operations for Hay's Wharf between Toolley Street and Pickelherring Street in 1958.
[161] See ERNST GROHNE, _Tongefässe in Bremen seit dem Mittelalter_ (Bremen: Arthur Geist, 1949), p. 120, Abb.
78, Abb.
80a.
[162] The smaller base fragment was found in stratum T.N.
17, a much later context than the rest.
If this fragment does come from the same dish, it must be assumed that the fragments were scattered and that the sherd was moved in fill dug from an earlier deposit.
[163] A name coined to describe pottery made by the Pamunkey Indians and others in the 18th century that was copied from English forms and sold to the colonists, presumably for use by those who could not afford European wares.
See IVOR NOËL HUME, "An Indian Wave of the Colonial Period," _Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia_ (September 1962), vol.
17, no.
1, pp.
2-14.
[164] The bowl was important in that the presence of its fragments deep in both T.N.
23 and T.N.
24 indicated that both Pits D and E were filled at approximately the same time.
[165] Colonial Williamsburg archeological collection, 10C-58-10B.
[166] Brown stonewares similar to those commonly attributed to Fulham, but more correctly called London, were manufactured at Yorktown by William Rogers in the second quarter of the 18th century.
See footnote 67.
[167] A comparable vessel, ornamented with medallion containing Tudor rose and initials of Charles II, is illustrated in BLACKER, _The A B C of English Salt-Glaze Stoneware_, p. 35.
[168] A similar example from a context of 1763-1772 is illustrated by NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," fig.
29, no.
1.
[169] ADRIAN OSWALD, "A London Stoneware Pottery, Recent Excavations at Bankside," _The Connoisseur_ (January 1951), vol.
126, no.
519, pp.
183-185.
[170] Op.
cit.
(footnote 67).
[171] A close parallel that was found at Lewes, Delaware, is illustrated in WATKINS, "North Devon Pottery," p. 45, fig.
25.
[172] See SHEELAH RUGGLES-BRISE, _Sealed Bottles_ (London: Country Life, 1949), pl.
4, fig.
at lower left, and W. A. THORPE, "The Evolution of the Decanter," _The Connoisseur_ (April 1929), vol.
83, no.
332, p. 197, fig.
2.
[173] Another example is illustrated by NOËL HUME, "The Glass Wine Bottle," op.
cit.
(footnote 56), fig.
3, type 3.
[174] Ibid., fig.
3, type 6, illustrates a similar example.
[175] Ibid., fig.
3, type 5, shows another example.
[176] All other Jones seals from T.N.
30 and T.N.
31 were stamped from combinations of single-letter matrices.
See fig.
6.
[177] A similar though slightly smaller neck came from T.N.
16, and a square base, probably from an ordinary case bottle, was among the surface finds.
Another example is illustrated in NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell," p. 181, fig.
11, no.
13.
[178] NOËL HUME, _Archaeology in Britain_, p. 108.
[179] Colorful beads of this character were frequently used as Indian trade goods and are found in Indian graves in Virginia and elsewhere.
A long-established legend that beads were manufactured at the Jamestown glasshouse is without archeological evidence.
Although many beads have been found on the shores of the James River near Jamestown, there is reason to suppose that all those of European form were imported.
[180] See Hughes, _English, Scottish and Irish Table Glass_, p. 195 and fig.
134.
[181] C. G. HOLLAND, "An Analysis of Projectile Points and Large Blades," appendix to CLIFFORD EVANS, _A Ceramic Study of Virginia Archeology_ (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 160, Washington, 1955), p. 167.
[182] Ibid., p. 171.
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY: PAPER 54 THE "POOR POTTER" OF YORKTOWN _C.
Malcolm Watkins_ and _Ivor Noël Hume_ PART I: DOCUMENTARY RECORD--_C.
Malcolm Watkins_ 75 THE CROWN AND COLONIAL MANUFACTURE 76 THE "POOR POTTER" AND HIS WARES 79 APPENDIXES 86 PART II: POTTERY EVIDENCE--_Ivor Noël Hume_ 91 THE SALT-GLAZED STONEWARE 91 STONEWARE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES 102 THE EARTHENWARES 105 CONCLUSIONS 109 [Illustration: Figure 1.--MODERN YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA, showing original survey plat on which William Rogers' name appears on lots 51 and 55.
Additional properties which he acquired are mentioned in his will as lots 59, 74, and 75.]
The "Poor Potter" of Yorktown _Pottery making in colonial Virginia, strongly discouraged by a mercantilistic England, seemingly was almost nonexistent according to the Governor's reports which mention but one nameless "poor potter" at Yorktown, whose wares are dismissed as being low in quantity and quality.
This paper, the combined effort of a historian and an archeologist, provides evidence that the Yorktown potter was neither poor nor nameless, that his ware was of sufficient quantity and quality to offer competition to English imports, and that official depreciation of his economic importance apparently was deemed politic by the colonial Governor._ THE AUTHORS: _C.
Malcolm Watkins is curator of cultural history in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology, and Ivor Noël Hume is director of archeology at Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution._ Part I: Documentary Record _C.
Malcolm Watkins_ In his annual reports on manufactures to the Lords of the Board of Trade during the 1730s, Virginia's royal governor, William Gooch, mentioned several times an anonymous "poor potter" of Yorktown.
At face value, Gooch's reports might seem to indicate that manufacturing was an insignificant factor in Virginia's economy and that the only pottery-making endeavor worth mentioning at all was so trivial it could be brushed aside as being almost, if not quite, unworthy of notice.
Occasionally, historians have selected one or another of these references to the "poor potter" to support the view either that manufacturing was negligible in colonial Virginia or that ceramic art was limited to the undeveloped skills of a frontier potter.
[183] The recent development of archeology, however, as an adjunct of research in cultural history--especially in the historic areas of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown--has produced substantial evidence challenging both the accuracy of Gooch's reports and the conclusions drawn from them, which, contrary to Gooch's statements, proves that pottery making in Yorktown was highly skilled and much at odds with the concept of a "poor potter."
The observation that a remarkably developed ceramic enterprise had been conducted in or near Yorktown was first made by Mr. Noël Hume, the archeologist partner of this paper, in 1956 when he identified fragments of saggers used in firing stoneware, which were excavated in association with numerous stoneware waster sherds and a group of unglazed earthenware sherds of good quality at the site of the Swan Tavern in Yorktown.
[184] The question naturally arose, could these expertly made wares have come from the kilns of the "poor potter"?
Although ultimate proof is still lacking, identification with him is sufficiently well supported by documentary and artifactual hints that--until further scientific findings are forthcoming--it is presented here as a hypothesis that the "poor potter" did indeed make them.
This portion of the paper considers not only the specifics of artifacts and documents, but also the state of manufactures in Virginia before 1750 and their relationship to the character and attitudes of Governor Gooch.
The Crown and Colonial Manufacture It should be noted that, in general, the history of pottery making in colonial America is fragmentary and inconclusive.
Scattered documents bear hints of potters and their activities, and occasional archeological deposits contain the broken sherds and other material evidence of potters' products.
Difficulty in obtaining information about early pottery manufacture may be related in large part to a reluctance on the part of the colonists to reveal evidence of manufacturing activity to the Crown authorities.
It was the established principle of the Mother Country to integrate the colonial economy into her mercantile system, which was run primarily for her own benefit.
As a consequence, there increasingly developed a contest between those who sought to protect English manufactures by discouraging production of colonial goods and those who, in America, tried to enlarge colonial self-sufficiency, the latter inevitably resorting to evasion and suppression of evidence in order to gain their advantage.
The outlines of this struggle are suggested in the laws and official reports relating to colonial manufactures.
In Virginia, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, influential landowners encouraged manufactures as a way to offset the dominance of tobacco in the colony, while several acts were passed in the Virginia Assembly to establish official port towns which, it was thought, would result in flourishing craft communities.
Although, for a variety of reasons inherent in Virginia's economy and geography, most of these failed, the acts nonetheless were consistently opposed by the Crown authorities.
The 1704 Act for Ports and Towns, for example, was vetoed by the Crown in 1709 for the following reasons: The whole Act is designed to Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships, and such settlements will encourage their going on with the Woolen and other Manufactures there.
And should this Act be Confirmed, the Establishing of Towns and Incorporating of the Planters as intended thereby, will put them upon further Improvements of the said manufactures, and take them off from the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of very ill consequence, not only in respect to the Exports of our Woolen and other Goods and Consequently to the Dependance that Colony ought to have on this Kingdom, but likewise in respect to the Importation of Tobacco hither for the home and Foreign Consumption, Besides a further Prejudice in relation to our shipping and navigation.
[185] This forthright exposition of official English attitudes reiterated the policy of colonial economic dependence.
The wording of the veto--"encourage their _going on_ with the Woolen and other Manufactures" and "a _further_ Prejudice in relation to our shipping" [italics supplied]--shows that the dangers feared by the Board of Trade regarding the establishment of towns had already become a reality and a threat to English economic policy.
Victor S. Clark, in _The History of Manufactures_ in _the United States_, points out that the colonists passed so many laws to encourage their own manufactures "that such British intervention as occurred must be regarded rather as indicating the passive disposition of the home government than as defining an administrative policy vigorously carried out.
"[186] Nevertheless, from 1700 until the Revolution, reports on American manufactures made by royal governors to the Board of Trade demonstrate not only that the Americans were vigorously promoting manufactures but also that they were being evasive and secretive in doing so in the face of official disapproval.
The Board of Trade reported in 1733: "It is not improbable that some former governors of our colonies ... may, in breach of their instructions, have given their concurrence to laws, or have connived for many years at the practice of trades prejudicial to the interest of Great Britain...."[187] Governor Belcher of Massachusetts in his report to the Board of Trade complained that "we cannot conceal from your lordships that it is with the greatest difficulty we are able to procure true informations of the trade and manufactures of New England; which will not appear extraordinary when we acquaint your lordship, that the assembly of the Massachusetts Bay had the boldness to summon ... Mr. Jeremiah Dunbar [Surveyor General of his Majesty's woods in North America] before them and pass a severe censure upon him, for having given evidence at the bar of the House of Commons of Great Britain with respect to the trade and manufactures of this province...."[188] After the Port Act of 1704 was disallowed, the Virginians were harder pressed than the northern colonists, who managed to maintain their frowned-upon industries.
Ignoring the Virginians' resentment at being limited almost exclusively to the growing of tobacco, additional economic pressures were put upon them.
For example, whereas stripped tobacco--the leaves separated from the stalks--had constituted the principal form of exported tobacco, an Act of Parliament was introduced on January 17, 1729, containing clauses prohibiting the importation into England of "Stript Tobacco."
John Randolph, Clerk of the Council of Virginia, wrote a letter to Parliament, petitioning the repeal of the clause.
By having to export the stalks, he complained, the planters are loaded with the duty and Freight of that which is not only of no Value, but depreciates the pure tobacco at least 2d in every pound.
The Tobacconists are under a temptation to manufacture the Stalk and mingle it with the leaf, whereby the Commodity is adulterated, and of course the consumption of it is lessend.
And the Merchants are obliged to keep great quantities in their Warehouses, and at last to sell upon long Credit.
In consequence of which the price of the Planters Labors, is fallen below what they are able to bear.
And unless they can be relieved, they must be driven to a necessity of Employing themselves more usefully in Manufactures of Woollen and Linen, as they are not able under the present circumstances to buy what is Necessary for their Cloathing, in this Kingdom....[189] Although the usual covering phrase, "other manufactures," was omitted here, it could well have been included.
Under such adverse restraints, enterprising Virginians were almost forced to turn to surreptitious manufacturing; perhaps the restraints became excellent excuses for pursuing such manufactures, which, perhaps, were in any case inevitable.
Relief came by 1730 with the passage of a new tobacco act, liberalizing the restrictions on the planters.
Meanwhile, in 1727, William Gooch was appointed Lieutenant Governor and, owing in part to his political astuteness and sympathetic awareness of the colonists' difficulties, the lot of the planter was greatly improved.
Nevertheless, manufacturing persisted as the colonists increased in strength and numbers.
Although official restrictions may have been a perverse encouragement to manufactures, the dynamics of a growing population in a new country predetermined even more an expansion of enterprise.
Not only did economic depression force the industrious to turn to manufactures as an alternative to poverty, but economic prosperity, when it occurred in the 1730s, provided a financial stimulus to further that prosperity by means of local manufacturing.
Governor Gooch doubtlessly understood this.
He was remarkable among Virginia's colonial governors for his ability to achieve what the colonists wanted while pleasing the home government.
His administration created an era of good feeling during which the Virginians frequently expressed their gratitude and praise.
In 1728, after serving as Governor for seven months, he was given £500 by the Assembly as well as an illegal grant by the Council of £300 from the royal quit-rents, which led George Chalmers, an English historian, to comment sourly in 1782 that for this gift "he in return resigned in a great measure, the government to them.
"[190] This was not altogether a fair conclusion, for, though Gooch, as Campbell in his _History of Virginia_ states, may have been possessed of "some flexibility of principle,"[191] he was an extraordinarily successful Governor.
Percy S. Flippin concluded that Gooch "was a striking example of what an energetic, forceful royal governor, who was influenced by conditions in the colony and not altogether by his instructions, could accomplish, both for the colony and for the British government.
"[192] He repeatedly acted in the interests of the colonists, particularly regarding improved tobacco laws.
He attended almost every meeting of the Council, whose members constituted the most influential persons in the colony, and thus established a close working relationship and understanding with those who expressed the colonial view-point.
Quite evidently he understood that prosperity in the colony was a prerequisite to successful trade with England and to a substantial tax return.
In respect to improving the tobacco laws, we know that he opposed existing British attitudes; in relation to colonial manufactures beneficial to colonial prosperity, we may assume that he was sympathetic, even though he could not advocate them openly.
Certainly, as Campbell stated, "Owing partly to this coalition [between Gooch and the planters], partly to a well-established revenue and a rigid economy, Virginia enjoyed prosperous repose during his long administration.
"[193] Gooch's reports on manufactures to the Board of Trade provide an exercise in reading between the lines.
They suggest that he was doing his best to support the colonists while observing the letter of the Crown's instructions.
They allude to manufactures here and there, but usually in terms that minimize their importance or that brush aside the possibilities of their growth.
Yet in his depreciations one senses that while he was trying to state such facts as were necessary, he actually was trying on occasion to create an impression that was at variance with the whole truth.
In tracing the Yorktown potter we shall see that this must have been the case.
In his report of 1732 he made a general statement calculated to allow the Lords of the Board of Trade to relax in calm reassurance, while at the same time encouraging their recognition of his wisdom in initiating a new tobacco law: There hath been much Discourse amongst the common People of Sowing Flax and Cotton, and therewith supplying themselves with Cloathing: but since the late Tobacco Law hath begun to raise the Price of that Staple, all these projected Schemes are laid aside, and in all probability will Continue so, as long as Tobacco is of any Value, seeing the necessary Cloathing for the Planters and their Negroes, may be more easily Purchas'd with Tobacco than made by themselves.
Nor indeed is there much ground to suspect that any kind of Manufactures will prevail in a Country where handycraft Labour is so dear as 'Tis Here; The Heat in Summer, and severe Colds in Winter, accompani'd with sundry Diseases proceeding from these Causes, such as Labouring People in Great Britain undergo, and where the Earth produces enough to purchase and supply all the necessitys of life without the drudgery of much Toil, men are tempted to be lazy.
He then added inconsistently that four ironworks making pots and "Backs for Fireplaces" had been set up in Virginia and admitted that one even included an air furnace.
The Lords of the Board of Trade might well have asked how these were accomplished without "the drudgery of much Toil."
He also stated that: "there is one poor Potter's work of course earthen Ware, which is of so little Consequence, that I dare say there hath not been twenty Shillings worth less of that Commodity imported since it was sett up than there was before.
"[194] It is remarkable that Gooch felt the need to mention the potter at all, since pottery making was usually an anonymous, little-noted craft.
Nevertheless, in 1733 he reported again on this seemingly insignificant enterprise: As to Manufactures sett up, Wee have at York Town upon York River one poor Potter's Work for Earthen Ware, which is so very inconsiderable that I dare Say there has not been forty Shillings' worth less of that Commodity imported since it was Erected than there was before; the poorest Familys being the only Purchasers, who not being able to send to England for such Things would do without them, if they could not gett them Here.
[195] Clearly, we, like the Lords of the Board of Trade, are led to believe that a semiskilled country potter was operating a small shop which produced crude pottery incapable of competing with English wares.
The word "poor" can be interpreted doubly, connoting both poverty and low quality.
Hence, by inference, it was an enterprise destined to failure.
But such an impression of failure was not supported by Gooch's own evidence that the pottery works were continuing year after year.
In 1734 he reported: As to Manufactures We have at York Town, on York River, one poor Potters' work for earthen Ware, which is so very inconsiderable, that there has been little less of that Commodity imported since it was Erected, than there was before.
[196] The 1735 report was equally depreciating,[197] while the following year Gooch opened his report with the comment: "The same poor Potter's Work is still continued at York Town without any great Improvement or Advantage to the Owner, or any Injury to the Trade of Great Britain.
"[198] The 1737 report on Trade and Manufactures even contained a special subheading: "Potters' Work."
There then followed: "The Potter continues his Business (at York Town in this Colony) of making Potts and Panns, with very little Advantage to himself, and without any dammage to Trade.
"[199] One wonders why Gooch's persistence in mentioning this enterprise in such terms almost annually did not lead the Board of Trade to question his reasons for mentioning it at all if the pottery was so insignificant.
Perhaps they did question it, because in the next report, filed in 1739 after a two-year interval, Gooch dismissed the pottery succinctly, almost impatiently, as though to turn aside further questions that might be raised: "The poor Potter's Operation is unworthy of your Lordships notice."
Gooch then proceeded with an admission that: The Common People in all Parts of the Colony, and indeed many of the better Sort, are lately gott into the use of Loom Weaving coarse cloth for themselves and Negroes; And our Inhabitants on the other side of the Mountains, make very good Linnen which they sell up and down the Country.
Nor is the making of Shoes with Hides of their own Tanning less practiced, tho' the Leather is very Indifferent.
[200] It was easier, of course, to admit that the "common People in all Parts of the Colony" were engaged in domestic manufactures than to allow attention to concentrate on a single commercial, industrial enterprise.
Only with difficulty could sanctions have been brought to bear against home industries throughout the colony--a single manufactory reported almost annually for eight years was quite another matter.
To have lasted this long, the "poor potter" must have been less than poor, and his pottery must have had an importance that either had to be revealed by truthful statement or dissimulated.
It appears that Gooch chose the latter course: the pottery being a large enterprise was noticeable; being noticeable it had to be reported; but being large it contributed to the wealth of the colony while competing with British imports which did not, and therefore it should be condoned.
Gooch made a practical decision which may reflect his obligation to the colonists: the pottery works had to be downgraded in his reports and attention distracted from it.
The "Poor Potter" and his Wares Who, then, was the "poor potter," and how wide of the mark was Gooch in so designating him?
The first clue was found in a ledger kept between 1725 and 1732 by John Mercer, who was to become master of the plantation Marlborough in Stafford County as well as an influential colonial lawyer.
In 1725, at the age of 21, Mercer was making his way in the world by trading up and down the rivers of Virginia, buying imported goods in towns like Yorktown, where he had a large account with the wealthy merchant Richard Ambler, and exchanging these imports for raw materials at upstream plantations.
Included in John Mercer's ledger is an account with one William Rogers having the following entry: "By Earthen Ware amounting to by Invoice 12.
3.
6.
"[201] So large an amount implies a wholesale purchase from a potter.
Was William Rogers, then, the "poor potter" of Yorktown?
Scattered throughout the records are references to several William Rogerses from 17th-and 18th-century Virginia (see Appendix I), but none seems likely to refer to the "poor potter" until one reaches Yorktown.
There a deed is recorded from the "Trustees to the Port Land in Yorktown," granting two lots of land on May 19, 1711, to "William Rogers aforesaid Brewer.
"[202] That he was a brewer admittedly is a weak clue to his being a potter.
But, despite this, it is necessary to pursue this William Rogers further.
These two lots were granted to Rogers by the Trustees in accordance with previous acts for establishing port towns.
Yorktown had been established according to the Act for Ports and Towns in 1691, and Rogers' lots were numbers 51 and 55 (see plat, fig.
1), lying contiguously on the northern border of the town between Read and Nelson Streets.
To this day they continue to bear the same numbers.
[Illustration: Figure 2.--MAJOR LAWRENCE SMITH'S ORIGINAL SURVEY PLAT of Yorktown, Virginia, made according to the Virginia Port Act of 1691, which set up a port town for each county.
This plat, still in the York County records, bears the names of successive lot holders from 1691 on into the 18th century.
William Rogers' name appears on lots 51 and 55.
He was granted this property by the town feoffees in 1711.
Additional properties he acquired are mentioned in his will as lots 59, 74, and 75.]
For year after year nothing appears in the York County records to indicate that William Rogers was connected even remotely with a pottery works.
That he was soon prospering as a brewer is suggested by the mention of "Roger's [sic] best Virga aile," as selling at sixpence per quart, in a list of liquor prices presented for Yorktown tavern keepers on March 19, 1711.
[203] In 1714 an indentured woman servant of Rogers ran away and was ordered to serve an additional six months and four days.
[204] His name occurs in 1718 in two small court actions to collect bad debts and in another against Robert Minge for trespass.
He is recorded in these simply as "Wm.
Rogers.
"[205] There is no other significant mention until 1730, when the wife of "William Stark, Gent."
relinquished her right of dower to lands in the County, so as to permit their sale to "William Rogers.
"[206] Later in the same year "Mr. Wm.
Rogers" was sued by Henry Ham, a bondservant, for his freedom.
[207] In 1734 "William Rogers gent" took oath as "Capt.
of the Troop.
"[208] Later that year "William Rogers gent" was appointed "Surveyor of the Landings, Streets, and Cosways in York Town.
"[209] LIST OF PLAT OWNERS --PARTIAL NAME * ILLEGIBLE 1.
Thomas *; W-2.
Neillson; Buckner 3.
John Ande--; Buckner 4.
(?)
Th[r]e[l]keld 5.
(?)
Q[u]arl[e]; Read; Buckner 6.
John *; Buckner 7.
Henry Alexander; P. Lightfoot 8.
Thomas Greenwood; J. Walker; (?)
Amos * 9.
Robert L[e]ighton; Sam.
Cooper 10.
Mr. Joseph; Mr. J. Walker 11.
Ralph *; Lightfoot 12.
*; Wm.
Cary 13.
(?)
Owen; David 14.
Robert Moore; Wm.
Cary 15.
William Webb; Jno.
Trotter 16.
Mr. Thomas; Lightfoot 17.
Mr. Dudley Diggs; Lightfoot 18.
*; Wm.
Cary 19.
Thomas Collyer; Wm.
Cary 20.
Thomas Branson; Wm.
Cary 21.
Nicholas Harrison; Robt.
Ballard 22.
Thomas * 23.
* 24.
Jefferson 25.
(?)
Charles Hansford 26.
William Tomkins 27.
James Archer; John (?)
Douglas 28.
* 29.
Saml.
Tompson 30.
John R-31.
Will[ia]m Pattisson 32.
Thomas (?)
Wootton; A. Archer 33.
Mr. Edwd.
Moss Jr.; *; Jno.
Loving 34.
Capt.
* 35.
Capt.
Edmond Jennings 36.
Coll.
Wm.
Diggs; Lightfoot 37.
Thomas Mountford; Lightfoot 38.
Richard Trotter; P. Lightfoot 39.
John Wyth; Jno.
Martin 40.
Richard (?)
Trotter 41.
David * 42.
John *; Diggs 43.
Dannll.
Taylor 44.
Edward Dodds; (?)
Jo.
Cathafie 45.
William Hewit 46.
* 47.
* 48.
Coll.
Wm.
Cary; 1709 49.
James (?)
Plowman; 1712 50.
Jno.
Simson; Edwd.
Powers 51.
Wm.
(?)
Anderson; Wm.
Rogers 52.
* 53.
Will[ia]m--son; Edwd.
Smith 54.
Edward (?)
Gibbs; Ballard 55.
James Walker; Wm.
Rogers 56.
* 57.
*; Jno.
--ton 58.
Harrison 59.
Harrison 60.
Mrs. Young 61.
Mrs. Young 62.
Let to Morrison; Tho.
H-63.
Robt.
Morrison (?)
Jr. 64.
* 65.
Edwd.
Power 66.
Ed Power 67 and 71.
-Gibbons 67.
Deed; Geo.
Allen 68.
Edward * * 69.
Jno.
Wyth; Edwd.
Webb 70.
A. Archer; James (?)
Paxton; N. Hooke 71 and 67.
-Gibbons 71.
Geo.
Allen 72.
* 73.
Edward Fuller 74.
* 75.
* In the _Virginia Gazette_ for September 10, 1736, Rogers advertised for rent or sale "The House which formerly belong'd to Col _Jenings_, in which the _Bristol_ store was lately kept ... in _Williamsburg_," and on December 22 put in a notice for an overseer.
[210] The following year, on June 20, Rogers was appointed to build the county prison for £160.
[211] In the _Gazette_ for May 4, 1739, he announced the sale of "A small shallop ... in _York_ Town: she is about Five Years old...."[212] Then, on December 17, 1739, we find that Rogers had died and that his will was presented in court.
He had identified himself as "Wm.
Rogers ...
Merchant."
The will lists the distribution of his lands and property (see Appendix II) to his wife Theodosia, to one daughter, Mrs. Susanna Reynolds, and to his son William Rogers--the latter being under age.
In addition to town properties a "Trace of parcel of Land lying & being and adjoining to Mountford's Mill Dam in the County of York commonly called & known by the Name of Tarripin Point" went to William Rogers, Jr.[213] It is only when we arrive at this document that we find the clue we are seeking: "my interest is that no potters ware not burnt and fit for sale should be appraised."
Who but a potter (or the owner of a pottery) would have had in his possession unfired "potters ware" not "fit for sale"?
Any remaining doubts that Rogers operated a pottery are dispelled by the inventory (see Appendix III), which describes the estate of a wealthy man, not a "poor" potter.
He owned 29 Negroes, considerable plate, a clock worth £6, a silver-hilted sword and spurs, and a silver watch.
There were many pictures, including "a Neat Picture of King Charles the Second" and "52 pictures in the Hall."
Some of the rooms had "Window Curtains & Vallins," and one of the beds had "work'd Curtains & Vallins" [presumably crewel-worked].
The furniture included a marble table, "12 Chairs with Walnut frames & Cane bottoms," a "japand corner cupboard," "Couch Squab and pillows," "pcl Backgammon Tables," and a great deal more of lavish furnishings.
But more important for us is a grouping of items:[214] 1 pr large Scales & Weights £2.10 a pcl crakt redware £2 a parcel crakt Stone Do £5 11 pocket bottles 3/8 1/2 barrel Gun powder £2.10 1 old Sain & ropes £1.10 1 horse Mill £8 2300 lb.
old Iron £9.11.
8 26 doz qt Mugs £5.4 60 doz pt Do 7.10 11 doz Milk pans £2.4 9 large Cream potts 4/6 9 Midle Sized Do 3/ 12 Small Do 2/ 2 doz red Saucepans 4/ 2 doz porringers 4/ 6 Chamber potts 2/ 4 doz bird bottles 12/ 3 doz Lamps 9/ 4 doz small stone bottles 6/ 4 doz small dishes 8/ 6 doz puding pans 2/ 26 Cedar pailes £2.12 40 Bushels Salt £4 With this, added to the provision in the will, we have adequate proof that Rogers ran a pottery shop and that he made both stoneware and red earthenware.
Further evidence is found in the _Virginia Gazette_ for February 4, 1740: To be Sold by Way of Outcry, at the house of Mr. William Rogers, deceas'd ... all the Household Goods, Cattle, and Horses; also a very good drought of Steers, 3 Carts, a Parcel of Wheat, and Salt, a large Parcel of old Iron, Parcel of Stone and Earthen Ware, a good Worm Still, a very good Horse Mill to go with one Horse; also a new Sloop, built last March with all new Rigging, and very well fitted, with 2 very good Boats and several other Things.
[215] The horse mill was probably the potter's traditional clay-grinding mill, while we may assume that the large amount of salt was intended for stoneware glaze.
Other items in the inventory show that Rogers was in both the brewing and the distilling business and every evidence is that he had achieved great affluence.
Governor Gooch's last report on the "poor potter" was filed in 1741 (none having been sent in 1740).
In it he stated: The poor potter is Dead, and the business of making potts & panns, is of little advantage to his Family, and as little Damage to the Trade of our Mother Country.
[216] There is little question now that this William Rogers was, indeed, the "poor potter."
We also learn from this report that the business was being continued by his family after his death.
This is confirmed by a number of documentary clues, the first of which occurs in an indenture of 1741 (proved in 1743 in the York County Deeds).
It begins: I George Rogers of Bra[i]ntree in the County of Essex [England] coller Maker Send Greeting.
Whereas William Rogers late of Virginia Mercht was in his life time younger brother to me the said George Rogers and at the time of his death left an Estate to his only son named William Rogers which sd last mentioned William Rogers dyed lately intestate so that in right of Law the said Estate is devolved & come unto me....
This document served to appoint "Thomas Reynolds of London Mariner" as his attorney and to assign to him all his rights in the estate.
[217] We hear no further of George, suggesting that his claim on the estate was settled permanently, but of Thomas Reynolds we learn a good deal.
On June 6, 1737, as captain of the ship _Braxton_ of London, he arrived at Yorktown from Boston "where she was lately built."
He brought from New England a cargo of 80,000 bricks, "Trayn Oyl," woodenware, and hops.
[218] It was he who had married Susanna Rogers.
[219] He sailed to Bristol on September 30, 1737, perhaps to sell or deliver his new ship in England.
In any case, he returned from London the following April as master of the ship _Maynard_.
He made several crossings in her until he docked her at London on October 10, 1739.
[220] While there he must have learned of the death of his father-in-law; whether for this reason or some other, his name was no longer listed among those of shipmasters arriving at and leaving Yorktown.
Since he then would have been in effect the head of the family, he probably gave up the sea and settled in Yorktown to manage William Rogers' enterprises, because William, Jr.,--intended to take over the principal family properties upon his coming of age--died within about a year of his father's death.
Reynolds, both on his own account as Susanna's husband and as attorney for George Rogers, logically would have succeeded to proprietorship.
In any case, by 1745 he was established so successfully at Yorktown that he was made a justice of the peace.
At some point he went into partnership with a Captain Charles Seabrook in a mercantile venture that involved ownership of the ocean sloop _Judith_ and two "country cutters" named _York_ and _Eltham_.
[221] Reynolds lived next to the Swan Tavern in Yorktown and was characterized by Courtenay Norton, wife of the merchant John Norton, as having "shone in the World in Righteousness.
"[222] He died in 1758 or 1759.
That the pottery was being operated, presumably by Reynolds, at least until 1745 is evident from an advertisement by Frances Webb of Williamsburg in the _Virginia Gazette_ for June 20, 1745.
This called attention to "all Sorts of _Rogers'_ Earthenware as cheap as at York."
And, although we have no assurance that the earthenware was made at the Rogers pottery, we learn from the _Gazette_ that two days prior to this the sloop _Nancy_ had sailed from Yorktown for Maryland, bearing a "Parcel of Earthenware.
"[223] How long the pottery may have flourished is not known.
There is no further mention of it after 1745, and the shipping records do not suggest that earthenware or stoneware products were then being shipped out of York River.
The most significant fact about the "poor potter" is the revelation that he made stoneware.
Stoneware manufacture is a sophisticated art, requiring special clays, high-temperature firing, and the ability to use salt in glazing.
When William Rogers acquired his first lots in Yorktown in 1711, no stoneware, so far as we know, was being made in North America.
By 1725, when Rogers sold earthenware to John Mercer, the Duché family apparently had just succeeded in making stoneware in Philadelphia.
[224] Since we have no documentary evidence of Rogers' first production of stoneware, we do not know whether his stoneware antedated that of the Duchés; we know only that after he died in 1739 numerous pieces of stoneware were listed in what were obviously the effects of his pottery shop.
There is strong archeological evidence, however, that it was made about 1730 (see p. 110).
Although Rogers may not have been the first to make stoneware in colonial North America, that he was at least one of the first must have elevated him to a position of prominence among colonial potters.
Far from being a poor potter who conducted a business "with very little advantage to himself, and without any damage to Trade," he was supplying a colonial market that heretofore had been filled solely from England and Germany.
There is a hint that he may have shipped his wares to North Carolina, because the _Virginia Gazette_ announced on September 21, 1739: "Cler'd out of York River ... September 11.
Sloop Thomas and Tryal, of North Carolina, John Nelson, for North Carolina ... some Stone Ware.
"[225] Three years before, Rogers had sued in court to collect "a Bill Payable to him from one Richard Saunderson of North Carolina.
"[226] The possibility that the stoneware in the sloop _Thomas and Tryal_ had been made by Rogers is highly conjectural, since European imports often were redistributed and transshipped in American ports.
But, since its cargo as a whole consisted of non-European materials, this still remains a possibility.
The most notable inference that Rogers' stoneware may have infiltrated distant colonial markets is found in the Petition of Isaac Parker to the Massachusetts Court to establish a stoneware manufactory in Charlestown, Massachusetts, filed in September 1742: "... there are large quantities of said ware imported into this Province every year from New York, Philadelphia, & Virginia, for which ... returns are mostly made in Silver and Gold by the gentn who receive them here.
"[227] Since there is no evidence that stoneware was being made at this time in Virginia, other than at Yorktown, it is reasonable to suppose that the "poor potter's" heirs shipped stoneware all the way to New England and that they were paid in hard cash, as distinct from tobacco credits, which would have been the case with local customers.
However this may be, the Rogers enterprise, even if its products were confined to Virginia, appears to have been extensive, wealth-producing, and quite the opposite of Governor Gooch's appraisal of it in his reports to the Board of Trade.
As to the location of his kilns, we know that Rogers owned two lots, where he apparently lived, at the northern boundary of the town.
He also owned a warehouse by the riverside and other lots on which he was building dwellings when he died.
He owned land at "Tarripin Point" and two lots in Williamsburg.
Governor Gooch repeatedly located the pottery in Yorktown: "We have here at York Town upon York River one poor Potter's Work ...," or, "the Potter continues his Business (at York Town in this Colony)."
This is rather good evidence that the kilns were within the town limits rather than at some outside location, such as "Tarripin Point."
A waterfront location would have been desirable for many reasons, but, since a potter's kiln would have been a fire hazard not to only Rogers' but to other warehouses, it is questionable whether nearby kilns would have been tolerated.
English practice was usually to locate potter's kilns at the far edges of towns or outside their limits.
Nevertheless, there were many exceptions, and kilns sometimes were located near the water, especially when practical reasons of convenience in loading ships outweighed the dangers.
The North Devon potteries were heavily committed to water transportation, and at least two of the kilns at Bideford in North Devon in the 17th century, for example, were located near the water in what were then densely settled areas.
[228] The North Walk Pottery in nearby Barnstaple was also on the water's edge, close to a thickly populated area;[229] in 17th-century America we find a parallel in the pottery of William Vincent, located at the harbor's edge in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where it was easy for him to ship his wares along the coast.
[230] The 18th-century potteries of Charlestown, Massachusetts, which also had wide markets, were clustered along the harbor shore amid a welter of wharves and warehouses.
[231] It is conceivable, therefore, that the Yorktown waterfront may have been similarly exposed to the dangers of a potter's kiln, since Rogers transported his wares by water.
More logical from the standpoint of safety, however, would be the pair of lots on the western edge of the town where Rogers apparently dwelt after they were granted to him in 1711.
Although it is not conclusive, his inventory, which includes the lists of earthenwares and stonewares mentioned above, appears to have been taken in a sequence beginning with the house and followed by one outbuilding after another.
Presumably these were located close together.
Things pertaining to the kitchen and perhaps to the quarters follow the contents of the house (in which the "work room" is mentioned), then the distilling apparatus followed by the brewing equipment.
Next come the pottery items, then a miscellany of laundry, garden, and cooking gear, and finally stable fixtures and a horse.
It is not until the end of the inventory that the boats and their rigging and equipment, doubtless located at the waterside, are mentioned.
These speculations are offered for what they are worth in suggesting possibilities for future archeological discovery of the kiln site.
The question of William Rogers' own role in the pottery enterprise perhaps will never be solved conclusively, although, as Mr. Noël Hume points out, there is no evidence that he himself was a potter.
His beginnings almost surely were humble ones, humble enough for a potter.
We know that his brother George was a maker of horse collars--a worthy occupation, but not one to be equated with the role of an 18th-century gentleman--in Braintree, Essex County, England.
There were many potters in Essex in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and one wonders if William Rogers was trained by one of them.
But the Essex Records do not reveal a William Rogers whose dates or circumstances fit ours.
We do find that a George Rogers died at Braintree in 1750.
[232] Whatever may have been William's early training, it is apparent that he knew the art of brewing and that he engaged in it at Yorktown.
To be sure, nearly every farmer and yeoman in the colonies knew how to brew.
Furthermore, commercial brewing was probably accepted as an honorable industry by the Crown authorities, since the colonial demand for beers and ales must have always been in excess of the exportable supply.
It is possible, we may speculate, that Rogers was trained as a potter but practiced brewing and preferred to be known publicly as a brewer.
In any case, he was essentially a businessman whose establishment made ale as well as pottery for public consumption, and it is clear that by 1725 he was conducting a potter's business on a considerable scale.
To have done so he must have employed potters and apprentices, yet in cursory searches of the York County records, we have been unable to discover any reference either to potteries or potters, reinforcing the suspicion that every effort--including Gooch's apologetic references--was being made to conduct the pottery in a clandestine manner.
Thus, the only thing we know with certainty is that William Rogers was a very successful entrepreneur who carried on more than one kind of business.
We also can deduce from what is disclosed in the records that he ascended high in the social scale in Virginia and that the rate of this ascent was, not surprisingly, in proportion to the increase of his wealth.
Whether or not he was a trained potter, one thing is certain: he was not a "poor potter."
As to the role of his son-in-law and successor, Thomas Reynolds, we know with certainty that Reynolds was not a potter.
For at least five years and perhaps longer, however, he evidently ran the pottery, which means that there were trained hands to produce stonewares and earthenwares.
Who they were or where they came from are not revealed in the records.
If, however, we can prove that the wares about to be discussed were made by them, it becomes clear that they were a remarkably competent lot, often able to equal if not to excel their English peers.
The persistence of the pottery for at least 20 and perhaps more than 34 years was owing in part, no doubt, to Governor Gooch's apologetic treatment of it in his reports to the Lords of the Board of Trade and to his leniency toward colonial manufacturers in general.
Basically, however, it was a response to public need and to a growing independence and a socio-economic situation distinct from the mother country's.
The Virginians had a will and direction which impelled them beyond the restrictions imposed upon them to grow tobacco and do little else.
The "poor potter" is significant because he exemplified the impulse to break these restrictions and to move the colony toward a craft-oriented economy.
Because his wares were skillfully made and sometimes were scarcely distinguishable from those of his English competitors, he was able to hold his position economically and at the same time to become personally wealthy and influential.
The scope of his enterprise--more clearly demonstrated in the archeological section of this presentation--should lead to a reappraisal of Governor Gooch's attitudes toward the endeavors of the colonists.
His reports to the Board of Trade are shown to have been dissimulations instead of statements of fact.
They evidence a daring and suggest a wisdom and a degree of pragmatism on the part of the Governor that might well have been continued by the Crown and its authorities.
This entire episode illustrates a remarkably fluid phase of Virginia's history in which the opportunity for an energetic man to rise from obscurity to wealth and position foretold a pattern that became legendary in American society.
Governor Gooch undoubtedly sensed these internal pressures, as much psychological as economic, to seek the rewards of industry and enterprise.
That the pottery later ceased to function and Virginia's manufactures in general failed to develop may reflect the differences in attitudes between Governor Gooch and his successors and the stubborn impositions by the Crown that eventually led to the American Revolution.
There seems little doubt that the "poor potter," William Rogers, and the maker of the pottery so liberally dispersed around Yorktown and elsewhere in Virginia are one and the same.
Further archeological investigation and discovery of a kiln or kiln dump should provide the evidence needed for proof.
APPENDIXES I: Other Virginians by the Name of William Rogers In order to feel absolutely certain that the William Rogers of Yorktown was the "poor potter" so often mentioned by Governor Gooch, a check was made through the records of all 17th-and 18th-century Virginians named William Rogers to see if any others might possibly have been associated with the Yorktown pottery.
The earliest William Rogers found was listed as one of a group of 60 persons transported and assigned to Richard Cooke in Henrico County.
[233] In 1639 a "Mr. William Rogers" was viewer of the tobacco crop in Upper Norfolk.
[234] In 1718 a William Rogers died in Richmond County.
[235] It is quite evident that none of these was the "poor potter."
In 1704 a William Rogers owned 200 acres in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore,[236] and in 1731 a will of William Rogers was recorded there.
[237] In Surry County several men of this name are noted.
One of them was bound as an apprentice in 1681;[238] this William Rogers was probably the same man who was listed in 1687 in the Surry militia "for Foot.
"[239] In 1702 a William Rogers took up some newly opened land "on the South side of Blackwater," which was measured by the surveyor for Charles City County (only meaning, perhaps, that Surry did not have its own surveyor).
[240] In 1704 a William Roger (sic) owned 450 acres in Surry.
[241] Two years later William Rogers, Jr., had 220 acres surveyed on the "S. side of Blackwater" in Surry County.
[242] Meanwhile a William Rogers had recorded a will in Surry in 1701, and another (presumably William Rogers, Jr.) did so in 1727.
[243] A William Rogers was listed in Lancaster in 1694 as the husband of Elizabeth Skipworth,[244] and he appears to have been tithable in the Christ Church parish in 1714.
[245] Wills are recorded under the name in Lancaster County in 1728 and 1768.
[64] None of these records dispute the strong evidence discovered at Yorktown concerning the identity of the "poor potter."
II.
Evidence of William Rogers' Properties _Virginia Gazette_, SEPTEMBER 10, 1736 "To be Lett or Sold, very reasonably.
The House which formerly belong'd to Col _Jenings_, in which the _Bristol_ store was lately kept, being the next House to _John Clayton's_, Esq.
; in _Williamsburg_: It is a large commodious House, with Two Lots, a Garden, Coach-House, Stable, and other Outhouses and Conveniences.
Enquire of Capt.
_William Rogers_, in _York_, or of _William Parks_, Printer in _Williamsburg_."
ROGERS' WILL (1739) To his wife Theodosia: "... two Lotts--lyeing & being in the City of Wmsburgh together with the Dwelling House and other houses thereunto belonging" and also "... a Lott lying behind Cheshire's Lott number 63 in York Town that I bought of Mr. George Reade, with all the Improvements upon it during his life and after his death."
["Behind _Cheshire_'s Lott" apparently means Lot 59, next to it.
See plat.]
"... one certain Tract or Parcel of Land, lying being and adjoining to Mountford's Mill Dam in the County of York commonly called & known by the Name of Tarripin Point."
"... the parcel of Land that I bought of Mr Edwd Smith except one Chain and that to be laid off at the end next the Lott that I bought of Francis Moss with all the Improvements on it and in case I should dye before I build upon it, I shall leave all the plank & framing stuff together with the window frames & all the other things designed for the House to my Wife and not to be appraised with my Estate and if my Carpenter is not free that he shall not be appraised but serve his time out and with my said Wife."
[Francis Morse owned Lot 75, extreme southwest corner.
Therefore, this was probably Lot 74.]
* * * * * "unto my son Wm Rogers all my Lotts in Yorktown where I now dwell with all the houses thereunto belonging."
"also the warehouse by the waterside and all other my Lands and Tenements wherever lying except the Lotts & Land before given to my Wife."
* * * * * To his daughter Susanna Reynolds: "the Lott that I bought of Mr Francis Morse known by the No 75 together with the Brickhouse and all other Improvements upon it also one Chain of the Land that I bought of Mr Edward Smith to be taken at the end next to the Lott to her & her heirs for Ever in case I dye before the House is done I then leave also bricks enough to finish the house, together wth the window frames & doors and what other framing was design'd for her house...." 64 _Virginia Wills and Administrations_, loc.
cit.
(footnote 53).
III: Inventory of William Rogers' Estate[246] Pursuant to an Order of York Court Dec. the 17th 1739 We the Subscribers being first sworn before Wm.
Nelson junr Gent have appraised the Estate of Capt.
Wm.
Rogers decd.
as followeth Vizt.
Waterford £25 Betty £25 Adam £30 Blackwall £30 £110.
0.
0 Nanny £18 Lazarus Son of Nanny £5 23.
0.
0 Amy Daughter of Nanny £16 Grace Daughter of Nanny 8£ 24.
0.
0 Barnaby £15 Samson £25 Quaqua £25 Tony £30 95.
0.
0 Jo £30 York £25 Jack £25 George £22 Tom 30 132.
0.
0 Monmouth £30 London £30 Ben £30 Pritty £30 120.
0.
0 Phillis £25 Sarah £30 Harry £25 Lucy £12 92.
0.
0 Little Nanny £25 Phoeby £20 Phil son of Phoeby £5 50.
0.
0 Cato £20 James £18 Peg £16 54.
0.
0 Household Goods &c. 1 Clock £6 one Silver hilt Cutting Sword and one pr.
Silver Spurrs 4£ 10.
0.
0 1 Tea Pott 5 Spoons 2 pt.
Cans and 2 Salts of Silver 11.
15.
0 To a parcel China ware £10 a pcl Glasses & Table Stand £1.10 11.
10.
0 a pcl books £4 a pcl Sheets Table Linnen and one wt.
Quilt 22l 26.
--1 Silver Salver 1 pt.
Can 2 Salts 11 Spoons and one Soop Do 14.
--1 Silver Watch £4 one horse Colt £4 a Coach & 4 horses £40 48.
--a Neat Picture of King Charles the Second 2.
10.
0 1 Marble Table £2 one corner cupboard wth.
a glass face 20/ 3.
--1 Looking Glass £1.10 1 pr.
Glass Sconces 15/ £2.
5.
0 1 Chimney Glass wth.
a pr.
brass arms £2 a japaned corner Cupboard 2.
15.
0 12 Chairs wth.
Walnut frames & Cane bottoms 5.
--1 Dutch picture in a guilt frame 0.
10.
0 7 Cartoons 4 glass Pictures 4 Maps & 3 small Pictures 1.
5.
0 1 Large walnut Table £1.15 one less Do 20/ 2.
15.
0 1 small Table & one Tea board 5/ one Iron back 12/ 0.
17.
0 1 pr.
And Irons 20/ one Iron fender 1 pr.
Tongs & Shovel fire 7/6 1.
7.
6 1 Iron plate frame 7/6 8 China Pictures in large frames 8/ 0.
15.
6 1 Copper Cistern 13/ 12 Ivory handle knives & forks £1.10 2.
3.
0 11 Eboney Do 12/6 12 Desart Do wth.
Ivory handles 12/ 1.
4.
6 4 Window Curtains & Vallins £1.10 one small Cherry Table 6/ 1.
16.
0 2 Mares & one Colt £5 a pcl of Carpenters Tools £2.10 7.
10.
0 27 head Cattle £17 Six high back Chairs wth.
rush bottoms £1.10 18.
10.
0 1 Bed Bolster Pillow Bedsted 1 pr.
blankets & Quilt 3.
--2 small pine Tables 0.
4.
0 1 large Bed Bolster 1 Pillow 1 pr.
blankets Bedstead Curtain rod Workt Curtains & Vallins 7.
1 Bed Bolster 2 pillows 1 pr.
blankets 1 Old Quilt old blue Hangings & Bedsted 4.
--1 Looking Glass 20/.
2 pr.
window Curtains 10/ one pr.
Sconces 6/ 1.
16.
0 1 pr.
large mony Scales & weights 12/6 1 pr.
less do 5/ 0.
17.
6 1 pr.
small do 2/6 5 rush bottom Chairs wth black frames 7/6 0.
10.
0 A Chimney piece 10/ 52 Pictures in the Hall 10/ 1.
1 Couch Squab and pillow 30/ 1 japand Tea Table 5/ 1.
5.
0 1 Small pine Table 1/ 2 Walnut Stools 3/ 0.
4.
0 1 Chimney Glass 4/ one pr.
Sconces 7/6 1 Dressing Table 2/ 1.
09.
6 1 Looking Glass wth Drawers 20/ one Iron back 6/ £1.
6.
0 1 pr.
And Iron 7/6 1 pr.
Tongs & fire Shovel 4/ 0.
11.
6 1 brass fender 5/ 1 Case wth Drawers 1.5 1.
10.
0 1 pr.
Backgammon Tables 12/6 Tea Chest & Cannisters 6/ 0.
18.
6 1 Dresing Box 5/ 1 Trumpet 5/ 1 large Elbow Chair 7/6 0.
17.
6 A Dutch Picture in a guilt frame 2.
0 1 Bed Bedstead Bolster 2 pillows 1 blanket 1 Quilt Curtains Vallins & Curtain Rod 6.
0.
0 1 Bedstead wth Sacking bottom 1 small Bed & one pillow 1.
10.
0 1 Dram Case & 6 Bottles 12/6 2 pr.
window Curtains 10/ 1.
2.
6 1 Copper preserving pan 10/ 1 pr.
large pistols 15/ 1.
5.
0 1 pr.
Holsters 5/ 1 pr.
holster Caps & housing laced and flowerd with Silver 20/ 1.
5.
0 14 bottles Stoughton's Elixir 14/ 6l Chocolate 18/ 1.
12.
0 20 lb Cocanuts £2, 50 Ells Ozn brigs £2.10 4.
10.
0 15-1/2 yds Dorsay 9 Strips twist 2 hh Silk 5 doz Coat and 2 doz.
brest buttons 2.
0.
0 3 Cloth brushes 3/ 28 Maple handle knives 5/10 0.
8.
10 10 Yarn Caps 2/6 3 horn books 6d 3 Baskits 4/ 0.
7.
0 1 Iron back in the work room 5/ 1 Do in the Little Chamber 6/ 0.
11.
0 1 Iron fender 1 pr Tongs & fire Shovell 5/ 1 pr Andirons 2/ 0.
7.
0 5 brass Candle Sticks 2 Tinder boxes & 1 Iron Candle Stick 14/ 0.
14.
0 1 Flasket and a parcel Turners Tools 0.
18.
0 8 pr Negros Shoes £1.4.
72 yds Cantaloon £1.4 2.
8.
0 11 yds Coarse Stuff 5/6 1 old Desk 20/ 1 Cedar Press 15/ 2.
0.
6 13 Cannisters 3/6 16 Tin patty pans 12 Cake Do 2 Bisket Do 12 Chocolate Do 2 Coffee pots and 1 Funnell 11/6 0.
15.
0 1 Box Iron & 2 heaters 5/ 1 Coffee mill 4/ £0.
9.
0 1.
2 hour Glass 1/ 5 broad hows 13/ 1 Spining Wheel 5/ 0.
19.
0 2 4l flat Irons 6/ 1 Trooping Saddle blue housing Crooper & Brest plate 20/ 1.
6.
0 An Ozenbrig Skreen 10/ 1 small pine Chest 2/6 0.
12.
6 1 Walnut Table 12/6 5 Candle Moulds 7/6 1.
--1 Bark Sifter 5/ 10 Pictures 4/ 1 Cold Still 12/6 1.
1.
6 1 pr Stilliards 7/6 12 New Sickles 12/ 10 old Do 2/6 1.
2.
0 2 larger Sieves and 1 Hair Sifter 7/6 1 Case wth.
14 bottles 15/ 1.
2.
6 1 Bell Metal Skillet 12/ 1 pr brass Scales & weights 10/ 1.
2.
0 1 Coffee Roaster 4/ 1 fire Shovell 1 pr Tongs & 1 Iron fender 3/ 0.
7.
0 6 woodin Chairs and 1 old Cane Do 0.
8.
0 1 pewter Ink Stand 2/6 1 Tea Kettle 5/ 0.
7.
6 2 Trivets 2 pr Sheep Sheers and 1 pr Bellows 5/ 0.
5.
0 1 Warming pan 5/ 20 doz Quart bottles 2£ 1 whip Saw 20/ 3.
5.
0 3 Empty Casks and 2 beer Tubbs 7/6 0.
7.
6 2 Powdering Tubbs and 1 large Cask 0.
6.
0 A Meal Binn 3/ 3 Spills 9/ 1 worm Still £2/10 3.
2.
0 4 Wheel barrows 8/ 3 Spades 7/ a Copper Kettle £2.10 3.
5.
0 1 large Iron pott 12/6 1 Iron Kettle 15/ 1 Flasket 1/6 1.
9.
0 1 Iron pott 1/6 1 Bed Bolster Bedsted 1 Rugg & 10 Blanket 1/10 1.
11.
6 1 Bed Bolster Bedsted Blanket and 1 old Quilt 17.
6 1 old Table 1/6 6 oxen Ox Cart Yokes & Chains 13.
--80 lb Ginger 10/ 24 lb.
Alspice £1.4 55 lb.
Rice 5/ 1.
19.
0 50 lb.
Snakeroot £1/5 34 lb.
Hops 17/ 124 lb.
feathers £5.3.4 7.
5.
4 a pcl old Sails & riging 3.
--1 pr large Scales & weights £2.10 a pcl crakt red ware £2 £4.
10.
0 a parcel crakt Stone Do £5 11 pocket bottles 3/8 5.
3.
8 1/2 barrel Gun powder £2.10 1 old Sain & ropes £1.10 4.
--1 horse Mill £8 2300 lb.
old Iron £9.11.8 17.
11.
8 26 doz qt Mugs £5.4 60 doz pt Do 7.10 12.
14.
0 11 doz Milk pans £2.4 9 large Cream potts 4/6 2.
8.
6 9 Midle Sized Do 3/ 12 Small Do 2/ 0.
5.
0 2 doz red Saucepans 4/ 2 doz porringers 4/ 0.
8.
0 6 Chamber potts 2/ 4 doz bird bottles 12/ 0.
14.
0 3 doz Lamps 9/ 4 doz small stone bottles 6/ 0.
15.
0 4 doz small dishes 8/ 6 doz puding pans 2/ 0.
10.
0 26 Cedar pailes £2.12 40 Bushels Salt £4 6.
12.
0 104 lb.
pewter in Dishes & plates 5.
4.
0 1 Gallon 1.
2qt 1 qt 1 pt & 1 1/2 pt pewter pott 0.
16.
0 1 pewter Bed pan 5/ 12 Sheep £3 3.
5.
0 6 Washing Tubbs 12/ 1 Chocolate pott & Mill 6/ 0.
18.
0 6 Tea Spoons & a Childs Spoon of Silver 1.
--7 Bell Glasses 16/ 1 Kitchen jack 26/ 2.
2.
0 1 pr Andirons 15/ 1 large Copper pott & Cover 30/ £2.
5.
0 1 less Do 17/6 1 Marble Mortar 12/6 1.
10.
0 1 Bell Metal Do and Iron Pestle 0.
10.
0 2 large knives 1 Choping Do 1 Basting Ladle 1 Brass Skimer 1 pr small Tongs and flesh fork 0.
5.
0 1 Copper Stew pan 1 Copper & 1 Iron frying pan 1 Tin fish Kettle 0.
14.
0 1 Brass Skillet and 2 Tin Covers 0.
9.
0 1 Iron Crane and 1 large Pestle 0.
8.
0 1 Water pail 1/6 1 Iron pott 1 pr hooks & 1 Iron Ladle 6/ 0.
7.
6 1 larger Iron pott & hooks 6/ 1 horse Cart & wheels £3 3.
6.
0 1 old whip Saw 10/ 1 Set old Chain harness for 3 horses 20/ 1.
10.
0 1 Set Do for 3 Horses £4 8 Iron Wedges 12/6 4.
12.
6 1 Bay horse £1.5 1 pr wooden Scales 2/ 2 Baskets 2/6 1.
9.
6 1 old horse Cart £1.5 212 bushels wheat a 1/6d £15.18.
17.
1.
0 [sic] 1 old Boat 10/ a New Sloop Boat Sails Rigging 2 Anchors 2 Cables 1 old Hawser and 1 Grapnell 90.
0.
0 1 Glass Light 3/ 2 Wyer Sieves 7/6 0.
10.
6 -----------£1224.
5.
6 [sic] John Ballard John Trotter Ishmael Moody Part II: Pottery Evidence _Ivor Noël Hume_ The Salt-Glazed Stoneware Attention was first drawn to the potential importance of the 18th-century pottery factory at Yorktown in 1956 when an examination of the National Park Service artifacts from the town revealed large quantities of stoneware sagger fragments visually identical to those previously retrieved from a site at Bankside in London.
[247] On the assumption that where kiln "furniture" is found there also must be examples of the product, a more careful search of the Yorktown collections was made, yielding numerous fragments of brown salt-glazed stoneware tankards and bottles which, although at first sight appearing to be typically English, were found to have reacted slightly differently to the vagaries of firing than did the average examples found in England.
The largest assemblage of stoneware and sagger fragments came from the vicinity of the restored Swan Tavern, although the actual relationship of the pieces, one to another, was not recorded in the National Park Service's archeological report on the excavations.
Nevertheless, the presence on the same lot of fragments of pint tankards adorned with a sprig-molded swan ornament (fig.
3) along with numerous pieces of sagger (fig.
12) seemed positive enough evidence.
English tavern mugs of the 18th century were frequently decorated with an applied panel copying the sign which hung outside the hostelry.
[248] The Swan Tavern at Yorktown was probably no exception, and to the often illiterate traveler it would have been identified either by a painted sign or perhaps by a swan carved in wood and set above the entrance.
The significance of the swan-decorated tankards is simply that the tavern keeper would have been unlikely to have sent to England for such objects when, as the saggers so loudly proclaim, a local potter could supply them as needed and without cost of transportation.
The above reasoning seemed to link the saggers with brown salt-glazed stonewares rather than with products in the Rhenish tradition, which would have been the other obvious possibility.
[249] Wasters were thinly represented among the sherds from Yorktown, although many underfired or overburned pieces were initially claimed as such.
A more mature study of the Yorktown potter's products has shown that these variations would not have been considered unsalable, nor, in all probability, would they have been marked down as "seconds."
Examples exhibiting both extremes of temperature have been found in domestic rubbish pits at Williamsburg, clearly showing that such pieces did find a ready sale.
Figure 4 illustrates a mug fragment from Williamsburg with a large, heavily salted roof-dripping lodged above the handle and overflowing the rim, a blemish the presence of which is hard to explain if the mug was fired in a sagger.
Such a piece found in the vicinity of a kiln reasonably could be considered a waster.
It must be deduced, therefore, that, providing the Yorktown potter's vessels would hold water and stand more or less vertically on a table, they would find a market.
The site of Rogers' kilns in or near Yorktown has not been found, nor have his waster tips and pits been located.
In the absence of such concrete evidence, a study of his wares may be thought premature.
But, while numerous questions obviously remain to be answered, sufficient data have now been gathered to identify a considerable range of brown stoneware as being of Tidewater Virginia manufacture.
There is, of course, good reason to suppose that much, if not all, of it is a product of the Rogers factory, although until that site is dug one cannot be certain.
It can be argued, perhaps, that if there was one more or less clandestine stoneware potter at work in the area, there might well be others.
It could also be added that two earthenware-pottery-making sites have been discovered in the Jamestown-Williamsburg area for which no documentary evidence has been found.
The very fact that such enterprise was officially discouraged reduces the value of the negative evidence to be derived from the absence of documentation.
The most convincing evidence for the identification of Rogers' stoneware comes from the already mentioned Swan Tavern mugs and from a quantity of sherds found in a 4-to 7-inch layer beneath Yorktown's Main Street in front of the Digges House in the spring of 1957.
This material was exposed during the laying of utilities beside the modern roadway.
So tightly packed were the fragments of saggers and pottery vessels that they appeared to have been deliberately laid down as metaling for the colonial street.
Several years later Mr. Watkins discovered that in 1734 William Rogers had been appointed "Surveyor of the Landings, Streets; and Cosways in York Town."
It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that Rogers disposed of his kiln waste by using it for hard core to make good the roads under his jurisdiction.
Such a use of potters' refuse has ample precedent in that the wasters and sagger fragments from the 17th-century-London delftware kilns were dumped on the foreshore of the river Thames to serve the same purpose.
Similarly, stoneware waste from the presumed Bankside factory[250] was used there to line the bottoms of trenches for wooden drains.
The pottery fragments found in the Yorktown road metaling comprised unglazed, coarse-earthenware pans and bowls; pieces of badly fired, brown, salt-glazed stoneware jars and bottles; and numerous sagger fragments.
In the years since interest first was shown in the products of the Yorktown factory, a useful range of examples has been gathered from excavations in Williamsburg and in neighboring counties.
The single most significant item was recovered from another kiln site in James City County (known as the Challis site) on the bank of the James River.
This object, a pint mug (fig.
5), is the best preserved specimen yet found.
It is impressed on the upper wall, opposite the handle, with a pseudo-official capacity stamp[251] comprising the initials W R beneath a crown (William III Rex) which, perhaps, might have led to an intentional misinterpretation as the mark of William Rogers' factory.
The official English marks generally were incuse or stamped in relief with the cypher and crown within a borderless oval.
They were always placed close to the rim, just left of the handle.
Rogers' stamp was set in a much more pretentious position and was enclosed within a rectangle marking the edges of the matrix (fig.
6).
The Challis site mug was a key piece of evidence, being the first example found that illustrated the position of the W R stamp, and it was sufficiently intact for a drawing to be made, its capacity measured, and its variations of firing studied.
The association of the Challis mug with the Rogers factory is based on the fact that there is an identical stamp among the Park Service's artifacts from Yorktown (fig.
7), along with another pseudo W R stamp which had been applied to the _base_ of a tankard.
A measured drawing of the Challis mug was given to Mr. James E. Maloney of the Williamsburg Pottery,[252] who kindly agreed to undertake a series of experiments to reproduce the piece in his own stoneware kiln, using local Tidewater clay.
The results of the first trials were extremely successful, and they showed that it would be possible to reproduce exact copies of the Yorktown wares from this clay (fig.
8).
Thus any doubt as to the supply source was dispelled.
The conditions of firing at the Williamsburg Pottery, however, are somewhat different from those that would have prevailed in the 18th century.
Mr. Maloney's kiln is fired by oil rather than wood, so that the localized variations of color resulting from the reducing effects of wood smoke have been eliminated.
In addition, Mr. Maloney's pots are fired without the use of saggers, thus providing more uniform atmospheric and salting conditions than would have been possible with the 18th-century method of stacking the kilns.
[Illustration: Figure 3.--PINT AND QUART MUGS of brown salt-glazed stoneware made for the Swan Tavern at Yorktown.
Each mug is decorated with an applied swan in high relief.]
The Yorktown mugs were hand thrown, but a template was used to shape the ornamental cordoning.
It was first assumed that a single template had served to fashion both the cordons at the base and the groove below the lip.
We had such a tool made of aluminum, copying the Challis mug's ornament, and proportionately enlarged to allow for shrinkage in firing.
But in using this template Mr. Maloney discovered that it was impossible to shape the whole exterior of the vessel in one movement without the tools "chattering" against the wall.
Since none of the Yorktown sherds nor, indeed, any of the brown-stoneware mugs I have studied in England exhibit this feature, it is clear that the potters used only a small template which molded the base cordoning alone, a technique in marked contrast to that of the German Westerwald potters of the same period, whose mass-produced tankards and chamberpots invariably exhibit considerable "chattering."
Shaping the lip of the Yorktown tankards appears to have been accomplished entirely by hand as was the application of the encircling groove below it.
Because the clay used in the manufacture of these brown stonewares is relatively coarse, it does not lend itself readily to the thin potting so characteristic of English white salt-glaze or the refined Nottingham and Burslem brown stonewares.
Consequently, it was necessary to pare down the mouths of the mugs to make them acceptable to the lips of the toper.
This interior tooling, extending about half an inch below the rim, is found on all the Yorktown and English brown stonewares of this class.
The technique is the reverse of that used by the Westerwald potters, whose mugs are thinned from the outside, leaving the straight edge on the interior.
[253] Having imbibed from both types of tankard, I believe that the English (and Yorktown) technique is distinctly preferable.
One's upper lip does most of the work; the paring of the inside of the vessel shapes the rim away from that lip and carries the ale smoothly into the mouth.
[Illustration: Figure 4.--YORKTOWN STONEWARE MUG FRAGMENT marred by kiln drippings lodged above the handle.
The fragment was found in Williamsburg.
Height of sherd 4 centimeters.]
The treatment of the single-reeded handle on the Challis site mug equals the best English examples, being thin and of sufficient size to accommodate three fingers, with the top of its curve remaining below the edge of the rim so that the thumb cannot slip over it.
In addition, the lower terminal is folded back on itself and impressed.
While it has often been said that the signature of a potter is found in the shaping of his rims and his handles, we must remember that in a large commercial pottery the person who applies the handles often is not the same workman as he who throws the pot.
This explains the considerable variety among the handles of supposed Yorktown tankards, some of them very skillfully fashioned and applied, others appallingly crude.
It is inconceivable that all can be the work of a single craftsman.
[Illustration: Figure 5.--YORKTOWN STONEWARE MUG, found in James City County, which was discarded about 1730.
Height 12.5 centimeters; capacity 17 fluid ounces.]
The iron-oxide slip into which the upper part of the body and handle of the Challis site mug was dipped provided the vessel with a pleasing purplish-to-green mottling when struck by the salt, but, compared to its English prototypes, the variations of color and the unevenness of the size of the mottling label it a product of inferior firing.
Nevertheless, in criticizing the Yorktown stoneware, we might remember Dr. Johnson's comment on women preachers, whom he likened to a dog walking on its hind legs, saying: "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
[Illustration: Figure 6.--SILVER REPRODUCTION of the matrix used by the Yorktown potter to apply unofficial excise stamps.
Height 1.45 centimeters.]
[Illustration: Figure 7.--EXAMPLES OF W.R. STAMPS on Yorktown stoneware mugs.
Right, from below the rim; left, on the underside of the base.
Enlarged.]
On the evidence of the many fragments of Yorktown mugs found in Williamsburg excavations, it may be supposed that the Challis example was of above-average quality.
Many of the Williamsburg sherds are both badly overfired and poorly mottled, owing either to inadequate salting or to the use of a slip of the wrong consistency.
The much-restored specimen shown in figure 9 was found in a mid-18th-century rubbish deposit[254] and apparently had belonged to John Coke, who kept tavern in Williamsburg east of the Public Gaol.
In this example, the intended mottled effect has become a solid band of purple, and the body color below has turned dark gray.
I had long supposed that both were the result of overfiring.
Experiments by Mr. Maloney, however, clearly showed that the gray body may result from a reducing atmosphere as readily as by excessive temperature, while the purple zone could be due to the slip's being too thick.
Two test mugs fired side by side at a temperature of 2300° F., using thick and thin slips of iron oxide, produced the solid-purple band and the brown mottle respectively.
[Illustration: Figure 8.--REPRODUCTION OF A YORKTOWN salt-glazed stoneware mug made from local clay at the Williamsburg pottery.
Height 12.8 centimeters.]
[Illustration: Figure 9.--POOR-QUALITY MUG of probable local stoneware, discarded in the mid-18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Height 13.4 centimeters; capacity 23 fluid ounces.]
Before dismissing the John Coke mug as merely an example of wrong slip consistency, it should be noted that this piece has none of the characteristics of the Challis mug; the handle is quite different in both size and shape and is applied without the folded terminal, the proportions are poor, and the template used for the base cordoning is so worn on its bottom edge that the wide upper cordon is more pronounced than the base itself, thus giving the whole vessel a feeling of stubby instability.
In addition, the body appears to have been scraped round after the slip had been applied, possibly to remove the excess.
All in all, it is a miserable mug, and we may be forgiven for wondering whether it is really a product of William Rogers' operation.
Some of his tankards may have been made by apprentice potters, which would account for somewhat varying shapes.
But the handle is not an inept creation as handles go; it is simply an entirely different type from that used on the English stoneware that Rogers copied.
Even more curious is the question of the template, which should have been discarded long before.
While the throwing variations of Rogers' potters may have been overlooked, little can be said for a master craftsman who would allow the use of tools so worn as to mar the esthetic quality of every mug produced.
We may wonder whether there was another stoneware potter at work in Virginia in the mid-18th century or whether, after Rogers' death, his factory's standards were allowed to deteriorate to the level of the John Coke mug.
Although the tavern tankards are the most informative of the Yorktown products, numerous other stoneware forms were produced.
These are well represented in the National Park Service and Colonial Williamsburg collections.
The most simple and at the same time the most attractive of these is a group of hemispherical bowls (fig.
10), two of which were found in the same deposit as the Coke mug.
[255] One, which had been dipped into an iron-oxide slip in the same manner as were the tankards, has a pale gray body with a narrow band of brown mottling below the rim.
The other Coke bowl has a dirty greenish-gray body, while the slipped band is a heavy purplish-brown with little mottling.
The entire bowl is too heavily salted, an infirmity which often may have afflicted these pieces.
A fragment of a slightly smaller and even more heavily salted bowl was found in 1961 by Mrs. P. G. Harrison in her flower bed at Yorktown,[256] thus seeming to confirm the Yorktown origin of the Coke bowls.
[Illustration: Figure 10.--HEMISPHERICAL BOWLS of Yorktown stoneware, discarded in the mid-18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Rim diameter of both 17.15 centimeters.]
There is no doubt that bottles and jars, some of considerable size, were among the Yorktown factory's principal products, but this does not mean necessarily that all such items found in the vicinity of Yorktown or Williamsburg are Rogers' pieces.
Just as the tavern tankards were copies of English mugs, so the bottles and jars had their prototypes among the wares of English, brown-stoneware potters.
The difference is simply that the kitchen vessels have rarely attracted the attention of collectors and therefore are poorly represented in English museums.
Consequently we have little opportunity to study them and to determine how such pieces differ from those made at Yorktown.
At this stage it is possible to be sure only of the Virginia origin of those examples whose clay is clearly of the local variety.
Such an identification can be made only when the piece is markedly underfired and retains the coloring and impurities characteristic of earthenwares of proven Virginia manufacture.
Fortunately, the large bottles are small mouthed and neither slipped nor glazed on the inside, thus ensuring that, if the piece is underfired the earthenware characteristics will be readily discernible.
Fragments of underfired stoneware bottles were among the most common sherds recovered from the colonial roadway at Yorktown, providing invaluable evidence to aid the identification of the Rogers stoneware body composition and color.
It must be reiterated, however, that this guide is confined to underfired products and that those correctly burned cannot be distinguished as yet from others of English manufacture.
The globular bottle shown in figure 11 is underfired and consequently not a true "stoneware," but from the outside it bears all the characteristics of a good quality product.
This undoubtedly local and almost certainly Yorktown example was found on the John Coke site in Williamsburg[257] in a context of about 1765.
The body is evenly potted, the cordoning below the mouth neatly tooled, and the broad strap handle rugged and tidily shaped into a finger-impressed rat-tail terminal.
The handle can, perhaps, be faulted, in that it will accommodate only two fingers with comfort, and it is a little wider in proportion to its size than any I have seen in England.
The iron-oxide slip which extends to the midsection of the body is well mottled and predominantly of good color.
Ignoring the under-firing, this bottle may be classed as a very creditable piece of potting, seemingly quite as good as most such vessels turned out by English potters in the mid-18th century.
[258] [Illustration: Figure 11.--AN UNDERFIRED YORKTOWN "stoneware" bottle, discarded about 1765.
Found in Williamsburg.
Surviving height 24.77 centimeters.]
Globular-bodied jars with everted collar-like mouths can be proved to have been made at Yorktown on the evidence of a few small under-and over-fired sherds recovered from the old road metaling in front of the Digges House.
The best example recovered from a dated archeological context in Virginia is a jar found in a rubbish deposit of about 1763-1772 at the plantation of Rosewell in Gloucester County.
[259] But like the well-fired bottles, its Yorktown provenance cannot yet be proved.
The last major category of kitchen stoneware believed to have been made at the Yorktown pottery is a group of pipkins (fig.
13, no.
7).
These were often overburned and improperly salted, turning the body a greenish gray and the iron-oxide slip to a coarse brown mottling with a similar greenish hue.
The bodies of these vessels are generally bag-shaped and are broader toward the base than at the rim, which is slightly everted and tooled into a rounded lip over a cordon of comparable width.
The handles were made separately in solid rolls that were pierced longitudinally with a stick or metal rod to avoid warping in firing or heat retention in use.
They possess pestle-like terminals that were luted to the body after shaping.
No definite evidence has yet been found to identify these vessels as Yorktown products, but they do exhibit color characteristics, particularly when overfired, comparable to those of one of the Coke hemispherical bowls as well as to some of the tankard fragments.
[Illustration: Figure 12.--AN INCOMPLETE SAGGER and lid for quart tankards, with a Swan Tavern pint mug seated in it.
Found at Yorktown.]
[Illustration: Figure 13.--YORKTOWN STONEWARE BOTTLE AND PIPKIN, and characteristic earthenware rim forms.]
Figure 13 1.
Creampan, rim sherd of typical Yorktown form, slightly flaring externally and incurving within, hard red earthenware with grey-to-pink surface and one spot of dark-brown glaze on the outside; presumably biscuit and rejected before glazing.
Diameter approximately 10-1/4 inches.
Found at Yorktown along with other similar rims beneath the roadway south of the Digges House.
Colonial Williamsburg collection.
2.
Creampan, section from rim to base, a typical example of the "rolled-rim" technique, the body poorly fired, pink earthenware flecked with ocher, presumably biscuit and rejected before glazing.
The sherd is badly twisted and is an undoubted waster.
Diameter approximately 16 inches.
National Park Service collection from Yorktown.
No recorded context.
3.
Creampan, rim and wall fragment, rim technique similar to no.
2, but heavier and the body thicker; pale pink earthenware flecked with ocher.
Presumably biscuit and rejected before glazing.
Diameter uncertain.
National Park Service collection from Yorktown.
No recorded provenance.
4.
Creampan, rim and wall fragment, the rim form a variant on the everted and rolled technique, seemingly having been turned out and then rolled back toward the interior.
The body orange-to-pink earthenware flecked with ocher, presumably biscuit and rejected before glazing.
Diameter approximately 10-1/8 inches.
National Park Service collection from Yorktown.
No recorded provenance.
Fragments of three pans of this type were present in the as-yet-unpublished group of artifacts from the Challis site in James City County whence came the key Rogers stoneware tankard (fig.
3), all of which were buried around 1730.
5.
Funnel, lower rim fragment, lead-glazed pale pink-bodied earthenware similar to the two examples illustrated in figure 15; the rim everted and tooled beneath, a technique paralleled by those on numerous bowls found at Yorktown and Williamsburg.
A rim sherd of this form was among the pieces found in front of the Digges House.
The funnel is thin walled, well potted, and coated with a ginger-to-yellow mottled glaze both inside and out.
National Park Service collection from Yorktown; no recorded context.
The comparable funnels cited above were discarded in the mid-18th century.
6.
Porringer, small rim fragment only, but bearing traces of handle luting which thus identifies the vessel; the rim everted and flattened on the top, pale pink-bodied earthenware, presumably biscuit and rejected before glazing.
Diameter approximately 6-1/8 inches.
National Park Service collection from Yorktown; no recorded provenance.
7.
Pipkin, brown salt-glazed stoneware, bag-shaped body with slightly rising base, the rim thickened, slightly everted, with a tooled cordon beneath.
The handle (not part of this example) was made as a solid roll and when soft pierced longitudinally with a stick.
The glaze is well mottled and a purplish green.
The body was thrown away in the mid-18th century, but the handle is unstratified.
Colonial Williamsburg archeological collection (body) E. R. 140.27A, (handle) 30B.
Other fragments from Williamsburg show that the rim usually was drawn slightly outward at a point at right angles to the handle to create a simple spout.
Excavated examples of these pipkins range in rim diameter from 4-1/8 to at least 5-5/8 inches.
8.
Bottle, brown salt-glazed stoneware, neck and handle fragment only, the body dark gray and the oxide slip a deep purple to yellow as a result of overfiring.
Glazing also occurs on the fractures, identifying this piece as a waster and therefore of considerable importance.
Other blemishes include roof drippings on the handle and body which indicate that the bottle was fired without the protection of a sagger.
The cordoning on the neck is well proportioned, and the handle terminates in a neatly fingered rat-tail.
National Park Service collection from the Swan Tavern site at Yorktown; unstratified.
S. T. 213.
[Illustration: Figure 14.--BROWN LEAD-GLAZED EARTHENWARE CREAMPAN of typical Yorktown type, probably dating from the second quarter of the 18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Rim diameter 35.56 centimeters.]
Stoneware Manufacturing Processes The types of kiln used by the Yorktown potters as well as their techniques of manufacture will not be known until the factory site is located and carefully excavated.
Until that time, the Yorktown stonewares raise more questions than they answer.
The most important of these is the shape of the kilns and how they were fired.
The wares run the gamut from such under-burning that the iron-oxide slip has evolved no further than a zone of bright-red coloring, to overfiring which has turned the slip a deep purple and the body to almost the hardness and color of granite.
Do these differences result from a lack of control over entire batches, or do they stem from temperature variations inherent in different parts of the kiln?
Mr. Maloney's experiments, made without the use of saggers, have shown that close proximity to the firebox can unexpectedly and dramatically affect the wares.
Thus, one mug of his first test series was placed much closer to the direct heat than were the rest, with the result that it emerged with an overall dark, highly glossed surface somewhat reminiscent of Burslem brown stoneware.
The only real evidence of the Yorktown manufacturing process comes from the many sagger fragments that have been found around the town.
The largest single assemblage was discovered on the Swan Tavern site, but another group of large pieces was recovered from beneath the Archer Cottage at the foot of the colonial roadway leading down to the river frontage.
In neither instance is it likely that the sherds were serving any practical purpose, and so it is hard to imagine why they would have been taken to these widely distant locations.
The Park Service Yorktown collection includes sections through three saggers of different sizes, one for holding quart tankards (fig.
12), another for pint mugs, and a third which might have served for the bowls, the last being 5-3/4 inches in height and having an interior base diameter of approximately 8 inches, with walls 1/2 inch thick and side apertures 5-1/2 inches apart.
[260] These apertures are pear shaped and are common to all the Yorktown saggers, as they are also to the examples excavated at Bankside in London.
[261] The tankard saggers have three such holes plus a vertical slit which extends from the top to the bottom to house the handles, but it is not known whether the wide and shallow example described above would have possessed this feature.
If this example was intended only for bowls, a slot would not have been needed and an extra aperture probably would have been substituted: but were it also used for pipkins, a handle opening would have been essential.
The purpose of the pear-shaped apertures was to enable the salt fumes to percolate freely around the vessels being fired.
For the same reason sagger lids sometimes were jacked up on small pads of clay, or the sagger rim scooped out here and there to let the fumes enter from the top.
A careful examination of some of the Yorktown vessels shows that those closest to the salting holes received excessive fuming through the sagger apertures, the outlines of which were transferred to the pots in patches or stripes of heavy greenish mottling.
[Illustration: Figure 15.--YELLOW LEAD-GLAZED EARTHENWARE CREAMPAN of local Tidewater manufacture, probably dating from the second quarter of the 18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Rim diameter 34.29 centimeters.]
Other kiln furniture found in Yorktown includes fragments of sagger lids having an average thickness of 3/4 of an inch and various lumps of clay which served as kiln pads and props.
[262] Without knowing the type of kilns used it is impossible to determine how the saggers were employed.
It is obvious, however, that they prevented the pots from sticking together in the kiln, from being dripped upon by the fusing brickwork of the roof, and from becoming repositories for the salt as it was thrown or poured into the kiln.
But, as Mr. Maloney demonstrates daily, it is perfectly possible to make good stoneware without saggers, though wasters will accrue from the mishaps just described.
If a single-level "crawl-in" or "groundhog" type kiln is used, the number of pots discarded as wasters is more than offset by the space saved through not using saggers.
It can be argued, therefore, that Rogers' kiln was of a type in which the saggers served the additional function of allowing the pots to be stacked one on top of the other instead of being spread over a wide flat area, in which case it is possible that the kiln or kilns were of the beehive variety.
[263] [Illustration: Figure 16.--LEAD-GLAZED EARTHENWARE BOWL of typical Yorktown type, probably dating from the second quarter of the 18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Rim diameter 18.95 centimeters.]
The manufacture of stoneware requires only one firing at a temperature of about 2300° F., and it takes Mr. Maloney approximately 13 hours to burn them, although at Yorktown the use of saggers may have necessitated prolonged "soaking" of up to 24 hours or more.
The salt was thrown in at the peak temperature and repeated at least twice at intervals of about a half hour.
When the fire was extinguished the kiln would have been allowed to cool for up to two days and two nights before it could be unloaded.
Mr. Maloney has stated that his stoneware kiln, which he considers small, takes approximately three hours to load.
Thus, if the Yorktown factory worked at full capacity, it probably would have been possible to fire each kiln once a week.
But, not knowing how many workmen were engaged in the operation, we would be unwise even to guess at the size of its output.
The listing of stoneware and coarse earthenware included in Rogers' inventory is not particularly large, although £5 worth of "crackt" stoneware might have represented a considerable quantity of "seconds" or wasters when one considers that 26 dozen good quart mugs were worth only 4 shillings more.
Pint mugs are the most commonly found stoneware relics of the Yorktown factory.
Following the "26 doz.
qt Mugs £5.4.," a value of 4d.
per mug, we find "60 doz pt Do 7.10.
"[264] A stock of 60 dozen would be reasonable because, as Mr. Maloney has stated, a good potter can throw approximately 12 dozen a day.
[Illustration: Figure 17.--A PAIR OF BROWN LEAD-GLAZED local earthenware funnels, paralleled by a fragment from Yorktown, discarded in the mid-18th century.
Found in Williamsburg.
Rim diameters: left, 18.25 centimeters; right, 18.42 centimeters.]
Before leaving the evidence of the inventory it should be noted that the vessels which we usually term storage jars are probably synonymous with Rogers' "9 large Cream Potts 4/6"; but where are the large stone bottles?
The "4 doz small stone bottles 6/" were likely to have been of quart capacity.
We can only suppose that the large bottles were not included in the batches fired just before Rogers died and that, consequently, he had none in stock.
The Earthenwares Besides the stonewares, the inventory includes the following items of earthenware: 11 doz Milk pans £2.4 9 Midle Sized Do 3/ 2 doz red Saucepans 4/ 6 Chamber potts 2/ 3 doz Lamps 9/ 4 doz small dishes 8/ 9 large Cream potts 4/6 12 Small Do 2/ 2 doz porringers 4/ 4 doz bird bottles 12/ 4 doz small stone bottles 6/ 6 doz puding pans 2/ This listing might be read to indicate that the Yorktown factory produced considerably less earthenware than stoneware, a construction that could be supported by the earlier inventory reference to "a pcl crakt redware" with a value of only £2 as against the £5 worth of "crackt" stoneware.
We may wonder whether a ratio of 40 to 60 percent may not be a reasonable guide to the proportionate output of coarse-ware and stoneware, although it must be admitted that we do not know the relative sizes of the two parcels of cracked wares.
It must be added also that, besides the inventory, the only extant direct documentary reference to the Rogers' factory products (1745) is to earthenware, not stoneware.
Furthermore, we know that 20 years earlier he had sold a considerable quantity of earthenware to John Mercer of Marlborough.
Prior to the discovery of the Yorktown evidence we had known of no stoneware manufacturing in Tidewater Virginia in the 18th century, but archeological evidence had revealed the presence of earthenware kilns in the 17th century, with the possibility of two or three operating at much the same time.
[265] It can easily be argued that there would have been more in the 18th century, though no kiln sites have yet been found.
These considerations cannot be ignored, and consequently we must carefully avoid the trap of attributing all 18th-century, lead-glazed earthenwares made from Tidewater clay to the Rogers factory.
A wood-fired Yorktown kiln burning pottery made from Peninsula clay and coated with a clear lead glaze would produce wares possessing variations of texture and color similar to those emerging from a comparable kiln, say, at Williamsburg.
[266] Therefore, in attempting to assess the range and importance of Rogers' earthenwares we must use potting techniques alone as our guide to their identification.
[Illustration: Figure 18.--UNGLAZED EARTHENWARE BOTTLE, probably of Yorktown manufacture, discarded about 1765.
Found in Williamsburg.
Surviving height 23.81 centimeters.]
The principal evidence comes from the cut beside Main Street in Yorktown in front of the Digges House,[267] where numerous rim fragments of overfired and unglazed creampans were found.
Others were recovered from the edges of the roadways on three sides of the adjacent colonial lots 51 and 55, shown on the 18th-century plat (Watkins, fig.
1) as having belonged to William Rogers.
The rims from these deposits flared slightly, were tooled inward, and were flattened on the upper surface (fig.
13, no.
1).
Fragments of such bowls, usually coated on the inside with a mottled lead glaze varying in color from light ginger to the tone and appearance of molasses, depending on the color of the body, are frequently found in Williamsburg (fig.
14) and on plantation sites in contexts of the second quarter of the 18th century.
This creampan form is one of two made from Virginia clay which constantly turn up in contemporaneous archeological deposits.
The second form (figs.
13, no.
2, and 15) possesses an everted and rolled rim,[268] an entirely different technique from that described above.
I am inclined to doubt that these and their variants were made at the Rogers factory and have termed them products of the "rolled-rim" potter.
Nevertheless, a few unglazed fragments of such pans (fig.
13, nos.
2-4) are represented in the National Park Service collections from uncertain archeological contexts in Yorktown.
[269] The fact that they are unglazed suggests that they may have been made there, though undoubtedly not by the craftsman who threw the flattened-rim creampans.
Other earthenware sherds from the Digges House group include small, folded-rim fragments which may have come from storage jars or flowerpots.
Another fragment was sharply everted over a pronouncedly incurving body.
This could have been part of a small bowl or porringer.
The Williamsburg archeological collections include a number of bowls of this form, one of which is illustrated in figure 16.
A similar rim form is present on a pair of lead-glazed funnels (fig.
17) from a mid-18th-century context at the Coke Garrett House in Williamsburg and on a presumed funnel fragment (fig.
13, no.
5) in the Park Service collection from Yorktown.
[270] Also from Yorktown comes the only known porringer fragment (fig.
13, no.
6), a biscuit sherd with a flattened rim and traces of the luting for a handle.
[271] Although the type is not represented among stratified finds from Yorktown, mention must be made of an unglazed earthenware water (?)
bottle found in Williamsburg,[272] which is clearly a stoneware form and thus probably was made at the Yorktown factory (fig.
18).
Perhaps the most baffling item listed in Rogers' inventory was the reference to "4 doz bird bottles 12/", for it was hard to imagine that he would have been making the small feeder bottles for cages which were normally fashioned in glass.
However, it now seems reasonably certain that the Rogers bird bottles were actually bird houses.
Figure 19 illustrates two bottle-shaped vessels of Virginia earthenware coated with lead glazes identical in color to examples found on a creampan and other presumably Rogers products excavated in Yorktown.
The example on the left has lost its mouth but when complete was undoubtedly comparable to the specimen at right.
The former was found in 1935 during the demolition of a chimney of the "Pyle House" at Green Spring near Jamestown.
[273] It was mortared into the chimney twelve feet above the ground with its broken mouth facing out but with its base stopping short of the flue.
The bottle is now in the collection of the National Park Service at Jamestown, and a recent examination showed that it still contained a lens of washed soil lying in the belly clearly indicating the position in which it had been seated in the chimney brickwork.
A stick had been thrust through the wall before firing and emerged on the inside at the same point that the lens of dirt was resting.
It was apparent, therefore, that the hole was meant for drainage.
The stick hole was present in both bottles as also was an ante cocturam cut in the base (fig.
20) which removed almost half of the bottom plus a vertical triangle.
It is believed that this feature was intended to enable the bottles to be hooked over pintles or large nails which latched into the #V# and prevented them from rolling.
In this way they could have been mounted under the eaves of frame buildings as nesting boxes (or bottles) and although firmly secure when hooked, they could be easily lifted off for cleaning.
Evidence of such use is provided by slight chipping on the inner face of the vertical #V# cut of the second bottle (right) where the bottle had abraded against the nail or pintle.
The date of the Green Spring bottle is uncertain, though the paper label accompanying it says "Probably 1720, date of building of house."
However, it is clear that the bottle was not installed in the intended portable manner and it is possible that it was added at a later date.
The complete example (fig.
19, right) was recently discovered in a sound archeological context during excavations at the James Geddy House in Williamsburg, being associated with a large refuse deposit dating in the period about 1740-60.
[274] It may be noted that in the 1746 inventory of the estate of John Burdett, tavern keeper of Williamsburg, there are listed "16 bird Bottles 3/".
[275] As it seems unlikely that a tavern keeper would have a stock of birdcage bottles when he apparently had no birdcage, it may be suggested that the reference is to bottles similar to those discussed here.
In support of this conclusion, attention is drawn to the fact that Rogers' new bottles were valued at 3d each, while Burdett's (used?)
seven years later were appraised at 2-1/4d.
[276] [Illustration: Figure 19.--TWO EARTHENWARE "BIRD BOTTLES" believed to be of Rogers' lead-glazed earthenware showing drainage holes in sides.
Bottle on left is from a house chimney near Green Spring and, on right, is from the James Geddy House in Williamsburg.
Height 18.42 centimeters, and 21.91 centimeters, respectively.]
It seems evident that the Rogers earthenware was fired to biscuit, glazed, and fired again in a glost oven; no other explanation accounts for the large quantities of unglazed earthenware found at Yorktown.
Mr. Maloney's experiments at the Williamsburg Pottery have amply demonstrated that the Yorktown earthenware could have been glazed in the green state and would not have required a second firing.
Furthermore, the study of a late-17th-century kiln site in James City County has confirmed that not all potters thought it necessary to make glazing a separate process.
It is curious that the Rogers factory found it desirable to take this second and seemingly uneconomical step.
The making of stoneware certainly would not have been a double-firing operation, and, although some of the pieces actually are fired no higher than the earthenware, they have been slipped and salted.
Consequently we must accept the bottle discussed above as an intentional earthenware item which had passed through only the first kiln.
Furthermore, its presence in Williamsburg indicates that it was never meant to be glazed.
And finally, it should be noted that an unglazed handle fragment, probably from a similar bottle, was among the sherds recovered from the roadway in front of the Digges House.
[Illustration: Figure 20.--BASES OF THE "BIRD BOTTLES" depicted in figure 19, showing holes for suspension.
Base diameters: left, 10.48 centimeters; right, 10.16 centimeters.]
Conclusions The Rogers inventory contains such a wide variety of forms that one may claim without fear of contradiction that his factory was _capable_ of producing any of the kinds of kitchen vessels and general-purpose containers that the colony may have required.
Consequently, a Yorktown origin may reasonably be considered for any of the wares made from local clay that turn up in contexts of the appropriate period.
In the Williamsburg collections are such varied lead-glazed, earthenware items as closestool pans, chamber pots, straight-sided dishes, lidded storage jars, wide-mouthed and double-handled storage bins, pipkins, and chafing dishes.
But whether all these things were made, in fact, at Yorktown cannot be known until the factory site is found and excavated.
In the meantime, a few conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the existing archeological evidence.
There can be no doubt that the Rogers factory at Yorktown was a sizable operation and that it employed throwers as capable in their own field as any in England.
Our slender knowledge of Rogers' own background does not indicate that he himself was a potter.
It must be supposed, therefore, that he obtained the services of at least a journeyman potter apprenticed in one of the brown-stoneware factories in England.
One can only guess at the center in which this unknown craftsman was trained, but it is more than likely that he came from London and might have worked at Fulham,[277] or more probably at Southwark, or even, perhaps, at Lambeth, the types of sagger and the wares produced at Yorktown being stylistically identical to the fragments found on the latter sites.
Not knowing the number of craftsmen employed, we cannot hope to determine the size of Rogers' output or the number of kilns in operation.
But one would suppose that he had at least two kilns, one for stoneware and the other for lead-glazed earthenware, although they could, conceivably, have been interchangeable.
An indication that lead-glazed wares were sometimes burned in the salt-glaze kiln is provided by a single creampan in the Williamsburg collection,[278] which is both lead-glazed and heavily incrusted with salt.
It is possible, however, that, knowing that there would be "cold" spots in the kiln,[279] the potter tried to make use of every available inch and inserted a few lead-glazed pieces along with the stoneware.
Documentary evidence relating to the distribution of Rogers' products has been discussed by Mr. Watkins (pp.
83-84), and, although some of it tends to be equivocal, we are left with the impression that both stoneware and earthenware were shipped for trade elsewhere, but that such shipments were probably infrequent and not of large quantities.
[280] When seemingly comparable fragments are unearthed on sites beyond the environs of the York and James Rivers one must use extreme caution in attributing them to Yorktown.
Clay of a generally similar character lies beneath much of Tidewater Virginia, and, since little serious historical archeology has been undertaken in the state beyond the Jamestown-Williamsburg-Yorktown triangle, it is much too soon to assume that apprentices trained at Yorktown did not set up their own kilns in other counties.
In short, techniques of manufacture such as are exhibited by the shaping of earthenware rims and handles should be the only acceptable guide for identification, and even these are not infallible.
As for the stoneware, the manufacturing techniques are so English in character that they are of no help.
Thus, once the Rogers stoneware was shipped out of Yorktown, it must have lost its identity as totally as Governor Gooch presumably had hoped that it would.
Archeological evidence for the date range of the Yorktown ware is not very conclusive.
The Challis site mug seems to have been thrown away around 1730, and this provides the earliest tightly dated context in which the wares have been found.
The largest single assemblage of probable Yorktown products was the extensive refuse deposit believed to have been associated with John Coke's tavern in Williamsburg, but this was not discarded before mid-century.
Other fragments of stoneware tankards, jars, and pipkins have been found at the Anthony Hay and New Post Office Sites in Williamsburg in contexts ranging from 1750 to 1770, while more, possibly Yorktown pieces, were encountered in a rubbish deposit interred in the period 1763-1772 at Rosewell in Gloucester County.
These are, of course, dates at or after which the pieces were thrown away; they do not necessarily have a close relationship with the dates of manufacture.
Nevertheless, the recovery of so many fragments from late contexts does suggest that the factory continued in operation after the last documented date of 1745.
[281] The most obvious source for dating evidence is clearly at Yorktown itself, but, unfortunately, little of the large National Park Service collection has any acceptable archeological associations.
The fragments recovered from the roadway in front of the Digges House were accompanied by no closely datable items.
While it is tempting to associate this deposit with Rogers' tenure as "Surveyor of the Landings, Streets; and Cosways" beginning in 1734,[282] it is also possible that he provided the City of York with road metaling before that date and that after his death his successors continued to do so.
The quantity of sagger fragments from the vicinity of the Swan Tavern might have been associated in some way with the fact that Thomas Reynolds (see Watkins, p. 83) occupied the adjacent lot.
More sagger fragments were found in the backfilling of the builder's trench around the recently restored Digges House on Main Street, which the National Park Service believes to have been constructed in about 1760.
[283] But it can be argued that the sagger pieces were scattered so liberally around the town that their presence in the builder's trench does not necessarily imply that the factory was still operating at that date.
In summation, it may be said that the quantities of stoneware and earthenware with possible Yorktown associations which have been found in archeological sites in Tidewater Virginia leave little doubt that the venture established by William Rogers was of considerable value to the colony.
There can be equally little doubt that Governor Gooch was aware of this fact and that he gave his tacit approval to the venture by minimizing its importance in his reports to the Board of Trade.
The quality of the products was good by colonial standards, and their quantity impressive.
Consequently, in spite of Governor Gooch's misleading reports, William Rogers begins to emerge as one of the pioneers of industry in Virginia.
It is to be hoped that it will be possible eventually to undertake a full archeological excavation of his factory site and so enable Rogers to step out once and for all from behind the deprecatory sobriquet of the "poor potter" of Yorktown that has concealed for more than two centuries his name, his acumen, and his potters' talents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to Colonial Williamsburg for helping to subsidize the preparation of this paper and for permission to illustrate specimens from its archeological collections; also to J. Paul Hudson, National Park Service curator at Jamestown for similar facilities; as well as to Charles E. Hatch, senior National Park Service historian at Yorktown, for access to various archeological reports in his library.
I am particularly grateful to James E. Maloney of the Williamsburg Pottery for the immense amount of work which he so generously undertook not only to reproduce copies of the Yorktown products but also to recreate the wasters as well, thus providing information regarding the colonial technical processes that could not have been obtained in any other way.
I am also grateful to Joseph Grace, Colonial Williamsburg's watchmaker and engraver who made an accurate copy of the unofficial excise stamp used on Rogers' mugs, and to my secretary Lynn Hill, who toiled long and hard to bring order into this report.
I am further indebted to Wilcomb E. Washburn, Chairman, Department of American Studies, at the Smithsonian Institution, who first drew my attention to the artifacts in front of the Dudley Digges House; and to my wife Audrey, to John Dunton and William Hammes, all of Colonial Williamsburg's department of archeology, who through the years have helped collect ceramic evidence from Yorktown.
I. N. H. U.S. Government Printing Office: 1967 FOOTNOTES: [183] For example: THOMAS JEFFERSON WERTENBAKER, _The Old South, The Founding of American Civilization_ (New York: Scribner's, 1942), p. 265; J. PAUL HUDSON, "Earliest Yorktown Pottery," _Antiques_ (May 1958), vol.
73, pp.
472-473.
[184] This material is located in the collection of the Colonial National Historical Park, Jamestown, Virginia.
[185] "Reasons for Repealing the Acts pass'd in Virginia and Maryland relating to Ports and Towns," _Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts_, edit.
William P. Palmer (Richmond, 1875), vol.
1, pp.
137-138.
[186] VICTOR S. CLARK, _The History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860_ (Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Institution, 1916), pp.
26-27.
[187] Ibid., p. 203.
[188] Ibid., p. 204.
[189] Library of Congress Transcripts: Great Britain, Public Records Office, Colonial Office 5, vol.
1322, p. 185.
[190] PERCY SCOTT FLIPPIN, "William Gooch: Successful Royal Governor of Virginia," _William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_ (1926), ser.
2, vol.
6, no.
1, pp.
37-38; FLIPPIN, _The Royal Government in Virginia (1624-1775)_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), pp.
124 ff.
[191] CHARLES CAMPBELL, _History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia_ (Philadelphia, 1810), p. 448.
[192] FLIPPIN (1926), op.
cit.
(footnote 8), p. 38.
[193] CAMPBELL, op.
cit.
(footnote 9), p. 414.
[194] Library of Congress Transcripts: Great Britain, Public Record Office, Colonial Office 5, vol.
1323, p. 82.
[195] Ibid., p. 133.
[196] Ibid., p. 189.
[197] Ibid., vol.
1324, p. 3.
[198] Ibid., pp.
30-31.
[199] Ibid., p. 104.
[200] Ibid., vol.
1325, p. 83.
[201] C. MALCOLM WATKINS, _The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia_, (_Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 253), Washington: Smithsonian Institution, in press.
[202] York County Records: Deeds & Bonds, vol.
2, 1701-1713, p. 365 (In York County Courthouse, Yorktown, Va.).
[203] York County Records, Book 14: _Orders & Wills_, 1716-1720.
[204] Ibid., pp.
307, 317, 357, 386, 394, 439.
[205] York County Records, Book 17: _Orders, Wills, &c._, 1729-1732, p. 136.
[206] Ibid., p. 296.
[207] York County Records, Book 18: _Orders, Wills, & Inventories_, p. 15.
[208] Ibid., p. 121.
[209] Ibid., p. 157.
[210] LESTER J. CAPPON and STELLA F. DUFF, _Virginia Gazette Index, 1736-1780_ (Williamsburg, Va.: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1950); and the _Virginia Gazette, 1736-1780_ (Williamsburg, Va.: Issued on microfilm by the Institute of Early American History and Culture from originals loaned by other institutions, 1950), reel 1.
[211] EDWARD M. RILEY, "The Colonial Courthouses of York County, Virginia," _William & Mary Quarterly Historical Magazine_ (1942), ser.
2 (hereinafter designated _WMQ_ 2), vol.
22, pp.
399-404.
[212] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm, op.
cit.
(footnote 28), reel 1.
[213] York County Records, Book 18: _Orders, Wills, & Inventories_, pp.
525, 537 ff.
[214] Ibid., pp.
553 ff.
[215] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm, op.
cit.
(footnote 28), reel 1.
[216] Library of Congress Transcripts, op.
cit.
(footnote 12), vol.
1325, p. 83.
[217] York County Records, Book 5: _Deeds_, 1741-1754, p. 64.
[218] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm, op.
cit.
(footnote 41), reel 1 (June 17, 1737).
[219] _Tyler's Quarterly_ (Richmond, Va., 1922), vol.
3, p. 296.
[220] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm, op.
cit.
(footnote 28), reel 1 (Sept. 30, 1737; April 17, 1738; June 23, 1738; July 7, 1738; April 20, 1739; July 13, 1739; Aug. 24, 1739; January 25, 1740).
[221] "Reynolds and Rogers," _WMQ_ 1 (1905), vol.
13, pp.
128, 129.
[222] _John Norton & Sons, Merchants of London and Virginia_, edit.
Frances Norton Mason (Richmond, Va.: Dietz, 1937), p. 518.
[223] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm (Parks' Virginia Gazette, June 20 and July 4, 1745); I. NOËL HUME, Part II, p. 110.
[224] "The Votes of Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania," _Pennsylvania Archives_ (Harrisburg), ser.
8, vol.
3, pp.
2047-2049.
(From Rudolf Hommel, in correspondence with Lura Woodside Watkins.)
[225] _Virginia Gazette_ microfilm, op.
cit.
(footnote 28), reel 1.
[226] York County Records, Book 18: _Orders, Wills, & Inventories_, p. 290.
[227] "Petition of Isaac Parker, September, 1742," _Massachusetts Archives_, vol.
59, pp.
332-333 (quoted in LURA WOODSIDE WATKINS, _New England Potters and Their Wares_ [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950], p. 245).
[228] _Bideford-in-Devon: Official Guide to Bideford and District_, edit.
Sheila Hutchinson (Bideford, about 1961), p. 35.
[229] C. MALCOLM WATKINS, "North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century" (paper 13 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), pp.
28-29.
[230] LURA WOODSIDE WATKINS, _New England Potters and Their Wares_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 16.
[231] Ibid., p. 24.
[232] _The Register of Burials in the Parish of Braintree in the County of Essex from Michaelmas ... 1740_ (MS in Essex County Record Office, Chelmsford, England), p. 40.
[233] "Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents," prepared by W. G. STANARD, _Virginia Magazine of History & Biography_ (hereinafter designated _VHM_) (1899), vol.
5, p. 186.
[234] "Viewers of Tobacco Crop, 1639," _VHM_ (1898), vol.
5, p. 121.
[235] _Virginia Wills and Administrations 1632-1800_, comp.
Clayton Torrence (Richmond, Wm.
Byrd Press, Inc., n.d.), pp.
364-365.
[236] _English Duplicates of Lost Virginia Records_, comp.
Louis des Coquets, Jr. (Princeton, N.J.: Privately printed, 1958), p. 128.
[237] _Virginia Wills and Administrations_, loc.
cit.
(footnote 53).
[238] LYON G. TYLER, "Education in Colonial Virginia," _William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_ (1897), ser.
1 (hereinafter designated _WMQ_ 1), vol.
5, p. 221.
[239] "Extracts from the Records of Surry County," _WMQ_ 1 (1903), vol.
11, p. 83.
[240] _English Duplicates_, op.
cit.
(footnote 54), p. 73.
[241] Ibid., p. 210.
[242] Ibid., pp.
81, 83, 86.
[243] _Virginia Wills and Administrations_, loc.
cit.
(footnote 53).
[244] "Virginia Gleanings in England," _VHM_ (1921), vol.
29, p. 435.
[245] "Tithables in Lancaster County, 1716," _WMQ_ 1 (1913), vol.
21, p. 21.
[246] From _Orders, Wills, & Inventories_, York County Records, no.
18, pp.
553 ff.
The linear totals given in the right-hand column are not always the sum of the amounts noted in each line, but they are presented here as faithfully as possible.
[247] ADRIAN OSWALD, "A London Stoneware Pottery, Recent Excavations at Bankside," _The Connoisseur_ (January 1951), vol.
126, no.
519, pp.
183-185.
[248] J. F. BLACKER, _The A.
B. C. of English Salt-Glaze Stoneware_ (London: 1922), pp.
46, 48, 51, 56, 57, 63, and 65.
[249] Kiln waste found in recent excavations in Philadelphia indicate that Anthony Duché was manufacturing stoneware there in the style of Westerwald in the 1730s.
[250] No trace of a kiln was found on the Bankside site in Southwark; it is probable that the waste came from another location nearby, possibly from the factory established in Gravel Lane around 1690, which continued under various managements until about 1750.
It may be noted that, in the same way that much Southwark delftware has been erroneously attributed to Lambeth, it is likely that brown stonewares in the so-called style of Fulham was made in Southwark before Lambeth rose to prominence in that field.
See F. H. GARNER, "Lambeth Earthenware," _Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle_ (London: 1937), vol.
1, no.
4, p. 46; also JOHN DRINKWATER, "Some Notes on English Salt-Glaze Brown Stoneware," _Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle_ (London, 1939), vol.
2, no.
6, p. 33.
[251] W. R. excise or capacity stamps continued to be impressed on tavern mugs long after William III was dead.
The latest published example is dated 1792.
DRINKWATER, op.
cit.
(footnote 69), p. 34 and pl.
XIIIb.
[252] The Williamsburg Pottery, on Route 60 near Lightfoot, specializes in the reproduction of 18th-century stoneware and slipware.
[253] I. NOËL HUME, _Here Lies Virginia_ (New York: Knopf, 1963), fig.
55.
[254] Colonial Williamsburg, E. R. (Excavation Register) 140.27A.
[255] E. R. 140.27A.
[256] Colonial Williamsburg, cat.
no.
1913.
[257] E. R. 157G.27A (also 159A, 165A, 173, and 173A).
[258] The majority of archeologically documented pieces have been recovered from English domestic sites and not from kiln dumps.
[259] I. NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia, 1957-1959," (paper 18 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology: Papers 12-18_, U. S. National Museum Bulletin 225, by various authors; Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 1963), p. 208, no.
3 and p. 209, fig.
28, no.
3.
[260] U.S. National Park Service collection at Jamestown: Yorktown the first from the Swan Tavern Site and the others from Project 203, F. S. 8, unstratified material recovered during sewer digging on Main Street, 1956-1957.
[261] OSWALD, op.
cit.
(footnote 66), fig.
IX.
[262] U.S. National Park Service collection at Jamestown: Yorktown, S. T. 1933.
[263] Mr. Maloney is of the opinion that saggers could just as usefully have served a "groundhog" kiln where they would have enabled the pots to be stacked up to four in height.
[264] See WATKINS, Part I, footnote 32.
[265] Op.
cit.
(footnote 72), pp.
208-220.
[266] It must be stressed that no evidence of any such kiln exists.
See also footnote 30.
[267] This material is divided between the colonial archeological collections of the Smithsonian Institution and of Colonial Williamsburg.
[268] I. NOËL HUME, "Excavations at Tutter's Neck, James City County in Virginia, 1960-1961," paper 53 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_ (U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249); Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1966, fig.
19, nos.
1, 3, and 4.
[269] N.P.S.
Collection at Jamestown: Yorktown, no provenance.
[270] Bowl IC.1.18C, Funnels E.R.
140.27A, and National Park Service collection at Jamestown: Yorktown, no provenance.
[271] National Park Service collection at Jamestown: Yorktown, no provenance.
[272] E.R.
157A, C, and G, 27A.
[273] National Park Service collection, J.
13049 (G.S.
), with label reading "Pyle House Green Spring.
Built into brickwork of chimney--removed in securing brick for Lightfoot House by C.?
T.
(10.29.35)."
[274] Colonial Williamsburg archeological collections, E. R. 987D.19B, cat.
3275.
[275] "Inventory and Appraisement of estate of John Burdett," York County Records, Book 20, _Wills and Inventories_, pp.
46-49.
[276] Since this paper was written and the bird bottles identified, a number of additional fragments have been recognized among mid-eighteenth-century finds from Williamsburg excavations, including a small, pierced lug handle fitting the scar on the Geddy example (fig.
19, right).
The hole through the handle lined up with that through the shoulder clearly indicating that their combined purpose was to provide an alternative method of suspension for use when the bottles were hung in trees.
[277] There is a long-established belief that Fulham was the principal source of 18th-century brown-stoneware vessels.
While the art of making the ware was first developed there by John Dwight, the factory fell into decline after his death in 1703 and remained in virtual oblivion until the 19th century.
[278] Archeological area 2B2, context unknown.
[279] Mr. Maloney has pointed out that a margin of 150°F.
is sufficient to make the difference between earthenware and stoneware.
[280] Export records for the York River should be treated with some caution as goods often were imported from one place and later exported to another.
But if we accept the 1739 and 1745 _Virginia Gazette_ references (Watkins, footnotes 38 and 41) as being to wares of Yorktown manufacture, by the same token we must draw comparable conclusions from the Naval Office Lists for Accomac (Eastern Shore of Virginia), which show "1 shipment" of "stoneware" exported to Maryland in 1749.
Similarly we would have to assume that there was an earthenware factory operating near the James River in 1755 when the records list the exporting of "2 crates Earthenware" to the Rappahannock.
Such conclusions may, indeed, be correct, though there is as yet no evidence to support them.
Naval Office Lists, Public Records Office, London; cf.
_Commodity Analysis of Imports and Exports, Accomac, Virginia, 1726-1769_, and for the _Rappahannock, Virginia, 1726-1769_ microfilm books compiled under the direction of John H. Cox, University of California, 1939 (unpublished).
[281] _Virginia Gazette_, June 20, 1745.
[282] WATKINS, Part I, footnote 37.
[283] Large numbers of wine-bottle fragments also were recovered from the builder's trench, and provided archeological support for a construction date after about 1760.
Index Act for Ports and Towns (1691), 80 Act for Ports and Towns (1704), repeal of, 76, 77 act prohibiting importation of "stript tobacco," 77 petition for the repeal of, 77 ale, 80 Allen, William, 41 Ambler, Richard (merchant), 79 architectural drawings, Tutter's Neck, 30 Atkins, Robert, 42 Bacon, Nathaniel, 7 ball, cannon, 12, 22, 23 (illustr.)
basin, English delftware, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 22, 24 (illustr.)
bead, glass, 47, 70, 71 (illustr.)
Belcher, Governor (Massachusetts), 77 Board of Trade (London), reports to, 75, 76, 77, 78-79, 82-83, 84, 85, 111 boat "shallop," 82 sloop, 82 bone, 18, 47 bones, animal, 51-52 bottles, 36, 43, 51, 82 bird, 82, 107, 108 (illustr.
), 109 (illustr.)
case, 13 oil or essence, 13 pharmaceutical, 13, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 55 stoneware, 91, 92, 98 (illustr.
), 100 (illustr.
), 101, 105 water, 107 wine, 4, 10, 13, 14, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 39 (illustr.
), 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 55, 68-70 (illustr.)
wine, miniature, 17 (illustr.
), 24 (illustr.
), 25 wine, seals for, 32, 35, 36, 37 (illustr.
), 43, 46, 55, 69, (illustr.
), 70 Yorktown earthenware, 106 (illustr.)
bottle glass, 11 bowls: delftware, 49, 64-66 (illustr.)
earthenware, 48 (illustr.)
Indian pottery, 67 Staffordshire, 55 stoneware, 96, 97 (illustr.)
Yorktown earthenware, 49, 104 (illustr.
), 107 _Braxton_ (ship), 83 Bray, David, Sr., 40 Bray, David, Jr., 35, 37, 40 Bray, Elizabeth, 41 Bray, Elizabeth Meriwether, 41 Bray, James, Sr., 40 Bray, James, Jr., 40 Bray, Judith, 35, 36, 37, 40 Bray, Thomas, 35, 40, 45, 56 brewing, 80, 82, 85 Brewster, Richard, 36 Bristol (store), 82, 87 Brown, Matthew, 36, 40 bricklaying, English bond, 4, 8, 44, 45 brickmaking, 43 bricks (_See under_ building materials) broad arrow, 58 (illustr.
), 59 Bruton Parish, 35 church, 37 buckle, shoe, 63 (illustr.
), 64 (_See also_ harness) building materials: bricks, 43, 87; shipment of, 83; sizes of, 8, 44, 45 lathes, oak, 7 lumber, 7, 9, 10, 14; oak strips, 44; weatherboards, 44 (_See also_ floor) mortar, 4, 8, 10, 43, 44, 45, 51 oystershells, 4, 10, 11, 12, 14, 44, 45, 49, 52 plaster, 51 shingles, cypress, 7 Burbydge, Richard (seal of), 36, 39, 46, 69 (illustr.
), 70 Burdett, John (tavern keeper), 107, 108 Burwell, Lewis, 41 Burwell's Ferry (Virginia), 43 (_See also_ Kingsmill) button, brass, 70, 71 (illustr.)
can, iron, 4 Carter, Robert "King", 45 Cary, Colonel Thomas, rebellion led by, 39 Challis site (James City County), 92, 94, 95, 96, 110 Chalmers, George, 78 chamber pots, 82; handle of English delftware, 15, 16 (illustr.)
charger, delftware, 49, 51, 55, 65 (illustr.
), 66 Charles II, 39, 82 Charleston, R. J., 13 Chesapeake Corporation, 31, 32, 41, 42 Cheshire, ----, 87 chimney, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14; bird bottles in, 107-108; Tutter's Neck, 36, 43, 45, 49 chinoiserie, 13 Chowan Precinct (North Carolina), 37-39 churches: Bruton Parish, 37 Chowan Precinct (North Carolina), 37-38 Clark, Victor S., 76 Clay Bank, excavations at, 3-27; excavation plans, 6 Clayton, John, 87 clock, 82 closets, 7 clothing, 77, 78 Coke, John (tavern keeper), 95, 96, 97, 110 collar, iron, 24 (illustr.
), 25 College Landing (Virginia), 32 Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 3, 5, 31, 32, 42, 44, 96 ceramics, 10, 11, 31, 32, 46 Indian, 11, 15, 16 (illustr.)
shipment of, 82, 84 Staffordshire, 11 (_See also_ specific forms and types) Colono-Indian pottery, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 45, 49, 55, 65 (illustr.
), 67; bowl, 65 (illustr.
), 67; cup, 52 (illustr.)
cooper, 12 Cotton, Ezra, 7 Council of Virginia, 40, 77, 78 petition complaining about piracy, 41 Culpeper, Lord, 41 cup, Colono-Indian pottery, 52 (illustr.
); delftware, 49; earthenware, 12, 68, 69 (illustr.
); porcelain, 70, 71 (illustr.)
curtains, 82; rings for, 70, 71 (illustr.)
cutlery, 46, 58 (illustr.
); bone handled, 18, 19 (illustr.)
(_See also_ knife; fork) Daniel, Daniel Mack, 42 delftware, 50 (illustr.
): bowls, 49 charger, 49, 51, 55 cup, 49 drug jar, 49 English, 13, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 22, 23, (illustr.
), 44, 46, 47, 51, 64-67, 65 (illustr.)
plate, 47 porringers, 49 salts, 51 (illustr.)
Desandrouin (cartographer), 32, 34, 35 doors, 8 drug jar, 49, 65 (illustr.
), 66 Duché, Anthony (potter), 91 Duché family (potters), 84 Dunbar, Jeremiah, 77 Dwight, John (Fulham potter), 55, 109 earthenware, 14 bowl, 48 (illustr.)
Cistercian, 15, 16 (illustr.)
English, 10, 68, 69 (illustr.)
lead-glazed, 11, 22, 24 (illustr.)
North Devon, 47 Staffordshire, 48 (illustr.)
tin-enameled (Portuguese), 10, 15, 16 (illustr.)
Yorktown, 47, 49, 51, 55, 68, 69 (illustr.)
(_See also_ specific forms; William Rogers) Eaton, Alden, 31 Eden, Governor, 42 elevations, hypothetical (Tutter's Neck), 30 _Eltham_ (ship), 83 excavation plans, Clay Bank, 6; Tutter's Neck, 37, 47 excise stamps, 92, 95 (illustr.)
Ferry, William (tobacco pipe maker), 14 firebacks, 78 fireplace, 8, 9 flax, 78 Fletcher, John (tobacco pipe maker), 27 floor, wooden, 9, 10 (illustr.
), 11 (illustr.
), 44 fork, table, 51, 58 (illustr.
), 59 flower pots, 107 Fox, Jacob (tobacco pipe maker), 27 Fox, Josiah (tobacco pipe maker), 14 framing, 8 Frank, E. M., 44 funnel, Yorktown earthenware, 100 (illustr.
), 101, 105 (illustr.)
furnace, air, 78 furniture, 82 Gale, Christopher, 42 Geddes, Captain John, 36 glass, 10, 31, 43; bead, 47, 70, 71 (illustr.
); decanter, 13; stem of drinking glass or candlestick, 13, 14, 17 (illustr.
); reconstructed drawing of, 18; window, 44, 49 (_See also_ bottle) glasses, drinking, 10; Romer, 55, 71 (illustr.
), 72; tumbler, 44, 51, 55; wine, 13, 14, 47, 49, 55, 64; with covers, 13 glebe-house, 7, 38 Gooch, Governor William, 75, 76-77, 78-79, 82-83, 84, 85 reports to Board of Trade, 75, 76, 78-79, 84, 85, 111 Goodridg, Jeremiah, 37 Gray, Edward, 36 Green, Dr., 7 Grice, John, 36 gunpowder, 82 Ham, Henry, 81 hardware: band, brass, 70, 71 (illustr.)
bolt, 60, 61 (illustr.
), 62 boss, brass, 19 (illustr.
), 21 handle, 60, 61 (illustr.)
hasp, 61 (illustr.)
key, 58 (illustr.
), 60 latch, 61 (illustr.
), 62 loop, 62, 63 (illustr.)
nails, 8, 10, 44 padlock, 44, 51, 54 (illustr.
), 60, 61 (illustr.)
rivet, 61 (illustr.
), 62 spike, 60, 61 (illustr.)
staple, 20 (illustr.
), 21, 24 (illustr.
), 27 strap, 61 (illustr.
), 62, 63 (illustr.
), 64 tack, 19 (illustr.
), 21 ward plate, 61 (illustr.
), 62 harness: boss from bridle, 19 (illustr.
), 21 buckle, 47, 61 (illustr.
), 62 cheekpiece from snaffle bit, 20 (illustr.
), 21 fitting for, 47, 70, 71 (illustr.)
ornament, 47, 63 (illustr.
), 64, 70, 71 (illustr.)
snaffle bit, 62, 63 (illustr.)
spoon bit, 58 (illustr.
), 60 stirrup, 22, 23 (illustr.)
Harrison, Mrs. P. G., 97 Harwood, Elizabeth, 28 hearth, 9, 10, 12 Herman, Augustine, 2, 5 Higgenson, Humphry, 36 Hodgson, Reverend Robert, 7 Horns Quarter (King William County), 40 horseshoe, 49, 62, 63 (illustr.)
houses: "Ardudwy" (Clay Bank), 4, 5, 7, 8, 14 brick, 45, 87 Corotoman, 45 Green Spring, Pyle House, 107, 108 Jamestown, 44 Tutter's Neck, drawings of, 30 (illustr.)
Williamsburg: John Blair, 44 Brush-Everard, 44 Coke Garrett, 107, 108 James Geddy, 107 Anthony Hay, 110 New Post Office, 110 Yorktown: Archer Cottage, 102 Digges house, 92, 98, 106, 107, 108, 110 (_See also_ Tutter's Neck, buildings) indentured servants, 81 Indians: appeal to governor for help against, 38, 40 Iroquois Confederation, 40 pottery, 11, 15, 16 (illustr.)
(_See also_ Colono-Indian pottery) projectile point, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 71 (illustr.)
72 tobacco pipes, 14 uprising, 39-40 war with Tuscarora Indians, 39-40 inventory, William Rogers' estate, 82, 88-90, 105, 109 iron, unidentified objects, 20 (illustr.
), 21, 24 (illustr.
), 25-27 (_See also_ specific items) ironworks, 78 _Jamaica Merchant_ (ship), 36 Jamestown, 44, 107 jar: earthenware, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 47, 68, 69 (illustr.)
pickle, glass, 69 (illustr.
), 70 stoneware, 92 storage, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 68, 69 (illustr.
), 105, 107 Jenings, Col., 82, 87 Jenkins, William F., 3, 4, 11 Jennings, Governor Edmund, 4 Johnson, Elizabeth Bray, 41 Johnson, Col. Philip, 41 Jones, Dorothy Walker, 41 Jones, Frederick, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44-45, 56; property attacked by Indians, 40; will of, 40; wine bottle seal of, 35-36, 38 (illustr.
), 39 (illustr.
), 69 (illustr.
), 70 Jones, Henry (tobacco pipe maker), 14 Jones, Hugh, 42 Jones, Jane, 41 Jones, Captain Roger, 36, 41; complaints about the conduct of, 41 Jones, Thomas, 13, 35, 37, 41 _Judith_ (ship), 83 jug, brown stoneware, 65 (illustr.
), 67; white stoneware, 55 kilns, 104; "furniture", 76, 91, 92, 93-94, 99 (illustr.
), 103-104; location of, 84, 105-106; types of, 104; use of refuse of, 92 (_See also_ pottery making) Kingsmill (Virginia), 40, 41 (See also Burwell's Ferry) kitchen: Clay Bank, 7, 8 Tutter's Neck, 30, 36, 43, 44; conjectural reconstruction of, 30 (illustr.
); excavation of, 45-46 knife, iron, 20 (illustr.
), 21; table, 49, 58 (illustr.
), 59 Knight, Tobias, 41 lamps, 82 latten (_See under_ spoon) leather, 79 Lee, Robert (widow of), 4 Little Town (Virginia), 40, 45 majolica, Spanish, 49 makers' marks: latten spoon--R S, 58 (illustr.
), 59 W W, 4, 18 pewter spoon--M, 27 tools--I H, 21 WARD, 18 (_See also_ tobacco pipe) Maloney, James E., 92-96, 102-105 mantels, 8 manufacturing in colonial Virginia, 76-79 reports on trade and manufactures, 75, 76, 78-79 manufacturing in New England, 77 map, Tutter's Neck, 33 (illustr.
); Virginia (1673), 2 (illustr.
), 5; (1781), 32, 34, 35 (illustr.
); Yorktown, 74; (1691), 80 marks: broad arrow, 58 (illustr.
), 59 excise stamp on stoneware, 92, 95 (illustr.)
shipping, 36 (_See also_ makers' marks; tobacco pipes) Marlborough (plantation), 32, 79, 105 _Maynard_ (ship), 83 Maynard, Lieutenant, 42 Mercer, John, 79, 84, 105 Meriwether, Elizabeth, 41 Middle Plantation (Williamsburg), 40 mill, horse, 82 Minge, Robert, 81 Morse (Moss), Francis, 87 Mountford's Mill Dam, 82 mug, 82; English delftware, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 22, 24 (illustr.
), 46; redware, 22, 24 (illustr.
); reproductions, 96 (illustr.
); stoneware, 91, 92, 93 (illustr.
), 94 (illustr.
), 99 (illustr.
), 104-105 _Nancy_ (sloop), 83 National Park Service, 91, 92, 93, 96, 102, 107, 110 Negroes, 40, 78, 79, 82 (_See also_ slaves) Nelson, John, 84 Nelson, William, 88 "New Bottle" (plantation), 4; location of, 4-5 New Bottle (Scotland), 4 Nicholson, Francis, 41 Norton, Courtenay, 83 Norton, John (merchant), 83 oil, 83 ointment pot, 65 (illustr.
), 66 Page, Elizabeth, 40 Page family, 3 pan: cream (Yorktown earthenware), 55, 68, 69 (illustr.
), 100 (illustr.
), 101, 102 (illustr.
), 103 (illustr.
), 106, 109-110 milk, 82 pudding, 82 sauce, 82 Tidewater earthenware, 22, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 92 Parker, Isaac, 84 Parks, William (printer), 87 Petsworth Parish (_See under Vestry Book of_) Pettus family, 40 Pettus, Mourning, marriage of, 40 Pettus, Thomas, Jr. (widow of), 40 pewter (_See_ spoon) pictures, 82 pipe (_See_ tobacco pipe) pipkin, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 99, 100 (illustr.
), 101 piracy, 41-42 plate, English delftware, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 22, 24 (illustr.
), 65 (illustr.
), 67; tin-glazed earthenware, 15, 16 (illustr.)
Pollock, ----, 40 porcelain, Chinese, 49 cup, 70, 71 (illustr.)
porringers, 82; delftware, 49, 65 (illustr.
), 66; Yorktown earthenware, 100 (illustr.
), 101, 107 Porteus, Beilby, 4, 8 Porteus, Edward, 4, 7, 14 Porteus, Robert, 4, 5, 7, 8 pot, cream, 82; iron, 62, 63 (illustr.
), 78 potteries, Charlestown, Mass., 84 Fulham (England), 109 Gloucester, Mass., 85 North Devon, England, 84 North Walk, England, 84-85 Philadelphia, 84 Williamsburg, 92-96, 102-105 pottery: inventory of, 82, 85 pottery making, 78-79, 83-84, 102-105, 110; experiments in, 92-96, 102-105 prison, 82 gaol, 95 projectile point, 15, 16 (illustr.
), 71 (illustr.
), 72 Purton (plantation), 4 Randolph, John, 35, 77 Reade, George, 87 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 7 Reynolds, Susanna Rogers, 82, 83, 87 Reynolds, Thomas, 83, 84, 110 ring: curtain (brass), 70, 71 (illustr.
); iron, 24 (illustr.
), 25, 62, 63 (illustr.)
"Rippon Hall" (plantation, York County), 4 Rogers, George, 83, 84 Rogers, Theodosia, 82, 87 Rogers, William (Yorktown potter), 75-111 brewer, 80, 82, 85 Captain of the troop, 82 death of, 82, 83 inventory of, 82, 88-90, 105, 109 surveyor, 82, 92 Rogers, William, Jr., 82, 83, 87 Rogers, William (others of same name), 86-87 Rosewell (plantation), 3, 32, 98, 110 salt, 39, 82 salt dishes, delftware, 51 (illustr.
), 65 (illustr.
), 66, 67 saucer, 55, 65 (illustr.
), 66 Saunderson, Richard, 84 Sayer, Richard (tobacco pipe maker), 54 scales, 82 Seabrook, Captain Charles, 83 seal, wine bottle, 32, 35, 36, 37 (illustr.
), 43, 46, 55, 69 (illustr.
), 70 shells, 52 shoes, manufacture of, 79 Skipworth, Elizabeth, 87 slaves, 45; brought to North Carolina from Virginia, 40, 41; ceramics made for use by, 45; listed in inventory, 88; quarters for, 46 Smith, Edward, 87 Smith, John (daughter of), 4 Smith, Major Lawrence, 80 South, William, 36 spoon: latten, 4, 10, 12, 18, 19 (illustr.
), 46, 58 (illustr.
), 59 pewter, 11, 24 (illustr.
), 27, 47, 49, 58 (illustr.
), 59 Spotswood, Governor Alexander, 36, 37 Stark, William (wife of), 81 still, 82 (See also brewing) stoneware: Bellarmine, 49 brown, 49, 51, 65 (illustr.
), 67-68 excise stamps on, 92, 95 (illustr.)
manufacture of, 83-84, 102-105, 110 Westerwald tankard, 49, 65 (illustr.
), 68 white, jug, 55 white salt-glazed, 43, 49 strainer, brass or bronze, 19 (illustr.
), 21 stratigraphy, Clay Bank, 11-12 Tutter's Neck, 49 Stubbs, William Carter, 4 Swan Tavern (Yorktown), 76, 83, 102, 110; mugs from, 91, 92, 93 (illustr.
), 99 (illustr.)
sword, 49, 58 (illustr.
), 60, 82 tankard, brown stoneware, 65 (illustr.
), 67, 91; Westerwald stoneware, 49, 65 (illustr.
), 68 tanning, 79 Tarripin Point (Virginia), 82, 84, 87 taverns, 80 Taylor, Ebanezar, 42 Teach, Edward "Blackbeard" (pirate), 41-42 textiles: cotton, 78; linen, 77, 79; manufacture of, 79; wool, 76, 77 _Thomas and Tryal_ (ship), 84 Thorpe, Otho, 36 Tippet, Robert (tobacco pipe maker), 54 Tippett, Jacob (tobacco pipe maker), 14 tobacco, 76, 77; act of 1730, 77; laws regarding, 78 tobacco pipes, 10, 13, 14, 26 (illustr.
), 27-28, 46, 47, 49, 52-54; dating of, 10, 13, 14, 47, 52-54; Indian, 14, 15, 16 (illustr.
); profiles, 57 (illustr.)
tobacco pipes, makers' marks on: H I, 14, 26 (illustr.
), 27 H S, 49, 53, 57 (illustr.)
I F, 14, 26 (illustr.
), 27 I S, 53-54, 57 (illustr.)
M B, 26 (illustr.
), 28 R M, 53, 57 (illustr.)
S A, 14, 26 (illustr.
), 28 V R, 14, 26 (illustr.
), 27 VS, 26 (illustr.
), 28 W, 54 W F, 14 W P (or R), 14, 26 (illustr.
), 27 X·I·F·X, 26 (illustr.
), 28 tobacco pipes, makers of: William Ferry, 14 John Fletcher, 27 Jacob Fox, 27 Josiah Fox, 14, 27 Henry Jones, 14 Richard Sayer, 54, 56, 57 (illustr.)
I. Tippet, 14, 49 Robert Tippet, 54 Richard Tyler, 54 tools, 14 chisel, carpenter's, 12; cooper's, 13, 22, 23 (illustr.
); forming, 9, 12, 22, 23 (illustr.)
cramp, 20 (illustr.
), 21 dividers, 49, 54 (illustr.
), 58 (illustr.
), 60 fleam, 58 (illustr.
), 60 gimlet, 19 (illustr.
), 21 hoe, 12, 21, 22, 23 (illustr.
); broad, 21, 23 (illustr.
); grub, 21, 23 (illustr.)
race knife, 12, 18, 19 (illustr.
), 24 (illustr.
), 25 saw, 47, 54 (illustr.)
saw wrest, 20 (illustr.
), 21 scissors, 54 (illustr.
), 59, 60 scythe, 62, 63 (illustr.)
sickle, 47, 49, 54 (illustr.
), 60, 61 (illustr.)
tools: spade, 22, 23 (illustr.)
unidentified, 58 (illustr.
), 60 wedge, 12, 22, 23 (illustr.)
tube, bone, 63 (illustr.
), 64; iron, 61 (illustr.
), 62 Tutter's Neck, 30-72; aerial photograph of, 32 buildings: drawings of, 30 excavation of, 43-46 kitchen, 30, 36, 43, 44, 45-46 residence, 30, 43-45 excavation plan of, 37, 47 map of, 33 (illustr.
), 34, 35 (illustr.)
tyg, earthenware, 12, 15, 16 (illustr.
); 22, 24 (illustr.)
Tyler, Richard (tobacco pipe maker), 54 unidentified objects, iron, 20 (illustr.
), 21, 24 (illustr.
), 25-27 (_See also_ specific items) _Vestry Book of Petsworth Parish_, 5, 7 Vincent, William (potter), 85 Virginia: colonial economy, 76-79 Ward, ---(toolmaker), 18 warehouse, 87 weaving, 79 Webb, Frances, 83 Williamsburg, 13, 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 82, 83, 84, 87, 91, 92, 95, 110 (_See also_ Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.) Williamsburg Pottery, 92-96; experiments at, 102-105 Williamsburg Restoration, Inc., 31, 41 windows, 7, 44; frames for, 87; lead cames for, 44 (_See also_ glass, window) woodenware, 83 _York_ (ship), 83 Yorktown, 74-111; list of plat owners, 81 map of, 74; (1691), 80 Transcriber's Notes: Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected.
Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_.
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P. 54 Sidenote text may appear to be oddly split between lines but this is what is portrayed on the image.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE.
A statue of the hawk-god Horus in front of the temple of Edfu.
The author stands beside it.]
[_Photo by N. Macnaghten._ The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archæology BY ARTHUR E.P.B.
WEIGALL INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF UPPER EGYPT, DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES AUTHOR OF 'TRAVELS IN THE UPPER EGYPTIAN DESERTS,' 'THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AKHNATON, PHARAOH OF EGYPT,' 'A GUIDE TO THE ANTIQUITIES OF UPPER EGYPT,' ETC., ETC.
RAND McNALLY & COMPANY CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 1912 _TO ALAN H. GARDINER, ESQ., M.A., D.LITT.
LAYCOCK STUDENT OF EGYPTOLOGY AT WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD, THIS BOOK, WHICH WILL RECALL SOME SUMMER NIGHTS UPON THE THEBAN HILLS, IS DEDICATED._ PREFACE.
No person who has travelled in Egypt will require to be told that it is a country in which a considerable amount of waiting and waste of time has to be endured.
One makes an excursion by train to see some ruins, and, upon returning to the station, the train is found to be late, and an hour or more has to be dawdled away.
Crossing the Nile in a rowing-boat the sailors contrive in one way or another to prolong the journey to a length of half an hour or more.
The excursion steamer will run upon a sandbank, and will there remain fast for a part of the day.
The resident official, travelling from place to place, spends a great deal of time seated in railway stations or on the banks of the Nile, waiting for his train or his boat to arrive; and he has, therefore, a great deal of time for thinking.
I often try to fill in these dreary periods by jotting down a few notes on some matter which has recently been discussed, or registering and elaborating arguments which have chanced lately to come into the thoughts.
These notes are shaped and "written up" when next there is a spare hour, and a few books to refer to; and ultimately they take the form of articles or papers, some of which find their way into print.
This volume contains twelve chapters, written at various times and in various places, each dealing with some subject drawn from the great treasury of Ancient Egypt.
Some of the chapters have appeared as articles in magazines.
Chapters iv., v., and viii.
were published in 'Blackwood's Magazine'; chapter vii.
in 'Putnam's Magazine' and the 'Pall Mall Magazine'; and chapter ix.
in the 'Century Magazine.'
I have to thank the editors for allowing me to reprint them here.
The remaining seven chapters have been written specially for this volume.
LUXOR, UPPER EGYPT, _November_ 1910.
CONTENTS.
PART I.--THE VALUE OF THE TREASURY.
CHAP.
PAGE I.
THE VALUE OF ARCHÆOLOGY 3 II.
THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE 26 III.
THE NECESSITY OF ARCHÆOLOGY TO THE GAIETY OF THE WORLD 55 PART II.--STUDIES IN THE TREASURY.
IV.
THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS 81 V. THE MISFORTUNES OF WENAMON 112 VI.
THE STORY OF THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR 138 PART III.--RESEARCHES IN THE TREASURY.
VII.
RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT 165 VIII.
THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON 185 IX.
THE TOMB OF HOREMHEB 209 PART IV.--THE PRESERVATION OF THE TREASURY.
X. THEBAN THIEVES 239 XI.
THE FLOODING OF LOWER NUBIA 262* XII.
ARCHÆOLOGY IN THE OPEN 281** * Transcriber's note: Original text incorrectly lists page number "261".
**Transcriber's note: Original text incorrectly lists page number "282".
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATE PAGE A STATUE OF THE HAWK-GOD HORUS IN FRONT OF THE TEMPLE OF EDFU.
THE AUTHOR STANDS BESIDE IT _Frontispiece_ I.
THE MUMMY OF RAMESES II.
OF DYNASTY XIX.
10 II.
WOOD AND ENAMEL JEWEL-CASE DISCOVERED IN THE TOMB OF YUAA AND TUAU.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE FURNITURE OF ONE OF THE BEST PERIODS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART 17 III.
HEAVY GOLD EARRINGS OF QUEEN TAUSERT OF DYNASTY XX.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE WORK OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GOLDSMITHS 22 IV.
IN THE PALM-GROVES NEAR SAKKÂRA, EGYPT 36 V. THE MUMMY OF SETY I.
OF DYNASTY XIX.
48 VI.
A RELIEF UPON THE SIDE OF THE SARCOPHAGUS OF ONE OF THE WIVES OF KING MENTUHOTEP III., DISCOVERED AT DÊR EL BAHRI (THEBES).
THE ROYAL LADY IS TAKING SWEET-SMELLING OINTMENT FROM AN ALABASTER VASE.
A HANDMAIDEN KEEPS THE FLIES AWAY WITH A BIRD'S-WING FAN.
62 VII.
LADY ROUGING HERSELF: SHE HOLDS A MIRROR AND ROUGE-POT 71 DANCING GIRL TURNING A BACK SOMERSAULT 71 VIII.
TWO EGYPTIAN BOYS DECKED WITH FLOWERS AND A THIRD HOLDING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.
THEY ARE STANDING AGAINST THE OUTSIDE WALL OF THE DENDEREH TEMPLE 82 IX.
A GARLAND OF LEAVES AND FLOWERS DATING FROM ABOUT B.C.
1000.
IT WAS PLACED UPON THE NECK OF A MUMMY 94 X.
A RELIEF OF THE SAITIC PERIOD, REPRESENTING AN OLD MAN PLAYING UPON A HARP, AND A WOMAN BEATING A DRUM.
OFFERINGS OF FOOD AND FLOWERS ARE PLACED BEFORE THEM 100 XI.
AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY HUNTING BIRDS WITH A BOOMERANG AND DECOYS.
HE STANDS IN A REED-BOAT WHICH FLOATS AMIDST THE PAPYRUS CLUMPS, AND A CAT RETRIEVES THE FALLEN BIRDS.
IN THE BOAT WITH HIM ARE HIS WIFE AND SON 108 XII.
A REED BOX FOR HOLDING CLOTHING, DISCOVERED IN THE TOMB OF YUAA AND TUAU 118 XIII.
A FESTIVAL SCENE OF SINGERS AND DANCERS FROM A TOMB-PAINTING OF DYNASTY XVII.
133 XIV.
A SAILOR OF LOWER NUBIA AND HIS SON 144 XV.
A NILE BOAT PASSING THE HILLS OF THEBES 159 XVI.
THE EXCAVATIONS ON THE SITE OF THE CITY OF ABYDOS 166 XVII.
EXCAVATING THE OSIREION AT ABYDOS.
A CHAIN OF BOYS HANDING UP BASKETS OF SAND TO THE SURFACE 175 XVIII.
THE ENTRANCE OF THE TOMB OF QUEEN TIY, WITH EGYPTIAN POLICEMAN STANDING BESIDE IT.
ON THE LEFT IS THE LATER TOMB OF RAMESES X.
186 XIX.
TOILET-SPOONS OF CARVED WOOD, DISCOVERED IN TOMBS OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY.
THAT ON THE RIGHT HAS A MOVABLE LID 192 XX.
THE COFFIN OF AKHNATON LYING IN THE TOMB OF QUEEN TIY 207 XXI.
HEAD OF A GRANITE STATUE OF THE GOD KHONSU, PROBABLY DATING FROM ABOUT THE PERIOD OF HOREMHEB 217 XXII.
THE MOUTH OF THE TOMB OF HOREMHEB AT THE TIME OF ITS DISCOVERY.
THE AUTHOR IS SEEN EMERGING FROM THE TOMB AFTER THE FIRST ENTRANCE HAD BEEN EFFECTED.
ON THE HILLSIDE THE WORKMEN ARE GROUPED 229 XXIII.
A MODERN THEBAN FELLAH-WOMAN AND HER CHILD 240 XXIV.
A MODERN GOURNAWI BEGGAR 250 XXV.
THE ISLAND AND TEMPLES OF PHILÆ WHEN THE RESERVOIR IS EMPTY 269 XXVI.
A RELIEF REPRESENTING QUEEN TIY, FROM THE TOMB OF USERHAT AT THEBES.
THIS RELIEF WAS STOLEN FROM THE TOMB, AND FOUND ITS WAY TO THE BRUSSELS MUSEUM, WHERE IT IS SHOWN IN THE DAMAGED CONDITION SEEN IN PL.
XXVII.
282 XXVII.
A RELIEF REPRESENTING QUEEN TIY, FROM THE TOMB OF USERHAT, THEBES.
(SEE PL.
XXVI.)
293 PART I THE VALUE OF THE TREASURY.
"History no longer shall be a dull book.
It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man.
You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read.
You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.
A man shall be the Temple of Fame.
He shall walk, as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences....
He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits of heaven and earth."
EMERSON.
CHAPTER I.
THE VALUE OF ARCHÆOLOGY.
The archæologist whose business it is to bring to light by pick and spade the relics of bygone ages, is often accused of devoting his energies to work which is of no material profit to mankind at the present day.
Archæology is an unapplied science, and, apart from its connection with what is called culture, the critic is inclined to judge it as a pleasant and worthless amusement.
There is nothing, the critic tells us, of pertinent value to be learned from the Past which will be of use to the ordinary person of the present time; and, though the archæologist can offer acceptable information to the painter, to the theologian, to the philologist, and indeed to most of the followers of the arts and sciences, he has nothing to give to the ordinary layman.
In some directions the imputation is unanswerable; and when the interests of modern times clash with those of the past, as, for example, in Egypt where a beneficial reservoir has destroyed the remains of early days, there can be no question that the recording of the threatened information and the minimising of the destruction, is all that the value of the archæologist's work entitles him to ask for.
The critic, however, usually overlooks some of the chief reasons that archæology can give for even this much consideration, reasons which constitute its modern usefulness; and I therefore propose to point out to him three or four of the many claims which it may make upon the attention of the layman.
In the first place it is necessary to define the meaning of the term "Archæology."
Archæology is the study of the facts of ancient history and ancient lore.
The word is applied to the study of all ancient documents and objects which may be classed as antiquities; and the archæologist is understood to be the man who deals with a period for which the evidence has to be excavated or otherwise discovered.
The age at which an object becomes an antiquity, however, is quite undefined, though practically it may be reckoned at a hundred years; and ancient history is, after all, the tale of any period which is not modern.
Thus an archæologist does not necessarily deal solely with the remote ages.
Every chronicler of the events of the less recent times who goes to the original documents for his facts, as true historians must do during at least a part of their studies, is an archæologist; and, conversely, every archæologist who in the course of his work states a series of historical facts, becomes an historian.
Archæology and history are inseparable; and nothing is more detrimental to a noble science than the attitude of certain so-called archæologists who devote their entire time to the study of a sequence of objects without proper consideration for the history which those objects reveal.
Antiquities are the relics of human mental energy; and they can no more be classified without reference to the minds which produced them than geological specimens can be discussed without regard to the earth.
There is only one thing worse than the attitude of the archæologist who does not study the story of the periods with which he is dealing, or construct, if only in his thoughts, living history out of the objects discovered by him; and that is the attitude of the historian who has not familiarised himself with the actual relics left by the people of whom he writes, or has not, when possible, visited their lands.
There are many "archæologists" who do not care a snap of the fingers for history, surprising as this may appear; and there are many historians who take no interest in manners and customs.
The influence of either is pernicious.
It is to be understood, therefore, that in using the word Archæology I include History: I refer to history supplemented and aggrandised by the study of the arts, crafts, manners, and customs of the period under consideration.
As a first argument the value of archæology in providing a precedent for important occurrences may be considered.
Archæology is the structure of ancient history, and it is the voice of history which tells us that a Cretan is always a Cretan, and a Jew always a Jew.
History, then, may well take her place as a definite asset of statecraft, and the law of Precedent may be regarded as a fundamental factor in international politics.
What has happened before may happen again; and it is the hand of the archæologist that directs our attention to the affairs and circumstances of olden times, and warns us of the possibilities of their recurrence.
It may be said that the statesman who has ranged in the front of his mind the proven characteristics of the people with whom he is dealing has a perquisite of the utmost importance.
Any archæologist who, previous to the rise of Japan during the latter half of the nineteenth century, had made a close study of the history of that country and the character of its people, might well have predicted unerringly its future advance to the position of a first-class power.
The amazing faculty of imitation displayed by the Japanese in old times was patent to him.
He had seen them borrow part of their arts, their sciences, their crafts, their literature, their religion, and many of their customs from the Chinese; and he might have been aware that they would likewise borrow from the West, as soon as they had intercourse with it, those essentials of civilisation which would raise them to their present position in the world.
To him their fearlessness, their tenacity, and their patriotism, were known; and he was so well aware of their powers of organisation, that he might have foreseen the rapid development which was to take place.
What historian who has read the ancient books of the Irish--the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Ballymote, the Book of Lismore, and the like--can show either surprise or dismay at the events which have occurred in Ireland in modern times?
Of the hundreds of kings of Ireland whose histories are epitomised in such works as that of the old archæologist Keating, it would be possible to count upon the fingers those who have died in peace; and the archæologist, thus, knows better than to expect the descendants of these kings to live in harmony one with the other.
National characteristics do not change unless, as in the case of the Greeks, the stock also changes.
In the Jews we have another example of the persistence of those national characteristics which history has made known to us.
The Jews first appear in the dimness of the remote past as a group of nomad tribes, wandering over southern Palestine, Egypt, and the intervening deserts; and at the present day we see them still homeless, scattered over the face of the globe, the "tribe of the wandering foot and weary breast."
In no country has the archæologist been more active than in Egypt during the last half century, and the contributions which his spade and pick have offered to history are of first-rate importance to that study as a whole.
The eye may now travel down the history of the Nile Valley from prehistoric days to the present time almost without interruption; and now that the anthropologist has shown that the modern Egyptians, Mussulman and Copt, peasant and townsman, belong to one and the same race of ancient Egyptians, one may surely judge to-day's inhabitants of the country in the light of yesterday's records.
In his report for the year 1906, Lord Cromer, questioning whether the modern inhabitants of the country were capable of governing their own land, tells us that we must go back to the precedent of Pharaonic days to discover if the Egyptians ever ruled themselves successfully.
In this pregnant remark Lord Cromer was using information which the archæologist and historian had made accessible to him.
Looking back over the history of the country, he was enabled, by the study of this information, to range before him the succession of foreign occupations of the Nile Valley and to assess their significance.
It may be worth while to repeat the process, in order to give an example of the bearing of history upon modern polemics, though I propose to discuss this matter more fully in another chapter.
Previous to the British occupation the country was ruled, as it is now, by a noble dynasty of Albanian princes, whose founder was set upon the throne by the aid of Turkish and Albanian troops.
From the beginning of the sixteenth century until that time Egypt had been ruled by the Ottoman Government, the Turk having replaced the Circassian and other foreign "Mamlukes" who had held the country by the aid of foreign troops since the middle of the thirteenth century.
For a hundred years previous to the Mamluke rule Egypt had been in the hands of the Syrian and Arabian dynasty founded by Saladdin.
The Fatimides, a North African dynasty, governed the country before the advent of Saladdin, this family having entered Egypt under their general, Jauhar, who was of Greek origin.
In the ninth century Ahmed ibn Tulun, a Turk, governed the land with the aid of a foreign garrison, his rule being succeeded by the Ikhshidi dynasty of foreigners.
Ahmed had captured Egypt from the Byzantines who had held it since the days of the Roman occupation.
Previous to the Romans the Ptolemies, a Greek family, had governed the Nile Valley with the help of foreign troops.
The Ptolemies had followed close upon the Greek occupation, the Greeks having replaced the Persians as rulers of Egypt.
The Persian occupation had been preceded by an Egyptian dynasty which had been kept on the throne by Greek and other foreign garrisons.
Previous to this there had been a Persian occupation, which had followed a short period of native rule under foreign influence.
We then come back to the Assyrian conquest which had followed the Ethiopian rule.
Libyan kings had held the country before the Ethiopian conquest.
The XXIst and XXth Dynasties preceded the Libyans, and here, in a disgraceful period of corrupt government, a series of so-called native kings are met with.
Foreigners, however, swarmed in the country at the time, foreign troops were constantly used, and the Pharaohs themselves were of semi-foreign origin.
One now comes back to the early XIXth and XVIIIth Dynasties which, although largely tinged with foreign blood, may be said to have been Egyptian families.
Before the rise of the XVIIIth Dynasty the country was in foreign hands for the long period which had followed the fall of the XIIth Dynasty, the classical period of Egyptian history (about the twentieth century B.C.
), when there were no rivals to be feared.
Thus the Egyptians may be said to have been subject to foreign occupation for nearly four thousand years, with the exception of the strong native rule of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the semi-native rule of the three succeeding dynasties, and a few brief periods of chaotic government in later times; and this is the information which the archæologist has to give to the statesman and politician.
It is a story of continual conquest, of foreign occupations following one upon another, of revolts and massacres, of rapid retributions and punishments.
It is the story of a nation which, however ably it may govern itself in the future, has only once in four thousand years successfully done so in the past.
[Illustration: PL.
I.
The mummy of Rameses II.
of Dynasty XIX.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ Such information is of far-reaching value to the politician, and to those interested, as every Englishman should be, in Imperial politics.
A nation cannot alter by one jot or tittle its fundamental characteristics; and only those who have studied those characteristics in the pages of history are competent to foresee the future.
A certain Englishman once asked the Khedive Ismail whether there was any news that day about Egyptian affairs.
"That is so like all you English," replied his Highness.
"You are always expecting something new to happen in Egypt day by day.
To-day is here the same as yesterday, and to-morrow will be the same as to-day; and so it has been, and so it will be, for thousands of years.
"[1] Neither Egypt nor any other nation will ever change; and to this it is the archæologist who will bear witness with his stern law of Precedent.
[Footnote 1: E. Dicey.
'The Story of the Khedivate,' p.
528.]
I will reserve the enlarging of this subject for the next chapter: for the present we may consider, as a second argument, the efficacy of the past as a tonic to the present, and its ability to restore the vitality of any age that is weakened.
In ancient Egypt at the beginning of the XXVIth Dynasty (B.C.
663) the country was at a very low ebb.
Devastated by conquests, its people humiliated, its government impoverished, a general collapse of the nation was imminent.
At this critical period the Egyptians turned their minds to the glorious days of old.
They remodelled their arts and crafts upon those of the classical periods, introduced again the obsolete offices and titles of those early times, and organised the government upon the old lines.
This movement saved the country, and averted its collapse for a few more centuries.
It renewed the pride of workmanship in a decadent people; and on all sides we see a revival which was the direct result of an archæological experiment.
The importance of archæology as a reviver of artistic and industrial culture will be realised at once if the essential part it played in the great Italian Renaissance is called to mind.
Previous to the age of Cimabue and Giotto in Florence, Italian refinement had passed steadily down the path of deterioration.
Græco-Roman art, which still at a high level in the early centuries of the Christian era, entirely lost its originality during Byzantine times, and the dark ages settled down upon Italy in almost every walk of life.
The Venetians, for example, were satisfied with comparatively the poorest works of art imported from Constantinople or Mount Athos: and in Florence so great was the poverty of genius that when Cimabue in the thirteenth century painted that famous Madonna which to our eyes appears to be of the crudest workmanship, the little advance made by it in the direction of naturalness was received by the city with acclamations, the very street down which it was carried being called the "Happy Street" in honour of the event.
Giotto carried on his master's teachings, and a few years later the Florentines had advanced to the standard of Fra Angelico, who was immediately followed by the two Lippis and Botticelli.
Leonardo da Vinci, artist, architect, and engineer, was almost contemporaneous with Botticelli, being born not much more than a hundred years after the death of Giotto.
With him art reached a level which it has never surpassed, old traditions and old canons were revived, and in every direction culture proceeded again to those heights from which it had fallen.
The reader will not need to be reminded that this great renaissance was the direct result of the study of the remains of the ancient arts of Greece and Rome.
Botticelli and his contemporaries were, in a sense, archæologists, for their work was inspired by the relics of ancient days.
Now, though at first sight it seems incredible that such an age of barbarism as that of the later Byzantine period should return, it is indeed quite possible that a relatively uncultured age should come upon us in the future; and there is every likelihood of certain communities passing over to the ranks of the absolute Philistines.
Socialism run mad would have no more time to give to the intellect than it had during the French Revolution.
Any form of violent social upheaval means catalepsy of the arts and crafts, and a trampling under foot of old traditions.
The invasions and revolts which are met with at the close of ancient Egyptian history brought the culture of that country to the lowest ebb of vitality.
The fall of Greece put an absolute stop to the artistic life of that nation.
The invasions of Italy by the inhabitants of less refined countries caused a set-back in civilisation for which almost the whole of Europe suffered.
Certain of the French arts and crafts have never recovered from the effects of the Revolution.
A national convulsion of one kind or another is to be expected by every country; and history tells us that such a convulsion is generally followed by an age of industrial and artistic coma, which is brought to an end not so much by the introduction of foreign ideas as by a renascence of the early traditions of the nation.
It thus behoves every man to interest himself in the continuity of these traditions, and to see that they are so impressed upon the mind that they shall survive all upheavals, or with ease be re-established.
There is no better tonic for a people who have weakened, and whose arts, crafts, and industries have deteriorated than a return to the conditions which obtained at a past age of national prosperity; and there are few more repaying tasks in the long-run than that of reviving an interest in the best periods of artistic or industrial activity.
This can only be effected by the study of the past, that is to say by archæology.
It is to be remembered, of course, that the sentimental interest in antique objects which, in recent years, has given a huge value to all ancient things, regardless of their intrinsic worth, is a dangerous attitude, unless it is backed by the most expert knowledge; for instead of directing the attention only to the best work of the best periods, it results in the diminishing of the output of modern original work and the setting of little of worth in its place.
A person of a certain fashionable set will now boast that there is no object in his room less than two hundred years old: his only boast, however, should be that the room contains nothing which is not of intrinsic beauty, interest, or good workmanship.
The old chairs from the kitchen are dragged into the drawing-room--because they are old; miniatures unmeritoriously painted by unknown artists for obscure clients are nailed in conspicuous places--because they are old; hideous plates and dishes, originally made by ignorant workmen for impoverished peasants, are enclosed in glass cases--because they are old; iron-bound chests, which had been cheaply made to suit the purses of farmers, are rescued from the cottages of their descendants and sold for fabulous sums--because they are old.
A person who fills a drawing-room with chairs, tables, and ornaments, dating from the reign of Queen Anne, cannot say that he does so because he wishes it to look like a room of that date; for if this were his desire, he would have to furnish it with objects which appeared to be newly made, since in the days of Queen Anne the first quality noticeable in them would have been their newness.
In fact, to produce the desired effect everything in the room, with very few exceptions, would have to be a replica.
To sit in this room full of antiques in a frock-coat would be as bad a breach of good taste as the placing of a Victorian chandelier in an Elizabethan banqueting-hall.
To furnish the room with genuine antiquities because they are old and therefore interesting would be to carry the museum spirit into daily life with its attending responsibilities, and would involve all manner of incongruities and inconsistencies; while to furnish in this manner because antiques were valuable would be merely vulgar.
There are, thus, only three justifications that I can see for the action of the man who surrounds himself with antiquities: he must do so because they are examples of workmanship, because they are beautiful, or because they are endeared to him by family usage.
These, of course, are full and complete justifications; and the value of his attitude should be felt in the impetus which it gives to conscientious modern work.
There are periods in history at which certain arts, crafts, or industries reached an extremely high level of excellence; and nothing can be more valuable to modern workmen than familiarity with these periods.
Well-made replicas have a value that is overlooked only by the inartistic.
Nor must it be forgotten that modern objects of modern design will one day become antiquities; and it should be our desire to assist in the making of the period of our lifetime an age to which future generations will look back for guidance and teaching.
Every man can, in this manner, be of use to a nation, if only by learning to reject poor work wherever he comes upon it--work which he feels would not stand against the criticism of Time; and thus it may be said that archæology, which directs him to the best works of the ancients, and sets him a standard and criterion, should be an essential part of his education.
[Illustration: PL.
II Wood and enamel jewel-case discovered in the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau.
An example of the furniture of one of the best periods of ancient Egyptian art.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ The third argument which I wish to employ here to demonstrate the value of the study of archæology and history to the layman is based upon the assumption that patriotism is a desirable ingredient in a man's character.
This is a premise which assuredly will be admitted.
True patriotism is essential to the maintenance of a nation.
It has taken the place, among certain people, of loyalty to the sovereign; for the armies which used to go to war out of a blind loyalty to their king, now do so from a sense of patriotism which is shared by the monarch (if they happen to have the good fortune to possess one).
Patriotism is often believed to consist of a love of one's country, in an affection for the familiar villages or cities, fields or streets, of one's own dwelling-place.
This is a grievous error.
Patriotism should be an unqualified desire for the welfare of the race as a whole.
It is not really patriotic for the Englishman to say, "I love England": it is only natural.
It is not patriotic for him to say, "I don't think much of foreigners": it is only a form of narrowness of mind which, in the case of England and certain other countries, happens sometimes to be rather a useful attitude, but in the case of several nations, of which a good example is Egypt, would be detrimental to their own interests.
It was not unqualified patriotism that induced the Greeks to throw off the Ottoman yoke: it was largely dislike of the Turks.
It is not patriotism, that is to say undiluted concern for the nation as a whole, which leads some of the modern Egyptians to prefer an entirely native government to the Anglo-Egyptian administration now obtaining in that country: it is restlessness; and I am fortunately able to define it thus without the necessity of entering the arena of polemics by an opinion as to whether that restlessness is justified or not justified.
If patriotism were but the love of one's tribe and one's dwelling-place, then such undeveloped or fallen races as, for example, the American Indians, could lay their downfall at the door of that sentiment; since the exclusive love of the tribe prevented the small bodies from amalgamating into one great nation for the opposing of the invader.
If patriotism were but the desire for government without interference, then the breaking up of the world's empires would be urged, and such federations as the United States of America would be intolerable.
Patriotism is, and must be, the desire for the progress and welfare of the whole nation, without any regard whatsoever to the conditions under which that progress takes place, and without any prejudice in favour either of self-government or of outside control.
I have no hesitation in saying that the patriotic Pole is he who is in favour of Russian or German control of his country's affairs; for history has told him quite plainly that he cannot manage them himself.
The Nationalist in any country runs the risk of being the poorest patriot in the land, for his continuous cry is for self-government, without any regard to the question as to whether such government will be beneficial to his nation in the long-run.
The value of history to patriotism, then, is to be assessed under two headings.
In the first place, history defines the attitude which the patriot should assume.
It tells him, in the clear light of experience, what is, and what is not, good for his nation, and indicates to him how much he may claim for his country.
And in the second place, it gives to the patriots of those nations which have shown capacity and ability in the past a confidence in the present; it permits in them the indulgence of that enthusiasm which will carry them, sure-footed, along the path of glory.
Archæology, as the discovery and classification of the facts of history, is the means by which we may obtain a true knowledge of what has happened in the past.
It is the instrument with which we may dissect legend, and extract from myth its ingredients of fact.
Cold history tells the Greek patriot, eager to enter the fray, that he must set little store by the precedent of the deeds of the Trojan war.
It tells the English patriot that the "one jolly Englishman" of the old rhyme is not the easy vanquisher of the "two froggy Frenchmen and one Portugee" which tradition would have him believe.
He is thus enabled to steer a middle course between arrant conceit and childish fright.
History tells him the actual facts: history is to the patriot what "form" is to the racing man.
In the case of the English (Heaven be praised!)
history opens up a boundless vista for the patriotic.
The Englishman seldom realises how much he has to be proud of in his history, or how loudly the past cries upon him to be of good cheer.
One hears much nowadays of England's peril, and it is good that the red signals of danger should sometimes be displayed.
But let every Englishman remember that history can tell him of greater perils faced successfully; of mighty armies commanded by the greatest generals the world has ever known, held in check year after year, and finally crushed by England; of vast fleets scattered or destroyed by English sailors; of almost impregnable cities captured by British troops.
"There is something very characteristic," writes Professor Seeley,[1] "in the indifference which we show towards the mighty phenomenon of the diffusion of our race and the expansion of our state.
We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."
[Footnote 1: 'The Expansion of England,' p.
10.]
The history of England, and later of the British Empire, constitutes a tale so amazing that he who has the welfare of the nation as a whole at heart--that is to say, the true patriot--is justified in entertaining the most optimistic thoughts for the future.
He should not be indifferent to the past: he should bear it in mind all the time.
Patriotism may not often be otherwise than misguided if no study of history has been made.
The patriot of one nation will wish to procure for his country a freedom which history would show him to have been its very curse; and the patriot of another nation will encourage a nervousness and restraint in his people which history would tell him was unnecessary.
The English patriot has a history to read which, at the present time, it is especially needful for him to consider; and, since Egyptology is my particular province, I cannot better close this argument than by reminding the modern Egyptians that their own history of four thousand years and its teaching must be considered by them when they speak of patriotism.
A nation so talented as the descendants of the Pharaohs, so industrious, so smart and clever, should give a far larger part of its attention to the arts, crafts, and industries, of which Egyptian archæology has to tell so splendid a story.
As a final argument for the value of the study of history and archæology an aspect of the question may be placed before the reader which will perhaps be regarded as fanciful, but which, in all sincerity, I believe to be sober sense.
In this life of ours which, under modern conditions, is lived at so great a speed, there is a growing need for a periodical pause wherein the mind may adjust the relationship of the things that have been to those that are.
So rapidly are our impressions received and assimilated, so individually are they shaped or classified, that, in whatever direction our brains lead us, we are speedily carried beyond that province of thought which is common to us all.
A man who lives alone finds himself, in a few months, out of touch with the thought of his contemporaries; and, similarly, a man who lives in what is called an up-to-date manner soon finds himself grown unsympathetic to the sober movement of the world's slow round-about.
Now, the man who lives alone presently developes some of the recognised eccentricities of the recluse, which, on his return to society, cause him to be regarded as a maniac; and the man who lives entirely in the present cannot argue that the characteristics which he has developed are less maniacal because they are shared by his associates.
Rapidly he, too, has become eccentric; and just as the solitary man must needs come into the company of his fellows if he would retain a healthy mind, so the man who lives in the present must allow himself occasional intercourse with the past if he would keep his balance.
[Illustration: PL.
III.
Heavy gold earrings of Queen Tausert of Dynasty XX.
An example of the work of ancient Egyptian goldsmiths.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ Heraclitus, in a quotation preserved by Sextus Empiricus,[1] writes: "It behoves us to follow the common reason of the world; yet, though there is a common reason in the world, the majority live as though they possessed a wisdom peculiar each unto himself alone."
Every one of us who considers his mentality an important part of his constitution should endeavour to give himself ample opportunities of adjusting his mind to this "common reason" which is the silver thread that runs unbroken throughout history.
We should remember the yesterdays, that we may know what the pother of to-day is about; and we should foretell to-morrow not by to-day but by every day that has been.
[Footnote 1: Bywater: 'Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiæ,' p.
38.]
Forgetfulness is so common a human failing.
In our rapid transit through life we are so inclined to forget the past stages of the journey.
All things pass by and are swallowed up in a moment of time.
Experiences crowd upon us; the events of our life occur, are recorded by our busy brains, are digested, and are forgotten before the substance of which they were made has resolved into its elements.
We race through the years, and our progress is headlong through the days.
Everything, as it is done with, is swept up into the basket of the past, and the busy handmaids, unless we check them, toss the contents, good and bad, on to the great rubbish heap of the world's waste.
Loves, hates, gains, losses, all things upon which we do not lay fierce and strong hands, are gathered into nothingness, and, with a few exceptions, are utterly forgotten.
And we, too, will soon have passed, and our little brains which have forgotten so much will be forgotten.
We shall be throttled out of the world and pressed by the clumsy hands of Death into the mould of that same rubbish-hill of oblivion, unless there be a stronger hand to save us.
We shall be cast aside, and left behind by the hurrying crowd, unless there be those who will see to it that our soul, like that of John Brown, goes marching along.
There is only one human force stronger than death, and that force is History, By it the dead are made to live again: history is the salvation of the mortal man as religion is the salvation of his immortal life.
Sometimes, then, in our race from day to day it is necessary to stop the headlong progress of experience, and, for an hour, to look back upon the past.
Often, before we remember to direct our mind to it, that past is already blurred, and dim.
The picture is out of focus, and turning from it in sorrow instantly the flight of our time begins again.
This should not be.
"There is," says Emerson, "a relationship between the hours of our life and the centuries of time."
Let us give history and archæology its due attention; for thus not only shall we be rendering a service to all the dead, not only shall we be giving a reason and a usefulness to their lives, but we shall also lend to our own thought a balance which in no otherwise can be obtained, we shall adjust ourselves to the true movement of the world, and, above all, we shall learn how best to serve that nation to which it is our inestimable privilege to belong.
CHAPTER II.
THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE.
"History," says Sir J. Seeley, "lies before science as a mass of materials out of which a political doctrine can be deduced....
Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics....
Politics and history are only different aspects of the same study.
"[1] [Footnote 1: 'The Expansion of England.']
These words, spoken by a great historian, form the keynote of a book which has run into nearly twenty editions; and they may therefore be regarded as having some weight.
Yet what historian of old Egyptian affairs concerns himself with the present welfare and future prospects of the country, or how many statesmen in Egypt give close attention to a study of the past?
To the former the Egypt of modern times offers no scope for his erudition, and gives him no opportunity of making "discoveries," which is all he cares about.
To the latter, Egyptology appears to be but a pleasant amusement, the main value of which is the finding of pretty scarabs suitable for the necklaces of one's lady friends.
Neither the one nor the other would for a moment admit that Egyptology and Egyptian politics "are only different aspects of the same study."
And yet there can be no doubt that they are.
It will be argued that the historian of ancient Egypt deals with a period so extremely remote that it can have no bearing upon the conditions of modern times, when the inhabitants of Egypt have altered their language, religion, and customs, and the Mediterranean has ceased to be the active centre of the civilised world.
But it is to be remembered that the study of Egyptology carries one down to the Muhammedan invasion without much straining of the term, and merges then into the study of the Arabic period at so many points that no real termination can be given to the science; while the fact of the remoteness of its beginnings but serves to give it a greater value, since the vista before the eyes is wider.
It is my object in this chapter to show that the ancient history of Egypt has a real bearing on certain aspects of the polemics of the country.
I need not again touch upon the matters which were referred to on page 8 in order to demonstrate this fact.
I will take but one subject--namely, that of Egypt's foreign relations and her wars in other lands.
It will be best, for this purpose, to show first of all that the ancient and modern Egyptians are one and the same people; and, secondly, that the political conditions, broadly speaking, are much the same now as they have been throughout history.
Professor Elliot Smith, F.R.S., has shown clearly enough, from the study of bones of all ages, that the ancient and modern inhabitants of the Nile Valley are precisely the same people anthropologically; and this fact at once sets the matter upon an unique footing: for, with the possible exception of China, there is no nation in the world which can be proved thus to have retained its type for so long a period.
This one fact makes any parallel with Greece or Rome impossible.
The modern Greeks have not much in common, anthropologically, with the ancient Greeks, for the blood has become very mixed; the Italians are not the same as the old Romans; the English are the result of a comparatively recent conglomeration of types.
But in Egypt the subjects of archaic Pharaohs, it seems certain, were exactly similar to those of the modern Khedives, and new blood has never been introduced into the nation to an appreciable extent, not even by the Arabs.
Thus, if there is any importance in the bearing of history upon politics, we have in Egypt a better chance of appreciating it than we have in the case of any other country.
It is true that the language has altered, but this is not a matter of first-rate importance.
A Jew is not less typical because he speaks German, French, or English; and the cracking of skulls in Ireland is introduced as easily in English as it was in Erse.
The old language of the Egyptian hieroglyphs actually is not yet quite dead; for, in its Coptic form, it is still spoken by many Christian Egyptians, who will salute their friends in that tongue, or bid them good-morning or good-night.
Ancient Egyptian in this form is read in the Coptic churches; and God is called upon by that same name which was given to Amon and his colleagues.
Many old Egyptian words have crept into the Arabic language, and are now in common use in the country; while often the old words are confused with Arabic words of similar sound.
Thus, at Abydos, the archaic fortress is now called the _Shunet es Zebib_, which in Arabic would have the inexplicable meaning "the store-house of raisins"; but in the old Egyptian language its name, of similar sound, meant "the fortress of the Ibis-jars," several of these sacred birds having been buried there in jars, after the place had been disused as a military stronghold.
A large number of Egyptian towns still bear their hieroglyphical names: Aswan, (Kom) Ombo, Edfu, Esneh, Keft, Kus, Keneh, Dendereh, for example.
The real origin of these being now forgotten, some of them have been given false Arabic derivations, and stories have been invented to account for the peculiar significance of the words thus introduced.
The word _Silsileh_ in Arabic means "a chain," and a place in Upper Egypt which bears that name is now said to be so called because a certain king here stretched a chain across the river to interrupt the shipping; but in reality the name is derived from a mispronounced hieroglyphical word meaning "a boundary."
Similarly the town of Damanhur in Lower Egypt is said to be the place at which a great massacre took place, for in Arabic the name may be interpreted as meaning "rivers of blood," whereas actually the name in Ancient Egyptian means simply "the Town of Horus."
The archæological traveller in Egypt meets with instances of the continued use of the language of the Pharaohs at every turn; and there are few things that make the science of Egyptology more alive, or remove it further from the dusty atmosphere of the museum, than this hearing of the old words actually spoken by the modern inhabitants of the land.
The religion of Ancient Egypt, like those of Greece and Rome, was killed by Christianity, which largely gave place, at a later date, to Muhammedanism; and yet, in the hearts of the people there are still an extraordinary number of the old pagan beliefs.
I will mention a few instances, taking them at random from my memory.
In, ancient days the ithiphallic god Min was the patron of the crops, who watched over the growth of the grain.
In modern times a degenerate figure of this god Min, made of whitewashed wood and mud, may be seen standing, like a scarecrow, in the fields throughout Egypt.
When the sailors cross the Nile they may often be heard singing _Ya Amuni, Ya Amuni_, "O Amon, O Amon," as though calling upon that forgotten god for assistance.
At Aswan those who are about to travel far still go up to pray at the site of the travellers' shrine, which was dedicated to the gods of the cataracts.
At Thebes the women climb a certain hill to make their supplications at the now lost sanctuary of Meretsegert, the serpent-goddess of olden times.
A snake, the relic of the household goddess, is often kept as a kind of pet in the houses of the peasants.
Barren women still go to the ruined temples of the forsaken gods in the hope that there is virtue in the stones; and I myself have given permission to disappointed husbands to take their childless wives to these places, where they have kissed the stones and embraced the figures of the gods.
The hair of the jackal is burnt in the presence of dying people, even of the upper classes, unknowingly to avert the jackal-god Anubis, the Lord of Death.
A scarab representing the god of creation is sometimes placed in the bath of a young married woman to give virtue to the water.
A decoration in white paint over the doorways of certain houses in the south is a relic of the religious custom of placing a bucranium there to avert evil.
Certain temple-watchmen still call upon the spirits resident in the sanctuaries to depart before they will enter the building.
At Karnak a statue of the goddess Sekhmet is regarded with holy awe; and the goddess who once was said to have massacred mankind is even now thought to delight in slaughter.
The golden barque of Amon-Ra, which once floated upon the sacred lake of Karnak, is said to be seen sometimes by the natives at the present time, who have not yet forgotten its former existence.
In the processional festival of Abu'l Haggag, the patron saint of Luxor, whose mosque and tomb stand upon the ruins of the Temple of Amon, a boat is dragged over the ground in unwitting remembrance of the dragging of the boat of Amon in the processions of that god.
Similarly in the _Mouled el Nebi_ procession at Luxor, boats placed upon carts are drawn through the streets, just as one may see them in the ancient paintings and reliefs.
The patron gods of Kom Ombo, Horur and Sebek, yet remain in the memories of the peasants of the neighbourhood as the two brothers who lived in the temple in the days of old.
A robber entering a tomb will smash the eyes of the figures of the gods and deceased persons represented therein, that they may not observe his actions, just as did his ancestors four thousand years ago.
At Gurneh a farmer recently broke the arms of an ancient statue, which lay half-buried near his fields, because he believed that they had damaged his crops.
In the south of Egypt a pot of water is placed upon the graves of the dead, that their ghost, or _ka_, as it would have been called in old times, may not suffer from thirst; and the living will sometimes call upon the name of the dead, standing at night in the cemeteries.
The ancient magic of Egypt is still widely practised, and many of the formulæ used in modern times are familiar to the Egyptologist.
The Egyptian, indeed, lives in a world much influenced by magic and thickly populated by spirits, demons, and djins.
Educated men holding Government appointments, and dressing in the smartest European manner, will describe their miraculous adventures and their meetings with djins.
An Egyptian gentleman holding an important administrative post, told me the other day how his cousin was wont to change himself into a cat at night time, and to prowl about the town.
When a boy, his father noticed this peculiarity, and on one occasion chased and beat the cat, with the result that the boy's body next morning was found to be covered with stripes and bruises.
The uncle of my informant once read such strong language (magically) in a certain book that it began to tremble violently, and finally made a dash for it out of the window.
This same personage was once sitting beneath a palm-tree with a certain magician (who, I fear, was also a conjurer), when, happening to remark on the clusters of dates twenty feet or so above his head, his friend stretched his arms upwards and his hands were immediately filled with the fruit.
At another time this magician left his overcoat by mistake in a railway carriage, and only remembered it when the train was a mere speck upon the horizon; but, on the utterance of certain words, the coat immediately flew through the air back to him.
I mention these particular instances because they were told to me by educated persons; but amongst the peasants even more incredible stories are gravely accepted.
The Omdeh, or headman, of the village of Chaghb, not far from Luxor, submitted an official complaint to the police a short time ago against an _afrit_ or devil which was doing much mischief to him and his neighbours, snatching up oil-lamps and pouring the oil over the terrified villagers, throwing stones at passers-by, and so forth.
Spirits of the dead in like manner haunt the living, and often do them mischief.
At Luxor, lately, the ghost of a well-known robber persecuted his widow to such an extent that she finally went mad.
A remarkable parallel to this case, dating from Pharaonic days, may be mentioned.
It is the letter of a haunted widower to his dead wife, in which he asks her why she persecutes him, since he was always kind to her during her life, nursed her through illnesses, and never grieved her heart.
[1] [Footnote 1: Maspero: 'Études egyptologiques,' i.
145.]
These instances might be multiplied, but those which I have quoted will serve to show that the old gods are still alive, and that the famous magic of the Egyptians is not yet a thing of the past.
Let us now turn to the affairs of everyday life.
An archæological traveller in Egypt cannot fail to observe the similarity between old and modern customs as he rides through the villages and across the fields.
The houses, when not built upon the European plan, are surprisingly like those of ancient days.
The old cornice still survives, and the rows of dried palm stems, from which its form was originally derived, are still to be seen on the walls of gardens and courtyards.
The huts or shelters of dried corn-stalks, so often erected in the fields, are precisely the same as those used in prehistoric days; and the archaic bunches of corn-stalks smeared with mud, which gave their form to later stone columns, are set up to this day, though their stone posterity are now in ruins.
Looking through the doorway of one of these ancient houses, the traveller, perhaps, sees a woman grinding corn or kneading bread in exactly the same manner as her ancestress did in the days of the Pharaohs.
Only the other day a native asked to be allowed to purchase from us some of the ancient millstones lying in one of the Theban temples, in order to re-use them on his farm.
The traveller will notice, in some shady corner, the village barber shaving the heads and faces of his patrons, just as he is seen in the Theban tomb-paintings of thousands of years ago; and the small boys who scamper across the road will have just the same tufts of hair left for decoration on their shaven heads as had the boys of ancient Thebes and Memphis.
In another house, where a death has occurred, the mourning women, waving the same blue cloth which was the token of mourning in ancient days, will toss their arms about in gestures familiar to every student of ancient scenes.
Presently the funeral will issue forth, and the men will sing that solemn yet cheery tune which never fails to call to mind the far-famed _Maneros_--that song which Herodotus describes as a plaintive funeral dirge, and which Plutarch asserts was suited at the same time to festive occasions.
In some other house a marriage will be taking place, and the singers and pipers will, in like manner, recall the scenes upon the monuments.
The former have a favourite gesture--the placing of the hand behind the ear as they sing--which is frequently shown in ancient representations of such festive scenes.
The dancing girls, too, are here to be seen, their eyes and cheeks heavily painted, as were those of their ancestresses; and in their hands are the same tambourines as are carried by their class in Pharaonic paintings and reliefs.
The same date-wine which intoxicated the worshippers of the Egyptian Bacchus goes the round of this village company, and the same food stuff, the same small, flat loaves of bread, are eaten.
Passing out into the fields the traveller observes the ground raked into the small squares for irrigation which the prehistoric farmer made; and the plough is shaped as it always was.
The _shadoof_, or water-hoist, is patiently worked as it has been for thousands of years; while the cylindrical hoist employed in Lower Egypt was invented and introduced in Ptolemaic times.
Threshing and winnowing proceed in the manner represented on the monuments, and the methods of sowing and reaping have not changed.
Along the embanked roads, men, cattle, and donkeys file past against the sky-line, recalling the straight rows of such figures depicted so often upon the monuments.
Overhead there flies the vulture goddess Nekheb, and the hawk Horus hovers near by.
Across the road ahead slinks the jackal, Anubis; under one's feet crawls Khepera, the scarab; and there, under the sacred tree, sleeps the horned ram of Amon.
In all directions the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians pass to and fro, as though some old temple-inscription had come to life.
The letter _m_, the owl, goes hooting past.
The letter _a_, the eagle, circles overhead; the sign _ur_, the wagtail, flits at the roadside, chirping at the sign _rekh_, the peewit.
Along the road comes the sign _ab_, the frolicking calf; and near it is _ka_, the bull; while behind them walks the sign _fa_, a man carrying a basket on his head.
In all directions are the figures from which the ancients made their hieroglyphical script; and thus that wonderful old writing at once ceases to be mysterious, a thing of long ago, and one realises how natural a product of the country it was.
[Illustration: PL.
IV.
In the palm-groves near Sakkâra, Egypt.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._ In a word, ancient and modern Egyptians are fundamentally similar.
Nor is there any great difference to be observed between the country's relations with foreign powers in ancient days and those of the last hundred years.
As has been seen in the last chapter, Egypt was usually occupied by a foreign power, or ruled by a foreign dynasty, just as at the present day; and a foreign army was retained in the country during most of the later periods of ancient history.
There were always numerous foreigners settled in Egypt, and in Ptolemaic and Roman times Alexandria and Memphis swarmed with them.
The great powers of the civilised world were always watching Egypt as they do now, not always in a friendly attitude to that one of themselves which occupied the country; and the chief power with which Egypt was concerned in the time of the Ramesside Pharaohs inhabited Asia Minor and perhaps Turkey, just as in the middle ages and the last century.
Then, as in modern times, Egypt had much of her attention held by the Sudan, and constant expeditions had to be made into the regions above the cataracts.
Thus it cannot be argued that ancient history offers no precedent for modern affairs because all things have now changed.
Things have changed extremely little, broadly speaking; and general lines of conduct have the same significance at the present time as they had in the past.
I wish now to give an outline of Egypt's relationship to her most important neighbour, Syria, in order that the bearing of history upon modern political matters may be demonstrated; for it would seem that the records of the past make clear a tendency which is now somewhat overlooked.
I employ this subject simply as an example.
From the earliest historical times the Egyptians have endeavoured to hold Syria and Palestine as a vassal state.
One of the first Pharaohs with whom we meet in Egyptian history, King Zeser of Dynasty III., is known to have sent a fleet to the Lebanon in order to procure cedar wood, and there is some evidence to show that he held sway over this country.
For how many centuries previous to his reign the Pharaohs had overrun Syria we cannot now say, but there is no reason to suppose that Zeser initiated the aggressive policy of Egypt in Asia.
Sahura, a Pharaoh of Dynasty V., attacked the Phoenician coast with his fleet, and returned to the Nile Valley with a number of Syrian captives.
Pepi I. of the succeeding dynasty also attacked the coast-cities, and Pepi II.
had considerable intercourse with Asia.
Amenemhat I., of Dynasty XII., fought in Syria, and appears to have brought it once more under Egyptian sway.
Senusert I. seems to have controlled the country to some extent, for Egyptians lived there in some numbers.
Senusert III.
won a great victory over the Asiatics in Syria; and a stela and statue belonging to Egyptian officials have been found at Gezer, between Jerusalem and the sea.
After each of the above-mentioned wars it is to be presumed that the Egyptians held Syria for some years, though little is now known of the events of these far-off times.
During the Hyksos dynasties in Egypt there lived a Pharaoh named Khyan who was of Semitic extraction; and there is some reason to suppose that he ruled from Baghdad to the Sudan, he and his fathers having created a great Egyptian Empire by the aid of foreign troops.
Egypt's connection with Asia during the Hyksos rule is not clearly defined, but the very fact that these foreign kings were anxious to call themselves "Pharaohs" shows that Egypt dominated in the east end of the Mediterranean.
The Hyksos kings of Egypt very probably held Syria in fee, being possessed of both countries, but preferring to hold their court in Egypt.
We now come to the great Dynasty XVIII., and we learn more fully of the Egyptian invasions of Syria.
Ahmosis I. drove the Hyksos out of the Delta and pursued them through Judah.
His successor, Amenhotep I., appears to have seized all the country as far as the Euphrates; and Thutmosis I., his son, was able to boast that he ruled even unto that river.
Thutmosis III., Egypt's greatest Pharaoh, led invasion after invasion into Syria, so that his name for generations was a terror to the inhabitants.
From the Euphrates to the fourth cataract of the Nile the countries acknowledged him king, and the mighty Egyptian fleet patrolled the seas.
This Pharaoh fought no less than seventeen campaigns in Asia, and he left to his son the most powerful throne in the world.
Amenhotep II.
maintained this empire and quelled the revolts of the Asiatics with a strong hand.
Thutmosis IV., his son, conducted two expeditions into Syria; and the next king, Amenhotep III., was acknowledged throughout that country.
That extraordinary dreamer, Akhnaton, the succeeding Pharaoh, allowed the empire to pass from him owing to his religious objections to war; but, after his death, Tutankhamen once more led the Egyptian armies into Asia.
Horemheb also made a bid for Syria; and Seti I. recovered Palestine.
Rameses II., his son, penetrated to North Syria; but, having come into contact with the new power of the Hittites, he was unable to hold the country.
The new Pharaoh, Merenptah, seized Canaan and laid waste the land of Israel.
A few years later, Rameses III.
led his fleet and his army to the Syrian coast and defeated the Asiatics in a great sea-battle.
He failed to hold the country, however, and after his death Egypt remained impotent for two centuries.
Then, under Sheshonk I., of Dynasty XXII., a new attempt was made, and Jerusalem was captured.
Takeloth II., of the same dynasty, sent thither an Egyptian army to help in the overthrow of Shalmaneser II.
From this time onwards the power of Egypt had so much declined that the invasions into Syria of necessity became more rare.
Shabaka of Dynasty XXV.
concerned himself deeply with Asiatic politics, and attempted to bring about a state of affairs which would have given him the opportunity of seizing the country.
Pharaoh Necho, of the succeeding dynasty, invaded Palestine and advanced towards the Euphrates.
He recovered for Egypt her Syrian province, but it was speedily lost again.
Apries, a few years later, captured the Phoenician coast and invaded Palestine; but the country did not remain for long under Egyptian rule.
It is not necessary to record all the Syrian wars of the Dynasty of the Ptolemies.
Egypt and Asia were now closely connected, and at several periods during this phase of Egyptian history the Asiatic province came under the control of the Pharaohs.
The wars of Ptolemy I. in Syria were conducted on a large scale.
In the reign of Ptolemy III.
there were three campaigns, and I cannot refrain from quoting a contemporary record of the King's powers if only for the splendour of its wording:-"The great King Ptolemy ... having inherited from his father the royalty of Egypt and Libya and Syria and Phoenicia and Cyprus and Lycia and Caria and the Cyclades, set out on a campaign into Asia with infantry and cavalry forces, a naval armament and elephants, both Troglodyte and Ethiopic....
But having become master of all the country within the Euphrates, and of Cilicia and Pamphylia and Ionia and the Hellespont and Thrace, and of all the military forces and elephants in these countries, and having made the monarchs in all these places his subjects, he crossed the Euphrates, and having brought under him Mesopotamia and Babylonia and Susiana and Persis and Media, and all the rest as far as Bactriana ... he sent forces through the canals----" (Here the text breaks off.)
Later in this dynasty Ptolemy VII.
was crowned King of Syria, but the kingdom did not remain long in his power.
Then came the Romans, and for many years Syria and Egypt were sister provinces of one empire.
There is no necessity to record the close connection between the two countries in Arabic times.
For a large part of that era Egypt and Syria formed part of the same empire; and we constantly find Egyptians fighting in Asia.
Now, under Edh Dhahir Bebars of the Baharide Mameluke Dynasty, we see them helping to subject Syria and Armenia; now, under El-Mansur Kalaun, Damascus is captured; and now En Nasir Muhammed is found reigning from Tunis to Baghdad.
In the Circassian Mameluke Dynasty we see El Muayyad crushing a revolt in Syria, and El Ashraf Bursbey capturing King John of Cyprus and keeping his hand on Syria.
And so the tale continues, until, as a final picture, we see Ibrahim Pasha leading the Egyptians into Asia and crushing the Turks at Iconium.
Such is the long list of the wars waged by Egypt in Syria.
Are we to suppose that these continuous incursions into Asia have suddenly come to an end?
Are we to imagine that because there has been a respite for a hundred years the precedent of six thousand years has now to be disregarded?
By the recent reconquest of the Sudan it has been shown that the old political necessities still exist for Egypt in the south, impelling her to be mistress of the upper reaches of the Nile.
Is there now no longer any chance of her expanding in other directions should her hands become free?
The reader may answer with the argument that in early days England made invasion after invasion into France, yet ceased after a while to do so.
But this is no parallel.
England was impelled to war with France because the English monarchs believed themselves to be, by inheritance, kings of a large part of France; and when they ceased to believe this they ceased to make war.
The Pharaohs of Egypt never considered themselves to be kings of Syria, and never used any title suggesting an inherited sovereignty.
They merely held Syria as a buffer state, and claimed no more than an overlordship there.
Now Syria is still a buffer state, and the root of the trouble, therefore, still exists.
Though I must disclaim all knowledge of modern politics, I am quite sure that it is no meaningless phrase to say that England will most carefully hold this tendency in check prevent an incursion into Syria; but, with a strong controlling hand relaxed, it would require more than human strength to eradicate an Egyptian tendency--nay, a habit, of six thousand years' standing.
Try as she might, Egypt, as far as an historian can see, would not be able to prevent herself passing ultimately into Syria again.
How or when this would take place an Egyptologist cannot see, for he is accustomed to deal in long periods of time, and to consider the centuries as others might the decades.
It might not come for a hundred years or more: it might come suddenly quite by accident.
In 1907 there was a brief moment when Egypt appeared to be, quite unknowingly, on the verge of an attempted reconquest of her lost province.
There was a misunderstanding with Turkey regarding the delineation of the Syrio-Sinaitic frontier; and, immediately, the Egyptian Government took strong action and insisted that the question should be settled.
Had there been bloodshed the seat of hostilities would have been Syria; and supposing that Egypt had been victorious, she would have pushed the opposing forces over the North Syrian frontier into Asia Minor, and when peace was declared she would have found herself dictating terms from a point of vantage three hundred miles north of Jerusalem.
Can it be supposed that she would then have desired to abandon the reconquered territory?
However, matters were settled satisfactorily with the Porte, and the Egyptian Government, which had never realised this trend of events, and had absolutely no designs upon Syria, gave no further consideration to Asiatic affairs.
In the eyes of the modern onlookers the whole matter had developed from a series of chances; but in the view of the historian the moment of its occurrence was the only chance about it, the _fact_ of its occurrence being inevitable according to the time-proven rules of history.
The phrase "England in Egypt" has been given such prominence of late that a far more important phrase, "Egypt in Asia," has been overlooked.
Yet, whereas the former is a catch-word of barely thirty years' standing, the latter has been familiar at the east end of the Mediterranean for forty momentous centuries at the lowest computation, and rings in the ears of the Egyptologist all through the ages.
I need thus no justification for recalling it in these pages.
Now let us glance at Egypt's north-western frontier.
Behind the deserts which spread to the west of the Delta lies the oasis of Siwa; and from here there is a continuous line of communication with Tripoli and Tunis.
Thus, during the present winter (1910-11), the outbreak of cholera at Tripoli has necessitated the despatch of quarantine officials to the oasis in order to prevent the spread of the disease into Egypt.
Now, of late years we have heard much talk regarding the Senussi fraternity, a Muhammedan sect which is said to be prepared to declare a holy war and to descend upon Egypt.
In 1909 the Egyptian Mamur of Siwa was murdered, and it was freely stated that this act of violence was the beginning of the trouble.
I have no idea as to the real extent of the danger, nor do I know whether this bogie of the west, which is beginning to cause such anxiety in Egypt in certain classes, is but a creation of the imagination; but it will be interesting to notice the frequent occurrence of hostilities in this direction, since the history of Egypt's gateways is surely a study meet for her guardians.
When the curtain first rises upon archaic times, we find those far-off Pharaohs struggling with the Libyans who had penetrated into the Delta from Tripoli and elsewhere.
In early dynastic history they are the chief enemies of the Egyptians, and great armies have to be levied to drive them back through Siwa to their homes.
Again in Dynasty XII., Amenemhat I. had to despatch his son to drive these people out of Egypt; and at the beginning of Dynasty XVIII., Amenhotep I. was obliged once more to give them battle.
Seti I. of Dynasty XIX.
made war upon them, and repulsed their invasion into Egypt.
Rameses II.
had to face an alliance of Libyans, Lycians, and others, in the western Delta.
His son Merenptah waged a most desperate war with them in order to defend Egypt against their incursions, a war which has been described as the most perilous in Egyptian history; and it was only after a battle in which nine thousand of the enemy were slain that the war came to an end.
Rameses III., however, was again confronted with these persistent invaders, and only succeeded in checking them temporarily.
Presently the tables were turned, and Dynasty XXII., which reigned so gloriously in Egypt, was Libyan in origin.
No attempt was made thenceforth for many years to check the peaceful entrance of Libyans into Egypt, and soon that nation held a large part of the Delta.
Occasional mention is made of troubles upon the north-west frontier, but little more is heard of any serious invasions.
In Arabic times disturbances are not infrequent, and certain sovereigns, as for example, El Mansur Kalaun, were obliged to invade the enemy's country, thus extending Egypt's power as far as Tunis.
There is one lesson which may be learnt from the above facts--namely, that this frontier is somewhat exposed, and that incursions from North Africa by way of Siwa are historic possibilities.
If the Senussi invasion of Egypt is ever attempted it will not, at any rate, be without precedent.
When England entered Egypt in 1882 she found a nation without external interests, a country too impoverished and weak to think of aught else but its own sad condition.
The reviving of this much-bled, anæmic people, and the reorganisation of the Government, occupied the whole attention of the Anglo-Egyptian officials, and placed Egypt before their eyes in only this one aspect.
Egypt appeared to be but the Nile Valley and the Delta; and, in truth, that was, and still is, quite as much as the hard-worked officials could well administer.
The one task of the regeneration of Egypt was all absorbing, and the country came to be regarded as a little land wherein a concise, clearly-defined, and compact problem could be worked out.
[Illustration: PL.
V. The mummy of Sety I. of Dynasty XIX.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ Now, while this was most certainly the correct manner in which to face the question, and while Egypt has benefited enormously by this singleness of purpose in her officials, it was, historically, a false attitude.
Egypt is not a little country: Egypt is a crippled Empire.
Throughout her history she has been the powerful rival of the people of Asia Minor.
At one time she was mistress of the Sudan, Somaliland, Palestine, Syria, Libya, and Cyprus; and the Sicilians, Sardinians, Cretans, and even Greeks, stood in fear of the Pharaoh.
In Arabic times she held Tunis and Tripoli, and even in the last century she was the foremost Power at the east end of the Mediterranean.
Napoleon when he came to Egypt realised this very thoroughly, and openly aimed to make her once more a mighty empire.
But in 1882 such fine dreams were not to be considered: there was too much work to be done in the Nile Valley itself.
The Egyptian Empire was forgotten, and Egypt was regarded as permanently a little country.
The conditions which we found here we took to be permanent conditions.
They were not.
We arrived when the country was in a most unnatural state as regards its foreign relations; and we were obliged to regard that state as chronic.
This, though wise, was absolutely incorrect.
Egypt in the past never has been for more than a short period a single country; and all history goes to show that she will not always be single in the future.
With the temporary loss of the Syrian province Egypt's need for a navy ceased to exist; and the fact that she is really a naval power has now passed from men's memory.
Yet it was not much more than a century ago that Muhammed Ali fought a great naval battle with the Turks, and utterly defeated them.
In ancient history the Egyptian navy was the terror of the Mediterranean, and her ships policed the east coast of Africa.
In prehistoric times the Nile boats were built, it would seem, upon a seafaring plan: a fact that has led some scholars to suppose that the land was entered and colonised from across the waters.
We talk of Englishmen as being born to the sea, as having a natural and inherited tendency towards "business upon great waters"; and yet the English navy dates from the days of Queen Elizabeth.
It is true that the Plantagenet wars with France checked what was perhaps already a nautical bias, and that had it not been for the Norman conquest, England, perchance would have become a sea power at an earlier date.
But at best the tendency is only a thousand years old.
In Egypt it is seven or eight thousand years old at the lowest computation.
It makes one smile to think of Egypt as a naval power.
It is the business of the historian to refrain from smiling, and to remark only that, absurd as it may sound, Egypt's future is largely upon the water as her past has been.
It must be remembered that she was fighting great battles in huge warships three or four hundred feet in length at a time when Britons were paddling about in canoes.
One of the ships built by the Pharaoh Ptolemy Philopator was four hundred and twenty feet long, and had several banks of oars.
It was rowed by four thousand sailors, while four hundred others managed the sails.
Three thousand soldiers were also carried upon its decks.
The royal dahabiyeh which this Pharaoh used upon the Nile was three hundred and thirty feet long, and was fitted with state rooms and private rooms of considerable size.
Another vessel contained, besides the ordinary cabins, large bath-rooms, a library, and an astronomical observatory.
It had eight towers, in which there were machines capable of hurling stones weighing three hundred pounds or more, and arrows eighteen feet in length.
These huge vessels were built some two centuries before Cæsar landed in Britain.
[1] [Footnote 1: Athenæus, v.
8.]
In conclusion, then, it must be repeated that the present Nile-centred policy in Egypt, though infinitely best for the country at this juncture, is an artificial one, unnatural to the nation except as a passing phase; and what may be called the Imperial policy is absolutely certain to take its place in time, although the Anglo-Egyptian Government, so long as it exists, will do all in its power to check it.
History tells us over and over again that Syria is the natural dependant of Egypt, fought for or bargained for with the neighbouring countries to the north; that the Sudan is likewise a natural vassal which from time to time revolts and has to be reconquered; and that Egypt's most exposed frontier lies on the north-west.
In conquering the Sudan at the end of the nineteenth century the Egyptians were but fulfilling their destiny: it was a mere accident that their arms were directed against a Mahdi.
In discussing seriously the situation in the western oases, they are working upon the precise rules laid down by history.
And if their attention is not turned in the far future to Syria, they will be defying rules even more precise, and, in the opinion of those who have the whole course of Egyptian history spread before them, will but be kicking against the pricks.
Here surely we have an example of the value of the study of a nation's history, which is not more nor less than a study of its political tendencies.
Speaking of the relationship of history to politics, Sir J. Seeley wrote: "I tell you that when you study English history, you study not the past of England only but her future.
It is the welfare of your country, it is your whole interest as citizens, that is in question when you study history."
These words hold good when we deal with Egyptian history, and it is our business to learn the political lessons which the Egyptologist can teach us, rather than to listen to his dissertations upon scarabs and blue glaze.
Like the astronomers of old, the Egyptologist studies, as it were, the stars, and reads the future in them; but it is not the fashion for kings to wait upon his pronouncements any more!
Indeed he reckons in such very long periods of time, and makes startling statements about events which probably will not occur for very many years to come, that the statesman, intent upon his task, has some reason to declare that the study of past ages does not assist him to deal with urgent affairs.
Nevertheless, in all seriousness, the Egyptologist's study is to be considered as but another aspect of statecraft, and he fails in his labours if he does not make this his point of view.
In his arrogant manner the Egyptologist will remark that modern politics are of too fleeting a nature to interest him.
In answer, I would tell him that if he sits studying his papyri and his mummies without regard for the fact that he is dealing with a nation still alive, still contributing its strength to spin the wheel of the world around, then are his labours worthless and his brains misused.
I would tell him that if his work is paid for, then is he a robber if he gives no return in information which will be of practical service to Egypt in some way or another.
The Egyptian Government spends enormous sums each year upon the preservation of the magnificent relics of bygone ages--relics for which, I regret to say, the Egyptians themselves care extremely little.
Is this money spent, then, to amuse the tourist in the land, or simply to fulfil obligations to ethical susceptibilities?
No; there is but one justification for this very necessary expenditure of public money--namely, that these relics are regarded, so to speak, as the school-books of the nation, which range over a series of subjects from pottery-making to politics, from stone-cutting to statecraft.
The future of Egypt may be read upon the walls of her ancient temples and tombs.
Let the Egyptologist never forget, in the interest and excitement of his discoveries, what is the real object of his work.
CHAPTER III.
THE NECESSITY OF ARCHÆOLOGY TO THE GAIETY OF THE WORLD.
When a great man puts a period to his existence upon earth by dying, he is carefully buried in a tomb, and a monument is set up to his glory in the neighbouring church.
He may then be said to begin his second life, his life in the memory of the chronicler and historian.
After the lapse of an æon or two the works of the historian, and perchance the tomb itself, are rediscovered; and the great man begins his third life, now as a subject of discussion and controversy amongst archæologists in the pages of a scientific journal.
It may be supposed that the spirit of the great man, not a little pleased with its second life, has an extreme distaste for his third.
There is a dead atmosphere about it which sets him yawning as only his grave yawned before.
The charm has been taken from his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them.
He must feel towards the archæologist much as a young man feels towards his cold-blooded parent by whom his love affair has just been found out.
The public, too, if by chance it comes upon this archæological journal, finds the discussion nothing more than a mental gymnastic, which, as the reader drops off to sleep, gives him the impression that the writer is a man of profound brain capacity, but, like the remains of the great man of olden times, as dry as dust.
There is one thing, however, which has been overlooked.
This scientific journal does not contain the ultimate results of the archæologist's researches.
It contains the researches themselves.
The public, so to speak, has been listening to the pianist playing his morning scales, has been watching the artist mixing his colours, has been examining the unshaped block of marble and the chisels in the sculptor's studio.
It must be confessed, of course, that the archæologist has so enjoyed his researches that often the ultimate result has been overlooked by him.
In the case of Egyptian archæology, for example, there are only two Egyptologists who have ever set themselves to write a readable history,[1] whereas the number of books which record the facts of the science is legion.
[Footnote 1: Professor J.H.
Breasted and Sir Gaston Maspero.]
The archæologist not infrequently lives, for a large part of his time, in a museum, a somewhat dismal place.
He is surrounded by rotting tapestries, decaying bones, crumbling stones, and rusted or corroded objects.
His indoor work has paled his cheek, and his muscles are not like iron bands.
He stands, often, in the contiguity to an ancient broadsword most fitted to demonstrate the fact that he could never use it.
He would probably be dismissed his curatorship were he to tell of any dreams which might run in his head--dreams of the time when those tapestries hung upon the walls of barons' banquet-halls, or when those stones rose high above the streets of Camelot.
Moreover, those who make researches independently must needs contribute their results to scientific journals, written in the jargon of the learned.
I came across a now forgotten journal, a short time ago, in which an English gentleman, believing that he had made a discovery in the province of Egyptian hieroglyphs, announced it in ancient Greek.
There would be no supply of such pedantic swagger were there not a demand for it.
Small wonder, then, that the archæologist is often represented as partaking somewhat of the quality of the dust amidst which he works.
It is not necessary here to discuss whether this estimate is just or not: I wish only to point out its paradoxical nature.
More than any other science, archæology might be expected to supply its exponents with stuff that, like old wine, would fire the blood and stimulate the senses.
The stirring events of the Past must often be reconstructed by the archæologist with such precision that his prejudices are aroused, and his sympathies are so enlisted as to set him fighting with a will under this banner or under that.
The noise of the hardy strife of young nations is not yet silenced for him, nor have the flags and the pennants faded from sight.
He has knowledge of the state secrets of kings, and, all along the line, is an intimate spectator of the crowded pageant of history.
The caravan-masters of the elder days, the admirals of the "great green sea" the captains of archers, have related their adventures to him; and he might repeat to you their stories.
Indeed, he has such a tale to tell that, looking at it in this light, one might expect his listeners all to be good fighting men and noble women.
It might be supposed that the archæologist would gather around him only men who have pleasure in the road that leads over the hills, and women who have known the delight of the open.
One has heard so often of the "brave days of old" that the archæologist might well be expected to have his head stuffed with brave tales and little else.
His range, however, may be wider than this.
To him, perhaps, it has been given to listen to the voice of the ancient poet, heard as a far-off whisper; to breathe in forgotten gardens the perfume of long dead flowers; to contemplate the love of women whose beauty is all perished in the dust; to hearken to the sound of the harp and the sistra, to be the possessor of the riches of historical romance.
Dim armies have battled around him for the love of Helen; shadowy captains of sea-going ships have sung to him through the storm the song of the sweethearts left behind them; he has feasted with sultans, and kings' goblets have been held to his lips; he has watched Uriah the Hittite sent to the forefront of the battle.
Thus, were he to offer a story, one might now suppose that there would gather around him, not the men of muscle, but a throng of sallow listeners, as improperly expectant as were those who hearkened under the moon to the narrations of Boccaccio, or, in old Baghdad, gave ear to the tales of the thousand and one nights.
One might suppose that his audience would be drawn from those classes most fondly addicted to pleasure, or most nearly representative, in their land and in their time, of the light-hearted and not unwanton races of whom he had to tell.
For his story might be expected to be one wherein wine and women and song found countenance.
Even were he to tell of ancient tragedies and old sorrows, he would still make his appeal, one might suppose, to gallants and their mistresses, to sporting men and women of fashion, just as, in the mournful song of Rosabelle, Sir Walter Scott is able to address himself to the "ladies gay," or Coleridge in his sad "Ballad of the Dark Ladie" to "fair maids."
Who could better arrest the attention of the coxcomb than the archæologist who has knowledge of silks and scents now lost to the living world?
To the gourmet who could more appeal than the archæologist who has made abundant acquaintance with the forgotten dishes of the East?
Who could so surely thrill the senses of the courtesan than the archæologist who can relate that which was whispered by Anthony in the ear of Cleopatra?
To the gambler who could be more enticing than the archæologist who has seen kings play at dice for their kingdoms?
The imaginative, truly, might well collect the most highly disreputable audience to listen to the tales of the archæologist.
But no, these are not the people who are anxious to catch the pearls which drop from his mouth.
Do statesmen and diplomatists, then, listen to him who can unravel for them the policies of the Past?
Do business men hasten from Threadneedle Street and Wall Street to sit at his feet, that they may have instilled into them a little of the romance of ancient money?
I fear not.
Come with me to some provincial town, where this day Professor Blank is to deliver one of his archæological lectures at the Town Hall.
We are met at the door by the secretary of the local archæological society: a melancholy lady in green plush, who suffers from St Vitus's dance.
Gloomily we enter the hall and silently accept the seats which are indicated to us by an unfortunate gentleman with a club-foot.
In front of us an elderly female with short hair is chatting to a very plain young woman draped like a lay figure.
On the right an emaciated man with a very bad cough shuffles on his chair; on the left two old grey-beards grumble to one another about the weather, a subject which leads up to the familiar "Mine catches me in the small of the back"; while behind us the inevitable curate, of whose appearance it would be trite to speak, describes to an astonished old lady the recent discovery of the pelvis of a mastodon.
The professor and the aged chairman step on to the platform; and, amidst the profoundest gloom, the latter rises to pronounce the prefatory rigmarole.
"Archæology," he says, in a voice of brass, "is a science which bars its doors to all but the most erudite; for, to the layman who has not been vouchsafed the opportunity of studying the dusty volumes of the learned, the bones of the dead will not reveal their secrets, nor will the crumbling pediments of naos and cenotaph, the obliterated tombstones, or the worm-eaten parchments, tell us their story.
To-night, however, we are privileged; for Professor Blank will open the doors for us that we may gaze for a moment upon that solemn charnel-house of the Past in which he has sat for so many long hours of inductive meditation."
And the professor by his side, whose head, perhaps, was filled with the martial music of the long-lost hosts of the Lord, or before whose eyes there swayed the entrancing forms of the dancing-girls of Babylon, stares horrified from chairman to audience.
He sees crabbed old men and barren old women before him, afflicted youths and fatuous maidens; and he realises at once that the golden keys which he possesses to the gates of the treasury of the jewelled Past will not open the doors of that charnel-house which they desire to be shown.
The scent of the king's roses fades from his nostrils, the Egyptian music which throbbed in his ears is hushed, the glorious illumination of the Palace of a Thousand Columns is extinguished; and in the gathering gloom we leave him fumbling with a rusty key at the mildewed door of the Place of Bones.
Why is it, one asks, that archæology is a thing so misunderstood?
Can it be that both lecturer and audience have crushed down that which was in reality uppermost in their minds: that a shy search for romance has led these people to the Town Hall?
Or perchance archæology has become to them something not unlike a vice, and to listen to an archæological lecture is their remaining chance of being naughty.
It may be that, having one foot in the grave, they take pleasure in kicking the moss from the surrounding tombstones with the other; or that, being denied, for one reason or another, the jovial society of the living, like Robert Southey's "Scholar" their hopes are with the dead.
[Illustration: PL.
VI.
A relief upon the side of the sarcophagus of one of the wives of King Mentuhotep III., discovered at Dêr el Bahri (Thebes).
The royal lady is taking sweet-smelling ointment from an alabaster vase.
A handmaiden keeps the flies away with a bird's-wing fan.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ Be the explanation what it may, the fact is indisputable that archæology is patronised by those who know not its real meaning.
A man has no more right to think of the people of old as dust and dead bones than he has to think of his contemporaries as lumps of meat.
The true archæologist does not take pleasure in skeletons as skeletons, for his whole effort is to cover them decently with flesh and skin once more, and to put some thoughts back into the empty skulls.
He sets himself to hide again the things which he would not intentionally lay bare.
Nor does he delight in ruined buildings: rather he deplores that they are ruined.
Coleridge wrote like the true archæologist when he composed that most magical poem "Khubla Khan"-"In Xanadu did Khubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."
And those who would have the pleasure-domes of the gorgeous Past reconstructed for them must turn to the archæologist; those who would see the damsel with the dulcimer in the gardens of Xanadu must ask of him the secret, and of none other.
It is true that, before he can refashion the dome or the damsel, he will have to grub his way through old refuse heaps till he shall lay bare the ruins of the walls and expose the bones of the lady.
But this is the "dirty work"; and the mistake which is made lies here: that this preliminary dirty work is confused with the final clean result.
An artist will sometimes build up his picture of Venus from a skeleton bought from an old Jew round the corner; and the smooth white paper which he uses will have been made from putrid rags and bones.
Amongst painters themselves these facts are not hidden, but by the public they are most carefully obscured.
In the case of archæology, however, the tedious details of construction are so placed in the foreground that the final picture is hardly noticed at all.
As well might one go to Rheims to see men fly, and be shown nothing else but screws and nuts, steel rods and cog-wheels.
Originally the fault, perhaps, lay with the archæologist; now it lies both with him and with the public.
The public has learnt to ask to be shown the works, and the archæologist is often so proud of them that he forgets to mention the purpose of the machine.
A Roman statue of bronze, let us suppose, is discovered in the Thames valley.
It is so corroded and eaten away that only an expert could recognise that it represents a reclining goddess.
In this condition it is placed in the museum, and a photograph of it is published in 'The Graphic.'
Those who come to look at it in its glass case think it is a bunch of grapes, or possibly a monkey: those who see its photograph say that it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone or a fish in convulsions.
The archæologist alone holds its secret, and only he can see it as it was.
He alone can know the mind of the artist who made it, or interpret the full meaning of the conception.
It might have been expected, then, that the public would demand, and the archæologist delightedly furnish, a model of the figure as near to the original as possible; or, failing that, a restoration in drawing, or even a worded description of its original beauty.
But no: the public, if it wants anything, wants to see the shapeless object in all its corrosion; and the archæologist forgets that it is blind to aught else but that corrosion.
One of the main duties of the archæologist is thus lost sight of: his duty as Interpreter and Remembrancer of the Past.
All the riches of olden times, all the majesty, all the power, are the inheritance of the present day; and the archæologist is the recorder of this fortune.
He must deal in dead bones only so far as the keeper of a financial fortune must deal in dry documents.
Behind those documents glitters the gold, and behind those bones shines the wonder of the things that were.
And when an object once beautiful has by age become unsightly, one might suppose that he would wish to show it to none save his colleagues or the reasonably curious layman.
When a man makes the statement that his grandmother, now in her ninety-ninth year, was once a beautiful woman, he does not go and find her to prove his words and bring her tottering into the room: he shows a picture of her as she was; or, if he cannot find one, he describes what good evidence tells him was her probable appearance.
In allowing his controlled and sober imagination thus to perform its natural functions, though it would never do to tell his grandmother so, he becomes an archæologist, a remembrancer of the Past.
In the case of archæology, however, the public does not permit itself so to be convinced.
In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford excellent facsimile electrotypes of early Greek weapons are exhibited; and these have far more value in bringing the Past before us than the actual weapons of that period, corroded and broken, would have.
But the visitor says, "These are shams," and passes on.
It will be seen, then, that the business of archæology is often misunderstood both by archæologists and by the public; and that there is really no reason to believe, with Thomas Earle, that the real antiquarian loves a thing the better for that it is rotten and stinketh.
That the impression has gone about is his own fault, for he has exposed too much to view the mechanism of his work; but it is also the fault of the public for not asking of him a picture of things as they were.
Man is by nature a creature of the present.
It is only by an effort that he can consider the future, it is often quite impossible for him to give any heed at all to the Past.
The days of old are so blurred and remote that it seems right to him that any relic from them should, by the maltreatment of Time, be unrecognisable.
The finding of an old sword, half-eaten by rust, will only please him in so far as it shows him once more by its sad condition the great gap between those days and these, and convinces him again of the sole importance of the present.
The archæologist, he will tell you, is a fool if he expects him to be interested in a wretched old bit of scrap-iron.
He is right.
It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to find fascination in the nuts and screws.
The true archæologist would hide that corroded weapon in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it.
For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; it is only the Present that counts.
That is the real reason why he is an archæologist.
He has turned to the Past because he is in love with the Present.
He, more than any man, worships at the altar of the goddess of To-day; and he is so desirous of extending her dominion that he has adventured, like a crusader, into the lands of the Past in order to subject them to her.
Adoring the Now, he would resent the publicity of anything which so obviously suggested the Then as a rust-eaten old blade.
His whole business is to hide the gap between Yesterday and To-day; and, unless a man is initiate, he would have him either see the perfect sword as it was when it sought the foeman's bowels, or see nothing.
The Present is too small for him; and it is therefore that he calls so insistently to the Past to come forth from the darkness to augment it.
The ordinary man lives in the Present, and he will tell one that the archæologist lives in the Past.
This is not so.
The layman, in the manner of the Little Englander, lives in a small and confined Present; but the archæologist, like a true Imperialist, ranges through all time, and calls it not the Past but the Greater Present.
The archæologist is not, or ought not to be, lacking in vivacity.
One might say that he is so sensible to the charms of society that, finding his companions too few in number, he has drawn the olden times to him to search them for jovial men and agreeable women.
It might be added that he has so laughed at jest and joke that, fearing lest the funds of humour run dry, he has gathered the laughter of all the years to his enrichment.
Certainly he has so delighted in noble adventure and stirring action that he finds his newspaper insufficient to his needs, and fetches to his aid the tales of old heroes.
In fact, the archæologist is so enamoured of life that he would raise all the dead from their graves.
He will not have it that the men of old are dust: he would bring them to him to share with him the sunlight which he finds so precious.
He is so much an enemy of Death and Decay that he would rob them of their harvest; and, for every life the foe has claimed, he would raise up, if he could, a memory that would continue to live.
The meaning of the heading which has been given to this chapter is now becoming clear, and the direction of the argument is already apparent.
So far it has been my purpose to show that the archæologist is not a rag-and-bone man, though the public generally thinks he is, and he often thinks he is himself.
The attempt has been made to suggest that archæology ought not to consist in sitting in a charnel-house amongst the dead, but rather in ignoring that place and taking the bones into the light of day, decently clad in flesh and finery.
It has now to be shown in what manner this parading of the Past is needful to the gaiety of the Present.
Amongst cultured people whose social position makes it difficult for them to dance in circles on the grass in order to express or to stimulate their gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not permit them to sing a merry song of sixpence as they trip down the streets, there is some danger of the fire of merriment dying for want of fuel.
Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has been encouraged, so that the mind at least, if not the body, may skip about and clap its hands.
A portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading his 'Punch' in the club, is, after all, giving play to precisely those same humours which in ancient days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to kiss the girls or to perform any other merry joke.
It is necessary, therefore, ever to enlarge the stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing, if thoughts are to be kept young and eyes bright in this age of restraint.
What would Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster it?
What would the Christmas numbers do without the pictures of our great-grandparents' coaches snow-bound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth century, of jesters at the courts of the barons?
What should we do without the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' the 'Compleat Angler,' 'Pepys' Diary,' and all the rest of the ancient books?
And, going back a few centuries, what an amount we should miss had we not 'Æsop's Fables,' the 'Odyssey,' the tales of the Trojan War, and so on.
It is from the archæologist that one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of our equipment, so archæology, which looks for more, is necessary to our gaiety.
[Illustration: PL.
VII.
Lady rouging herself: she holds a mirror and rouge-pot.
--FROM A PAPYRUS, TURIN.]
[Illustration: Dancing girl turning a back somersault.--NEW KINGDOM.]
In order to keep his intellect undulled by the routine of his dreary work, Matthew Arnold was wont to write a few lines of poetry each day.
Poetry, like music and song, is an effective dispeller of care; and those who find Omar Khayyam or "In Memoriam" incapable of removing the of burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the "Owl and the Pussy-cat," or the Bab Ballads.
In some form or other verse and song are closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has its interests and its charm.
"She gazes at the stars above: I would I were the skies, That I might gaze upon my love With such a thousand eyes!"
That is probably from the Greek of Plato, a writer who is not much read by the public at large, and whose works are the legitimate property of the antiquarian.
It suffices to show that it is not only to the moderns that we have to look for dainty verse that is conducive to a light heart.
The following lines are from the ancient Egyptian:-"While in my room I lie all day In pain that will not pass away, The neighbours come and go.
Ah, if with them my darling came The doctors would be put to shame: _She_ understands my woe."
Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely; and the reader will admit that there is as much of a lilt about those which are here quoted as there is about the majority of the ditties which he has hummed to himself in his hour of contentment.
Here is Philodemus' description of his mistress's charms:-"My lady-love is small and brown; My lady's skin is soft as down; Her hair like parseley twists and turns; Her voice with magic passion burns...." And here is an ancient Egyptian's description of not very dissimilar phenomena:-"A damsel sweet unto the sight, A maid of whom no like there is; Black are her tresses as the night, And blacker than the blackberries."
Does not the archæologist perform a service to his contemporaries by searching out such rhymes and delving for more?
They bring with them, moreover, so subtle a suggestion of bygone romance, they are backed by so fair a scene of Athenian luxury or Theban splendour, that they possess a charm not often felt in modern verse.
If it is argued that there is no need to increase the present supply of such ditties, since they are really quite unessential to our gaiety, the answer may be given that no nation and no period has ever found them unessential; and a light heart has been expressed in this manner since man came down from the trees.
Let us turn now to another consideration.
For a man to be light of heart he must have confidence in humanity.
He cannot greet the morn with a smiling countenance if he believes that he and his fellows are slipping down the broad path which leads to destruction.
The archæologist never despairs of mankind; for he has seen nations rise and fall till he is almost giddy, but he knows that there has never been a general deterioration.
He realises that though a great nation may suffer defeat and annihilation, it is possible for it to go down in such a thunder that the talk of it stimulates other nations for all time.
He sees, if any man can, that all things work together for happiness.
He has observed the cycle of events, the good years and the bad; and in an evil time he is comforted by the knowledge that the good will presently roll round again.
Thus the lesson which he can teach is a very real necessity to that contentment of mind which lies at the root of all gaiety.
Again, a man cannot be permanently happy unless he has a just sense of proportion.
He who is too big for his boots must needs limp; and he who has a swollen head is in perpetual discomfort.
The history of the lives of men, the history of the nations, gives one a fairer sense of proportion than does almost any other study.
In the great company of the men of old he cannot fail to assess his true value: if he has any conceit there is a greater than he to snub him; if he has a poor opinion of his powers there is many a fool with whom to contrast himself favourably.
If he would risk his fortune on the spinning of a coin, being aware of the prevalence of his good-luck, archæology will tell him that the best luck will change; or if, when in sore straits, he asks whether ever a man was so unlucky, archæology will answer him that many millions of men have been more unfavoured than he.
Archæology provides a precedent for almost every event or occurrence where modern inventions are not involved; and, in this manner, one may reckon their value and determine their trend.
Thus many of the small worries which cause so leaden a weight to lie upon the heart and mind are by the archæologist ignored; and many of the larger calamities by him are met with serenity.
But not only does the archæologist learn to estimate himself and his actions: he learns also to see the relationship in which his life stands to the course of Time.
Without archæology a man may be disturbed lest the world be about to come to an end: after a study of history he knows that it has only just begun; and that gaiety which is said to have obtained "when the world was young" is to him, therefore, a present condition.
By studying the ages the archæologist learns to reckon in units of a thousand years; and it is only then that that little unit of threescore-and-ten falls into its proper proportion.
"A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone," says the hymn, but it is only the archæologist who knows the meaning of the words; and it is only he who can explain that great discrepancy in the Christian faith between the statement "Behold, I come quickly" and the actual fact.
A man who knows where he is in regard to his fellows, and realises where he stands in regard to Time, has learnt a lesson of archæology which is as necessary to his peace of mind as his peace of mind is necessary to his gaiety.
It is not needful, however, to continue to point out the many ways in which archæology may be shown to be necessary to happiness.
The reader will have comprehended the trend of the argument, and, if he be in sympathy with it, he will not be unwilling to develop the theme for himself.
Only one point, therefore, need here be taken up.
It has been reserved to the end of this chapter, for, by its nature, it closes all arguments.
I refer to Death.
Death, as we watch it around us, is the black menace of the heavens which darkens every man's day; Death, coming to our neighbour, puts a period to our merry-making; Death, seen close beside us, calls a halt in our march of pleasure.
But let those who would wrest her victory from the grave turn to a study of the Past, where all is dead yet still lives, and they will find that the horror of life's cessation is materially lessened.
To those who are familiar with the course of history, Death seems, to some extent, but the happy solution of the dilemma of life.
So many men have welcomed its coming that one begins to feel that it cannot be so very terrible.
Of the death of a certain Pharaoh an ancient Egyptian wrote: "He goes to heaven like the hawks, and his feathers are like those of the geese; he rushes at heaven like a crane, he kisses heaven like the falcon, he leaps to heaven like the locust"; and we who read these words can feel that to rush eagerly at heaven like the crane would be a mighty fine ending of the pother.
Archæology, and especially Egyptology, in this respect is a bulwark to those who find the faith of their fathers wavering; for, after much study, the triumphant assertion which is so often found in Egyptian tombs--"Thou dost not come dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest living"--begins to take hold of the imagination.
Death has been the parent of so much goodness, dying men have cut such a dash, that one looks at it with an awakening interest.
Even if the sense of the misfortune of death is uppermost in an archæologist's mind, he may find not a little comfort in having before him the example of so many good, men, who, in their hour, have faced that great calamity with squared shoulders.
"When Death comes," says a certain sage of ancient Egypt, "it seizes the babe that is on the breast of its mother as well as he that has become an old man.
When thy messenger comes to carry thee away, be thou found by him _ready_."
Why, here is our chance; here is the opportunity for that flourish which modesty, throughout our life, has forbidden to us!
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, when the time came for him to lay his head upon the block, bade the executioner smite it off with three strokes as a courtesy to the Holy Trinity.
King Charles the Second, as he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those who stood around him for "being an unconscionable time adying."
The story is familiar of Napoleon's aide-de-camp, who, when he had been asked whether he were wounded, replied, "Not wounded: killed," and thereupon expired.
The Past is full of such incidents; and so inspiring are they that Death comes to be regarded as a most stirring adventure.
The archæologist, too, better than any other, knows the vastness of the dead men's majority; and if, like the ancients, he believes in the Elysian fields, where no death is and decay is unknown, he alone will realise the excellent nature of the company into which he will there be introduced.
There is, however, far more living going on in the world than dying; and there is more happiness (thanks be!)
than sorrow.
Thus the archæologist has a great deal more of pleasure than of pain to give to us for our enrichment.
The reader will here enter an objection.
He will say: "This may be true of archæology in general, but in the case of Egyptology, with which we are here mostly concerned, he surely has to deal with a sad and solemn people."
The answer will be found in the next chapter.
No nation in the world's history has been so gay, so light-hearted as the ancient Egyptians; and Egyptology furnishes, perhaps, the most convincing proof that archæology is, or should be, a merry science, very necessary to the gaiety of the world.
I defy a man suffering from his liver to understand the old Egyptians; I defy a man who does not appreciate the pleasure of life to make anything of them.
Egyptian archæology presents a pageant of such brilliancy that the archæologist is often carried along by it as in a dream, down the valley and over the hills, till, Past blending with Present, and Present with Future, he finds himself led to a kind of Island of the Blest, where death is forgotten and only the joy of life, and life's good deeds, still remain; where pleasure-domes, and all the ancient "miracles of rare device," rise into the air from above the flowers; and where the damsel with the dulcimer beside the running stream sings to him of Mount Abora and of the old heroes of the elder days.
If the Egyptologist or the archæologist could revive within him one-hundredth part of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable goodness, of much that is to be found in his province, one would have to cry, like Coleridge-"Beware, beware!
Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."
PART II.
STUDIES IN THE TREASURY.
"And I could tell thee stories that would make thee laugh at all thy trouble, and take thee to a land of which thou hast never even dreamed.
Where the trees have ever blossoms, and are noisy with the humming of intoxicated bees.
Where by day the suns are never burning, and by night the moonstones ooze with nectar in the rays of the camphor-laden moon.
Where the blue lakes are filled with rows of silver swans, and where, on steps of lapis lazuli, the peacocks dance in agitation at the murmur of the thunder in the hills.
Where the lightning flashes without harming, to light the way to women stealing in the darkness to meetings with their lovers, and the rainbow hangs for ever like an opal on the dark blue curtain of the cloud.
Where, on the moonlit roofs of crystal palaces, pairs of lovers laugh at the reflection of each other's love-sick faces in goblets of red wine, breathing, as they drink, air heavy with the fragrance of the sandal, wafted on the breezes from the mountain of the south.
Where they play and pelt each other with emeralds and rubies, fetched at the churning of the ocean from the bottom of the sea.
Where rivers, whose sands are always golden, flow slowly past long lines of silent cranes that hunt for silver fishes in the rushes on the banks.
Where men are true, and maidens love for ever, and the lotus never fades."
F.W.
BAIN: _A Heifer of the Dawn_.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
A certain school geography book, now out of date, condenses its remarks upon the character of our Gallic cousins into the following pregnant sentence: "The French are a gay and frivolous nation, fond of dancing and red wine."
The description would so nearly apply to the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, that its adoption here as a text to this chapter cannot be said to be extravagant.
The unbiassed inquirer into the affairs of ancient Egypt must discover ultimately, and perhaps to his regret, that the dwellers on the Nile were a "gay and frivolous people," festive, light-hearted, and mirthful, "fond of dancing and red wine," and pledged to all that is brilliant in life.
There are very many people, naturally, who hold to those views which their forefathers held before them, and picture the Egyptians as a sombre, gloomy people; replete with thoughts of Death and of the more melancholy aspect of religion; burdened with the menacing presence of a multitude of horrible gods and demons, whose priests demanded the erection of vast temples for their appeasement; having little joy of this life, and much uneasy conjecture about the next; making entertainment in solemn gatherings and ponderous feasts; and holding merriment in holy contempt.
Of the five startling classes into which the dictionary divides the human temperament, namely, the bilious or choleric, the phlegmatic, the sanguine, the melancholic, and the nervous, it is probable that the first, the second, and the fourth would be those assigned to the ancient Egyptians by these people.
This view is so entirely false that one will be forgiven if, in the attempt to dissolve it, the gaiety of the race is thrust before the reader with too little extenuation.
The sanguine, and perhaps the nervous, are the classes of temperament under which the Egyptians must be docketed.
It cannot be denied that they were an industrious and even a strenuous people, that they indulged in the most serious thoughts, and attempted to study the most complex problems of life, and that the ceremonial side of their religion occupied a large part of their time.
But there is abundant evidence to show that, like their descendents of the present day, they were one of the least gloomy people of the world, and that they took their duties in the most buoyant manner, allowing as much sunshine to radiate through their minds as shone from the cloudless Egyptian skies upon their dazzling country.
It is curiously interesting to notice how general is the present belief in the solemnity of this ancient race's attitude towards existence, and how little their real character is appreciated.
Already the reader will be protesting, perhaps, that the application of the geographer's summary of French characteristics to the ancient Egyptians lessens in no wise its ridiculousness, but rather increases it.
Let the protest, however, be held back for a while.
Even if the Egyptians were not always frivolous, they were always uncommonly gay, and any slight exaggeration will be pardoned in view of the fact that old prejudices have to be violently overturned, and the stigma of melancholy and ponderous sobriety torn from the national name.
It would be a matter of little surprise to some good persons if the products of excavation in the Nile Valley consisted largely of antique black kid gloves.
[Illustration: PL.
VIII.
Two Egyptian boys decked with flowers and a third holding a musical instrument.
They are standing against the outside wall of the Dendereh Temple.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._ Like many other nations the ancient Egyptians rendered mortuary service to their ancestors, and solid tomb-chapels had to be constructed in honour of the more important dead.
Both for the purpose of preserving the mummy intact, and also in order to keep the ceremonies going for as long a period of time as possible, these chapels were constructed in a most substantial manner, and many of them have withstood successfully the siege of the years.
The dwelling-houses, on the other hand, were seldom delivered from father to son; but, as in modern Egypt, each grandee built a palace for himself, designed to last for a lifetime only, and hardly one of these mansions still exists even as a ruin.
Moreover the tombs were constructed in the dry desert or in the solid hillside, whereas the dwelling-houses were situated on the damp earth, where they had little chance of remaining undemolished.
And so it is that the main part of our knowledge of the Egyptians is derived from a study of their tombs and mortuary temples.
How false would be our estimate of the character of a modern nation were we to glean our information solely from its churchyard inscriptions!
We should know absolutely nothing of the frivolous side of the life of those whose bare bones lie beneath the gloomy declaration of their Christian virtues.
It will be realised how sincere was the light-heartedness of the Egyptians when it is remembered that almost everything in the following record of their gaieties is derived from a study of the tombs, and of objects found therein.
Light-heartedness is the key-note of the ancient philosophy of the country, and in this assertion the reader will, in most cases, find cause for surprise.
The Greek travellers in Egypt, who returned to their native land impressed with the wonderful mysticism of the Egyptians, committed their amazement to paper, and so led off that feeling of awed reverence which is felt for the philosophy of Pharaoh's subjects.
But in their case there was the presence of the priests and wise men eloquently to baffle them into the state of respect, and there were a thousand unwritten arguments, comments, articles of faith, and controverted points of doctrine heard from the mouths of the believers, to surprise them into a reverential attitude.
But we of the present day have left to us only the more outward and visible remains of the Egyptians.
There are only the fundamental doctrines to work on, the more penetrating notes of the harmony to listen to.
Thus the outline of the philosophy is able to be studied without any complication, and we have no whirligig of priestly talk to confuse it.
Examined in this way, working only from cold stones and dry papyri, we are confronted with the old "Eat, drink, and be merry," which is at once the happiest and most dangerous philosophy conceived by man.
It is to be noticed that this way of looking at life is to be found in Egypt from the earliest times down to the period of the Greek occupation of the country, and, in fact, until the present day.
That is to say, it was a philosophy inborn in the Egyptian,--a part of his nature.
Imhotep, the famous philosopher of Dynasty III., about B.C.
3000, said to his disciples: "Behold the dwellings of the dead.
Their walls fall down, their place is no more; they are as though they had never existed"; and he drew from this the lesson that man is soon done with and forgotten, and that therefore his life should be as happy as possible.
To Imhotep must be attributed the earliest known exhortation to man to resign himself to his candle-end of a life, and to the inevitable snuffing-out to come, and to be merry while yet he may.
There is a poem, dating from about B.C.
2000, from which the following is taken:-"Walk after thy heart's desire so long as thou livest.
Put myrrh on thy head, clothe thyself in fine linen, anoint thyself with the true marvels of God.... Let not thy heart concern itself, until there cometh to thee that great day of lamentation.
Yet he who is at rest can hear not thy complaint, and he who lies in the tomb can understand not thy weeping.
Therefore, with smiling face, let thy days be happy, and rest not therein.
For no man carrieth his goods away with him; "O, no man returneth again who is gone thither."
Again, we have the same sentiments expressed in a tomb of about B.C.
1350, belonging to a certain Neferhotep, a priest of Amen.
It is quoted on page 235, and here we need only note the ending: "Come, songs and music are before thee.
Set behind thee all cares; think only upon gladness, until that day cometh whereon thou shalt go down to the land which loveth silence."
A Ptolemaic inscription quoted more fully towards the end of this chapter reads: "Follow thy desire by night and by day.
Put not care within thy heart."
The ancient Egyptian peasants, like their modern descendants, were fatalists, and a happy carelessness seems to have softened the strenuousness of their daily tasks.
The peasants of the present day in Egypt so lack the initiative to develop the scope of their industries that their life cannot be said to be strenuous.
In whatever work they undertake, however, they show a wonderful degree of cheerfulness, and a fine disregard for misfortune.
Their forefathers, similarly, went through their labours with a song upon their lips.
In the tombs at Sakkâra, dating from the Old Empire, there are scenes representing flocks of goats treading in the seed on the newly-sown ground, and the inscriptions give the song which the goat-herds sing:-"The goat-herd is in the water with the fishes,-He speaks with the _nar_-fish, he talks with the pike; From the west is your goat-herd; your goat-herd is from the west."
The meaning of the words is not known, of course, but the song seems to have been a popular one.
A more comprehensible ditty is that sung to the oxen by their driver, which dates from the New Empire:-"Thresh out for yourselves, ye oxen, thresh out for yourselves.
Thresh out the straw for your food, and the grain for your masters.
Do not rest yourselves, for it is cool to-day."
Some of the love-songs have been preserved from destruction, and these throw much light upon the subject of the Egyptian temperament.
A number of songs, supposed to have been sung by a girl to her lover, form themselves into a collection entitled "The beautiful and gladsome songs of thy sister, whom thy heart loves, as she walks in the fields."
The girl is supposed to belong to the peasant class, and most of the verses are sung whilst she is at her daily occupation of snaring wild duck in the marshes.
One must imagine the songs warbled without any particular refrain, just as in the case of the modern Egyptians, who pour out their ancient tales of love and adventure in a series of bird-like cadences, full-throated, and often wonderfully melodious.
A peculiar sweetness and tenderness will be noticed in the following examples, and though they suffer in translation, their airy lightness and refinement is to be distinguished.
One characteristic song, addressed by the girl to her lover, runs-"Caught by the worm, the wild duck cries, But in the love-light of thine eyes I, trembling, loose the trap.
So flies The bird into the air.
What will my angry mother say?
With basket full I come each day, But now thy love hath led me stray, And I have set no snare."
Again, in a somewhat similar strain, she sings-"The wild duck scatter far, and now Again they light upon the bough And cry unto their kind; Anon they gather on the mere-But yet unharmed I leave them there, For love hath filled my mind."
Another song must be given here in prose form.
The girl who sings it is supposed to be making a wreath of flowers, and as she works she cries-"I am thy first sister, and to me thou art as a garden which I have planted with flowers and all sweet-smelling herbs.
And I have directed a canal into it, that thou mightest dip thy hand into it when the north wind blows cool.
The place is beautiful where we walk, because we walk together, thy hand resting within mine, our mind thoughtful and our heart joyful.
It is intoxicating to me to hear thy voice, yet my life depends upon hearing it.
Whenever I see thee it is better to me than food and drink."
One more song must be quoted, for it is so artless and so full of human tenderness that I may risk the accusation of straying from the main argument in repeating it.
It runs:-"The breath of thy nostrils alone Is that which maketh my heart to live.
I found thee: God grant thee to me For ever and ever."
It is really painful to think of these words as having fallen from the lips of what is now a resin-smelling lump of bones and hardened flesh, perhaps still unearthed, perhaps lying in some museum show-case, or perhaps kicked about in fragments over the hot sand of some tourist-crowded necropolis.
Mummies are the most lifeless objects one could well imagine.
It is impossible even for those whose imaginations are most powerful, to infuse life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed body; and this fact is partly responsible for that atmosphere of stark, melancholy, sobriety and aloofness which surrounds the affairs of ancient Egypt.
In reading these verses, it is imperative for their right understanding that the mummies and their resting-places should be banished from the thoughts.
It is not always a simple matter for the student to rid himself of the atmosphere of the museum, where the beads which should be jangling on a brown neck are lying numbered and labelled on red velvet; where the bird-trap, once the centre of such feathered commotion, is propped up in a glass case as "D, 18,432"; and where even the document in which the verses are written is the lawful booty of the grammarian and philologist in the library.
But it is the first duty of an archæologist to do away with that atmosphere.
Let those who are untrammelled then, pass out into the sunshine of the Egyptian fields and marshes, where the wild duck cry to each other as they scuttle through the tall reeds.
Here in the early morning comes our songstress, and one may see her as clearly as one can that Shulamite of King Solomon's day, who has had the good fortune to belong to a land where stones and bones, being few in number, do not endanger the atmosphere of the literature.
One may see her, her hair moving in the breeze "as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead"; her teeth white "as a flock of shorn sheep which came up from the washing," and her lips "like a thread of scarlet."
Through such imaginings alone can one appreciate the songs, or realise the lightness of the manner in which they were sung.
With such a happy view of life amongst the upper classes as is indicated by their philosophy, and with that merry disposition amongst the peasants which shows itself in their love of song, it is not surprising to find that asceticism is practically unknown in ancient Egypt before the time of Christ.
At first sight, in reflecting on the mysteries and religious ceremonies of the nation, we are apt to endow the priests and other participators with a degree of austerity wholly unjustified by facts.
We picture the priest chanting his formulæ in the dim light of the temple, the atmosphere about him heavy with incense; and we imagine him as an anchorite who has put away the things of this world.
But in reality there seems to have been not even such a thing as a celibate amongst the priests.
Each man had his wife and his family, his house, and his comforts of food and fine linen.
He indulged in the usual pastimes and was present at the merriest of feasts.
The famous wise men and magicians, such as Uba-ana of the Westcar Papyrus, had their wives, their parks, their pleasure-pavilions, and their hosts of servants.
Great dignitaries of the Amon Church, such as Amenhotepsase, the Second Prophet of Amen in the time of Thutmosis IV., are represented as feasting with their friends, or driving through Thebes in richly-decorated chariots drawn by prancing horses, and attended by an array of servants.
A monastic life, or the life of an anchorite, was held by the Egyptians in scorn; and indeed the state of mind which produces the monk and the hermit was almost entirely unknown to the nation in dynastic times.
It was only in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods that asceticism came to be practised; and some have thought that its introduction into Egypt is to be attributed to the preaching of the Hindoo missionaries sent from India to the court of the Ptolemies.
It is not really an Egyptian characteristic; and its practice did not last for more than a few centuries.
The religious teachings of the Egyptians before the Ptolemaic era do not suggest that the mortification of the flesh was a possible means of purifying the spirit.
An appeal to the senses and to the emotions, however, was considered as a legitimate method of reaching the soul.
The Egyptians were passionately fond of ceremonial display.
Their huge temples, painted as they were with the most brilliant colours, formed the setting of processions and ceremonies in which music, rhythmic motion, and colour were brought to a point of excellence.
In honour of some of the gods dances were conducted; while celebrations, such as the fantastic Feast of Lamps, were held on the anniversaries of religious events.
In these gorgeously spectacular ceremonies there was no place for anything sombre or austere, nor could they have been conceived by any but the most life-loving temperaments.
As in his religious functions, so in his home, the Egyptian regarded brilliancy and festivity as an edification.
When in trouble or distress, he was wont to relieve his mind as readily by an appeal to the vanities of this world as by an invocation of the powers of Heaven.
Thus, when King Sneferu, of Dynasty IV., was oppressed with the cares of state, his councillor Zazamankh constructed for him a pleasure boat which was rowed around a lake by the most beautiful damsels obtainable.
And again, when Wenamon, the envoy of Herhor of Dynasty XXI., had fallen into trouble with the pirates of the Mediterranean, his depression was banished by a gift of a dancing-girl, two vessels of wine, a young goat of tender flesh, and a message which read--"Eat and drink, and let not thy heart feel apprehension."
An intense craving for brightness and cheerfulness is to be observed on all sides, and the attempt to cover every action of life with a kind of lustre is perhaps the most apparent characteristic of the race.
At all times the Egyptians decked themselves with flowers, and rich and poor alike breathed what they called "the sweet north wind" through a screen of blossoms.
At their feasts and festivals each guest was presented with necklaces and crowns of lotus-flowers, and a specially selected bouquet was carried in the hands.
Constantly, as the hours passed, fresh flowers were brought to them, and the guests are shown in the tomb paintings in the act of burying their noses in the delicate petals with an air of luxury which even the conventionalities of the draughtsman cannot hide.
In the women's hair a flower was pinned which hung down before the forehead; and a cake of ointment, concocted of some sweet-smelling unguent, was so arranged upon the head that, as it slowly melted, it re-perfumed the flower.
Complete wreaths of flowers were sometimes worn, and this was the custom as much in the dress of the home as in that of the feast.
The common people also arrayed themselves with wreaths of lotuses at all galas and carnivals.
The room in which a feast was held was decorated lavishly with flowers.
Blossoms crept up the delicate pillars to the roof; garlands twined themselves around the tables and about the jars of wine; and single buds lay in every dish of food.
Even the dead were decked in their tombs with a mass of flowers, as though the mourners would hide with the living delights of the earth the misery of the grave.
The Egyptian loved his garden, and filled it with all manner of beautiful flowers.
Great parks were laid out by the Pharaohs, and it is recorded of Thutmosis III.
that he brought back from his Asiatic campaigns vast quantities of rare plants with which to beautify Thebes.
Festivals were held at the season when the flowers were in full bloom, and the light-hearted Egyptian did not fail to make the flowers talk to him, in the imagination, of the delights of life.
In one case a fig-tree is made to call to a passing maiden to come into its shade.
"Come," it says, "and spend this festal day, and to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, sitting in my shadow.
Let thy lover sit at thy side, and let him drink.... Thy servants will come with the dinner-things--they will bring drink of every kind, with all manner of cakes, flowers of yesterday and of to-day, and all kinds of refreshing fruit."
Than this one could hardly find a more convincing indication of the gaiety of the Egyptian temperament.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries A.D. the people were so oppressed that any display of luxury was discouraged, and a happy smile brought the tax-gatherer to the door to ascertain whether it was due to financial prosperity.
But the carrying of flowers, and other indications of a kind of unworried contentment, are now again becoming apparent on all sides.
[Illustration: PL.
IX.
A garland of leaves and flowers dating from about B.C.
1000.
It was placed upon the neck of a mummy.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ The affection displayed by the Egyptians for bright colours would alone indicate that their temperament was not melancholic.
The houses of the rich were painted with colours which would be regarded as crude had they appeared in the Occident, but which are admissible in Egypt where the natural brilliancy of the sunshine and the scenery demands a more extreme colour-scheme in decoration.
The pavilions in which the nobles "made a happy day," as they phrased it, were painted with the most brilliant wall-decorations, and the delicately-shaped lotus columns supporting the roof were striped with half a dozen colours, and were hung with streamers of linen.
The ceilings and pavements seem to have afforded the artists a happy field for a display of their originality and skill, and it is on these stretches of smooth-plastered surface that gems of Egyptian art are often found.
A pavement from the palace of Akhnaton at Tell el Amârna shows a scene in which a cow is depicted frisking through the reeds, and birds are represented flying over the marshes.
In the palace of Amenhotep III.
at Gurneh there was a ceiling decoration representing a flight of doves, which, in its delicacy of execution and colouring, is not to be classed with the crude forms of Egyptian decoration, but indicates an equally light-hearted temperament in its creator.
It is not probable that either bright colours or daintiness of design would emanate from the brains of a sombre-minded people.
Some of the feminine garments worn in ancient Egypt were exceedingly gaudy, and they made up in colour all that they lacked in variety of design.
In the Middle and New Empires the robes of the men were as many-hued as their wall decorations, and as rich in composition.
One may take as a typical example the costume of a certain priest who lived at the end of Dynasty XVIII.
An elaborate wig covers his head; a richly ornamented necklace surrounds his neck; the upper part of his body is clothed in a tunic of gauze-like linen; as a skirt there is swathed around him the most delicately coloured fine linen, one end of which is brought up and thrown gracefully over his arm; decorated sandals cover his feet and curl up over his toes; and in his hand he carries a jewelled wand surmounted by feathers.
It would be an absurdity to state that these folds of fine linen hid a heart set on things higher than this world and its vanities.
Nor do the objects of daily use found in the tombs suggest any austerity in the Egyptian character.
There is no reflection of the Underworld to be looked for in the ornamental bronze mirrors, nor smell of death in the frail perfume pots.
Religious abstraction is not to be sought in lotus-formed drinking-cups, and mortification of the body is certainly not practised on golden chairs and soft cushions.
These were the objects buried in the tombs of the priests and religious teachers.
The puritanical tendency of a race can generally be discovered by a study of the personal names of the people.
The names by which the Egyptians called their children are as gay as they are pretty, and lack entirely the Puritan character.
"Eyes-of-love," "My-lady-is-as-gold," "Cool-breeze," "Gold-and-lapis-lazuli," "Beautiful-morning," are Egyptian names very far removed from "Through-trials-and-tribulationswe-enter-into-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven Jones," which is the actual name of a now living scion of a Roundhead family.
And the well-known "Praise-God Barebones" has little to do with the Egyptian "BeautifulKitten," "Little-Wild-Lion," "I-have-wanted-you," "Sweetheart," and so on.
The nature of the folk-tales is equally indicative of the temperament of a nation.
The stories which have come down to us from ancient Egypt are often as frivolous as they are quaint.
Nothing delighted the Egyptians more than the listening to a tale told by an expert story-teller; and it is to be supposed that such persons were in as much demand in the old days as they are now.
One may still read of the adventures of the Prince who was fated to die by a dog, a snake, or a crocodile; of the magician who made the waters of the lake heap themselves up that he might descend to the bottom dry-shod to recover a lady's jewel; of the fat old wizard who could cut a man's head off and join it again to his body; of the fairy godmothers who made presents to a new-born babe; of the shipwrecked sailor who was thrown up on an island inhabited by serpents with human natures; of the princess in the tower whose lovers spent their days in attempting to climb to her window,--and so on.
The stories have no moral, they are not pompous: they are purely amusing, interesting, and romantic.
As an example one may quote the story which is told of Prince Setna, the son of Rameses II.
This Prince was one day sitting in the court of the temple of Ptah, when he saw a woman pass "beautiful exceedingly, there being no woman of her beauty."
There were wonderful golden ornaments upon her, and she was attended by fifty-two persons, themselves of some rank and much beauty.
"The hour that Setna saw her, he knew not the place on earth where he was"; and he called to his servants and told them to "go quickly to the place where she is, and learn what comes under her command."
The beautiful lady proved finally to be named Tabubna, the daughter of a priest of Bast, the Cat.
Setna's acquaintance with her was later of a most disgraceful character; and, from motives which are not clear, she made him murder his own children to please her.
At the critical moment, however, when the climax is reached, the old, old joke is played upon the listener, who is told that Setna then woke up, and discovered that the whole affair had been an afternoon dream in the shade of the temple court.
The Egyptians often amused themselves by drawing comic pictures and caricatures, and there is an interesting series still preserved in which animals take the place of human beings, and are shown performing all manner of antics.
One sees a cat walking on its hind legs driving a flock of geese, while a wolf carrying a staff and knapsack leads a herd of goats.
There is a battle of the mice and cats, and the king of the mice, in his chariot drawn by two dogs, is seen attacking the fortress of the cats.
A picture which is worthy of Edward Lear shows a ridiculous hippopotamus seated amidst the foliage of a tree, eating from a table, whilst a crow mounts a ladder to wait upon him.
There are caricatures showing women of fashion rouging their faces, unshaven and really amusing old tramps, and so forth.
Even upon the walls of the tombs there are often comic pictures, in which one may see little girls fighting and tearing at each others' hair, men tumbling one over another as they play, and the like; and one must suppose that these were the scenes which the owner of the tomb wished to perpetuate throughout the eternity of Death.
The Egyptians took keen delight in music.
In the sound of the trumpet and on the well-tuned cymbals they praised God in Egypt as merrily as the Psalmist could wish.
The strings and the pipe, the lute and the harp, made music at every festival--religious, national, or private.
Plato tells us that "nothing but beautiful forms and fine music was permitted to enter into the assemblies of young people" in Egypt; and he states that music was considered as being of the greatest consequence for its beneficial effects upon youthful minds.
Strabo records the fact that music was largely taught in Egypt, and the numbers of musical instruments buried in the tombs or represented in the decorations confirm his statement.
The music was scientifically taught, and a knowledge of harmony is apparent in the complicated forms of the instruments.
The harps sometimes had as many as twenty-two strings: the long-handled guitars, fitted with three strings, were capable of wide gradations; and the flutes were sufficiently complicated to be described by early writers as "many-toned."
The Egyptian did not merely bang a drum with his fist because it made a noise, nor blow blasts upon a trumpet as a means of expressing the inexpressible.
He was an educated musician, and he employed the medium of music to encourage his lightness of heart and to render his gaiety more gay.
[Illustration: PL.
X.
A relief of the Saitic Period, representing an old man playing upon a harp, and a woman beating a drum.
Offerings of food and flowers are placed before them.
--ALEXANDRIA MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ One sees representations of the women in a rich man's harem amusing themselves by dancing and singing.
In the tomb of Ay there is a scene showing the interior of the women's quarters, and here the ladies are shown dancing, playing guitars, feasting, or adorning themselves with their jewellery; while the store-rooms are seen to be filled with all manner of musical instruments, as well as mirrors, boxes of clothes, and articles of feminine use.
At feasts and banquets a string band played during the meal, and songs were sung to the accompaniment of the harp.
At religious festivals choruses of male and female voices were introduced.
Soldiers marched through the streets to the sound of trumpets and drums, and marriage processions and the like were led by a band.
At the feasts it was customary for the dancing-girls, who were employed for the amusement of the guests, to perform their dances and to play a guitar or a flute at the same time.
One sees representations of girls, their heads thrown back and their long hair flying, merrily twanging a guitar as they skip round the room.
In the civil and religious processions many of the participators danced along as though from sheer lightness of heart; and on some occasions even the band footed it down the high-road, circling, jumping, and skipping as they played.
The words for "rejoice" and "dance" were synonymous in the literature of the Egyptians.
In early days dancing naturally implied rejoicing, and rejoicing was most easily expressed by dancing.
But the Egyptians of the refined periods more often danced to amuse themselves, regarding it, just as we do at the present day, as an exhilaration.
Persons of the upper classes, however, did not indulge very freely in it, but preferred to watch the performances of professional dancers.
At all banquets dancing was as indispensable as wine, women, and song, and it rather depended on the nature of the wine and women as to whether the guests joined personally in the sport or sat still while the dancers swayed around the room.
The professionals were generally women, but sometimes men were employed, and one sees representations of a man performing some difficult solo while a chorus of women sings and marks time by clapping the hands.
Men and women danced together on occasions, but as a general rule the Egyptian preferred to watch the movements of the more graceful sex by themselves.
The women sometimes danced naked, to show off the grace of their poses and the suppleness of their muscles; sometimes they were decked with ribbons only; and sometimes they wore transparent dresses made of linen of the finest texture.
It was not unusual for them to carry tambourines and castanets with which to beat time to their dances.
On the other hand, there were delicate and sober performances, unaccompanied by music.
The paintings show some of the poses to have been exceedingly graceful, and there were character dances enacted in which the figures must have been highly dramatic and artistic.
For example, the tableau which occurs in one dance, and is called "The Wind," shows two of the dancing-girls bent back like reeds when the wind blows upon them, while a third figure stands over them in protection, as though symbolising the immovable rocks.
But more usually the merry mood of the Egyptians asserted itself, as it so often does at the present day, in a demand for something approaching nearer to buffoonery.
The dancers whirled one another about in the wildest manner, often tumbling head over heels on the floor.
A trick, attended generally with success, consisted in the attempt by the dancers to balance the body upon the head without the support of the arms.
This buffoonery was highly appreciated by the audience which witnessed it; and the banqueting-room must have been full of the noise of riotous mirth.
One cannot, indeed, regard a feast as pompous or solemn at which the banging of the tambourines and the click of castanets vied with the clatter of the dishes and the laughter of the guests in creating a general hullabaloo.
Let those state who will that the Egyptian was a gloomy individual, but first let them not fail to observe that same Egyptian standing upon his head amidst the roars of laughter of his friends.
Dancing as a religious ceremony is to be found in many primitive countries, and in Egypt it exists at the present day in more than one form.
In the days of the Pharaohs it was customary to institute dances in honour of some of the gods, more especially those deities whose concerns were earthy--that is to say, those connected with love, joy, birth, death, fertility, reproduction, and so on.
It will be remembered how David danced before the Ark of the Lord, and how his ancestors danced in honour of the golden calf.
In Egypt the king was wont to dance before the great god Min of the crops, and at harvest-time the peasants performed their thanksgiving before the figures of Min in this manner.
Hathor and Bast, the two great goddesses of pleasure, were worshipped in the dance.
Hathor was mistress of sports and dancing, and patron of amusements and mirth, joy and pleasure, beauty and love; and in regard to the happy temperament of the Egyptians, it is significant that this goddess was held in the highest esteem throughout the history of the nation.
Bast was honoured by a festival which for merriment and frivolity could not well be equalled.
The festival took place at Bubastis, and is described by Herodotus in the following words:-"This is the nature of the ceremony on the way to Bubastis.
They go by water, and numerous boats are crowded with persons of both sexes.
During the voyage several women strike the cymbals, some men play the flute, the rest singing and clapping their hands.
As they pass near a town they bring the boat close to the bank.
Some of the women continue to sing and play the cymbals; others cry out as long as they can, and utter mocking jests against the people of the town, who begin to dance, while the former pull up their clothes before them in a scoffing manner.
The same is repeated at every town they pass upon the river.
Arrived at Bubastis, they celebrate the festival of Bast, sacrificing a great number of victims, and on that occasion a greater consumption of wine takes place than during the whole of the year."
At this festival of Bast half the persons taking part in the celebrations must have become intoxicated.
The Egyptians were always given to wine-drinking, and Athenæus goes so far as to say that they were a nation addicted to systematic intemperance.
The same writer, on the authority of Hellanicus, states that the vine was cultivated in the Nile valley at a date earlier than that at which it was first grown by any other people; and it is to this circumstance that Dion attributes the Egyptian's love of wine.
Strabo and other writers speak of the wines of Egypt as being particularly good, and various kinds emanating from different localities are mentioned.
The wines made from grapes were of the red and white varieties; but there were also fruit wines, made from pomegranates and other fruits.
In the lists of offerings inscribed on the walls of temples and tombs one sees a large number of varieties recorded--wines from the north, wines from the south, wines provincial, and wines foreign.
Beer, made of barley, was also drunk very largely, and this beverage is heartily commended by the early writers.
Indeed, the wine and beer-bibber was so common an offender against the dignity of the nation, that every moralist who arose had a word to say against him.
Thus, for example, in the Maxims of Ani one finds the moralist writing-"Do not put thyself in a beer-house.
An evil thing are words reported as coming from thy mouth when thou dost not know that they have been said by thee.
When thou fallest thy limbs are broken, and nobody giveth thee a hand.
Thy comrades in drink stand up, saying, 'Away with this drunken man.'"
The less thoughtful members of society, however, considered drunkenness as a very good joke, and even went so far as to portray it in their tomb decorations.
One sees men carried home from a feast across the shoulders of three of their companions, or ignominiously hauled out of the house by their ankles and the scruff of their neck.
In the tomb of Paheri at El Kab women are represented at a feast, and scraps of their conversation are recorded, such, for instance, as "Give me eighteen cups of wine, for I should love to drink to drunkenness: my inside is as dry as straw."
There are actually representations of women overcome with nausea through immoderate drinking, and being attended by servants who have hastened with basins to their assistance.
In another tomb-painting a drunken man is seen to have fallen against one of the delicate pillars of the pavilion with such force that it has toppled over, to the dismay of the guests around.
In the light of such scenes as these one may picture the life of an Egyptian in the elder days as being not a little depraved.
One sees the men in their gaudy raiment, and the women luxuriously clothed, staining their garments with the wine spilt from the drinking-bowls as their hands shake with their drunken laughter; and the vision of Egyptian solemnity is still further banished at the sight.
It is only too obvious that a land of laughter and jest, feasting and carouse, must be situated too near a Pompeian volcano to be capable of endurance, and the inhabitants too purposeless in their movements to avoid at some time or other running into the paths of burning lava.
The people of Egypt went merrily through the radiant valley in which they lived, employing all that the gods had given them,--not only the green palms, the thousand birds, the blue sky, the hearty wind, the river and its reflections, but also the luxuries of their civilisation,--to make for themselves a frail feast of happiness.
And when the last flowers, the latest empty drinking-cup, fell to the ground, nothing remained to them but that sodden, drunken night of disgrace which shocks one so at the end of the dynastic history, and which inevitably led to the fall of the nation.
Christian asceticism came as the natural reaction and Muhammedan strictness followed in due course; and it required the force of both these movements to put strength and health into the people once more.
[Illustration: PL.
XI.
An Egyptian noble of the Eighteenth Dynasty hunting birds with a boomerang and decoys.
He stands in a reed-boat which floats amidst the papyrus clumps, and a cat retrieves the fallen birds.
In the boat with him are his wife and son.
--FROM A THEBAN TOMB-PAINTING, BRITISH MUSEUM.]
One need not dwell, however, on this aspect of the Egyptian temperament.
It is more pleasing, and as pertinent to the argument, to follow the old lords of the Nile into the sunshine once more, and to glance for a moment at their sports.
Hunting was a pleasure to them, in which they indulged at every opportunity.
One sees representations of this with great frequency upon the walls of the tombs.
A man will be shown standing in a reed boat which has been pushed in amongst the waving papyrus.
A boomerang is in his hand, and his wife by his side helps him to locate the wild duck, so that he may penetrate within throwing-distance of the birds before they rise.
Presently up they go with a whir, and the boomerang claims its victims; while all manner of smaller birds dart from amidst the reeds, and gaudy butterflies pass startled overhead.
Again one sees the hunter galloping in his chariot over the hard sand of the desert, shooting his arrows at the gazelle as he goes.
Or yet again with his dogs he is shown in pursuit of the long-eared Egyptian hare, or of some other creature of the desert.
When not thus engaged he may be seen excitedly watching a bullfight, or eagerly judging the merits of rival wrestlers, boxers, and fencers.
One may follow him later into the seclusion of his garden, where, surrounded by a wealth of trees and flowers, he plays draughts with his friends, romps with his children, or fishes in his artificial ponds.
There is much evidence of this nature to show that the Egyptian was as much given to these healthy amusements as he was to the mirth of the feast.
Josephus states that the Egyptians were a people addicted to pleasure, and the evidence brought together in the foregoing pages shows that his statement is to be confirmed.
In sincere joy of living they surpassed any other nation of the ancient world.
Life was a thing of such delight to the Egyptian, that he shrank equally from losing it himself and from taking it from another.
His prayer was that he might live to be a centenarian.
In spite of the many wars of the Egyptians, there was less unnecessary bloodshed in the Nile valley than in any other country which called itself civilised.
Death was as terrible to them as it was inevitable, and the constant advice of the thinker was that the living should make the most of their life.
When a king died, it was said that "he went forth to heaven having spent life in happiness," or that "he rested after life, having completed his years in happiness."
It is true that the Egyptians wished to picture the after-life as one of continuous joy.
One sees representations of a man's soul seated in the shade of the fruit-trees of the Underworld, while birds sing in the branches above him, and a lake of cool water lies before him; but they seemed to know that this was too pleasant a picture to be the real one.
A woman, the wife of a high priest, left upon her tombstone the following inscription, addressed to her husband:-"O, brother, husband, friend," she says, "thy desire to drink and to eat hath not ceased.
Therefore be drunken, enjoy the love of women--make holiday.
Follow thy desire by night and by day.
Put not care within thy heart.
Lo!
are not these the years of thy life upon earth?
For as for the Underworld, it is a land of slumber and heavy darkness, a resting-place for those who have passed within it.
Each sleepeth there in his own form, they never awake to see their fellows, they behold not their fathers nor their mothers, their heart is careless of their wives and children."
She knows that she will be too deeply steeped in the stupor of the Underworld to remember her husband, and unselfishly she urges him to continue to be happy after the manner of his nation.
Then, in a passage which rings down the years in its terrible beauty, she tells of her utter despair, lying in the gloomy Underworld, suffocated with the mummy bandages, and craving for the light, the laughter, and the coolness of the day.
"The water of life," she cries, "with which every mouth is moistened, is corruption to me, the water that is by me corrupteth me.
I know not what to do since I came into this valley.
Give me running water, say to me, 'Water shall not cease to be brought to thee.'
Turn my face to the north wind upon the edge of the water.
Verily thus shall my heart be cooled and refreshed from its pain."
It is, however, the glory of life, rather than the horror of death, which is the dominant note in the inscriptions and reliefs.
The scenes in the tomb decorations seem to cry out for very joy.
The artist has imprisoned in his representations as much sheer happiness as was ever infused into cold stone.
One sees there the gazelle leaping over the hills as the sun rises, the birds flapping their wings and singing, the wild duck rising from the marshes, and the butterflies flashing overhead.
The fundamental joy of living--that gaiety of life which the human being may feel in common with the animals--is shown in these scenes as clearly as is the merriment in the representations of feasts and dancing.
In these paintings and reliefs one finds an exact illustration to the joyful exhortation of the Psalmist as he cries, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; ... let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein."
In a land where, to quote one of their own poems, "the tanks are full of water and the earth overflows with love," where "the cool north wind" blows merrily over the fields, and the sun never ceases to shine, it would be a remarkable phenomenon if the ancient Egyptians had not developed the sanguine temperament.
The foregoing pages have shown them at their feasts, in their daily occupations, and in their sports, and the reader will find that it is not difficult to describe them, in the borrowed words of the old geographer, as a people always gay and often frivolous, and never-ceasingly "fond of dancing and red wine."
CHAPTER V. THE MISFORTUNES OF WENAMON.
In the third chapter of this book it has been shown that the archæologist is, to some extent, enamoured of the Past because it can add to the stock of things which are likely to tickle the fancy.
So humorous a man is he, so fond of the good things of life, so stirred by its adventures, so touched by its sorrows, that he must needs go to the Past to replenish his supplies, as another might go to Paris or Timbuctoo.
Here, then, is the place to give an example of the entertainment which he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story which follows, it will be a matter of surprise to me.
In the year 1891, at a small village in Upper Egypt named El Hibeh, some natives unearthed a much damaged roll of papyrus which appeared to them to be very ancient.
Since they had heard that antiquities have a market value they did not burn it along with whatever other scraps of inflammable material they had collected for their evening fire, but preserved it, and finally took it to a dealer, who gave them in exchange for it a small sum of money.
From the dealer's hands it passed into the possession of Monsieur Golenischeff, a Russian Egyptologist, who happened at the time to be travelling in Egypt; and by him it was carried to St Petersburg, where it now rests.
This _savant_ presently published a translation of the document, which at once caused a sensation in the Egyptological world; and during the next few years four amended translations were made by different scholars.
The interest shown in this tattered roll was due to the fact that it had been found to contain the actual report written by an official named Wenamon to his chief, the High Priest of Amon-Ra, relating his adventures in the Mediterranean while procuring cedar-wood from the forests of Lebanon.
The story which Wenamon tells is of the greatest value to Egyptology, giving as it does a vivid account of the political conditions obtaining in Syria and Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Rameses XII.
; but it also has a very human interest, and the misfortunes of the writer may excite one's sympathy and amusement, after this lapse of three thousand years, as though they had occurred at the present time.
In the time at which Wenamon wrote his report Egypt had fallen on evil days.
A long line of incapable descendants of the great Rameses II.
and Rameses III.
had ruled the Nile valley; and now a wretched ghost of a Pharaoh, Rameses XII., sat upon the throne, bereft of all power, a ruler in name only.
The government of the country lay in the hands of two great nobles: in Upper Egypt, Herhor, High Priest of Amon-Ra, was undisputed master; and in Lower Egypt, Nesubanebded, a prince of the city of Tanis (the Zoan of the Bible), virtually ruled as king of the Delta.
Both these persons ultimately ascended the throne of the Pharaohs; but at the time of Wenamon's adventures the High Priest was the more powerful of the two, and could command the obedience of the northern ruler, at any rate in all sacerdotal matters.
The priesthood of Amon-Ra was the greatest political factor in Egyptian life.
That god's name was respected even in the courts of Syria, and though his power was now on the wane, fifty years previously the great religious body which bowed the knee to him was feared throughout all the countries neighbouring to Egypt.
The main cause of Wenamon's troubles was the lack of appreciation of this fact that the god's influence in Syria was not as great as it had been in the past; and this report would certainly not have been worth recording here if he had realised that prestige is, of all factors in international relations, the least reliable.
In the year 1113 B.C.
the High Priest undertook the construction of a ceremonial barge in which the image of the god might be floated upon the sacred waters of the Nile during the great religious festivals at Thebes; and for this purpose he found himself in need of a large amount of cedar-wood of the best quality.
He therefore sent for Wenamon, who held the sacerdotal title of "Eldest of the Hall of the Temple of Amon," and instructed him to proceed to the Lebanon to procure the timber.
It is evident that Wenamon was no traveller, and we may perhaps be permitted to picture him as a rather portly gentleman of middle age, not wanting either in energy or pluck, but given, like some of his countrymen, to a fluctuation of the emotions which would jump him from smiles to tears, from hope to despair, in a manner amazing to any but an Egyptian.
To us he often appears as an overgrown baby, and his misfortunes have a farcical nature which makes its appeal as much through the medium of one's love of the ludicrous as through that of one's interest in the romance of adventure.
Those who are acquainted with Egypt will see in him one of the types of naif, delightful children of the Nile, whose decorous introduction into the parlour of the nations of to-day is requiring such careful rehearsal.
For his journey the High Priest gave Wenamon a sum of money, and as credentials he handed him a number of letters addressed to Egyptian and Syrian princes, and intrusted to his care a particularly sacred little image of Amon-Ra, known as Amon-of-the-Road, which had probably accompanied other envoys to the Kingdoms of the Sea in times past, and would be recognised as a token of the official nature of any embassy which carried it.
Thus armed Wenamon set out from El Hibeh--probably the ancient Hetbennu, the capital of the Eighteenth Province of Upper Egypt--on the sixteenth day of the eleventh month of the fifth year of the reign of Rameses XII.
(1113 B.C.
), and travelled down the Nile by boat to Tanis, a distance of some 200 miles.
On his arrival at this fair city of the Delta, whose temples and palaces rose on the borders of the swamps at the edge of the sea, Wenamon made his way to the palace of Nesubanebded, and handed to him the letters which he had received from the High Priest.
These were caused to be read aloud; and Nesubanebded, hearing that Wenamon was desirous of reaching the Lebanon as soon as possible, made the necessary arrangements for his immediate despatch upon a vessel which happened then to be lying at the quay under the command of a Syrian skipper named Mengebet, who was about to set out for the Asiatic coast.
On the first day of the twelfth month, that is to say fourteen days after his departure from his native town, Wenamon set sail from Tanis, crossing the swamps and heading out into "the Great Syrian Sea."
The voyage over the blue rippling Mediterranean was calm and prosperous as the good ship sailed along the barren shores of the land of the Shasu, along the more mountainous coast of Edom, and thence northwards past the cities of Askalon and Ashdod.
To Wenamon, however, the journey was fraught with anxiety.
He was full of fears as to his reception in Syria, for the first of his misfortunes had befallen him.
Although he had with him both money and the image of Amon-of-the-Road, in the excitement and hurry of his departure he had entirely forgotten to obtain again the bundle of letters of introduction which he had given Nesubanebded to read; and thus there were grave reasons for supposing that his mission might prove a complete failure.
Mengebet was evidently a stern old salt who cared not a snap of the fingers for Amon or his envoy, and whose one desire was to reach his destination as rapidly as wind and oars would permit; and it is probable that he refused bluntly to return to Tanis when Wenamon informed him of the oversight.
This and the inherent distrust of an Egyptian for a foreigner led Wenamon to regard the captain and his men with suspicion; and one must imagine him seated in the rough deck-cabin gloomily guarding the divine image and his store of money.
He had with him a secretary and probably two or three servants; and one may picture these unfortunates anxiously watching the Syrian crew as they slouched about the deck.
It is further to be remembered that, as a general rule, the Egyptians are most extremely bad sailors.
After some days the ship arrived at the little city of Dor, which nestled at the foot of the Ridge of Carmel; and here they put in to replenish their supplies.
Wenamon states in his report that Dor was at this time a city of the Thekel or Sicilians, some wandering band of sea-rovers having left their native Sicily to settle here, at first under the protection of the Egyptians, but now independent of them.
The King of Dor, by name Bedel, hearing that an envoy of the High Priest of Amon-Ra had arrived in his harbour, very politely sent down to him a joint of beef, some loaves of bread, and a jar of wine, upon which Wenamon must have set to with an appetite, after subsisting upon the scanty rations of the sea for so long a time.
It may be that the wine was more potent than that to which the Egyptian was accustomed; or perhaps the white buildings of the city, glistening in the sunlight, and the busy quays, engrossed his attention too completely: anyhow, the second of his misfortunes now befel him.
One of the Syrian sailors seized the opportunity to slip into his cabin and to steal the money which was hidden there.
Before Wenamon had detected the robbery the sailor had disappeared for ever amidst the houses of Dor.
That evening the distracted envoy, seated upon the floor of his cabin, was obliged to chronicle the list of stolen money, which list was afterwards incorporated in his report in the following manner:-One vessel containing gold amounting to 5 debens, Four vessels containing silver amounting to 20 " One wallet containing silver amounting to 11 " --------Total of what was stolen: gold, 5 debens; silver, 31 debens.
A deben weighed about 100 grammes, and thus the robber was richer by 500 grammes of gold, which in those days would have the purchasing value of about £600 in our money, and 3100 grammes of silver, equal to about £2200.
[1] [Footnote 1: See Weigall: Catalogue of Weights and Balances in the Cairo Museum, p.
xvi.]
[Illustration: PL.
XII.
A reed box for holding clothing, discovered in the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ Wenamon must have slept little that night, and early on the following morning he hastened to the palace of King Bedel to lay his case before him.
Fortunately Bedel did not ask him for his credentials, but with the utmost politeness he gave his consideration to the affair.
Wenamon's words, however, were by no means polite, and one finds in them a blustering assurance which suggests that he considered himself a personage of extreme consequence, and regarded a King of Dor as nothing in comparison with an envoy of Amon-Ra.
"I have been robbed in your harbour," he cried, so he tells us in the report, "and, since you are the king of this land, you must be regarded as a party to the crime.
You must search for my money.
The money belongs to Nesubanebded, and it belongs to Herhor, my lord" (no mention, observe, of the wretched Rameses XII.
), "and to the other nobles of Egypt.
It belongs also to Weret, and to Mekmel, and to Zakar-Baal the Prince of Byblos.
"[2] These latter were the persons to whom it was to be paid.
[Footnote 2: The translation is based on that of Prof.
Breasted.]
The King of Dor listened to this outburst with Sicilian politeness, and replied in the following very correct terms: "With all due respect to your honour and excellency," he said, "I know nothing of this complaint which you have lodged with me.
If the thief belonged to my land and went on board your ship in order to steal your money, I would advance you the sum from my treasury while they were finding the culprit.
But the thief who robbed you belonged to your ship.
Tarry, however, a few days here with me and I will seek him."
Wenamon, therefore, strode back to the vessel, and there remained, fuming and fretting, for nine long days.
The skipper Mengebet, however, had no reason to remain at Dor, and seems to have told Wenamon that he could wait no longer.
On the tenth day, therefore, Wenamon retraced his steps to the palace, and addressed himself once more to Bedel.
"Look," he said to the king, when he was ushered into the royal presence, "you have not found my money, and therefore you had better let me go with my ship's captain and with those...." The rest of the interview is lost in a lacuna, and practically the only words which the damaged condition of the papyrus permits one now to read are, "He said, 'Be silent!'"
which indicates that even the patience of a King of Dor could be exhausted.
When the narrative is able to be resumed one finds that Wenamon has set sail from the city, and has travelled along the coast to the proud city of Tyre, where he arrived one afternoon penniless and letterless, having now nothing left but the little Amon-of-the-Road and his own audacity.
The charms of Tyre, then one of the great ports of the civilised world, were of no consequence to the destitute Egyptian, nor do they seem to have attracted the skipper of his ship, who, after his long delay at Dor, was in no mood to linger.
At dawn the next morning, therefore, the journey was continued, and once more an unfortunate lacuna interrupts the passage of the report.
From the tattered fragments of the writing, however, it seems that at the next port of call--perhaps the city of Sidon--a party of inoffensive Sicilian merchants was encountered, and immediately the desperate Wenamon hatched a daring plot.
By this time he had come to place some trust in Mengebet, the skipper, who, for the sake of his own good standing in Egypt, had shown himself willing to help the envoy of Amon-Ra in his troubles, although he would not go so far as to delay his journey for him; and Wenamon therefore admitted him to his councils.
On some pretext or other a party led by the Egyptian paid a visit to these merchants and entered into conversation with them.
Then, suddenly overpowering them, a rush was made for their cash-box, which Wenamon at once burst open.
To his disappointment he found it to contain only thirty-one debens of silver, which happened to be precisely the amount of silver, though not of gold, which he had lost.
This sum he pocketed, saying to the struggling merchants as he did so, "I will take this money of yours, and will keep it until you find my money.
Was it not a Sicilian who stole it, and no thief of ours?
I will take it."
With these words the party raced back to the ship, scrambled on board, and in a few moments had hoisted sail and were scudding northwards towards Byblos, where Wenamon proposed to throw himself on the mercy of Zakar-Baal, the prince of that city.
Wenamon, it will be remembered, had always considered that he had been robbed by a Sicilian of Dor, notwithstanding the fact that only a sailor of his own ship could have known of the existence of the money, as King Bedel seems to have pointed out to him.
The Egyptian, therefore, did not regard this forcible seizure of silver from these other Sicilians as a crime.
It was a perfectly just appropriation of a portion of the funds which belonged to him by rights.
Let us imagine ourselves robbed at our hotel by Hans the German waiter: it would surely give us the most profound satisfaction to take Herr Schnupfendorff, the piano-tuner, by the throat when next he visited us, and go through his pockets.
He and Hans, being of the same nationality, must suffer for one another's sins, and if the magistrate thinks otherwise he must be regarded as prejudiced by too much study of the law.
Byblos stood at the foot of the hills of Lebanon, in the very shadow of the great cedars, and it was therefore Wenamon's destination.
Now, however, as the ship dropped anchor in the harbour, the Egyptian realised that his mission would probably be fruitless, and that he himself would perhaps be flung into prison for illegally having in his possession the famous image of the god to which he could show no written right.
Moreover, the news of the robbery of the merchants might well have reached Byblos overland.
His first action, therefore, was to conceal the idol and the money; and this having been accomplished he sat himself down in his cabin to await events.
The Prince of Byblos certainly had been advised of the robbery; and as soon as the news of the ship's arrival was reported to him he sent a curt message to the captain saying simply, "Get out of my harbour."
At this Wenamon gave up all hope, and, hearing that there was then in port a vessel which was about to sail for Egypt, he sent a pathetic message to the prince asking whether he might be allowed to travel by it back to his own country.
No satisfactory answer was received, and for the best part of a month Wenamon's ship rode at anchor, while the distracted envoy paced the deck, vainly pondering upon a fitting course of action.
Each morning the same brief order, "Get out of my harbour," was delivered to him by the harbour-master; but the indecision of the authorities as to how to treat this Egyptian official prevented the order being backed by force.
Meanwhile Wenamon and Mengebet judiciously spread through the city the report of the power of Amon-of-the-Road, and hinted darkly at the wrath which would ultimately fall upon the heads of those who suffered the image and its keeper to be turned away from the quays of Byblos.
No doubt, also, a portion of the stolen debens of silver was expended in bribes to the priests of the city, for, as we shall presently see, one of them took up Wenamon's cause with the most unnatural vigour.
All, however, seemed to be of no avail, and Wenamon decided to get away as best he could.
His worldly goods were quietly transferred to the ship which was bound for the Nile; and, when night had fallen, with Amon-of-the-Road tucked under his arm, he hurried along the deserted quay.
Suddenly out of the darkness there appeared a group of figures, and Wenamon found himself confronted by the stalwart harbour-master and his police.
Now, indeed, he gave himself up for lost.
The image would be taken from him, and no longer would he have the alternative of leaving the harbour.
He must have groaned aloud as he stood there in the black night, with the cold sea wind threatening to tear the covers from the treasure under his arm.
His surprise, therefore, was unbounded when the harbour-master addressed him in the following words: "Remain until morning here near the prince."
The Egyptian turned upon him fiercely.
"Are you not the man who came to me every day saying, "Get out of my harbour?"
he cried.
"And now are you not saying, 'Remain in Byblos?'
your object being to let this ship which I have found depart for Egypt without me, so that you may come to me again and say, 'Go away.'"
The harbour-master in reality had been ordered to detain Wenamon for quite another reason.
On the previous day, while the prince was sacrificing to his gods, one of the noble youths in his train, who had probably seen the colour of Wenamon's debens, suddenly broke into a religious frenzy, and so continued all that day, and far into the night, calling incessantly upon those around him to go and fetch the envoy of Amon-Ra and the sacred image.
Prince Zakar-Baal had considered it prudent to obey this apparently divine command, and had sent the harbour-master to prevent Wenamon's departure.
Finding, however, that the Egyptian was determined to board the ship, the official sent a messenger to the prince, who replied with an order to the skipper of the vessel to remain that night in harbour.
Upon the following morning a deputation, evidently friendly, waited on Wenamon, and urged him to come to the palace, which he finally did, incidentally attending on his way the morning service which was being celebrated upon the sea-shore.
"I found the prince," writes Wenamon in his report, "sitting in his upper chamber, leaning his back against a window, while the waves of the Great Syrian Sea beat against the wall below.
I said to him, 'The mercy of Amon be with you!'
He said to me, 'How long is it from now since you left the abode of Amon?'
I replied, 'Five months and one day from now.'"
The prince then said, "Look now, if what you say is true, where is the writing of Amon which should be in your hand?
Where is the letter of the High Priest of Amon which should be in your hand?"
"I gave them to Nesubanebded," replied Wenamon.
"Then," says Wenamon, "he was very wroth, and he said to me, 'Look here, the writings and the letters are not in your hand.
And where is the fine ship which Nesubanebded would have given you, and where is its picked Syrian crew?
He would not put you and your affairs in the charge of this skipper of yours, who might have had you killed and thrown into the sea.
Whom would they have sought the god from then?--and you, whom would they have sought you from then?'
So said he to me, and I replied to him, 'There are indeed Egyptian ships and Egyptian crews that sail under Nesubanebded, but he had at the time no ship and no Syrian crew to give me.'"
The prince did not accept this as a satisfactory answer, but pointed out that there were ten thousand ships sailing between Egypt and Syria, of which number there must have been one at Nesubanebded's disposal.
"Then," writes Wenamon, "I was silent in this great hour.
At length he said to me, 'On what business have you come here?'
I replied, 'I have come to get wood for the great and august barge of Amon-Ra, king of the gods.
Your father supplied it, your grandfather did so, and you too shall do it.'
So spoke I to him."
The prince admitted that his fathers had sent wood to Egypt, but he pointed out that they had received proper remuneration for it.
He then told his servants to go and find the old ledger in which the transactions were recorded, and this being done, it was found that a thousand debens of silver had been paid for the wood.
The prince now argued that he was in no way the servant of Amon, for if he had been he would have been obliged to supply the wood without remuneration.
"I am," he proudly declared, "neither your servant nor the servant of him who sent you here.
If I cry out to the Lebanon the heavens open and the logs lie here on the shore of the sea."
He went on to say that if, of his condescension, he now procured the timber Wenamon would have to provide the ships and all the tackle.
"If I make the sails of the ships for you," said the prince, "they may be top-heavy and may break, and you will perish in the sea when Amon thunders in heaven; for skilled workmanship comes only from Egypt to reach my place of abode."
This seems to have upset the composure of Wenamon to some extent, and the prince took advantage of his uneasiness to say, "Anyway, what is this miserable expedition that they have had you make (without money or equipment)?"
At this Wenamon appears to have lost his temper.
"O guilty one!"
he said to the prince, "this is no miserable expedition on which I am engaged.
There is no ship upon the Nile which Amon does not own, and his is the sea, and his this Lebanon of which you say, 'It is mine.'
Its forests grow for the barge of Amon, the lord of every ship.
Why Amon-Ra himself, the king of the gods, said to Herhor, my lord, 'Send me'; and Herhor made me go bearing the statue of this great god.
Yet see, you have allowed this great god to wait twenty-nine days after he had arrived in your harbour, although you certainly knew he was there.
He is indeed still what he once was: yes, now while you stand bargaining for the Lebanon with Amon its lord.
As for Amon-Ra, the king of the gods, he is the lord of life and health, and he was the lord of your fathers, who spent their lifetime offering to him.
You also, you are the servant of Amon.
If you will say to Amon, 'I will do this,' and you execute his command, you shall live and be prosperous and be healthy, and you shall be popular with your whole country and people.
Wish not for yourself a thing belonging to Amon-Ra, king of the gods.
Truly the lion loves his own!
Let my secretary be brought to me that I may send him to Nesubanebded, and he will send you all that I shall ask him to send, after which, when I return to the south, I will send you all, all your trifles again."
"So spake I to him," says Wenamon in his report, as with a flourish of his pen he brings this fine speech to an end.
No doubt it would have been more truthful in him to say, "So would I have spoken to him had I not been so flustered"; but of all types of lie this is probably the most excusable.
At all events, he said sufficient to induce the prince to send his secretary to Egypt; and as a token of good faith Zakar-Baal sent with him seven logs of cedar-wood.
In forty-eight days' time the messenger returned, bringing with him five golden and five silver vases, twenty garments of fine linen, 500 rolls of papyrus, 500 ox-hides, 500 coils of rope, twenty measures of lentils, and five measures of dried fish.
At this present the prince expressed himself most satisfied, and immediately sent 300 men and 300 oxen with proper overseers to start the work of felling the trees.
Some eight months after leaving Tanis, Wenamon's delighted eyes gazed upon the complete number of logs lying at the edge of the sea, ready for shipment to Egypt.
The task being finished, the prince walked down to the beach to inspect the timber, and he called to Wenamon to come with him.
When the Egyptian had approached, the prince pointed to the logs, remarking that the work had been carried through although the remuneration had not been nearly so great as that which his fathers had received.
Wenamon was about to reply when inadvertently the shadow of the prince's umbrella fell upon his head.
What memories or anticipations this trivial incident aroused one cannot now tell with certainty.
One of the gentlemen-in-waiting, however, found cause in it to whisper to Wenamon, "The shadow of Pharaoh, your lord, falls upon you"--the remark, no doubt, being accompanied by a sly dig in the ribs.
The prince angrily snapped, "Let him alone"; and, with the picture of Wenamon gloomily staring out to sea, we are left to worry out the meaning of the occurrence.
It may be that the prince intended to keep Wenamon at Byblos until the uttermost farthing had been extracted from Egypt in further payment for the wood, and that therefore he was to be regarded henceforth as Wenamon's king and master.
This is perhaps indicated by the following remarks of the prince.
"Do not thus contemplate the terrors of the sea," he said to Wenamon.
"For if you do that you should also contemplate my own.
Come, I have not done to you what they did to certain former envoys.
They spent seventeen years in this land, and they died where they were."
Then, turning to an attendant, "Take him," he said, "and let him see the tomb in which they lie."
"Oh, don't let me see it," Wenamon tells us that he cried in anguish; but, recovering his composure, he continued in a more valiant strain.
"Mere human beings," he said, "were the envoys who were then sent.
There was no god among them (as there now is)."
The prince had recently ordered an engraver to write a commemorative inscription upon a stone tablet recording the fact that the king of the gods had sent Amon-of-the-Road to Byblos as his divine messenger and Wenamon as his human messenger, that timber had been asked for and supplied, and that in return Amon had promised him ten thousand years of celestial life over and above that of ordinary persons.
Wenamon now reminded him of this, asking him why he should talk so slightingly of the Egyptian envoys when the making of this tablet showed that in reality he considered their presence an honour.
Moreover, he pointed out that when in future years an envoy from Egypt should read this tablet, he would of course pronounce at once the magical prayers which would procure for the prince, who would probably then be in hell after all, a draught of water.
This remark seems to have tickled the prince's fancy, for he gravely acknowledged its value, and spoke no more in his former strain.
Wenamon closed the interview by promising that the High Priest of Amon-Ra would fully reward him for his various kindnesses.
Shortly after this the Egyptian paid another visit to the sea-shore to feast his eyes upon the logs.
He must have been almost unable to contain himself in the delight and excitement of the ending of his task and his approaching return, in triumph to Egypt; and we may see him jauntily walking over the sand, perhaps humming a tune to himself.
Suddenly he observed a fleet of eleven ships sailing towards the town, and the song must have died upon his lips.
As they drew nearer he saw to his horror that they belonged to the Sicilians of Dor, and we must picture him biting his nails in his anxiety as he stood amongst the logs.
Presently they were within hailing distance, and some one called to them asking their business.
The reply rang across the water, brief and terrible; "Arrest Wenamon!
Let not a ship of his pass to Egypt."
Hearing these words the envoy of Amon-Ra, king of the gods, just now so proudly boasting, threw himself upon the sand and burst into tears.
The sobs of the wretched man penetrated to a chamber in which the prince's secretary sat writing at the open window, and he hurried over to the prostrate figure.
"Whatever is the matter with you?"
he said, tapping the man on the shoulder.
Wenamon raised his head, "Surely you see these birds which descend on Egypt," he groaned.
"Look at them!
They have come into the harbour, and how long shall I be left forsaken here?
Truly you see those who have come to arrest me."
With these words one must suppose that Wenamon returned to his weeping, for he says in his report that the sympathetic secretary went off to find the prince in order that some plan of action might be formulated.
When the news was reported to Zakar-Baal, he too began to lament; for the whole affair was menacing and ugly.
Looking out of the window he saw the Sicilian ships anchored as a barrier across the mouth of the harbour, he saw the logs of cedar-wood strewn over the beach, he saw the writhing figure of Wenamon pouring sand and dust upon his head and drumming feebly with his toes; and his royal heart was moved with pity for the misfortunes of the Egyptian.
[Illustration: PL.
XIII.
A festival scene of singers and dancers from a tomb-painting of Dynasty XVII.
--THEBES] [_Copied by H. Petrie._ Hastily speaking to his secretary, he told him to procure two large jars of wine and a ram, and to give them to Wenamon on the chance that they might stop the noise of his lamentations.
The secretary and his servants procured these things from the kitchen, and, tottering down with them to the envoy, placed them by his side.
Wenamon, however, merely glanced at them in a sickly manner, and then buried his head once more.
The failure must have been observed from the window of the palace, for the prince sent another servant flying off for a popular Egyptian lady of no reputation, who happened to be living just then at Byblos in the capacity of a dancing-girl.
Presently she minced into the room, very much elated, no doubt, at this indication of the royal favour.
The prince at once ordered her to hasten down on to the beach to comfort her countryman.
"Sing to him," he said.
"Don't let his heart feel apprehension."
Wenamon seemed to have waved the girl aside, and we may picture the prince making urgent signs to the lady from his window to renew her efforts.
The moans of the miserable man, however, did not cease, and the prince had recourse to a third device.
This time he sent a servant to Wenamon with a message of calm assurance.
"Eat and drink," he said, "and let not your heart feel apprehension.
You shall hear all that I have to say in the morning."
At this Wenamon roused himself, and, wiping his eyes, consented to be led back to his rooms, ever turning, no doubt, to cast nervous glances in the direction of the silent ships of Dor.
On the following morning the prince sent for the leaders of the Sicilians and asked them for what reason they had come to Byblos.
They replied that they had come in search of Wenamon, who had robbed some of their countrymen of thirty-one debens of silver.
The prince was placed in a difficult position, for he was desirous to avoid giving offence either to Dor or to Egypt from whence he now expected further payment; but he managed to pass out on to clearer ground by means of a simple stratagem.
"I cannot arrest the envoy of Amon in my territory," he said to the men of Dor.
"But I will send him away, and you shall pursue him and arrest him."
The plan seems to have appealed to the sporting instincts of the Sicilians, for it appears that they drew off from the harbour to await their quarry.
Wenamon was then informed of the scheme, and one may suppose that he showed no relish for it.
To be chased across a bilious sea by sporting men of hardened stomach was surely a torture for the damned; but it is to be presumed that Zakar-Baal left the Egyptian some chance of escape.
Hastily he was conveyed on board a ship, and his misery must have been complete when he observed that outside the harbour it was blowing a gale.
Hardly had he set out into the "Great Syrian Sea" before a terrific storm burst, and in the confusion which ensued we lose sight of the waiting fleet.
No doubt the Sicilians put in to Byblos once more for shelter, and deemed Wenamon at the bottom of the ocean as the wind whistled through their own bare rigging.
The Egyptian had planned to avoid his enemies by beating northwards when he left the harbour, instead of southwards towards Egypt; but the tempest took the ship's course into its own hands and drove the frail craft north-westwards towards Cyprus, the wooded shores of which were, in course of time, sighted.
Wenamon was now indeed 'twixt the devil and the deep sea, for behind him the waves raged furiously, and before him he perceived a threatening group of Cypriots awaiting him upon the wind-swept shore.
Presently the vessel grounded upon the beach, and immediately the ill-starred Egyptian and the entire crew were prisoners in the hands of a hostile mob.
Roughly they were dragged to the capital of the island, which happened to be but a few miles distant, and with ignominy they were hustled, wet and bedraggled, through the streets towards the palace of Hetebe, the Queen of Cyprus.
As they neared the building the queen herself passed by, surrounded by a brave company of nobles and soldiers.
Wenamon burst away from his captors, and bowed himself before the royal lady, crying as he did so, "Surely there is somebody amongst this company who understands Egyptian."
One of the nobles, to Wenamon's joy, replied, "Yes, I understand it."
"Say to my mistress," cried the tattered envoy, "that I have heard even in far-off Thebes, the abode of Amon, that in every city injustice is done, but that justice obtains in the land of Cyprus.
Yet see, injustice is done here also this day."
This was repeated to the queen, who replied, "Indeed!--what is this that you say?"
Through the interpreter Wenamon then addressed himself to Hetebe.
"If the sea raged," he said, "and the wind drove me to the land where I now am, will you let these people take advantage of it to murder me, I who am an envoy of Amon?
I am one for whom they will seek unceasingly.
And as for these sailors of the prince of Byblos, whom they also wish to kill, their lord will undoubtedly capture ten crews of yours, and will slay every man of them in revenge."
This seems to have impressed the queen, for she ordered the mob to stand on one side, and to Wenamon she said, "Pass the night ..." Here the torn writing comes to an abrupt end, and the remainder of Wenamon's adventures are for ever lost amidst the dust of El Hibeh.
One may suppose that Hetebe took the Egyptian under her protection, and that ultimately he arrived once more in Egypt, whither Zakar-Baal had perhaps already sent the timber.
Returning to his native town, it seems that Wenamon wrote his report, which for some reason or other was never despatched to the High Priest.
Perhaps the envoy was himself sent for, and thus his report was rendered useless; or perhaps our text is one of several copies.
There can be no question that he was a writer of great power, and this tale of his adventures must be regarded as one of the jewels of the ancient Egyptian language.
The brief description of the Prince of Byblos, seated with his back to the window, while the waves beat against the wall below, brings vividly before one that far-off scene, and reveals a lightness of touch most unusual in writers of that time.
There is surely, too, an appreciation of a delicate form of humour observable in his account of some of his dealings with the prince.
It is appalling to think that the peasants who found this roll of papyrus might have used it as fuel for their evening fire; and that, had not a drifting rumour of the value of such articles reached their village, this little tale of old Egypt and the long-lost Kingdoms of the Sea would have gone up to empty heaven in a puff of smoke.
CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY OF THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR.
When the early Spanish explorers led their expeditions to Florida, it was their intention to find the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, tales of its potent waters having reached Peter Martyr as early as 1511.
This desire to discover the things pertaining to Fairyland has been, throughout history, one of the most fertile sources of adventure.
From the days when the archaic Egyptians penetrated into the regions south of the Cataracts, where they believed that the inhabitants were other than human, and into Pount, the "Land of the Ghosts," the hope of Fairyland has led men to search the face of the earth and to penetrate into its unknown places.
It has been the theme of countless stories: it has supplied material for innumerable songs.
And in spite of the circumambulations of science about us, in spite of the hardening of all the tissues of our imagination, in spite of the phenomenal development of the commonplace, this desire for a glimpse of the miraculous is still set deeply in our hearts.
The old quest of Fairyland is as active now as ever it was.
We still presume, in our unworthiness, to pass the barriers, and to walk upon those paths which lead to the enchanted forests and through them to the city of the Moon.
At any moment we are ready to set forth, like Arthur's knights, in search of the Holy Grail.
The explorer who penetrates into Central Africa in quest of King Solomon's mines is impelled by a hope closely akin to that of the Spaniards.
The excavator who digs for the buried treasures of the Incas or of the Egyptians is often led by a desire for the fabulous.
Search is now being made in the western desert of Egypt for a lost city of burnished copper; and the Anglo-Egyptian official is constantly urged by credulous natives to take camels across the wilderness in quest of a town whose houses and temples are of pure gold.
What archæologist has not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea?
It is* not only children who love the tales of Fairyland.
How happily we have read Kipling's 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' De la Motte Fouqué's 'Undine,' Kenneth Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows,' or F.W.
Bain's Indian stories.
The recent fairy plays--Barry's "Peter Pan," Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird," and the like--have been enormously successful.
Say what we will, fairy tales still hold their old power over us, and still we turn to them as a relief from the commonplace.
*Transcriber's note: In the original text the word "is" is omitted.
Some of us, failing to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future.
Each Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the endless search.
To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of the Elysian Fields: they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven.
They sing of crystal fountains, of streets paved with gold, of meadows dressed with living green where they shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn.
There everlasting spring abides and never-withering flowers; there ten thousand times ten thousand clad in sparkling raiment throng up the steeps of light.
Here in the church the most unimaginative people cry aloud upon their God for Fairyland.
"The roseate hues of early dawn, The brightness of the day, The crimson of the sunset sky, How fast they fade away!
Oh, for the pearly gates of Heaven, Oh, for the golden floor...." They know no way of picturing the incomprehensible state of the future, and they interpret it, therefore, in terms of the fairy tale.
I am inclined to think that this sovereignty of the fairies is beneficial.
Fairy tales fill the minds of the young with knowledge of the kindly people who will reward with many gifts those that are charitable to the old; they teach a code of chivalry that brings as its reward the love of the beautiful princess in the tower; they tell of dangers overcome by courage and perseverance; they suggest a contact with nature which otherwise might never be developed.
Where angels and archangels overawe by their omnipotence, the microscopic fairies who can sit singing upon a mushroom and dangle from the swaying stem of a bluebell, carry the thoughts down the scale of life to the little and really important things.
A sleepy child will rather believe that the Queen of the Fairies is acting sentry upon the knob of the bedpost than that an angel stands at the head of the cot with great wings spread in protection--wings which suggest the probability of claws and a beak to match.
The dragons which can only be slain by the noble knight, the enchantments which can only be broken by the outwitting of the evil witch, the lady who can only be won by perils bravely endured, form the material of moral lessons which no other method of teaching could so impress upon the youthful mind.
And when mature years are attained the atmosphere of Fairyland remains with us.
The lost songs of the little people drift through the brain, recalling the infinite possibilities of beauty and goodness which are so slightly out of reach; the forgotten wonder of elfs and brownies suggests itself to us from the heart of flowers and amidst the leaves of trees.
The clear depths of the sea take half their charm from the memory of the mermaid's palace; the silence of forests is rich with the expectancy of the Knight of the Golden Plume; the large spaces of kitchens and corridors are hushed for the concealment of Robin Goodfellow.
It is the elusiveness, the enchantment, of Fairyland which, for the mature mind, constitutes its greatest value and charm; it is a man's desire for the realms of Midsummer-night that makes the building of those realms in our childhood so valuable.
We are constantly endeavouring to recapture the grace of that intangible kingdom, and the hope of ultimate success retains the elasticity of the mind.
Held fast by the stiffened joints of reason and closeted with the gout of science, we are fettered prisoners in the world unless there be the knowledge that something eludes us to lead us on.
We know quite well that the fairies do not exist, but at the same time we cannot deny that the elusive atmosphere of Fairyland is one with that of our fondest dreams.
Who has not, upon a grey morning, awakened from sleep with the knowledge that he has passed out from a kingdom of dream more dear than all the realms of real life?
Vainly we endeavour to recall the lost details, but only the impression remains.
That impression, however, warms the tone of our whole day, and frames our thoughts as it were with precious stones.
Thus also it is with the memory of our childhood's idea of Fairyland: the impression is recalled, the brain peers forward, the thoughts go on tiptoe, and we feel that we have caught a glimpse of Beauty.
Indeed, the recollection of the atmosphere created in our youthful minds by means of fairy tales is perhaps the most abundant of the sources of our knowledge of Beauty in mature years.
I do not suppose that I am alone in declaring that some of the most tender feelings of childhood are inspired by the misfortunes of the Beast in the story of "Beauty and the Beast"; and the Sleeping Beauty is the first love of many a small boy.
Man, from his youth up, craves enchantment; and though the business of life gives him no opportunity for the indulging in day-dreams, there are few of us indeed who have not at some time sought the phantom isles, and sought in vain.
There is no stormy night, when the wind moans through the trees, and the moon-rack flies overhead, but takes something of its mystery from the recollection of the enchantments of the dark ages.
The sun does not sink into the sea amidst the low-lying clouds but some vague thought is brought to mind of the uncharted island whereon that maiden lies sleeping whose hair is dark as heaven's wrath, and whose breast is white like alabaster in the pathway of the moon.
There she lies in the charmed circle under the trees, where none may enter until that hour when some pale, lost mariner shall surprise the secret of the pathway, and, coming suddenly upon her, shall kiss her shadowed lips.
Vague, elusive, undefined, as such fancies must be, they yet tinge the thoughts of almost every man at certain moments of his life, and set him searching for the enchantment of bygone days.
Eagerly he looks for those "...Magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn"; and it is the fact of their unreality that gives them their haunting value.
The following story, preserved in a papyrus now at St Petersburg, describes a mysterious island whereon there dwelt a monster most lovable and most forlorn: a creature so tenderly drawn, indeed, that the reader will not fail to enthrone him in the little company of the nobility of the kingdom of the fairy tale.
Translations of the story by two or three savants have appeared; but the present version, which I give in its literal form, has been prepared especially for this volume by Mr Alan Gardiner; and, coming from him, it may be said to be the last word of the science upon the subject of this difficult text.
The scene with which the story opens is clearly indicated by the introductory sentences, though actually it is not described.
A large war-galley had come swinging down the Nile from the land of Wawat in the south, the oars flashing in the Nubian sunlight.
On the left the granite rocks of the island of Bigeh towered above the vessel; on the right the island of Philæ, as yet devoid of buildings, rested placidly on the blue waters.
Ahead were the docks of Shallal, where the clustered boats lay darkly against the yellow of the desert, and busy groups of figures, loading and unloading cargoes, moved to and fro over the sand.
Away to the left, behind Bigeh, the distant roar of the First Cataract could be heard as the waters went rushing down from Nubia across the frontier into Egypt.
[Illustration: PL.
XIV.
A sailor of Lower Nubia and his son.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._ The great vessel had just returned from the little-known country of Ethiopia, which bordered the Land of the Ghosts, having its frontiers upon the shores of the sea that encircled the world; and the sailors were all straining their eyes towards these docks which formed the southernmost outpost of Egypt, their home.
The greatest excitement prevailed on deck; but in the cabin, erected of vari-coloured cloth in the stern of the vessel, the noble leader of the expedition which was now at its conclusion lay in a troubled sleep, tossing nervously upon his bed.
His dreams were all of the terrible ordeal which was before him.
He could take no pleasure in his home-coming, for he was driven nigh crazy by the thought of entering the presence of the great Pharaoh himself in order to make his report.
It is almost impossible to realise nowadays the agonies of mind that a man had to suffer who was obliged to approach the incarnation of the sun upon earth, and to crave the indulgence of this god in regard to any shortcomings in the conduct of the affairs intrusted to him.
Of all the kings of the earth the Pharaoh was the most terrible, the most thoroughly frightening.
Not only did he hold the lives of his subjects in his hand to do with them as he chose, but he also controlled the welfare of their immortal souls; for, being a god, he had dominion over the realms of the dead.
To be censured by the Pharaoh was to be excommunicated from the pleasures of this earth and outlawed from the fair estate of heaven.
A well-known Egyptian noble named Sinuhe, the hero of a fine tale of adventure, describes himself as petrified with terror when he entered the audience-chamber.
"I stretched myself on my stomach," he writes, "and became unconscious before him (the Pharaoh).
This god addressed me kindly, but I was as a man overtaken by the twilight: my soul departed, my flesh trembled; my heart was no more in my body that I should know life from death.
"[1] Similarly another personage writes: "Remember the day of bringing the tribute, when thou passest into the Presence under the window, the nobles on each side before his Majesty, the nobles and ambassadors (?)
of all countries.
They stand and gaze at the tribute, while thou fearest and shrinkest back, and thy hand is weak, and thou knowest not whether it is death or life that is before thee; and thou art brave (only) in praying to thy gods: 'Save me, prosper me this one time.
'"[2] [Footnote 1: Sinuhe, 254-256.]
[Footnote 2: Papyrus Koller, 5, 1-4.]
Of the Pharaoh it is written-"Thine eye is clearer than the stars of heaven; Thou seest farther than the sun.
If I speak afar off, thine ear hears; If I do a hidden deed, thine eye sees it.
"[1] [Footnote 1: Anastasi Papyri, 4, 5, 6 ff.]
Or again-"The god of taste is in thy mouth, The god of knowledge is in thy heart; Thy tongue is enthroned in the temple of truth; God is seated upon thy lips.
"[2] [Footnote 2: Kubban stela.]
To meet face to face this all-knowing, all-seeing, celestial creature, from whom there could be no secrets hid nor any guilt concealed, was an ordeal to which a man might well look forward with utter horror.
It was this terrible dread that, in the tale with which we are now concerned, held the captain of this Nubian vessel in agony upon his couch.
As he lay there, biting his finger-nails, one of the ship's officers, himself a former leader of expeditions, entered the cabin to announce their arrival at the Shallal docks.
"Good news, prince," said he cheerfully to his writhing master.
"Look, we have reached home.
They have taken the mallet and driven in the mooring-post; the ship's cable has been put on land.
There is merrymaking and thanksgiving, and every man is embracing his fellow.
Our crew has returned unscathed, without loss to our soldiers.
We have reached the end of Wawat, we have passed Bigeh.
Yes, indeed, we have returned safely; we have reached our own land."
At this the prince seems to have groaned anew, much to the distress of his friend, who could but urge him to pull himself together and to play the man.
"Listen to me, prince," he begged, "for I am one void of exaggeration.
Wash yourself, pour water on your fingers."
The wretched, man replied, it would seem, with a repetition of his fears; whereupon the old sailor seems to have sat down by his side and to have given him a word of advice as to how he should behave in the king's presence.
"Make answer when you are addressed," he said; "speak to the king with a heart in you; answer without restraint.
For it is a man's mouth that saves him....
But do as you will: to talk to you is wearisome (to you)."
Presently the old sailor was seized with an idea.
He would tell a story, no matter whether it were strictly true or not, in which his own adventures should be set forth.
He would describe how he was wrecked upon an unknown island, how he was saved from death, and how, on his return, he conducted into the Pharaoh's presence.
A narration of his own experiences before his sovereign might give heart to his captain, and might effectually lift the intolerable burden of dread from the princely shoulders.
"I will relate to you," he began, "a similar thing which befell me my very self.
I was making a journey to the mines of the sovereign ..." The prince may here be supposed to have sat up and given gloomy attention to his friend's words, for Egyptians of all ages have loved a good story, and tales of adventures in the south were, in early times, most acceptable.
The royal gold mines referred to were probably situated at the southern-most end of the eastern Egyptian desert.
To reach them one would take ship from Kossair or some other Red Sea port, sail down the coast to the frontiers of Pount, the modern Somaliland, and then travel inland by caravan.
It was a perilous undertaking, and, at the time when this story was written, the journey must have furnished material for amazing yarns.
"I went down on the Great Green Sea," continued the speaker, "in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits[1] in length and forty cubits in breadth, and in it were a hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt.
They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were stouter than lions.
They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it was not."
[Footnote 1: The average cubit was about 20-1/2 inches.]
A storm arose while they were out of sight of land, and rapidly increased in violence, until the waves, according to the very restrained estimate of the narrator, were eight cubits high--that is to say, about thirteen or fourteen feet.
To one who was accustomed to the waves of the Nile this would be a great height; and the passage thus suggests that the scribe was an untravelled man.
A vessel of 150 cubits, or about 250 feet, in length might have been expected to ride out a storm of this magnitude; but, according to the story, she went to pieces, and the whole ship's company, with the single exception of the teller of the tale, were drowned.
The survivor managed to cling to a plank of wood, which was driven by the wind towards the shores of an uncharted island, and here at length he was cast up by the waves.
Not far from the beach there was a small thicket, and to this the castaway hastened, sheltering therein from the fury of the storm.
For three days in deep despair he lay hidden, "without a companion," as he said, "save my heart;" but at last the tempest subsided, the sun shone in the heavens once again, and the famished mariner was able to go in search of food, which, to his delight, he found in abundance.
The scene upon which he gazed as he plucked the fruit of the laden trees was most mysterious, and all that he saw around him must have had an appearance not altogether consistent with reality, for, indeed, the island was not real.
It had been called into existence, perhaps, at the bidding of some god to relieve the tedium of an eternal afternoon, and suddenly it had appeared, floating upon the blue waters of the ocean.
How long it had remained there, how long it would still remain, none could tell, for at any moment the mind of the god might be diverted, and instantly it would dissolve and vanish as would a dream.
Beneath the isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness the fishes of the deep, with luminous, round eyes, passed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the trees above them.
Overhead the heavens stretched, and around about spread the expanse of the sea upon which no living thing might be seen, save only the dolphins as they leapt into the sunshine and sank again amidst the gleaming spray.
There was abundant vegetation upon the island, but it does not appear to have looked quite real.
The fig-trees were heavy with fruit, the vines were festooned from bough to bough, hung with clusters of grapes, and pomegranates were ripe for the plucking.
But there seems to have been an unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment were upon them.
In the tangled undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor walked there lay great melons and pumpkins.
The breeze wafted to his nostrils the smell of the incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after the storm, must have made every breath he breathed a pleasure of Paradise to him.
Moving over the luxuriant ground, he put up flights of wonderful birds which sped towards the interior, red, green, and golden, against the sky.
Monkeys chattered at him from the trees, and sprang from branch to branch amidst the dancing flowers.
In shadowed pools of clear water fishes were to be seen, gliding amidst the reeds; and amongst the rocks beside the sea the castaway could look down upon the creatures of the deep imprisoned between the tides.
Food in all forms was to hand, and he had but to fill his arms with the good things which Fate had provided.
"I found there," he said, "figs, grapes, and all manner of goodly onions; melons and pomegranates were there, and pumpkins of every kind.
Fishes were there and fowls: there was nought that was lacking in it.
I satisfied myself, and set upon the ground the abundance of that with which my arms were filled.
I took the fire-borer and kindled a fire, and made a burnt-offering to the gods."
Seated in the warm sunshine amidst the trees, eating a roast fowl seasoned with onions or some equally palatable concoction, he seems to have found the life of a shipwrecked mariner by no means as distressing as he had anticipated; and the wording of the narrative appears to be so arranged that an impression of comfortable ease and security may surround his sunlit figure.
Suddenly, however, all was changed.
"I heard," said he, "a sound as of thunder, and I thought it was the waves of the sea."
Then "the trees creaked and the earth trembled"; and, like the Egyptian that he was, he went down on his shaking hands and knees, and buried his face in the ground.
At length "I uncovered my face," he declared, "and I found it was a serpent that came, of the length of thirty cubits"--about fifty feet--"and his tail was more than two cubits" in diameter.
"His skin was overlaid with gold, and his eyebrows were of real lapis lazuli, and he was exceeding perfect."
"He opened his mouth to me," he continued, "as I lay on my stomach before him, and said to me: 'Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?--who brought thee?
If thou delayest to tell me who brought thee to this island I will cause thee to know thyself (again only) when thou art ashes, and art become that which is not seen'"--that is to say, a ghost.
"Thus you spoke to me," whispered the old sailor, as though again addressing the serpent, who, in the narration of these adventures, had become once more a very present reality to him, "but I heard it not.
I lay before thee, and was unconscious."
Continuing his story, he told how the great serpent lifted him tenderly in his golden mouth, and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees and the flowers.
The Egyptian at once flung himself upon his stomach before him, and lay there in a stupor of terror.
The serpent, however, meant him no harm, and indeed looked down on him with tender pity as he questioned him once more.
"Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?"
he asked again, "Who brought thee to this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the (under) half is waves?"
On his hands and knees before the kindly monster the shipwrecked Egyptian managed to regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to give an account of himself.
"I was going down to the mines," he faltered, "on a mission of the sovereign, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt.
They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were stouter than lions.
They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it was not.
Every one of them, his heart was stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow.
There was none unproven amongst them.
The storm arose while that we were on the Great Green Sea, before we touched land; and as we sailed it redoubled (its strength), and the waves thereof were eight cubits.
There was a plank of wood to which I clung.
The ship perished, and of them that were in her not one was left saving me alone, who now am at your side.
And I was brought to this island by the waves of the Great Green Sea."
At this point the man seems to have been overcome once more with terror, and the serpent, therefore, hastened to reassure him.
"Fear not, little one," he said in his gentle voice; "fear not.
Let not thy face be dismayed.
If thou hast come to me it is God who has let thee live, who has brought thee to this phantom isle in which there is naught that is lacking, but it is full of all good things.
Behold, thou shalt pass month for month until thou accomplish four months upon this island.
And a ship shall come from home, and sailors in it whom thou knowest, and thou shalt go home with them, and shalt die in thine own city."
"How glad is he," exclaimed the old mariner as he related his adventures to the prince, "how glad is he that recounts what he has experienced when the calamity is passed!"
The prince, no doubt, replied with a melancholy grunt, and the thread of the story was once more taken up.
There was a particular reason why the serpent should be touched and interested to hear how Providence had saved the Egyptian from death, for he himself had survived a great calamity, and had been saved from an equally terrible fate, as he now proceeded to relate.
"I will tell to thee the like thereof," he said, "which happened in this island.
I dwelt herein with my brothers, and my children were among them.
Seventy-two serpents we were, all told, with my offspring and my brothers; nor have I yet mentioned to thee a little girl brought to me by fortune.
A star came down, and all these went up in the flames.
And it happened so that I was not together with them when they were consumed; I was not in their midst.
I could have died (of grief) for them when I found them as a single pile of corpses."
It is clear from the story that this great serpent was intended to be pictured as a sad and lonely, but most lovable, character.
All alone upon this ghostly isle, the last of his race, one is to imagine him dreaming of the little girl who was taken from him, together with all his family.
Although fabulous himself, and half divine, he was yet the victim of the gods, and was made to suffer real sorrows in his unreal existence.
Day by day he wandered over his limited domain, twisting his golden body amidst the pumpkins, and rearing himself above the fig-trees; thundering down to the beach to salute the passing dolphins, or sunning himself, a golden blaze, upon the rocks.
There remained naught for him to do but to await the cessation of the phantasy of his life; and yet, though his lot was hard, he was ready at once to subordinate his sorrows to those of the shipwrecked sailor before him.
No more is said of his distress, but with his next words he seems to have dismissed his own misfortunes, and to have attempted to comfort the Egyptian.
"If thou art brave," he said, "and restrainest thy longing, thou shalt press thy children to thy bosom and kiss thy wife, and behold thy house--that is the best of all things.
Thou shalt reach home, and shalt dwell there amongst thy brothers."
"Thereat," said the mariner, "I cast me upon my stomach and touched the ground before him, and I said to him: 'I will tell of thy might to the Sovereign, I will cause him to be acquainted with thy greatness.
I will let bring to thee perfume and spices, myrrh and sweet-scented woods, and incense of the sanctuaries wherewithal every god is propitiated.
I will recount all that has befallen me, and that which I have seen by his might; and they shall praise thee in that city before the magistrates of the entire land.
I will slaughter to thee oxen as a burnt-offering, geese will I pluck for thee, and I will let bring to thee vessels laden with all the goodly things of Egypt, as may be (fitly) done to a god who loves men in a distant land, a land unknown to men.'"
At these words the serpent opened his golden mouth and fell to laughing.
The thought that this little mortal, grovelling before him, could believe himself able to repay the kindnesses received tickled him immensely.
"Hast thou not much incense (here, then)?"
he laughed.
"Art not become a lord of frankincense?
And I, behold I am prince of Pount," the land of perfumes, "and the incense, _that_ is my very own.
As for the spices which thou sayest shall be brought, they are the wealth of this island.
But it shall happen when thou hast left this place, never shalt thou see this island more, for it shall be changed to waves."
The teller of the story does not relate in what manner he received this well-merited reproof.
The gentle monster, no doubt, was tolerant of his presumptuousness, and soon put him at his ease again.
During the whole period of the Egyptian's residence on the island, in fact, the golden serpent seems to have been invariably kind to him.
The days passed by like a happy dream, and the spell of the island's enchantment possessed him so that, in after times, the details of the events of every day were lost in the single illusion of the whole adventure.
At last the ship arrived, as it had been foretold, and the sailor watched her passing over the hazy sea towards the mysterious shore.
"I went and got me up into a tall tree," he said, "and I recognised those that were in it.
And I went to report the matter (to the serpent), and I found that he knew it."
Very tenderly the great monster addressed him.
"Fare thee well, little one," he said "Fare thee well to thy house.
Mayest thou see thy children and raise up a good name in thy city.
Behold, such are my wishes for thee."
"Then," continued the sailor, "I laid me on my stomach, my arms were bended before him.
And he gave me a freight of frankincense, perfume and myrrh, sweet-scented woods and antimony, giraffes' tails, great heaps of incense, elephant tusks, dogs, apes and baboons, and all manner of valuable things.
And I loaded them in that ship, and I laid myself on my stomach to make thanksgiving to him.
Then he said to me: 'Behold, thou shalt come home in two months, and shalt press thy children to thy bosom, and shalt flourish in their midst; and there thou shalt be buried.'"
[Illustration: PL.
XV.
A Nile boat passing the hills of Thebes.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._] To appreciate the significance of these last words it is necessary to remember what an important matter it was to an Egyptian that he should be buried in his native city.
In our own case the position upon the map of the place where we lay down our discarded bones is generally not of first-rate importance, and the thought of being buried in foreign lands does not frighten us.
Whether our body is to be packed away in the necropolis of our city, or shovelled into a hole on the outskirts of Timbuctoo, is not a matter of vital interest.
There is a certain sentiment that leads us to desire interment amidst familiar scenes, but it is subordinated with ease to other considerations.
To the Egyptian, however, it was a matter of paramount importance.
"What is a greater thing," says Sinuhe in the tale of his adventures in Asia, "than that I should be buried in the land in which I was born?"
"Thou shalt not die in a foreign land; Asiatics shall not conduct thee to the tomb," says the Pharaoh to him; and again, "It is no little thing that thou shalt be buried without Asiatics conducting thee.
"[1] There is a stela now preserved in Stuttgart, in which the deceased man asks those who pass his tomb to say a prayer for his soul; and he adjures them in these words: "So truly as ye wish that your native gods should praise you, and that ye should be established in your seats, and that ye should hand down your offices to your children: that ye should reach your homes in safety, and recount your travels to your wives;--then say a prayer," &c.[2] [Footnote 1: Sinuhe, B.
159, 197, 258.]
[Footnote 2: Zeit.
Aeg.
Spr., 39 (1901), p.
118.]
The serpent was thus giving the castaway a promise which meant more to him than all the other blessings, and it was with a light heart indeed that he ran down to the beach to greet his countrymen.
"I went down to the shore where the ship was," he continued, "and I called to the soldiers which were in that ship, and I gave praises upon the shore to the lord of this island, and likewise did they which were in the ship."
Then he stepped on board, the gangway was drawn up, and, with a great sweep of the oars, the ship passed out on to the open sea.
Standing on deck amongst the new cargo, the officers and their rescued friend bowed low to the great serpent who towered above the trees at the water's edge, gleaming in the sunshine.
"Fare thee well, little one," his deep voice rolled across the water; and again they bowed in obeisance to him.
The main-sail was unfurled to the wind, and the vessel scudded bravely across the Great Green Sea; but for some time yet they must have kept their eyes upon the fair shape of the phantom island, as the trees blended into the hills and the hills at last into the haze; and their vision must have been focussed upon that one gleaming point where the golden serpent, alone once more with his memories, watched the ship moving over the fairy seas.
"So sailed we northwards," said the sailor, "to the place of the Sovereign, and we reached home in two months, in accordance with all that he had said.
And I entered in before the Sovereign, and I brought to him this tribute which I had taken away from within this island.
Then gave he thanksgivings for me before the magistrates of the entire land.
And I was made a 'Follower,' and was rewarded with the serfs of such an one."
The old sailor turned to the gloomy prince as he brought his story to an end.
"Look at me," he exclaimed, "now that I have reached land, now that I have seen (again in memory) what I have experienced.
Hearken thou to me, for behold, to hearken is good for men."
But the prince only sighed the more deeply, and, with a despairing gesture, replied: "Be not (so) superior, my friend!
Doth one give water to a bird on the eve, when it is to be slain on the morrow?"
With these words the manuscript abruptly ends, and we are supposed to leave the prince still disconsolate in his cabin, while his friend, unable to cheer him, returns to his duties on deck.
PART III.
RESEARCHES IN THE TREASURY.
"...And he, shall be, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills?"
--TENNYSON.
CHAPTER VII.
RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT.
There came to the camp of a certain professor, who was engaged in excavating the ruins of an ancient Egyptian city, a young and faultlessly-attired Englishman, whose thirst for dramatic adventure had led him to offer his services as an unpaid assistant digger.
This immaculate personage had read in novels and tales many an account of the wonders which the spade of the excavator could reveal, and he firmly believed that it was only necessary to set a "nigger" to dig a little hole in the ground to open the way to the treasuries of the Pharaohs.
Gold, silver, and precious stones gleamed before him, in his imagination, as he hurried along subterranean passages to the vaults of long-dead kings.
He expected to slide upon the seat of his very well-made breeches down the staircase of the ruined palace which he had entered by way of the skylight, and to find himself, at the bottom, in the presence of the bejewelled dead.
In the intervals between such experiences he was of opinion that a little quiet gazelle shooting would agreeably fill in the swiftly passing hours; and at the end of the season's work he pictured himself returning to the bosom of his family with such a tale to tell that every ear would be opened to him.
On his arrival at the camp he was conducted to the site of his future labours; and his horrified gaze was directed over a large area of mud-pie, knee-deep in which a few bedraggled natives slushed their way downwards.
After three weeks' work on this distressing site, the professor announced that he had managed to trace through the mud the outline of the palace walls, once the feature of the city, and that the work here might now be regarded as finished.
He was then conducted to a desolate spot in the desert, and until the day on which he fled back to England he was kept to the monotonous task of superintending a gang of natives whose sole business it was to dig a very large hole in the sand, day after day and week after week.
It is, however, sometimes the fortune of the excavator to make a discovery which almost rivals in dramatic interest the tales of his youth.
Such as experience fell to the lot of Emil Brugsch Pasha when he was lowered into an ancient tomb and found himself face to face with a score of the Pharaohs of Egypt, each lying in his coffin; or again, when Monsieur de Morgan discovered the great mass of royal jewels in one of the pyramids at Dachour.
But such "finds" can be counted on the fingers, and more often an excavation is a fruitless drudgery.
Moreover, the life of the digger is not often a pleasant one.
[Illustration: PL.
XVI.
The excavations on the site of the city of Abydos.]
[_Photo by the Author._ It will perhaps be of interest to the reader of romances to illustrate the above remarks by the narration of some of my own experiences; but there are only a few interesting and unusual episodes in which I have had the peculiarly good fortune to be an actor.
There will probably be some drama to be felt in the account of the more important discoveries (for there certainly is to the antiquarian himself); but it should be pointed out that the interest of these rare finds pales before the description, which many of us have heard, of how the archæologists of a past century discovered the body of Charlemagne clad in his royal robes and seated upon his throne,--which, by the way, is quite untrue.
In spite of all that is said to the contrary, truth is seldom stranger than fiction; and the reader who desires to be told of the discovery of buried cities whose streets are paved with gold should take warning in time and return at once to his novels.
If the dawning interest of the reader has now been thoroughly cooled by these words, it may be presumed that it will be utterly annihilated by the following narration of my first fruitless excavation; and thus one will be able to continue the story with the relieved consciousness that nobody is attending.
In the capacity of assistant to Professor Flinders Petrie, I was set, many years ago, to the task of excavating a supposed royal cemetery in the desert behind the ancient city of Abydos, in Upper Egypt.
Two mounds were first attacked; and after many weeks of work in digging through the sand, the superstructure of two great tombs was bared.
In the case of the first of these several fine passages of good masonry were cleared, and at last the burial-chamber was reached.
In the huge sarcophagus which was there found great hopes were entertained that the body and funeral-offerings of the dead prince would be discovered; but when at last the interior was laid bare the solitary article found was a copy of a French newspaper left behind by the last, and equally disgusted, excavator.
The second tomb defied the most ardent exploration, and failed to show any traces of a burial.
The mystery was at last solved by Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception, soon came to the conclusion that the whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide an enormous mass of rock chippings the presence of which had been a puzzle for some time.
These masons' chippings were evidently the output from some large cutting in the rock, and it became apparent that there must be a great rock tomb in the neighbourhood.
Trial trenches in the vicinity presently revealed the existence of a long wall, which, being followed in either direction, proved to be the boundary of a vast court or enclosure built upon the desert at the foot of a conspicuous cliff.
A ramp led up to the entrance; but as it was slightly askew and pointed to the southern end of the enclosure, it was supposed that the rock tomb, which presumably ran into the cliff from somewhere inside this area, was situated at that end.
The next few weeks were occupied in the tedious task of probing the sand hereabouts, and at length in clearing it away altogether down to the surface of the underlying rock.
Nothing was found, however; and sadly we turned to the exact middle of the court, and began to work slowly to the foot of the cliff.
Here, in the very middle of the back wall, a pillared chamber was found, and it seemed certain that the entrance to the tomb would now be discovered.
The best men were placed to dig out this chamber, and the excavator--it was many years ago--went about his work with the weight of fame upon his shoulders and an expression of intense mystery upon his sorely sun-scorched face.
How clearly memory recalls the letter home that week, "We are on the eve of a great discovery"; and how vividly rises the picture of the baking desert sand into which the sweating workmen were slowly digging their way!
But our hopes were short-lived, for it very soon became apparent that there was no tomb entrance in this part of the enclosure.
There remained the north end of the area, and on to this all the available men were turned.
Deeper and deeper they dug their way, until the mounds of sand thrown out formed, as it were, the lip of a great crater.
At last, some forty or fifty feet down, the underlying rock was struck, and presently the mouth of a great shaft was exposed leading down into the bowels of the earth.
The royal tomb had at last been discovered, and it only remained to effect an entrance.
The days were now filled with excitement, and, the thoughts being concentrated on the question of the identity of the royal occupant of the tomb, it was soon fixed in our minds that we were about to enter the burial-place of no less a personage than the great Pharaoh Senusert III.
(Sesostris), the same king whose jewels were found at Dachour.
One evening, just after I had left the work, the men came down to the distant camp to say that the last barrier was now reached and that an entrance could be effected at once.
In the pale light of the moon, therefore, I hastened back to the desert with a few trusted men.
As we walked along, one of these natives very cheerfully remarked that we should all probably get our throats cut, as the brigands of the neighbourhood got wind of the discovery, and were sure to attempt to enter the tomb that night.
With this pleasing prospect before us we walked with caution over the silent desert.
Reaching the mound of sand which surrounded our excavation, we crept to the top and peeped over into the crater.
At once we observed a dim light below us, and almost immediately an agitated but polite voice from the opposite mound called out in Arabic, "Go away, mister.
We have all got guns."
This remark was followed by a shot which whistled past me; and therewith I slid down the hill once more, and heartily wished myself safe in my bed.
Our party then spread round the crater, and at a given word we proposed to rush the place.
But the enemy was too quick for us, and after the briefest scrimmage, and the exchanging* of a harmless shot or two, we found ourselves in possession of the tomb, and were able to pretend that we were not a bit frightened.
*Transcriber's note: Original text read "exhanging".
Then into the dark depths of the shaft we descended, and ascertained that the robbers had not effected an entrance.
A long night watch followed, and the next day we had the satisfaction of arresting some of the criminals.
The tomb was found to penetrate several hundred feet into the cliff, and at the end of the long and beautifully worked passage the great royal sarcophagus was found--empty!
So ended a very strenuous season's work.
If the experiences of a digger in Professor Petrie's camp are to be regarded as typical, they will probably serve to damp the ardour of eager young gentlemen in search of ancient Egyptian treasure.
One lives in a bare little hut constructed of mud, and roofed with cornstalks or corrugated iron; and if by chance there happened to be a rain storm, as there was when I was a member of the community, one may watch the frail building gently subside in a liquid stream on to one's bed and books.
For seven days in the week one's work continues, and it is only to the real enthusiast that that work is not monotonous and tiresome.
A few years later it fell to my lot to excavate for the Government the funeral temple of Thutmosis III.
at Thebes, and a fairly large sum was spent upon the undertaking.
Although the site was most promising in appearances, a couple of months' work brought to light hardly a single object of importance, whereas exactly similar sites in the same neighbourhood had produced inscriptions of the greatest value.
Two years ago I assisted at an excavation upon a site of my own selection, the net result of which, after six weeks' work, was one mummified cat!
To sit over the work day after day, as did the unfortunate promoter of this particular enterprise, with the flies buzzing around his face and the sun blazing down upon him from a relentless sky, was hardly a pleasurable task; and to watch the clouds of dust go up from the tip-heap, where tons of unprofitable rubbish rolled down the hillside all day long, was an occupation for the damned.
Yet that is excavating as it is usually found to be.
Now let us consider the other side of the story.
In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes excavations have been conducted for some years by Mr Theodore M. Davis, of Newport, Rhode Island, by special arrangement with the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian Government; and as an official of that Department I have had the privilege of being present at all the recent discoveries.
The finding of the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau a few years ago was one of the most interesting archæological events of recent times, and one which came somewhere near to the standard of romance set by the novelists.
Yuaa and Tuau were the parents of Queen Tiy, the discovery of whose tomb is recorded in the next chapter.
When the entrance of their tomb was cleared, a flight of steps was exposed, leading down to a passage blocked by a wall of loose stones.
In the top right-hand corner a small hole, large enough to admit a man, had been made in ancient times, and through this we could look down into a dark passage.
As it was too late in the day to enter at once, we postponed that exciting experience until the morrow, and some police were sent for to guard the entrance during the night.
I had slept the previous night over the mouth, and there was now no possibility of leaving the place for several more nights, so a rough camp was formed on the spot.
Here I settled myself down for the long watch, and speculated on the events of the next morning, when Mr Davis and one or two well-known Egyptologists were to come to the valley to open the sepulchre.
Presently, in the silent darkness, a slight noise was heard on the hillside, and immediately the challenge of the sentry rang out.
This was answered by a distant call, and after some moments of alertness on our part we observed two figures approaching us.
These, to my surprise, proved to be a well-known American artist and his wife,[1] who had obviously come on the expectation that trouble was ahead; but though in this they were certainly destined to suffer disappointment, still, out of respect for the absolute unconcern of both visitors, it may be mentioned that the mouth of a lonely tomb already said by native rumour to contain incalculable wealth is not perhaps the safest place in the world.
Here, then, on a level patch of rock we three lay down and slept fitfully until the dawn.
Soon after breakfast the wall at the mouth of the tomb was pulled down, and the party passed into the low passage which sloped down to the burial chamber.
At the bottom of this passage there was a second wall blocking the way; but when a few layers had been taken off the top we were able to climb, one by one, into the chamber.
[Footnote 1: Mr and Mrs Joseph Lindon Smith.]
[Illustration: PL.
XVII.
Excavating the Osireion at Abydos.
A chain of boys handing up baskets of sand to the surface.]
[_Photo by the Author._ Imagine entering a town house which had been closed for the summer: imagine the stuffy room, the stiff, silent appearance of the furniture, the feeling that some ghostly occupants of the vacant chairs have just been disturbed, the desire to throw open the windows to let life into room once more.
That was perhaps the first sensation as we stood, really dumfounded, and stared around at the relics of the life of over three thousand years ago, all of which were as new almost as when they graced the palace of Prince Yuaa.
Three arm-chairs were perhaps the first objects to attract the attention: beautiful carved wooden chairs, decorated with gold.
Belonging to one of these was a pillow made of down and covered with linen.
It was so perfectly preserved that one might have sat upon it or tossed it from this chair to that without doing it injury.
Here were fine alabaster vases, and in one of these we were startled to find a liquid, like honey or syrup, still unsolidified by time.
Boxes of exquisite workmanship stood in various parts of the room, some resting on delicately wrought legs.
Now the eye was directed to a wicker trunk fitted with trays and partitions, and ventilated with little apertures, since the scents were doubtless strong.
Two most comfortable beds were to be observed, fitted with springy string mattresses and decorated with charming designs in gold.
There in the far corner, placed upon the top of a number of large white jars, stood the light chariot which Yuaa had owned in his lifetime.
In all directions stood objects gleaming with gold undulled by a speck of dust, and one looked from one article to another with the feeling that the entire human conception of Time was wrong.
These were the things of yesterday, of a year or so ago.
Why, here were meats prepared for the feasts in the Underworld; here were Yuaa's favourite joints, each neatly placed in a wooden box as though for a journey.
Here was his staff, and here were his sandals,--a new pair and an old.
In another corner there stood the magical figures by the power of which the prince was to make his way through Hades.
The words of the mystical "Chapter of the Flame" and of the "Chapter of the Magical Figure of the North Wall" were inscribed upon them; and upon a great roll of papyrus twenty-two yards in length other efficacious prayers were written.
But though the eyes passed from object to object, they ever returned to the two lidless gilded coffins in which the owners of this room of the dead lay as though peacefully sleeping.
First above Yuaa and then above his wife the electric lamps were held, and as one looked down into their quiet faces there was almost the feeling that they would presently open their eyes and blink at the light.
The stern features of the old man commanded one's attention, again and again our gaze was turned from this mass of wealth to this sleeping figure in whose honour it had been placed here.
At last we returned to the surface to allow the thoughts opportunity to collect themselves and the pulses time to quiet down, for, even to the most unemotional, a discovery of this kind, bringing one into the very presence of the past, has really an unsteadying effect.
Then once more we descended, and made the preliminary arrangements for the cataloguing of the antiquities.
It was now that the real work began, and, once the excitement was past, there was a monotony of labour to be faced which put a very considerable strain on the powers of all concerned.
The hot days when one sweated over the heavy packing-cases, and the bitterly cold nights when one lay at the mouth of the tomb under the stars, dragged on for many a week; and when at last the long train of boxes was carried down to the Nile _en route_ for the Cairo Museum, it was with a sigh of relief that the official returned to his regular work.
This, of course, was a very exceptional discovery.
Mr Davis has made other great finds, but to me they have not equalled in dramatic interest the discovery just recorded.
Even in this royal valley, however, there is much drudgery to be faced, and for a large part of the season's work it is the excavator's business to turn over endless masses of rock chippings, and to dig huge holes which have no interest for the patient digger.
Sometimes the mouth of a tomb is bared, and is entered with the profoundest hopes, which are at once dashed by the sudden abrupt ending of the cutting a few yards from the surface.
At other times a tomb-chamber is reached and is found to be absolutely empty.
At another part of Thebes the well-known Egyptologist, Professor Schiaparelli, had excavated for a number of years without finding anything of much importance, when suddenly one fine day he struck the mouth of a large tomb which was evidently intact.
I was at once informed of the discovery, and proceeded to the spot as quickly as possible.
The mouth of the tomb was approached down a flight of steep, rough steps, still half-choked with _débris_.
At the bottom of this the entrance of a passage running into the hillside was blocked by a wall of rough stones.
After photographing and removing this, we found ourselves in a long, low tunnel, blocked by a second wall a few yards ahead.
Both these walls were intact, and we realised that we were about to see what probably no living man had ever seen before: the absolutely intact remains of a rich Theban of the Imperial Age--_i.e._, about 1200 or 1300 B.C.
When this second wall was taken down we passed into a carefully-cut passage high enough to permit of one standing upright.
At the end of this passage a plain wooden door barred our progress.
The wood retained the light colour of fresh deal, and looked for all the world as though it had been set up but yesterday.
A heavy wooden lock, such as is used at the present day, held the door fast.
A neat bronze handle on the side of the door was connected by a spring to a wooden knob set in the masonry door-post; and this spring was carefully sealed with a small dab of stamped clay.
The whole contrivance seemed so modern that Professor Schiaparelli called to his servant for the key, who quite seriously replied, "I don't know where it is, sir."
He then thumped the door with his hand to see whether it would be likely to give; and, as the echoes reverberated through the tomb, one felt that the mummy, in the darkness beyond, might well think that his resurrection call had come.
One almost expected him to rise, like the dead knights of Kildare in the Irish legend, and to ask, "Is it time?"
for the three thousand years which his religion had told him was the duration of his life in the tomb was already long past.
Meanwhile we turned our attention to the objects which stood in the passage, having been placed there at the time of the funeral, owing to the lack of room in the burial-chamber.
Here a vase, rising upon a delicately shaped stand, attracted the eye by its beauty of form; and here a bedstead caused us to exclaim at its modern appearance.
A palm-leaf fan, used by the ancient Egyptians to keep the flies off their wines and unguents, stood near a now empty jar; and near by a basket of dried-up fruit was to be seen.
This dried fruit gave the impression that the tomb was perhaps a few months old, but there was nothing else to be seen which suggested that the objects were even as much as a year old.
It was almost impossible to believe, and quite impossible to realise, that we were standing where no man had stood for well over three thousand years; and that we were actually breathing the air which had remained sealed in the passage since the ancient priests had closed the entrance thirteen hundred years before Christ.
Before we could proceed farther, many flashlight photographs had to be taken, and drawings made of the doorway; and after this a panel of the woodwork had to be removed with a fret-saw in order that the lock and seal might not be damaged.
At last, however, this was accomplished, and the way into the tomb-chamber was open.
Stepping through the frame of the door, we found ourselves in an unencumbered portion of the floor, while around us in all directions stood the funeral furniture, and on our left the coffins of the deceased noble and his wife loomed large.
Everything looked new and undecayed, and even the order in which the objects were arranged suggested a tidying-up done that very morning.
The gravel on the floor was neatly smoothed, and not a speck of dust was anywhere to be observed.
Over the large outer coffin a pall of fine linen was laid, not rotting and falling to pieces like the cloth of mediæval times we see in our museums, but soft and strong like the sheets of our beds.
In the clear space before the coffin stood a wooden pedestal in the form of a miniature lotus column.
On the top of this, resting on three wooden prongs, was a small copper dish, in which were the ashes of incense, and the little stick used for stirring them.
One asked oneself in bewilderment whether the ashes here, seemingly not cold, had truly ceased to glow at a time when Rome and Greece were undreamt of, when Assyria did not exist, and when the Exodus of the Children of Israel was yet unaccomplished.
On low tables round cakes of bread were laid out, not cracked and shrivelled, but smooth and brown, with a kind of white-of-egg glaze upon them.
Onions and fruit were also spread out; and the fruit of the _dôm_ palm was to be seen in plenty.
In various parts of the chamber there were numerous bronze vessels of different shapes, intended for the holding of milk and other drinkables.
Well supplied with food and drink, the senses of the dead man were soothed by a profusion of flowers, which lay withered but not decayed beside the coffin, and which at the time of the funeral must have filled the chamber with their sweetness.
Near the doorway stood an upright wooden chest closed with a lid.
Opening this, we found it to contain the great ceremonial wig of the deceased man, which was suspended from a rail passing across the top of the chest, and hung free of the sides and bottom.
The black hair was plaited into hundreds of little tails, but in size the wig was not unlike those of the early eighteenth century in Europe.
Chairs, beds, and other pieces of furniture were arranged around the room, and at one side there were a number of small chests and boxes piled up against the wall.
We opened one or two of these, and found them to contain delicate little vases of glass, stone, and metal, wrapped round with rags to prevent them breaking.
These, like everything else in the tomb, were new and fresh, and showed no trace of the passing of the years.
The coffins, of course, were hidden by the great casing in which each rested, and which itself was partly hidden by the linen pall.
Nothing could be touched for many days, until photographs had been taken and records made; and we therefore returned through the long passage to the light of the day.
There must have been a large number of intact tombs to be found when first the modern interest in Egyptian antiquities developed; but the market thus created had to be supplied, and gangs of illicit diggers made short work of the most accessible tombs.
This illegal excavation, of course, continues to some extent at the present day, in spite of all precautions, but the results are becoming less and less proportionate to the labour expended and risk taken.
A native likes best to do a little quiet digging in his own back yard and to admit nobody else into the business.
To illustrate this, I may mention a tragedy which was brought to my notice a few years ago.
A certain native discovered the entrance of a tomb in the floor of his stable, and at once proceeded to worm his way down the tunnel.
That was the end of the native.
His wife, finding that he had not returned two hours or so later, went down the newly found tunnel after him.
That was the end of her also.
In turn, three other members of the family went down into the darkness; and that was the end of them.
A native official was then called, and, lighting his way with a candle, penetrated down the winding passage.
The air was so foul that he was soon obliged to retreat, but he stated that he was just able to see in the distance ahead the bodies of the unfortunate peasants, all of whom had been overcome by what he quaintly described as "the evil lighting and bad climate."
Various attempts at the rescue of the bodies having failed, we gave orders that this tomb should be regarded as their sepulchre, and that its mouth should be sealed up.
According to the natives, there was evidently a vast hoard of wealth stored at the bottom of this tomb, and the would-be robbers had met their death at the hands of the demon in charge of it, who had seized each man by the throat as he came down the tunnel and had strangled him.
The Egyptian peasants have a very strong belief in the power of such creatures of the spirit world.
A native who was attempting recently to discover hidden treasure in a certain part of the desert, sacrificed a lamb each night above the spot where he believed the treasure to lie, in order to propitiate the _djin_ who guarded it.
On the other hand, however, they have no superstition as regards the sanctity of the ancient dead, and they do not hesitate on that ground to rifle the tombs.
Thousands of graves have been desecrated by these seekers after treasure, and it is very largely the result of this that scientific excavation is often so fruitless nowadays.
When an excavator states that he has discovered a tomb, one takes it for granted that he means a _plundered_ tomb, unless he definitely says that it was intact, in which case one calls him a lucky fellow and regards him with green envy.
And thus we come back to my remarks at the beginning of this chapter, that there is a painful disillusionment awaiting the man who comes to dig in Egypt in the hope of finding the golden cities of the Pharaohs or the bejewelled bodies of their dead.
Of the latter there are but a few left to be found.
The discovery of one of them forms the subject of the next chapter.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TOMB OF TIY AND AKHNATON.
[1] [Footnote 1: A few paragraphs in this chapter also appear in my 'Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.'
(Wm.
Blackwood & Sons, 1910.)]
In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, which are being conducted each year by Mr Davis, brought to light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style, appeared to be that of a royal personage of the XVIIIth Dynasty.
The Valley lies behind the cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes, and is approached by a long winding road running between the rocks and rugged hills of the Lybian desert.
Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the XXth Dynasties were buried in large sepulchres cut into the sides of the hills; and the present excavations have for their object the removal of the _débris_ which has collected at the foot of these hills, in order that the tombs hidden beneath may be revealed.
About sixty tombs are now open, some of which were already known to Greek and Roman travellers; and there are probably not more than two or three still to be discovered.
When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered I was at once notified, and proceeded with all despatch to the Valley.
It was not long before we were able to enter the tomb.
A rough stairway led down into the hillside, bringing us to the mouth of a passage which was entirely blocked by a wall of built stones.
On removing this wall we found ourselves in a small passage, descending at a sharp incline to a chamber which could be seen a few yards farther on.
Instead of this passage being free from _débris_, however, as we had expected on finding the entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled with fallen stones which seemed to be the ruins of an earlier entrance-wall.
On top of this heap of stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine, almost entirely blocking the passage.
This shrine, as we later saw, was in the form of a great box-like sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering for the coffin of the deceased person.
It was, however, not put together: three sides of it were leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber, and the fourth was here in the passage.
Either it was never built up, or else it was in process of being taken out of the tomb again when the work was abandoned.
[Illustration: PL.
XVIII.
The entrance of the tomb of Queen Tiy, with Egyptian policeman standing beside it.
On the left is the later tomb of Rameses X.]
[_Photo by R. Paul._ To pass this portion of the shrine which lay in the passage without doing it damage was no easy matter.
We could not venture to move it, as the wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it remained in its original position.
We therefore made a bridge of planks within a few inches of the low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across into the unencumbered passage beyond.
In the funeral-chamber, besides the other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin, in the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner with rare stones and coloured glass.
The coffin had originally lain upon a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin being partly thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off.
In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped.
The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun"; but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that King Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen Tiy, and thus no immediate reply could be given to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to us to know which of the Pharaoh's of Egypt had been found.
In a recess in the wall above the body there stood four alabaster "canopy" jars, each with a lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a human head.
In another corner there was a box containing many little toilet vases and utensils of porcelain.
A few alabaster vases and other objects were lying in various parts of the chamber, arranged in some sort of rough order.
Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and for several days, during the lengthy process of photographing and recording the contents of the tomb _in situ_, no further information could be obtained as to the identity of the owner of the tomb.
The shrine was certainly made for Queen Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging by an inscription upon one of them which gave the names of Tiy and her husband, King Amenhotep III., the parents of Akhnaton.
It was, therefore, not a surprise when a passing doctor declared the much broken bones to be those of a woman--that is to say, those of Queen Tiy.
For reasons which will presently become apparent, it had been difficult to believe that Akhnaton could have been buried in this Valley, and one was very ready to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had but been given by him to his mother.
The important discovery was now announced, and considerable interest and excitement.
At the end of the winter the various archæologists departed to their several countries, and it fell to me to despatch the antiquities to the Cairo Museum, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to prevent their breakage, to Dr Elliot Smith, to be examined by that eminent authority.
It may be imagined that my surprise was considerable when I received a letter from him reading--"Are you sure that the bones you sent me are those which were found in the tomb?
Instead of the bones of an old woman, you have sent me those of a young man.
Surely there is some mistake."
There was, however, no mistake.
Dr Elliot Smith later informed me that the bones were those of a young man of about twenty-eight years of age, and at first this description did not seem to tally with that of Akhnaton, who was always thought to have been a man of middle age.
But there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral furniture belonged to Queen Tiy.
Dr Elliot Smith's decision was, of course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had received full mention.
About the year B.C.
1500 the throne of Egypt fell to the young brother of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the country rose to a height of power never again equalled.
Amenhotep II.
succeeded to an empire which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he left these great possessions almost intact to his son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton.
It is important to notice the chronology of this period.
The mummy of Thutmosis IV.
has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we know that his son Amenhotep III.
was old enough to hunt lions at about the time of his father's death, and that he was already married to Queen Tiy a year later.
Thus one must suppose that Thutmosis IV.
was a father at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and that Amenhotep III.
was married to Tiy at about the same age.
The wife of Thutmosis IV.
was probably a Syrian princess, and it must have been during her regency that Amenhotep III.
married Tiy, who was not of royal blood.
Amenhotep and Tiy introduced into Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant reign the Nile Valley was more open to Syrian influence than it had ever been before.
The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court tongue, and the correspondence was written in cuneiform instead of in the hieratic script of Egypt.
Amenhotep III., as has been said, was probably partly Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason to suppose that Yuaa, the father of Queen Tiy, was also a Syrian.
One has, therefore, to picture the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated with foreign ideas, which clashed with those of the orthodox Egyptians.
Queen Tiy bore several children to the King; but it was not until they had reigned over twenty years that a son and heir was born, whom they named Amenhotep, that being changed later to Akhnaton.
It is probable that he first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills.
It was an extensive and roomy structure, lightly built and gaily decorated.
The ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath one's feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, passed across the hall, and the wild duck hastened towards the open casements.
Through curtained doorways one might obtain glimpses of a garden planted with flowers foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace the King had made a great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia.
Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named _Aton-gleams_, the Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond.
Amenhotep III.
has been rightly called the "Magnificent," and one may well believe that his son Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and to the clink of golden wine-cups.
Fragments of countless thousands of wine-jars and blue fayence drinking-vessels have been found in the ruins of the palace; and contemporary objects and paintings show us some of the exquisitely wrought bowls of gold and silver which must have graced the royal tables, and the charming toilet utensils which were to be found in the sleeping apartments.
While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth of this Egypto-Asiatic prince, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day to be their master.
This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and most conservative community which conservative Egypt ever produced.
It demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation.
One of the great gods of Syria was Aton, the god of the sun; and his recognition at the Theban Court was a source of constant irritation to the ministers of Amon-Ra.
Probably they would have taken stronger measures to resist this foreign god had it not been for the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient god of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra, the associated deity with Amon, and on the other hand to Aton of Syria.
Thus Aton might be regarded merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra; but the danger to the old _régime_ lay in the fact that with the worship of Aton there went a certain amount of freethought.
The sun and its warm rays were the heritage of all mankind; and the speculative mind of the Asiatic, always in advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not failed to collect to the Aton-worship a number of semi-philosophical teachings far broader than the strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.
[Illustration: PL.
XIX.
Toilet-spoons of carved wood, discovered in tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
That on the right has a movable lid.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._ There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy was the prime factor in the new movement.
It may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father was a priest of the Egyptian god Min, who corresponded to the North Syrian Aton in his capacity as a god of vegetation; and she may have imbibed something of the broader doctrines from him.
It is the barge upon _her_ pleasure-lake which is called _Aton-gleams_, and it is _her_ private artist who is responsible for one of the first examples of the new style of art which begins to appear at this period.
Egyptian art was bound down by conventions jealously guarded by the priesthood, and the slight tendency to break away from these, which now becomes apparent, is another sign of the broadening of thought under the reign of Amenhotep III.
and Tiy.
King Amenhotep III.
does not seem to have been a man of strong character, and in the changes which took place at this time he does not appear to have taken so very large a part.
He always showed the most profound respect for, and devotion to, his Queen; and one is inclined to regard him as a tool in her hands.
According to some accounts he reigned only thirty years, but there are contemporary monuments dated in his thirty-sixth year, and it seems probable that for the last few years he was reigning only in name, and that in reality his ministers, under the regency of Queen Tiy, governed the land.
Amenhotep III.
was perhaps during his last years insane or stricken with some paralytic disease, for we read of an Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image to Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting to cure him.
It must have been during these six years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms and encouraged the breaking down of the old traditions, especially those relating to the worship of Amon-Ra.
Amenhotep III.
died in about the forty-ninth year of his age, after a total reign of thirty-six years; and Akhnaton, who still bore the name of Amenhotep, ascended the throne.
One must picture him now as an enthusiastic boy, filled with the new thought of the age, and burning to assert the broad doctrines which he had learned from his mother and her friends, in defiance of the priests of Amon-Ra.
He was already married to a Syrian named Nefertiti, and certainly before he was fifteen years of age he was the father of two daughters.
The new Pharaoh's first move, under the guidance of Tiy, was to proclaim Aton the only true god, and to name himself high priest of that deity.
He then began to build a temple dedicated to Aton at Karnak; but it must have been distasteful to observe how overshadowed and dwarfed was this new temple by the mighty buildings in honour of the older gods which stood there.
Moreover, there must have been very serious opposition to the new religion in Thebes, where Amon had ruled for so many centuries unchallenged.
In whatever direction he looked he was confronted with some evidence of the worship of Amon-Ra: he might proclaim Aton to be the only god, but Amon and a hundred other deities stared down at him from every temple wall.
He and his advisers, therefore, decided to abandon Thebes altogether and to found a new capital elsewhere.
Akhnaton selected a site for the new city on the west bank of the river, at a point now named El Amarna, about 160 miles above Cairo.
Here the hills recede from the river, forming a bay about three miles deep and five long; and in this bay the young Pharaoh decided to build his capital, which was named "Horizon of Aton."
With feverish speed the new buildings were erected.
A palace even more beautiful than that of his parents at Thebes was prepared for him; a splendid temple dedicated to Aton was set up amidst a garden of rare trees and brilliant flowers; villas for his nobles were erected, and streets were laid out.
Queen Tiy, who seems to have continued to live at Thebes, often came down to El Amarna to visit her son; but it seems to have been at his own wish rather than at her advice that he now took the important step which set the seal of his religion upon his life.
Around the bay of El Amarna, on the cliffs which shut it off so securely, the King caused landmarks to be made at intervals, and on these he inscribed an oath which some have interpreted to mean that he would never again leave his new city.
He would remain, like the Pope in the Vatican, for the rest of his days within the limits of this bay; and, rather than be distracted by the cares of state and the worries of empire, he would shut himself up with his god and would devote his life to his religion.
He was but a youth still, and, to his inexperienced mind, this oath seemed nothing; nor in his brief life does it seem that he broke it, though at times he must have longed to visit his domains.
The religion which this boy, who now called himself Akhnaton, "The Glory of Aton," taught was by no means the simple worship of the sun.
It was, without question, the most enlightened religion which the world at that time had ever known.
The young priest-king called upon mankind to worship the unknown power which is behind the sun, that power of which the brilliant sun was the visible symbol, and which might be discerned in the fertilising warmth of the sun's rays.
Aton was originally the actual sun's disk; but Akhnaton called his god "Heat which is in Aton," and thus drew the eyes of his followers towards a Force far more intangible and distant than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down.
Akhnaton's god was the force which created the sun, the something which penetrated to this earth in the sun's heat and caused the vegetation to grow.
Amon-Ra and the gods of Egypt were for the most part but deified mortals, endued with monstrous, though limited, power, and still having around them traditions of exaggerated human deeds.
Others had their origin in natural phenomena--the wind, the Nile, the sky, and so on.
All were terrific, revengeful, and able to be moved by human emotions.
But Akhnaton's god was the intangible and yet ever-present Father of mankind, made manifest in sunshine.
The youthful High Priest called upon his followers to search for their god not in the confusion of battle or behind the smoke of human sacrifices, but amidst the flowers and trees, amidst the wild duck and the fishes.
He preached an enlightened nature-study; he was perhaps the first apostle of the Simple Life.
He strove to break down conventional religion, and ceaselessly urged his people to worship in Truth, simply, without an excess of ceremonial.
While the elder gods had been manifest in natural convulsions and in the more awful incidents of life, Akhnaton's kindly god could be seen in the chick which broke out of its egg, in the wind which filled the sails of the ships, in the fish which leapt from the water.
Aton was the joy which caused the young sheep "to dance upon their feet," and the birds to "flutter in their marshes."
He was the god of the simple pleasures of life, and Truth was the watchword of his followers.
It may be understood how the boy longed for truth in all things when one remembers the thousand exaggerated conventions of Egyptian life at this time.
Court etiquette had developed to a degree which rendered life to the Pharaoh an endless round of unnatural poses of mind and body.
In the preaching of his doctrine of truth and simplicity, Akhnaton did not fail to call upon his subjects to regard their Pharaoh not as a god but as a man.
It was usual for the Pharaoh to keep aloof from his people: Akhnaton was to be found in their midst.
The Court demanded that their lord should drive in solitary state through the city: Akhnaton sat in his chariot with his wife and children, and allowed the artist to represent him joking with his little daughter, who has mischievously poked the horses with a stick.
In representing the Pharaoh, the artist was expected to draw him in some conventional attitude of dignity: Akhnaton insisted upon being shown in all manner of natural attitudes--now leaning languidly upon a staff, now nursing his children, now caressing his wife.
As has been said, one of the first artists to break away from the ancient conventions was in the service of Queen Tiy, and was probably under her influence.
But in the radical change in the art which took place, Akhnaton is definitely stated to have been the leader, and the new school acknowledge that they were taught by the King.
The new art is extraordinary, and it must be owned that its merit lies rather in its originality than in its beauty.
An attempt is made to do away with the prescribed attitudes and the strict proportions, and to portray any one individual with his natural defects.
Some of the sculptured heads, however, which have come down to us, and notably the four "canopic" heads found in this tomb, are of wonderful beauty, and have no trace of traditional mannerisms, though they are highly idealised.
The King's desire for light-heartedness led him to encourage the use of bright colours and gay decorations in the palace.
Some of the ceiling and pavement paintings are of great beauty, while the walls and pillars inlaid with coloured stones must have given a brilliancy to the halls unequalled in Egypt at any previous time.
The group of nobles who formed the King's Court had all sacrificed much in coming to the new capital.
Their estates around Thebes had been left, their houses abandoned, and the tombs which were in process of being made for them in the Theban hills had been rendered useless.
The King, therefore, showered favours upon them, and at his expense built their houses and constructed sepulchres for them.
It is on the walls of these tombs that one obtains the main portion of one's information regarding the teachings of this wonderful youth, who was now growing into manhood.
Here are inscribed those beautiful hymns to Aton which rank so high in ancient literature.
It is unfortunate that space does not allow more than a few extracts from the hymns to be quoted here; but something of their beauty may be realised from these.
(Professor Breasted's translation.)
"Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O living Aton, Beginning of life!
When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven Thou fillest every land with thy beauty."
"Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth; Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day."
"When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven The world is in darkness like the dead.
Men sleep in their chambers, their heads are wrapt up.
Every lion cometh forth from his den.
The serpents, they sting.
Darkness reigns, the world is in silence: He that made them has gone to rest in his horizon."
"Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon ...
When thou sendest forth thy rays The two lands of Egypt are in daily festivity, Awake and standing upon their feet, For thou hast raised them up.
Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing, Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.
Then in all the world they do their work."
"All cattle rest upon their herbage, all trees and plants flourish.
The birds flutter in their marshes, their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All the sheep dance upon their feet, All winged things fly; they live when thou hast shone upon them."
"The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike,...
The fish in the river leap up before thee, And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea."
"Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman ... Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother; Who soothest him that he may not weep, A nurse even in the womb."
"When the chick crieth in the egg-shell, Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive ...
He cometh forth from the egg, to chirp with all his might.
He runneth about upon his two feet."
"How manifold are all thy works!
They are hidden from before us."
There are several verses of this hymn which are almost identical with Psalm civ., and those who study it closely will be forced to one of two conclusions: either that Psalm civ.
is derived from this hymn of the young Pharaoh, or that both are derived from some early Syrian hymn to the sun.
Akhnaton may have only adapted this early psalm to local conditions; though, on the other hand, a man capable of bringing to pass so great a religious revolution in Egypt may well be credited with the authorship of this splendid song.
There is no evidence to show that it was written before the King had reached manhood.
Queen Tiy probably did not now take any further part in a movement which had got so far out of her hands.
She was now nearly sixty years old, and this, to one who had been a mother so early in life, was a considerable age.
It seems that she sometimes paid visits to her son at El Amarna, but her interest lay in Thebes, where she had once held so brilliant a Court.
When at last she died, therefore, it is not surprising to find that she was buried in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
The tomb which has been described above is most probably her original sepulchre, and here her body was placed in the golden shrine made for her by Akhnaton, surrounded by the usual funeral furniture.
She thus lay no more than a stone's throw from her parents, whose tomb was discovered two years ago, and which was of very similar size and shape.
After her death, although preaching this gentle creed of love and simple truth, Akhnaton waged a bitter and stern war against the priesthoods of the old gods.
It may be that the priesthoods of Amon had again attempted to overthrow the new doctrines, or had in some manner called down the particular wrath of the Pharaoh.
He issued an order that the name of Amon was to be erased and obliterated wherever it was found, and his agents proceeded to hack it out on all the temple walls.
The names also of other gods were erased; and it is noticeable in this tomb that the word _mut_, meaning "mother," was carefully spelt in hieroglyphs which would have no similarity to those used in the word _Mut_, the goddess-consort of Amon.
The name of Amenhotep III., his own father, did not escape the King's wrath, and the first syllables were everywhere erased.
As the years went by Akhnaton seems to have given himself more and more completely to his new religion.
He had now so trained one of his nobles, named Merira, in the teachings of Aton that he was able to hand over to him the high priesthood of that god, and to turn his attention to the many other duties which he had imposed upon himself.
In rewarding Merira, the King is related to have said, "Hang gold at his neck before and behind, and gold on his legs, because of his hearing the teaching of Pharaoh concerning every saying in these beautiful places."
Another official whom Akhnaton greatly advanced says: "My lord advanced me because I have carried out his teaching, and I hear his word without ceasing."
The King's doctrines were thus beginning to take hold; but one feels, nevertheless, that the nobles followed their King rather for the sake of their material gains than for the spiritual comforts of the Aton-worship.
There is reason to suppose that at least one of these nobles was degraded and banished from the city.
But while Akhnaton was preaching peace and goodwill amidst the flowers of the temple of Aton, his generals in Asia Minor were vainly struggling to hold together the great empire created by Thutmosis III.
Akhnaton had caused a temple of Aton to be erected at one point in Syria at least, but in other respects he took little or no interest in the welfare of his foreign dominions.
War was not tolerated in his doctrine: it was a sin to take away life which the good Father had given.
One pictures the hardened soldiers of the empire striving desperately to hold the nations of Asia faithful to the Pharaoh whom they never saw.
The small garrisons were scattered far and wide over Syria, and constantly they sent messengers to the Pharaoh asking at least for some sign that he held them in mind.
There is no more pathetic page of ancient history than that which tells of the fall of the Egyptian Empire.
The Amorites, advancing along the sea-coast, took city after city from the Egyptians almost without a struggle.
The chiefs of Tunip wrote an appeal for help to the King: "To the King of Egypt, my lord,--The inhabitants of Tunip, thy servant."
The plight of the city is described and reinforcements are asked for, "And now," it continues, "Tunip thy city weeps, and her tears are flowing, and there is no help for us.
For twenty years we have been sending to our lord the King, the King of Egypt, but there has not come a word to us, no, not one."
The messengers of the beleaguered city must have found the King absorbed in his religion, and must have seen only priests of the sun where they had hoped to find the soldiers of former days.
The Egyptian governor of Jerusalem, attacked by Aramæans, writes to the Pharaoh, saying: "Let the King take care of his land, and ... let send troops.... For if no troops come in this year, the whole territory of my lord the King will perish."
To this letter is added a note to the King's secretary, which reads, "Bring these words plainly before my lord the King: the whole land of my lord the King is going to ruin."
So city after city fell, and the empire, won at such cost, was gradually lost to the Egyptians.
It is probable that Akhnaton had not realised how serious was the situation in Asia Minor.
A few of the chieftains who were not actually in arms against him had written to him every now and then assuring him that all was well in his dominions; and, strange to relate, the tribute of many of the cities had been regularly paid.
The Asiatic princes, in fact, had completely fooled the Pharaoh, and had led him to believe that the nations were loyal while they themselves prepared for rebellion.
Akhnaton, hating violence, had been only too ready to believe that the despatches from Tunip and elsewhere were unjustifiably pessimistic.
He had hoped to bind together the many countries under his rule, by giving them a single religion.
He had hoped that when Aton should be worshipped in all parts of his empire, and when his simple doctrines of love, truth, and peace should be preached from every temple throughout the length and breadth of his dominions, then war would cease and a unity of faith would hold the lands in harmony one with the other.
When, therefore, the tribute suddenly ceased, and the few refugees came staggering home to tell of the perfidy of the Asiatic princes and the fall of the empire, Akhnaton seems to have received his deathblow.
He was now not more than twenty-eight years of age; and though his portraits show that his face was already lined with care, and that his body was thinner than it should have been, he seems to have had plenty of reserve strength.
He was the father of several daughters, but his queen had borne him no son to succeed him; and thus he must have felt that his religion could not outlive him.
With his empire lost, with Thebes his enemy, and with his treasury wellnigh empty, one feels that Akhnaton must have sunk to the very depths of despondency.
His religious revolution had ruined Egypt, and had failed: did he, one wonders, find consolation in the sunshine and amidst the flowers?
His death followed speedily; and, resting in the splendid coffin in which we found him, he was laid in the tomb prepared for him in the hills behind his new capital.
The throne fell to the husband of one of his daughters, Smenkhkara, who, after an ephemeral reign, gave place to another of the sons-in-law of Akhnaton, Tutankhaton.
This king was speedily persuaded to change his name to Tutankhamon, to abandon the worship of Aton, and to return to Thebes.
Akhnaton's city fell into ruins, and soon the temples and palaces became the haunt of jackals and the home of owls.
The nobles returned with their new king to Thebes, and not one remained faithful to those "teachings" to which they had once pretended to be such earnest listeners.
[Illustration: PL.
XX.
The coffin of Akhnaton lying in the tomb of Queen Tiy.]
[_Photo by R. Paul._ The fact that the body in the new tomb was that of Akhnaton, and not of Queen Tiy, gives a new reading to the history of the burial.
When Tutankhamon returned to Thebes, Akhnaton's memory was still, it appears, regarded with reverence, and it seems that there was no question of leaving his body in the neighbourhood of his deserted palace, where, until the discovery of this tomb, Egyptologists had expected to find it.
It was carried to Thebes, together with some of the funeral furniture, and was placed in the tomb of Queen Tiy, which had been reopened for the purpose.
But after some years had passed and the priesthood of Amon-Ra had again asserted itself, Akhnaton began to be regarded as a heretic and as the cause of the loss of Egypt's Asiatic dominions.
These sentiments were vigorously encouraged by the priesthood, and soon Akhnaton came to be spoken of as "that criminal," and his name was obliterated from his monuments.
It was now felt that his body could no longer lie in state together with that of Queen Tiy in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
The sepulchre was therefore opened once more, and the name Akhnaton was everywhere erased from the inscriptions.
The tomb, polluted by the presence of the heretic, was no longer fit for Tiy, and the body of the Queen was therefore carried elsewhere, perhaps to the tomb of her husband Amenhotep III.
The shrine in which her mummy had lain was pulled to pieces and an attempt was made to carry it out of the tomb; but this arduous task was presently abandoned, and one portion of the shrine was left in the passage, where we found it.
The body of Akhnaton, his name erased, was now the sole occupant of the tomb.
The entrance was blocked with stones, and sealed with the seal of Tutankhamon, a fragment of which was found; and it was in this condition that it was discovered in 1907.
The bones of this extraordinary Pharaoh are in the Cairo Museum; but, in deference to the sentiments of many worthy persons, they are not exhibited.
The visitor to that museum, however, may now see the "canopic" jars, the alabaster vases, the gold vulture, the gold necklace, the sheets of gold in which the body was wrapped, the toilet utensils, and parts of the shrine, all of which we found in the burial-chamber.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TOMB OF HOREMHEB.
In the last chapter a discovery was recorded which, as experience has shown, is of considerable interest to the general reader.
The romance and the tragedy of the life of Akhnaton form a really valuable addition to the store of good things which is our possession, and which the archæologist so diligently labours to increase.
Curiously enough, another discovery, that of the tomb of Horemheb, was made by the same explorer (Mr Davis) in 1908; and as it forms the natural sequel to the previous chapter, I may be permitted to record it here.
Akhnaton was succeeded by Smenkhkara, his son-in-law, who, after a brief reign, gave place to Tutankhamon, during whose short life the court returned to Thebes.
A certain noble named Ay came next to the throne, but held it for only three years.
The country was now in a chaotic condition, and was utterly upset and disorganised by the revolution of Akhnaton, and by the vacillating policy of the three weak kings who succeeded him, each reigning for so short a time.
One cannot say to what depths of degradation Egypt might have sunk had it not been for the timely appearance of Horemheb, a wise and good ruler, who, though but a soldier of not particularly exalted birth, managed to raise himself to the vacant throne, and succeeded in so organising the country once more that his successors, Rameses I., Sety I., and Rameses II., were able to regain most of the lost dominions, and to place Egypt at the head of the nations of the world.
Horemheb, "The Hawk in Festival," was born at Alabastronpolis, a city of the 18th Province of Upper Egypt, during the reign of Amenhotep III., who has rightly been named "The Magnificent," and in whose reign Egypt was at once the most powerful, the most wealthy, and the most luxurious country in the world.
There is reason to suppose that Horemheb's family were of noble birth, and it is thought by some that an inscription which calls King Thutmosis III.
"the father of his fathers" is to be taken literally to mean that that old warrior was his great-or great-great-grandfather.
The young noble was probably educated at the splendid court of Amenhotep III., where the wit and intellect of the world was congregated, and where, under the presidency of the beautiful Queen Tiy, life slipped by in a round of revels.
As an impressionable young man, Horemheb must have watched the gradual development of freethought in the palace, and the ever-increasing irritation and chafing against the bonds of religious convention which bound all Thebans to the worship of the god Amon.
Judging by his future actions, Horemheb did not himself feel any real repulsion to Amon, though the religious rut into which the country had fallen was sufficiently objectionable to a man of his intellect to cause him to cast in his lot with the movement towards emancipation.
In later life he would certainly have been against the movement, for his mature judgment led him always to be on the side of ordered habit and custom as being less dangerous to the national welfare than a social upheaval or change.
Horemheb seems now to have held the appointment of captain or commander in the army, and at the same time, as a "Royal Scribe," he cultivated the art of letters, and perhaps made himself acquainted with those legal matters which in later years he was destined to reform.
When Amenhotep III.
died, the new king, Akhnaton, carried out the revolution which had been pending for many years, and absolutely banned the worship of Amon, with all that it involved.
He built himself a new capital at El Amârna, and there he instituted the worship of the sun, or rather of the heat or power of the sun, under the name of Aton.
In so far as the revolution constituted a breaking away from tiresome convention, the young Horemheb seems to have been with the King.
No one of intelligence could deny that the new religion and new philosophy which was preached at El Amârna was more worthy of consideration on general lines than was the narrow doctrine of the Amon priesthood; and all thinkers must have rejoiced at the freedom from bonds which had become intolerable.
But the world was not ready, and indeed is still not ready, for the schemes which Akhnaton propounded; and the unpractical model-kingdom which was uncertainly developing under the hills of El Amârna must have already been seen to contain the elements of grave danger to the State.
Nevertheless the revolution offered many attractions.
The frivolous members of the court, always ready for change and excitement, welcomed with enthusiasm the doctrine of the moral and simple life which the King and his advisers preached, just as in the decadent days before the French Revolution the court, bored with licentiousness, gaily welcomed the morality-painting of the young Greuze.
And to the more serious-minded, such as Horemheb seems to have been, the movement must have appealed in its imperial aspect.
The new god Aton was largely worshipped in Syria, and it seems evident that Akhnaton had hoped to bind together the heterogeneous nations of the empire by a bond of common worship.
The Asiatics were not disposed to worship Amon, but Aton appealed to them as much as any god, and Horemheb must have seen great possibilities in a common religion.
It is thought that Horemheb may be identified amongst the nobles who followed Akhnaton to El Amârna, and though this is not certain, there is little doubt that he was in high favour with the King at the time.
To one whose tendency is neither towards frivolity nor towards fanaticism, there can be nothing more broadening than the influence of religious changes.
More than one point of view is appreciated: a man learns that there are other ruts than that in which he runs, and so he seeks the smooth midway.
Thus Horemheb, while acting loyally towards his King, and while appreciating the value of the new movement, did not exclude from his thoughts those teachings which he deemed good in the old order of things.
He seems to have seen life broadly; and when the new religion of Akhnaton became narrowed and fanatical, as it did towards the close of the tragic chapter of that king's short life, Horemheb was one of the few men who kept an open mind.
Like many other nobles of the period, he had constructed for himself a tomb at Sakkâra, in the shadow of the pyramids of the old kings of Egypt; and fragments of this tomb, which of course was abandoned when he became Pharaoh, are now to be seen in various museums.
In one of the scenes there sculptured Horemheb is shown in the presence of a king who is almost certainly Akhnaton; and yet in a speech to him inscribed above the reliefs, Horemheb makes reference to the god Amon whose very name was anathema to the King.
The royal figure is drawn according to the canons of art prescribed by Akhnaton, and upon which, as a protest against the conventional art of the old order, he laid the greatest stress in his revolution; and thus, at all events, Horemheb was in sympathy with this aspect of the movement.
But the inscriptions which refer to Amon, and yet are impregnated with the Aton style of expression, show that Horemheb was not to be held down to any one mode of thought.
Akhnaton was, perhaps, already dead when these inscriptions were added, and thus Horemheb may have had no further reason to hide his views; or it may be that they constituted a protest against that narrowness which marred the last years of a pious king.
Those who read the history of the period in the last chapter will remember how Akhnaton came to persecute the worshippers of Amon, and how he erased that god's name wherever it was written throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.
Evidently with this action Horemheb did not agree; nor was this his only cause for complaint.
As an officer, and now a highly placed general of the army, he must have seen with feelings of the utmost bitterness the neglected condition of the Syrian provinces.
Revolt after revolt occurred in these states; but Akhnaton, dreaming and praying in the sunshine of El Amârna, would send no expedition to punish the rebels.
Good-fellowship with all men was the King's watchword, and a policy more or less democratic did not permit him to make war on his fellow-creatures.
Horemheb could smell battle in the distance, but could not taste of it.
The battalions which he had trained were kept useless in Egypt; and even when, during the last years of Akhnaton's reign, or under his successor Smenkhkara, he was made commander-in-chief of all the forces, there was no means of using his power to check the loss of the cities of Asia.
Horemheb must have watched these cities fall one by one into the hands of those who preached the doctrine of the sword, and there can be little wonder that he turned in disgust from the doings at El Amârna.
During the times which followed, when Smenkhkara held the throne for a year or so, and afterwards, when Tutankhamon became Pharaoh, Horemheb seems to have been the leader of the reactionary movement.
He did not concern himself so much with the religious aspect of the questions: there was as much to be said on behalf of Aton as there was on behalf of Amon.
But it was he who knocked at the doors of the heart of Egypt, and urged the nation to awake to the danger in the East.
An expedition against the rebels was organised, and one reads that Horemheb was the "companion of his Lord upon the battlefield on that day of the slaying of the Asiatics."
Akhnaton had been opposed to warfare, and had dreamed that dream of universal peace which still is a far-off light to mankind.
Horemheb was a practical man in whom such a dream would have been but weakness; and, though one knows nothing more of these early campaigns, the fact that he attempted to chastise the enemies of the empire at this juncture stands to his credit for all time.
Under Tutankhamon the court returned to Thebes, though not yet exclusively to the worship of Amon; and the political phase of the revolution came to an end.
The country once more settled into the old order of life, and Horemheb, having experienced the full dangers of philosophic speculation, was glad enough to abandon thought for action.
He was now the most powerful man in the kingdom, and inscriptions call him "the greatest of the great, the mightiest of the mighty, presider over the Two Lands of Egypt, general of generals," and so on.
The King "appointed him to be Chief of the Land, to administer the laws of the land as Hereditary Prince of all this land"; and "all that was done was done by his command."
From chaos Horemheb was producing order, and all men turned to him in gratitude as he reorganised the various government departments.
The offices which he held, such as Privy Councillor, King's Secretary, Great Lord of the People, and so on, are very numerous; and in all of these he dealt justly though sternly, so that "when he came the fear of him was great in the sight of the people, prosperity and health were craved for him, and he was greeted as 'Father of the Two Lands of Egypt.'"
He was indeed the saviour and father of his country, for he had found her corrupt and disordered, and he was leading her back to greatness and dignity.
[Illustration: PL.
XXI.
Head of a granite statue of the god Khonsu, probably dating from about the period of Horemheb.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by Beato._ At this time he was probably a man of about forty years of age.
In appearance he seems to have been noble and good to look upon.
"When he was born," says the inscription, "he was clothed with strength: the hue of a god was upon him"; and in later life, "the form of a god was in his colour," whatever that may mean.
He was a man of considerable eloquence and great learning.
"He astonished the people by that which came out of his mouth," we are told; and "when he was summoned before the King the palace began to fear."
One may picture the weak Pharaoh and his corrupt court, as they watched with apprehension the movements of this stern soldier, of whom it was said that his every thought was "in the footsteps of the Ibis,"--the ibis being the god of wisdom.
On the death of Tutankhamon, the question of inviting Horemheb to fill the vacant throne must have been seriously considered; but there was another candidate, a certain Ay, who had been one of the most important nobles in the group of Akhnaton's favourites at El Amârna, and who had been the loudest in the praises of Aton.
Religious feeling was at the time running high, for the partizans of Amon and those of Aton seem to have been waging war on one another; and Ay appears to have been regarded as the man most likely to bridge the gulf between the two parties.
A favourite of Akhnaton, and once a devout worshipper of Aton, he was not averse to the cults of other gods; and by conciliating both factions he managed to obtain the throne for himself.
His power, however, did not last for long; and as the priests of Amon regained the confidence of the nation at the expense of those of Aton, so the power of Ay declined.
His past connections with Akhnaton told against him, and after a year or so he disappeared, leaving the throne vacant once more.
There was now no question as to who should succeed.
A princess named Mutnezem, the sister of Akhnaton's queen, and probably an old friend of Horemheb, was the sole heiress to the throne, the last surviving member of the greatest Egyptian dynasty.
All men turned to Horemheb in the hope that he would marry this lady, and thus reign as Pharaoh over them, perhaps leaving a son by her to succeed him when he was gathered to his fathers.
He was now some forty-five years of age, full of energy and vigour, and passionately anxious to have a free hand in the carrying out of his schemes for the reorganisation of the government.
It was therefore with joy that, in about the year 1350 B.C., he sailed up to Thebes in order to claim the crown.
He arrived at Luxor at a time when the annual festival of Amon was being celebrated, and all the city was _en fête_.
The statue of the god had been taken from its shrine at Karnak, and had been towed up the river to Luxor in a gorgeous barge, attended by a fleet of gaily-decorated vessels.
With songs and dancing it had been conveyed into the Luxor temple, where the priests had received it standing amidst piled-up masses of flowers, fruit, and other offerings.
It seems to have been at this moment that Horemheb appeared, while the clouds of incense streamed up to heaven, and the morning air was full of the sound of the harps and the lutes.
Surrounded by a crowd of his admirers, he was conveyed into the presence of the divine figure, and was there and then hailed as Pharaoh.
From the temple he was carried amidst cheering throngs to the palace which stood near by; and there he was greeted by the Princess Mutnezem, who fell on her knees before him and embraced him.
That very day, it would seem, he was married to her, and in the evening the royal heralds published the style and titles by which he would be known in the future: "Mighty Bull, Ready in Plans; Favourite of the Two Goddesses, Great in Marvels; Golden Hawk, Satisfied with Truth; Creator of the Two Lands," and so forth.
Then, crowned with the royal helmet, he was led once more before the statue of Amon, while the priests pronounced the blessing of the gods upon him.
Passing down to the quay before the temple the figure of the god was placed once more upon the state-barge, and was floated down to Karnak; while Horemheb was led through the rejoicing crowds back to the palace to begin his reign as Pharaoh.
In religious matters Horemheb at once adopted a strong attitude of friendship towards the Amon party which represented the old order of things.
There is evidence to show that Aton was in no way persecuted; yet one by one his shrines were abandoned, and the neglected temples of Amon and the elder gods once more rang with the hymns of praise.
Inscriptions tell us that the King "restored the temples from the marshes of the Delta to Nubia.
He fashioned a hundred images with all their bodies correct, and with all splendid costly stones.
He established for them daily offerings every day.
All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold.
He equipped them with priests and with ritual-priests, and with the choicest of the army.
He transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all equipment."
By these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its normal condition, and in no way was he prejudiced by any particular devotion to Amon.
A certain Patonemheb, who had been one of Akhnaton's favourites in the days of the revolution, was appointed High Priest of Ra--the older Egyptian form of Aton who was at this time identified with that god--at the temple of Heliopolis; and this can only be regarded as an act of friendship to the Aton-worshippers.
The echoing and deserted temples of Aton in Thebes, and El Amârna, however, were now pulled down, and the blocks were used for the enlarging of the temple of Amon,--a fact which indicates that their original dedication to Aton had not caused them to be accursed.
The process of restoration was so gradual that it could not have much disturbed the country.
Horemheb's hand was firm but soothing in these matters, and the revolution seems to have been killed as much by kindness as by force.
It was probably not till quite the end of his reign that he showed any tendency to revile the memory of Akhnaton; and the high feeling which at length brought the revolutionary king the name of "that criminal of El Amârna" did not rise till half a century later.
The difficulties experienced by Horemheb in steering his course between Amon and Aton, in quietly restoring the old equilibrium without in any way persecuting those who by religious convictions were Aton-worshippers, must have been immense; and one cannot but feel that the King must have been a diplomatist of the highest standing.
His unaffected simplicity won all hearts to him; his toleration and broadness of mind brought all thoughtful men to his train; and his strong will led them and guided them from chaos to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid old Egypt of the past.
Horemheb was the preacher of Sanity, the apostle of the Normal, and Order was his watchword.
The inscriptions tell us that it was his custom to give public audiences to his subjects, and there was not a man amongst those persons whom he interviewed whose name he did not know, nor one who did not leave his presence rejoicing.
Up and down the Nile he sailed a hundred times, until he was able truly to say, "I have improved this entire land; I have learned its whole interior; I have travelled it entirely in its midst."
We are told that "his Majesty took counsel with his heart how he might expel evil and suppress lying.
The plans of his Majesty were an excellent refuge, repelling violence and delivering the Egyptians from the oppressions which were around them.
Behold, his Majesty spent the whole time seeking the welfare of Egypt, and searching out instances of oppression in the land."
It is interesting, by the way, to note that in his eighth year the King restored the tomb of Thutmosis IV., which had been robbed during the revolution; and the inscription which the inspectors left behind them was found on the wall when Mr Theodore Davis discovered the tomb a few years ago.
The plundering of the royal tombs is a typical instance of the lawlessness of the times.
The corruption, too, which followed on the disorder was appalling; and wherever the King went he was confronted by deceit, embezzlement, bribery, extortion, and official tyranny.
Every Government officer was attempting to obtain money from his subordinates by illegal means; and _bakshish_--that bogie of the Nile Valley--cast its shadow upon all men.
Horemheb stood this as long as he could; but at last, regarding justice as more necessary than tact, we are told that "his Majesty seized a writing-palette and scroll, and put into writing all that his Majesty the King had said to himself."
It is not possible to record here more than a few of the good laws which he then made, but the following examples will serve to show how near to his heart were the interests of his people.
It was the custom for the tax-collectors to place that portion of a farmer's harvest, which they had taken, upon the farmer's own boat, in order to convey it to the public granary.
These boats often failed to be returned to their owners when finished with, and were ultimately sold by the officials for their own profit.
Horemheb, therefore, made the following law:-"If the poor man has made for himself a boat with its sail, and, in order to serve the State, has loaded it with the Government dues, and has been robbed of the boat, the poor man stands bereft of his property and stripped of his many labours.
This is wrong, and the Pharaoh will suppress it by his excellent measures.
If there be a poor man who pays the taxes to the two deputies, and he be robbed of his property and his boat, my majesty commands: that every officer who collects the taxes and takes the boat of any citizen, this law shall be executed against him, and his nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent in exile to Tharu.
Furthermore, concerning the tax of timber, my majesty commands that if any officer find a poor man without a boat, then he shall bring him a craft belonging to another man in which to carry the timber; and in return for this let the former man do the loading of the timber for the latter."
The tax-collectors were wont to commandeer the services of all the slaves in the town, and to detain them for six or seven days, "so that it was an excessive detention indeed."
Often, too, they used to appropriate a portion of the tax for themselves.
The new law, therefore, was as follows:-"If there be any place where the officials are tax-collecting, and any one shall hear the report saying that they are tax-collecting to take the produce for themselves, and another shall come to report saying, 'My man slave or my female slave has been taken away and detained many days at work by the officials,' the offender's nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent to Tharu."
One more law may here be quoted.
The police used often to steal the hides which the peasants had collected to hand over to the Government as their tax.
Horemheb, having satisfied himself that a tale of this kind was not merely an excuse for not paying the tax, made this law:-"As for any policeman concerning whom one shall hear it said that he goes about stealing hides, beginning with this day the law shall be executed against him, by beating him a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and taking from him by force the hides which he took."
To carry out these laws he appointed two chief judges of very high standing, who are said to have been "perfect in speech, excellent in good qualities, knowing how to judge the heart."
Of these men the King writes: "I have directed them to the way of life, I have led them to the truth, I have taught them, saying, 'Do not receive the reward of another.
How, then, shall those like you judge others, while there is one among you committing a crime against justice?'"
Under these two officials Horemheb appointed many judges, who went on circuit around the country; and the King took the wise step of arranging, on the one hand, that their pay should be so good that they would not be tempted to take bribes, and, on the other hand, that the penalty for this crime should be most severe.
So many were the King's reforms that one is inclined to forget that he was primarily a soldier.
He appears to have made some successful expeditions against the Syrians, but the fighting was probably near his own frontiers, for the empire lost by Akhnaton was not recovered for many years, and Horemheb seems to have felt that Egypt needed to learn to rule herself before she attempted to rule other nations.
An expedition against some tribes in the Sudan was successfully carried through, and it is said that "his name was mighty in the land of Kush, his battle-cry was in their dwelling-places."
Except for a semi-military expedition which was dispatched to the land of Punt, these are the only recorded foreign activities of the King; but that he had spent much time in the organisation and improvement of the army is shown by the fact that three years after his death the Egyptian soldiers were swarming over the Lebanon and hammering at the doors of the cities of Jezreel.
Had he lived for another few years he might have been famous as a conqueror as well as an administrator, though old age might retard and tired bones refuse their office.
As it is, however, his name is written sufficiently large in the book of the world's great men; and when he died, about B.C.
1315, after a reign of some thirty-five years, he had done more for Egypt than had almost any other Pharaoh.
He found the country in the wildest disorder, and he left it the master of itself, and ready to become once more the master of the empire which Akhnaton's doctrine of Peace and Goodwill had lost.
Under his direction the purged worship of the old gods, which for him meant but the maintenance of some time-proved customs, had gained the mastery over the chimerical worship of Aton; without force or violence he had substituted the practical for the visionary; and to Amon and Order his grateful subjects were able to cry, "The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee shines; the sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in darkness, but the whole earth is now in light."
The tomb of this great Pharaoh was cut in the rocks on the west side of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, not far from the resting-place of Amenhotep II.
In the days of the later Ramesside kings the tomb-plunderers entered the sepulchre, pulled the embalmed body of the king to pieces in the search for hidden jewels, scattered the bones of the three members of his family who were buried with him, and stole almost everything of value which they found.
There must have been other robberies after this, and finally the Government inspectors of about B.C.
1100 entered the tomb, and, seeing its condition, closed its mouth with a compact mass of stones.
The torrents of rain which sometimes fall in winter in Egypt percolated through this filling, and left it congealed and difficult to cut through; and on the top of this hard mass tons of rubbish were tossed from other excavations, thus completely hiding the entrance.
In this condition the tomb was found by Mr Davis in February 1908.
Mr Davis had been working on the side of the valley opposite to the tomb of Rameses III., where the accumulations of _débris_ had entirely hidden the face of the rocks, and, as this was a central and likely spot for a "find," it was hoped that when the skin of rubbish had been cleared away the entrance of at least one royal tomb would be exposed.
Of all the XVIIIth-Dynasty kings, the burial-places of only Thutmosis II., Tutankhamon, and Horemheb remained undiscovered, and the hopes of the excavators concentrated on these three Pharaohs.
After a few weeks of digging, the mouth of a large shaft cut into the limestone was cleared.
This proved to lead into a small chamber half-filled with rubbish, amongst which some fine jewellery, evidently hidden here, was found.
This is now well published by Mr Davis in facsimile, and further mention of it here is unnecessary.
Continuing the work, it was not long before traces of another tomb became apparent, and in a few days' time we were able to look down from the surrounding mounds of rubbish upon the commencement of a rectangular cutting in the rock.
The size and style of the entrance left no doubt that the work was to be dated to the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and the excavators were confident that the tomb of either Tutankhamon or Horemheb lay before them.
Steps leading down to the entrance were presently uncovered, and finally the doorway itself was freed from _débris_.
On one of the door-posts an inscription was now seen, written in black ink by one of the Government inspectors of B.C.
1100.
This stated, that in the fourth year of an unknown king the tomb had been inspected, and had been found to be that of Horemheb.
[Illustration: PL.
XXII.
The mouth of the tomb of Horemheb at the time of its discovery.
The author is seen emerging from the tomb after the first entrance had been effected.
On the hillside the workmen are grouped.]
[_Photo by Lady Glyn._ We had hoped now to pass into the tomb without further difficulty, but in this we were disappointed, for the first corridor was quite choked with the rubbish placed there by the inspectors.
This corridor led down at a steep angle through the limestone hillside, and, like all other parts of the tomb, it was carefully worked.
It was not until two days later that enough clearing had been done to allow us to crawl in over the rubbish, which was still piled up so nearly to the roof that there was only just room to wriggle downwards over it with our backs pressing against the stone above.
At the lower end of the corridor there was a flight of steps towards which the rubbish shelved, and, sliding down the slope, we were here able to stand once more.
It was obvious that the tomb did not stop here, and work, therefore, had to be begun on the rubbish which choked the stairway in order to expose the entrance to further passages.
A doorway soon became visible, and at last this was sufficiently cleared to permit of our crawling into the next corridor, though now we were even more closely squeezed between the roof and the _débris_ than before.
The party which made the entrance consisted of Mr Davis; his assistant, Mr Ayrton; Mr Harold Jones; Mr Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt Exploration Fund; and myself.
Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and pulled ourselves down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling avalanche of small stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage, where we scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft.
Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on slightly raised plaster.
Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris, Horus, and other gods; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst the elaborate inscriptions.
The colours were extremely rich, and, though there was so much to be seen ahead, we stood there for some minutes, looking at them with a feeling much akin to awe.
The shaft was partly filled with rubbish, and not being very deep, we were able to climb down it by means of a ladder, and up the other side to an entrance which formed a kind of window in the sheer wall.
In entering a large tomb for the first time, there are one or two scenes which fix themselves upon the memory more forcefully than others, and one feels as though one might carry these impressions intact to the grave.
In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall.
At one's feet lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained of a white-pillared hall.
The intense eagerness to know what was beyond, and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years, cast a spell over the scene and made it unforgetable.
This aperture had once been blocked up with stones, and the paintings had passed across it, thus hiding it from view, so that a robber entering the tomb might think that it ended here.
But the trick was an old one, and the plunderers had easily detected the entrance, had pulled away the blocks, and had climbed through.
Following in their footsteps, we went up the ladder and passed through the entrance into the pillared hall.
Parts of the roof had fallen in, and other parts appeared to be likely to do so at any moment.
Clambering over the _débris_ we descended another sloping corridor, which was entered through a cutting in the floor of the hall, originally blocked up and hidden.
This brought us into a chamber covered with paintings, like those around the well; and again we were brought to a standstill by the amazingly fresh colours which arrested and held the attention.
We then passed on into the large burial-hall, the roof of which was supported by crumbling pillars.
Slabs of limestone had broken off here and there and had crashed down on to the floor, bringing with them portions of the ceiling painted with a design of yellow stars on a black ground.
On the walls were unfinished paintings, and it was interesting to notice that the north, south, east, and west were clearly marked upon the four walls for ceremonial purposes.
The main feature towards which our eyes were turned was the great pink-granite sarcophagus which stood in the middle of the hall.
Its sides were covered with well-cut inscriptions of a religious nature; and at the four corners there were figures of Isis and Nephthys, in relief, with their wings spread out as though in protection around the body.
Looking into the sarcophagus, the lid having been thrown off by the plunderers, we found it empty except for a skull and a few bones of more than one person.
The sarcophagus stood upon the limestone floor, and under it small holes had been cut, in each of which a little wooden statue of a god had been placed.
Thus the king's body was, so to speak, carried on the heads of the gods, and held aloft by their arms.
This is a unique arrangement, and has never before been found in any burial.
In all directions broken figures of the gods were lying, and two defaced wooden statues of the king were overthrown beside the sarcophagus.
Beautiful pieces of furniture, such as were found by Mr Davis in the tomb of Yuaa and Thuau, were not to be expected in the sepulchre of a Pharaoh; for whereas those two persons were only mortals and required mortal comforts in the Underworld, the king was a god and needed only the comfort of the presence of other gods.
Dead flowers were found here and there amidst the _débris_, these being the remnant of the masses of garlands which were always heaped around and over the coffin.
Peering into a little chamber on the right, we saw two skulls and some broken bones lying in the corner.
These appeared to be female, and one of the skulls may have been that of Mutnezem, the queen.
In another small chamber on the left there was a fine painting of Osiris on the back wall; and, crouching at the foot of this, a statuette of a god with upraised hands had been placed.
As we turned the corner and came upon it in the full glare of the lamps, one felt that the arms were raised in horror at sight of us, and that the god was gasping with surprise and indignation at our arrival.
In the floor of another ante-chamber a square hole was cut, leading down to a small room.
A block of stone had neatly fitted over the opening, thus hiding it from view; but the robbers had detected the crack, and had found the hiding-place.
Here there were a skull and a few bones, again of more than one person.
Altogether there must have been four bodies buried in the tomb; and it seems that the inspectors, finding them strewn in all directions, had replaced one skull in the sarcophagus, two in the side room, and one in this hiding-place, dividing up the bones between these three places as they thought fit.
It may be that the king himself was buried in the underground chamber, and that the sarcophagus was a sort of blind; for he had seen the destruction caused by robbers in the tomb of Thutmosis IV., which he had restored, and he may have made this attempt to secure the safety of his own body.
Whether this be so or not, however, Fate has not permitted the body of the great king to escape the hands of the destroyer, and it will now never be known with certainty whether one of these four heads wore the crown of the Pharaohs.
The temperature was very great in the tomb, and the perspiration streamed down our faces as we stood contemplating the devastation.
Now the electric lamps would flash upon the gods supporting the ransacked sarcophagus, lighting for a moment their grotesque forms; now the attention would concentrate upon some wooden figure of a hippopotamus-god or cow-headed deity; and now the light would bring into prominence the great overthrown statue of the king.
There is something peculiarly sensational in the examining of a tomb which has not been entered for such thousands of years, but it must be left to the imaginative reader to infuse a touch of that feeling of the dramatic into these words.
It would be hopeless to attempt to put into writing those impressions which go to make the entering of a great Egyptian sepulchre so thrilling an experience: one cannot describe the silence, the echoing steps, the dark shadows, the hot, breathless air; nor tell of the sense of vast Time the penetrating of it which stirs one so deeply.
The air was too bad to permit of our remaining long so deep in the bowels of the earth; and we presently made our way through halls and corridors back to the upper world, scrambling and crashing over the _débris_, and squeezing ourselves through the rabbit-hole by which we had entered.
As we passed out of this hot, dark tomb into the brilliant sunlight and the bracing north wind, the gloomy wreck of the place was brought before the imagination with renewed force.
The scattered bones, the broken statues, the dead flowers, grouped themselves in the mind into a picture of utter decay.
In some of the tombs which have been opened the freshness of the objects has caused one to exclaim at the inaction of the years; but here, where vivid and well-preserved wall-paintings looked down on a jumbled collection of smashed fragments of wood and bones, one felt how hardly the Powers deal with the dead.
How far away seemed the great fight between Amon and Aton; how futile the task which Horemheb accomplished so gloriously!
It was all over and forgotten, and one asked oneself what it mattered whether the way was difficult or the battle slow to win.
In the fourth year of the reign of Horemheb a certain harper named Neferhotep partly composed a song which was peculiarly appropriate to the tune which ran in one's head at the opening of the tomb of this Pharaoh whom the harper served-"(1.)
Behold the dwellings of the dead.
Their walls fall down; their place is no more: they are as though they had never existed.
(2.)
That which hath come into being must pass away again.
The young men and maidens go to their places; the sun riseth at dawn, and setteth again in the hills of the west.
Men beget and women conceive.
The children, too, go to the places which are appointed for them.
O, then, be happy!
Come, scents and perfumes are set before thee: _mahu_-flowers and lilies for the arms and neck of thy beloved.
Come, songs and music are before thee.
Set behind thee all cares; think only upon gladness, until that day cometh whereon thou shalt go down to the land which loveth silence."
Horemheb must often have heard this song sung in his palace at Thebes by its composer; but did he think, one wonders, that it would be the walls of his own tomb which would fall down, and his own bones which would be almost as though they had never existed?
PART IV.
THE PRESERVATION OF THE TREASURY.
"Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity--the unchangefulness in the midst of change--the same seeming will, and intent for ever and ever inexorable!...
And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlastingly."
--KINGLAKE: _Eothen_ (1844).
CHAPTER X. THEBAN THIEVES.
Thebes was the ancient capital of Egypt, and its ruins are the most extensive in the Nile Valley.
On the east bank of the river, at the modern towns of Luxor and Karnak, there are the remains of mighty temples; and on the west bank, in the neighbourhood of the village of Gurneh, tombs, mortuary chapels, and temples, literally cover the ground.
The inhabitants of these three places have for generations augmented their incomes by a traffic in antiquities, and the peasants of Gurneh have, more especially, become famous as the most hardy pilferers of the tombs of their ancestors in all Egypt.
In conducting this lucrative business they have lately had the misfortune to be recognised as thieves and robbers by the Government, and it is one of my duties to point this out to them.
As a matter of fact they are no more thieves than you or I.
It is as natural for them to scratch in the sand for antiquities as it is for us to pick flowers by the roadside: antiquities, like flowers, are the product of the soil, and it is largely because the one is more rare than the other that its promiscuous appropriation has been constituted an offence.
The native who is sometimes child enough to put his eyes out rather than serve in the army, who will often suffer all manner of wrongs rather than carry his case to the local courts, and who will hide his money under his bed rather than trust it to the safest bank, is not likely to be intelligent enough to realise that, on scientific grounds, he is committing a crime in digging for scarabs.
He is beginning to understand that in the eyes of the law he is a criminal, but he has not yet learnt so to regard himself.
I here name him thief, for officially that is his designation; but there is no sting in the word, nor is any insult intended.
By all cultured persons the robbery of antiquities must be regarded as a grave offence, and one which has to be checked.
But the point is ethical; and what has the Theban to do with ethics?
The robbery of antiquities is carried out in many different ways and from many different motives.
Sometimes it is romantic treasure hunting that the official has to deal with; sometimes it is adventurous robbery with violence; sometimes it is the taking advantage of chance discoveries; sometimes it is the pilfering of objects found in authorised excavations; and sometimes it is the stealing of fragments smashed from the walls of the ancient monuments.
All these forms of robbery, except the last, may call for the sympathy of every reader of these lines who happens not to have cultivated that vaguely defined "archæological sense" which is, practically, the product of this present generation alone; and in the instances which are here to be given the point of view of the "Theban thief" will be readily appreciated.
[Illustration: PL.
XXIII.
A modern Theban Fellah-woman and her child.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._ Treasure hunting is a relic of childhood that remains, like all other forms of romance and adventure, a permanently youthful feature in our worn old hearts.
It has been drilled into us by the tales of our boyhood, and, in later life, it has become part of that universal desire to get something for nothing which lies behind our most honest efforts to obtain the goods of this world.
Who has not desired the hidden wealth of the late Captain Kidd, or coveted the lost treasure of the Incas?
I recently wrote an article which was entitled "Excavations in Egypt," but the editor of the magazine in which it appeared hastily altered these words to "Treasure Hunting in Egypt," and thereby commanded the attention of twice the number of readers.
Can we wonder, then, that this form of adventure is so often met with in Egypt, the land of hidden treasure?
The Department of Antiquities has lately published a collection of mediæval traditions with regard to this subject, which is known as the Book of the Pearl.
In it one is told the exact places where excavations should be made to lay bare the wealth of the ancients.
"Go to such and such a spot," says this curious book, "and dig to the depth of so many cubits, and you will find a trap-door; descend through this and you will find a chamber wherein are forty jars filled with gold.
Take what you want, and give thanks to God."
Many of the sites referred to have been literally hacked out of all recognition by the picks and spades of thousands of gold-seekers; and it may be that sometimes their efforts have been rewarded, since a certain amount of genuine information is embodied in the traditions.
Sir Gaston Maspero, the Director-General of the Department of Antiquities, tells a story of how a native came to him asking permission to excavate at a certain spot where he believed treasure to be hidden.
Sir Gaston accompanied him to the place, and a tunnel was bored into what appeared to be virgin sand and rock.
At the end of the first day's work the futility of his labours was pointed out to the man, but he was not to be daunted.
For two more days he stood watching the work from morn to nightfall with hope burning in his eyes, and on the following morning his reward came.
Suddenly the ground gave way before the picks of the workmen, and a hole was seen leading into a forgotten cave.
In this cave the implements of mediæval coiners were discovered, and an amount of metal, false and true, was found which had been used by them in the process of their business.
A short time ago a man applied for permission to perform a similar kind of excavation at a place called Nag Hamadi, and in my absence permission was given him.
On my return the following report was submitted: "... Having reached the spot indicated the man started to blow the stones by means of the Denamits.
Also he slaught a lamb, thinking that there is a treasure, and that when the lamb being slaught he will discover it at once."
In plainer English, the man had blown up the rocks with dynamite, and had attempted to further his efforts by sacrificing a lamb to the _djin_ who guarded the treasure.
The _djin_, however, was not thus to be propitiated, and the gold of the Pharaohs was never found.
More recently the watchmen of the famous temple of Dêr el Bahri found themselves in trouble owing to the discovery that part of the ancient pavement showed signs of having been raised, stone by stone, in order that the ground below might be searched for the treasure which a tradition, such as those in the Book of the Pearl, had reported as lying hid there.
Almost as romantic as treasure hunting is robbery with violence.
We all remember our boyhood's fascination for piracy, smuggling, and the profession of Dick Turpin; and to the Theban peasant, who is essentially youthful in his ideas, this form of fortune hunting has irresistible attractions.
When a new tomb is discovered by authorised archæologists, especially when it is situated in some remote spot such as the Valley of the Kings, there is always some fear of an armed raid; and police guard the spot night and day until the antiquities have been removed to Cairo.
The workmen who have been employed in the excavation return to their homes with wonderful tales of the wealth which the tomb contains, and in the evening the discovery is discussed by the women at the well where the water is drawn for the village, with the result that it very soon assumes prodigious proportions, inflaming the minds of all men with the greed of gold.
Visitors often ask why it is that the mummies of the Pharaohs are not left to lie each in its own tomb; and it is argued that they look neither congruous nor dignified in the glass cases of the museum.
The answer is obvious to all who know the country: put them back in their tombs, and, without continuous police protection, they will be broken into fragments by robbers, bolts and bars notwithstanding.
The experiment of leaving the mummy and some of the antiquities _in situ_ has only once been tried, and it has not been a complete success.
It was done in the case of the tomb of Amenhotep II.
at Thebes, the mummy being laid in its original sarcophagus; and a model boat, used in one of the funeral ceremonies, was left in the tomb.
One night the six watchmen who were in charge of the royal tombs stated that they had been attacked by an armed force; the tomb in question was seen to have been entered, the iron doors having been forced.
The mummy of the Pharaoh was found lying upon the floor of the burial-hall, its chest smashed in; and the boat had disappeared, nor has it since been recovered.
The watchmen showed signs of having put up something of a fight, their clothes being riddled with bullet-holes; but here and there the cloth looked much as though it had been singed, which suggested, as did other evidence, that they themselves had fired the guns and had acted the struggle.
The truth of the matter will never be known, but its lesson is obvious.
The mummy was put back into its sarcophagus, and there it has remained secure ever since; but one never knows how soon it will be dragged forth once more to be searched for the gold with which every native thinks it is stuffed.
Some years ago an armed gang walked off with a complete series of mortuary reliefs belonging to a tomb at Sakkârah.
They came by night, overpowered the watchmen, loaded the blocks of stone on to camels, and disappeared into the darkness.
Sometimes it is an entire cemetery that is attacked; and, if it happens to be situated some miles from the nearest police-station, a good deal of work can be done before the authorities get wind of the affair.
Last winter six hundred men set to work upon a patch of desert ground where a tomb had been accidently found, and, ere I received the news, they had robbed a score of little graves, many of which must have contained objects purchasable by the dealers in antiquities for quite large sums of money.
At Abydos a tomb which we had just discovered was raided by the villagers, and we only regained possession of it after a rapid exchange of shots, one of which came near ending a career whose continuance had been, since birth, a matter of great importance to myself.
But how amusing the adventure must have been for the raiders!
The appropriation of treasure-trove come upon by chance, or the digging out of graves accidentally discovered, is a very natural form of robbery for the natives to indulge in, and one which commends itself to the sympathies of all those not actively concerned in its suppression.
There are very few persons even in western countries who would be willing to hand over to the Government a hoard of gold discovered in their own back garden.
In Egypt the law is that the treasure-trove thus discovered belongs to the owner of the property; and thus there is always a certain amount of excavation going on behind the walls of the houses.
It is also the law that the peasants may carry away the accumulated rubbish on the upper layers of ancient town sites, in order to use it as a fertiliser for their crops, since it contains valuable phosphates.
This work is supervised by watchmen, but this does not prevent the stealing of almost all the antiquities which are found.
As illegal excavators these _sebakhîn_, or manure-diggers, are the worst offenders, for they search for the phosphates in all manner of places, and are constantly coming upon tombs or ruins which they promptly clear of their contents.
One sees them driving their donkeys along the roads, each laden with a sack of manure, and it is certain that some of these sacks contain antiquities.
In Thebes many of the natives live inside the tombs of the ancient nobles, these generally consisting of two or three rock-hewn halls from which a tunnel leads down to the burial-chamber.
Generally this tunnel is choked with _débris_, and the owner of the house will perhaps come upon it by chance, and will dig it out, in the vain hope that earlier plunderers have left some of the antiquities undisturbed.
It recently happened that an entire family was asphyxiated while attempting to penetrate into a newly discovered tunnel, each member entering to ascertain the fate of the previous explorer, and each being overcome by the gases.
On one occasion I was asked by a native to accompany him down a tunnel, the entrance of which was in his stable, in order to view a sarcophagus which lay at the bottom.
We each took a candle, and, crouching down to avoid the low roof, we descended the narrow, winding passage, the loose stones sliding beneath our feet.
The air was very foul; and below us there was the thunderous roar of thousands of wings beating through the echoing passage--the wings of evil-smelling bats.
Presently we reached this uncomfortable zone.
So thickly did the bats hang from the ceiling that the rock itself seemed to be black; but as we advanced, and the creatures took to their wings, this black covering appeared to peel off the rock.
During the entire descent this curious spectacle of regularly receding blackness and advancing grey was to be seen a yard or so in front of us.
The roar of wings was now deafening, for the space into which we were driving the bats was very confined.
My guide shouted to me that we must let them pass out of the tomb over our heads.
We therefore crouched down, and a few stones were flung into the darkness ahead.
Then, with a roar and a rush of air, they came, bumping into us, entangling themselves in our clothes, slapping our faces and hands with their unwholesome wings, and clinging to our fingers.
At last the thunder died away in the passage behind us, and we were able to advance more easily, though the ground was alive with the bats maimed in the frantic flight which had taken place, floundering out of our way and squeaking shrilly.
The sarcophagus proved to be of no interest, so the encounter with the bats was to no purpose.
The pilfering of antiquities found during the course of authorised excavations is one of the most common forms of robbery.
The overseer cannot always watch the workmen sufficiently closely to prevent them pocketing the small objects which they find, and it is an easy matter to carry off the stolen goods, even though the men are searched at the end of the day.
A little girl minding her father's sheep and goats in the neighbourhood of the excavations, and apparently occupying her hands with the spinning of flax, is perhaps the receiver of the objects.
Thus it is more profitable to dig for antiquities even in authorised excavations than to work the water-hoist, which is one of the usual occupations of the peasant.
Pulling the hoisting-pole down, and swinging it up again with its load of water many thousands of times in the day, is monotonous work; whereas digging in the ground, with the eyes keenly watching for the appearance of antiquities, is always interesting and exciting.
And why should the digger refrain from appropriating the objects which his pick reveals?
If he does not make use of his opportunities and carry off the antiquities, the western director of the works will take them to his own country and sell them for his own profit.
All natives believe that the archæologists work for the purpose of making money.
Speaking of Professor Flinders Petrie, a peasant said to me the other day: "He has worked five-and-twenty years now; he must be _very_ rich."
He would never believe that the antiquities were given to museums without any payment being made to the finder.
The stealing of fragments broken out of the walls of "show" monuments is almost the only form of robbery which will receive general condemnation.
That this vandalism is also distasteful to the natives themselves is shown by the fact that several better-class Egyptians living in the neighbourhood of Thebes subscribed, at my invitation, the sum of £50 for the protection of certain beautiful tombs.
When they were shown the works undertaken with their money, they expressed themselves as being "pleased with the delicate inscriptions in the tombs, but very awfully angry at the damage which the devils of ignorant people had made."
A native of moderate intelligence can quite appreciate the argument that whereas the continuous warfare between the agents of the Department of Antiquities and the illegal excavators of small graves is what might be called an honourable game, the smashing of public monuments cannot be called fair-play from whatever point of view the matter is approached.
Often revenge or spite is the cause of this damage.
It is sometimes necessary to act with severity to the peasants who infringe the rules of the Department, but a serious danger lies in such action, for it is the nature of the Thebans to revenge themselves not on the official directly but on the monuments which he is known to love.
Two years ago a native illegally built himself a house on Government ground, and I was obliged to go through the formality of pulling it down, which I did by obliging him to remove a few layers of brickwork around the walls.
A short time afterwards a famous tomb was broken into and a part of the paintings destroyed; and there was enough evidence to show that the owner of this house was the culprit, though unfortunately he could not be convicted.
One man actually had the audacity to warn me that any severity on my part would be met by destruction of monuments.
Under these circumstances an official finds himself in a dilemma.
If he maintains the dignity and prestige of his Department by punishing any offences against it, he endangers the very objects for the care of which he is responsible; and it is hard to say whether under a lax or a severe administration the more damage would be done.
[Illustration: PL.
XXIV.
A modern Gournawi beggar.]
[_Photo by E. Bird._ The produce of these various forms of robbery is easily disposed of.
When once the antiquities have passed into the hands of the dealers there is little chance of further trouble.
The dealer can always say that he came into possession of an object years ago, before the antiquity laws were made, and it is almost impossible to prove that he did not.
You may have the body of a statue and he the head: he can always damage the line of the breakage, and say that the head does not belong to that statue, or, if the connection is too obvious, he can say that he found the head while excavating twenty years ago on the site where now you have found the body.
Nor is it desirable to bring an action against the man in a case of this kind, for it might go against the official.
Dealing in antiquities is regarded as a perfectly honourable business.
The official, crawling about the desert on his stomach in the bitter cold of a winter's night in order to hold up a convoy of stolen antiquities, may use hard language in regard to the trade, but he cannot say that it is pernicious as long as it is confined to minor objects.
How many objects of value to science would be destroyed by their finders if there was no market to take them to!
One of the Theban dealers leads so holy a life that he will assuredly be regarded as a saint by future generations.
The sale of small antiquities to tourists on the public roads is prohibited, except at certain places, but of course it can be done with impunity by the exercise of a little care.
Men and boys and even little girls as they pass will stare at you with studying eyes, and if you seem to be a likely purchaser, they will draw from the folds of their garments some little object which they will offer for sale.
Along the road in the glory of the setting sun there will come as fine a young man as you will see on a day's march.
Surely he is bent on some noble mission: what lofty thoughts are occupying his mind, you wonder.
But as you pass, out comes the scarab from his pocket, and he shouts, "Wanty scarab, mister?--two shillin'," while you ride on your way a greater cynic than before.
Some years ago a large inscribed stone was stolen from a certain temple, and was promptly sold to a man who sometimes traded in such objects.
This man carried the stone, hidden in a sack of grain, to the house of a friend, and having deposited it in a place of hiding, he tramped home, with his stick across his shoulders, in an attitude of deep unconcern.
An enemy of his, however, had watched him, and promptly gave information.
Acting on this the police set out to search the house.
When we reached the entrance we were met by the owner, and a warrant was shown to him.
A heated argument followed, at the end of which the infuriated man waved us in with a magnificent and most dramatic gesture.
There were some twenty rooms in the house, and the stifling heat of a July noon made the task none too enjoyable.
The police inspector was extremely thorough in his work, and an hour had passed before three rooms had been searched.
He looked into the cupboards, went down on his knees to peer into the ovens, stood on tiptoe to search the fragile wooden shelves (it was a heavy stone which we were looking for), hunted under the mats, and even peeped into a little tobacco-tin.
In one of the rooms there were three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor.
The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top.
The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record.
Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks.
The inspector ran his hand through the clothes which lay therein, and out jumped a few more rats, which likewise went up the walls.
The searching of the remaining rooms carried us well through the afternoon; and at last, hot and weary, we decided to abandon the hunt.
Two nights later a man was seen walking away from the house with a heavy sack on his back; and the stone is now, no doubt, in the Western hemisphere.
The attempt to regain a lost antiquity is seldom crowned with success.
It is so extremely difficult to obtain reliable information; and as soon as a man is suspected his enemies will rush in with accusations.
Thirty-eight separate accusations were sent in against a certain head-watchman during the first days after the fact had leaked out that he was under suspicion.
Not one of them could be shown to be true.
Sometimes one man will bring a charge against another for the betterment of his own interests.
Here is a letter from a watchman who had resigned, but wished to rejoin, "To his Exec.
Chief Dircoter of the tembels.
I have honner to inform that I am your servant X, watchman on the tembels before this time.
Sir from one year ago I work in the Santruple (?)
as a watchman about four years ago.
And I not make anything wrong and your Exec.
know me.
Now I want to work in my place in the tembel, because the man which in it he not attintive to His, but alway he in the coffee....
He also steal the scribed stones.
Please give your order to point me again.
Your servant, X."
"The coffee" is, of course, the _café_ which adjoins the temple.
A short time ago a young man came to me with an accusation against his own father, who, he said, had stolen a statuette.
The tale which he told was circumstantial, but it was hotly denied by his infuriated parent.
He looked, however, a trifle more honest than his father, and when a younger brother was brought in as witness, one felt that the guilt of the old man would be the probable finding.
The boy stared steadfastly at the ground for some moments, however, and then launched out into an elaborate explanation of the whole affair.
He said that he asked his father to lend him four pounds, but the father had refused.
The son insisted that that sum was due to him as his share in some transaction, and pointed out that though he only asked for it as a loan, he had in reality a claim to it.
The old man refused to hand it over, and the son, therefore, waited his opportunity and stole it from his house, carrying it off triumphantly to his own establishment.
Here he gave it into the charge of his young wife, and went about his business.
The father, however, guessed where the money had gone; and while his son was out, invaded his house, beat his daughter-in-law on the soles of her feet until she confessed where the money was hidden, and then, having obtained it, returned to his home.
When the son came back to his house he learnt what had happened, and, out of spite, at once invented the accusation which he had brought to me.
This story appeared to be true in so far as the quarrel over the money was concerned, but that the accusation was invented proved to be untrue.
Sometimes the peasants have such honest faces that it is difficult to believe that they are guilty of deceit.
A lady came to the camp of a certain party of excavators at Thebes, holding in her hand a scarab.
"Do tell me," she said to one of the archæologists, "whether this scarab is genuine.
I am sure it must be, for I bought it from a boy who assured me that he had stolen it from your excavations, and he looked such an honest and truthful little fellow."
In order to check pilfering in a certain excavation in which I was assisting we made a rule that the selected workmen should not be allowed to put unselected substitutes in their place.
One day I came upon a man whose appearance did not seem familiar, although his back was turned to me.
I asked him who he was, whereupon he turned upon me a countenance which might have served for the model of a painting of St John, and in a low, sweet-voice he told me of the illness of the real workman, and of how he had taken over the work in order to obtain money for the purchase of medicine for him, they being friends from their youth up.
I sent him away and told him to call for any medicine he might want that evening.
I did not see him again until about a week later, when I happened to meet him in the village with a policeman on either side of him, from one of whom I learned that he was a well-known thief.
Thus is one deceived even in the case of real criminals: how then can one expect to get at the truth when the crime committed is so light an affair as the stealing of an antiquity?
The following is a letter received from one of the greatest thieves in Thebes, who is now serving a term of imprisonment in the provincial gaol:-"SIR GENERAL INSPECTOR,--I offer this application stating that I am from the natives of Gurneh, saying the following:-'On Saturday last I came to your office and have been told that my family using the sate to strengthen against the Department.
The result of this talking that all these things which somebody pretends are not the fact.
In fact I am taking great care of the antiquities for the purpose of my living matter.
Accordingly, I wish to be appointed in the vacant of watching to the antiquities in my village and promise myself that if anything happens I do hold myself resposible.'"
I have no idea what "using the sate to strengthen" means.
It is sometimes said that European excavators are committing an offence against the sensibilities of the peasants by digging up the bodies of their ancestors.
Nobody will repeat this remark who has walked over a cemetery plundered by the natives themselves.
Here bodies may be seen lying in all directions, torn limb from limb by the gold-seekers; here beautiful vases may be seen smashed to atoms in order to make more rare the specimens preserved.
The peasant has no regard whatsoever for the sanctity of the ancient dead, nor does any superstition in this regard deter him in his work of destruction.
Fortunately superstition sometimes checks other forms of robbery.
_Djins_ are believed to guard the hoards of ancient wealth which some of the tombs are thought to contain, as, for example, in the case of the tomb in which the family was asphyxiated, where a fiend of this kind was thought to have throttled the unfortunate explorers.
Twin brothers are thought to have the power of changing themselves into cats at will; and a certain Huseyn Osman, a harmless individual enough, and a most expert digger, would turn himself into a cat at night-time, not only for the purpose of stealing his brother Muhammed Osman's dinner, but also in order to protect the tombs which his patron was occupied in excavating.
One of the overseers in some recent excavations was said to have power of detecting all robberies on his works.
The archæologist, however, is unfortunately unable to rely upon this form of protection, and many are the schemes for the prevention of pilfering which are tried.
In some excavations a sum of money is given to the workman for every antiquity found by him, and these sums are sufficiently high to prevent any outbidding by the dealers.
Work thus becomes very expensive for the archæologist, who is sometimes called upon to pay £10 or £20 in a day.
The system has also another disadvantage, namely, that the workmen are apt to bring antiquities from far and near to "discover" in their diggings in order to obtain a good price for them.
Nevertheless, it would seem to be the most successful of the systems.
In the Government excavations it is usual to employ a number of overseers to watch for the small finds, while for only the really valuable discoveries is a reward given.
For finding the famous gold hawk's head at Hieraconpolis a workman received £14, and with this princely sum in his pocket he went to a certain Englishman to ask advice as to the spending of it.
He was troubled, he said, to decide whether to buy a wife or a cow.
He admitted that he had already one wife, and that two of them would be sure to introduce some friction into what was now a peaceful household; and he quite realised that a cow would be less apt to quarrel with his first wife.
The Englishman, very properly, voted for the cow, and the peasant returned home deep in thought.
While pondering over the matter during the next few weeks, he entertained his friends with some freedom, and soon he found to his dismay that he had not enough money left to buy either a wife or a cow.
Thereupon he set to with a will, and soon spent the remaining guineas in riotous living.
When he was next seen by the Englishman he was a beggar, and, what was worse, his taste for evil living had had several weeks of cultivation.
The case of the fortunate finder of a certain great _cache_ of mummies was different.
He received a reward of £400, and this he buried in a very secret place.
When he died his possessions descended to his sons.
After the funeral they sat round the grave of the old man, and very rightly discussed his virtues until the sun set.
Then they returned to the house and began to dig for the hidden money.
For some days they turned the sand of the floor over; but failing to find what they sought, they commenced operations on a patch of desert under the shade of some tamarisks where their father was wont to sit of an afternoon.
It is said that for twelve hours they worked like persons possessed, the men hacking at the ground, and the boys carrying away the sand in baskets to a convenient distance.
But the money was never found.
It is not often that the finders of antiquities inform the authorities of their good fortune, but when they do so an attempt is made to give them a good reward.
A letter from the finder of an inscribed statue, who wished to claim his reward, read as follows: "With all delight I please inform you that on 8th Jan. was found a headless temple of granite sitting on a chair and printed on it."
I will end this chapter as I began it, in the defence of the Theban thieves.
In a place where every yard of ground contains antiquities, and where these antiquities may be so readily converted into golden guineas, can one wonder that every man, woman, and child makes use of his opportunities in this respect to better his fortune?
The peasant does not take any interest in the history of mankind, and he cannot be expected to know that in digging out a grave and scattering its contents, through the agency of dealers, over the face of the globe, he loses for ever the facts which the archæologist is striving so hard to obtain.
The scientific excavator does not think the antiquities themselves so valuable as the record of the exact arrangement in which they were found.
From such data alone can he obtain his knowledge of the manners and customs of this wonderful people.
When two objects are found together, the date of one being known and that of the other unknown, the archæological value of the find lies in the fact that the former will place the latter in its correct chronological position.
But if these two objects are sold separately, the find may perhaps lose its entire significance.
The trained archæologist records every atom of information with which he meets; the native records nothing.
And hence, if there is any value at all in the study of the history of mankind, illegal excavation must be stopped.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FLOODING OF LOWER NUBIA.
The country of Lower Nubia lies between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile.
The town of Aswan, once famous as the frontier outpost of Egypt and now renowned as a winter resort for Europeans and Americans, stands some two or three miles below the First Cataract; and two hundred miles southwards, at the foot of the Second Cataract, stands Wady Halfa.
About half-way between these two points the little town of Derr nestles amidst its palms; and here the single police-station of the province is situated.
Agriculturally the land is extremely barren, for the merest strip of cultivation borders the river, and in many reaches the desert comes down to the water's edge.
The scenery is rugged and often magnificent.
As one sails up the Nile the rocky hills on either side group themselves into bold compositions, rising darkly above the palms and acacias reflected in the water.
The villages, clustered on the hillsides as though grown like mushrooms in the night, are not different in colour to the ground upon which they are built; but here and there neatly whitewashed houses of considerable size are to be observed.
Now we come upon a tract of desert sand which rolls down to the river in a golden slope; now the hills recede, leaving an open bay wherein there are patches of cultivated ground reclaimed from the wilderness; and now a dense but narrow palm-grove follows the line of the bank for a mile or more, backed by the villages at the foot of the hills.
The inhabitants are few in number.
Most of the males have taken service as cooks, butlers, waiters, and bottle-washers in European houses or hotels throughout Egypt; and consequently one sees more women than men pottering about the villages or working in the fields.
They are a fine race, clean in their habits and cheery in character.
They can be distinguished with ease from the Egyptian _fellahîn_; for their skin has more the appearance of bronze, and their features are often more aquiline.
The women do not wear the veil, and their dresses are draped over one shoulder in a manner unknown to Egypt.
The method of dressing the hair, moreover, is quite distinctive: the women plait it in innumerable little strands, those along the forehead terminating in bead-like lumps of bee's-wax.
The little children go nude for the first six or eight years of their life, though the girls sometimes wear around their waists a fringe made of thin strips of hide.
The men still carry spears in some parts of the country, and a light battle-axe is not an uncommon weapon.
There is no railway between Aswan and Halfa, all traffic being conducted on the river.
Almost continuously a stream of native troops and English officers passes up and down the Nile bound for Khartoum or Cairo; and in the winter the tourists on steamers and _dahabiyehs_ travel through the country in considerable numbers to visit the many temples which were here erected in the days when the land was richer than it is now.
The three most famous ruins of Lower Nubia are those of Philae, just above Aswan; Kalabsheh, some forty miles to the south; and Abu Simbel, about thirty miles below Halfa: but besides these there are many buildings of importance and interest.
The ancient remains date from all periods of Egyptian history; for Lower Nubia played an important part in Pharaonic affairs, both by reason of its position as the buffer state between Egypt and the Sudan, and also because of its gold-mining industries.
In old days it was divided into several tribal states, these being governed by the Egyptian Viceroy of Ethiopia; but the country seldom revolted or gave trouble, and to the present day it retains its reputation for peacefulness and orderly behaviour.
Owing to the building, and now the heightening, of the great Nile dam at Aswan, erected for the purpose of regulating the flow of water by holding back in the plenteous autumn and winter the amount necessary to keep up the level in the dry summer months, the whole of the valley from the First Cataract to the neighbourhood of Derr will be turned into a vast reservoir, and a large number of temples and other ruins will be flooded.
Before the dam was finished the temples on the island of Philae were strengthened and repaired so as to be safe from damage by the water; and now every other ruin whose foundations are below the future high-water level has been repaired and safeguarded.
In 1906 and 1907 the present writer was dispatched to the threatened territory to make a full report on the condition of the monuments there;[1] and a very large sum of money was then voted for the work.
Sir Gaston Maspero took the matter up in the spirit which is associated with his name; Monsieur Barsanti was sent to repair and underpin the temples; French, German, and English scholars were engaged to make copies of the endangered inscriptions and reliefs; and Dr Reisner, Mr C. Firth, and others, under the direction of Captain Lyons, were entrusted with the complete and exhaustive excavation of all the cemeteries and remains between the dam and the southern extremity of the reservoir.
As a result of this work, not one scrap of information of any kind will be lost by the flooding of the country.
[Footnote 1: Weigall: 'A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia.'
(Department of Antiquities, Cairo, 1907.)]
As was to be expected, the building and raising of the dam caused consternation amongst the archæologically interested visitors to Egypt, and very considerably troubled the Egyptologists.
Philae, one of the most picturesque ruins on the Nile, was to be destroyed, said the more hysterical, and numerous other buildings were to meet with the same fate.
A very great deal of nonsense was written as to the vandalism of the English; and the minds of certain people were so much inflamed by the controversy that many regrettable words were spoken.
The Department of Antiquities was much criticised for having approved the scheme, though it was more generally declared that the wishes of that Department had not been consulted, which was wholly untrue.
These strictures are pronounced on all sides at the present day, in spite of the very significant silence and imperturbation (not to say supination) of Egyptologists, and it may therefore be as well to put the matter plainly before the reader, since the opinion of the person who is in charge of the ruins in question, has, whether right or wrong, a sort of interest attached to it.
In dealing with a question of this kind one has to clear from the brain the fumes of unbalanced thought and to behold all things with a level head.
Strong wine is one of the lesser causes of insobriety, and there is often more damage done by intemperance of thought in matters of criticism than there is by actions committed under the influence of other forms of immoderation.
We are agreed that it is a sad spectacle which is to be observed in the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, when the legs of half the pedestrians appear to have lost their cunning.
We say in disgust that these people are intoxicated.
What, then, have we to say regarding those persons whose brains are unbalanced by immoderate habits of thought, who are suffering from that primary kind of intoxication which the dictionary tells us is simply a condition of the mind wherein clear judgment is obscured?
There is sometimes a debauchery in the reasoning faculties of the polite which sends their opinions rollicking on their way just as drink will send a man staggering up the highroad.
Temperance and sobriety are virtues which in their relation to thought have a greater value than they possess in any other regard; and we stand in more urgent need of missionaries to preach to us sobriety of opinion, a sort of critical teetotalism, than ever a drunkard stood in want of a pledge.
This case of Philae and the Lower Nubian temples illustrates my meaning.
On the one hand there are those who tell us that the island temple, far from being damaged by its flooding, is benefited thereby; and on the other hand there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man.
Both these views are distorted and intemperate.
Let us endeavour to straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before us in an atmosphere of propriety.
It will be agreed by all those who know Egypt that a great dam was necessary, and it will be admitted that no reach of the Nile below Wady Halfa could be converted into a reservoir with so little detriment to _modern_ interests as that of Lower Nubia.
Here there were very few cultivated fields to be inundated and a very small number of people to be dislodged.
There were, however, these important ruins which would be flooded by such a reservoir, and the engineers therefore made a most serious attempt to find some other site for the building.
A careful study of the Nile valley showed that the present site of the dam was the only spot at which a building of this kind could be set up without immensely increasing the cost of erection and greatly adding to the general difficulties and the possible dangers of the undertaking.
The engineers had, therefore, to ask themselves whether the damage to the temples weighed against these considerations, whether it was right or not to expend the extra sum from the taxes.
The answer was plain enough.
They were of opinion that the temples would not be appreciably damaged by their flooding.
They argued, very justly, that the buildings would be under water for only five months in each year, and for seven months the ruins would appear to be precisely as they always had been.
It was not necessary, then, to state the loss of money and the added inconveniences on the one hand against the total loss of the temples on the other.
It was simply needful to ask whether the temporary and apparently harmless inundation of the ruins each year was worth avoiding at the cost of several millions of precious Government money; and, looking at it purely from an administrative point of view, remembering that public money had to be economised and inextravagantly dealt with, I do not see that the answer given was in any way outrageous.
Philae and the other temples were not to be harmed: they were but to be closed to the public, so to speak, for the winter months.
[Illustration: PL.
XXV.
The island and temples of Philæ when the reservoir is empty.]
[_Photo by R. Glendinning._ This view of the question is not based upon any error.
In regard to the possible destruction of Philae by the force of the water, Mr Somers Clarke, F.S.A., whose name is known all over the world in connection with his work at St Paul's Cathedral and elsewhere, states definitely[1] that he is convinced that the temples will not be overthrown by the flood, and his opinion is shared by all those who have studied the matter carefully.
Of course it is possible that, in spite of all the works of consolidation which have been effected, some cracks may appear; but during the months when the temple is out of water each year, these may be repaired.
I cannot see that there is the least danger of an extensive collapse of the buildings; but should this occur, the entire temple will have to be removed and set up elsewhere.
Each summer and autumn when the water goes down and the buildings once more stand as they did in the days of the Ptolemies and Romans, we shall have ample time and opportunity to discuss the situation and to take all proper steps for the safeguarding of the temples against further damage; and even were we to be confronted by a mass of fallen ruins, scattered pell-mell over the island by the power of the water, I am convinced that every block could be replaced before the flood rose again.
The temple of Maharraka was entirely rebuilt in three or four weeks.
[Footnote 1: Proc.
Soc.
Antiq., April 20, 1898.]
Now, as to the effect of the water upon the reliefs and inscriptions with which the walls of the temples at Philae are covered.
In June 1905 I reported[1] that a slight disintegration of the surface of the stone was noticeable, and that the sharp lines of the hieroglyphs had become somewhat blurred.
This is due to the action of the salts in the sandstone; but these salts have now disappeared, and the disintegration will not continue.
The Report on the Temples of Philae, issued by the Ministry of Public Works in 1908, makes this quite clear; and I may add that the proof of the statement is to be found at the many points on the Nile where there are the remains of quay walls dating from Pharaonic times.
Many of these quays are constructed of inscribed blocks of a stone precisely similar in quality to that used at Philae; and although they have been submerged for many hundreds of years, the lines of the hieroglyphs are almost as sharp now as they ever were.
The action of the water appears to have little effect upon sandstone, and it may thus be safely predicted that the reliefs and inscriptions at Philae will not suffer.
[Footnote 1: Les Annales du Service des Antiquites d'Egypte, vii.
1, p.
74.]
There still remain some traces of colour upon certain reliefs, and these will disappear.
But archæologically the loss will be insignificant, and artistically it will not be much felt.
With regard to the colour upon the capitals of the columns in the Hall of Isis, however, one must admit that its destruction would be a grave loss to us, and it is to be hoped that the capitals will be removed and replaced by dummies, or else most carefully copied in facsimile.
Such is the case of Philae when looked at from a practical point of view.
Artistically and sentimentally, of course, one deeply regrets the flooding of the temple.
Philae with its palms was a very charming sight, and although the island still looks very picturesque each year when the flood has receded and the ground is covered with grasses and vegetation, it will not again possess quite the magic that once caused it to be known as the "pearl of Egypt."
But these are considerations which are to be taken into account with very great caution as standing against the interest of modern Egypt.
If Philae were to be destroyed, one might, very properly, desire that modern interests should not receive sole consideration; but it is not to be destroyed, or even much damaged, and consequently the lover of Philae has but two objections to offer to the operations now proceeding: firstly, that the temples will be hidden from sight during a part of each year; and secondly, that water is an incongruous and unharmonious element to introduce into the sanctuaries of the gods.
Let us consider these two objections.
As to the hiding of the temple under the water, we have to consider to what class of people the examination of the ruins is necessary.
Archæologists, officials, residents, students, and all natives, are able to visit the place in the autumn, when the island stands high and dry, and the weather is not uncomfortably hot.
Every person who desires to see Philae in its original condition can arrange to make his journey to Lower Nubia in the autumn or early winter.
It is only the ordinary winter tourist who will find the ruins lost to view beneath the brown waters; and while his wishes are certainly to be consulted to some extent, there can be no question that the fortunes of the Egyptian farmers must receive the prior attention.
And as to the incongruity of the introduction of the water into these sacred precincts, one may first remark that water stands each year in the temples of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum, Shenhur, Esneh, and many another, introduced by the natural rise of the Nile, thus giving us a quieting familiarity with such a condition; and one may further point out that the presence of water in the buildings is not (speaking archæologically) more discordant than that of the palms and acacias which clustered around the ruins previous to the building of the dam, and gave Philae its peculiar charm.
Both water and trees are out of place in a temple once swept and garnished, and it is only a habit of thought that makes the trees which grow in such ruins more congruous to the eye than water lapping around the pillars and taking the fair reflections of the stonework.
What remains, then, of the objections?
Nothing, except an undefined sense of dismay that persists in spite of all arguments.
There are few persons who will not feel this sorrow at the flooding of Philae, who will not groan inwardly as the water rises; and yet I cannot too emphatically repeat that there is no real cause for this apprehension and distress.
A great deal of damage has been done to the prestige of the archæologist by the ill-considered outbursts of those persons who have allowed this natural perturbation to have full sway in their minds.
The man or woman who has protested the loudest has seldom been in a position even to offer an opinion.
Thus every temperate thinker has come to feel a greater distaste for the propaganda of those persons who would have hindered the erection of the dam than for the actual effects of its erection.
Vegetarians, Anti-Vivisectionists, Militant Suffragists, Little Englanders, and the like, have taught us to beware of the signs and tokens of the unbalanced mind; and it becomes the duty of every healthy person to fly from the contamination of their hysteria, even though the principles which lie at the base of their doctrines may not be entirely without reason.
We must avoid hasty and violent judgment as we would the plague.
No honest man will deny that the closing of Philae for half the year is anything but a very regrettable necessity; but it has come to this pass, that a self-respecting person will be very chary in admitting that he is not mightily well satisfied with the issue of the whole business.
Recently a poetic effusion has been published bewailing the "death" of Philae, and because the author is famous the world over for the charm of his writing, it has been read, and its lament has been echoed by a large number of persons.
It is necessary to remind the reader, however, that because a man is a great artist it does not follow that he has a sober judgment.
The outward appearance, and a disordered opinion on matters of everyday life, are often sufficient indication of this intemperance of mind which is so grave a human failing.
A man and his art, of course, are not to be confused; and perhaps it is unfair to assess the art by the artist, but there are many persons who will understand my meaning when I suggest that it is extremely difficult to give serious attention to writers or speakers of a certain class.
Philae is _not_ dead.
It may safely be said that the temples will last as long as the dam itself.
Let us never forget that Past and Present walk hand in hand, and, as between friends, there must always be much "give and take."
How many millions of pounds, I wonder, has been spent by the Government, from the revenues derived from the living Egyptians, for the excavation and preservation of the records of the past?
Will the dead not make, in return, this sacrifice for the benefit of the striving farmers whose money has been used for the resuscitation of their history?
A great deal has been said regarding the destruction of the ancient inscriptions which are cut in such numbers upon the granite rocks in the region of the First Cataract, many of which are of great historical importance.
Vast quantities of granite have been quarried for the building of the dam, and fears have been expressed that in the course of this work these graffiti may have been blasted into powder.
It is necessary to say, therefore, that with the exception of one inscription which was damaged when the first quarrymen set to work upon the preliminary tests for suitable stone, not a single hieroglyph has been harmed.
The present writer numbered all the inscriptions in white paint and marked out quarrying concessions, while several watchmen were set to guard these important relics.
In this work, as in all else, the Department of Antiquities received the most generous assistance from the Department concerned with the building of the dam; and I should like to take this opportunity of saying that archæologists owe a far greater debt to the officials in charge of the various works at Aswan than they do to the bulk of their own fellow-workers.
The desire to save every scrap of archæological information has been dominant in the minds of all concerned in the work throughout the whole undertaking.
Besides the temples of Philae there are several other ruins which will be flooded in part by the water when the heightening of the reservoir is completed.
On the island of Bigeh, over against Philae, there is a little temple of no great historical value which will pass under water.
The cemeteries on this island, and also on the mainland in this neighbourhood, have been completely excavated, and have yielded most important information.
Farther up stream there stands the little temple of Dabôd.
This has been repaired and strengthened, and will not come to any harm; while all the cemeteries in the vicinity, of course, have been cleared out.
We next come to the fortress and quarries of Kertassi, which will be partly flooded.
These have been put into good order, and there need be no fear of their being damaged.
The temple of Tafeh, a few miles farther to the south, has also been safeguarded, and all the ancient graves have been excavated.
Next comes the great temple of Kalabsheh which, in 1907, when my report was made, was in a sorry state.
The great hall was filled with the ruins of the fallen colonnade and its roof; the hypostyle hall was a mass of tumbled blocks over which the visitor was obliged to climb; and all the courts and chambers were heaped up with _débris_.
Now, however, all this has been set to rights, and the temple stands once more in its glory.
The water will flood the lower levels of the building each year for a few months, but there is no chance of a collapse taking place, and the only damage which is to be anticipated is the loss of the colour upon the reliefs in the inner chambers, and the washing away of some later Coptic paintings, already hardly distinguishable, in the first hall.
The temple is not very frequently visited, and it cannot be said that its closing for each winter will be keenly felt; and since it will certainly come to no harm under the gentle Nile, I do not see that its fate need cause any consternation.
Let those who are able visit this fine ruin in the early months of winter, and they will be rewarded for their trouble by a view of a magnificent temple in what can only be described as apple-pie order.
I venture to think that a building of this kind washed by the water is a more inspiring sight than a tumbled mass of ruins rising from amidst an encroaching jumble of native hovels.
Farther up the river stands the temple of Dendur.
This will be partly inundated, though the main portion of the building stands above the highest level of the reservoir.
Extensive repairs have been carried out here, and every grave in the vicinity has been examined.
The fortress of Koshtamneh, which is made of mud-bricks, will be for the most part destroyed; but now that a complete record of this construction has been made, the loss is insignificant.
Somewhat farther to the south stands the imposing temple of Dakkeh, the lower levels of which will be flooded.
This temple has been most extensively patched up and strengthened, and no damage of any kind will be caused by its inundation.
The vast cemeteries in the neighbourhood have all been excavated, and the remains of the town have been thoroughly examined.
Still farther to the south stands the mud-brick fortress of Kubban, which, like Koshtamneh, will be partly destroyed; but the detailed excavations and records which have here been made will prevent any loss being felt by archæologists.
Finally, the temple of Maharraka requires to be mentioned.
This building in 1907 was a complete ruin, but it was carefully rebuilt, and now it is quite capable of withstanding the pressure of the water.
From this point to the southern end of the new reservoir there are no temples below the new flood-level; and by the time that the water is raised every grave and other relic along the entire banks of the river will have been examined.
To complete these works it is proposed to erect a museum at Aswan wherein the antiquities discovered in Lower Nubia should be exhibited; and a permanent collection of objects illustrating the arts, crafts, and industries of Lower Nubia at all periods of its history, should be displayed.
It is a question whether money will be found for the executing of this scheme; but there can be no doubt that a museum of this kind, situated at the virtual capital of Lower Nubia, would be a most valuable institution.
In 1907 the condition of the monuments of Lower Nubia was very bad.
The temples already mentioned were in a most deplorable state; the cemeteries were being robbed, and there was no proper organisation for the protection of the ancient sites.
There are, moreover, several temples above the level of high water, and these were also in a sad condition.
Gerf Husen was both dirty and dilapidated; Wady Sabua was deeply buried in sand; Amada was falling to pieces; Derr was the receptacle for the refuse of the town; and even Abu Simbel itself was in a dangerous state.
In my report I gave a gloomy picture indeed of the plight of the monuments.
But now all this is changed.
Sir Gaston Maspero made several personal visits to the country; every temple was set in order; many new watchmen were appointed; and to-day this territory may be said to be the "show" portion of this inspectorate.
Now, it must be admitted that the happy change is due solely to the attention to which the country was subjected by reason of its flooding; and it is not the less true because it is paradoxical that the proposed submersion of certain temples has saved all the Lower Nubian monuments from rapid destruction at the hands of robbers, ignorant natives, and barbarous European visitors.
What has been lost in Philae has been gained a thousand-fold in the repairing and safeguarding of the temples, and in the scientific excavation of the cemeteries farther to the south.
Here, then, is the sober fact of the matter.
Are the English and Egyptian officials such vandals who have voted over a hundred thousand pounds for the safeguarding of the monuments of Lower Nubia?
What country in the whole world has spent such vast sums of money upon the preservation of the relics of the Past as has Egypt during the last five-and-twenty years?
The Government has treated the question throughout in a fair and generous manner; and those who rail at the officials will do well to consider seriously the remarks which I have dared to make upon the subject of temperate criticism.
CHAPTER XII.
ARCHÆOLOGY IN THE OPEN.
In this chapter I propose to state the case in favour of the archæologist who works abroad in the field, in contrast to him who studies at home in the museum, in the hope that others will follow the example of that scholar to whom this volume is dedicated, who does both.
I have said in a previous chapter that the archæologist is generally considered to be a kind of rag-and-bone man: one who, sitting all his life in a dusty room, shuns the touch of the wind and takes no pleasure in the vanities under the sun.
Actually, this is not so very often a true description of him.
The ease with which long journeys are now undertaken, the immunity from insult or peril which the traveller now enjoys, have made it possible for the archæologist to seek his information at its source in almost all the countries of the world; and he is not obliged, as was his grandfather, to take it at second-hand from the volumes of mediæval scholars.
Moreover, the necessary collections of books of reference are now to be found in very diverse places; and thus it comes about that there are plenty of archæologists who are able to leave their own museums and studies for limited periods.
And as regards his supposed untidy habits, the phase of cleanliness which, like a purifying wind, descended suddenly upon the world in the second half of the nineteenth century, has penetrated even to libraries and museums, removing every speck of dust therefrom.
The archæologist, when engaged in the sedentary side of his profession, lives nowadays in an atmosphere charged with the odours of furniture-polish and monkey-brand.
A place less dusty than the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, or than the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, could not easily be imagined.
The disgusting antiquarian of a past generation, with his matted locks and stained clothing, could but be ill at ease in such surroundings, and could claim no brotherhood with the majority of the present-day archæologists.
Cobwebs are now taboo; and the misguided old man who dwelt amongst them is seldom to be found outside of caricature, save in the more remote corners of the land.
[Illustration: PL.
XXVI.
A relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb of Userhat at Thebes.
This relief was stolen from the tomb, and found its way to the Brussels Museum, where it is shown in the damaged condition seen in Plate xxvii.]
[_Photo by H. Carter._ The archæologist in these days, then, is not often confined permanently to his museum, though in many cases he remains there as much as possible; and still less often is he a person of objectionable appearance.
The science is generally represented by two classes of scholar: the man who sits in the museum or library for the greater part of his life, and lives as though he would be worthy of the furniture-polish, and the man who works in the field for a part of the year and then lives as though he regarded the clean airs of heaven in even higher estimation.
Thus, in arguing the case for the field-worker, as I propose here to do, there is no longer the easy target of the dusty antiquarian at which to hurl the javelin.
One cannot merely urge a musty individual to come out into the open air: that would make an easy argument.
One has to take aim at the less vulnerable person of the scholar who chooses to spend the greater part of his time in a smart gallery of exhibits or in a well-ordered and spotless library, and whose only fault is that he is too fond of those places.
One may no longer tease him about his dusty surroundings; but I think it is possible to accuse him of setting a very bad example by his affection for "home comforts," and of causing indirectly no end of mischief.
It is a fact that there are many Greek scholars who are so accustomed to read their texts in printed books that they could not make head nor tail of an original document written in a cursive Greek hand; and there are not a few students of Egyptian archæology who do not know the conditions and phenomena of the country sufficiently to prevent the occurrence of occasional "howlers" in the exposition of their theories.
There are three main arguments which may be set forward to induce Egyptologists to come as often as possible to Egypt, and to urge their students to do so, instead of educating the mind to the habit of working at home.
Firstly, the study of archæology in the open helps to train the young men in the path of health in which they should go.
Work in the Egyptian desert, for example, is one of the most healthy and inspiring pursuits that could be imagined; and study in the shrines overlooking the Nile, where, as at Gebel Silsileh, one has to dive into the cool river and swim to the sun-scorched scene of one's work, is surely more invigorating than study in the atmosphere of the British Museum.
A gallop up to the Tombs of the Kings puts a man in a readier mood for a morning's work than does a drive in an omnibus along Tottenham Court Road; and he will feel a keenness as he pulls out his note-book that he can never have experienced in his western city.
There is, moreover, a certain amount of what is called "roughing it" to be endured by the archæologist in Egypt; and thus the body becomes toughened and prepared for any necessary spurt of work.
To rough it in the open is the best medicine for tired heads, as it is the finest tonic for brains in a normal condition.
In parenthesis an explanation must be given of what is meant here by that much misunderstood condition of life which is generally known as "roughing it."
A man who is accustomed to the services of two valets will believe that he is roughing it when he is left to put the diamond studs in his evening shirts with his own fingers; and a man who has tramped the roads all his life will hardly consider that he is roughing it when he is outlawed upon the unsheltered moors in late autumn.
The degree of hardship to which I refer lies between these two extremes.
The science of Egyptology does not demand from its devotees a performance of many extreme acts of discomfort; but, during the progress of active work, it does not afford many opportunities for luxurious self-indulgence, or for any slackness in the taking of exercise.
As a protest against the dilettante antiquarian (who is often as objectionable a character as the unwashed scholar) there are certain archæologists who wear the modern equivalent of a hair shirt, who walk abroad with pebbles in their shoes, and who speak of the sitting upon an easy-chair as a moral set-back.
The strained and posed life which such savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel.
It is not roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending to rough it.
It is not roughing it to eat tinned food out of the tin when a plate costs a penny or two: it is either hypocrisy or slovenliness.
To rough it is to lead an exposed life under conditions which preclude the possibility of indulging in certain comforts which, in their place and at the right time, are enjoyed and appreciated.
A man may well be said to rough it when he camps in the open, and dispenses with the luxuries of civilisation; when he pours a jug of water over himself instead of lying in ecstasy in an enamelled bath; eats a meal of two undefined courses instead of one of five or six; twangs a banjo to the moon instead of ravishing his ear with a sonata upon the grand piano; rolls himself in a blanket instead of sitting over the library fire; turns in at 9 P.M. and rises ere the sun has topped the hills instead of keeping late hours and lying abed; sleeps on the ground or upon a narrow camp-bed (which occasionally collapses) instead of sprawling at his ease in a four-poster.
A life of this kind cannot fail to be of benefit to the health; and, after all, the work of a healthy man is likely to be of greater value than that of one who is anæmic or out of condition.
It is the first duty of a scholar to give attention to his muscles, for he, more than other men, has the opportunity to become enfeebled by indoor work.
Few students can give sufficient time to physical exercise; but in Egypt the exercise is taken during the course of the work, and not an hour is wasted.
The muscles harden and the health is ensured without the expending of a moment's thought upon the subject.
Archæology is too often considered to be the pursuit of weak-chested youths and eccentric old men: it is seldom regarded as a possible vocation for normal persons of sound health and balanced mind.
An athletic and robust young man, clothed in the ordinary costume of a gentleman, will tell a new acquaintance that he is an Egyptologist, whereupon the latter will exclaim in surprise: "Not really?--you don't look like one."
A kind of mystery surrounds the science.
The layman supposes the antiquarian to be a very profound and erudite person, who has pored over his books since a baby, and has shunned those games and sports which generally make for a healthy constitution.
The study of Egyptology is thought to require a depth of knowledge that places its students outside the limits of normal learning, and presupposes in them an unhealthy amount of schooling.
This, of course, is absurd.
Nobody would expect an engineer who built bridges and dams, or a great military commander, to be a seedy individual with longish hair, pale face, and weak eyesight; and yet probably he has twice the brain capacity of the average archæologist.
It is because the life of the antiquarian is, or is generally thought to be, unhealthy and sluggish that he is so universally regarded as a worm.
Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men.
Let them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of mental expansion.
Let their first desire be to show themselves good, useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much to remove the stigma from their profession.
Let them be acquainted with the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to suffer.
A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at home in the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of the student more considerably than he could imagine.
Moreover, the appearance of the scholar prancing about upon his fiery steed (even though it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of those who profess and call themselves Egyptologists.
As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be distasteful to a large number of archæologists.
I refer to the narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American museums, whose desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other eastern antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in order that they and the public may have the entertainment of examining at home the wonders of lands which they make no effort to visit.
I have no hesitation in saying that the craze for recklessly bringing away unique antiquities from Egypt to be exhibited in western museums for the satisfaction of the untravelled man, is the most pernicious bit of folly to be found in the whole broad realm of archæological misbehaviour.
A museum has three main justifications for its existence.
In the first place, like a home for lost dogs, it is a repository for stray objects.
No curator should endeavour to procure for his museum any antiquity which could be safely exhibited on its original site* and in its original position.
He should receive only those stray objects which otherwise would be lost to sight, or those which would be in danger of destruction.
The curator of a picture gallery is perfectly justified in purchasing any old master which is legitimately on sale; but he is not justified in obtaining a painting direct from the walls of a church where it has hung for centuries, and where it should still hang.
In the same way a curator of a museum of antiquities should make it his first endeavour not so much to obtain objects direct from Egypt as to gather in those antiquities which are in the possession of private persons who cannot be expected to look after them with due care.
*Transcriber's note: Original text read "sight".
In the second place, a museum is a store-house for historical documents such as papyri and ostraca, and in this respect it is simply to be regarded as a kind of public library, capable of unlimited and perfectly legitimate expansion.
Such objects are not often found by robbers in the tombs which they have violated, nor are they snatched from temples to which they belong.
They are almost always found accidentally, and in a manner which precludes any possibility of their actual position having much significance.
The immediate purchase, for example, by museum agents of the Tell el Amarna tablets--the correspondence of a great Pharaoh--which had been discovered by accident, and would perhaps have been destroyed, was most wise.
In the third place, a museum is a permanent exhibition for the instruction of the public, and for the enlightenment of students desirous of obtaining comparative knowledge in any one branch of their work, and for this purpose it should be well supplied not so much with original antiquities as with casts, facsimiles, models, and reproductions of all sorts.
To be a serviceable exhibition both for the student and the public a museum does not need to possess only original antiquities.
On the contrary, as a repository for stray objects, a museum is not to be expected to have a complete series of original antiquities in any class, nor is it the business of the curator to attempt to fill up the gaps by purchase, except in special cases.
To do so is to encourage the straying of other objects.
The curator so often labours under the delusion that it is his first business to collect together as large a number as possible of valuable masterpieces.
In reality that is a very secondary matter.
His first business, if he is an Egyptologist, is to see that Egyptian masterpieces remain in Egypt so far as is practicable; and his next is to save what has irrevocably strayed from straying further.
If the result of this policy is a poor collection, then he must devote so much the more time and money to obtaining facsimiles and reproductions.
The keeper of a home for lost dogs does not search the city for a collie with red spots to complete his series of collies, or for a peculiarly elongated dachshund to head his procession of those animals.
The fewer dogs he has got the better he is pleased, since this is an indication that a larger number are in safe keeping in their homes.
The home of Egyptian antiquities is Egypt, a fact which will become more and more realised as travelling is facilitated.
But the curator generally has the insatiable appetite of the collector.
The authorities of one museum bid vigorously against those of another at the auction which constantly goes on in the shops of the dealers in antiquities.
They pay huge prices for original statues, vases, or sarcophagi: prices which would procure for them the finest series of casts or facsimiles, or would give them valuable additions to their legitimate collection of papyri.
And what is it all for?
It is not for the benefit of the general public, who could not tell the difference between a genuine antiquity and a forgery or reproduction, and who would be perfectly satisfied with the ordinary, miscellaneous collection of minor antiquities.
It is not for that class of Egyptologist which endeavours to study Egyptian antiquities in Egypt.
It is almost solely for the benefit of the student and scholar who cannot, or will not, go to Egypt.
Soon it comes to be the curator's pride to observe that savants are hastening to his museum to make their studies.
His civic conceit is tickled by the spectacle of Egyptologists travelling long distances to take notes in his metropolitan museum.
He delights to be able to say that the student can study Egyptology in his well-ordered galleries as easily as he can in Egypt itself.
All this is as wrong-headed as it can be.
While he is filling his museum he does not seem to understand that he is denuding every necropolis in Egypt.
I will give one or two instances of the destruction wrought by western museums.
I them at random from my memory.
In the year 1900 the then Inspector-General of Antiquities in Upper Egypt discovered a tomb at Thebes in which there was a beautiful relief sculptured on one of the walls, representing Queen Tiy.
This he photographed (Plate XXVI.
), and the tomb was once more buried.
In 1908 I chanced upon this monument, and proposed to open it up as a "show place" for visitors; but alas!--the relief of the queen had disappeared, and only a gaping hole in the wall remained.
It appears that robbers had entered the tomb at about the time of the change of inspectors; and, realising that this relief would make a valuable exhibit for some western museum, they had cut out of the wall as much as they could conveniently carry away--namely, the head and upper part of the figure of Tiy.
The hieroglyphic inscription which was sculptured near the head was carefully erased, in case it should contain some reference to the name of the tomb from which they were taking the fragment; and over the face some false inscriptions were scribbled in Greek characters, so as to give the stone an unrecognisable appearance.
In this condition it was conveyed to a dealer's shop, and it now forms one of the exhibits in the Royal Museum at Brussels.
The photograph on Plate XXVII.
shows the fragment as it appears after being cleaned.
[Illustration: PL.
XXVII.
A Relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb of Userhat, Thebes.
--BRUSSELS MUSEUM.
(See PL.
xxvi.)]
[_Photo by T. Capart._ In the same museum, and in others also, there are fragments of beautiful sculpture hacked out of the walls of the famous tomb of Khaemhat at Thebes.
In the British Museum there are large pieces of wall-paintings broken out of Theban tombs.
The famous inscription in the tomb of Anena at Thebes, which was one of the most important texts of the early XVIIIth Dynasty, was smashed to pieces several years ago to be sold in small sections to museums; and the scholar to whom this volume is dedicated was instrumental in purchasing back for us eleven of the fragments, which have now been replaced in the tomb, and, with certain fragments in Europe, form the sole remnant of the once imposing stela.
One of the most important scenes out of the famous reliefs of the Expedition to Pount, at Dêr el Bahri, found its way into the hands of the dealers, and was ultimately purchased by our museum in Cairo.
The beautiful and important reliefs which decorated the tomb of Horemheb at Sakkâra, hacked out of the walls by robbers, are now exhibited in six different museums: London, Leyden, Vienna, Bologna, Alexandria, and Cairo.
Of the two hundred tombs of the nobles now to be seen at Thebes, I cannot, at the moment, recall a single one which has not suffered in this manner at some time previous to the organisation of the present strict supervision.
The curators of western museums will argue that had they not purchased these fragments they would have fallen into the hands of less desirable owners.
This is quite true, and, indeed, it forms the nearest approach to justification that can be discovered.
Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that this purchasing of antiquities is the best stimulus to the robber, who is well aware that a market is always to be found for his stolen goods.
It may seem difficult to censure the purchaser, for certainly the fragments were "stray" when the bargain was struck, and it is the business of the curator to collect stray antiquities.
But why were they stray?
Why were they ever cut from the walls of the Egyptian monuments?
Assuredly because the robbers knew that museums would purchase them.
If there had been no demand there would have been no supply.
To ask the curators to change their policy, and to purchase only those objects which are legitimately on sale, would, of course, be as futile as to ask the nations to disarm.
The rivalry between museum and museum would alone prevent a cessation of this indiscriminate traffic.
I can see only one way in which a more sane and moral attitude can be introduced, and that is by the development of the habit of visiting Egypt and of working upon archæological subjects in the shadow of the actual monuments.
Only the person who is familiar with Egypt can know the cost of supplying the stay-at-home scholar with exhibits for his museums.
Only one who has resided in Egypt can understand the fact that Egypt itself is the true museum for Egyptian antiquities.
He alone can appreciate the work of the Egyptian Government in preserving the remains of ancient days.
The resident in Egypt, interested in archæology, comes to look with a kind of horror upon museums, and to feel extraordinary hostility to what may be called the museum spirit.
He sees with his own eyes the half-destroyed tombs, which to the museum curator are things far off and not visualised.
While the curator is blandly saying to his visitor: "See, I will now show you a beautiful fragment of sculpture from a distant and little-known Theban tomb," the white resident in Egypt, with black murder in his heart, is saying: "See, I will show you a beautiful tomb of which the best part of one wall is utterly destroyed that a fragment might be hacked out for a distant and little-known European museum."
To a resident in Europe, Egypt seems to be a strange and barbaric land, far, far away beyond the hills and seas; and her monuments are thought to be at the mercy of wild Bedwin Arabs.
In the less recent travel books there is not a published drawing of a temple in the Nile valley but has its complement of Arab figures grouped in picturesque attitudes.
Here a fire is being lit at the base of a column, and the black smoke curls upwards to destroy the paintings thereon; here a group of children sport upon the lap of a colossal statue; and here an Arab tethers his camel at the steps of the high altar.
It is felt, thus, that the objects exhibited in European museums have been _rescued_ from Egypt and recovered from a distant land.
This is not so.
They have been snatched from Egypt and lost to the country of their origin.
He who is well acquainted with Egypt knows that hundreds of watchmen, and a small army of inspectors, engineers, draughtsmen, surveyors, and other officials now guard these monuments, that strong iron gates bar the doorways against unauthorised visitors, that hourly patrols pass from monument to monument, and that any damage done is punished by long terms of imprisonment; he knows that the Egyptian Government spends hundreds of thousands of pounds upon safeguarding the ancient remains; he is aware that the organisation of the Department of Antiquities is an extremely important branch of the Ministry of Public Works.
He has seen the temples swept and garnished, the tombs lit with electric light, and the sanctuaries carefully rebuilt.
He has spun out to the Pyramids in the electric tram or in a taxi-cab; has strolled in evening dress and opera hat through the halls of Karnak, after dinner at the hotel; and has rung up the Theban Necropolis on the telephone.
A few seasons' residence in Egypt shifts the point of view in a startling manner.
No longer is the country either distant or insecure; and, realising this, the student becomes more balanced, and he sees both sides of the question with equal clearness.
The archæologist may complain that it is too expensive a matter to come to Egypt.
But why, then, are not the expenses of such a journey met by the various museums?
A hundred pounds will pay for a student's winter in Egypt and his journey to and from that country.
Such a sum is given readily enough for the purchase of an antiquity; but surely rightly-minded students are a better investment than wrongly-acquired antiquities.
It must now be pointed out, as a third argument, that an Egyptologist cannot study his subject properly unless he be thoroughly familiar with Egypt and the modern Egyptians.
A student who is accustomed to sit at home, working in his library or museum, and who has never resided in Egypt, or has but travelled for a short time in that country, may do extremely useful work in one way and another, but that work will not be faultless.
It will be, as it were, lop-sided; it will be coloured with hues of the west, unknown to the land of the Pharaohs and antithetical thereto.
A London architect may design an apparently charming villa for a client in Jerusalem, but unless he knows by actual and prolonged experience the exigencies of the climate of Palestine, he will be liable to make a sad mess of his job.
By bitter experience the military commanders learnt in South Africa that a plan of campaign prepared in England was of little use to them.
The cricketer may play a very good game upon the home ground, but upon a foreign pitch the first straight ball will send his bails flying into the clear blue sky.
An archæologist who attempts to record the material relating to the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians cannot complete his task, or even assure himself of the accuracy of his statements, unless he has studied the modern customs and has made himself acquainted with the permanent conditions of the country.
The modern Egyptians, as has been pointed out in chapter ii.
(page 28), are the same people as those who bowed the knee to Pharaoh, and many of their customs still survive.
A student can no more hope to understand the story of Pharaonic times without an acquaintance with Egypt as she now is than a modern statesman can hope to understand his own times solely from a study of the past.
Nothing is more paralysing to a student of archæology than continuous book-work.
A collection of hard facts is an extremely beneficial mental exercise, but the deductions drawn from such a collection should be regarded as an integral part of the work.
The road-maker must also walk upon his road to the land whither it leads him; the shipbuilder must ride the seas in his vessel, though they be uncharted and unfathomed.
Too often the professor will set his students to a compilation which leads them no farther than the final fair copy.
They will be asked to make for him, with infinite labour, a list of the High Priests of Amon; but unless he has encouraged them to put such life into those figures that each one seems to step from the page to confront his recorder, unless the name of each calls to mind the very scenes amidst which he worshipped, then is the work uninspired and as deadening to the student as it is useful to the professor.
A catalogue of ancient scarabs is required, let us suppose, and students are set to work upon it.
They examine hundreds of specimens, they record the variations in design, they note the differences in the glaze or material.
But can they picture the man who wore the scarab?--can they reconstruct in their minds the scene in the workshop wherein the scarab was made?--can they hear the song of the workmen or their laughter when the overseer was not nigh?
In a word, does the scarab mean history to them, the history of a period, of a dynasty, of a craft?
Assuredly not, unless the students know Egypt and the Egyptians, have heard their songs and their laughter, have watched their modern arts and crafts.
Only then are they in a position to reconstruct the picture.
Theodore Roosevelt, in his Romanes lecture at Oxford, gave it as his opinion that the industrious collector of facts occupied an honourable but not an exalted position; and he added that the merely scientific historian must rest content with the honour, substantial, but not of the highest type, that belongs to him who gathers material which some time some master shall arise to use.
Now every student should aim to be a master, to _use_ the material which he has so laboriously collected; and though at the beginning of his career, and indeed throughout his life, the gathering of material is a most important part of his work, he should never compile solely for the sake of compilation, unless he be content to serve simply as a clerk of archæology.
An archæologist must be an historian.
He must conjure up the past; he must play the Witch of Endor.
His lists and indices, his catalogues and note-books, must be but the spells which he uses to invoke the dead.
The spells have no potency until they are pronounced: the lists of the kings of Egypt have no more than an accidental value until they call before the curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves.
It is the business of the archæologist to awake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep.
It is his business to make the stones tell their tale: not to petrify the listener.
It is his business to put motion and commotion into the past that the present may see and hear: not to pin it down, spatchcocked, like a dead thing.
In a word, the archæologist must be in command of that faculty which is known as the historic imagination, without which Dean Stanley was of opinion that the story of the past could not be told.
But how can that imagination be at once exerted and controlled, as it must needs be, unless the archæologist is so well acquainted with the conditions of the country about which he writes that his pictures of it can be said to be accurate?
The student must allow himself to be saturated by the very waters of the Nile before he can permit himself to write of Egypt.
He must know the modern Egyptians before he can construct his model of Pharaoh and his court.
In a recent London play dealing with ancient Egypt, the actor-manager exerted his historic imagination, in one scene, in so far as to introduce a _shadoof_ or water-hoist, which was worked as a naturalistic side-action to the main incident.
But, unfortunately, it was displayed upon a hillside where no water could ever have reached it; and thus the audience, all unconsciously, was confronted with the remarkable spectacle of a husbandman applying himself diligently to the task of ladelling thin air on to crops that grew upon barren sand.
If only his imagination had been controlled by a knowledge of Egypt, the picture might have been both true and effective.
When the mummy of Akhnaton was discovered and was proved to be that of a man of twenty-eight years of age, many persons doubted the identification on the grounds that the king was known to have been married at the time when he came to the throne, seventeen years before his death,[1] and it was freely stated that a marriage at the age of ten or eleven was impossible and out of the question.
Thus it actually remained for the writer to point out that the fact of the king's death occurring seventeen years after his marriage practically fixed his age at his decease at not much above twenty-eight years, so unlikely was it that his marriage would have been delayed beyond his eleventh year.
Those who doubted the identification on such grounds were showing all too clearly that the manners and customs of the Egyptians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so many of which have come down intact from olden times, were unknown to them.
[Footnote 1: Weigall: Life of Akhnaton, p.
56.]
Here we come to the root of the trouble.
The Egyptologist who has not resided for some time in Egypt is inclined to allow his ideas regarding the ancient customs of the land to be influenced by his unconsciously-acquired knowledge of the habits of the west.
Men do not marry before the age of eighteen or twenty in Europe: therefore they did not do so in Egypt.
There are streams of water upon the mountains in Europe: therefore water may be hoisted upon the hillsides in Egypt.
But is he blind that he sees not the great gulf fixed between the ways of the east and those of his accustomed west?
It is of no value to science to record the life of Thutmosis III.
with Napoleon as our model for it, nor to describe the daily life of the Pharaoh with the person of an English king before our mind's eye.
Our European experience will not give us material for the imagination to work upon in dealing with Egypt.
The setting for our Pharaonic pictures must be derived from Egypt alone; and no Egyptologist's work that is more than a simple compilation is of value unless the sunlight and the sandy glare of Egypt have burnt into his eyes, and have been reflected on to the pages under his pen.
The archæologist must possess the historic imagination, but it must be confined to its proper channels.
It is impossible to exert this imagination without, as a consequence, a figure rising up before the mind partially furnished with the details of a personality and fully endowed with the broad character of an individual.
The first lesson, thus, which we must learn is that of allowing no incongruity to appear in our figures.
A king whose name has survived to us upon some monument becomes at once such a reality that the legends concerning him are apt to be accepted as so much fact.
Like John Donne once* says-"Thou art so true, that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truth, and fables histories."
*Transcriber's note: Original text read "one".
But only he who has resided in Egypt can judge how far the fables are to be regarded as having a nucleus of truth.
In ancient history there can seldom be sufficient data at the Egyptologist's disposal with which to build up a complete figure; and his puppets must come upon the stage sadly deficient, as it were, in arms, legs, and apparel suitable to them, unless he knows from an experience of modern Egyptians how to restore them and to clothe them in good taste.
The substance upon which the imagination works must be no less than a collective knowledge of the people of the nation in question.
Rameses must be constructed from an acquaintance with many a Pasha of modern Egypt, and his Chief Butler must reflect the known characteristics of a hundred Beys and Effendis.
Without such "padding" the figures will remain but names, and with names Egyptology is already overstocked.
It is remarkable to notice how little is known regarding the great personalities in history.
Taking three characters at random: we know extremely little that is authentic regarding King Arthur; our knowledge of the actual history of Robin Hood is extremely meagre; and the precise historian would have to dismiss Cleopatra in a few paragraphs.
But let the archæologist know so well the manners and customs of the period with which he is dealing that he will not, like the author of the stories of the Holy Grail, dress Arthur in the armour of the thirteenth century, nor fill the mind of Cleopatra with the thoughts of the Elizabethan poet; let him be so well trained in scientific cautiousness that he will not give unquestioned credence to the legends of the past; let him have sufficient knowledge of the nation to which his hero or heroine belonged to be able to fill up the lacunæ with a kind of collective appreciation and estimate of the national characteristics,--and I do not doubt that his interpretations will hold good till the end of all history.
The student to whom Egypt is not a living reality is handicapped in his labours more unfairly than is realised by him.
Avoid Egypt, and though your brains be of vast capacity, though your eyes be never raised from your books, you will yet remain in many ways an ignoramus, liable to be corrected by the merest tourist in the Nile valley.
But come with me to a Theban garden that I know, where, on some still evening, the dark palms are reflected in the placid Nile, and the acacias are mellowed by the last light of the sunset; where, in leafy bowers, the grapes cluster overhead, and the fig-tree is burdened with fruit.
Beyond the broad sheet of the river rise those unchangeable hills which encompass the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings; and at their foot, dimly seen in the evening haze, sit the twin colossi, as they have sat since the days of Amenhotep the Magnificent.
The stars begin to be seen through the leaves now that the daylight dies, and presently the Milky Way becomes apparent, stretching across the vault of the night, as when it was believed to be the Nile of the Heavens.
The owls hoot to one another through the garden; and at the edge of the alabaster tank wherein the dusk is mirrored, a frog croaks unseen amidst the lilies.
Even so croaked he on this very ground in those days when, typifying eternity, he seemed to utter the endless refrain, "I am the resurrection, I am the resurrection," into the ears of men and maidens beneath these self-same stars.
And now a boat floats past, on its way to Karnak, silhouetted against the last-left light of the sky.
There is music and song on board.
The sound of the pipes is carried over the water and pulses to the ears, inflaming the imagination with the sorcery of its cadences and stirring the blood by its bold rhythm.
The gentle breeze brings the scent of many flowers to the nostrils, and with these come drifting thoughts and undefined fancies, so that presently the busy considerations of the day are lulled and forgotten.
The twilight seems to cloak the extent of the years, and in the gathering darkness the procession of the centuries is hidden.
Yesterday and to-day are mingled together, and there is nothing to distinguish to the eye the one age from the other.
An immortal, brought suddenly to the garden at this hour, could not say from direct observation whether he had descended from the clouds into the twentieth century before or the twentieth century after Christ; and the sound of the festal pipes in the passing boat would but serve to confuse him the more.
In such a garden as this the student will learn more Egyptology than he could assimilate in many an hour's study at home; for here his five senses play the student and Egypt herself is his teacher.
While he may read in his books how this Pharaoh or that feasted o' nights in his palace beside the river, here, not in fallible imagination but in actual fact, he may see Nilus and the Libyan desert to which the royal eyes were turned, may smell the very perfume of the palace garden, and may hearken to the self-same sounds that lulled a king to sleep in Hundred-gated Thebes.
Not in the west, but only by the waters of the Nile will he learn how best to be an historian of ancient Egypt, and in what manner to make his studies of interest, as well as of technical value, to his readers, for he will here discover the great secret of his profession.
Suddenly the veil will be lifted from his understanding, and he will become aware that Past and Present are so indissoluble as to be incapable of separate interpretation or single study.
He will learn that there is no such thing as a distinct Past or a defined Present.
"Yesterday this day's madness did prepare," and the affairs of bygone times must be interpreted in the light of recent events.
The Past is alive to-day, and all the deeds of man in all the ages are living at this hour in offspring.
There is no real death.
The earthly grave will not hide, nor the mountain tomb imprison, the actions of the men of old Egypt, so consequent and fruitful are all human affairs.
This is the knowledge which will make his work of lasting value; and nowhere save in Egypt can he acquire it.
This, indeed, is the secret of the Sphinx; and only at the lips of the Sphinx itself can he learn it.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
SCIENCE IN ARCADY BY GRANT ALLEN LONDON: LAWRENCE & BULLEN, 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1892.
To GRANT RICHARDS, _IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MANY KIND OFFICES._ Avuncular Greeting.
CONTENTS.
PAGE MY ISLANDS 1 TROPICAL EDUCATION 21 ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND 40 A DESERT FRUIT 56 PRETTY POLL 71 HIGH LIFE 90 EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS 105 MUD 123 THE GREENWOOD TREE 140 FISH AS FATHERS 157 AN ENGLISH SHIRE 177 THE BRONZE AXE 212 THE ISLE OF RUIM 231 A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD 250 A PERSISTENT NATIONALITY 266 CASTERS AND CHESTERS 274 PREFACE.
These essays deal for the most part with Science in Arcady.
'Tis my native country: for I am not of those who 'praise the busy town.'
On the contrary, in the words of the great poet who has just departed to join Milton and Shelley in a place of high collateral glory, I 'love to rail against it still,' with a naturalist's bitterness.
For the town is always dead and lifeless.
There are who admire it, they say--poor purblind creatures--because, forsooth, 'there is so much life there.'
So much life, indeed!
No grass in the streets; no flowers in the lanes; no beetles or butterflies on the dull stone pavements!
Brick and mortar have killed out all life over square miles of Middlesex.
For myself, I love better the densely-peopled fields than this human desert, this beflagged and macadamised man-made solitude.
The country teems with life on every hand; a thousand different plants and flowers in the spangled meadows; a thousand varied denizens of pond, and air, and heath, and copses.
Their ways are endless.
They attract me far more with their infinite diversity than the grey and gloomy haunts of the cab-horse and the stock-broker.
But my Arcady, as you will see, is none the less tolerably broad and eclectic in its limits.
These various essays have been suggested to my pen by rambles far and wide between its elastic confines.
The little tractate on _Mud_, for example, recalls to mind some pleasant weeks among the Italian lakes and on the plain of Lombardy.
_A Desert Fruit_ owes its origin to a morning at Luxor.
_High Life_ had its key-note struck by a fortnight in the Tyrol.
_Tropical Education_ is a dim reminiscence of old Jamaican experiences.
Our _Eight-Legged Friends_ were observed at leisure on the window-panes of our own little nook at Dorking.
_A Hill-Top Stronghold_ was sketched _in situ_ at Florence by a window that looked across the valley to Fiesole.
Excursions into books or into the remoter past have given occasion for the archæological essays relegated here to the end of the volume.
My thanks are due to Messrs. Longmans for permission to reprint from their magazine _My Islands_, _A Hill-Top Stronghold_, _A Desert Fruit_, _The Isle of Ruim_, _Eight-Legged Friends_, and _Tropical Education_.
I have also to acknowledge a similar courtesy on the part of Messrs. Smith & Elder with regard to _Mud_, _The Bronze Axe_, _High Life_, _Pretty Poll_, _The Greenwood Tree_, _On the Wings of the Wind_, _Casters and Chesters_, and _Fish as Fathers_, all of which originally appeared in the _Cornhill_.
Messrs. Chatto & Windus have been equally kind as regards the paper on _An English Shire_ contributed to the _Gentleman's_.
_A Persistent Nationality_ made its first bow in the _North American Review_, and has still to be introduced to an English audience.
G.A.
Hind Head, Surrey, _Oct._, 1892.
SCIENCE IN ARCADY.
MY ISLANDS.
About the middle of the Miocene period, as well as I can now remember (for I made no note of the precise date at the moment), my islands first appeared above the stormy sheet of the North-West Atlantic as a little rising group of mountain tops, capping a broad boss of submarine volcanoes.
My attention was originally called to the new archipelago by a brother investigator of my own aerial race, who pointed out to me on the wing that at a spot some 900 miles to the west of the Portuguese coast, just opposite the place where your mushroom city of Lisbon now stands, the water of the ocean, as seen in a bird's-eye view from some three thousand feet above, formed a distinct greenish patch such as always betokens shoals or rising ground at the bottom.
Flying out at once to the point he indicated, and poising myself above it on my broad pinions at a giddy altitude, I saw at a glance that my friend was quite right.
Land making was in progress.
A volcanic upheaval was taking place on the bed of the sea.
A new island group was being forced right up by lateral pressure or internal energies from a depth of at least two thousand fathoms.
I had always had a great liking for the study of material plants and animals, and I was so much interested in the occurrence of this novel phenomenon--the growth and development of an oceanic island before my very eyes--that I determined to devote the next few thousand centuries or so of my æonian existence to watching the course of its gradual evolution.
If I trusted to unaided memory, however, for my dates and facts, I might perhaps at this distance of time be uncertain whether the moment was really what I have roughly given, within a geological age or two, the period of the Mid-Miocene.
But existing remains on one of the islands constituting my group (now called in your new-fangled terminology Santa Maria) help me to fix with comparative certainty the precise epoch of their original upheaval.
For these remains, still in evidence on the spot, consist of a few small marine deposits of Upper Miocene age; and I recollect distinctly that after the main group had been for some time raised above the surface of the ocean, and after sand and streams had formed a small sedimentary deposit containing Upper Miocene fossils beneath the shoal water surrounding the main group, a slight change of level occurred, during which this minor island was pushed up with the Miocene deposits on its shoulders, as a sort of natural memorandum to assist my random scientific recollections.
With that solitary exception, however, the entire group remains essentially volcanic in its composition, exactly as it was when I first saw its youthful craters and its red-hot ash-cones pushed gradually up, century after century, from the deep blue waters of the Mid-Miocene ocean.
All round my islands the Atlantic then, as now, had a depth, as I said before, of two thousand fathoms; indeed, in some parts between the group and Portugal the plummet of your human navigators finds no bottom, I have often heard them say, till it reaches 2,500; and out of this profound sea-bed the volcanic energies pushed up my islands as a small submarine mountain range, whose topmost summits alone stood out bit by bit above the level of the surrounding sea.
One of them, the most abrupt and cone-like, by name now Pico, rises to this day, a magnificent sight, sheer seven thousand feet into the sky from the placid sheet that girds it round on every side.
You creatures of to-day, approaching it in one of your clumsy new-fashioned fire-driven canoes that you call steamers, must admire immensely its conical peak, as it stands out silhouetted against the glowing horizon in the deep red glare of a sub-tropical Atlantic sunset.
But when I, from my solitary aerial perch, saw my islands rise bare and massive first from the water's edge, the earliest idea that occurred to me as an investigator of nature was simply this: how will they ever get clad with soil and herbage and living creatures?
So naked and barren were their black crags and rocks of volcanic slag, that I could hardly conceive how they could ever come to resemble the other smiling oceanic islands which I looked down upon in my flight from day to day over so many wide and scattered oceans.
I set myself to watch, accordingly, whence they would derive the first seeds of life, and what changes would take place under dint of time upon their desolate surface.
For a long epoch, while the mountains were still rising in their active volcanic state, I saw but little evidence of a marked sort of the growth of living creatures upon their loose piles of pumice.
Gradually, however, I observed that spores of lichens, blown towards them by the wind, were beginning to sprout upon the more settled rocks, and to discolour the surface in places with grey and yellow patches.
Bit by bit, as rain fell upon the new-born hills, it brought down from their weathered summits sand and mud, which the torrents ground small and deposited in little hollows in the valleys; and at last something like earth was found at certain spots, on which seeds, if there had been any, might doubtless have rooted and flourished exceedingly.
My primitive idea, as I watched my islands in this their almost lifeless condition, was that the Gulf Stream and the trade winds from America would bring the earliest higher plants and animals to our shores.
But in this I soon found I was quite mistaken.
The distance to be traversed was so great, and the current so slow, that the few seeds or germs of American species cast up upon the shore from time to time were mostly far too old and water-logged to show signs of life in such ungenial conditions.
It was from the nearer coasts of Europe, on the contrary, that our earliest colonists seemed to come.
Though the prevalent winds set from the west, more violent storms reached us occasionally from the eastward direction; and these, blowing from Europe, which lay so much closer to our group, were far more likely to bring with them by waves or wind some waifs and strays of the European fauna and flora.
I well remember the first of these great storms that produced any distinct impression on my islands.
The plants that followed in its wake were a few small ferns, whose light spores were more readily carried on the breeze than any regular seeds of flowering plants.
For a month or two nothing very marked occurred in the way of change, but slowly the spores rooted, and soon produced a small crop of ferns, which, finding the ground unoccupied, spread when once fairly started with extraordinary rapidity, till they covered all the suitable positions throughout the islands.
For the most part, however, additions to the flora, and still more to the fauna, were very gradually made; so much so that most of the species now found in the group did not arrive there till after the end of the Glacial epoch, and belong essentially to the modern European assemblage of plants and animals.
This was partly because the islands themselves were surrounded by pack-ice during that chilly period, which interrupted for a time the course of my experiment.
It was interesting, too, after the ice cleared away, to note what kinds could manage by stray accidents to cross the ocean with a fair chance of sprouting or hatching out on the new soil, and which were totally unable by original constitution to survive the ordeal of immersion in the sea.
For instance, I looked anxiously at first for the arrival of some casual acorn or some floating filbert, which might stock my islands with waving greenery of oaks and hazel bushes.
But I gradually discovered, in the course of a few centuries, that these heavy nuts never floated securely so far as the outskirts of my little archipelago; and that consequently no chestnuts, apple trees, beeches, alders, larches, or pines ever came to diversify my island valleys.
The seeds that did really reach us from time to time belonged rather to one or other of four special classes.
Either they were very small and light, like the spores of ferns, fungi, and club-mosses; or they were winged and feathery, like dandelion and thistle-down; or they were the stones of fruits that are eaten by birds, like rose-hips and hawthorn; or they were chaffy grains, enclosed in papery scales, like grasses and sedges, of a kind well adapted to be readily borne on the surface of the water.
In all these ways new plants did really get wafted by slow degrees to the islands; and if they were of kinds adapted to the climate they grew and flourished, living down the first growth of ferns and flowerless herbs in the rich valleys.
The time which it took to people my archipelago with these various plants was, of course, when judged by your human standards, immensely long, as often the group received only a single new addition in the lapse of two or three centuries.
But I noticed one very curious result of this haphazard and lengthy mode of stocking the country: some of the plants which arrived the earliest, having the coast all clear to themselves, free from the fierce competition to which they had always been exposed on the mainland of Europe, began to sport a great deal in various directions, and being acted upon here by new conditions, soon assumed under stress of natural selection totally distinct specific forms.
(You see, I have quite mastered your best modern scientific vocabulary.)
For instance, there were at first no insects of any sort on the islands; and so those plants which in Europe depended for their fertilisation upon bees or butterflies had here either to adapt themselves somehow to the wind as a carrier of their pollen or else to die out for want of crossing.
Again, the number of enemies being reduced to a minimum, these early plants tended to lose various defences or protections they had acquired on the mainland against slugs or ants, and so to become different in a corresponding degree from their European ancestors.
The consequence was that by the time you men first discovered the archipelago no fewer than forty kinds of plants had so far diverged from the parent forms in Europe or elsewhere that your savants considered them at once as distinct species, and set them down at first as indigenous creations.
It amused me immensely.
For out of these forty plants thirty-four were to my certain knowledge of European origin.
I had seen their seeds brought over by the wind or waves, and I had watched them gradually altering under stress of the new conditions into fresh varieties, which in process of time became distinct species.
Two of the oldest were flowers of the dandelion and daisy group, provided with feathery seeds which enable them to fly far before the carrying breeze; and these two underwent such profound modifications in their insular home that the systematic botanists who at last examined them insisted upon putting each into a new genus, all by itself, invented for the special purpose of their reception.
One almost equally ancient inhabitant, a sort of harebell, also became in process of time extremely unlike any other harebell I had ever seen in any part of my airy wanderings.
But the remaining thirty new species or so evolved in the islands by the special circumstances of the group had varied so comparatively little from their primitive European ancestors, that they hardly deserved to be called anything more than very distinct and divergent varieties.
Some five or six plants, however, I noted arrive in my archipelago, not from Europe, but from the Canaries or Madeira, whose distant blue peaks lay dim on the horizon far to the south-west of us, as I poised in mid-air high above the topmost pinnacle of my wild craggy Pico.
These kinds, belonging to a much warmer region, soon, as I noticed, underwent considerable modification in our cooler climate, and were all of them adjudged distinct species by the learned gentlemen who finally reported upon my island realm to British science.
As far as I can recollect, then, the total number of flowering plants I noted in the islands before the arrival of man was about 200; and of these, as I said before, only forty had so far altered in type as to be considered at present peculiar to the archipelago.
The remainder were either comparatively recent arrivals or else had found the conditions of their new home so like those of the old one from which they migrated, that comparatively little change took place in their forms or habits.
Of course, just in proportion as the islands got stocked I noticed that the changes were less and less marked; for each new plant, insect, or bird that established itself successfully tended to make the balance of nature more similar to the one that obtained in the mainland opposite, and so decreased the chances of novelty of variation.
Hence, it struck me that the oldest arrivals were the ones which altered most in adaptation to the circumstances, while the newest, finding themselves in comparatively familiar surroundings, had less occasion to be selected for strange and curious freaks or sports of form or colour.
The peopling of the islands with birds and animals, however, was to me even a more interesting and engrossing study in natural evolution than its peopling by plants, shrubs, and trees.
I may as well begin, therefore, by telling you at once that no furry or hairy quadruped of any sort--no mammal, as I understand your men of science call them--was ever stranded alive upon the shores of my islands.
For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some tiny mouse or shrew or water-vole might lurk half drowned in some cranny or crevice of the bark or trunk.
But it was all in vain.
I ought to have known beforehand that terrestrial animals of the higher types never by any chance reach an oceanic island in any part of this planet.
The only three specimens of mammals I ever saw tossed up on the beach were two drowned mice and an unhappy squirrel, all as dead as doornails, and horribly mauled by the sea and the breakers.
Nor did we ever get a snake, a lizard, a frog, or a fresh-water fish, whose eggs I at first fondly supposed might occasionally be transported to us on bits of floating trees or matted turf, torn by floods from those prehistoric Lusitanian or African forests.
No such luck was ours.
Not a single terrestrial vertebrate of any sort appeared upon our shores before the advent of man with his domestic animals, who played havoc at once with my interesting experiment.
It was quite otherwise with the unobtrusive small deer of life--the snails, and beetles, and flies, and earthworms--and especially with the winged things: birds, bats, and butterflies.
In the very earliest days of my islands' existence, indeed, a few stray feathered fowls of the air were driven ashore here by violent storms, at a time when vegetation had not yet begun to clothe the naked pumice and volcanic rock; but these, of course, perished for want of food, as did also a few later arrivals, who came under stress of weather at the period when only ferns, lichens, and mosses had as yet obtained a foothold on the young archipelago.
Sea-birds, of course, soon found out our rocks; but as they live off fish only, they contributed little more than rich beds of guano to the permanent colonising of the islands.
As well as I can remember, the land-snails were the earliest truly terrestrial casuals that managed to pick up a stray livelihood in these first colonial days of the archipelago.
They came oftenest in the egg, sometimes clinging to water-logged leaves cast up by storms, sometimes hidden in the bark of floating driftwood, and sometimes swimming free on the open ocean.
In one case, as I recall to myself well, a swallow, driven off from the Portuguese coast, a little before the Glacial period had begun to whiten the distant mountains of central and northern Europe, fell exhausted at last upon the shore of Terceira.
There were no insects then for the poor bird to feed upon, so it died of starvation and weariness before the day was out; but a little earth that clung in a pellet to one of its feet contained the egg of a land-shell, while the prickly seed of a common Spanish plant was entangled among the winged feathers by its hooked awns.
The egg hatched out, and became the parent of a large brood of minute snails, which, outliving the cold spell of the Ice Age, had developed into a very distinct type in the long period that intervened before the advent of man in the islands; while the seed sprang up on the natural manure heap afforded by the swallow's decaying body, and clinging to the valleys during the Glacial Age on the hill-tops, gave birth in due season to one of the most markedly indigenous of our Terceira plants.
Occasionally, too, very minute land-snails would arrive alive on the island after their long sea-voyage on bits of broken forest-trees--a circumstance which I would perhaps hesitate to mention in mere human society were it not that I have been credibly informed your own great naturalist, Darwin, tried the experiment himself with one of the biggest European land-molluscs, the great edible Roman snail, and found that it still lived on in vigorous style after immersion in sea-water for twenty days.
Now, I myself observed that several of these bits of broken trees, torn down by floods in heavy storm time from the banks of Spanish or Portuguese rivers, reached my island in eight or ten days after leaving the mainland, and sometimes contained eggs of small land-snails.
But as very long periods often passed without a single new species being introduced into the group, any kind that once managed to establish itself on any of the islands usually remained for ages undisturbed by new arrivals, and so had plenty of opportunity to adapt itself perfectly by natural selection to the new conditions.
The consequence was, that out of some seventy land-snails now known in the islands, thirty-two had assumed distinct specific features before the advent of man, while thirty-seven (many of which, I think, I never noticed till the introduction of cultivated plants) are common to my group with Europe or with the other Atlantic islands.
Most of these, I believe, came in with man and his disconcerting agriculture.
As to the pond and river snails, so far as I could observe, they mostly reached us later, being conveyed in the egg on the feet of stray waders or water-birds, which gradually peopled the island after the Glacial epoch.
Birds and all other flying creatures are now very abundant in all the islands; but I could tell you some curious and interesting facts, too, as to the mode of their arrival and the vicissitudes of their settlement.
For example, during the age of the Forest Beds in Europe, a stray bullfinch was driven out to sea by a violent storm, and perched at last on a bush at Fayal.
I wondered at first whether he would effect a settlement.
But at that time no seeds or fruits fit for bullfinches to eat existed on the islands.
Still, as it turned out, this particular bullfinch happened to have in his crop several undigested seeds of European plants exactly suited to the bullfinch taste; so when he died on the spot, these seeds, germinating abundantly, gave rise to a whole valleyful of appropriate plants for bullfinches to feed upon.
Now, however, there was no bullfinch to eat them.
For a long time, indeed, no other bullfinches arrived at my archipelago.
Once, to be sure, a few hundred years later, a single cock bird did reach the island alone, much exhausted with his journey, and managed to pick up a living for himself off the seeds introduced by his unhappy predecessor.
But as he had no mate, he died at last, as your lawyers would say, without issue.
It was a couple of hundred years or so more before I saw a third bullfinch--which didn't surprise me, for bullfinches are very woodland birds, and non-migratory into the bargain--so that they didn't often get blown seaward over the broad Atlantic.
At the end of that time, however, I observed one morning a pair of finches, after a heavy storm, drying their poor battered wings upon a shrub in one of the islands.
From this solitary pair a new race sprang up, which developed after a time, as I imagined they must, into a distinct species.
These local bullfinches now form the only birds peculiar to the islands; and the reason is one well divined by one of your own great naturalists (to whom I mean before I end to make the _amende honorable_).
In almost all other cases the birds kept getting reinforced from time to time by others of their kind blown out to sea accidentally--for only such species were likely to arrive there--and this kept up the purity of the original race, by ensuring a cross every now and again with the European community.
But the bullfinches, being the merest casuals, never again to my knowledge were reinforced from the mainland, and so they have produced at last a special island type, exactly adapted to the peculiarities of their new habitat.
You see, there was hardly ever a big storm on land that didn't bring at least one or two new birds of some sort or other to the islands.
Naturally, too, the newcomers landed always on the first shore they could sight; and so at the present day the greatest number of species is found on the two easternmost islands nearest the mainland, which have forty kinds of land-birds, while the central islands have but thirty-six, and the western only twenty-nine.
It would have been quite different, of course, if the birds came mainly from America with the trade winds and the Gulf Stream, as I at first anticipated.
In that case, there would have been most kinds in the westernmost islands, and fewest stragglers in the far eastern.
But your own naturalists have rightly seen that the existing distribution necessarily implies the opposite explanation.
Birds, I early noticed, are always great carriers of fruit-seeds, because they eat the berries, but don't digest the hard little stones within.
It was in that way, I fancy, that the Portugal laurel first came to my islands, because it has an edible fruit with a very hard seed; and the same reason must account for the presence of the myrtle, with its small blue berry; the laurustinus with its currant-like fruit; the elder-tree, the canary laurel, the local sweet-gale, and the peculiar juniper.
Before these shrubs were introduced thus unconsciously by our feathered guests, there were no fruits on which berry-eating birds could live; but now they are the only native trees or large bushes on the islands--I mean the only ones not directly planted by you mischief-making men, who have entirely spoilt my nice little experiment.
It was much the same with the history of some among the birds themselves.
Not a few birds of prey, for example, were driven to my little archipelago by stress of weather in its very early days; but they all perished for want of sufficient small quarry to make a living out of.
As soon, however, as the islands had got well stocked with robins, black-caps, wrens, and wagtails, of European types--as soon as the chaffinches had established themselves on the seaward plains, and the canary had learnt to nest without fear among the Portugal laurels--then buzzards, long-eared owls, and common barn-owls, driven westward by tempests, began to pick up a decent living on all the islands, and have ever since been permanent residents, to the immense terror and discomfort of our smaller song-birds.
Thus the older the archipelago got the less chance was there of local variation taking place to any large degree, because the balance of life each day grew more closely to resemble that which each species had left behind it in its native European or African mainland.
I said a little while ago we had no mammal in the islands.
In that I was not quite strictly correct.
I ought to have said, no terrestrial mammal.
A little Spanish bat got blown to us once by a rough nor'easter, and took up its abode at once among the caves of our archipelago, where it hawks to this day after our flies and beetles.
This seemed to me to show very conspicuously the advantage which winged animals have in the matter of cosmopolitan dispersion; for while it was quite impossible for rats, mice, or squirrels to cross the intervening belt of three hundred leagues of sea, their little winged relation, the flitter-mouse, made the journey across quite safely on his own leathery vans, and with no greater difficulty than a swallow or a wood-pigeon.
The insects of my archipelago tell very much the same story as the birds and the plants.
Here, too, winged species have stood at a great advantage.
To be sure, the earliest butterflies and bees that arrived in the fern-clad period were starved for want of honey; but as soon as the valleys began to be thickly tangled with composites, harebells, and sweet-scented myrtle bushes, these nectar-eating insects established themselves successfully, and kept their breed true by occasional crosses with fresh arrivals blown to sea afterwards.
The development of the beetles I watched with far greater interest, as they assumed fresh forms much more rapidly under their new conditions of restricted food and limited enemies.
Many kinds I observed which came originally from Europe, sometimes in the larval state, sometimes in the egg, and sometimes flying as full-grown insects before the blast of the angry tempest.
Several of these changed their features rapidly after their arrival in the islands, producing at first divergent varieties, and finally, by dint of selection, acting in various ways, through climate, food, or enemies, on these nascent forms, evolving into stable and well-adapted species.
But I noticed three cases where bits of driftwood thrown up from South America on the western coasts contained the eggs or larvae of American beetles, while several others were driven ashore from the Canaries or Madeira; and in one instance even a small insect, belonging to a type now confined to Madagascar, found its way safely by sea to this remote spot, where, being a female with eggs, it succeeded in establishing a flourishing colony.
I believe, however, that at the time of its arrival it still existed on the African continent, but becoming extinct there under stress of competition with higher forms, it now survives only in these two widely separated insular areas.
It was an endless amusement to me during those long centuries, while I devoted myself entirely to the task of watching my fauna and flora develop itself, to look out from day to day for any chance arrival by wind or waves, and to follow the course of its subsequent vicissitudes and evolution.
In a great many cases, especially at first, the new-comer found no niche ready for it in the established order of things on the islands, and was fain at last, after a hard struggle, to retire for ever from the unequal contest.
But often enough, too, he made a gallant fight for it, and, adapting himself rapidly to his new environment, changed his form and habits with surprising facility.
For natural selection, I found, is a hard schoolmaster.
If you happen to fit your place in the world, you live and thrive, but if you don't happen to fit it, to the wall with you without quarter.
Thus sometimes I would see a small canary beetle quickly take to new food and new modes of life on my islands under my very eyes, so that in a century or so I judged him myself worthy of the distinction of a separate species; while in another case, I remember, a south European weevil evolved before long into something so wholly different from his former self that a systematic entomologist would have been forced to enrol him in a distinct genus.
I often wish now that I had kept a regular collection of all the intermediate forms, to present as an illustrative series to one of your human museums; but in those days, of course, we none of us imagined anybody but ourselves would ever take an interest in these problems of the development of life, and we let the chance slide till it was too late to recover it.
Naturally, during all these ages changes of other sorts were going on in my islands--elevations and subsidences, separations and reunions, which helped to modify the life of the group considerably.
Indeed, volcanic action was constantly at work altering the shapes and sizes of the different rocky mountain-tops, and bringing now one, now another, into closer relations than before with its neighbours.
Why, as recently as 1811 (a date which is so fresh in my memory that I could hardly forget it) a new island was suddenly formed by submarine eruption off the coast of St. Michael's, to which the name of Sabrina was momentarily given by your human geographers.
It was about a mile around and 300 feet high; but, consisting as it did of loose cinders only, it was soon washed away by the force of the waves in that stormy region.
I merely mention it here to show how recently volcanic changes have taken place in my islands, and how continuously the internal energy has been at work modifying and re-arranging them.
Up to the moment of the arrival of man in the archipelago the whole population, animal and vegetable, consisted entirely of these waifs and strays, blown out to sea from Europe or Africa, and modified more or less on the spot in accordance with the varying needs of their new home.
But the advent of the obtrusive human species spoilt the game at once for an independent observer.
Man immediately introduced oranges, bananas, sweet potatoes, grapes, plums, almonds, and many other trees or shrubs, in which, for selfish reasons, he was personally interested.
At the same time he quite unconsciously and unintentionally stocked the islands with a fine vigorous crop of European weeds, so that the number of kinds of flowering plants included in the modern flora of my little archipelago exceeds, I think, by fully one-half that which I remember before the date of the Portuguese occupation.
In the same way, besides his domestic animals, this spoil-sport colonist man brought in his train accidentally rabbits, weasels, mice, and rats, which now abound in many parts of the group, so that the islands have now in effect a wild mammalian fauna.
What is more odd, a small lizard has also got about in the walls--not as you would imagine, a native-born Portuguese subject, but of a kind found only in Madeira and Teneriffe, and, as far as I could make out at the time, it seemed to me to come over with cuttings of Madeira vines for planting at St. Michael's.
It was about the same time, I imagine, that eels and gold-fish first got loose from glass globes into the ponds and water-courses.
I have forgotten to mention, what you will no doubt yourself long since have inferred, that my archipelago is known among human beings in modern times as the Azores; and also that traces of all these curious facts of introduction and modification, which I have detailed here in their historical order, may still be detected by an acute observer and reasoner in the existing condition of the fauna and flora.
Indeed, one of your own countrymen, Mr. Goodman, has collected all the most salient of these facts in his 'Natural History of the Azores,' and another of your distinguished men of science, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, has given essentially the same explanations beforehand as those which I have here ventured to lay, from another point of view, before a critical human audience.
But while Mr. Wallace has arrived at them by a process of arguing backward from existing facts to prior causes and probable antecedents, it occurred to me, who had enjoyed such exceptional opportunities of watching the whole process unfold itself from the very beginning, that a strictly historical account of how I had seen it come about, step after step, might possess for some of you a greater direct interest than Mr. Wallace's inferential solution of the self-same problem.
If, through lapse of memory or inattention to detail at so remote a period, I have set down aught amiss, I sincerely trust you will be kind enough to forgive me.
But this little epic of the peopling of a single oceanic archipelago by casual strays, which I alone have had the good fortune to follow through all its episodes, seemed to me too unique and valuable a chapter in the annals of life to be withheld entirely from the scientific world of your eager, ephemeral, nineteenth century humanity.
TROPICAL EDUCATION.
If any one were to ask me (which is highly unlikely) 'In what university would an intelligent young man do best to study?'
I think I should be very much inclined indeed to answer offhand, 'In the Tropics.'
No doubt this advice sounds on first hearing just a trifle paradoxical; and no doubt, too, the proposed university has certain serious drawbacks (like many others) on the various grounds of health, expense, faith, and morals.
Senior Proctors are unknown at Honolulu; Select Preachers don't range as far as the West Coast.
But it has always seemed to me, nevertheless, that certain elements of a liberal education are to be acquired tropically which can never be acquired in a temperate, still less in an arctic or antarctic academy.
This is more especially true, I allow, in the particular cases of the biologist and the sociologist; but it is also true in a somewhat less degree of the mere common arts course, and the mere average seeker after liberal culture.
Vast aspects of nature and human life exist which can never adequately be understood aright except in tropical countries; vivid side-lights are cast upon our own history and the history of our globe which can never adequately be appreciated except beneath the searching and all too garish rays of a tropical sun.
Whenever I meet a cultivated man who knows his Tropics--and more particularly one who has known his Tropics during the formative period of mental development, say from eighteen to thirty--I feel instinctively that he possesses certain keys of man and nature, certain clues to the problems of the world we live in, not possessed in anything like the same degree by the mere average annual output of Oxford or of Heidelberg.
I feel that we talk like Freemasons together--we of the Higher Brotherhood who have worshipped the sun, _præsentiorem deum_, in his own nearer temples.
Let me begin by positing an extreme parallel.
How obviously inadequate is the conception of life enjoyed by the ordinary Laplander or the most intelligent Fuegian!
Suppose even he has attended the mission school of his native village, and become learned there in all the learning of the Egyptians, up to the extreme level of the sixth standard, yet how feeble must be his idea of the planet on which he moves!
How much must his horizon be cabined, cribbed, confined by the frost and snow, the gloom and poverty, of the bare land around him!
He lives in a dark cold world of scrubby vegetation and scant animal life: a world where human existence is necessarily preserved only by ceaseless labour and at severe odds; a world out of which all the noblest and most beautiful living creatures have been ruthlessly pressed; a world where nothing great has been or can be; a world doomed by its mere physical conditions to eternal poverty, discomfort, and squalor.
For green fields he has snow and reindeer moss: for singing birds and flowers, the ptarmigan and the tundra.
How can he ever form any fitting conception of the glory of life--of the means by which animal and vegetable organisms first grew and flourished?
How can he frame to himself any reasonable picture of civilised society, or of the origin and development of human faculty and human organisation?
Somewhat the same, though of course in a highly mitigated degree, are the disadvantages under which the pure temperate education labours, when compared with the education unconsciously drunk in at every pore by an intelligent mind in tropical climates.
And fully to understand this pregnant educational importance of the Tropics we must consider with ourselves how large a part tropical conditions have borne in the development of life in general, and of human life and society in particular.
The Tropics, we must carefully remember, are the norma of nature: the way things mostly are and always have been.
They represent to us the common condition of the whole world during by far the greater part of its entire existence.
Not only are they still in the strictest sense the biological head-quarters: they are also the standard or central type by which we must explain all the rest of nature, both in man and beast, in plant and animal.
The temperate and arctic worlds, on the other hand, are a mere passing accident in the history of our planet: a hole-and-corner development; a special result of the great Glacial epoch, and of that vast slow secular cooling which preceded and led up to it, from the beginning of the Miocene or Mid-Tertiary period.
Our European ideas, poor, harsh, and narrow, are mainly formed among a chilled and stunted fauna and flora, under inclement skies, and in gloomy days, all of which can give us but a very cramped and faint conception of the joyous exuberance, the teeming vitality, the fierce hand-to-hand conflict, and the victorious exultation of tropical life in its full free development.
All through the Primary and Secondary epochs of geology, it is now pretty certain, hothouse conditions practically prevailed almost without a break over the whole world from pole to pole.
It may be true, indeed, as Dr. Croli believes (and his reasoning on the point I confess is fairly convincing), that from time to time glacial periods in one or other hemisphere broke in for a while upon the genial warmth that characterised the greater part of those vast and immeasurable primæval æons.
But even if that were so--if at long intervals the world for some hours in its cosmical year was chilled and frozen in an insignificant cap at either extremity--these casual episodes in a long story do not interfere with the general truth of the principle that life as a whole during the greater portion of its antique existence has been carried on under essentially tropical conditions.
No matter what geological formation we examine, we find everywhere the same tale unfolded in plain inscriptions before our eyes.
Take, for example, the giant club-mosses and luxuriant tree-ferns nature-printed on shales of the coal age in Britain: and we see in the wild undergrowth of those palæozoic forests ample evidence of a warm and almost West Indian climate among the low basking islets of our northern carboniferous seas.
Or take once more the oolitic epoch in England, lithographed on its own mud, with its puzzle-monkeys and its sago-palms, its crocodiles and its deinosaurs, its winged pterodactyls and its whale-like lizards.
All these huge creatures and these broad-leaved trees plainly indicate the existence of a temperature over the whole of Northern Europe almost as warm as that of the Malay Archipelago in our own day.
The weather report for all the earlier ages stands almost uninterruptedly at Set Fair.
Roughly speaking, indeed, one may say that through the long series of Primary and Secondary formations hardly a trace can be found of ice or snow, autumn or winter, leafless boughs or pinched and starved deciduous vegetation.
Everything is powerful, luxuriant, vivid.
Life, as Comus feared, was strangled with its waste fertility.
Once, indeed, in the Permian Age, all over the temperate regions, north and south, we get passing indications of what seems very like a glacial epoch, partially comparable to that great glaciation on whose last fringe we still abide to-day.
But the Ice Age of the Permian, if such there were, passed away entirely, leaving the world once more warm and fruitful up to the very poles under conditions which we would now describe as essentially tropical.
It was with the Tertiary period--perhaps, indeed, only with the middle subdivision of that period--that the gradual cooling of the polar and intermediate regions began.
We know from the deposits of the chalk epoch in Greenland that late in Secondary times ferns, magnolias, myrtles, and sago-palms--an Indian or Mexican flora--flourished exceedingly in what is now the dreariest and most ice-clad region of the northern hemisphere.
Later still, in the Eocene days, though the plants of Greenland had grown slightly more temperate in type, we still find among the fossils, not only oaks, planes, vines, and walnuts, but also wellingtonias like the big trees of California, Spanish chestnuts, quaint southern salisburias, broad-leaved liquidambars, and American sassafras.
Nay, even in glacier-clad Spitzbergen itself, where the character of the flora already begins to show signs of incipient chilling, we nevertheless see among the Eocene types such plants as the swamp-cyprus of the Carolinas and the wellingtonias of the Far West, together with a rich forest vegetation of poplars, birches, oaks, planes, hazels, walnuts, water-lilies, and irises.
As a whole, this vegetation still bespeaks a climate considerably more genial, mild, and equable than that of modern England.
It was in this basking world of the chalk and the Eocene that the great mammalian fauna first took its rise; it was in this easy world of fruits and sunshine that the primitive ancestors of man first began to work upwards toward the distinctively human level of the palæolithic period.
But then, in the mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost--a nipping-frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age.
I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of that colossal cataclysm; I shall take all those for granted at present: what we are concerned with now are the results it left behind--the changes which it wrought on fauna and flora and on human society.
Especially is it of importance in this connection to point out that the Glacial epoch is not yet entirely finished--if, indeed, it is ever destined to be finished.
We are living still on the fringe of the Ice Age, in a cold and cheerless era, the legacy of the accumulated glaciers of the northern and southern snow-fields.
If once that ice were melted off--ah, well, there is much virtue in an _if_.
Still, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace seems to suggest somewhere that the sun is gradually making inroads even now on those great glacier-sheets of the northern cap, just as we know he is doing on the smaller glacier-sheets of Switzerland (most of which are receding), and that in time perhaps (say in a hundred thousand years or so) warm ocean currents may once more penetrate to the very poles themselves.
That, however, is neither here nor there.
The fact remains that we of Northern Europe live to-day in a cramped, chilled, contracted world; a world from which all the larger, fiercer, and grander types have either been killed off or driven south; a world which stands to the full and vigorous world of the Eocene and Miocene periods in somewhat the same relation as Lapland stands to-day to Italy or the Riviera.
This being so, it naturally results that if we want really to understand the history of life, its origin and its episodes, we must turn nowadays to that part of our planet which still most nearly preserves the original conditions--that is to say, the Tropics.
And it has always seemed to me, both _à priori_ and _à posteriori_, that the Tropics on this account do really possess for every one of us a vast and for the most part unrecognised educational importance.
I say 'for every one of us,' of deliberate design.
I don't mean merely for the biologist, though to him, no doubt, their value in this respect is greatest of all.
Indeed, I doubt whether the very ideas of the struggle for life, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, would ever have occurred at all to the stay-at-home naturalists of the Linnæan epoch.
It was in the depths of Brazilian forests, or under the broad shade of East Indian palms, that those fertile conceptions first flashed independently upon two southern explorers.
It is very noteworthy indeed that all the biologists who have done most to revolutionise the science of life in our own day--Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, Bates, Fritz Müller, and Belt--have without exception formed their notions of the plant and animal world during tropical travels in early life.
No one can read the 'Voyage of the _Beagle_,' the 'Naturalist on the Amazons,' or the 'Malay Archipelago' without feeling at every page how profoundly the facts of tropical nature had penetrated and modified their authors' minds.
On the other hand, it is well worth while to notice that the formal opposition to the new and more expansive evolutionary views came mainly from the museum and laboratory type of naturalists in London and Paris, the official exponents of dry bones, who knew nature only through books and preserved specimens, or through her impoverished and far less plastic developments in northern lands.
The battle of organic evolution has been waged by the Darwins, the Huxleys, and the Müllers on the one hand, against the Cuviers, the Owens, and the Virchows on the other.
Still, it is not only in biology, as I said just now, that a taste of the Tropics in early life exerts a marked widening and philosophic influence upon a man's whole mental horizon.
In ten thousand ways, in that great tropical university, men feel themselves in closer touch than elsewhere with the ultimate facts and truths of nature.
I don't know whether it is all fancy and preconceived opinion, but I often imagine when I talk with new-met men that I can detect a certain difference in tone and feeling at first sight between those who have and those who have not passed the Tropical Tripos.
In the Tropics, in short, we seem to get down to the very roots of things.
Thousands of questions, social, political, economical, ethical, present themselves at once in new and more engagingly simple aspects.
Difficulties vanish, distinctions disappear, conventions fade, clothes are reduced to their least common measure, man stands forth in his native nakedness.
Things that in the North we had come to regard as inevitable--garments, firing, income tax, morality--evaporate or simplify themselves with instructive ease and phantasmagoric readiness.
Malthus and the food question assume fresh forms, as in dissolving views, before our very eyes.
How are slums conceivable or East Ends possible where every man can plant his own yam and cocoa-nut, and reap their fruit four-hundred-fold?
How can Mrs. Grundy thrive where every woman may rear her own ten children on her ten-rood plot without aid or assistance from their indeterminate fathers?
What need of carpentry where a few bamboos, cut down at random, can be fastened together with thongs into a comfortable chair?
What use of pottery where calabashes hang on every tree, and cocoa-nuts, with the water fresh and pure within, supply at once the cup, and the filter, and the Apollinaris within?
Of course I don't mean to assert, either, that this tropical university will in itself suffice for all the needs of educated or rather of educable men.
It must be taken, _bien entendu_, as a supplementary course to the Literæ Humaniores.
There are things which can only be learnt in the crowded haunts and cities of men--in London, Paris, New York, Vienna.
There are things which can only be learnt in the centres of culture or of artistic handicraft--in Oxford, Munich, Florence, Venice, Rome.
There is only one Grand Canal and only one Pitti Palace.
We must have Shakespeare, Homer, Catullus, Dante; we must have Phidias, Fra Angelico, Rafael, Mendelssohn; we must have Aristotle, Newton, Laplace, Spencer.
But after all these, and before all these, there is something more left to learn.
Having first read them, we must read ourselves out of them.
We must forget all this formal modern life; we must break away from this cramped, cold, northern world; we must find ourselves face to face at last, in Pacific isles or African forests, with the underlying truths of simple naked nature.
For that, in its perfection, we must go to the Tropics; and there, we shall learn and unlearn much, coming back, no doubt, with shattered faiths and broken gods, and strangely disconcerted European prejudices, but looking out upon life with a new outlook, an outlook undimmed by ten thousand preconceptions which hem in the vision and obstruct the view of the mere temperately educated.
Nor is it only on the _élite_ of the world that this tropical training has in its own way a widening influence.
It is good, of course, for our Galtons to have seen South Africa; good for our Tylors to have studied Mexico; good for our Hookers to have numbered the rhododendrons and deodars of the Himalayas.
I sometimes fancy, even, that in the works of our very greatest stay-at-home thinkers on anthropological or sociological subjects, I detect here and there a certain formalist and schematic note which betrays the want of first-hand acquaintance with the plastic and expansive nature of tropical society.
The beliefs and relations of the actual savage have not quite that definiteness of form and expression which our University Professors would fain assign to them.
But apart from the widening influence of the Tropics on these picked minds, there is a widening influence exerted insensibly on the very planters or merchants, the rank and file of European settlers, which can hardly fail to impress all those who have lived amongst them.
The cramping effect of the winter cold and the artificial life is all removed.
Men live in a freer, wider, warmer air; their doors and windows stand open day and night; the scent of flowers and the hum of insects blow in upon them with every breeze; their brother man and sister woman are more patent in every action to their eyes; the world shows itself more frankly; it has fewer secrets, and readier sympathies.
I don't mean to say the result is all gain.
Far from it.
There are evils inherent in tropical life which, as a noble lord remarks of nature generally, "no preacher can heal."
But viewed as education, like Saint-Simon's thieving, it is all valuable.
I should think most men who have once passed through a tropical experience would no more wish that full chapter blotted out of their lives than they would consent to lose their university culture, their Continental travel, or their literary, scientific, or artistic education.
And what are the elements of this tropical curriculum which give it such immense educational value?
I think they are manifold.
A few only may be selected as of typical importance.
In the first place, because first in order of realisation, there is its value as a mental _bouleversement_, a revolution in ideas, a sort of moral and intellectual cold shower-bath, a nervous shock to the system generally.
The patient or pupil gets so thoroughly upset in all his preconceived ideas; he finds all round him a life so different from the life to which he has been accustomed in colder regions, that he wakes up suddenly, rubs his eyes hard, and begins to look about him for some general explanation of the world he lives in.
It is good for the ordinary man to get thus unceremoniously upset.
Take the average young intelligence of the London streets, with its glib ideas already formed from supply and demand in a civilised country, where soil is appropriated, and classes distinct, and commodities drop as it were from the clouds upon the middle-class breakfast-table--take such an intelligence, self-satisfied and empty, and place its possessor all at once in a new environment, where everything material, mental, and moral seems topsy-turvy, where life is real and morals are rudimentary--and unless he is a very particular fool indeed, what a lot you must really give that blithe new-comer to turn over and think about!
The sun that shifts now north, now south of him; the seasons that go by fours instead of twos; the trees that blossom and bear fruit from January to December, with no apparent regard for the calendar months as by law established; the black, brown, or yellow people, who know not his creed or his social code; the castes and cross-divisions that puzzle and surprise him; the pride and the scruples, deeper than those of civilised life, but that nevertheless run counter to his own; the economic conditions that defy his preconceptions; the virtues and the vices that equally rub him up the wrong way--all these things are highly conducive to the production of that first substratum of philosophic thinking, a Socratic attitude of supreme ignorance, a pure Cartesian frame of universal doubt.
Then again there is the marvellous exuberance and novelty of the fauna and flora.
And this once more has something better for us all than mere specialist interest.
Sugar and ginger grow for all alike.
For we must remember that not only do the Tropics represent the vastly greater portion of the world's past: they also represent the vastly greater portion of the world's present.
By far the larger part of the land surface of the earth is tropical or subtropical; the temperate and arctic regions make up but a minor and unimportant fraction of the soil of our planet.
And if we include the sea as well, this truth becomes even more strikingly evident: the Tropics are even now the rule of life; the colder regions are but an abnormal and outlying eccentricity of nature.
Yet it is from this starved and dwarfed and impoverished northern area that most of us have formed our views of life, to the total exclusion of the wider, richer, more varied world that calls for our admiration in tropical latitudes.
Insensibly this richness and vividness of nature all around one, on a first visit to the Tropics, sinks into one's mind, and produces profound, though at first unconscious, modifications in one's whole mode of regarding man and his universe.
Especially is this the case in early life, when the character is still plastic and the eye still keen: pictures are formed in that brilliant sunshine and under those dim arches of hot grey sky that photograph themselves for ever on the lasting tablets of the human memory.
John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography dwells lovingly, I remember, on the profound effect produced on himself by his childish visits to Jeremy Bentham at Ford Abbey in Dorsetshire, on the delightful sense of space and freedom and generous expansion given to his mind by the mere act of living and moving in those stately halls and wide airy gardens.
Every university man must look back with pleasure of somewhat the same sort to the free breezy memories of the quadrangles and common rooms of Christ Church or of Trinity.
But in the tropical university everybody passes his time in arcades of Greek or Pompeian airiness: the palm-trees wave and whisper around his head as he sits for coolness on his wide verandah; the humming-birds dart from flower to flower on the delicate bouquets that crowd his drawing-room.
I knew a lady who made a capital collection of butterflies and moths at her own dinner-table by simply impounding in paper boxes the insects that flitted about the lamp at dessert.
Why, if it comes to that, the very bread itself comprises generally a whole entomological cabinet, and contains in fragments the _disjecta membra_ of specimens enough to stock entire glass cases at severe South Kensington.
How's that for an inducement to study life where it is richest and most abundant in its native starting-place?
But above all in educational importance I rank the advantage of seeing human nature in its primitive surroundings, far from the squalid and chilly influences of the tail-end of the Glacial epoch.
I admit at once that cold has done much, exceeding much, for human development--has been the mother of civilisation in somewhat the same sense that necessity has been the mother of invention.
To it, no doubt, we owe to a great extent, in varying stages, clothing, the house, fire, the steam-engine.
Yet none the less is it true that the first levels of society must needs have been passed under essentially tropical conditions, and that nascent civilisation spread but slowly northward, from Egypt and Asia, through Greece and Italy, to the cloudy regions where its chief centres are at present domiciled under canopies of coal smoke.
And even to-day the sight of the tropics, green and luxuriant, brings us into touch at once with earlier ideas and habits of the race--makes us more able not only to understand, but also to sympathise with, our ancient ancestors of the naked-and-not-ashamed era of culture.
Views formed exclusively in the North tend too much to imitate the reduced gentlewoman's outlook upon life; views formed in the Tropics correct this refractive influence by a certain genial and tolerant virile expansion, not to be learned at the Common, Clapham.
To one whose economic pendulum has hitherto oscillated between selfish luxury in Mayfair and squalid poverty in Seven Dials, there is indeed a world of novelty in the first view of the tropical poverty that is not squalid but contentedly luxurious--of the dusky father with his wife or wives (the mere number is a detail) sprawling at full length, half clad, in the eye of the sun, before the palm-thatched hut, while the fat black babies and the fat black little pigs wallow together almost indistinguishably in the dust at his side, just out of reach of the muscular foot that might otherwise of pure wantonness molest them.
What a flood of light it all casts upon the future possibilities of society, that leisured, cultureless household, on whose garden-plot yam or bread-fruit or bananas or sweet potatoes can be grown in sufficient quantity to support the family without more labour than in England would pay for its kitchen coals; where the hut is but a shelter from rain, or a bed-curtain for night, and where the untaxed sun supplies the place of a drawing-room fire all the year round, and warms the water for the baby's bath at nothing the gallon!
If there is any man who doesn't sympathise with his dusky brother when he sees him thus at home in his airy palace--any man who doesn't fraternise closely with his kind when thus brought face to face with our primitive existence, I don't envy him his stern and wild Caledonian ethics.
The beach-comber instinct should be strong in all sane minds.
Or if that blunt way of putting it perchance offend the weaker brethren, let us say rather, the spirit of the Lotus-eaters.
For the man who doesn't want to eat of the Lotus just once in his life has become too civilised: the iron of the Gradgrind era of universal competition and payment by results has entered to deeply into his sordid soul.
He wants a course of Egypt and Tahiti.
Oh, yes; I know what you are going to object, and I grant it at once: the influence of the Tropics is by no means an ascetic one.
They, tend rather to encourage a certain genial and friendly tolerance of all possible human forms of society--even the lowest.
They are essentially democratic, not to say socialistic and revolutionary in tone.
By bringing us all down to the underlying verities of life, apart from its conventions, they beget perhaps a somewhat hasty impatience of Court dress and the Lord Chamberlain's regulations.
But, _per contra_, they teach us to feel that every man, whether black, brown, or white, is very human, and every woman and child, if possible, even a trifle more so.
Wicked as it all is, there is yet in tropical political economy more of the Gospel according to St. John, and less of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus, than in any orthodox political economy prescribed by examiners for the University of London.
It is something to see a world where ceaseless toil is not the necessary and inevitable lot of all who don't pay income tax on a thousand a year, even if Board schools are unknown and quadratic equations a vanishing quantity.
It is something to see a stick of sugar-cane protruding from the mouth of every child, and oranges retailed at twelve for a ha'penny.
It is something to know how the vast majority of the human race still live and move and have their being, and to feel that after all their mode of life, though lacking in Greek iambics, wallpapers, and the _Saturday Review_, yet appeals in its own beach-comberish way to some of one's inmost and deepest yearnings.
The hibiscus that flames before the wattled hut, the parrot that chatters from the green and golden mango-tree, the lithe, healthy figures of the children in the stream, are some compensation for the lack of London mud, London fog, and London illustrations of practical Christianity in the Isle of Dogs and the Bermondsey purlieus.
I don't know whether I am knocking the last nail into the completed coffin of my own contention, but I believe every right-minded man returns from the Tropics a good deal more of a Communist than when he went there.
One word of explanation to prevent mistake.
I am not myself, like Kingsley or Wallace, an enthusiastic tropicist.
On the contrary, viewed as a place of permanent residence, I don't at all like the Tropics to live in.
I am pleading here only for their educational value, in small doses.
Spending two or three years there in the heyday of life is very much like reading Herodotus--a thing one is glad one had once to do, but one would never willingly do again for any money.
We northern creatures are remote products of the Great Ice Age, and by this time, like Polar bears, we have grown adapted to our glacial environment.
All the more, therefore, is it a useful shaking-up for us to get transported bodily from our cramped and poverty-stricken northern slums, just once in our life, to the palms and temples of the South, the lands where the human body is a hardy plant, not a frail exotic.
We come back to our chilly home among the fogs and bogs with wider projects for the thawing down of the social ice-heap, and the introduction of the bread-fruit-tree and the currant-bun-bush into the remotest wilds of the borough of Hackney.
I am not even quite sure that tropical experience doesn't predispose us somewhat in favour of planting the sweet potato instead of grazing battering-rams in the uplands of Connemara.
But hush; I hear an editorial frown.
No more of this heresy.
ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND.
Of course, you know my friend the squirting cucumber.
If you don't, that can be only because you've never looked in the right place to find him.
On all waste ground outside most southern cities--Nice, Cannes, Florence: Rome, Algiers, Granada: Athens, Palermo, Tunis, where you will--the soil is thickly covered by dark trailing vines which bear on their branches a queer hairy green fruit, much like a common cucumber at that early stage of its existence when we know it best in the commercial form of pickled gherkins.
As long as you don't interfere with them, these hairy green fruits do nothing out of the common in the way of personal aggressiveness.
Like the model young lady of the books on etiquette, they don't speak unless they're spoken to.
But if peradventure you chance to brush up against the plant accidentally, or you irritate it of set purpose with your foot or your cane, then, as Mr. Rider Haggard would say, 'a strange thing happens': off jumps the little green fruit with a startling bounce, and scatters its juice and pulp and seeds explosively through a hole in the end where the stem joined on to it.
The entire central part of the cucumber, in short (answering to the seeds and pulp of a ripe melon), squirts out elastically through the breach in the outer wall, leaving the hollow shell behind as a mere empty windbag.
Naturally, the squirting cucumber knows its own business best, and is not without sufficient reasons of its own for this strange and, to some extent, unmannerly behaviour.
By its queer trick of squirting, it manages to kill at least two birds with one stone.
For, in the first place, the sudden elastic jump of the fruit frightens away browsing animals, such as goats and cattle.
Those meditative ruminants are little accustomed to finding shrubs or plants take the aggressive against them; and when they see a fruit that quite literally flies in their faces of its own accord, they hesitate to attack the uncanny vine which bristles with such magical and almost miraculous defences.
Moreover, the juice of the squirting cucumber is bitter and nauseous, and if it gets into the eyes or nostrils of man or beast, it impresses itself on the memory by stinging like red pepper.
So the trick of squirting serves in a double way as a protection to the plant against the attacks of herbivorous animals and other enemies.
But that's not all.
Even when no enemy is near, the ripe fruits at last drop off of themselves, and scatter their seeds elastically in every direction.
This they do simply in order to disseminate their kind in new and unoccupied spots, where the seedlings will root and find an opening in life for themselves.
Observe, indeed, that the very word 'disseminate' implies a general vague recognition of this principle of plant-life on the part of humanity.
It means, etymologically, to scatter seed; and it points to the fact that everywhere in nature seeds are scattered broadcast, infinite pains being taken by the mother-plant for their general diffusion over wide areas of woodland, plain, or prairie.
Let us take as examples a single little set of instances, familiar to everybody, but far commoner in the world at large than the inhabitants of towns are at all aware of: I mean, the winged seeds, that fly about freely in the air by means of feathery hairs or gossamer, like thistle-down and dandelion.
Of these winged types we have many hundred varieties in England alone.
All the willow-herbs, for example, have such feathery seeds (or rather fruits) to help them on their way through life; and one kind, the beautiful pink rose-bay, flies about so readily, and over such wide spaces of open country, that the plant is known to farmers in America as fireweed, because it always springs up at once over whole square miles of charred and smoking soil after every devastating forest fire.
It travels fast, for it travels like Ariel.
In much the same way, the coltsfoot grows on all new English railway banks, because its winged seeds are wafted everywhere in myriads on the winds of March.
All the willows and poplars have also winged seeds: so have the whole vast tribe of hawkweeds, groundsels, ragworts, thistles, fleabanes, cat's-ears, dandelions, and lettuces.
Indeed, one may say roughly, there are very few plants of any size or importance in the economy of nature which don't deliberately provide, in one way or another, for the dispersal and dissemination of their fruits or seedlings.
Why is this?
Why isn't the plant content just to let its grains or berries drop quietly on to the soil beneath, and there shift for themselves as best they may on their own resources?
The answer is a more profound one than you would at first imagine.
Plants discovered the grand principle of the rotation of crops long before man did.
The farmer now knows that if he sows wheat or turnips too many years running on the same plot, he 'exhausts the soil,' as we say--deprives it of certain special mineral or animal constituents needful for that particular crop, and makes the growth of the plant, therefore, feeble or even impossible.
To avoid this misfortune, he lets the land lie fallow, or varies his crops from year to year according to a regular and deliberate cycle.
Well, natural selection forced the same discovery upon the plants themselves long before the farmer had dreamed of its existence.
For plants, being, in the strictest sense, 'rooted to the spot,' absolutely require that all their needs should be supplied quite locally.
Hence, from the very beginning, those plants which scattered their seeds widest throve the best; while those which merely dropped them on the ground under their own shadow, and on soil exhausted by their own previous demands upon it, fared ill in the struggle for life against their more discursive competitors.
The result has been that in the long run few species have survived, except those which in one way or another arranged beforehand for the dispersal of their seeds and fruits over fresh and unoccupied areas of plain or hillside.
I don't, of course, by any means intend to assert that seeds always do it by the simple device of wings or feathery projections.
Every variety of plan or dodge or expedient has been adopted in turn to secure the self-same end; and provided only it succeeds in securing it, any variety of them all is equally satisfactory.
One might parallel it with the case of hatching birds' eggs.
Most birds sit upon their eggs themselves, and supply the necessary warmth from their own bodies.
But any alternative plan that attains the same end does just as well.
The felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest: the ostrich trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert sand: and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves and rubbish, in which they deposit their eggs to be artificially incubated, as it were, by the slow heat generated in the process of putrefaction.
Just in the same way, we shall see in the case of seeds that any method of dispersion will serve the plant's purpose equally well, provided only it succeeds in carrying a few of the young seedlings to a proper place in which they may start fair at last in the struggle for existence.
As in the case of the fertilization of flowers, so in that of the dispersal of seeds, there are two main ways in which the work is effected--by animals and by wind-power.
I will not insult the intelligence of the reader at the present time of day by telling him that pollen is usually transferred from blossom to blossom in one or other of these two chief ways--it is carried on the heads or bodies of bees and other honey-seeking insects, or else it is wafted on the wings of the wind to the sensitive surface of a sister-flower.
So, too, seeds are for the most part either dispersed by animals or blown about by the breezes of heaven to new situations.
These are the two most obvious means of locomotion provided by nature; and it is curious to see that they have both been utilized almost equally by plants, alike for their pollen and their seeds, just as they have been utilized by man for his own purposes on sea or land, in ship, or windmill, or pack-horse, or carriage.
There are two ways in which animals may be employed to disperse seeds--voluntarily and involuntarily.
They may be compelled to carry them against their wills: or they may be bribed and cajoled and flattered into doing the plant's work for it in return for some substantial advantage or benefit the plant confers upon them.
The first plan is the one adopted by burrs and cleavers.
These adhesive fruits are like the man who buttonholes you and won't be shaken off: they are provided with little curved hooks or bent and barbed hairs which catch upon the wool of sheep, the coat of cattle, or the nether integuments of wayfaring humanity, and can't be got rid of without some little difficulty.
Most of them, you will find on examination, belonged to confirmed hedgerow or woodside plants: they grow among bushes or low scrub, and thickets of gorse or bramble.
Now, to such plants as these, it is obviously useful to have adhesive fruits and seeds: for when sheep or other animals get them caught in their coats, they carry them away to other bushy spots, and there, to get rid of the annoyance caused by the foreign body, scratch them off at once against some holly-bush or blackthorn.
You may often find seeds of this type sticking on thorns as the nucleus of a little matted mass of wool, so left by the sheep in the very spots best adapted for the free growth of their vigorous seedlings.
Even among plants which trust to the involuntary services of animals in dispersing their seeds, a great many varieties of detail may be observed on close inspection.
For example, in hound's-tongue and goose-grass, two of the best-known instances among our common English weeds, each little nut is covered with many small hooks, which make it catch on firmly by several points of attachment to passing animals.
These are the kinds we human beings of either sex oftenest find clinging to our skirts or trousers after a walk in a rabbit-warren.
But in herb-bennet and avens each nut has a single long awn, crooked near the middle with a very peculiar S-shaped joint, which effectually catches on to the wool or hair, but drops at the elbow after a short period of withering.
Sometimes, too, the whole fruit is provided with prehensile hooks, while sometimes it is rather the individual seeds themselves that are so accommodated.
Oddest of all is the plan followed by the common burdock.
Here, an involucre or common cup-shaped receptacle of hooked bracts surrounds an entire head of purple tubular flowers, and each of these flowers produces in time a distinct fruit; but the hooked involucre contains the whole compound mass, and, being pulled off bodily by a stray sheep or dog, effects the transference of the composite lot at once to some fitting place for their germination.
Those plants, on the other hand, which depend rather, like London hospitals, upon the voluntary system, produce that very familiar form of edible capsule which we commonly call in the restricted sense a fruit or berry.
In such cases, the seed-vessel is usually swollen and pulpy: it is stored with sweet juices to attract the birds or other animal allies, and it is brightly coloured so as to advertise to their eyes the presence of the alluring sugary foodstuff.
These instances, however, are now so familiar to everybody that I won't dwell upon them at any length.
Even the degenerate schoolboy of the present day, much as he has declined from the high standard set forth by Macaulay, knows all about the way the actual seed itself is covered (as in the plum or the cherry) by a hard stony coat which 'resists the action of the gastric juice' (so physiologists put it, with their usual frankness), and thus passes undigested through the body of its swallower.
All I will do here, therefore, is to note very briefly that some edible fruits, like the two just mentioned, as well as the apricot, the peach, the nectarine, and the mango, consist of a single seed with its outer covering; in others, as in the raspberry, the blackberry, the cloudberry, and the dew-berry, many seeds are massed together, each with a separate edible pulp; in yet others, as in the gooseberry, the currant, the grape, and the whortleberry, several seeds are embedded within the fruit in a common pulpy mass; and in others again, as in the apple, pear, quince, and medlar, they are surrounded by a quantity of spongy edible flesh.
Indeed, the variety that prevails among fruits in this respect almost defies classification: for sometimes, as in the mulberry, the separate little fruits of several distinct flowers grow together at last into a common berry: sometimes, as in a fig, the general flower-stalk of several tiny one-seeded blossoms forms the edible part: and sometimes, as in the strawberry, the true little nuts or fruits appear as mere specks or dots on the bloated surface of the swollen and overgrown stem, which forms the luscious morsel dear to the human palate.
Yet in every case it is interesting to observe that, while the seeds which depend for dispersion upon the breeze are easily detached from the parent plant and blown about by every wind of doctrine, the seeds or fruits which depend for their dispersion upon birds or animals always, on the contrary, hang on to their native boughs to the very last, till some unconscious friend pecks them off and devours them.
Haws, rose-hips, and holly-berries will wither and wilt on the tree in mild winters, because they can't drop off of themselves without the aid of birds, while the birds are too well supplied with other food to care for them.
One of the strangest cases of all, however, is that of the mistletoe, which, living parasitically upon the forest-boughs and apple-trees, would of course be utterly lost if its berries dropped their seeds on to the ground beneath it.
To avoid such a misfortune, the mistletoe berries are filled with an exceedingly viscid and sticky pulp, surrounding the hard little nut-like seeds: and this pulp makes the seeds cling to the bills and feet of various birds which feed upon the fruit, but most particularly of the missel thrush, who derives his common English name from his devotion to the mistletoe.
The birds then carry them away unwittingly to some neighbouring tree, and rub them off, when they get uncomfortable, against a forked branch--the exact spots that best suits the young mistletoe for sprouting in.
Man, in turn, makes use of the sticky pulp for the manufacture of bird-lime, and so employs against the birds the very qualities which the plant intended as a bribe for their kindly services.
Among seeds that trust for their disposal to the wind, the commonest, simplest, and least evolved type is that of the ordinary capsule, as in the poppies and campions.
At first sight, to be sure, a casual observer might suppose there existed in these cases no recognisable device at all for the dissemination of the seedlings.
But you and I, most excellent and discreet reader, are emphatically _not_, of course, mere casual observers.
_We_ look close, and go to the very root of things.
And when we do so, we see for ourselves at once that almost all capsules open--where?
why, at the top, so that the seeds can only be shaken out when there is a high enough wind blowing to sway the stems to and fro with some violence, and scatter the small black grains inside to a considerable distance.
Furthermore, in many instances, of which the common poppy-head is an excellent example, the capsule opens by lateral pores at the top of a flat head--a further precaution which allows the seeds to get out only by a few at a time, after a distinct jerk, and so scatters them pretty evenly, with different winds, over a wide circular space around the mother plant.
Experiment will show how this simple dodge works.
Try to shake out the poppy-seed from a ripe poppy-head on the plant as it grows, without breaking the stem or bending it unnaturally, and you will easily see how much force of wind is required in order to put this unobtrusive but very effective mechanism into working order.
The devices of this character employed by various plants for the dispersal of seeds even in ordinary dry capsules are far too numerous for me to describe in full detail, though they form a delightful subject for individual study in any small suburban garden.
I will only give one more illustrative case, just to show the sort of point an amateur should always be on the look-out for.
There is an extremely common, though inconspicuous, English weed, the mouse-ear chickweed, found everywhere in flower-beds or grass-plots, however small, and noticeable for its quaint little horn-shaped capsules.
These have a very odd sort of twist or cock-up in the middle, just above the part where the seeds lie; and they open at the top by ten small teeth, pointed obliquely outward for no apparent reason.
Yet every point has a meaning of its own for all that.
The plant is one that lies rather close upon the ground; and the effect of this twist in the capsule is that the seeds, which are relatively heavy, and well stored with nutriment, can never get out at all, unless a very strong wind is blowing, which sweeps over the herbage in long quick waves, and carries everything it shakes out for great distances before it.
So much design have even the smallest weeds put into the mechanism for the dispersion of their precious seeds, the hope of their race and the earnest of their future!
Artillery marks a higher stage than the sling and the stone.
Just so, in many plants, a step higher in the evolutionary scale as regards the method of dispersion, the capsule itself bursts open explosively, and scatters its contents to the four winds of heaven.
Such plants may be said to discharge their grains on the principle of the bow and arrow.
The balsam is a familiar example of this startling mode of moving to fresh fields and pastures new: its capsule consists of five long straight valves, which break asunder elastically the moment they are touched, when fully ripe, and shed their seeds on all sides, like so many small bombshells.
Our friend the squirting cucumber, which served as the prime text for this present discourse, falls into somewhat the same category, though in other ways it rather resembles the true succulent fruits, and belongs, indeed, to the same family as the melon, the gourd, the pumpkin, and the vegetable-marrow, almost all of which are edible and in every way fruit-like.
Among English weeds, the little bittercress that grows on dry walls and hedge-banks forms an excellent example of the same device.
Village children love to touch the long, ripe, brown capsules on the top with one timid finger, and then jump away, half laughing, half terrified, when the mild-looking little plant goes off suddenly with a small bang and shoots its grains like a catapult point-blank in their faces.
It is in the tropics, however, that these elastic fruits reach their highest development.
There they have to fight, not merely against such small fry as robins, squirrels, and harvest-mice, but against the aggressive parrot, the hard-billed toucan, the persistent lemur, and the inquisitive monkey.
Moreover, the elastic fruits of the tropics grow often on spreading forest trees, and must therefore shed their seeds to immense distances if they are to reach comparatively virgin soil, unexhausted by the deep-set roots of the mother trunk.
Under such exceptional circumstances, the tropical examples of these elastic capsules are by no means mere toys to be lightly played with by babes and sucklings.
The sand-box tree of the West Indies has large round fruits, containing seeds about as big as an English horsebean; and the capsule explodes, when ripe, with a detonation like a pistol, scattering its contents with as much violence as a shot from an air-gun.
It is dangerous to go too near these natural batteries during the shooting season.
A blow in the eye from one would blind a man instantly.
I well remember the very first night I spent in my own house in Jamaica, where I went to live shortly after the repression of 'Governor Eyre's rebellion,' as everybody calls it locally.
All night long I heard somebody, as I thought, practising with a revolver in my own back garden: a sound which somewhat alarmed me under those very unstable social conditions.
An earthquake about midnight, it is true, diverted my attention temporarily from the recurring shots, but didn't produce the slightest effect upon the supposed rebel's devotion to the improvement of his marksmanship.
When morning dawned, however, I found it was only a sand-box tree, and that the shots were nothing more than the explosions of the capsules.
As to the wonderful tales told about the Brazilian cannon-ball tree, I cannot personally endorse them from original observation, and will not stain this veracious page with any second-hand quotations from the strange stories of modern scientific Munchausens.
Still higher in the evolutionary scale than the elastic fruits are those airy species which have taken to themselves wings like the eagle, and soar forth upon the free breeze in search of what the Americans describe as 'fresh locations.'
Of this class the simplest type may be seen in those forest-trees, like the maple and the sycamore, whose fruits are flattened out into long expansions or parachutes, technically known as 'keys,' by whose aid they flutter down obliquely to the ground at a considerable distance.
The keys of the sycamore, to take a single instance, when detached from the tree in autumn, fall spirally through the air owing to the twist of the winged arm, and are carried so far that, as every gardener knows, young sycamore trees rank among the commonest weeds among our plots and flower-beds.
A curious variant upon this type is presented by the lime, or linden, whose fruits are in themselves small wingless nuts; but they are born in clusters upon a common stalk, which is winged on either side by a large membranous bract.
When the nuts are ripe, the whole cluster detaches itself in a body from the branch, and flutters away before the breeze by means of the common parachute, to some spot a hundred yards or more, where the wind chances to land it.
The topmost place of all in the hierarchy of seed life, it seems to me, is taken by the feathery fruits and seeds which float freely hither and thither wherever the wind may bear them.
An immense number of the very highest plants--the aristocrats of the vegetable kingdom, such as the lordly composites, those ultimate products of plant evolution--possess such floating feathery seeds; though here, again, the varieties of detail are too infinite for rapid or popular classification.
Indeed, among the composites alone--the thistle and dandelion tribe with downy fruits--I can reckon up more than a hundred and fifty distinct variations of plan among the winged seeds known to me in various parts of Europe.
But if I am strong, I am merciful: I will let the public off with a hundred and forty-eight of them.
My two exceptions shall be John-go-to-bed-at-noon and the hairy hawkweed, both of them common English meadow-plants.
The first, and more quaintly named, of the two has little ribbed fruits that end in a long and narrow beak, supporting a radial rib-work of spokes like the frame of an umbrella; and from rib to rib of this framework stretch feathery cross-pieces, continuous all round, so as to make of the whole mechanism a perfect circular parachute, resembling somewhat the web of a geometrical spider.
But the hairy hawkweed is still more cunning in its generation; for that clever and cautious weed produces its seeds or fruits in clustered heads, of which the central ones are winged, while the outer are heavy, squat, and wingless.
Thus does the plant make the best of all chances that may happen to open before it: if one lot goes far and fares but ill, the other is pretty sure to score a bull's-eye.
These are only a few selected examples of the infinite dodges employed by enlightened herbs and shrubs to propagate their scions in foreign parts.
Many more, equally interesting, must be left undescribed.
Only for a single case more can I still find room--that of the subterranean clover, which has been driven by its numerous enemies to take refuge at last in a very remarkable and almost unique mode, of protecting its offspring.
This particular kind of clover affects smooth and close-cropped hillsides, where the sheep nibble down the grass and other herbage almost as fast as it springs up again.
Now, clover seeds resemble their allies of the pea and bean tribe in being exceedingly rich in starch and other valuable foodstuffs.
Hence, they are much sought after by the inquiring sheep, which eat them off wherever found, as exceptionally nutritious and dainty morsels.
Under these circumstances, the subterranean clover has learnt to produce small heads of bloom, pressed close to the ground, in which only the outer flowers are perfect and fertile, while the inner ones are transformed into tiny wriggling corkscrews.
As soon as the fertile flowers have begun to set their seed, by the kind aid of the bees, the whole stem bends downward, automatically, of its own accord; the little corkscrews then worm their way into the turf beneath; and the pods ripen and mature in the actual soil itself, where no prying ewe can poke an inquisitive nose to grub them up and devour them.
Cases like this point in certain ways to the absolute high-water-mark of vegetable ingenuity: they go nearest of all in the plant-world to the similitude of conscious animal intelligence.
A DESERT FRUIT.
Who knows the Mediterranean, knows the prickly pear.
Not that that quaint and uncanny-looking cactus, with its yellow blossoms and bristling fruits that seem to grow paradoxically out of the edge of thick fleshy leaves, is really a native of Italy, Spain, and North Africa, where it now abounds on every sun-smitten hillside.
Like Mr. Henry James and Mr. Marion Crawford, the Barbary fig, as the French call it, is, in point of fact, an American citizen, domiciled and half naturalised on this side of the Atlantic, but redolent still at heart of its Columbian origin.
Nothing is more common, indeed, than to see classical pictures of the Alma-Tadema school--not, of course, from the brush of the master himself, who is impeccable in such details, but fair works of decent imitators--in which Caia or Marcia leans gracefully in her white stole on one pensive elbow against a marble lintel, beside a courtyard decorated with a Pompeian basin, and overgrown with prickly pear or "American aloes."
I need hardly say that, as a matter of plain historical fact, neither cactuses nor agaves were known in Europe till long after Christopher Columbus had steered his wandering bark to the sandy shores of Cat's Island in the Bahamas.
(I have seen Cat's Island with these very eyes, and can honestly assure you that its shores _are_ sandy.)
But this is only one among the many pardonable little inaccuracies of painters, who thrust scarlet geraniums from the Cape of Good Hope into the fingers of Aspasia, or supply King Solomon in all his glory with Japanese lilies of the most recent introduction.
At the present day, it is true, both the prickly-pear cactus and the American agave (which the world at large insists upon confounding with the aloe, a member of a totally distinct family) have spread themselves in an apparently wild condition over all the rocky coasts both of Southern Europe and of Northern Africa.
The alien desert weeds have fixed their roots firmly in the sunbaked clefts of Ligurian Apennines; the tall candelabrum of the western agave has reared its great spike of branching blossoms (which flower, not once in a century, as legend avers, but once in some fifteen years or so) on all the basking hillsides of the Mauritanian Atlas.
But for the origin, and therefore for the evolutionary history, of either plant, we must look away from the shore of the inland sea to the arid expanse of the Mexican desert.
It was there, among the sweltering rocks of the Tierras Calientes, that these ungainly cactuses first learned to clothe themselves in prickly mail, to store in their loose tissues an abundant supply of sticky moisture, and to set at defiance the persistent attacks of all external enemies.
The prickly pear, in fact, is a typical instance of a desert plant, as the camel is a typical instance of a desert animal.
Each lays itself out to endure the long droughts of its almost rainless habitat by drinking as much as it can when opportunity offers, hoarding up the superfluous water for future use, and economising evaporation by every means in its power.
If you ask that convenient fiction, the Man in the Street, what sort of plant a cactus is, he will probably tell you it is all leaf and no stem, and each of the leaves grows out of the last one.
Whenever we set up the Man in the Street, however, you must have noticed we do it in order to knock him down again like a nine-pin next moment: and this particular instance is no exception to the rule; for the truth is that a cactus is practically all stem and no leaves, what looks like a leaf being really a branch sticking out at an angle.
The true leaves, if there are any, are reduced to mere spines or prickles on the surface, while the branches, in the prickly-pear and many of the ornamental hot-house cactuses, are flattened out like a leaf to perform foliar functions.
In most plants, to put it simply, the leaves are the mouths and stomachs of the organism; their thin and flattened blades are spread out horizontally in a wide expanse, covered with tiny throats and lips which suck in carbonic acid from the surrounding air, and disintegrate it in their own cells under the influence of sunlight.
In the prickly pears, on the contrary, it is the flattened stem and branches which undertake this essential operation in the life of the plant--the sucking-in of carbon and giving-out of oxygen, which is to the vegetable exactly what the eating and digesting of food is to the animal organism.
In their old age, however, the stems of the prickly pear display their true character by becoming woody in texture and losing their articulated leaf-like appearance.
Everything on this earth can best be understood by investigating the history of its origin and development, and in order to understand this curious reversal of the ordinary rule in the cactus tribe we must look at the circumstances under which the race was evolved in the howling waste of American deserts.
(All deserts have a prescriptive right to howl, and I wouldn't for worlds deprive them of the privilege.)
Some familiar analogies will help us to see the utility of this arrangement.
Everybody knows our common English stone-crops--or if he doesn't he ought to, for they are pretty and ubiquitous.
Now stone-crops grow for the most part in chinks of the rock or thirsty sandy soil; they are essentially plants of very dry positions.
Hence they have thick and succulent little stems and leaves, which merge into one another by imperceptible gradations.
All parts of the plant alike are stumpy, green, and cylindrical.
If you squash them with your finger and thumb you find that though the outer skin or epidermis is thick and firm, the inside is sticky, moist, and jelly-like.
The reason for all this is plain; the stone-crops drink greedily by their roots whenever they get a chance, and store up the water so obtained to keep them from withering under the hot and pitiless sun that beats down upon them for hours in the baked clefts of their granite matrix.
It's the camel trick over again.
So leaves and stem grow thick and round and juicy within; but outside they are enclosed in a stout layer of epidermis, which consists of empty glassy cells, and which can be peeled off or flayed with a knife like the skin of an animal.
This outer layer prevents evaporation, and is a marked feature of all succulent plants which grow exposed to the sun on arid rocks or in sandy deserts.
The tendency to produce rounded stems and leaves, little distinguishable from one another, is equally noticeable in many seaside plants which frequent the strip of thirsty sand beyond the reach of the tides.
That belt of dry beach that stretches between high-water mark and the zone of vegetable mould, is to all intents and purpose a miniature desert.
True, it is watered by rain from time to time; but the drops sink in so fast that in half an hour, as we know, the entire strip is as dry as Sahara again.
Now there are many shore weeds of this intermediate sand-belt which mimic to a surprising degree the chief external features of the cactuses.
One such weed, the common salicornia, which grows in sandy bottoms or hollows of the beach, has a jointed stem, branched and succulent, after the true cactus pattern, and entirely without leaves or their equivalents in any way.
Still more cactus-like in general effect is another familiar English seaside weed, the kali or glasswort, so called because it was formerly burnt to extract the soda.
The glasswort has leaves, it is true, but they are thick and fleshy, continuous with the stem, and each one terminating in a sharp, needle-like spine, which effectually protects the weed against all browsing aggressors.
Now, wherever you get very dry and sandy conditions of soil, you get this same type of cactus-like vegetation--_plantes grasses_, as the French well call them.
The species which exhibit it are not necessary related to one another in any way; often they belong to most widely distinct families; it is an adaptive resemblance alone, due to similarity of external circumstances only.
The plants have to fight against the same difficulties, and they adopt for the most part the same tactics to fight them with.
In other words, any plant of whatever family, which wishes to thrive in desert conditions, must almost, as a matter of course, become thick and succulent, so as to store up water, and must be protected by a stout epidermis to prevent its evaporation under the fierce heat of the sunlight.
They do not necessarily lose their leaves in the process; but the jointed stem usually answers the purpose of leaves under such conditions far better than any thin and exposed blade could do in the arid air of a baking desert.
And therefore, as a rule, desert plants are leafless.
In India, for example, there are no cactuses.
But I wouldn't advise you to dispute the point with a peppery, fire-eating Anglo-Indian colonel.
I did so once, myself, at the risk of my life, at a _table d'hôte_ on the Continent; and the wonder is that I'm still alive to tell the story.
I had nothing but facts on my side, while the colonel had fists, and probably pistols.
And when I say no cactuses, I mean, of course, no indigenous species; for prickly pears and epiphyllums may naturally be planted by the hand of man anywhere.
But what people take for thickets of cactus in the Indian jungle are really thickets of cactus-like spurges.
In the dry soil of India, many spurges grow thick and succulent, learn to suppress their leaves, and assume the bizarre forms and quaint jointed appearance of the true cactuses.
In flower and fruit, however, they are euphorbias to the end; it is only in the thick and fleshy stem that they resemble their nobler and more beautiful Western rivals.
No true cactus grows truly wild anywhere on earth except in America.
The family was developed there, and, till man transplanted it, never succeeded in gaining a foothold elsewhere.
Essentially tropical in type, it was provided with no means of dispersing its seeds across the enormous expanse of intervening ocean which separated its habitat from the sister continents.
But why are cactuses so almost universally prickly?
From the grotesque little melon-cactuses of our English hothouses to the huge and ungainly monsters which form miles of hedgerows on Jamaican hillsides, the members of this desert family are mostly distinguished by their abundant spines and thorns, or by the irritating hairs which break off in your skin if you happen to brush incautiously against them.
Cactuses are the hedgehogs of the vegetable world; their motto is _Nemo me impune lacessit_.
Many a time in the West Indies I have pushed my hand for a second into a bit of tangled 'bush,' as the negroes call it, to seize some rare flower or some beautiful insect, and been punished for twenty-four hours afterwards by the stings of the almost invisible and glass-like little cactus-needles.
When you rub them they only break in pieces, and every piece inflicts a fresh wound on the flesh where it rankles.
Some of the species have large, stout prickles; some have clusters of irritating hairs at measured distances; and some rejoice in both means of defence at once, scattered impartially over their entire surface.
In the prickly pear, the bundles of prickles are arranged geometrically with great regularity in a perfect quincunx.
But that is a small consolation indeed to the reflective mind when you've stung yourself badly with them.
The reason for this bellicose disposition on the part of the cactuses is a tolerably easy one to guess.
Fodder is rare in the desert.
The starving herbivores that find themselves from time to time belated on the confines of such thirsty regions would seize with avidity upon any succulent plant which offered them food and drink at once in their last extremity.
Fancy the joy with which a lost caravan, dying of hunger and thirst in the byways of Sahara, would hail a great bed of melons, cucumbers, and lettuces!
Needless to say, however, under such circumstances melon, cucumber, and lettuce would soon be exterminated: they would be promptly eaten up at discretion without leaving a descendant to represent them in the second generation.
In the ceaseless war between herbivore and plant, which is waged every day and all day long the whole world over with far greater persistence than the war between carnivore and prey, only those species of plant can survive in such exposed situations which happen to develop spines, thorns, or prickles as a means of defence against the mouths of hungry and desperate assailants.
Nor is this so difficult a bit of evolution as it looks at first sight.
Almost all plants are more or less covered with hairs, and it needs but a slight thickening at the base, a slight woody deposit at the point, to turn them forthwith into the stout prickles of the rose or the bramble.
Most leaves are more or less pointed at the end or at the summits of the lobes; and it needs but a slight intensification of this pointed tendency to produce forthwith the sharp defensive foliage of gorse, thistles, and holly.
Often one can see all the intermediate stages still surviving under one's very eyes.
The thistles, themselves, for example, vary from soft and unarmed species which haunt out-of-the-way spots beyond the reach of browsing herbivores, to such trebly-mailed types as that enemy of the agricultural interest, the creeping thistle, in which the leaves continue themselves as prickly wings down every side of the stem, so that the whole plant is amply clad from head to foot in a defensive coat of fierce and bristling spearheads.
There is a common little English meadow weed, the rest-harrow, which in rich and uncropped fields produces no defensive armour of any sort; but on the much-browsed-over suburban commons and in similar exposed spots, where only gorse and blackthorn stand a chance for their lives against the cows and donkeys, it has developed a protected variety in which some of the branches grow abortive, and end abruptly in stout spines like a hawthorn's.
Only those rest-harrows have there survived in the sharp struggle for existence which happened most to baffle their relentless pursuers.
Desert plants naturally carry this tendency to its highest point of development.
Nowhere else is the struggle for life so fierce; nowhere else is the enemy so goaded by hunger and thirst to desperate measures.
It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly.
The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are compelled in turn to take almost extravagant precautions.
Sometimes the leaves end in a stout dagger-like point, as with the agave, or so-called American aloe; sometimes they are reduced to mere prickles or bundles of needle-like spikes; sometimes they are suppressed altogether, and the work of defence is undertaken in their stead by irritating hairs intermixed with caltrops of spines pointing outward from a common centre in every direction.
When one remembers how delicately sensitive are the tender noses of most browsing herbivores, one can realize what an excellent mode of defence these irritating hairs must naturally constitute.
I have seen cows in Jamaica almost maddened by their stings, and even savage bulls will think twice in their rage before they attempt to make their way through the serried spears of a dense cactus hedge.
To put it briefly, plants have survived under very arid or sandy conditions precisely in proportion as they displayed this tendency towards the production of thorns, spines, bristles, and prickles.
It is a marked characteristic of the cactus tribe to be very tenacious of life, and when hacked to pieces, to spring afresh in full vigour from every scrap or fragment.
True vegetable hydras, when you cut down one, ten spring in its place: every separate morsel of the thick and succulent stem has the power of growing anew into a separate cactus.
Surprising as this peculiarity seems at first sight, it is only a special desert modification of a faculty possessed in a less degree by almost all plants and by many animals.
If you cut off the end of a rose branch and stick it in the ground under suitable conditions, it grows into a rose tree.
If you take cuttings of scarlet geraniums or common verbenas, and pot them in moist soil, they bud out apace into new plants like their parents.
Certain special types can even be propagated from fragments of the leaf; for example, there is a particularly vivacious begonia off which you may snap a corner of one blade, and hang it up by a string from a peg or the ceiling, when, hi, presto!
little begonia plants begin to bud out incontinently on every side from its edges.
A certain German professor went even further than that; he chopped up a liverwort very fine into vegetable mincemeat, which he then spread thin over a saucerful of moist sand, and lo!
in a few days the whole surface of the mess was covered with a perfect forest of sprouting little liverworts.
Roughly speaking, one may say that every fragment of every organism has in it the power to rebuild in its entirety another organism like the one of which it once formed a component element.
Similarly with animals.
Cut off a lizard's tail, and straightway a new tail grows in its place with surprising promptitude.
Cut off a lobster's claw, and in a very few weeks that lobster is walking about airily on his native rocks, with two claws as usual.
True, in these cases the tail and the claw don't bud out in turn into a new lizard or a new lobster.
But that is a penalty the higher organisms have to pay for their extreme complexity.
They have lost that plasticity, that freedom of growth, which characterizes the simpler and more primitive forms of life; in their case the power of producing fresh organisms entire from a single fragment, once diffused equally over the whole body, is now confined to certain specialized cells which, in their developed form, we know as seeds or eggs.
Yet, even among animals, at a low stage of development, this original power of reproducing the whole from a single part remains inherent in the organism; for you may chop up a fresh-water hydra into a hundred little bits, and every bit will be capable of growing afresh into a complete hydra.
Now, desert plants would naturally retain this primitive tendency in a very high degree; for they are specially organized to resist drought--being the survivors of generations of drought-proof ancestors--and, like the camel, they have often to struggle on through long periods of time without a drop of water.
Exactly the same thing happens at home to many of our pretty little European stone-crops.
I have a rockery near my house overgrown with the little white sedum of our gardens.
The birds often peck off a tiny leaf or branch; it drops on the dry soil, and remains there for days without giving a sign of life.
But its thick epidermis effectually saves it from withering; and as soon as rain falls, wee white rootlets sprout out from the under side of the fragment as it lies, and it grows before long into a fresh small sedum plant.
Thus, what seem like destructive agencies themselves, are turned in the end by mere tenacity of life into a secondary means of propagation.
That is why the prickly pear is so common in all countries where the climate suits it, and where it has once managed to gain a foothold.
The more you cut it down, the thicker it springs; each murdered bit becomes the parent in due time of a numerous offspring.
Man, however, with his usual ingenuity, has managed to best the plant, on this its own ground, and turn it into a useful fodder for his beasts of burden.
The prickly pear is planted abundantly on bare rocks in Algeria, where nothing else would grow, and is cut down when adult, divested of its thorns by a rough process of hacking, and used as food for camels and cattle.
It thus provides fresh moist fodder in the African summer when the grass is dried up and all other pasture crops have failed entirely.
The flowers of the prickly pear, as of many other cactuses, grow apparently on the edge of the leaves, which alone might give the observant mind a hint as to the true nature of those thick and flattened expansions.
For whenever what look like leaves bear flowers or fruit on their edge or midrib, as in the familiar instance of butcher's broom, you may be sure at a glance they are really branches in disguise masquerading as foliage.
The blossoms in the prickly pear are large, handsome, and yellow; at least, they would be handsome if one could ever see them, but they are generally covered so thick in dust that it is difficult properly to appreciate their beauty.
They have a great many petals in numerous rows, and a great many stamens in a rosette in the centre; and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as lawyers put it, they are fertilized for the most part by tropical butterflies; but on this point, having observed them but little in their native habitats, I speak under correction.
The fruit itself, to which the plant owes its popular name, is botanically a berry, though a very big one, and it exhibits in a highly specialized degree the general tactics of all its family.
As far as their leaf-like stems go, the main object in life of the cactuses is--not to get eaten.
But when it comes to the fruit, this object in life is exactly reversed; the plant desires its fruit to be devoured by some friendly bird or adapted animal, in order that the hard little seeds buried in the pulp within may be dispersed for germination under suitable conditions.
At the same time, true to its central idea, it covers even the pear itself with deterrent and prickly hairs, meant to act as a defence against useless thieves or petty depredators, who would eat the soft pulp on the plant as it stands (much as wasps do peaches) without benefiting the species in return by dispersing its seedlings.
This practice is fully in accordance with the general habit of tropical or sub-tropical fruits, which lay themselves out to deserve the kind offices of monkeys, parrots, toucans, hornbills, and other such large and powerful fruit-feeders.
Fruits which arrange themselves for a _clientèle_, of this character have usually thick or nauseous rinds, prickly husks, or other deterrent integuments; but they are full within of juicy pulp, embedding stony or nutlike seeds, which pass undigested through the gizzards of their swallowers.
For a similar reason, the actual prickly pears themselves are attractively coloured.
I need hardly point out, I suppose, at the present time of day, that such tints in the vegetable world act like the gaudy posters of our London advertisers.
Fruits and flowers which desire to attract the attention of beasts, birds, or insects, are tricked out in flaunting hues of crimson, purple, blue, and yellow; fruits and flowers which could only be injured by the notice of animals are small and green, or dingy and inconspicuous.
PRETTY POLL.
It is an error of youth to despise parrots for their much talking.
Loquacity isn't always a sign of empty-headedness, nor is silence a sure proof of weight and wisdom.
Biologists, for their part, know better than that.
By common consent, they rank the parrot group as the very head and crown of bird creation.
Not, of course, because pretty Poll can talk (in a state of nature, parrots only chatter somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the crows, and the magpies.
What are the efficient causes of this exceptionally high intelligence in parrots?
Well, Mr. Herbert Spencer, I believe, was the first to point out the intimate connection that exists throughout the animal world between mental development and the power of grasping an object all round so as to know exactly its shape and its tactile properties.
The possession of an effective prehensile organ--a hand or its equivalent--seems to be the first great requisite for the evolution of a high order of intellect.
Man and the monkeys, for example, have a pair of hands; and in their case one can see at a glance how dependent is their intelligence upon these grasping organs.
All human arts base themselves ultimately upon the human hand; and even the apes approach nearest to humanity in virtue of their ever-active and busy little fingers.
The elephant, again, has his flexible trunk, which, as we have all heard over and over again, _usque ad nauseam_, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of tropical forest trees.
(That pin, in particular, is now a well-worn classic.)
The squirrel, once more, celebrated for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent standard, uses his pretty little paws as veritable hands, by which he can grasp a nut or fruit all round, and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of its true shape and properties.
Throughout the animal kingdom generally, indeed, this correspondence, or rather this chain of causation, makes itself everywhere felt; no high intelligence without a highly developed prehensile and grasping organ.
Perhaps the opossum is the very best and most crucial instance that could possibly be adduced of the intimate connection which exists between touch and intellect.
For the opossum is a marsupial; it belongs to the same group of lowly-organized, antiquated, and pouch-bearing animals as the kangaroo, the wombat, and the other belated Australian mammals.
Now everybody knows the marsupials as a class are nothing short of preternaturally stupid.
They are just about the very dullest and silliest of all existing quadrupeds.
And this is reasonable enough, when one comes to think of it, for they represent a very antique and early type, the first rough sketch of the mammalian idea, if I may so describe them, with wits unsharpened as yet by contact with the world in the fierce competition of the struggle for life as it displays itself on the crowded stage of the great continents.
They stand, in short, to the lions and tigers, the elephants and horses, the monkeys and squirrels, of Europe and America, as the Australian blackfellow stands to the Englishman or the Yankee.
They are the last relic of the original secondary quadrupeds, stranded for ages in a remote southern island, and still keeping up among Australian forests the antique type of life that went out of fashion in Europe, Asia, and America before the chalk was laid down or the London Clay deposited on the bed of our northern oceans.
Hence they have still very narrow brains, and are so extremely stupid that a kangaroo, it is said--though I don't vouch for it myself--when struck a smart blow, will turn and bite the stick that hurts him instead of expending his anger on the hand that holds it.
Now, every Girton girl is well aware that the opossum, though it is a marsupial too, differs inexpressibly in psychological development from the kangaroo and the wombat.
Your opossum, in short, is active, sly, and extremely intelligent.
He knows his way about the world he lives in.
'A 'possum up a gum-tree' is accepted by the observant American mind as the very incarnation of animal cleverness, cunning, and duplicity.
In negro folk-lore the resourceful 'possum takes the place of Reynard the Fox in European stories: he is the Macchiavelli of wild beasts: there is no ruse on earth of which he isn't amply capable, no artful trick which he can't design and execute, no wily manoeuvre which he can't contrive and carry to an end successfully.
All guile and intrigue, the 'possum can circumvent even Uncle Remus himself by his crafty diplomacy.
And what is it that makes all the difference between this 'cute Yankee marsupial and his backward and belated Australian cousins?
Why, nothing but the possession of a prehensile hand and tail.
Therein lies the whole secret.
The opossum's hind foot has a genuine opposable thumb; and he also uses his tail in climbing as a supernumerary hand, almost as much as do any of the monkeys.
He often suspends himself by it, like an acrobat, swings his body to and fro to get up steam, then lets go suddenly, and flies away to a distant branch, which he clutches by means of his hand-like hind feet.
If the toes play him false, he can 'recover his tip,' as circus-folk put it, with his prehensile tail.
The consequence is that the opossum, being able to form for himself clear and accurate conceptions of the real shapes and relations of things by these two distinct grasping organs, has acquired an unusual amount of general intelligence.
And further, in the keen competition of the American continent, he has been forced to develop an amount of cleverness and low cunning which leaves his Australian poor relations far behind in the Middle Ages of evolution.
At the risk of seeming to run off at a tangent and forsake our ostensible subject, pretty Poll, altogether, I must just pause for one moment more to answer an objection which I know has been trembling on the tip of your tongue any time the last five minutes.
You've been waiting till you could get a word in edgeways to give me a friendly nudge and remark very wisely, 'But look here, I say; how about the dog and the horse in your argument?
_They've_ got no prehensile organ that ever I heard of, and yet they're universally allowed to be the cleverest and most intelligent of all earthly quadrupeds.'
True, O most sapient and courteous objector.
I grant it you at once.
But observe the difference.
The cleverness of the horse and the dog is acquired, not original.
It has probably arisen in the course of their long hereditary intercourse and companionship with man, the cleverest and most serviceable individuals being deliberately selected from generation to generation, as dams and sires to breed from.
We can't fairly compare these artificial human products, therefore, with wild races whose intelligence is all native and self-evolved.
Moreover, the horse at least _has_ to some slight extent a prehensile organ in his very mobile and sensitive lip, which he uses like an undeveloped or rudimentary proboscis to feel things all over with.
So that the dog alone remains as a contradictory instance; and even the dog derives his cleverness indirectly from man, whose hand and thumb in the last resort are really at the bottom of his vicarious wisdom.
We may conclude, then, I believe, that touch, as Mr. Herbert Spencer admirably words it, is 'the mother-tongue of the senses;' and that in proportion as animals have or have not highly developed and serviceable tactile organs will they rank high or low in the intellectual hierarchy of nature.
Now, how does this bear upon the family of parrots?
Well, in the first place, everybody who has ever kept a cockatoo or a macaw in domestic slavery is well aware that in no other birds do the claws so closely resemble a human or simian hand, not indeed in outer form or appearance, but in opposability of the thumbs and in perfection of grasping power.
The toes on each foot are arranged in opposite pairs--two turning in front and two backward, which gives all parrots their peculiar firmness in clinging on a perch or on the branch of a tree with one foot only, while they extend the other to grasp a fruit or to clutch at any object they desire to take possession of.
True, this peculiarity isn't entirely confined to the parrots alone, as such.
They share the division of the foot into two thumbs and two fingers with a whole large group of allied birds, called, in the charmingly concise and poetical language of technical ornithology, the Scansorial Picarians, and more generally, known to the unlearned herd (meaning you and me) by their several names of woodpeckers, cuckoos, toucans, and plantain-eaters.
All the members of this great group, of which the parrots proper are only the most advanced and developed family, possess the same arrangement of the digits into front-toes and back-toes.
But in none is the arrangement so perfect as in the parrots, and in none is the power of grasping an object all round so completely developed and so pregnant in moral and intellectual consequences.
All the Scansorial Picarians, however (if the reader with his proverbial courtesy will kindly pardon me the inevitable use of such very bad words), are essentially tree-haunters; and the tree-haunting and climbing habit, as is well beknown, seems particularly favourable to the growth of intelligence.
Thus schoolboys climb trees--but I forgot: this is a scientific article, and such levity is inconsistent with the dignity of science.
Let us be serious!
Well, at any rate, monkeys, squirrels, opossums, wild cats, are all of them climbers, and all of them, in the act of clinging, jumping, and balancing themselves on boughs, gain such an accurate idea of geometrical figure, perspective, distance, and the true nature of space-relations, as could hardly be acquired in any other manner.
In one word, they thoroughly understand space of three dimensions, and the tactual realities that answer to and underlie each visible appearance.
This is the very substratum of all intelligence; and the monkeys, possessing it more profoundly than any other animals, have accordingly taken the top of the form in the competitive examination perpetually conducted by survival of the fittest.
So, too, among birds, the parrots and their allies climb trees and rocks with exceptional ease and agility.
Even in their own department they are the great feathered acrobats.
Anybody who watches a woodpecker, for example, grasping the bark of a tree with its crooked and powerful toes, while it steadies itself behind by digging its stiff tail-feathers into the crannies of the outer rind, will readily understand how clear a notion the bird must gain into the practical action of the laws of gravity.
But the true parrots go a step further in the same direction than the woodpeckers or the toucans; for, in addition to prehensile feet, they have also a highly-developed prehensile bill, and within it a tongue which acts in reality as an organ of touch.
They use their crooked beaks to help them in climbing from branch to branch; and being thus provided alike with wings, legs, hands, fingers, bill and tongue, they are in fact the most truly arboreal of all known animals, and present in the fullest and highest degree all the peculiar features of the tree-haunting existence.
Nor is that all.
Alone among birds or mammals, the parrots have the curious peculiarity of being able to move the upper as well as the lower jaw.
It is this strange mobility of both the mandibles together, combined with the crafty effect of the sideways glance from those artful eyes, that gives the characteristic air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face.
We naturally expect so clever a bird to speak.
And when it turns upon us suddenly with a copy-book maxim, we are in no way astonished at its surpassing smartness.
Parrots are vegetarians; with a single degraded exception to whom I shall recur hereafter, Sir Henry Thompson himself couldn't find fault with their regimen.
They live chiefly upon a light but nutritious diet of fruit and seeds, or upon the abundant nectar of rich tropical flowers.
And it is mainly for the sake of getting at their chosen food that they have developed the large and powerful bills which characterise the family.
You may have perhaps noted that most tropical fruit-eaters, like the hornbills and the toucans, are remarkable for the size and strength of their beaks: if you haven't, I dare say you will generously take my word for it.
And, _per contra_, it may also have struck you that most tropical fruits have thick or hard or nauseous rinds, which need to be torn off before the monkeys or birds for whose use they are intended, can get at them and eat them.
Our little northern strawberries, and raspberries, and currants, and whortleberries, developed with a single eye to the petty robins and finches of temperate climates, can be popped into, the mouth whole and eaten as they stand: they are meant for small birds to devour, and to disperse the tiny undigested nut-like seeds in return for the bribe of the soft pulp that surrounds them.
But it is quite otherwise with oranges, shaddocks, bananas, plantains, mangoes, and pine-apples: those great tropical fruits can only be eaten properly with a knife and fork, after stripping off the hard and often acrid rind that guards and preserves them.
They lay themselves out for dispersion by monkeys, toucans, and other relatively large and powerful fruit-eaters; and the rind is put there as a barrier against small thieves who would rob the sweet pulp, but be absolutely incapable of carrying away and dispersing the large and richly-stored seeds it covers.
Parrots and toucans, however, have no knives and forks to cut off the rind with; but as monkeys use their fingers, so the birds use for the same purpose their sharp and powerful bills.
No better nut-crackers and fruit-parers could possibly be found.
The parrot, in particular, has developed for the purpose his curved and inflated beak--a wonderful weapon, keen as a tailor's scissors, and moved by powerful muscles on either side of the face which bring together the cutting edges with extraordinary energy.
The way the bird holds the fruit gingerly in one claw, while he strips off the rind dexterously with his under-hung lower mandible, and keeps a sharp look-out meanwhile on either side with those sly and stealthy eyes of his for a possible intruder, suggests to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native forest.
One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of his hereditary foe: one sees the canny parrot ever prepared for his rapid attack, and ever eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his impertinent interference with an unoffending fellow-citizen of the arboreal community.
Still, there are parrots and parrots, of course.
Not all this vast family are in all things of like passions one with another.
The great black cockatoo, for example, the largest of the tribe, lives almost entirely off the central shoot or 'cabbage' of palm-trees: an expensive kind of food, for when once the 'cabbage' is eaten the tree dies forthwith, so that each black cockatoo must have killed in his time whole groves of cabbage-palms.
Others, again, feed off fruits and seeds; and not a few are entirely adapted for flower-haunting and honey-sucking.
As a group, the parrots are comparatively modern birds.
Indeed, they could have no place in the world till the big tropical fruits and nuts were beginning to be developed.
And it is now pretty certain that fruits and nuts are for the most part of very recent and special evolution.
To put it briefly, the monkeys and parrots developed the fruits and nuts, while the fruits and nuts returned the compliment by developing conversely the monkeys and parrots.
In other words, both types grew up side by side in mutual dependence, and evolved themselves _pari passu_ for one another's benefit.
Without the fruits there could be no fruit-eaters; and without the fruit-eaters to disperse their seeds, there could just to the same extent be no fruits to speak of.
Most of the parrots very much resemble the monkeys and other tropical fruit-feeders in their habits and manners.
They are gregarious, mischievous, noisy, and irresponsible.
They have no moral sense, and are fond of practical jokes and other schoolboy horseplay.
They move about in flocks, screeching aloud as they go, and alight together on some tree well covered with berries.
No doubt, they herd together for the sake of protection and screech both to keep the flock in a body and to strike alarm and consternation into the breasts of their enemies.
When danger threatens, the first bird that perceives it sounds a note of warning; and in a moment the whole troop is on the wing at once, vociferous and eager, roaring forth a song in their own tongue which may be roughly interpreted as stating in English that they don't want to fight, but by Jingo, if they do, they'll tear their enemy to shreds and drink his blood up too.
The common grey parrot, the best known in confinement of all his kind, and unrivalled as an orator for his graces of speech, is a native of West Africa; so that he shares with other West Africans that perfect command of language which has always been a marked characteristic of the negro race.
He feeds in a general way upon palm-nuts, bananas, mangoes, and guavas, but he is by no means averse, if opportunity offers, to the Indian corn of the industrious native.
His wife accompanies him in his solitary rambles, for they are not gregarious.
In her native haunts, indeed, Polly is an unsociable bird.
It is only in confinement that her finer qualities come out, and that she develops into a speech-maker of distinguished attainments.
A very peculiar and exceptional offshoot of the parrot group is the brush-tongued lory, several species of which are common in Australia, India, and the Molucca Islands.
These pretty and interesting creatures are in point of fact parrots which have practically made themselves into humming-birds by long continuance in the poetical habit of visiting flowers for food.
Like Mr. Oscar Wilde in his æsthetic days, they breakfast off a lily.
Flitting about from tree to tree with great rapidity, they thrust their long extensible tongues, pencilled with honey-gathering hairs, into the tubes of many big tropical blossoms.
The lories, indeed, live entirely on nectar, and they are so common in the region they have made their own that all the larger flowers there have been developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like honey-collector.
In most parrots the mouth is dry and the tongue horny; but in the lories it is moist and much more like the same organ in the humming-birds and sun-birds.
The prevalence of very large and brilliantly coloured flowers in the Malayan region must be set down for the most part to the selective action of these æsthetic and colour-loving little brush-tongued parrots.
Australia and New Zealand, as everybody knows, are the countries where everything goes by contraries.
And it is here that the parrot group has developed some of its strangest and most abnormal offshoots.
One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls.
Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is, to put it plainly, a lory which has assumed all the outer appearance and habits of an owl.
A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an undertone of green to bespeak its parrot origin: while its face is entirely made up of two great disks, surrounding the eyes, which succeed in giving it a most marked and unmistakable owl-like appearance.
Now, why should a parrot so strangely disguise itself and belie its ancestry?
The reason is plain.
It found a place for it ready made in nature.
New Zealand is a remote and sparsely-stocked island, peopled by mere casual waifs and strays of life from adjacent but still very distant continents.
There are no dangerous enemies there.
Here, then, was a clear chance for a nightly prowler.
The owl-parrot with true business instinct saw the opening thus clearly laid before it, and took to a nocturnal and burrowing life, with the natural consequence that it acquired in time the dingy plumage, crepuscular eyes, and broad disk-like reflectors of other prowling night-fliers.
Unlike the owls, however, the owl-parrot, true to the vegetarian instincts of the whole lory race, lives almost entirely upon sprigs of mosses and other creeping plants.
It is thus essentially a ground bird; and as it feeds at night in a country possessing no native beasts of prey, it has almost lost the power of flight, and uses its wings only as a sort of parachute to break its fall in descending from a rock or tree to its accustomed feeding-ground.
To get up again, it climbs, parrot-like, with its hooked claws, up the surface of the trunk or the face of a precipice.
Even more aberrant in its ways, however, than the burrowing owl-parrot, is that other strange and hated New Zealand lory, the kea, which, alone among its kind, has abjured the gentle ancestral vegetarianism of the cockatoos and macaws, in favour of a carnivorous diet of singular ferocity.
And what is odder still, this evil habit has been developed in the kea since the colonization of New Zealand by the English, those most demoralizing of new-comers.
The settlers have taught the Maori to wear tall hats and to drink strong liquors: and they have thrown temptation in the way of even the once innocent native parrot.
Before the white man came, in fact, the kea was a mild-mannered fruit-eating or honey-sucking bird.
But as soon as sheep-stations were established in the island these degenerate parrots began to acquire a distinct taste for raw mutton.
At first, to be sure, they ate only the sheep's heads and offal that were thrown out from the slaughter-houses picking the bones as clean of meat as a dog or a jackal.
But in process of time, as the taste for blood grew upon them, a still viler idea entered into their wicked heads.
The first step on the downward path suggested the second.
If dead sheep are good to eat, why not also living ones?
The kea, pondering deeply on this abstruse problem, solved it at once with an emphatic affirmative.
And he straightway proceeded to act upon his convictions, and invent a really hideous mode of procedure.
Perching on the backs of the living sheep he has now learnt the exact spot where the kidneys are to be found; and he tears open the flesh to get at these dainty morsels, which he pulls out and devours, leaving the unhappy animal to die in miserable agony.
As many as two hundred ewes have thus been killed in a night at a single station.
I need hardly add that the sheep-farmer naturally resents this irregular proceeding, so opposed to all ideals of good grazing, and that the days of the kea are now numbered in New Zealand.
But from the purely psychological point of view the case is an interesting one, as being the best recorded instance of the growth of a new and complex instinct actually under the eyes of human observers.
One word as to the general colouring of the parrot group as a whole.
Tropical forestine birds have usually a ground tone of green because that colour enables them best to escape notice among the monotonous verdure of equatorial woodland scenery.
In the north, to be sure, green is a very conspicuous colour; but that is only because for half the year our trees are bare, and even during the other half they lack that 'breadth of tropic shade' which characterises the forests of all hot countries.
Therefore, in temperate climates, the common ground-tone of birds is brown, to harmonise with the bare boughs and leafless twigs, the clods of earth and dead turf or stubble.
But in the evergreen tropics green is the right hue for concealment or defence.
Therefore the parrots, the most purely tropical family of birds on earth, are mostly greenish; and among the smaller and more defenceless sorts, like the familiar little love-birds, where the need for protection is greatest, the green of the plumage is almost unbroken.
Of the tiny Pigmy Parrots of New Guinea, for instance, Mr. Bowdler Sharpe says: 'Owing to their small size and the resemblance of their green colouring to the forests they inhabit, they are not easily seen, and until recent years were very hard to procure.'
And of the green parrot of Jamaica, Mr. Gosse remarks: 'Often we hear their voices proceeding from a certain tree, or else have marked the descent of a flock on it; but on proceeding to the spot, though the eye has not wandered from it, we cannot discover an individual.
We go close to the tree, but all is silent and still as death.
We institute a careful survey of every part with the eye, to detect the slightest motion, or the form of a bird among the leaves, but all in vain.
We begin to think they have stolen off unperceived; but on throwing a stone into the tree, a dozen throats burst forth into a cry, and as many green birds rush forth upon the wing.
Green may thus be regarded as the normal or basal parrot tint, from which all other colours are special decorative variations.
But fruit-eating and flower-feeding creatures, like butterflies and humming-birds--seeking their food ever among the bright berries and brilliant flowers, almost invariably acquire in the long run an æsthetic taste for pure and varied colouring, and by the aid of sexual selection this taste stereotypes itself at last in their own wings and plumage.
They choose their mates for colour as they choose their foodstuffs.
Hence all the larger and more gregarious parrots, in which the need for concealment is less, tend to diversify the fundamental green of their coats with crimson, yellow, or blue, which in some cases take possession of the entire body.
The largest kinds of all, like the great blue and yellow or crimson macaws, are as gorgeous as Solomon in all his glory: and they are also the species least afraid of enemies; for in Brazil you may often see them wending their way homeward openly in pairs every evening, with as little attempt at concealment as rooks in England.
In the Moluccas and New Guinea, says Mr. Wallace, white cockatoos and gorgeous lories in crimson and blue are the very commonest objects in the local fauna.
Even the New Zealand owl-parrot, however, still retains many traces of his original greenness, mixed with the dirty brown and dingy yellow of his acquired nocturnal and burrowing nature.
If fruit-eaters are fine, flower-haunters are magnificent.
And the brush-tongued lories, that search for nectar among the bells of Malayan blossoms, are the brightest-coloured of all the parrot tribes.
Indeed, no group of birds, according to Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace (who ought to know, if anybody does), exhibits within the same limited number of types so extraordinary a diversity and richness of colouring as the parrots.
'As a rule,' he says, 'parrots may be termed green birds, the majority of the species having this colour as the basis of their plumage, relieved by caps, gorgets, bands and wing-spots of other and brighter hues.
Yet this general green tint sometimes changes into light or deep blue, as in some macaws; into pure yellow or rich orange, as in some of the American macaw-parrots; into purple, grey or dove-colour, as in some American, African, and Indian species; into the purest crimson, as in some of the lories; into rosy-white and pure white, as in the cockatoos; and into a deep purple, ashy or black, as in several Papuan, Australian, and Mascarene species.
There is in fact hardly a single distinct and definable colour that cannot be fairly matched among the 390 species of known parrots.
Their habits, too, are such as to bring them prominently before the eye.
They usually feed in flocks; they are noisy, and so attract attention; they love gardens, orchards, and open sunny places; they wander about far in search of food, and towards sunset return homeward in noisy flocks, or in constant pairs.
Their forms and motions are often beautiful and attractive.
The immensely long tails of the macaws and the more slender tails of the Indian parroquets, the fine crest of the cockatoos, the swift flight of many of the smaller species, and the graceful motions of the little love-birds and allied forms, together with their affectionate natures, aptitude for domestication, and power of mimicry, combine to render them at once the most conspicuous and the most attractive of all the specially tropical forms of bird life.'
I have purposely left to the last the one point about parrots which most often attracts the attention of the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless: I mean their power of mimicry in human language.
And I believe I am justified in passing it over lightly.
For in fact this power is but a very incidental result of the general intelligence of parrots, combined with the other peculiarities of their social life and forestine character.
Dominant woodland animals, indeed, like monkeys, parrots, toucans, and hornbills, at least if vegetarian in their habits, are almost always gregarious, noisy, mischievous, and imitative.
And the imitation results directly from the unusual intelligence; for, after all, what is the power of learning itself--at least, in all save its very highest phases--but the faculty of accurately imitating another?
Monkeys for the most part imitate action only, because they haven't very varied or flexible voices.
Parrots and many other birds, on the contrary--like the starling and still more markedly the American mocking-bird--being endowed with considerable flexibility of voice, imitate either songs or spoken words with great distinctness.
In the parrot the power of attention is also very considerable, for the bird will often try over with itself repeatedly the lesson it has set itself to learn.
But people too generally forget that at best the parrot knows only the general application of a sentence, not the separate meanings of its component words.
It knows, for example, that 'Polly wants a lump of sugar' is a phrase often followed by a present of food.
But to believe it can understand an abstract expression, like the famous 'By Jove!
what a beastly lot of parrots!'
is to confound learning by rote with genuine comprehension.
A careful review of all the evidence makes almost every scientific observer conclude that at most a parrot knows a word of command as a horse knows 'Whoa!'
or a dog knows the order to hunt for rats in the wainscot.
HIGH LIFE.
Everybody knows mountain flowers are beautiful.
As one rises up any minor height in the Alps or the Pyrenees below snow-level, one notices at once the extraordinary brilliancy and richness of the blossoms one meets there.
All nature is dressed in its brightest robes.
Great belts of blue gentian hang like a zone on the mountain slopes; masses of yellow globe-flower star the upland pastures; nodding heads of soldanella lurk low among the rugged boulders by the glacier's side.
No lowland blossoms have such vividness of colouring, or grow in such conspicuous patches.
To strike the eye from afar, to attract and allure at a distance, is the great aim and end in life of the Alpine flora.
Now, why are Alpine plants so anxious to be seen of men and angels?
Why do they flaunt their golden glories so openly before the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring violet?
The answer is, Because of the extreme rarity of the mountain air.
It's the barometer that does it.
At first sight, I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the traditional connection between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple.
But, like the amateur stories in country papers, it is 'founded on fact,' for all that.
(Imagine, by the way, a tale founded entirely on fiction!
How charmingly aerial!)
By a roundabout road, through varying chains of cause and effect, the rarity of the air does really account in the long run for the beauty and conspicuousness of the mountain flowers.
For bees, the common go-betweens of the loves of the plants, cease to range about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below snow-level.
And why?
Because it's too cold for them?
Oh, dear, no: on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermometer doesn't rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conventional character demands of them among the golden cups of the first timid crocuses.
Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a temperature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously on his communistic errand.
But bees, one must remember, have heavy bodies and relatively small wings: in the rarefied air of mountain heights they can't manage to support themselves in the most literal sense.
Hence their place in these high stations of the world is taken by the gay and airy butterflies, which have lighter bodies and a much bigger expanse of wing-area to buoy them up.
In the valleys and plains the bee competes at an advantage with the butterflies for all the sweets of life: but in this broad sub-glacial belt on the mountain-sides the butterflies in turn have things all their own way.
They flit about like monarchs of all they survey, without a rival in the world to dispute their supremacy.
And how does the preponderance of butterflies in the upper regions of the air affect the colour and brilliancy of the flowers?
Simply thus.
Bees, as we are all aware on the authority of the great Dr. Watts, are industrious creatures which employ each shining hour (well-chosen epithet, 'shining') for the good of the community, and to the best purpose.
The bee, in fact, is the _bon bourgeois_ of the insect world: he attends strictly to business, loses no time in wild or reckless excursions, and flies by the straightest path from flower to flower of the same species with mathematical precision.
Moreover, he is careful, cautious, observant, and steady-going--a model business man, in fact, of sound middle-class morals and sober middle-class intelligence.
No flitting for him, no coquetting, no fickleness.
Therefore, the flowers that have adapted themselves to his needs, and that depend upon him mainly or solely for fertilisation, waste no unnecessary material on those big flaunting coloured posters which we human observers know as petals.
They have, for the most part, simple blue or purple flowers, tubular in shape and, individually, inconspicuous in hue; and they are oftenest arranged in long spikes of blossom to avoid wasting the time of their winged Mr. Bultitudes.
So long as they are just bright enough to catch the bee's eye a few yards away, they are certain to receive a visit in due season from that industrious and persistent commercial traveller.
Having a circle of good customers upon whom they can depend with certainty for fertilisation, they have no need to waste any large proportion of their substance upon expensive advertisements or gaudy petals.
It is just the opposite with butterflies.
Those gay and irrepressible creatures, the fashionable and frivolous element in the insect world, gad about from flower to flower over great distances at once, and think much more of sunning themselves and of attracting their fellows than of attention to business.
And the reason is obvious, if one considers for a moment the difference in the political and domestic economy of the two opposed groups.
For the honey-bees are neuters, sexless purveyors of the hive, with no interest on earth save the storing of honey for the common benefit of the phalanstery to which they belong.
But the butterflies are full-fledged males and females, on the hunt through the world for suitable partners: they think far less of feeding than of displaying their charms: a little honey to support them during their flight is all they need:--'For the bee, a long round of ceaseless toil; for me,' says the gay butterfly, 'a short life and a merry one.'
Mr. Harold Skimpole needed only 'music, sunshine, a few grapes.'
The butterflies are of his kind.
The high mountain zone is for them a true ball-room: the flowers are light refreshments laid out in the vestibule.
Their real business in life is not to gorge and lay by, but to coquette and display themselves and find fitting partners.
So while the bees with their honey-bags, like the financier with his money-bags, are storing up profit for the composite community, the butterfly, on the contrary, lays himself out for an agreeable flutter, and sips nectar where he will, over large areas of country.
He flies rather high, flaunting his wings in the sun, because he wants to show himself off in all his airy beauty: and when he spies a bed of bright flowers afar off on the sun-smitten slopes, he sails off towards them lazily, like a grand signior who amuses himself.
No regular plodding through a monotonous spike of plain little bells for him: what he wants is brilliant colour, bold advertisement, good honey, and plenty of it.
He doesn't care to search.
Who wants his favours must make himself conspicuous.
Now, plants are good shopkeepers; they lay themselves out strictly to attract their customers.
Hence the character of the flowers on this beeless belt of mountain side is entirely determined by the character of the butterfly fertilisers.
Only those plants which laid themselves out from time immemorial to suit the butterflies, in other words, have succeeded in the long run in the struggle for existence.
So the butterfly-plants of the butterfly-zone are all strictly adapted to butterfly tastes and butterfly fancies.
They are, for the most part, individually large and brilliantly coloured: they have lots of honey, often stored at the base of a deep and open bell which the long proboscis of the insect can easily penetrate: and they habitually grow close together in broad belts or patches, so that the colour of each reinforces and aids the colour of the others.
It is this cumulative habit that accounts for the marked flowerbed or jam-tart character which everybody must have noticed in the high Alpine flora.
Aristocracies usually pride themselves on their antiquity: and the high life of the mountains is undeniably ancient.
The plants and animals of the butterfly-zone belong to a special group which appears everywhere in Europe and America about the limit of snow, whether northward or upward.
For example, I was pleased to note near the summit of Mount Washington (the highest peak in New Hampshire) that a large number of the flowers belonged to species well known on the open plains of Lapland and Finland.
The plants of the High Alps are found also, as a rule, not only on the High Pyrenees, the Carpathians, the Scotch Grampians, and the Norwegian fjelds, but also round the Arctic Circle in Europe and America.
They reappear at long distances where suitable conditions recur: they follow the snow-line as the snow-line recedes ever in summer higher north toward the pole or higher vertically toward the mountain summits.
And this bespeaks in one way to the reasoning mind a very ancient ancestry.
It shows they date back to a very old and cold epoch.
Let me give a single instance which strikingly illustrates the general principle.
Near the top of Mount Washington, as aforesaid, lives to this day a little colony of very cold-loving and mountainous butterflies, which never descend below a couple of thousand feet from the wind-swept summit.
Except just there, there are no more of there sort anywhere about: and as far as the butterflies themselves are aware, no others of their species exist on earth: they never have seen a single one of their kind, save of their own little colony.
One might compare them with the Pitcairn Islanders in the South Seas--an isolated group of English origin, cut off by a vast distance from all their congeners in Europe or America.
But if you go north some eight or nine hundred miles from New Hampshire to Labrador, at a certain point the same butterfly reappears, and spreads northward toward the pole in great abundance.
Now, how did this little colony of chilly insects get separated from the main body, and islanded, as it were, on a remote mountain-top in far warmer New Hampshire?
The answer is, they were stranded there at the end of the Glacial epoch.
A couple of hundred thousand years ago or thereabouts--don't let us haggle, I beg of you, over a few casual centuries--the whole of northern Europe and America was covered from end to end, as everybody knows, by a sheet of solid ice, like the one which Frithiof Nansen crossed from sea to sea on his own account in Greenland.
For many thousand years, with occasional warmer spells, that vast ice-sheet brooded, silent and grim, over the face of the two continents.
Life was extinct as far south as the latitude of New York and London.
No plant or animal survived the general freezing.
Not a creature broke the monotony of that endless glacial desert.
At last, as the celestial cycle came round in due season, fresh conditions supervened.
Warmer weather set in, and the ice began to melt.
Then the plants and animals of the sub-glacial district were pushed slowly northward by the warmth after the retreating ice-cap.
As time went on, the climate of the plains got too hot to hold them.
The summer was too much for the glacial types to endure.
They remained only on the highest mountain peaks or close to the southern limit of eternal snow.
In this way, every isolated range in either continent has its own little colony of arctic or glacial plants and animals, which still survive by themselves, unaffected by intercourse with their unknown and unsuspected fellow-creatures elsewhere.
Not only has the Glacial epoch left these organic traces of its existence, however; in some parts of New Hampshire, where the glaciers were unusually thick and deep, fragments of the primæval ice itself still remain on the spots where they were originally stranded.
Among the shady glens of the white mountains there occur here and there great masses of ancient ice, the unmelted remnant of primæval glaciers; and one of these is so large that an artificial cave has been cleverly excavated in it, as an attraction for tourists, by the canny Yankee proprietor.
Elsewhere the old ice-blocks are buried under the _débris_ of moraine-stuff and alluvium, and are only accidentally discovered by the sinking of what are locally known as ice-wells.
No existing conditions can account for the formation of such solid rocks of ice at such a depth in the soil.
They are essentially glacier-like in origin and character: they result from the pressure of snow into a crystalline mass in a mountain valley: and they must have remained there unmelted ever since the close of the Glacial epoch, which, by Dr. Croll's calculations, must most probably have ceased to plague our earth some eighty thousand years ago.
Modern America, however, has no respect for antiquity: and it is at present engaged in using up this palæocrystic deposit--this belated storehouse of prehistoric ice--in the manufacture of gin slings and brandy cocktails.
As one scales a mountain of moderate height--say seven or eight thousand feet--in a temperate climate, one is sure to be struck by the gradual diminution as one goes in the size of the trees, till at last they tail off into mere shrubs and bushes.
This diminution--an old commonplace of tourists--is a marked characteristic of mountain plants, and it depends, of course, in the main upon the effect of cold, and of the wind in winter.
Cold, however, is by far the more potent factor of the two, though it is the least often insisted upon: and this can be seen in a moment by anyone who remembers that trees shade off in just the self-same manner near the southern limit of permanent snow in the Arctic regions.
And the way the cold acts is simply this: it nips off the young buds in spring in exposed situations, as the chilly sea-breeze does with coast plants, which, as we commonly but incorrectly say, are "blown sideways" from seaward.
Of course, the lower down one gets, and the nearer to the soil, the warmer the layer of air becomes, both because there is greater radiation, and because one can secure a little more shelter.
So, very far north, and very near the snow-line on mountains, you always find the vegetation runs low and stunted.
It takes advantage of every crack, every cranny in the rocks, every sunny little nook, every jutting point or wee promontory of shelter.
And as the mountain plants have been accustomed for ages to the strenuous conditions of such cold and wind-swept situations, they have ended, of course, by adapting themselves to that station in life to which it has pleased the powers that be to call them.
They grow quite naturally low and stumpy and rosette-shaped: they are compact of form and very hard of fibre: they present no surface of resistance to the wind in any way; rounded and boss-like, they seldom rise above the level of the rooks and stones, whose interstices they occupy.
It is this combination of characters that makes mountain plants such favourites with florists: for they possess of themselves that close-grown habit and that rich profusion of clustered flowers which it is the grand object of the gardener by artificial selection to produce and encourage.
When one talks of the 'the limit of trees' on a mountain side, however, it must be remembered that the phrase is used in a strictly human or Pickwickian sense, and that it is only the size, not the type, of the vegetation that is really in question.
For trees exist even on the highest hill-tops: only they have accommodated themselves to the exigencies of the situation.
Smaller and ever smaller species have been developed by natural selection to suit the peculiarities of these inclement spots.
Take, for example, the willow and poplar group.
Nobody would deny that a weeping willow by an English river, or a Lombardy poplar in an Italian avenue, was as much of a true tree as an oak or a chestnut.
But as one mounts towards the bare and wind-swept mountain heights one finds that the willows begin to grow downward gradually.
The 'netted willow' of the Alps and Pyrenees, which shelters itself under the lee of little jutting rocks, attains the height of only a few inches; while the 'herbaceous willow,' common on all very high mountains in Western Europe, is a tiny creeping weed, which nobody would ever take for a forest tree by origin at all, unless he happened to see it in the catkin-bearing stage, when its true nature and history would become at once apparent to him.
Yet this little herb-like willow, one of the most northerly and hardy of European plants, is a true tree at heart none the less for all that.
Soft and succulent as it looks in branch and leaf, you may yet count on it sometimes as many rings of annual growth as on a lordly Scotch fir-tree.
But where?
Why, underground.
For see how cunning it is, this little stunted descendant of proud forest lords: hard-pressed by nature, it has learnt to make the best of its difficult and precarious position.
It has a woody trunk at core, like all other trees; but this trunk never appears above the level of the soil: it creeps and roots underground in tortuous zigzags between the crags and boulders that lie strewn through its thin sheet of upland leaf-mould.
By this simple plan the willow manages to get protection in winter, on the same principle as when we human gardeners lay down the stems of vines: only the willow remains laid down all the year and always.
But in summer it sends up its short-lived herbaceous branches, covered with tiny green leaves, and ending at last in a single silky catkin.
Yet between the great weeping willow and this last degraded mountain representative of the same primitive type, you can trace in Europe alone at least a dozen distinct intermediate forms, all well marked in their differences, and all progressively dwarfed by long stress of unfavourable conditions.
From the combination of such unfavourable conditions in Arctic countries and under the snow-line of mountains there results a curious fact, already hinted at above, that the coldest floras are also, from the purely human point of view, the most beautiful.
Not, of course, the most luxuriant: for lush richness of foliage and 'breadth of tropic shade' (to quote a noble lord) one must go, as everyone knows, to the equatorial regions.
But, contrary to the common opinion, the tropics, hoary shams, are not remarkable for the abundance or beauty of their flowers.
Quite otherwise, indeed: an unrelieved green strikes the keynote of equatorial forests.
This is my own experience, and it is borne out (which is far more important) by Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who has seen a wider range of the untouched tropics, in all four hemispheres--northern, southern, eastern, western--than any other man, I suppose, that ever lived on this planet.
And Mr. Wallace is firm in his conviction that the tropics in this respect are a complete fraud.
Bright flowers are there quite conspicuously absent.
It is rather in the cold and less favoured regions of the world that one must look for fine floral displays and bright masses of colour.
Close up to the snow-line the wealth of flowers is always the greatest.
In order to understand this apparent paradox one must remember that the highest type of flowers, from the point of view of organisation, is not at the same time by any means the most beautiful.
On the contrary, plants with very little special adaptation to any particular insect, like the water-lilies and the poppies, are obliged to flaunt forth in very brilliant hues, and to run to very large sizes in order to attract the attention of a great number of visitors, one or other of whom may casually fertilise them; while plants with very special adaptations, like the sage and mint group, or the little English orchids, are so cunningly arranged that they can't fail of fertilisation at the very first visit, which of course enables them to a great extent to dispense with the aid of big or brilliant petals.
So that, where the struggle for life is fiercest, and adaptation most perfect, the flora will on the whole be not most, but least, conspicuous in the matter of very handsome flowers.
Now, the struggle for life is fiercest, and the wealth of nature is greatest, one need hardly say, in tropical climates.
There alone do we find every inch of soil 'encumbered by its waste fertility,' as Comus puts it; weighed down by luxuriant growth of tree, shrub, herb, creeper.
There alone do lizards lurk in every hole; beetles dwell manifold in every cranny; butterflies flock thick in every grove; bees, ants, and flies swarm by myriads on every sun-smitten hillside.
Accordingly, in the tropics, adaptation reaches its highest point; and tangled richness, not beauty of colour, becomes the dominant note of the equatorial forests.
Now and then, to be sure, as you wander through Brazilian or Malayan woods, you may light upon some bright tree clad in scarlet bloom, or some glorious orchid drooping pendant from a bough with long sprays of beauty: but such sights are infrequent.
Green, and green, and ever green again--that is the general feeling of the equatorial forest: as different as possible from the rich mosaic of a high alp in early June, or a Scotch hillside deep in golden gorse and purple heather in broad August sunshine.
In very cold countries, on the other hand, though the conditions are severe, the struggle for existence is not really so hard, because, in one word, there are fewer competitors.
The field is less occupied; life is less rich, less varied, less self-strangling.
And therefore specialisation hasn't gone nearly so far in cold latitudes or altitudes.
Lower and simpler types everywhere occupy the soil; mosses, matted flowers, small beetles, dwarf butterflies.
Nature is less luxuriant, yet in some ways more beautiful.
As we rise on the mountains the forest trees disappear, and with them the forest beasts, from bears to squirrels; a low, wind-swept vegetation succeeds, very poor in species, and stunted in growth, but making a floor of rich flowers almost unknown elsewhere.
The humble butterflies and beetles of the chillier elevation produce in the result more beautiful bloom than the highly developed honey-seekers of the richer and warmer lowlands.
Luxuriance is atoned for by a Turkey carpet of floral magnificence.
How, then, has the world at large fallen into the pardonable error of believing tropical nature to be so rich in colouring, and circumpolar nature to be so dingy and unlovable?
Simply thus, I believe.
The tropics embrace the largest land areas in the world, and are richer by a thousand times in species of plants and animals than all the rest of the earth in a lump put together.
That richness necessarily results from the fierceness of the competition.
Now among this enormous mass of tropical plants it naturally happens that some have finer flowers than any temperate species; while as to the animals and birds, they are undoubtedly, on the whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna of colder climates.
But in the general aspect of tropical nature an occasional bright flower or brilliant parrot counts for very little among the mass of lush green which surrounds and conceals it.
On the other hand, in our museums and conservatories we sedulously pick out the rarest and most beautiful of these rare and beautiful species, and we isolate them completely from their natural surroundings.
The consequence is that the untravelled mind regards the tropics mentally as a sort of perpetual replica of the hot-houses at Kew, superimposed on the best of Mr. Bull's orchid shows.
As a matter of fact, people who know the hot world well can tell you that the average tropical woodland is much more like the dark shade of Box Hill or the deepest glades of the Black Forest.
For really fine floral display in the mass, all at once, you must go, not to Ceylon, Sumatra, Jamaica, but to the far north of Canada, the Bernese Oberland, the moors of Inverness-shire, the North Cape of Norway.
Flowers are loveliest where the climate is coldest; forests are greenest, most luxuriant, least blossoming, where the conditions of life are richest, warmest, fiercest.
In one word, High Life is always poor but beautiful.
EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS.
A singular opportunity was afforded me last summer for making myself thoroughly at home with the habits and manners of the common English geometrical spider.
By the pure chance of circumstance, two ladies of that intelligent and interesting species were kind enough to select for their temporary residence a large pane of glass just outside my drawing-room window.
Now, it so happened that this particular pane was constructed not to open, being, in fact, part of a big bow-window, the alternate sashes of which were alone intended for ventilation.
Hence it came to pass that by diligent care I was enabled to preserve my two eight-legged acquaintances from the devouring broom of the British housemaid, and to keep them constantly under observation at all times and seasons during a whole summer.
Of course this result was only obtained by a distinct exercise of despotic authority, for I know those poor spiders were a constant eyesore in Ellen's sight--the housemaid of the moment bore the name of Ellen--but I persisted in my prohibition of any forcible ejectment, and I carried my point in the end in the very teeth of that constituted domestic authority.
So successful was I, indeed, that when at last we flitted southwards ourselves with the swallows on our annual migration to the Mediterranean shores, we left Lucy and Eliza--those were the names we had given them--in undisturbed possession of their prescriptive rights in the drawing-room windows.
This year they are gone, and our home is left spiderless.
They were curious and uninviting pets, I'm bound to admit, those great juicy-looking creatures.
Nobody could say that any form of spider is precisely what our Italian friends prettily describe in their liquid way as _simpatico_.
At times, indeed, the conduct of Lucy and Eliza was so peculiarly horrible and blood-curdling in its atrocity, that even I, their best friend, who had so often interceded for their lives and saved them from the devastating duster of the aggressive housemaid--even I myself, I say, more than once debated in my own mind whether I was justified in letting them go on any longer in their career of crime unchecked, or whether I ought not rather to rush out at once, avenging rag in hand, and sweep them away at one fell swoop from the surface of a world they disgraced with their unbridled wickedness.
Eliza, in particular, I'm constrained to allow, was a perfect monster of vice--a sort of undeveloped arachnid Borgia, quick to slay and relentless in pursuit; a mass of eight-legged sins, stained with the colourless gore of ten thousand struggling victims, and absolutely without a single redeeming point in her hateful character.
And yet, whenever any more than usually horrible massacre of some pretty and innocent fly almost moved me in my righteous wrath to rush out into the garden in hot haste and put an end at once to the cruel wretch's existence with a judicial antimacassar, a number of moral scruples, such as could only be adequately resolved by the editor of the _Spectator_, always occurred spontaneously to my mind and conscience just in time to ensure that wicked Eliza a fresh spell of life in which to continue unabashed her atrocious behaviour.
Has man, I asked myself at such moments, mere human man, any right to set himself up in the place of earthly providence, as so much better and more moral than insentient nature?
If the spider cruelly devours living flies and intelligent or highly sensitive bees, we must at least remember that she has no choice in the matter, and that, as the poet justly remarks, ''tis her nature to.'
But then, on the other hand, it might be plausibly argued that 'tis our nature equally to kill the creature that we see so hatefully fulfilling the law of its own cruel being.
And yet again it might be pleaded by any able counsel who undertook the defence of Lucy or Eliza on her trial for her life against her human accusers, that she was impelled to all these evil deeds by maternal affection, one of the noblest and most unselfish of animal instincts.
Moreover, if the spider didn't prey, it would obviously die; and it seems rather hard on any creature to condemn it to death for no better reason than because it happens to have been born a member of its own kind, and not of any other and less morally objectionable species.
Jedburgh justice o£ that sort rather savours of the method pursued by the famous countryman who was found cutting a harmless amphibian into a hundred pieces with his murderous spade, and saying spitefully as he did so, at every particularly savage cut: 'I'll larn ye to be a twoad, I will; I'll larn ye to be a twoad!'
Nevertheless, in spite of all this my vaunted philosophy, I will frankly confess that more than once Eliza and Lucy sorely tried my patience, and that I was often a good deal better than half-minded in my soul to rush out in a feverish fit of moral indignation and put an end to their ghastly career of crime without waiting to hear what they had to say in their own favour, showing cause why sentence of death should not be executed upon them.
And I would have done it, I believe, had it not been for that peculiar arrangement of the drawing-room windows, which made it impossible to get at the culprits direct, without going out into the garden and round the house; which, of course, is a severe strain in wet or windy weather to put upon anybody's moral enthusiasm.
In the end, therefore, I always gave the evil-doers the benefit of the doubt; and I only mention my ethical scruples in the matter here lest scoffers should say, when they come to read what manner of things Lucy and Eliza did: 'Oh yes, that's just like those scientific folks; they're always so cold-blooded.
He could stand by and see these poor helpless flies tortured slowly to death, without a chance for their lives, and never put out a helping hand to save them!'
Well, I would only ask you one question, my sapient friend, who talk like that: Has it ever occurred to you that, if you kill one spider, you merely make room in the overflowing economy of nature for another to pick up a dishonest livelihood?
Have you ever reflected that the prime blame of spiderhood rests with Nature herself (if we may venture to personify that impersonal entity); and that she has provided such a constant supply or relay of spiders as will amply suffice to fill up all the possible vacancies that can ever occur in insect-eating circles?
Unless you have considered all these points carefully, and have an answer to give about them, you are not in a position to pronounce upon the subject, and you had better be referred for six months longer, as the medical examiners gracefully put it, to your ethical, psychological, and biological studies.
The great point about the position in which Eliza and Lucy had placed themselves was simply this.
They stood full against the light, so that we could see right through their translucent bodies, which were almost liquid to look upon, and beautifully dappled with dark spots on a grey ground in a very pretty and effective pattern.
So favourable was the opportunity for observation, indeed, that we could clearly make out with the naked eye even the joints of their legs, the hairs on their tarsi--excuse the phrase--and the very shape of their cruel tigerlike claws, as they rushed forth upon their prey in a sort of carnivorous frenzy.
At all hours of the day we could notice exactly what they were doing or suffering; and so familiar did we become with them individually and personally, that before the end of the season we recognized in detail all the differences of their characters almost as one might do with cats or dogs, and spoke of them by their Christian names like old and well-known acquaintances.
As the webs which Lucy and Eliza spun were several times broken or mutilated during the year, either by accident or the gardener, we had plenty of chances for seeing how they proceeded in making them.
The lines were in both cases stretched between a white rose-bush that climbed up one side of the window, and a purple clematis that occupied and draped the opposite mullion.
But Lucy and Eliza didn't live in the webs--those were only their snares or traps for prey; each of them had in addition a private home or apartment of her own under shelter of a rose-leaf at some distance from the treacherous geometrical structure.
The house itself consisted merely of a silken cell, built out from the rose-leaf, and connected with the snare by a single stout cord of very solid construction.
On this cord the spider kept one foot--I had almost said one hand--constantly fixed.
She poised it lightly by her claws, and whenever an insect got entangled in the web, a subtle electric message, so to speak, seemed to run along the line to the ever-watchful carnivore.
In one short second Lucy or Eliza, as the case might be, had darted out upon her quarry, and was tackling it might main, according to the particular way its size and strength rendered then and there advisable.
The method of procedure, which I shall describe more fully by-and-by, differed considerably from case to case, as these very large and strong spiders have sometimes to deal with mere tiny midges, and sometimes with extremely big and dangerous creatures, like bumble-bees, wasps, and even hornets.
In building their webs, as in many other small points, Lucy and Eliza showed from the first no inconsiderable personal differences.
Lucy began hers by spinning a long line from her spinnerets, and letting the wind carry it wherever it would; while Eliza, more architectural in character, preferred to take her lines personally from point to point, and see herself to their proper fastening.
In either case, however, the first thing done was to stretch some eight or ten stout threads from place to place on the outside of the future web, to act as _points d'appuy_ for the remainder of the structure.
To these outer threads, which the spiders strengthened so as to bear a considerable strain by doubling and trebling them, other thinner single threads were then carried radially at irregular distances, like the spokes of a wheel, from a point in the centre, where they were all made fast and connected together.
As soon as this radiating framework or scaffolding was finished, like the woof on a loom, the industrious craftswoman started at the middle, and began the task of putting in the cross-pieces or weft which were to complete and bind together the circular pattern.
These she wove round and round in a continuous spiral, setting out at the centre, and keeping on in ever-widening circlets, till she arrived at last at the exterior or foundation threads.
How she fastened these cross-pieces to the ray-lines I could never quite make out, though I often followed the work closely from inside through the pane of glass with a platyscopic lens; for, strange to say, the spiders were not in the least disturbed by being watched at their work, and never took the slightest notice of anything that went on at the other side of the window.
My impression is, however, that she gummed them together, letting them harden into one as they dried; for the thread itself is always semi-liquid when first exuded.
The cross-pieces, we observed from the very beginning, were invariably covered by little sparkling drops of something wet and beadlike, which at first in our ignorance we took for dew; for until I began systematically observing Lucy and Eliza, I will frankly confess I had never paid any particular attention to the spider-kind with the solitary exception of my old winter friends, the trap-door spiders of the Mediterranean shores.
But, after a little experience, we soon found out that these pearly drops on the web were not dew at all, but a sticky substance, akin, to that of the web, secreted by the animals themselves from their own bodies.
We also quickly discovered, coming to the observation as we did with minds unbiased by previous knowledge, that the viscid liquid in question was of the utmost importance to the spiders in securing their prey, and that unfortunate insects were not merely entangled but likewise gummed down or glued by it, like birds in bird-lime or flies in treacle.
So necessary is the sticky stuff, indeed, to the success of the trap, that Lucy and Eliza used to renew the entire set of cross-pieces in the web every morning, and thus ensure from day to day a perfectly fresh supply of viscid fluid; but, so far as I could see, they only renewed the rays and the foundation-threads under stress of necessity, when the snare had been so greatly injured by large insects struggling in it, or by the wind or the gardener, as to render repairs absolutely unavoidable.
The whole structure, when complete, is so beautiful and wonderful a sight, with its geometrical regularity and its beaded drops, that if it were produced by a rare creature from Madagascar or the Cape, in the insect-house at the Zoo, all the world, I'm convinced, would rush to look at it as a nine-days' wonder.
But since it's only the trap of the common English garden spider, why, we all pass it by without deigning even to glance at it.
At night my eight-legged friends slept always in their own homes or nests under shelter of the rose-leaves.
But during the day they alternated between the nest and the centre of the web, which last seemed to serve them as a convenient station where they waited for their prey, standing head downward with legs wide spread on the rays, on the look-out for incidents.
Whether at the centre or in the nest, however, they kept their feet constantly on the watch for any disturbance on the webs; and the instant any unhappy little fly got entangled in their meshes, the ever-watchful spider was out like a flash of lightning, and down at once in full force upon that incautious intruder.
I was convinced after many observations that it is by touch alone the spider recognizes the presence of prey in its web, and that it hardly derives any indications worth speaking of from its numerous little eyes, at least as regards the arrival of booty.
If a very big insect has got into the web, then a relatively large volume of disturbance is propagated along the telegraphic wire that runs from the snare to the house, or from the circumference to the centre; if a small one, then a slight disturbance; and the spider rushes out accordingly, either with an air of caution or of ferocious triumph.
Supposing the booty in hand was a tiny fly, then Lucy or Eliza would jump upon it at once with that strange access of apparently personal animosity with seems in some mysterious way a characteristic of all hunting carnivorous animals.
She would then carelessly wind a thread or two about it, in a perfunctory way, bury her jaws in its body, and in less than half a minute suck out its juices to the last drop, leaving the empty shell unhurt, like a dry skeleton or the slough of a dragon-fly larva.
But when wasps or other large and dangerous insects got entangled in the webs, the hunters proceeded with far greater caution.
Lucy, indeed, who was a decided coward, would stand and look anxiously at the doubtful intruder for several seconds, feeling the web with her claws, and running up and down in the most undecided manner, as if in doubt whether or not to tackle the uncertain customer.
But Eliza, whose spirits always rose like Nelson's before the face of danger, and whose motto seemed to be '_De l'audace, de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace_,' would rush at the huge foe in a perfect transport of wild fury, and go to work at once to enclose him in her toils of triple silken cables.
I always fancied, indeed, that Eliza was in a thoroughly housewifely tantrum at seeing her nice new web so ruthlessly torn and tattered by the unwelcome visitor, and that she said to herself in her own language: 'Oh well, then, if you _will_ have it, you _shall_ have it; so here goes for you.'
And go for him she did, with most unladylike ferocity.
Indeed, Eliza's best friend, I must fain admit, could never have said of her that she was a perfect lady.
The chawing-up of that wasp was a sight to behold.
I have no great sympathy with wasps--they have done me so many bad turns in my time that I don't pretend to regard them as deserving of exceptional pity--but I must say Eliza's way of going at them was unduly barbaric.
She treated them for all the world as if they were entirely devoid of a nervous system.
I wouldn't treat a _Saturday Reviewer_ myself as that spider treated the wasps when once she was sure of them.
She went at them with a sort of angry, half-contemptuous dash, kept cautiously out of the way of the protruded sting, began in most business-like fashion at the head, and rolling the wasp round and round with her legs and feelers, swathed him rapidly and effectually, with incredible speed, in a dense network of web poured forth from her spinnerets.
In less than half a minute the astonished wasp, accustomed rather to act on the offensive than the defensive, found himself helplessly enclosed in a perfect coil of tangled silk, which confined him from head to sting without the possibility of movement in any direction.
The whole time this had been going on the victim, struggling and writhing, had been pushing out its sting and doing the very best it knew to deal the wily Eliza a poisoned death-blow.
But Eliza, taught by ancestral experience, kept carefully out of the way; and the wasp felt itself finally twirled round and round in those powerful hands, and tied about as to its wings by a thousand-fold cable.
Sometimes, after the wasp was secured, Eliza even took the trouble to saw off the wings so as to prevent further struggling and consequent damage to the precious web; but more often she merely proceeded to eat it alive without further formality, still avoiding its sting as long as the creature had a kick left in it, but otherwise entirely ignoring its character as a sentient being in the most inhuman fashion.
And all the time, till the last drop of his blood was sucked out, the wasp would continue viciously to stick out his deadly sting, which the spider would still avoid with hereditary cunning.
It was a horrid sight--a duel _à outrance_ between two equally hateful and poisonous opponents; a living commentary on the appalling but o'er-true words of the poet, that 'Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal.'
Though these were the occasions when one sometimes felt as if the cup of Eliza's iniquities was really full, and one must pass sentence at last, without respite or reprieve, upon that life-long murderess.
One insect there was, however, before which even Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind.
When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in her shoes (I allow her those shoes by poetical licence) would retire in high dudgeon to her inmost bower, and there would sit and sulk, in visible bad temper, till the clumsy big thing, after many futile efforts, had torn its way by main force out of the coils that surrounded it.
Then, the moment the telegraphic communication told her the lines in the web were once more free, Eliza would sally forth again with a smiling face--oh yes, I assure you, we could tell by her look when she was smiling--and would repair afresh with cheerful alacrity the damage done to her snare by the unwelcome visitor.
Hummingbird hawk-moths, on the other hand, though so big and quick, she would kill immediately.
As for Lucy, craven soul, she had so little sense of proper pride and arachnid honour, that she shrank even from the wasps which Eliza so bravely and unhesitatingly tackled; and more than once we caught her in the very act of cutting them out entire, with the whole piece of web in which they were immeshed, and letting them drop on to the ground beneath, merely as a short way of getting rid of them from her premises.
I always rather despised Lucy.
She hadn't even the one redeeming virtue of most carnivorous or predatory races--an insensate and almost automatic courage.
I need hardly say, however, that the spider does not kill her prey by a mere fair-and-square bite alone.
She has recourse to the art of the Palmers and Brinvilliers.
All spiders, as far as known, are provided with poison-fangs in the jaws, which sometimes, as in the tarantula and many other large tropical kinds, well known to me in Jamaica and elsewhere, are sufficiently powerful to produce serious effects upon man himself; while even much smaller spiders, like Eliza and Lucy, have poison enough in their falces, as the jawlike organs are called, to kill a good big insect, such as a wasp or a bumble-bee.
These channelled poison-glands, combined with their savage tigerlike claws, make the spiders as a group extremely formidable and dominant creatures, the analogues in their own smaller invertebrate world of the serpents and wolves in the vertebrate creation.
Lucy and Eliza's family relations, I am sorry to say, were not, we found, of a kind to endear them to a critical public already sufficiently scandalized by their general mode of behaviour to their inoffensive neighbours.
As mothers, indeed, gossip itself had not a word of blame to whisper against them; but as wives, their conduct was distinctly open to the severest animadversion.
The males of the garden spider, as in many other instances, are decidedly smaller than their big round mates; so much so is this the case, indeed, in certain species that they seem almost like parasites of the immensely larger sack-bodied females.
Now, just as the worker bees kill off the drones as soon as the queen-bee has been duly fertilized, regarding them as of no further importance or value to the hive, so do the lady-spiders not only kill but eat their husbands as soon as they find they have no further use for them.
Nay, if a female spider doesn't care for the looks of a suitor who is pressing himself too much upon her fond attention, her way of expressing her disapprobation of his appearance and manners is to make a murderous spring at him, and, if possible, devour him.
Under these painful circumstances the process of courtship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous swain who has the boldness to commend himself by personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair ones.
It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to watch the details of the strange courtship, which we could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the rather gentler Lucy having been already mated, apparently, before she took up her quarters in our climbing white rose-bush.
One day, however, a timid-looking male spider, with inquiry and doubt in every movement of his tarsi, strolled tentatively up on the neat round web where Eliza was hanging, head downward as usual, all her feet on the thread, on the look-out for house-flies.
We knew he was a male at once by his longer and thinner body, and by his natural modesty.
He walked gingerly on all eights, like an arachnid Agag, in the direction of the object of his ardent affections, with a most comic uncertainty in every step he took towards her.
His claws felt the threads as he moved with anxious care; and it was clear he was ready at a moment's notice to jump away and flee for his life with headlong speed to his native obscurity if Eliza showed the slightest disposition, by gesture or movement, to turn and rend him.
Now and again, as he approached, Eliza, half coquettish, moved her feet a short step, and seemed to debate within her own mind in which spirit she should meet his flattering advances--whether to accept him or to eat him.
At each such hesitation, the unhappy male, fearing the worst, and sore afraid, would turn on his heel and fly for dear life as fast as eight trembling legs would carry him.
Then, after a minute or two, he would evidently come to the conclusion that he had wronged his lady-love, and that her movement was one of true, true love rather than of carnivorous and cannibalistic appetite.
At last, as I judged, his constancy was rewarded, though his ominous disappearance very shortly afterwards made me fear for the worst as to his final adventures.
In the end, Eliza laid a large number of eggs in a silken cocoon, in shape a balloon, and secreted, like the web, by her invaluable spinnerets.
Indeed, the real reason--I won't say excuse--for the rapacity and Gargantuan appetite of the spider lies, no doubt, in the immense amount of material she has to supply for her daily-renewed webs, her home, and her cocoon, all which have actually to be spun out of the assimilated food-stuffs in her own body; to say nothing of the additional necessity imposed upon her by nature for laying a trifle of six or seven hundred eggs in a single summer.
And, to tell the truth, Lucy and Eliza seemed to us to be always eating.
No matter at what hour one looked in upon them, they were pretty constantly engaged in devouring some inoffensive fly, or weaving hateful labyrinths of hasty cord round some fiercely-struggling wasp or some unhappy beetle.
We weren't fortunate enough, I regret to say, to see Eliza's eggs hatch out from the cocoon; but in other instances, especially in Southern Europe, I have noticed the little heap of well-covered ova, glued together into a mass, and attached to a branch or twig by stout silken cables.
If you open the cocoon when the young spiders are just hatched, they begin to run about in the most lively fashion, and look like a living and moving congeries of little balls or seedlets.
The common garden spider lays some seven hundred or more such eggs at a sitting, and out of those seven hundred only two on an average reach maturity and once more propagate their kind.
For if only four lived and throve, then clearly, in the next generation, there would be twice as many spiders as in this; and in the generation after that again, four times as many; and then eight times; and so on _ad infinitum_, until the whole world was just one living and seething mass of common garden spiders.
What keeps them down, then, in the end to their average number?
What prevents the development of the whole seven hundred?
The simple answer is, continuous starvation.
As usual, nature works with cruel lavishness.
There are just as many spiders at any given minute as there are insects enough in the world or in their area to feed upon.
Every spider lays hundreds of eggs, so as to make up for the average infant mortality by starvation, or by the attacks of ichneumon flies, or by being eaten themselves in the young stage, or by other casualties.
And so with all other species.
Each produces as many young on the average as will allow for the ordinary infant mortality of their kind, and leave enough over just to replace the parents in the next generation.
And that's one of the reasons why it's no use punishing Lucy and Eliza for their misdeeds in this world.
Kill them off if you will, and before next week a dozen more like them will dispute with one another the vacant place you have thus created in the balanced economy of that microcosm the garden.
Our observations upon Lucy and Eliza, however, had the effect of making us take an increased interest thenceforth in spiders in general, which till that time we had treated with scant courtesy, and set us about learning something as to the extraordinary variety of life and habit to be found within the range of this single group of arthropods, at first sight so extremely alike in their shapes, their appearance, their morals, and their manners.
It's perfectly astonishing, though, when one comes to look into it in detail, how exceedingly diverse spiders are in their mode of life, their structure, and the variety of uses to which they put their one extremely distinctive structural organ, the spinnerets.
I will only say here that some spiders use these peculiar glands to form light webs by whose aid, though wingless, they float balloon-wise through the air; that others employ them to line the sides of their underground tunnels, and to make the basis of their marvellously ingenious earthen trap-doors; that yet others have learnt how to adapt these same organs to a subaquatic existence, and to fill cocoons with air, like miniature diving bells; while others, again, have taught themselves to construct webs thick enough to catch and hold even creatures so superior to themselves in the scale of being as humming-birds and sunbirds.
This extraordinary variety in the utilization of a single organ teaches once more the same lesson which is impressed upon us elsewhere by so many other forms of organic evolution: whatever enables an animal or plant to gain an advantage over others in the struggle for life, no matter in what way, is sure to survive, and to be turned in time to every conceivable use of which its structure is capable, in the infinite whirligig of ever-varying nature.
MUD.
Even a prejudiced observer will readily admit that the most valuable mineral on earth is mud.
Diamonds and rubies are just nowhere by comparison.
I don't mean weight for weight, of course--mud is 'cheap as dirt,' to buy in small quantities--but aggregate for aggregate.
Quite literally, and without hocus-pocus of any sort, the money valuation of the mud in the world must outnumber many thousand times the money valuation of all the other minerals put together.
Only we reckon it usually not by the ton, but by the acre, though the acre is worth most where the mud lies deepest.
Nay, more, the world's wealth is wholly based on mud.
Corn, not gold, is the true standard of value.
Without mud there would be no human life, no productions of any kind: for food stuffs of every description are raised on mud; and where no mud exists, or can be made to exist, there, we say, there is desert or sand-waste.
Land, without mud, has no economic value.
To put it briefly, the only parts of the world that count much for human habitation are the mud deposits of the great rivers, and notably of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Ganges, the Indus, the Irrawaddy, the Hoang Ho, the Yang-tse-Kiang; of the Po, the Rhone, the Danube, the Rhine, the Volga, the Dnieper; of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Orinoco, the Amazons, the La Plata.
A corn-field is just a big mass of mud; and the deeper and purer and freer from stones or other impurities it is the better.
But England, you say, is not a great river-mud field; yet it supports the densest population in the world.
True; but England is an exceptional product of modern civilization.
She can't feed herself: she is fed from Odessa, Alexandria, Bombay, New York, Montreal, Buenos Ayres--in other words, from the mud fields of the Russian, the Egyptian, the Indian, the American, the Canadian, the Argentine rivers.
Orontes, said Juvenal, has flowed into Tiber; Nile, we may say nowadays, with equal truth, has flowed into Thames.
There is nothing to make one realize the importance of mud, indeed, like a journey up Nile when the inundation is just over.
You lounge on the deck of your dahabieh, and drink in geography almost without knowing it.
The voyage forms a perfect introduction to the study of mudology, and suggests to the observant mind (meaning you and me) the real nature of mud as nothing else on earth that I know of can suggest it.
For in Egypt you get your phenomenon isolated, as it were, from all disturbing elements.
You have no rainfall to bother you, no local streams, no complex denudation: the Nile does all, and the Nile does everything.
On either hand stretches away the bare desert, rising up in grey rocky hills.
Down the midst runs the one long line of alluvial soil--in other words, Nile mud--which alone allows cultivation and life in that rainless district.
The country bases itself absolutely on mud.
The crops are raised on it; the houses and villages are built of it; the land is manured with it; the very air is full of it.
The crude brick buildings that dissolve in dust are Nile mud solidified; the red pottery of Assiout is Nile mud baked hard; the village mosques and minarets are Nile mud whitewashed.
I have even seen a ship's bulwarks neatly repaired with mud.
It pervades the whole land, when wet, as mud undisguised; when dry, as dust-storm.
Egypt, says Herodotus, is a gift of the Nile.
A truer or more pregnant word was never spoken.
Of course it is just equally true, in a way, that Bengal is a gift of the Ganges, and that Louisiana and Arkansas are gifts of the Mississippi; but with this difference, that in the case of the Nile the dependence is far more obvious, far freer from disturbing or distracting details.
For that reason, and also because the Nile is so much more familiar to most English-speaking folk than the American rivers, I choose Egypt first as my type of a regular mud-land.
But in order to understand it fully you mustn't stop all your time in Cairo and the Delta; you mustn't view it only from the terrace of Shepheard's Hotel or the rocky platform of the Great Pyramid at Ghizeh: you must push up country early, under Mr. Cook's care, to Luxor and the First Cataract.
It is up country that Egypt unrolls itself visibly before your eyes in the very process of making: it is there that the full importance of good, rich black mud first forces itself upon you by undeniable evidence.
For remember that, from a point above Berber to the sea, the dwindling Nile never receives a single tributary, a single drop of fresh water.
For more than fifteen hundred miles the ever-lessening river rolls on between bare desert hills and spreads fertility over the deep valley in their midst--just as far as its own mud sheet can cover the barren rocky bottom, and no farther.
For the most part the line of demarcation between the grey bare desert and the cultivable plain is as clear and as well-defined as the margin of sea and land: you can stand with one foot on the barren rock and one on the green soil of the tilled and irrigated mud-land.
For the water rises up to a certain level, and to that level accordingly it distributes both mud and moisture: above it comes the arid rock, as destitute of life, as dead and bare and lonely as the centre of Sahara.
In and out, in waving line, up to the base of the hills, cultivation and greenery follow, with absolute accuracy, the line of highest flood-level; beyond it the hot rock stretches dreary and desolate.
Here and there islands of sandstone stand out above the green sea of doura or cotton; here and there a bay of fertility runs away up some lateral valley, following the course of the mud; but one inch above the inundation-mark vegetation and life stop short all at once with absolute abruptness.
In Egypt, then, more than anywhere else, one sees with one's own eyes that mud and moisture are the very conditions of mundane fertility.
Beyond Cairo, as one descends seaward, the mud begins to open out fan-wise and form a delta.
The narrow mountain ranges no longer hem it in.
It has room to expand and spread itself freely over the surrounding country, won by degrees from the Mediterranean.
At the mouths the mud pours out into the sea and forms fresh deposits constantly on the bottom, which are gradually silting up still newer lands to seaward.
Slow as is the progress of this land-forming action, there can be no doubt that the Nile has the intention of filling up by degrees the whole eastern Mediterranean, and that in process of time--say in no more than a few million years or so, a mere bagatelle to the geologist--with the aid of the Po and some other lesser streams, it will transform the entire basin of the inland sea into a level and cultivable plain, like Bengal or Mesopotamia, themselves (as we shall see) the final result of just such silting action.
It is so very important, for those who wish to see things "as clear as mud," to understand this prime principle of the formation of mud-lands, that I shall make no apology for insisting on it further in some little detail; for when one comes to look the matter plainly in the face, one can see in a minute that almost all the big things in human history have been entirely dependent upon the mud of the great rivers.
Thebes and Memphis, Rameses and Amenhotep, based their civilisation absolutely upon the mud of Nile.
The bricks of Babylon were moulded of Euphrates mud; the greatness of Nineveh reposed on the silt of the Tigris.
Upper India is the Indus; Agra and Delhi are Ganges and Jumna mud; China is the Hoang Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang; Burmah is the paddy field of the Irrawaddy delta.
And so many great plains in either hemisphere consist really of nothing else but mud-banks of almost incredible extent, filling up prehistoric Baltics and Mediterraneans, that a glance at the probable course of future evolution in this respect may help us to understand and to realize more fully the gigantic scale of some past accumulations.
As a preliminary canter I shall trot out first the valley of the Po, the existing mud flat best known by personal experience to the feet and eyes of the tweed-clad English tourist.
Everybody who has looked down upon the wide Lombard plain from the pinnacled roof of Milan Cathedral, or who has passed by rail through that monotonous level of poplars and vines between Verona and Venice, knows well what a mud flat due to inundation and gradual silting up of a valley looks like.
What I want to do now is to inquire into its origin, and to follow up in fancy the same process, still in action, till it has filled the Adriatic from end to end with one great cultivable lowland.
Once upon a time (I like to be at least as precise as a fairy tale in the matter of dates) there was no Lombardy.
And that time was not, geologically speaking, so very remote; for the whole valley of the Po, from Turin to the sea, consists entirely of alluvial deposits--or, in other words, of Alpine mud--which has all accumulated where it now lies at a fairly recent period.
We know it is recent, because no part of Italy has ever been submerged since it began to gather there.
To put it more definitely, the entire mass has almost certainly been laid down since the first appearance of man on our earth: the earliest human beings who reached the Alps or the Apennines--black savages clad in skins of extinct wild beasts--must have looked down from their slopes, with shaded eyes, not on a level plain such as we see to-day, but on a great arm of the sea which stretched like a gulf far up towards the base of the hills about Turin and Rivoli.
Of this ancient sea the Adriatic forms the still unsilted portion.
In other words, the great gulf which now stops short at Trieste and Venice once washed the foot of the Alps and the Apennines to the Superga at Turin, covering the sites of Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, Ravenna, Mantua, Cremona, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Pavia, Milan, and Novara.
The industrious reader who gets out his Baedeker and looks up the shaded map of North Italy which forms its frontispiece will be rewarded for his pains by a better comprehension of the district thus demarcated.
The idle must be content to take my word for what follows.
I pledge them my honour that I'll do my best not to deceive their trustful innocence.
It may sound at first hearing a strange thing to say so, but the whole of that vast gulf, from Turin to Venice, has been entirely filled up within the human period by the mud sheet brought down by mountain torrents from the Alps and the Apennines.
A parallel elsewhere will make this easier of belief.
You have looked down, no doubt, from the garden of the hotel at Glion upon the lake of Geneva and the valley of the Rhone about Villeneuve and Aigle.
If so, you can understand from personal knowledge the first great stage in the mud-filling process; for you must have observed for yourself from that commanding height that the lake once extended a great deal farther up country towards Bex and St. Maurice than it does at present.
You can still trace at once on either side the old mountainous banks, descending into the plain as abruptly and unmistakably as they still descend to the water's edge at Montreux and Vevey.
But the silt of the Rhone, brought down in great sheets of glacier mud (about which more anon) from the Furca and the Jungfrau and the Monte Rosa chain, has completely filled in the upper nine miles of the old lake basin with a level mass of fertile alluvium.
There is no doubt about the fact: you can see it for yourself with half an eye from that specular mount (to give the Devil his due, I quote Milton's Satan): the mud lies even from bank to bank, raised only a few inches above the level of the lake, and as lacustrine in effect as the veriest geologist on earth could wish it.
Indeed, the process of filling up still continues unabated at the present day where the mud-laden Rhone enters the lake at Bouveret, to leave it again, clear and blue and beautiful, under the bridge at Geneva.
The little delta which the river forms at its mouth shows the fresh mud in sheets gathering thick upon the bottom.
Every day this new mud-bank pushes out farther and farther into the water, so that in process of time the whole basin will be filled in, and a level plain, like that which now spreads from Bex and Aigle to Villeneuve, will occupy the entire bed from Montreux to Geneva.
Turn mentally to the upper feeders of the Po itself, and you find the same causes equally in action.
You have stopped at Pallanza--Garoni's is so comfortable.
Well, then, you know how every Alpine stream, as it flows, full-gorged, into the Italian lakes, is busily engaged in filling them up as fast as ever it can with turbid mud from the uplands.
The basins of Maggiore, Como, Lugano, and Garda are by origin deep hollows scooped out long since during the Great Ice Age by the pressure of huge glaciers that then spread far down into what is now the poplar-clad plain of Lombardy.
But ever since the ice cleared away, and the torrents began to rush headlong down the deep gorges of the Val Leventina and the Val Maggia, the mud has been hard at work, doing its level best to fill those great ice-worn bowls up again.
Near the mouth of each main stream it has already succeeded in spreading a fan-shaped delta.
I will not insult you by asking you at the present time of day whether you have been over the St. Gothard.
In this age of _trains de luxe_ I know to my cost everybody has been everywhere.
No chance of pretending to superior knowledge about Japan or Honolulu; the tourist knows them.
Very well, then; you must remember as you go past Bellinzona--revolutionary little Bellinzona with its three castled crags--you look down upon a vast mud flat by the mouth of the Ticino.
Part of this mud flat is already solid land, but part is mere marsh or shifting quicksand.
That is the first stage in the abolition of the lakes: the mud is annihilating them.
Maggiore, indeed, least fortunate of the three main sheets, is being attacked by the insidious foe at three points simultaneously.
At the upper end, the Ticino, that furious radical river, has filled in a large arm, which once spread far away up the valley towards Bellinzona.
A little lower down, the Maggia near Locarno carries in a fresh contribution of mud, which forms another fan-shaped delta, and stretches its ugly mass half across the lake, compelling the steamers to make a considerable detour eastward.
This delta is rapidly extending into the open water, and will in time fill in the whole remaining space from bank to bank, cutting off the upper end of the lake about Locarno from the main basin by a partition of lowland.
This upper end will then form a separate minor lake, and the Ticino will flow out of it across the intervening mud flat into the new and smaller Maggiore of our great-great-grandchildren.
If you doubt it, look what the torrent of the Toce, the third assailing battalion of the persistent mud force, has already done in the neighbourhood of Pallanza.
It has entirely cut off the upper end of the bay, that turns westward towards the Simplon, by a partition of mud; and this isolated upper bit forms now in our own day a separate lake, the Lago di Mergozzo, divided from the main sheet by an uninteresting mud bank.
In process of time, no doubt, the whole of Maggiore will be similarly filled in by the advancing mud sheet, and will become a level alluvial plain, surrounded by mountains, and greatly admired by the astute Piedmontese cultivator.
What is going on in Maggiore is going on equally in all the other sub-Alpine lakes of the Po valley.
They are being gradually filled in, every one of them, by the aggressive mud sheet.
The upper end of Lugano, for example, has already been cut off, as the Lago del Piano, from the main body; and the _piano_ itself, from which the little isolated tarn takes its name, is the alluvial mud fiat of a lateral torrent--the mud flat, in fact, which the railway from Porlezza traverses for twenty minutes before it begins its steep and picturesque climb by successive zigzags over the mountains to Menaggio.
Similarly the influx of the Adda at the upper end of Como has cut off the Lago di Mezzola from the main lake, and has formed the alluvial level that stretches so drearily all around Colico.
Slowly the mud fiend encroaches everywhere on the lakes; and if you look for him when you go, there you can see him actually at work every spring under your very eyes, piling up fresh banks and deltas with alarming industry, and preparing (in a few hundred thousand years) to ruin the tourist trade of Cadenabbia and Bellagio.
If we turn from the lakes themselves to the Lombard plain at large, which is an immensely older and larger basin, we see traces of the same action on a vastly greater scale.
A glance at the map will show the intelligent and ever courteous reader that the 'wandering Po'--I drop into poetry after Goldsmith--flows much nearer the foot of the Apennines than of the Alps in the course of its divagations, and seems purposely to bend away from the greater range of mountains.
Why is this, since everything in nature must needs have a reason?
Well, it is because, when the mud first began to accumulate in the old Lombard bay of the Adriatic, there was no Po at all, whether wandering or otherwise: the big river has slowly grown up in time by the union of the lateral torrents that pour down from either side, as the growth of the mud flat brought them gradually together.
Careful study of a good map will show how this has happened, especially if it has the plains and mountains distinctively tinted after the excellent German fashion.
The Ticino, the Adda, the Mincio, if you look at them close, reveal themselves as tributaries of the Po, which once flowed separately into the Lombard bay; the Adige, the Piave, the Tagliamento farther along the coast, reveal themselves equally as tributaries of the future Po, when once the great river shall have filled up with its mud the space between Trieste and Venice, though for the moment they empty themselves and their store of detritus into the open Adriatic.
Fix your eyes for a moment on Venetia proper, and you will see how this has all happened and is still happening.
Each mountain torrent that leaps from the Tyrolese Alps bring down in its lap a rich mass of mud, which has gradually spread over a strip of sea some forty or fifty miles wide, from the base of the mountains to the modern coast-line of the province.
Near the sea--or, in other words, at the temporary outlet--it forms banks and lagoons, of which those about Venice are the best known to tourists, though the least characteristic.
For miles and miles between Venice and Trieste the shifting north shore of the Adriatic consists of nothing but such accumulating mud banks.
Year after year they push farther seaward, and year after year fresh islets and shoals grow out into the waves beyond the temporary deltas.
In time, therefore, the gathering mud banks of these Alpine torrents must join the greater mud bank that runs rapidly seaward at the delta of the Po.
As soon as they do so the rivers must rush together, and what was once an independent stream, emptying itself into the Adriatic, must become a tributary of the Po, helping to swell the waters of that great united river.
The Adige has now just reached this state: its delta is continuous with the delta of the Po, and their branches interosculate.
The Mincio and the Adda reached it ages since: the Piave and the Livenia will not reach it for ages.
In Roman days Hatria was still on the sea: it is now some fifteen miles inland.
From all this you can gather why the existing Po flows far from the Alps and nearer the base of the Apennines.
The Alpine streams in far distant days brought down relatively large floods of glacial mud; formed relatively large deltas in the old Lombard bay; filled up with relative rapidity their larger half of the basin.
The Apennines, less lofty, and free from glaciers, sent down shorter and smaller torrents, laden with far less mud, and capable therefore of doing but little alluvial work for the filling in of the future Lombardy.
So the river was pushed southward by the Alpine deposits of the northern streams, leaving the great plains of Cisalpine Gaul spread away to the north of it.
And this land-making action is ceaseless and continuous.
About Venice, Chioggia, Maestra, Comacchio, the delta of the Po is still spreading seaward.
In the course of ages--if nothing unforeseen occurs meanwhile to prevent it--the Alpine mud will have filled in the entire Adriatic; and the Ionian Isles will spring like isolated mountain ridges from the Adriatic plain, as the Euganean hills--those 'mountains Euganean' where Shelley 'stood listening to the pæan with which the legioned rocks did hail the sun's uprise majestical'--spring in our own time from the dead level of Lombardy.
Once they in turn were the Euganean islands, and even now to the trained eye of the historical observer they stand up island-like from the vast green plain that spreads flat around them.
Perhaps it seems to you a rather large order to be asked to believe that Lombardy and Venetia are nothing more than an outspread sheet of deep Alpine mud.
Well, there is nothing so good for incredulity, don't you know, as capping the climax.
If a man will not swallow an inch of fact, the best remedy is to make him gulp down an ell of it.
And, indeed, the Lombard plain is but an insignificant mud flat compared with the vast alluvial plains of Asiatic and American rivers.
The alluvium of the Euphrates, of the Mississippi, of the Hoang Ho, of the Amazons would take in many Lombardies and half-a-dozen Venetias without noticing the addition.
But I will insist upon only one example--the rivers of India, which have formed the gigantic deep mud flat of the Ganges and the Jumna, one of the very biggest on earth, and that because the Himalayas are the highest and newest mountain chain exposed to denudation.
For, as we saw foreshadowed in the case of the Alps and Apennines, the bigger the mountains on which we can draw the greater the resulting mass of alluvium.
The Rocky Mountains give rise to the Missouri (which is the real Mississippi); the Andes give rise to Amazons and the La Plata; the Himalayas give rise to the Ganges and the Indus.
Great mountain, great river, great resulting mud sheet.
At a very remote period, so long ago that we cannot reduce it to any common measure with our modern chronology, the southern table-land of India--the Deccan, as we call it--formed a great island like Australia, separated from the continent of Asia by a broad arm of the sea which occupied what is now the great plain of Bengal, the North-West, and the Punjaub.
This ancient sea washed the foot of the Himalayas, and spread south thence for 600 miles to the base of the Vindhyas.
But the Himalayas are high and clad with gigantic glaciers.
Much ice grinds much mud on those snow-capped summits.
The rivers that flowed from the Roof of the World carried down vast sheets of alluvium, which formed fans at their mouths, like the cones still deposited on a far smaller scale in the Lake of Geneva by little lateral torrents.
Gradually the silt thus brought down accumulated on either side, till the rivers ran together into two great systems--one westward--the Indus, with its four great tributaries, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravee, Sutlej; one eastward, the Ganges, reinforced lower down by the sister streams of the Jumna and the Brahmapootra.
The colossal accumulation of silt thus produced filled up at last all the great arm of the sea between the two mountain chains, and joined the Deccan by slow degrees to the continent of Asia.
It is still engaged in filling up the Bay of Bengal on one side by the detritus of the Ganges, and the Arabian Sea on the other by the sand-banks of the Indus.
In the same way, no doubt, the silt of the Thames, the Humber, the Rhine, and the Meuse tend slowly (bar accidents) to fill up the North Sea, and anticipate Sir Edward Watkin by throwing a land bridge across the English Channel.
If ever that should happen, then history will have repeated itself, for it is just so that the Deccan was joined to the mainland of Asia.
One question more.
Whence comes the mud?
The answer is, Mainly from the detritus of the mountains.
There it has two origins.
Part of it is glacial, part of it is leaf-mould.
In order to feel we have really got to the very bottom of the mud problem--and we are nothing if not thorough--we must examine in brief these two separate origins.
The glacier mud is of a very simple nature.
It is disintegrated rock, worn small by the enormous millstone of ice that rolls slowly over the bed, and deposited in part as 'terminal moraine' near the summer melting-point.
It is the quantity of mud thus produced, and borne down by mountain torrents, that makes the alluvial plains collect so quickly at their base.
The mud flats of the world are in large part the wear and tear of the eternal hills under the planing action of the eternal glaciers.
But let us be just to our friends.
A large part is also due to the industrious earth-worm, whose place in nature Darwin first taught us to estimate at its proper worth.
For there is much detritus and much first-rate soil even on hills not covered by glaciers.
Some of this takes its origin, it is true, from disintegration by wind or rain, but much more is caused by the earth-worm in person.
That friend of humanity, so little recognized in his true light, has a habit of drawing down leaves into his subterranean nest, and there eating them up, so as to convert their remains into vegetable mould in the form of worm-casts.
This mould, the most precious of soils, gets dissolved again by the rain, and carried off in solution by the streams to the sea or the lowlands, where it helps to form the future cultivable area.
At the same time the earthworms secrete an acid, which acts upon the bare surface of rock beneath, and helps to disintegrate it in preparation for plant life in unfavourable places.
It is probable that we owe almost more on the whole to these unknown but conscientious and industrious annelids than even to those 'mills of God' the glaciers, of which the American poet justly observes that though they grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.
In the last resort, then, it is mainly on mud that the life of humanity in all countries bases itself.
Every great plain is the alluvial deposit of a great river, ultimately derived from a great mountain chain.
The substance consists as a rule of the débris of torrents, which is often infertile, owing to its stoniness and its purely mineral character; but wherever it has lain long enough to be covered by earth-worms with a deep black layer of vegetable mould, there the resulting soil shows the surprising fruitfulness one gets (for example) in Lombardy, where twelve crops a year are sometimes taken from the meadows.
Everywhere and always the amount and depth of the mud is the measure of possible fertility; and even where, as in the Great American Desert, want of water converts alluvial plains into arid stretches of sand-waste, the wilderness can be made to blossom like the rose in a very few years by artificial irrigation.
The diversion of the Arkansas River has spread plenty over a vast sage scrub; the finest crops in the world are now raised over a tract of country which was once the terror of the traveller across the wild west of America.
THE GREENWOOD TREE.
It is a common, not to say a vulgar error, to believe that trees and plants grow out of the ground.
And of course, having thus begun by calling it bad names, I will not for a moment insult the intelligence of my readers by supposing them to share so foolish a delusion.
I beg to state from the outset that I write this article entirely for the benefit of Other People.
You and I, O proverbially Candid and Intelligent One, it need hardly be said, are better informed.
But Other People fall into such ridiculous blunders that it is just as well to put them on their guard beforehand against the insidious advance of false opinions.
I have known otherwise good and estimable men, indeed, who for lack of sound early teaching on this point went to their graves with a confirmed belief in the terrestrial origin of all earthly vegetation.
They were probably victims of what the Church in its succinct way describes and denounces as Invincible Ignorance.
Now, the reason why these deluded creatures supposed trees to grow out of the ground, instead of out of the air, is probably only because they saw their roots there.
Of course, when people see a wallflower rooted in the clefts of some old church tower, they don't jump at once to the inane conclusion that it is made of rock--that it derives its nourishment direct from the solid limestone; nor when they observe a barnacle hanging by its sucker to a ship's hull, do they imagine it to draw up its food incontinently from the copper bottom.
But when they see that familiar pride of our country, a British oak, with its great underground buttresses spreading abroad through the soil in every direction, they infer at once that the buttresses are there, not--as is really the case--to support it and uphold it, but to drink in nutriment from the earth beneath, which is just about as capable of producing oak-wood as the copper plate on the ship's hull is capable of producing the flesh of a barnacle.
Sundry familiar facts about manuring and watering, to which I will return later on, give a certain colour of reasonableness, it is true, to this mistaken inference.
But how mistaken it really is for all that, a single and very familiar little experiment will easily show one.
Cut down that British oak with your Gladstonian axe; lop him of his branches; divide him into logs; pile him up into a pyramid; put a match to his base; in short, make a bonfire of him; and what becomes of robust majesty?
He is reduced to ashes, you say.
Ah, yes, but what proportion of him?
Conduct your experiment carefully on a small scale; dry your wood well, and weigh it before burning; weigh your ash afterwards, and what will you find?
Why, that the solid matter which remains after the burning is a mere infinitesimal fraction of the total weight: the greater part has gone off into the air, from whence it came, as carbonic acid.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes; but air to air, too, is the rule of nature.
It may sound startling--to Other People, I mean--but the simple truth remains, that trees and plants grow out of the atmosphere, not out of the ground.
They are, in fact, solidified air; or to be more strictly correct, solidified gas--carbonic acid.
Take an ordinary soda-water syphon, with or without a wine-glassful of brandy, and empty it till only a few drops remain in the bottom.
Then the bottle is full of gas; and that gas, which will rush out with a spurt when you press the knob, is the stuff that plants eat--the raw material of life, both animal and vegetable.
The tree grows and lives by taking in the carbonic acid from the air, and solidifying its carbon; the animal grows and lives by taking the solidified carbon from the plant, and converting it once more into carbonic acid.
That, in its ideally simple form, is the Iliad in a nutshell, the core and kernel of biology.
The whole cycle of life is one eternal see-saw.
First the plant collects its carbon compounds from the air in the oxidized state; it deoxidizes and rebuilds them: and then the animal proceeds to burn them up by slow combustion within his own body, and to turn them loose upon the air, once more oxidized.
After which the plant starts again on the same round as before, and the animal also recommences _da capo_.
And so on _ad infinitum_.
But the point which I want particularly to emphasize here is just this: that trees and plants don't grow out of the ground at all, as most people do vainly talk, but directly out of the air; and that when they die or get consumed, they return once more to the atmosphere from which they were taken.
Trees undeniably eat carbon.
Of course, therefore, all the ordinary unscientific conceptions of how plants feed are absolutely erroneous.
Vegetable physiology, indeed, got beyond these conceptions a good hundred years ago.
But it usually takes a hundred years for the world at large to make up its leeway.
Trees don't suck up their nutriment by the roots, they don't derive their food from the soil, they don't need to be fed, like babies through a tube, with terrestrial solids.
The solitary instance of an orchid hung up by a string in a conservatory on a piece of bark, ought to be sufficient at once to dispel for ever this strange illusion--if people ever thought; but of course they don't think--I mean Other People.
The true mouths and stomachs of plants are not to be found in the roots, but in the green leaves; their true food is not sucked up from the soil, but is inhaled through tiny channels from the air; the mass of their material is carbon, as we can all see visibly to the naked eye when a log of wood is reduced to charcoal: and that carbon the leaves themselves drink in, by a thousand small green mouths, from the atmosphere around them.
But how about the juice, the sap, the qualities of the soil, the manure required?
is the incredulous cry of Other People.
What is the use of the roots, and especially of the rootlets, if they are not the mouths and supply-tubes of the plants?
Well, I plainly perceive I can get 'no forrarder,' like the farmer with his claret, till I've answered that question, provisionally at least; so I will say here at once, without further ado--the plant requires drink as well as food, and the roots are the mouths that supply it with water.
They also suck up a few other things as well, which are necessary indeed, but far from forming the bulk of the nutriment.
Many plants, however, don't need any roots at all, while none can get on without leaves as mouths and stomachs.
That is to say, no true plantlike plants, for some parasitic plants are practically, to all intents and purposes, animals.
To put it briefly, every plant has one set of aerial mouths to suck in carbon, and many plants have another set of subterranean mouths as well, to suck up water and mineral constituents.
Have you ever grown mustard and cress in the window on a piece of flannel?
If so, that's a capital practical example of the comparative unimportance of soil, except as a means of supplying moisture.
You put your flannel in a soup-plate by the dining-room window; you keep it well wet, and you lay the seeds of the cress on top of it.
The young plants, being supplied with water by their roots, and with carbon by the air around, have all the little they need below, and grow and thrive in these conditions wonderfully.
But if you were to cover them up with an air-tight glass case, so as to exclude fresh air, they'd shrivel up at once for want of carbon, which is their solid food, as water is their liquid.
The way the plant really eats is little known to gardeners, but very interesting.
All over the lower surface of the green leaf lie scattered dozens of tiny mouths or apertures, each of them guarded by two small pursed-up lips which have a ridiculously human appearance when seen through a simple microscope.
When the conditions of air and moisture are favourable, these lips open visible to admit gases; and then the tiny mouths suck in carbonic acid in abundance from the air around then.
A series of pipes conveys the gaseous food thus supplied to the upper surface of the leaf, where the sunlight falls full upon it.
Now, the cells of the leaf contain a peculiar green digestive material, which I regret to say has no simpler or more cheerful name than chlorophyll; and where the sunlight plays upon this mysterious chlorophyll, it severs the oxygen from the carbon in the carbonic acid, turns the free gas loose upon the atmosphere once more through the tiny mouths, and retains the severed carbon intact in its own tissues.
That is the whole process of feeding in plants: they eat carbonic acid, digest it in their leaves, get rid of the oxygen with which it was formerly combined, and keep the carbon stored up for their own purposes.
Life as a whole depends entirely upon this property of chlorophyll; for every atom of organic matter in your body or mine was originally so manufactured by sunlight in the leaves of some plant from which, directly or indirectly, we derive it.
To be sure, in order to make up the various substances which compose their tissues--to build up their wood, their leaves, their fruits, their blossoms--plants require hydrogen, nitrogen, and even small quantities of oxygen as well; but these various materials are sufficiently supplied in the water which is taken up by the roots, and they really contribute very little indeed to the bulk of the tree, which consists for the most part of almost pure carbon.
If you were to take a thoroughly dry piece of wood, and then drive off from it by heat these extraneous matters, you would find that the remainder, the pure charcoal, formed the bulk of the weight, the rest being for the most part very light and gaseous.
Briefly put, plants are mostly carbon and water, and the carbon which forms their solid part is extracted direct from the air around them.
How does it come about then that a careless world in general, and more especially the happy-go-lucky race of gardeners and farmers in particular, who have to deal so much with plants in their practical aspect, always attach so great importance to root, soil, manure, minerals, and so little to the real gaseous food stuff of which their crops are, in fact, composed?
Why does Hodge, who is so strong on grain and guano, know absolutely nothing about carbonic acid?
That seems at first sight a difficult question to meet.
But I think we can meet it with a simple analogy.
Oxygen is an absolute necessary of human life.
Even food itself is hardly so important an element in our daily existence; for Succi, Dr. Tanner, the prophet Elijah, and other adventurous souls too numerous to mention, have abundantly shown us that a man can do without food altogether for forty days at a stretch, while he can't do without oxygen for a single minute.
Cut off his supply of that life-supporting gas, choke him, or suffocate him, or place him in an atmosphere of pure carbonic acid, or hold his head in a bucket of water, and he dies at once.
Yet, except in mines or submarine tunnels, nobody ever takes into account practically this most important factor in human and animal life.
We toil for bread, but we ignore the supply of oxygen.
And why?
Simply because oxygen is universally diffused everywhere.
It costs nothing.
Only in the Black Hole of Calcutta or in a broken tunnel shaft do men ever begin to find themselves practically short of that life-sustaining gas, and then they know the want of it far sooner and far more sharply than they know the want of food on a shipwreck raft, or the want of water in the thirsty desert.
Yet antiquity never even heard of oxygen.
A prime necessary of life passed unnoticed for ages in human history, only because there was abundance of it to be had everywhere.
Now it isn't quite the same, I admit, with the carbonaceous food of plants.
Carbonic acid isn't quite so universally distributed as oxygen, nor can every plant always get as much as it wants of it.
I shall show by-and-by that a real struggle for food takes place between plants, exactly as it takes place between animals; and that certain plants, like Oliver Twist in the workhouse, never practically get enough to eat.
Still, carbonic acid is present in very large quantities in the air in most situations, and is freely brought by the wind to all the open spaces which alone man uses for his crops and his gardening.
The most important element in the food of plants is thus in effect almost everywhere available, especially from the point of view of the mere practical everyday human agriculturist.
The wind that bloweth where it listeth brings fresh supplies of carbon on its wings with every breeze to the mouths and throats of the greedy and eager plants that long to absorb it.
It is quite otherwise, however, with the soil and its constituents.
Land, we all know--or if we don't, it isn't the fault of Mr. George and Mr. A.R.
Wallace--land is 'naturally limited in quantity.'
Every plant therefore struggles for a foothold in the soil far more fiercely and far more tenaciously than it struggles for its share in the free air of heaven.
Your plant is a land-grabber of Rob Roy proclivities; it believes in a fair fight and no favour.
A sufficient supply of food it almost takes for granted, if only it can once gain a sufficient ground-space.
But other plants are competing with it, tooth and nail (if plants may be permitted by courtesy those metaphorical adjuncts), for their share of the soil, like crofters or socialists; every spare inch of earth is permeated and pervaded with matted fibres; and each is striving to withdraw from each the small modicum of moisture, mineral matter, and manure for which all alike are eagerly battling.
Now, what the plant wants from the soil is three things.
First and foremost it wants support; like all the rest of us it must have its _pou sto_, its _pied-à-terre_, its _locus standi_.
It can't hang aloft, like Mahomet's coffin, miraculously suspended on an aerial perch between earth and heaven.
Secondly, it wants water, and this it can take in, as a rule, only or mainly by means of the rootlets, though there are some peculiar plants which grow (not parasitically) on the branches of trees, and absorb all the moisture they need by pores on their surface.
And thirdly, it wants small quantities of nitrogenous matter--in the simpler language of everyday life called manure--as well as of mineral matter--in the simpler language of everyday life called ashes.
It is mainly the first of these three, support, that the farmer thinks of when he calculates crops and acreage; for the second, he depends upon rainfall or irrigation; but the third, manure, he can supply artificially; and as manure makes a great deal of incidental difference to some of his crops, especially corn--which requires abundant phosphates--he is apt to over-estimate vastly its importance from a theoretical point of view.
Besides, look at it in another light.
Over large areas together, the conditions of air, climate, and rainfall are practically identical.
But soil differs greatly from place to place.
Here it's black; there it's yellow; here it's rich loam; there it's boggy mould or sandy gravel.
And some soils are better adapted to growing certain plants than others.
Rich lowlands and oolites suit the cereals; red marl produces wonderful grazing grass; bare uplands are best for gorse and heather.
Hence everything favours for the practical man the mistaken idea that plants and trees grow mainly out of the soil.
His own eyes tell him so; he sees them growing, he sees the visible result undeniable before his face; while the real act of feeding off the carbon in the air is wholly unknown to him, being realizable only by the aid of the microscope, aided by the most delicate and difficult chemical analysis.
Nevertheless French chemists have amply proved by actual experiment that plants can grow and produce excellent results without any aid from the soil at all.
You have only to suspend the seeds freely in the air by a string, and supply the rootlets of the sprouting seedlings with a little water, containing in solution small quantities of manure-stuffs, and the plants will grow as well as on their native heath, or even better.
Indeed, nature has tried the same experiment on a larger scale in many cases, as with the cliff-side plants that root themselves in the naked clefts of granite rocks; the tropical orchids that fasten lightly on the bark of huge forest trees; and the mosses that spread even over the bare face of hard brick walls, with scarcely a chink or cranny in which to fasten their minute rootlets.
The insect-eating plants are also interesting examples in their way of the curious means which nature takes for keeping up the manure supply under trying circumstances.
These uncanny things are all denizens of loose, peaty soil, where they can root themselves sufficiently for purposes of foothold and drink, but where the water rapidly washes away all animal matter.
Under such conditions the cunning sundews and the ruthless pitcher-plants set deceptive honey traps for unsuspecting insects, which they catch and kill, absorbing and using up the protoplasmic contents of their bodies, by way of manure, to supply their quota of nitrogenous material.
It is the literal fact, then, that plants really eat and live off carbon, just as truly as sheep eat grass or lions eat antelopes; and that the green leaves are the mouths and stomachs with which they eat and digest it.
From this it naturally results that the growth and spread of the leaves must largely depend upon the supply of carbon, as the growth and fatness of sheep depends upon the supply of pasturage.
Under most circumstances, to be sure, there is carbon enough and to spare lying about loose for every one of them; but conditions do now and again occur where we can clearly see the importance of the carbon supply.
Water, for example, contains practically much less carbonic acid than atmospheric air, especially when the water is stagnant, and therefore not supplied fresh to the plant from moment to moment.
As a consequence, almost all water-plants have submerged leaves very narrow and waving, while floating plants, like the water-lilies, have them large and round, owing to the absence of competition from other kinds about, which enables them to spread freely in every direction from the central stalk.
Moreover, these leaves, lolling on the water as they do, have their mouths on the upper instead of the under surface.
But the most remarkable fact of all is that many water plants have two entirely different types of leaves, one submerged and hair-like, the other floating and broad or circular.
Our own English water-crowfoot, for example, has the leaves that spring from its stem, below the surface, divided into endless long waving filaments, which look about in the water for the stray particles of carbon; but the moment it reaches the top of its native pond the foliage expands at once into broad lily-like lobes, that recline on the water like oriental beauties, and absorb carbon from the air to their heart's content, The one type may be likened to gills, that similarly catch the dissolved oxygen diffused in water; the other type may be likened to lungs, that drink in the free and open air of heaven.
Equally important to the plant, however, with the supply of carbonic acid, is the supply of sunshine by whose aid to digest it.
The carbon alone is no good to the tree if it can't get something which will separate it from the oxygen, locked in close embrace with it.
That thing is sunshine.
There is nothing, therefore, for which herbs, trees, and shrubs compete more eagerly than for their fair share of solar energy.
In their anxiety for this they jostle one another down most mercilessly, in the native condition, grasses struggling up with their hollow stems above the prone low herbs, shrubs overtopping the grasses in turn, and trees once more killing out the overshadowed undershrubs.
One must remember that wherever nature has free play, instead of being controlled by the hand of man, dense forest covers every acre of ground where the soil is deep enough; gorse, whins, and heather, or their equivalents grow wherever the forest fails; and herbs can only hold their own in the rare intervals where these domineering lords of the vegetable creation can find no foothold.
Meadows or prairies occur nowhere in nature, except in places where the liability to destructive fires over wide areas together crushes out forest trees, or else where goats, bison, deer, and other large herbivores browse them ceaselessly down in the stage of seedlings.
Competition for sunlight is thus even keener perhaps than competition for foodstuffs.
Alike on trees, shrubs, and herbs, accordingly the arrangement of the leaves is always exactly calculated so as to allow the largest possible horizontal surface, and the greatest exposure of the blade to the open sunshine.
In trees this arrangement can often be very well observed, all the leaves being placed at the extremities of the branches, and forming a great dome-shaped or umbrella-shaped mass, every part of which stands an even chance of catching its fair share of carbonic acid and solar energy.
The shapes of the leaves themselves are also largely due to the same cause, every leaf being so designed in form and outline as to interfere as little as possible with the other leaves on the same stem, as regards supply both of light and of carbonaceous foodstuffs.
It is only in rare cases, like that of the water-lily, that perfectly round leaves occur, because the conditions are seldom equal all round, and the incidence of light and the supply of carbon are seldom unlimited.
But wherever leaves rise free and solitary into the air, without mutual interference, they are always circular, as may be well seen in the common nasturtium and the English pennywort.
On the other hand, among dense hedgerows and thickets, where the silent, invisible struggle for life is fierce indeed, and where sunlight and carbonic acid are intercepted by a thousand competing mouths and arms, the prevailing types of leaf are extremely cut up and minutely subdivided into small lace-like fragments.
The plant in such cases can't afford material to fill up the interstices between the veins and ribs which determine its underlying architectural structure.
Often indeed species which grow under these hard conditions produce leaves which are, as it were, but skeleton representatives of their large and well filled-out compeers in the open meadows.
It is only by bearing vividly in mind this ceaseless and noiseless struggle between plants for their gaseous food and the sunshine which enables them to digest it that we can ever fully understand the varying forms and habits of the vegetable kingdom.
To most people, no doubt, it sounds like pure metaphor to talk of an internecine struggle between rooted beings which cannot budge one inch from their places, nor fight with horns, hoofs, or teeth, nor devour one another bodily, nor tread one another down with ruthless footsteps.
But that is only because we habitually forget that competition is just as really a struggle for life as open warfare.
The men who try against one another for a clerkship in the City, or a post in a gang of builder's workmen, are just as surely taking away bread and butter out of their fellows' mouths for their own advantage, as if they fought for it openly with fists or six-shooters.
The white man who encloses the hunting grounds of the Indian, and plants them with corn, is just as surely dooming that Indian to death as if he scalped or tomahawked him.
And so too with the unconscious warfare of plants.
The daisy or the plantain that spreads its rosette of leaves flat against the ground is just as truly monopolizing a definite space of land as the noble owner of a Highland deer forest.
No blade of grass can spring beneath the shadow of those tightly pressed little mats of foliage; no fragment of carbon, no ray of sunshine can ever penetrate below that close fence of living greenstuff.
Plants, in fact, compete with one another all round for everything they stand in need of.
They compete for their food--carbonic acid.
They compete for their energy--their fair share of sunlight.
They compete for water, and their foothold in the soil.
They compete for the favours of the insects that fertilize their flowers.
They compete for the good services of the birds or mammals that disseminate their seeds in proper spots for germination.
And how real this competition is we can see in a moment, if we think of the difficulties of human cultivation.
There, weeds are always battling manfully with our crops or our flowers for mastery over the field or garden.
We are obliged to root up with ceaseless toil these intrusive competitors, if we wish to enjoy the kindly fruits of the earth in due season.
When we leave a garden to itself for a few short years, we realize at once what effect the competition of hardy natives has upon our carefully tended and unstable exotics.
In a very brief time the dahlias and phloxes and lilies have all disappeared, and in their place the coarse-growing docks and nettles and thistles have raised their heads aloft to monopolize air and space and sunshine.
Exactly the same struggle is always taking place in the fields and woods and moors around us, and especially in the spots made over to pure nature.
There, the greenwood tree raises its huge umbrella of foliage to the skies, and allows hardly a ray of sunlight to struggle through to the low woodland vegetation of orchid or wintergreen underneath.
Where the soil is not deep enough for trees to root securely, bushes and heathers overgrow the ground, and compete with their bell-shaped blossoms for the coveted favour of bees and butterflies.
And in open glades, where for some reason or other the forest fails, tall grasses and other aspiring herbs run up apace towards the free air of heaven.
Elsewhere, creepers struggle up to the sun over the stems and branches of stronger bushes or trees, which they often choke and starve by monopolizing at last all the available carbon and sunlight.
And so throughout; the struggle for life goes on just as ceaselessly and truly among these unconscious combatants as among the lions and tigers of the tropical jungle, or among the human serfs of the overstocked market.
An ounce of example, they say, is worth a pound of precept.
So a single concrete case of a fierce vegetable campaign now actually in progress over all Northern Europe may help to make my meaning a trifle clearer.
Till very lately the forests of the north were largely composed in places of the light and airy silver birches.
But with the gradual amelioration of the climate of our continent, which has been going on for several centuries, the beech, a more southern type of tree, has begun to spread slowly though surely northward.
Now, beeches are greedy trees, of very dense and compact foliage; nothing else can grow beneath their thick shade, where once they have gained a foothold; and the seedlings of the silver birch stand no chance at all in the struggle for life against the serried leaves of their formidable rivals.
The beech literally eats them out of house and home; and the consequence is that the thick and ruthless southern tree is at this very moment gradually superseding over vast tracts of country its more graceful and beautiful, but far less voracious competitor.
FISH AS FATHERS.
Comparatively little is known as yet, even in this age of publicity, about the domestic arrangements and private life of fishes.
Not that the creatures themselves shun the wiles of the interviewer, or are at all shy and retiring, as a matter of delicacy, about their family affairs; on the contrary, they display a striking lack of reticence in their native element, and are so far from pushing parental affection to a quixotic extreme that many of them, like the common rabbit immortalised by Mr. Squeers, 'frequently devour their own offspring.'
But nature herself opposes certain obvious obstacles to the pursuit of knowledge in the great deep, which render it difficult for the ardent naturalist, however much he may be so disposed, to carry on his observations with the same facility as in the case of birds and quadrupeds.
You can't drop in upon most fish, casually, in their own homes; and when you confine them in aquariums, where your opportunities of watching them through a sheet of plate-glass are considerably greater, most of the captives get huffy under the narrow restrictions of their prison life, and obstinately refuse to rear a brood of hereditary helots for the mere gratification of your scientific curiosity.
Still, by hook and by crook (especially the former), by observation here and experiment there, naturalists in the end have managed to piece together a considerable mass of curious and interesting information of an out-of-the-way sort about the domestic habits and manners of sundry piscine races.
And, indeed, the morals of fish are far more varied and divergent than the uniform nature of the world they inhabit might lead an _à priori_ philosopher to imagine.
To the eye of the mere casual observer every fish would seem at first sight to be a mere fish, and to differ but little in sentiments and ethical culture from all the rest of his remote cousins.
But when one comes to look closer at their character and antecedents, it becomes evident at once that there is a deal of unsuspected originality and caprice about sharks and flat-fish.
Instead of conforming throughout to a single plan, as the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless are too prone to conclude, fish are in reality as various and variable in their mode of life as any other great group in the animal kingdom.
Monogamy and polygamy, socialism and individualism, the patriarchal and matriarchal types of government, the oviparous and viviparous methods of reproduction, perhaps even the dissidence of dissent and esoteric Buddhism, all alike are well represented in one family or another of this extremely eclectic and philosophically unprejudiced class of animals.
If you want a perfect model of domestic virtue, for example, where can you find it in higher perfection than in that exemplary and devoted father, the common great pipe-fish of the North Atlantic and the British Seas?
This high-principled lophobranch is so careful of its callow and helpless young that it carries about the unhatched eggs with him under his own tail, in what scientific ichthyologists pleasantly describe as a subcaudal pouch or cutaneous receptacle.
There they hatch out in perfect security, free from the dangers that beset the spawn and fry of so many other less tender-hearted kinds; and as soon as the little pipe-fish are big enough to look after themselves the sac divides spontaneously down the middle, and allows them to escape, to shift for themselves in the broad Atlantic.
Even so, however, the juniors take care always to keep tolerably near that friendly shelter, and creep back into it again on any threat of danger, exactly as baby-kangaroos do into their mother's marsupium.
The father-fish, in fact, has gone to the trouble and expense of developing out of his own tissues a membranous bag, on purpose to hold the eggs and young during the first stages of their embryonic evolution.
This bag is formed by two folds of the skin, one of which grows out from each side of the body, the free margins being firmly glued together in the middle by a natural exudation, while the eggs are undergoing incubation, but opening once more in the middle to let the little fish out as soon as the process of hatching is fairly finished.
So curious a provision for the safety of the young in the pipe-fish may be compared to some extent, as I hinted above, with the pouch in which kangaroos and other marsupial animals carry their cubs after birth, till they have attained an age of complete independence.
But the strangest part of it all is the fact that while in the kangaroo it is the mother who owns the pouch and takes care of the young, in the pipe-fish it is the father, on the contrary, who thus specially provides for the safety of his defenceless offspring.
And what is odder still, this topsy-turvy arrangement (as it seems to us) is the common rule throughout the class of fishes.
For the most part it must be candidly admitted by their warmest admirer, fish make very bad parents indeed.
They lay their eggs anywhere on a suitable spot, and as soon as they have once deposited them, like the ostrich in Job, they go on their way rejoicing, and never bestow another passing thought upon their deserted progeny.
But if ever a fish _does_ take any pains in the education and social upbringing of its young, you're pretty sure to find on enquiry it's the father--not as one would naturally expect, the mother--who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them.
It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful of the sacred claims of her wriggling offspring upon a mother's heart.
In the pipe-fish family, too, the ardent evolutionist can trace a whole series of instructive and illustrative gradations in the development of this instinct and the corresponding pouch-like structure among the male fish.
With the least highly-evolved types, like the long-nosed pipe-fish of the English Channel, and many allied forms from European seas, there is no pouch at all, but the father of the family carries the eggs about with him, glued firmly on to the service of his abdomen by a natural mucus.
In a somewhat more advanced tropical kind, the ridges of the abdomen are slightly dilated, so as to form an open groove, which loosely holds the eggs, though its edges do not meet in the middle as in the great pipe-fish.
Then come yet other more progressive forms, like the great pipe-fish himself, where the folds meet so as to produce a complete sac, which opens at maturity, to let out its little inmates.
And finally, in the common Mediterranean sea-horses, which you can pick up by dozens on the Lido at Venice, and a specimen of which exists in the dried form in every domestic museum, the pouch is permanently closed by coalescence of the edges, leaving a narrow opening in front, through which the small hippocampi creep out one by one as soon as they consider themselves capable of buffeting the waves of the Adriatic.
Fish that take much care of their offspring naturally don't need to produce eggs in the same reckless abundance as those dissipated kinds that leave their spawn exposed on the bare sandy bottom, at the mercy of every comer who chooses to take a bite at it.
They can afford to lay a smaller number, and to make each individual egg much larger and richer in proportion than their rivals.
This plan, of course, enables the young to begin life far better provided with muscles and fins than the tiny little fry which come out of the eggs of the improvident species.
For example, the cod-fish lays nine million odd eggs; but anybody who has ever eaten fried cod's-roe must needs have noticed that each individual ovum was so very small as to be almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.
Thousands of these infinitesimal specks are devoured before they hatch out by predaceous fish; thousands more of the young fry are swallowed alive during their helpless infancy by the enemies of their species.
Imagine the very fractional amount of parental affection which each of the nine million must needs put up with!
On the other hand, there is a paternally-minded group of cat-fish known as the genus _Arius_, of Ceylon, Australia, and other tropical parts, the males of which carry about the ova loose in their mouths, or rather in an enlargement of the pharynx, somewhat resembling the pelican's pouch; and the spouses of these very devoted sires lay accordingly only very few ova, all told, but each almost as big as a hedge-sparrow's egg--a wonderful contrast to the tiny mites of the cod-fish.
To put it briefly, the greater the amount of protection afforded the eggs, the smaller the number and the larger the size.
And conversely, the larger the size of the egg to start with, the better fitted to begin the battle of life is the young fish when first turned out on a cold world upon his own resources.
This is a general law, indeed, that runs through all nature, from London slums to the deep sea.
Wasteful species produce many young, and take but little care of them when once produced.
Economical species produce very few young, but start each individual well-equipped for its place in life and look after them closely till they can take care of themselves in the struggle for existence.
And on the average, however many or however few the offspring to start with, just enough attain maturity in the long run to replace their parents in the next generation.
Were it otherwise, the sea would soon become one solid mass of herring, cod, and mackerel.
These cat-fish, however, are not the only good fathers that carry their young (like woodcock) in their own mouths.
A freshwater species of the Sea of Galilee, _Chromis Andreæ_ by name (dedicated by science to the memory of that fisherman apostle, St. Andrew, who must often have netted them), has the same habit of hatching out its young in its own gullet: and here again it is the male fish upon whom this apparently maternal duty devolves, just as it is the male cassowary that sits upon the eggs of his unnatural mate, and the male emu that tends the nest, while the hen bird looks on superciliously and contents herself with exercising a general friendly supervision of the nursery department.
I may add parenthetically that in most fish families the eggs are fertilised after they have been laid, instead of before, which no doubt accounts for the seeming anomaly.
Still, good mothers too may be found among fish, though far from frequently.
One of the Guiana catfishes, known as Aspredo, very much resembles her countrywoman the Surinam toad in her nursery arrangements.
Of course you know the Surinam toad--whom not to know argues yourself unknown--that curious creature that carries her eggs in little pits on her back, where the young hatch out and pass through their tadpole stage in a slimy fluid, emerging at last from the cells of this living honeycomb only when they have attained the full amphibian honours of four-legged maturity.
Well, Aspredo among cat-fish manages her brood in much the same fashion; only she carries her eggs beneath her body instead of on her back like her amphibious rival.
When spawning time approaches, and Aspredo's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, the lower side of her trunk begins to assume, by anticipation, a soft and spongy texture, honeycombed with pits, between which are arranged little spiky protuberances.
After laying her eggs, the mother lies flat upon them on the river bottom, and presses them into the spongy skin, where they remain safely attached until they hatch out and begin to manage for themselves in life.
It is curious that the only two creatures on earth which have hit out independently this original mode of providing for their offspring should both be citizens of Guiana, where the rivers and marshes must probably harbour some special danger to be thus avoided, not found in equal intensity in other fresh waters.
A prettily marked fish of the Indian Ocean, allied, though not very closely, to the pipe fishes, has also the distinction of handing over the young to the care of the mother instead of the father.
Its name is Solenostoma (I regret that no more popular title exists), and it has a pouch, formed in this case by a pair of long broad fins, within which the eggs are attached by interlacing threads that push out from the body.
Probably in this instance nutriment is actually provided through these threads for the use of the embryo, in which case we must regard the mechanism as very closely analogous indeed to that which obtains among mammals.
Some few fish, indeed, are truly viviparous; among them certain blennies and carps, in which the eggs hatch out entirely within the body of the mother.
One of the most interesting of these divergent types is the common Californian and Mexican silver-fish, an inhabitant of the bays and inlets of sub-tropical America.
Its chief peculiarity and title to fame lies in the extreme bigness of its young at birth.
The full-grown fish runs to about ten inches in length, fisherman's scale, while the fry measure as much as three inches apiece; so that they lie, as Professor Seeley somewhat forcibly expresses it, 'packed in the body of the parent as close as herrings in a barrel.'
This strange habit of retaining the eggs till after they have hatched out is not peculiar to fish among egg-laying animals, for the common little brown English lizard is similarly viviparous, though most of its relatives elsewhere deposit their eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sun in earth or sandbanks.
Mr. Hannibal Chollop, if I recollect aright, once shot an imprudent stranger for remarking in print that the ancient Athenians, that inferior race, had got ahead in their time of the modern Loco-foco ticket.
But several kinds of fish have undoubtedly got ahead in this respect of the common reptilian ticket; for instead of leaving about their eggs anywhere on the loose to take care of themselves, they build a regular nest, like birds, and sit upon their eggs till the fry emerge from them.
All the sticklebacks, for instance, are confirmed nest-builders: but here once more it is the male, not the female, who weaves the materials together and takes care of the eggs during their period of incubation.
The receptacle itself is made of fibres of water-weeds or stalks of grass, and is open at both ends to let a current pass through.
As soon as the lordly little polygamist has built it, he coaxes and allures his chosen mates into the entrance, one by one, to lay their eggs; and then when the nest is full, he mounts guard over them bravely, fanning them with his fins, and so keeping up a continual supply of oxygen which is necessary for the proper development of the embryo within.
It takes a month's sitting before the young hatch out, and even after they appear, this excellent father (little Turk though he be, and savage warrior for the stocking of his harem) goes out attended by all his brood whenever he sallies forth for a morning constitutional in search of caddis-worms, which shows that there may be more good than we imagine, after all, in the domestic institutions even of people who don't agree with us.
The bullheads or miller's thumbs, those quaint big-headed beasts which divide with the sticklebacks the polite attentions of ingenious British youth, are also nest-builders, and the male fish are said to anxiously watch and protect their offspring during their undisciplined nonage.
Equally domestic are the habits of those queer shapeless creatures, the marine lump-suckers, which fasten themselves on to rocks, like limpets, by their strange sucking disks, and defy all the efforts of enemy or fishermen to dislodge them by main force from their well-chosen position.
The pretty little tropical walking-fish of the filuroid tribe--those fish out of water--carry the nest-making instinct a point further, for they go ashore boldly at the beginning of the rainy season in their native woods, and scoop out a hole in the beach as a place of safety, in which they make regular nests of leaves and other terrestrial materials to hold their eggs.
Then father and mother take turns-about at looking after the hatching, and defend the spawn with great zeal and courage against all intruders.
I regret to say, however, there are other unprincipled fish which display their affection and care for their young in far more questionable and unpleasant manners.
For instance, there is that uncanny creature that inserts its parasitic fry as a tiny egg inside the unsuspecting shells of mussels and cockles.
Our fishermen are only too well acquainted, again, with one unpleasant marine lamprey, the hag or borer, so called because it lives parasitically upon other fishes, whose bodies it enters, and then slowly eats them up from within outward, till nothing at all is left of them but skin, scales, and skeleton.
They are repulsive eel-shaped creatures, blind, soft, and slimy; their mouth consists of a hideous rasping sucker; and they pour out from the glands on their sides a copious mucus, which makes them as disagreeable to handle as they are unsightly to look at.
Mackerel and cod are the hag's principal victims; but often the fisherman draws up a hag-eaten haddock on the end of his line, of which not a wrack remains but the hollow shell or bare outer simulacrum.
As many as twenty of these disgusting parasites have sometimes been found within the body of a single cod-fish.
Yet see how carefully nature provides nevertheless for the due reproduction of even her most loathsome and revolting creations.
The hag not only lays a small number of comparatively large and well-stored eggs, but also arranges for their success in life by supplying each with a bundle of threads at either end, every such thread terminating at last in a triple hook, like those with which we are so familiar in the case of adhesive fruits and seeds, like burrs or cleavers.
By means of these barbed processes, the eggs attach themselves to living fishes; and the young borer, as soon as he emerges from his horny covering, makes his way at once into the body of his unconscious host, whom he proceeds by slow degrees to devour alive with relentless industry, from the intestines outward.
This beautiful provision of nature enables the infant hag to start in life at once in very snug quarters upon a ready-made fish preserve.
I understand, however, that cod-fish philosophers, actuated by purely personal and selfish conceptions of utility, refuse to admit the beauty or beneficence of this most satisfactory arrangement for the borer species.
Probably the best known of all fishes' eggs, however (with the solitary exception of the sturgeon's, commonly observed between brown bread and butter, under the name of caviare), are the queer leathery purse-shaped ova of the sharks, rays, skates, and dog-fishes.
Everybody has picked them up on the seashore, where children know them as devil's purses and devil's wheelbarrows.
Most of these queer eggs are oblong and quadrangular, with the four corners produced into a sort of handles or streamers, often ending in long tendrils, and useful for attaching them to corallines or seaweeds on the bed of the ocean.
But it is worth noticing that in colour the egg-cases closely resemble the common wrack to which they are oftenest fastened; and as they wave up and down in the water with the dark mass around them, they must be almost indistinguishable from the wrack itself by the keenest-sighted of their enemies.
This protective resemblance, coupled with the toughness and slipperiness of their leathery envelope or egg-shell, renders them almost perfectly secure from all evil-minded intruders.
As a consequence, the dog-fish lay but very few eggs each season, and those few, large and well provided with nutriment for their spotted offspring.
It is these purses, and those of the thornback and the edible skate, that we oftenest pick up on the English coast.
The larger oceanic sharks are mostly viviparous.
In some few cases, indeed, among the shark and ray family, the mechanism for protection goes a step or two further than in these simple kinds.
That well-known frequenter of Australian harbours, the Port Jackson shark, lays a pear-shaped egg, with a sort of spiral staircase of leathery ridges winding round it outside, Chinese pagoda wise, so that even if you bite it (I speak in the person of a predaceous fish) it eludes your teeth, and goes dodging off screw-fashion into the water beyond.
There's no getting at this evasive body anywhere; when you think you have it, it wriggles away sideways, and refuses to give any hold for jaws or palate.
In fact, a more slippery or guileful egg was never yet devised by nature's unconscious ingenuity.
Then, again, the Antarctic chimæra (so called from its very unprepossessing personal appearance) relies rather upon pure deception than upon mechanical means for the security of its eggs.
The shell or case in this instance is prolonged at the edge into a kind of broad wing on either side, so that it exactly resembles one of the large flat leaves of the Antarctic fucus in whose midst it lurks.
It forms the high-water mark, I fancy, of protective resemblance amongst eggs, for not only is the margin leaf-like in shape, but it is even gracefully waved and fringed with floating hairs, as is the fashion with the expanded fronds of so many among the gigantic far-southern sea-weeds.
A most curious and interesting set of phenomena are those which often occur when a group of fishes, once marine, take by practice to inhabiting freshwater rivers; or, _vice-versâ,_ when a freshwater kind, moved by an aspiration for more expansive surroundings, takes up its residence in the sea as a naturalised marine.
Whenever such a change of address happens, it usually follows that the young fry cannot stand the conditions of the new home to which their ancestors were unaccustomed--we all know the ingrained conservatism of children--and so the parents are obliged once a year to undertake a pilgrimage to their original dwelling-place for the breeding season.
Extreme cases of terrestrial animals, once aquatic in habits, throw a flood of lurid light (as the newspapers say) upon the reason why this should be so.
For example, frogs and toads develop from tadpoles, which in all essentials are true gill-breathing fish.
It is, therefore, obvious that they cannot lay their eggs on dry land, where the tadpoles would be unable to find anything to breathe; so that even the driest and most tree-haunting toads must needs repair to the water once a year to deposit their spawn in its native surroundings.
Once more, crabs pass their earlier larval stages as free-swimming crustaceans, somewhat shrimp-like in appearance, and as agile as fleas: it is only by gradual metamorphosis that they acquire their legs and claws and heavy pedestrian habits.
Now there are certain kinds of crab, like the West Indian land-crabs (those dainty morsels whose image every epicure who has visited the Antilles still enshrines with regret in a warm corner of his heart), which have taken in adult life to walking bodily on shore, and visiting the summits of the highest mountains, like the fish of Deucalion's deluge in Horace.
But once a year, as the land-crabs bask in the sun on St. Catherine's Peak or the Fern Walk, a strange instinctive longing comes over them automatically to return for a while to their native element; and, obedient to that inner monitor of their race, down they march in thousands, _velut agmine facto_, to lay their eggs at their leisure in Port Royal harbour.
On the way, the negroes catch them, all full of rich coral, waiting to be spawned; and Chloe or Dinah, serves them up hot, with breadcrumbs, in their own red shells, neatly nestling between the folds of a nice white napkin.
The rest run away, and deposit their eggs in the sea, where the young hatch out, and pass their larval stage once more as free and active little swimming crustaceans.
Well, crabs, I need hardly explain in this age of enlightenment, are not fish; but their actions help to throw a side-light on the migratory instinct in salmon, eels, and so many other true fish which have changed with time their aboriginal habits.
The salmon himself, for instance, is by descent a trout, and in the parr stage he is even now almost indistinguishable from many kinds of river-trout that never migrate seaward at all.
But at some remote period, the ancestors of the true salmon took to going down to the great deep in search of food, and being large and active fish, found much more to eat in the salt water than ever they had discovered in their native streams.
So they settled permanently in their new home, as far as their own lives went at least; though they found the tender young could not stand the brine that did no harm to the tougher constitutions of the elders.
No doubt the change was made gradually, a bit at a time, through the brackish water, the species getting further and further seaward down bays and estuaries with successive generations, but always returning to spawn in its native river, as all well-behaved salmon do to the present moment.
At last, the habit hardened into an organic instinct, and nowadays the young salmon hatch out like their fathers as parr in fresh water, then go to the sea in the grilse stage and grow enormously, and finally return as full-grown salmon to spawn and breed in their particular birthplace.
Exactly the opposite fate has happened to the eels.
The salmonoids as a family are freshwater fish, and by far the greater number of kinds--trout, char, whitefish, grayling, pollan, vendace, gwyniad, and so forth--are inhabitants of lakes, steams, ponds, and rivers, only a very small number having taken permanently or temporarily to a marine residence.
But the eels, as a family, are a saltwater group, most of their allies, like the congers and murænas, being exclusively confined to the sea, and only a very small number of aberrant types having ever taken to invading inland waters.
If the life-history of the salmon, however, has given rise to as much controversy as the Mar peerage, the life-history of the eel is a complete mystery.
To begin with, nobody has ever so much as distinguished between male and female eels; except microscopically, eels have never been seen in the act of spawning, nor observed anywhere with mature eggs.
The ova themselves are wholly unknown: the mode of their production is a dead secret.
All we know is this: that eels never reproduce in fresh water; that a certain number of adults descend the rivers to the sea, irregularly, during the winter months; and that some of these must presumably spawn with the utmost circumspection in brackish water or in the deep sea, for in the course of the summer myriads of young eels, commonly called grigs, and proverbial for their merriment, ascend the rivers in enormous bodies, and enter every smaller or larger tributary.
If we know little about the paternity and maternity of eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood.
The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality.
They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to dry land, like veritable snakes, and cut straight across country for the nearest lake, pond, or ornamental waters.
These swarms or migrations are known to farmers as eel-fairs; but the word ought more properly to be written eel-fares, as the eels then fare or travel up the streams to their permanent quarters.
A great many eels, however, never migrate seaward at all, and never seem to attain to years of sexual maturity.
They merely bury themselves under stones in winter, and live and die as celibates in their inland retreats.
So very terrestrial do they become, indeed, that eels have been taken with rats or field-mice undigested in their stomachs.
The sturgeon is another more or less migratory fish, originally (like the salmon) of freshwater habits, but now partially marine, which ascends its parent stream for spawning during the summer season.
Incredible quantities are caught for caviare in the great Russian rivers.
At one point on the Volga, a hundred thousand people collect in spring for the fishery, and work by relays, day and night continuously, as long as the sturgeons are going up stream.
On some of the tributaries, when fishing is intermitted for a single day, the sturgeons have been known to completely fill a river 360 feet wide, so that the backs of the uppermost fish were pushed out of the water.
(I take this statement, not from the 'Arabian Nights,' as the scoffer might imagine, but from that most respectable authority, Professor Seeley.)
Still, in spite of the enormous quantity killed, there is no danger of any falling off in the supply for the future, for every fish lays from two to three million eggs, each of which, as caviare eaters well know, is quite big enough to be distinctly seen with the naked eye in the finished product.
The best caviare is simply bottled exactly as found, with the addition merely of a little salt.
No man of taste can pretend to like the nasty sun-dried sort, in which the individual eggs are reduced to a kind of black pulp, and pressed hard with the feet into doubtful barrels.
In conclusion, let me add one word of warning as to certain popular errors about the young fry of sundry well-known species.
Nothing is more common than to hear it asserted that sprats are only immature herring.
This is a complete mistake.
Believe it not.
Sprats are a very distinct species of the herring genus, and they never grow much bigger than when they appear, _brochés_, at table.
The largest adult sprat measures only six inches, while full-grown herring may attain as much as fifteen.
Moreover, herring have teeth on the palate, always wanting in sprats, by which means the species may be readily distinguished at all ages.
When in doubt, therefore, do not play trumps, but examine the palate.
On the other hand, whitebait, long supposed to be a distinct species, has now been proved by Dr. Günther, the greatest of ichthyologists, to consist chiefly of the fry or young of herring.
To complete our discomfiture, the same eminent authority has also shown that the pilchard and the sardine, which we thought so unlike, are one and the same fish, called by different names according as he is caught off the Cornish coast or in Breton, Portuguese, or Mediterranean waters.
Such aliases are by no means uncommon among his class.
To say the plain truth, fish are the most variable and ill-defined of animals; they differ so much in different habitats, so many hybrids occur between them, and varieties merge so readily by imperceptible stages into one another, that only an expert can decide in doubtful cases--and every expert carefully reverses the last man's opinion.
Let us at least be thankful that whitebait by any other name would eat as nice; that science has not a single whisper to breathe against their connection with lemon; and that whether they are really the young of _Clupea harengus_ or not, the supply at Billingsgate shows no symptom of falling short of the demand.
AN ENGLISH SHIRE.
For the reasons which have determined the existence of Sussex as a county of England, and which have given it the exact boundaries that it now possesses, we must go back to the remote geological history of the secondary ages.
Its limits and its very existence as a separate shire were predetermined for it by the shape and consistence of the mud or sand which gathered at the bottom of the great Wealden lake, or filled up the hollows of the old inland cretaceous sea.
Paradoxical as it sounds to say so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon principality of Ælle the Bretwalda, the modern English county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded by the geological conformation of the rock upon which they repose.
Where human annals see only the handicraft and interaction of human beings--Euskarian and Aryan, Celt and Roman, Englishman and Norman--a closer scrutiny of history may perhaps see the working of still deeper elements--chalk and clay, volcanic upheaval and glacial denudation, barren upland and forest-clad plain.
The value and importance of these underlying facts in the comprehension of history has, I believe, been very generally overlooked; and I propose accordingly here to take the single county of Sussex in detail, in order to show that when the geological and geographical factors of the problem are given, all the rest follows as a matter of course.
By such detailed treatment alone can one hope to establish the truth of the general principle that human history is at bottom a result of geographical conditions, acting upon the fundamentally identical constitution of man.
In a certain sense, it is quite clear that human life depends mainly upon soil and conformation, to an extent that nobody denies.
You cannot have a dense population in Sahara; and you can hardly fail to have one in the fruitful valley of the Nile.
The growth of towns in one district rather than another must be governed largely by the existence of rivers or harbours, of coal or metals, of agricultural lowlands or defensible heights.
Glasgow could not spring up in inland Leicestershire, nor Manchester in coalless Norfolk.
Insular England must naturally be the greatest shipping country in Europe; while no large foreign trade is possible in any Bohemia except Shakespeare's.
So much everybody admits.
But it seems to me that these underlying causes have coloured the entire local history of every district to an extent which few people adequately recognise, and that until such recognition becomes more general, our views of history must necessarily be very narrow.
We must see not only that something depends upon geographical configuration, not even merely that a great deal depends upon it, but that everything depends upon it.
We must unlearn our purely human history, and learn a history of interaction between nature and man instead.
From the great central boss of the chalk system in Salisbury Plain, two long cretaceous horns or projections run out to eastward towards the Channel and the German Sea.
These two horns, separated by the deep valley of the Weald, are known as the North and South Downs respectively.
The first great spur or ridge passes through the heart of Surrey, and then forms the backbone of Kent, expanding into a fan at its eastward extremity, where it topples over abruptly into the sea in the sheer bluffs which sweep round in a huge arc from the North Foreland in the Isle of Thanet, to Shakespeare's Cliff at Dover.
The second or southernmost range, that of the South Downs, parts company from the main boss in Hampshire, and runs eastward in a narrower but bolder line, till the Channel cuts short its progress in the water-worn precipice of Beachy Head.
Between these two ranges of Downs lies the low forest region of the Weald, and between the South Downs and the sea stretches a long but very narrow strip of lowland, beginning at Chichester, and ending where the chalk cliffs first meet the shore beside the new Aquarium and Chain Pier at Brighton.
Thus the whole of Sussex consists of three well-marked parallel belts: the low coast-line on the south-west, the high chalk Downs in the centre, and the Weald district on the north and north-west.
As these three belts determine the whole history and very existence of Sussex as an English shire, I shall make no apology for treating their origin here in some rapid detail.
The oldest geological formation with which we have to deal in Sussex (to any considerable extent) is the Wealden: so that our inquiry need not go any farther back in the history of the world than the later secondary ages.
Before that time, and for long æons afterward, the portion of the earth's crust which now forms Sussex had probably never emerged from the ocean.
Britain was then wholly represented by the primary regions of Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall, forming a small archipelago or group of rocky islands separated at some distance by a wide passage from the nucleus of the young European continent.
But by the Wealden period, the English Channel and the Eastern half of England had been considerably elevated above the level of the sea.
Great rivers and lakes existed in this new continental region, much like those which now exist in Sweden, Northern Russia, and Canada; and the deposits of sand or mud formed at their bottoms or in their estuaries compose the chief part of the Wealden formation in England.
Without going fully into this question (somewhat complicated by frequent changes of level), it will suffice for our present purpose to say that the Wealden consists, in the main, of two great divisions, which form, so to speak, the floor, or lowest story, of the Sussex formations.
The first or bottom division is chiefly composed of a rather soft and friable sandstone, which runs through the whole Forest Ridges, and crops out in the grey cliffs of Hastings and Fairlight.
The second or upper division is chiefly composed of a thick greasy clay, which forms the soil in the greater part of the Weald, and glides unobtrusively under the sea in the flat shore on either side of Hastings, giving rise to the lowlands of Pevensey Bay and the Romney Marshes.
Why the sandstone, which is really the bottom layer, should appear higher than the clay in these places, we shall see a little later.
After the deposition of the gritty or muddy Wealden beds in the lake and _embouchure_ of the old continental river, there came a second period of considerable depression, during which the whole of south-eastern England was once more covered by a shallow sea.
This sea ran, like an early northern Mediterranean, right across the face of Central Europe; and on its bottom was deposited the soft ooze of globigerina shells and siliceous sponge skeletons which has now hardened into chalk and flint.
A great cretaceous sheet thus overlay the Wealden beds and the whole face of Sussex to a depth of at least 600 feet; and if it had not been afterwards worn off in places, as the nursery rhyme says of old Pillicock, it would be there still.
I need hardly say that the chalk is yet _en évidence_ along the whole range of South Downs, and forms the tall white cliffs between Brighton and Beachy Head.
Finally, during the Tertiary period, another layer of London clay and other soft deposits was spread over the top of the chalk, certainly on the strip between the South Downs and the sea, and probably over the whole district between the Channel and the Thames valley: though in this case, later denudation has proceeded so far that very few traces of the Tertiary formations are preserved anywhere except in the greater hollows.
Such being the original disposition of the strata which compose Sussex, we have next to ask, What are the causes which have produced its existing configuration?
If the whole mass had merely been uplifted straight out of the sea, we ought now to find the whole country a flat and level table-land, covered over its entire surface with a uniform coat of Tertiary deposits.
On digging or boring below these, we ought to come upon the chalk, and below the chalk again, with its cretaceous congeners the greensand or the gault, we ought to meet the Weald clay and the Hastings sand.
Wherever a seaward cliff exhibited a section for our observation, we ought to find these same strata all exposed in regular order--the sandstone at the bottom, the clay above it, the broad belt of chalk halfway up, and the Tertiary muds and rubbles at the top.
But in the county as we actually find it, we get a very different state of things.
Here, the surface at sea-level is composed of London clay; there, a great mound of chalk rises into a swelling down; and yonder, once more, a steep escarpment leads us down into a broad lowland of the Weald.
The causes which have led to this arrangement of surface and conformation must now be considered with necessary brevity.
The North and South Downs, with all the country between them, form part of a great fold or outward bulge of the strata above enumerated, having its centre about the middle line of the Forest Ridge.
Imagine these strata bent or pushed upward by an internal upheaving force acting along that line, and you will get a rough picture of the original circumstances which have led to the existing arrangement of the county.
You would then have, instead of a flat table-land, as supposed above, a great curved mountain slope, with its centre on top of the Forest Ridge.
This gentle slope would rise from the sea between Chichester and a point south of Beachy, would swell slowly upward till it reached a height of two or three thousand feet at the Surrey border, and would fall again gradually towards the Thames valley at London.
On the southern side of the Downs this is pretty much what we now get, the Tertiary strata being preserved in the district near Chichester; though farther east, around Newhaven and Beachy Head, the sea has encroached upon the chalk so as to cut out the great white cliffs which bound the view everywhere along the shore from Brighton to Eastbourne.
In the central portion of the boss, however, almost all the highest elevated part has been denuded by ice or water action.
Between the North and South Downs, where we ought to find the mountain ridge, we find instead the valley of the Weald.
Here the chalk has been quite worn away, giving rise to the steep escarpment on the northern side of the South Downs, seen from the Devil's Dyke, so that at the foot of the sudden descent we get the Weald clay exposed; while in the very centre of the upheaved tract the clay itself has been cut through, and the Hastings sand appears upon the surface.
Moreover, the sand, being upraised by the central force, stands higher than the clay on either side, which forms the trough of the Weald; and thus the forest ridge, which abuts upon the sea in the cliffs of Hastings Castle, seems to lie above the clay, under which, however, it really glides on either side.
I need hardly add that this rough diagrammatic description is only meant as a general indication of the facts, and that it considerably simplifies the real geological changes probably involved in the sculpture of Sussex.
Nevertheless, I believe it pretty accurately represents the main formative points in the ante-human history of the county.
So much by way of preface or introduction.
These facts of structure form the data for the reconstruction of the Sussex annals during the human period.
Upon them as framework all the subsequent development of the county hangs.
And first let us observe how, before the advent of man upon the scene, the shire was already strictly demarcated by its natural boundaries.
Along the coast, between Chichester Harbour and Brighton, stretched a long, narrow, level strip of clay and alluvium, suitable for the dwelling-place of an agricultural people.
Back of this coastwise belt lay the bare rounded range of the South Downs--good grazing land for sheep, but naturally incapable of cultivation.
Two rivers, however, flowed in deep valleys through the Downs, and their basins, with the outlying combes and glens, were also the predestined seats of agricultural communities.
The one was the Ouse, passing through the fertile country around Lewes, and falling at last into the English Channel at Seaford, not as now at Newhaven; the other was the Cuckmere river, which has cut itself a deep glen in the chalk hills just beneath the high cliffs of Beachy Head.
Beyond the Downs again, to the north, the country descended abruptly to the deep trough of the Weald, whose cold and sticky clays or porous sandstones are never of any use for purposes of tillage.
Hence, as its very name tells us, the Weald has always been a wild and wood-clad region.
The Romans knew it as the Silva Anderida, or forest of Pevensey; the early English as the Andredesweald.
Both names are derived from a Celtic root signifying 'The Uninhabited.'
Even in our own day, a large part of this tract is covered by the woodlands of Tolgate Forest, St. Leonard's Forest, and Ashdown Forest; while the remainder is only very scantily laid down in pasture-land or hop-fields, with a considerable sprinkling of copses, woods, commons, and parks.
From its very nature, indeed, the Weald can never be anything else, in its greater portion, than a wild, uncultivated, and wooded region.
Let us note, too, how the really habitable strip of Sussex, from the point of view of an early people, was quite naturally cut off from all other parts of England by obvious limits.
This habitable strip consists, of course, of the coastwise belt from Brighton to the Hampshire border (which belt I shall henceforward take the liberty of designating as Sussex Proper), together with the seaward valleys and combes of the South Downs.
To the west, the great tidal flats and swamps about Hayling Island cut off Sussex from Hampshire; and before drainage and reclamation had done their work, these marshy districts must have formed a most impassable frontier.
From this point, the great woodland region of the Weald, thickly covered with primæval forest, and tenanted by wolves, bears, wild boars, and red deer, swept round in a long curve from the swamps at Bosham and Havant to the corresponding swamps of the opposite end at Pevensey and Hurstmonceux.
The belt of savage wooded country, thick with the lairs of wild beasts, which thus ringed round the greater part of the county, shut off the coastwise strip at once from all possibility of communication with the rest of England.
So Sussex Proper and the combes of the Downs were naturally predestined to form a single Celtic kingdom, a single Saxon principality, and a single English shire.
It will be observed that this description leaves wholly out of consideration the strip of country about Hastings, Rye, and Winchelsea.
It does so intentionally.
That strip of country does not belong to Sussex in the same intimate and strictly necessary manner as the rest of the county.
It probably once formed the seat of a small independent community by itself; and though there were good and obvious reasons why it should become finally united to Sussex rather than to Kent, it may be regarded as to some extent a debateable island between them.
For an island it practically was in early times.
At Pevensey Bay the Weald ran down into the sea by a series of swamps and bogs still artificially drained by dykes and sluices.
On the other side, the Romney marshes formed a similar though wider stretch of tidal flats, reclaimed and drained at a far later period, partly through the agency of the long shingle bank thrown up round the low modern spit of Dungeness.
Between them, the Hastings cliffs rose high above marsh and sea.
In their rear, the Weald forest covered the ridge; so that the Hastings district (still a separate rape or division of the county) formed a sort of smaller Sussex, divided, like the larger one, from all the rest of England by a semicircular belt of marsh, forest, and marsh once more.
These are the main elements out of which the history of the county is made up.
How far such conditions may have acted upon the very earliest human inhabitants of Sussex--the palæolithic savages of the drift--before the last Glacial epoch, it is impossible to say, because we know that many of them did not then exist, and that the present configuration of the county is largely due to subsequent agencies.
Britain was then united to the continent by a broad belt of land, filling up the bed of the English Channel, and it possessed a climate wholly different from that of the present day; while the position of the drift and the river gravels shows that the sculpture of the surface was then in many respects unlike the existing distribution of hill and valley.
We must confine ourselves, therefore, to the later or recent period (subsequent to the last glaciation of Britain), during which man has employed implements of polished stone, of bronze, and of iron.
The Euskarian neolithic population of Britain--a dark white race, like the modern Basques--had settlements in Sussex, at least in the coast district between the Downs and the sea.
Here they could obtain in abundance the flints for the manufacture of their polished stone hatchets; while on the alluvial lowlands of Selsea and Shoreham they could grow those cereals upon which they largely depended for their daily bread.
Neolithic monuments, indeed, are common along the range of the South Downs, as they are also on the main mass of the chalk in Salisbury Plain; and at Cissbury Hill, near Worthing, we have remains of one of the largest neolithic camp refuges in Britain.
The evidence of tumuli and weapons goes to show that the Euskarian people of Sussex occupied the coast belt and the combes of the Downs from the Chichester marshland to Pevensey, but that they did not spread at all into the Weald.
In fact, it is most probable that at this early period Sussex was divided into several little tribes or chieftainships, each of which had its own clearing in the lowland cut laboriously out of the forest by the aid of its stone axes; while in the centre stood the compact village of wooden huts, surrounded by a stockade, and girt without by the small cultivated plots of the villagers.
On the Downs above rose the camp or refuge of the tribe--an earthwork rudely constructed in accordance with the natural lines of the hills--to which the whole body of people, with their women, children, and cattle, retreated in case of hostile invasion from the villagers on either side.
It is not likely that any foreigners from beyond the great forest belt of the Weald would ever come on the war-trail across that dangerous and trackless wilderness; and it is probable, therefore, that the camps or refuges were constructed as places of retreat for the tribes against their immediate neighbours, rather than against alien intruders from without.
Hence we may reasonably conclude--as indeed is natural at such an early stage of civilisation--that the whole district was not yet consolidated under a single rule, but that each village still remained independent, and liable to be engaged in hostilities with all others.
Even if extended chieftainships over several villages had already been set up, as is perhaps implied by the great tumuli of chiefs and the size of the camps in some parts of Britain, we must suppose them to have been confined for the most part to a single river valley.
If so, there may have been petty Euskarian principalities, rude supremacies or chieftainships like those of South Africa, in the Chichester lowlands, in the dale of Arun, in the valleys of the Adur, the Ouse, and the Cuckmere River, and perhaps, too, in the insulated Hastings region, between the Pevensey levels and the Romney marsh.
These principalities would then roughly coincide with the modern rapes of Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings.
Each would possess its own group of villages, and tilled lowland, its own boundary of forest, and its own camp of refuge on the hill-tops.
Cissbury almost undoubtedly formed such a camp for the fertile valley of the Adur and the coast strip from Worthing to Brighton.
On its summit has been discovered an actual manufactory of stone implements from the copious material supplied by the flint veins in the chalk of which it is composed.
Such a society, left to itself in Sussex, could never have got much further than this.
It could not discover or use metals, when it had no metal in its soil except the small quantity of iron to be found in the then inaccessible Weald.
It had no copper and no tin, and therefore it could not manufacture bronze.
But the geographical position of England generally, within sight of the European continent, made it certain that if ever anywhere else bronze should come to be used, the bronze-weaponed people must ultimately cross over and subjugate the stone-weaponed aborigines of the island.
Moreover, bronze was certain to be first hit upon in those countries where tin and copper were most easily workable--that is to say, in Asia.
From Asia, the secret of its manufacture spread to the outlying peninsula of Europe, where it was quickly adopted by the Aryan Celts, who had already invaded the outlying continent, armed only with weapons of stone.
As soon as they had learnt the use of bronze, certain great changes and improvements followed naturally--amongst others, an immense advance in the art of boat-building.
The Celts of the bronze age soon constructed vessels which enabled them to cross the narrow seas and invade Britain.
Their superior weapons gave them at once an enormous advantage over the Euskarian natives, armed only with their polished flint hatchets, and before long they overran the whole island, save only the recesses of Wales and the north of Scotland.
From that moment, the bronze age of Britain set in--say some 1,000 or 1,500 years before the Christian era.
The Celts, however, did not exterminate the whole Euskarian people; they were too few in number and too far advanced in civilisation for such a course.
They knew it was better to make them slaves than to destroy them: for the Celts had just reached, but had not yet got beyond, the slave-making stage of culture.
To this day, people of mixed Euskarian parentage, and marked by the long skull, dark complexion, and black eyes of the Euskarian type, form a large proportion of the English peasantry; and they are found even in Sussex, which subsequently suffered more than most other parts of Britain from the destructive deluge of Teutonic barbarism in the fifth century.
But though the Celts did not exterminate the Euskarians, they completely Celticised them, just as the Teuton is now Teutonising the old population of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
In South Wales and elsewhere, indeed, the aborigines retained their own language and institutions, as Silures and so forth; but in the conquered districts of southern and eastern Britain they learned the tongue of their masters, and came to be counted as Celtic serfs.
Thus, at the time when Britain comes forth into the full historic glare of Roman civilisation, we find the country inhabited by a Celtic aristocracy of Aryan type--round-headed, fair-haired, and blue-eyed; together-with a _plebs_ of Celticised Euskarian or half-caste serfs, retaining, as they still retain, the long skulls and dark complexions of their aboriginal ancestors.
This was the ethnical composition of the Sussex population at the date of the first Roman invasions.
Under the bronze-weaponed Celts, a very different type of civilisation became possible.
In the first place a more extended chieftainship resulted from the improved weapons and consequent military power; and all Britain (at least, towards the close of the Celtic domination) became amalgamated into considerable kingdoms, some of which seem to have spread over several modern shires.
Sussex, however, enclosed by its barrier of forest, would naturally remain a single little principality of itself, held, at least in later times, by a tribe known to the Romans as Regni.
Traces of Celtic occupation are mainly confined to the Downs and the seaward slope of Sussex Proper; in the broad expanse of the Weald, they are few and far between.
The Celts occupied the fertile valleys and alluvial slopes, cut down the woods by the river sides and on the plains, and built their larger and more regular camps of refuge upon the Downs, for protection against the kindred Cantii beyond the Weald, or the more distantly-related Belgæ across the Hayling tidal flats.
Of these hill-forts, Hollingbury Castle, near Brighton, may be taken as a typical example.
Bronze weapons and other implements of the bronze age are found in great numbers about Lewes in particular (where the isolated height, now crowned by the Norman Castle, must always have commanded the fertile river vale of the Ouse), as well as at Chichester, Bognor, and elsewhere.
But the great forest, inhabited by savage beasts and still more terrible fiends, proved a barrier to their northward extension.
Even if they had cleared the land, they could not have cultivated it with their existing methods; and so it is only in a few spots near the upper river valleys that we find any traces of outlying Celtic hamlets in the wilderness of the Weald.
Some kind of trade, however, must have existed between the Regni and the other tribes of Britain, in order to supply them with the bronze, whose component elements Sussex does not possess.
Woolsonbury, Westburton Hill, Clayton Hill, Wilmington, Hangleton Down, Plumpton Plain, and many other places along the coast have yielded large numbers of bronze implements; while the occurrence of the raw metal in lumps, together with the finished weapons, at Worthing and Beachy Head, as well the discovery of a mould for a socketed celt at Wilmington, shows that the actual foundry work was performed in Sussex itself.
A beautiful torque from Hollingbury Castle attests the workmanship of the Sussex founders.
No doubt the tin was imported from Cornwall, while the copper was probably brought over from the continent.
Glass beads, doubtless of Southern (perhaps Egyptian) manufacture, have also been found in Sussex, with implements of the bronze age.
In the polished stone age, the county had been self-supporting, because of its possession of flint.
In the bronze age it was dependent upon other places, through its non-possession of copper or tin.
During the former period it may have exported weapons from Cissbury; during the latter, it must have imported the material of weapons from Cornwall and Gaul.
Before the Romans came, the Celts of Britain had learned the use of iron.
Whether they ever worked the iron of the Weald, however, is uncertain.
But as the ores lie near the surface, as wood (to be made into charcoal) for the smelting was abundant, and as these two facts caused the Weald iron to be extensively employed in later times, it is probable that small clearings would be made in the most accessible spots, and that rude ironworks would be established.
The same geographical causes which made Britain part of the Roman world naturally affected Sussex, as one of its component portions.
Even under the Empire, however, the county remained singularly separate.
The Romans built two strong fortresses at Anderida and Regnum, Pevensey and Chichester, to guard the two Gwents or lowland plains, where the shore shelves slowly to seaward; and they ran one of their great roads across the coastwise tract, from Dover to the Portus Magnus (now Porchester), near Portsmouth; but they left Sussex otherwise very much to its own devices.
We know that the Regni were still permitted to keep their native chief, who probably exercised over his tribesmen somewhat the same subordinate authority which a Rájput raja now exercises under the British government.
Here, again, we see the natural result of the isolation of Sussex.
The Romans ruled directly in the open plains of the Yorkshire Ouse and the Thames, as we ourselves rule in the Bengal Delta, the Doáb, and the Punjáb; but they left a measure of independence to the native princes of south Wales, of Sussex, and of Cornwall, as we ourselves do to the native rulers in the deserts of Rájputana, the inaccessible mountains of Nipal, and the aboriginal hill districts of Central India.
When the Roman power began to decay, the outlying possessions were the first to be given up.
The Romans had enslaved and demoralised the provincial population; and when they were gone, the great farms tilled by slave labour under the direction of Roman mortgagee-proprietors lay open to the attacks of fresh and warlike barbarians from beyond the sea.
How early the fertile east coasts of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia may have fallen a prey to the Teutonic pirates we cannot say.
The wretched legends, indeed, retailed to us by Gildas, Bæda, and the English Chronicle, would have us believe that they were colonised at a later period; but as they lay directly in the path of the marauders from Sleswick, as they were certainly Teutonised very thoroughly, and as no real records survive, we may well take it for granted that the long-boats of the English, sailing down with the prevalent north-east winds from the wicks of Denmark, came first to shore on these fertile coasts.
After they had been conquered and colonised, the Saxon and Jutish freebooters began to look for settlements, on their part, farther south.
One horde, led, as the legend veraciously assures us, by Hengest and Horsa, landed in Thanet; another, composed entirely of Saxons, and under the command of a certain dubious Ælle, came to shore on the spit of Selsea.
It was from this last body that the county took its newer name of Suth-Seaxe, Suth Sexe, or Sussex.
Let us first frankly narrate the legend, and then see how far it may fairly be rationalised.
In 477, says the English Chronicle--written down, it must be remembered, from traditional sources, four centuries later, at the court of Alfred the West Saxon--in 477, Ælle and his three sons, Cymen, Wlencing, and Cissa, came to Britain in three ships, and landed at the stow that is cleped Cymenes-ora.
There that ilk day they slew many Welshmen, and the rest they drave into the wood hight Andredes-leah.
In 485, Ælle, fighting the Welsh near Mearcredes Burn, slew many, and the rest he put to flight.
In 491, Ælle, with his son Cissa, beset Andredes-ceaster, and slew all that therein were, nor was there after one Welshman left.
Such is the whole story, as told in the bald and simple entries of the West Saxon annalist, A more dubious tradition further states that Ælle was also Bretwalda, or overlord, of all the Teutonic tribes in Britain.
And now let us see what we can make of this wholly unhistorical and legendary tale.
Whether there ever was a South Saxon king named Ælle we cannot say; but that the earliest English pirate fleet on this coast should have landed near Selsea is likely enough.
The marauders would not land near the Romney marshes or the Pevensey flats, where the great fortresses of Lymne and Anderida would block their passage; and they could not beach their keels easily anywhere along the cliff-girt coast between Beachy Head and Brighton; so they would naturally sail along past the marshland and the chalk cliffs till they reached the open champaign shore near Chichester.
Cymenes-ora, where they are said to have landed, is now Keynor on the Bill of Selsea; and Selsea itself, as its name (correctly Selsey) clearly shows us, was then an island in the tidal flats.
This was just the sort of place which the English pirates loved, for all tradition represents their first settlements as effected on isolated spots like Thanet, Hurst Castle, Holderness, and Bamborough.
Thence they would march upon Regnum, the square Roman town at the harbour head, and reduce it by storm, garrisoned as it doubtless was by a handful of semi-Romanised Welshmen or Britons.
The town took the English name of Cissanceaster, or Chichester.
Moreover, all around the Chichester district, we still find a group of English clan villages, with the characteristic patronymic termination _ing_.
Such are East and West Wittering, Donnington, Funtington, Didling, and others.
It is _vraisemblable_ enough that the little strip of very low coast between Hayling Island and the Arun may have been the first original South Saxon colony.
Nor is it by any means impossible that the names of Keynor and Chichester Cymenes-ora and Cissanceaster--may still enshrine the memory of two among the old South Saxon freebooters.
The tradition of a battle at Mearcredes Burn, when the Welsh were again defeated, may refer to an advance by which, a few years later, the South Saxon pirates pushed eastward along the coast, and occupied the strip of shore as far as Brighton, together with the fertile valley of the Lewes Ouse.
In the first-named district we find a large group of English Clan villages, including Patching, Poling, Angmering, Goring, Worthing, Tarring, Washington, Lullington, Blatchingden, Ovingdean, Rottingdean, and many others.
Amongst them is one which has clearly given rise to the name of Ælle's third son, and that is Lancing.
Unfortunately for the legend, we must decide that this was really the settlement of an English clan of Lancingas, as Washington was the _tun_ or enclosure of the Weasingas, and Beddingham was the _ham_ or home of the Beddingas.
Around Lewes, in like manner, we find Tarring, Malling, Piddinghoe, Bletchington, and others; while in the valley just to the east we have ten or eleven such names as Lullington, Wilmington, Folkington, and Littlington.
These districts, I imagine, represent the second advance of the English conquerors.
Finally, fourteen years after the first landing, the South Saxons crossed the Downs and attacked Anderida.
The Roman walls of the great fortress were thick and strong, as their remains, built over by the Norman Castle, still show; but they were defended by half-trained Welsh, who could not withstand the English onset.
With the fall of Anderida, the native power was broken for ever, 'nor was there after one Welshman left.'
The English tribe of the Hastingas settled at Hastings; and the South Saxons were now supreme from marsh to marsh.
But did they really exterminate the native Celt-Euskarian population?
I venture to say, no.
Some no doubt, especially the men, they slew; but the women and children, as even Mr. Freeman admits, were probably spared in large numbers.
Even of the men, many doubtless became slaves to the Saxon lords; while others maintained themselves in isolated bands in the Weald.
To this day the Euskarian type of humanity is not uncommon among the Sussex peasantry, and all the rivers still bear the Celtic names of Arun, Adur, Ouse, and Calder.
That there was 'no Welshmen left' is only another way of saying that the armed Welsh resistance ceased.
The Romanised Britons became English churls and serfs--nay, the very name for a serf in ordinary conversation was Weala or Welshman.
The population received a new element--the English Saxons--but it was not completely changed.
The Weorthingas and Goringas simply became masters of the lands formerly held by Roman owners; and the cabins of their British serfs still clustered around the wooden hall of the English lords.
Nevertheless, Sussex is one of the most thoroughly Teutonised counties in England.
The proportion of Saxon blood is very marked: light hair and blue eyes, together with the broad and short English skull, are common even among the peasantry.
The number of English Clan names noticed by Mr. Kemble in the towns and villages of Sussex is 68 as against 60 in almost equally Teutonic Kent, 48 in Essex, 21 in largely Celtic Dorset, 6 in Cumberland, 2 in Cornwall, and none in Monmouth.
The size and number of the hundreds into which the county is divided tells us much the same tale.
Each hundred was originally a group of one hundred free English families, settled on the soil, and holding in check the native subject population of Anglicised Celt-Euskarian churls.
Now, in Sussex we get 61 hundreds, and in Kent 61, as against 13 in Surrey beyond the Weald (where the clan names also sink to 18), and 8 in Hertfordshire.
Or, to put it another way, which I borrow from Mr. Isaac Taylor, in Sussex there is one hundred to every 23 square miles; in Kent to every 24; in Dorset to every 30; in Surrey to every 58; in Herts to every 79; in Gloucester to every 97; in Derby to every 162; in Warwick to every 179; and in Lancashire to every 302.
In other words, while in Kent, Sussex, and the east the free English inhabitants clustered thickly on the soil, with a relatively small servile population, in Mercia and the west the English population was much more sparsely scattered, with a relatively great servile population.
So, as late as the time of Domesday, in Kent and Sussex the slaves mentioned in the great survey (only a small part, probably, of the total) numbered only 10 per cent.
of the population, while in Devon and Cornwall they numbered 20 per cent., and in Gloucestershire 33 per cent.
These results are all inevitable.
It is obvious that the first attacks must necessarily be made upon the east and south coasts, and that the inland districts and the west must only slowly be conquered afterward.
Especially was it easy to found Teutonic kingdoms in the four isolated regions of Lincolnshire, East Anglia, Kent, and Sussex, each of which was cut off from the rest of England in early times by impassable fens, marshes, forests, or rivers.
It was easy here to kill off the Welsh fighting population, to drive the remnants into the Fen Country or the Weald, to enslave the captives, the women, and the children, and to secure the Teutonic colony by a mark or border of woodland, swamp, or hill.
On the other hand, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia, with a vague and ill-defined internal border, had harder work to fight their way in against a united Welsh resistance; and it was only very slowly that they pushed across the central watershed, to dismember the unconquered remnant of the Britons at last into the three isolated bodies of Damnonia (Cornwall and Devon), Wales Proper, and Strathclyde.
This is probably why the earliest settlements were made in these isolated coast regions, and why the inward progress of the other colonies was so relatively slow.
The South Saxons, then, at first occupied the three fertile bits of the county--the coast belt of Sussex Proper, the Valley of the Ouse, and the isolated Hastings district--because these were the best adapted for their strictly agricultural life.
In spite of the legend of Ælle, I do not suppose that they were all united from the first under a single principality.
It seems far more probable that each little clan settlement was at first wholly independent; that afterwards three little chieftainships grew up in the three fertile strips--typified, perhaps, by the story of Ælle's three sons--and that the whole finally coalesced into a single kingdom of the South Saxons, which is the state in which we find the county in Bæda's time.
As ever, its boundaries were marked out for it by nature, for the Weald remained as yet an almost unbroken forest; and the names of Selsea, Pevensey, Winchelsea, Romney, and many others, show by their common insular termination (found in all isles round the British coast, as in Sheppey, Walney, Bardsea, Anglesea, Fursey, Wallasey, and so forth) that the marshland was still wholly undrained, and that a few islands alone stood here and there as masses of dry land out of their desolate and watery expanse.
The Hastings district, too, fell more naturally to Sussex than to Kent, because the marshes dividing it from the former were far less formidable than those which severed it from the latter.
Most probably the South Saxons intentionally aided nature in cutting off their territory from all other parts of Britain; for every English kingdom loved to surround itself with a distinct mark or border of waste, as a defence against invasion from outside.
The Romans had brought Sussex within the great network of their road system; but the South Saxons no doubt took special pains to cut off those parts of the roads which led across their own frontier.
At any rate, it is quite clear that Sussex did not largely participate in the general life of the new England, and that intercourse with the rest of the world was extremely limited.
The South Saxon kings probably lived for the most part at Chichester, though no doubt they had _hams_, after the royal Teutonic fashion generally, in many other parts of their territory; and they moved about from one to the other, with their suite of thegns, eating up in each what food was provided by their serfs for their use, and then moving on to the next.
The isolation of Sussex is strikingly shown by its long adherence to the primitive paganism.
Missionaries from Rome, under the guidance of Augustine, converted Kent as early as 597.
For Kent was the nearest kingdom to the continent; it contained the chief port of entry for continental travellers, Richborough--the Dover of those days--and its king, accustomed to continental connections, had married a Christian Frankish princess from Paris.
Hence Kent was naturally the first Teutonic principality to receive the faith.
Next came Northumbria, Lindsey, East Anglia, Wessex, and even inland Mercia.
But Sussex still held out for Thor and Woden as late as 679, three-quarters of a century after the conversion of Kent, and twenty years after Mercia itself had given way to the new faith.
Even when Sussex was finally converted, the manner in which the change took place was characteristic.
It was not by missionaries from beyond the Weald in Kent or Surrey, nor from beyond the marsh in Wessex.
An Irish monk, Bæda tells us, coming ashore on the open coast near Chichester, established a small monastery at Bosham--even then, no doubt, a royal _ham_, as we know it was under Harold--'a place,' says the old historian significantly, 'girt round by sea and forest.'
(It lies just on the mark between Wessex and the South Saxons.)
Æthelwealh, the king--a curious name, for it means 'noble Welshman' (perhaps he was of mixed blood)--had already been baptized in Mercia, and his wife was the daughter of a Christian ealdorman of the Worcester-men; but the rest of the principality was heathen.
The Irish monk effected nothing; but shortly after Wilfrith, the fiery Bishop of York, on one of his usual flying visits to Rome, got shipwrecked off Selsea.
With his accustomed vigour, he went ashore, and began a crusade in the heathen land.
He was able at once to baptize the 'leaders and soldiers'--that is to say, the free military English population; while his attendant priests--Eappa, Padda, Burghelm, and Oiddi (it is pleasant to preserve these little personal touches)--proceeded to baptize the 'plebs'--that is to say, the servile Anglicised Celt-Euskarian substratum--up and down the country villages.
It was to Wilfrith, too, that Sussex owed her first cathedral.
Æthelwealh made him a present of Selsea, 'a place surrounded by the sea on every side save one, where an isthmus about as broad as a stone's-throw connects it with the mainland,' and there the ardent bishop founded a regular monastery, in which he himself remained for five years.
On the soil were 250 serfs, whom Wilfrith at once set free.
After the death of Aldhelm, the West Saxon bishop, in 709, Sussex was made a separate bishopric, with its seat at Selsea; and it was not till after the Norman Conquest that the cathedral was removed to Chichester.
It may be noted that all these arrangements were in strict accordance with early English custom.
The kings generally gave their bishops a seat near their own chief town, as Cuthbert had his see at Lindisfarne, close to the royal Northumbrian capital of Bamborough; so that the proximity of Selsea to Chichester made it the most natural place for a bishopstool; and, again, it was usual to make over spots in the fens or marshes to the monks, who, by draining and cultivating them, performed a useful secular work.
No traces now remain of old Selsea Cathedral, its site having long been swallowed up by incursions of the sea.
Bæda has the ordinary number of miracles to record in connection with the monastery.
As time went on, however, the isolation of Sussex became less complete.
Æthelwealh had got himself into complications with Wessex by accepting the sovereignty of the Isle of Wight and the Meonwaras about Southhampton from the hands of a Mercian conqueror.
Perhaps Æthelwealh then repaired the old Roman roads which led from his own _ham_ at Chichester to Portsmouth in Wessex, and broke down the mark, so as to connect his old and his new dominions with one another.
At any rate, shortly after, Cædwalla, the West Saxon, an ætheling at large on the look-out for a kingdom, attacked him suddenly with his host of thegns from this unexpected quarter, killed the King himself, and harried the South Saxons from marsh to marsh.
Two South Saxons thegns expelled him for a time, and made themselves masters of the country.
But afterwards, Cædwalla, becoming King of the West Saxons, recovered Sussex once more, and handed it on to his successor, Ini.
Hence the South Saxons had no bishopric of their own during this period, but were included in the see of the West Saxons at Winchester.
During the hundred years of the Mercian Supremacy, coincident, roughly speaking, with the eighth century, we hear little of Sussex; but it seems to have shaken off the yoke of Wessex, and to have been in subjection to the great Mercian over-lords alone.
It had its own under-kings and its own bishops.
Early in the ninth century, however, when Ecgberht the West Saxon succeeding in throwing off the Mercian yoke, the other Saxon States of South Britain willingly joined him against the Anglian oppressors.
'The men of Kent and Surrey, Sussex and Essex, gladly submitted to King Ecgberht.'
When the royal house of the South Saxons died out, Sussex still retained a sort of separate existence within the West Saxon State, as Wales does in the England of our own day.
Æthelwulf made his son under-king of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex; and so, during the troublous times of the Danish invasion, when all southern England became one in its resistance to the heathen, those old principalities gradually sank into the position of provinces or shires.
From the period of union with the general West Saxon Kingdom (which grew slowly into the Kingdom of England under Eadgar and Cnut), the markland of the Weald seems to have been gradually encroached upon from the south.
Most of the names in that district are distinctly 'Anglo-Saxon' in type; by which I mean that they were imposed before the Norman Conquest, and belong to the stage of the language then in use.
Even during the Roman period, settlements for iron-mining existed in the Weald, and these clearings would of course be occupied by the English colonists at a comparatively early time.
Just at the foot of the Downs, too, on the north side, we find a few clan settlements on the edge of the Weald, which must date from the first period of English colonisation.
Such are Poynings, Didling, Ditchling, Chillington, and Chiltington.
Farther in, however, the clan names grow rarer; and where we find them they are not _hams_ or _tuns_, regular communities of Saxon settlers, but they show, by their forestine terminations of _hurst_, _ley_, _den_, and _field_, that they were mere outlying shelters of hunters or swineherds in the trackless forest.
Such are Billinghurst, Warminghurst, Itchingfield, and Ardingley.
On the Cuckmere river, the villages in the combes bear names like Jevington and Lullington; but in the upper valley of the little stream, where it flows through the Weald, we find instead Chiddingley and Hellingley.
Most of the Weald villages, however, bear still more woodland titles--Midhurst, Farnhurst, Nuthurst, Maplehurst, and Lamberhurst; Cuckfield, Mayfield, Rotherfield, Hartfield, Heathfield, and Wivelsfield; Crawley, Cowfold, Loxwood, Linchmere, and Marden.
_Hams_ and _tuns_, the sure signs of early English colonisation, are almost wholly lacking; in their place we get abundance of such names as Coneyhurst Common, Water Down Forest, Hayward's Heath, Milland Marsh, and Bell's Oak Green.
To this day even, the greater part of the Weald is down in park, copse, heath, forest, common, or marshland.
Throughout the whole expanse of the woodland region in Sussex, with the outlying portions in Kent, Surrey, and Hants, Mr. Isaac Taylor has collected no fewer than 299 local names with the significant forest terminations in _hurst_, _den_, _ley_, _holt_, and _field_.
These facts show that, during the later 'Anglo-Saxon' period, the Weald was being slowly colonised in a few favourable spots.
Its use as a mark was now gone, and it might be safely employed for the peaceful purposes of the archer and the swineherd.
Names referring to pasture and the wild beasts are therefore common.
To the same time must doubtless be assigned the exact delimitation of the Sussex frontiers.
During the early periods, the Kentings, the Suthrige, and the West Saxons would all extend on their side as far as the Weald, which would be treated as a sort of neutral zone.
But when the Woodland itself began to be occupied, a demarcation would naturally be made between the neighbouring provinces.
The boundary follows the most obvious course.
It starts on the east from the old mouth of the Rother (now diverted to Rye New Harbour), known as the Kent Ditch, in what was then the central and most impassable part of the marshland.
It runs along the Rother to its bifurcation, and then makes for the heaven-water-parting or dividing back of the Forest Ridge, beside two or three lesser streams.
Then it passes along the crest of the ridge from Tunbridge Wells, past East Grinstead and Crawley, till it strikes the Hampshire border.
There it follows the line between the two watersheds to the sea, which it reaches at Emsworth.
There is, however, one long insulated spur of Hampshire running down from Haslemere to Graffham (in apparent defiance of geographical features), whose origin and meaning I do not understand.
With the Norman Conquest, the history of Sussex, and of England generally, for the most part ceases abruptly; all the rest is mere personal gossip about Prince Edward and the battle of Lewes, or about George IV.
and the Brighton Pavilion.
Not, of course, that there is not real national history here as elsewhere; but it is hard to disentangle from the puerile personalities of historians generally.
Nevertheless, some brief attempt to reconstruct the main facts in the subsequent history of Sussex must still be undertaken.
The part which Sussex bore passively in the actual Conquest is itself typical of the new relations.
England was getting drawn into the general run of European civilisation, and the old isolation of Sussex was beginning to be broken down.
Lying so near the Continent, Sussex was naturally the landing-place for an army coming from Normandy or Ponthieu.
William's fleet came ashore on the low coast at Pevensey.
Naturally he turned towards Hastings, whence a road now led through the Weald to London.
On the tall cliffs he threw up an earthwork, and then marched towards the great town.
Harold's army met him on the heights of Senlac, part of the solitary ridge between the marshes, by which alone London could be reached.
Harold fell on the spot now marked by the ruined high altar of Battle Abbey--a national monument at present in the keeping of an English duke.
Once the native army was routed, William marched on resistlessly to London, and Sussex and England were at his feet.
The new feudal organisation of the county is doubtless shadowed forth in the existing rapes.
Of these there are six, called respectively after Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings.
It will be noticed at once that these were the seats of the new bishopric and of the five great early castles.
In one form or another, more or less modernised, Arundel Castle, Bramber Castle, Lewes Castle, Pevensey Castle, and Hastings Castle all survive to our own day.
In accordance with their ordinary policy of removing cathedrals from villages to chief towns, and so concentrating the civil and ecclesiastical government, the Normans brought the bishopstool from Selsea to Chichester.
The six rapes are fairly coincident--Chichester with the marsh district; Arundel with the dale of Arun; Bramber with the dale of Adur; Lewes with the western dale of Ouse; Pevensey with the eastern dale of Ouse; and Hastings with the insulated region between the marshes.
In other words, Sussex seems to have been cut up into six natural divisions along the sea-shore; while to each division was assigned all the Weald back of its own shore strip as far as the border.
Thus the rapes consist of six long longitudinal belts, each with a short sea front and a long stretch back into the Weald.
Increased intercourse with the Continent brought the Cinque Ports into importance; and, as premier Cinque Port, Hastings grew to be one of the chief towns in Sussex.
The constant French wars made them prominent in mediæval history.
As trade grew up, other commercial harbours gave rise to considerable mercantile towns.
Rye and Winchelsea, at the mouth of the Rother, were great ports of entry from France as late as the days of Elizabeth.
Seaford, at the mouth of the Ouse, was also an important harbour till 1570, when a terrible storm changed the course of the stream to the town called from that fact Newhaven.
Lewes was likewise a port, as the estuary of the Ouse was navigable from the mouth up to the town.
Brighthelmstone was still a village; but old Shoreham on the Adur was a considerable place.
Arundel Haven and Chichester Harbour recalls the old mercantile importance of their respective neighbourhoods.
The only other places of any note in mediæval Sussex were Steyning, under the walls of Bramber Castle; Hurstmonceux, which the Conqueror bestowed upon the lord of Eu; Battle, where he planted his great expiatory abbey; and Hurst Pierpont, which also dates from William's own time.
The sole important part of the county was still the strip along the coast between the Weald and the sea.
During the Plantagenet period, England became a wool-exporting country, like Australia at the present day; and therefore the wool-growing parts of the island rose quickly into great importance.
Sussex, with its large expanse of chalk downs, naturally formed one of the best wool-producing tracts; and in the reign of Edward III., Chichester was made one of the 'staples' to which the wool trade was confined by statute.
Sussex Proper and the Lewes valley were now among the most thickly populated regions of England.
The Weald, too, was beginning to have its turn.
English iron was getting to be in request for the cannon, armour, and arms required in the French wars; and nowhere was iron more easily procured, side by side with the fuel for smelting it, than in the Sussex Weald.
From the days of the Edwards to the early part of the eighteenth century, the woods of the Weald were cut down in quantities for the iron works.
During this time, several small towns began to spring up in the old forest region, of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst, Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead.
Many of the deserted smelting-places may still be seen, with their invariable accompaniment of a pond or dam.
The wood supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth's reign, but iron was still smelted in 1760.
From that time onward, the competition of Sheffield and Birmingham--where iron was prepared by the 'new method' with coal--blew out the Sussex furnaces, and the Weald relapsed once more into a wild heather-clad and wood-covered region, now thickly interspersed with parks and country seats, of which Petworth, Cowdry, and Ashburnham are the best known.
Modern times, of course, have brought their changes.
With the northward revolution caused by steam and coal, Sussex, like the rest of southern England, has fallen back to a purely agricultural life.
The sea has blocked up the harbours of Rye, Winchelsea, Seaford, and Lewes.
Man's hand has drained the marshes of the Rother, of Pevensey, and of Selsea Bill; and railways have broken down the isolation of Sussex from the remainder of the country.
Still, as of old, the natural configuration continues to produce its necessary effects.
Even now there are no towns of any size in the Weald: few, save Lewes, Arundel, and Chichester, anywhere but on the coast.
The Downs are given up to sheep-farming; the Weald to game and pleasure-grounds; the shore to holiday-making.
The proximity to London is now the chief cause of Sussex prosperity.
In the old coaching days, Brighton was a foregone conclusion.
Sixty miles by road from town, it was the nearest accessible spot by the seaside.
As soon as people began to think of annual holidays, Brighton must necessarily attract them.
Hence George IV.
and the Pavilion.
The railroad has done more.
It has made Brighton into a suburb, and raised its population to over 100,000.
At the same time, the South Coast line has begotten watering-places at Worthing, Bognor, and Littlehampton.
In the other direction, it has created Eastbourne.
Those who do not love chalk (as the Georges did), choose rather the more broken and wooded country round Hastings and St. Leonards, where the Weald sandstone runs down to the sea.
The difference between the rounded Downs and saucer-shaped combes of the chalk, and the deep glens traversing the soft friable strata of the Wealden, is well seen in passing from Beachy Head to Ecclesbourne and Fairlight.
Shoreham is kept half alive by the Brighton coal trade: Newhaven struggles on as a port for Dieppe.
But as a whole, the county is now one vast seaside resort from end to end, so that to-day the flat coasts at Selsea, Pevensey, and Rye, are alone left out in the cold.
The iron trade and the wool trade have long since gone north to the coal districts.
Brighton and Hastings sum up in themselves all that is vital in the Sussex of 1881.
THE BRONZE AXE.
There is always a certain fascination in beginning a subject at the wrong end and working backward: it has the charm which inevitably attaches to all evil practices; you know you oughtn't, and so you can't resist the temptation to outrage the proprieties and do it.
I can't myself resist the temptation of beginning this article where it ought to break off--with Chinese money, which is not the origin, but the final outcome and sole remaining modern representative of that antique and almost prehistoric implement, the Bronze Age hatchet.
Improbable and grotesque as this affiliation sounds at first hearing, it is, nevertheless, about as certain as any other fact in anthropological science--which isn't, perhaps, saying a great deal.
The familiar little brass cash, with the square hole for stringing them together on a thread in the centre, well known to the frequenter of minor provincial museums, are, strange to say, the lineal descendants, in unbroken order, of the bronze axe of remote Celestial ancestors.
From the regular hatchet to the modern coin one can trace a distinct, if somewhat broken, succession, so that it is impossible to say where the one leaves off and the other begins--where the implement merges into the medium of exchange, and settles down finally into the root of all evil.
Here is how this curious pedigree first worked itself out.
In early times, before coin was invented, barter was usually conducted between producer and consumer with metal implements, as it still is in Central Africa at the present day with Venetian glass beads and rolls of red calico.
Payments were all made in kind, and bronze was the commonest form of specie.
A gentleman desirous of effecting purchases in foreign parts went about the world with a number of bronze axes in his pocket (or its substitute), which he exchanged for other goods with the native traffickers in the country where he did his primitive business.
At first, the early Chinese in that unsophisticated age were content to use real hatchets for this commercial purpose; but, after a time, with the profound mercantile instinct of their race, it occurred to some of them that when a man wanted half a hatchet's worth of goods he might as well pay for them with half a hatchet.
Still, as it would be a pity to spoil a good working implement by cutting it in two, the worthy Ah Sin ingeniously compromised the matter by making thin hatchets, of the usual size and shape, but far too slender for practical usage.
By so doing he invented coin: and, what is more, he invented it far earlier than the rival claimants to that proud distinction, the Lydians, whose electrum staters were first struck in the seventh century, B.C.
But, according to Professor Terrien de la Couperie, some of the fancy Chinese hatchets which we still retain date back as far as the year 1000 (a good round number), and are so thin that they could only have been intended to possess exchange value.
And when a distinguished Sinologist gives us a date for anything Chinese, it behoves the rest of the unlearned world to open its mouth and shut its eyes, and thankfully receive whatever the distinguished Sinologist may send it.
In the seventh century, then, these mercantile axes, made in the strictest sense to sell and not to use, were stamped with an official stamp to mark their amount, and became thereby converted into true coins--that was the root of the 'root of all evil.'
Thence the declension to the 'cash' is easy; the form grew gradually more and more regular, while the square hole in the centre, once used for the handle, was retained by conservatism and practical sense as a convenient means of stringing them together.
So this was the end of the old bronze hatchet, perhaps the most wonderful civilizing agent ever invented by human ingenuity.
Let us hark back now, and from the opposite side see what was its first beginning.
'But why,' you ask, 'the most wonderful civilizing agency?
What did the bronze axe ever do for humanity?'
Well, nearly everything.
I believe I have really not said too much.
We are apt to talk big nowadays about the steam-engine, and that marvellous electricity which is always going to do wonders for us all--to-morrow; but I don't know whether either ever produced so great a revolution in human life, or so completely metamorphosed human existence, as that simple and commonplace bronze hatchet.
For, consider that before the days of bronze man knew no weapon or implement of any sort save the stone axe, or tomahawk, and the flint-tipped arrow.
Consider, that the highest stage of human culture he had then reached was hardly higher than that of the scalp-hunting Red Indian or the seal-spearing Esquimaux.
Consider, that in his Stone Age agriculture and grains were almost unknown--the forest uncleared, the soil untilled, and hunting and fishing the sole or principal human activities.
It was the bronze axe that first enabled man to make clearings in the woodland on the large scale, and to sow on those clearings in good big fields the wheat and barley which determined the first great upward step in the drama of civilization.
All these things depend in ultimate analysis upon that pioneer of culture, the bronze hatchet.
And how did the first Watt or Edison of metallurgy come to make that earliest bronze implement?
Well, it seems probable that between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age there intervened everywhere, or nearly everywhere, a very short and transient age of copper.
And the reason for thus thinking is threefold.
In the first place, bronze is an alloy of tin and copper: and it seems natural to suppose that men would use the simple metals in isolation to begin with, before they discovered that they could harden and temper them by mixing the two together.
In the second place, copper occurs in the pure or native state (without the trouble of smelting) in several countries, and was therefore a very natural metal for early man to cast his inquiring glance upon.
And in the third place, weapons of unmixed copper, apparently of very antique types, have been found in various parts of the world, both in Asia and America.
According to Mr. John Evans, the most learned historian of the Bronze Age, the greatest copper 'find' of the eastern hemisphere was that at Gungeria, in Central India; and the copper implements there found consisted entirely of flat celts of a very early and almost primitive pattern.
The copper weapons of America, however, have greater illustrative and ethnological interest, because the noble red man, at the period when Columbus first discovered him, and when he first discovered Columbus, was still in the Stone Age of his very imperfect culture, or, to speak more correctly, of extreme barbarism.
The fact is, the Indians of Lake Superior were only just beginning to employ copper, and were on the eve of independently inaugurating a Bronze Age of their own, when the intrusive white man came and spoiled the fun by the incontinent introduction of iron, firearms, missionaries, whisky, and all the other resources of civilization.
On the shores of Lake Superior native copper exists in abundance; and the intelligent Red Indian, finding this handsome red stone in the cliffs by his side, was pretty sure to try his hand at chipping a tomahawk out of the rare material.
But, as soon as he did so, Mr. Evans suggests, he would find to his surprise that it yielded to his blows; in short, that he had got that singular phenomenon, a malleable stone, to deal with.
Hammering away at his new invention, he must shortly have hammered it into a shapely axe.
The new process took his practical fancy at once: vistas of an untold wealth of scalps floated gaily before his fevered brain; and he proceeded to hammer himself various weapons and implements without delay.
Amongst others, he produced for himself very neat spear-heads, with sockets adapted for the reception of a shaft, made by hammering out the base flat, and then turning over the edges so as to enclose the wood between them, like a modern hoe-handle.
In Wisconsin alone more than a hundred of such copper axes, spear-heads, and knives have been unearthed by antiquaries and duly recorded.
All these weapons, however, are simply hammered, not cast or melted.
The Red Indian hadn't yet reached the stage of making a mould when De Champlain and his _voyageurs_ came down upon Canada and interrupted this interesting experiment in industrial development by springing the seventeenth century upon the unsophisticated red man at one fell blow, with all its inherited wealth of European science.
Nevertheless, the Indians must have known that fire melted copper; for the heat of the altars was great enough, say Squier and Davis, to fuse the implements and ornaments laid upon them in sacrificial rites; and so the fact of its fusibility could hardly have escaped them.
A people who had advanced so far on the road towards the invention of casting could hardly have been prevented from taking the final step, save by the sudden intervention of some social cataclysm like the European invasion of Eastern America.
And how awful a calamity that was for the Indians themselves we at this day can hardly even realize.
In some similar way, no doubt, the Asiatic people who first invented bronze must have learned the fact of the fusibility of metals, and have applied it in time, at first, perhaps, by accident, to the manufacture of that hard alloy.
I say Asiatic, because there seems good reason to believe that Asia was the original home of the nascent bronze industry.
For a Bronze Age almost necessarily implies a brief preceding age of copper; and there is no proof of pure copper implements ever having been largely used in Europe, while there is ample proof of their having been used to a very considerable extent in Asia.
Hence we may reasonably infer that the art of bronze-making was developed in Asia by a copper-using people, and that when metallurgy was first introduced into Europe the method of mixing the copper with tin had already been perfected.
The abundance of tin in the south-eastern islands of Asia renders this view probable; while in Europe there are no tin mines worth mentioning, except in the remotest part of a remote outlying island--to wit, in Cornwall.
Be this as it may, the earliest and simplest forms of bronze axe with which we are acquainted are profoundly interesting, as casting a flood of light upon the general process of human evolution all the world over.
Every new human invention is always at first directly modelled upon the other similar products which have preceded it.
There is no really new thing under the sun.
For example, the earliest English railway carriages were built on the model of the old stage-coach, only that three stage-coaches, as it were, were telescoped together, side by side--the very first bore the significant motto, _Tria juncta in uno_--and it was this preconception of the English coachbuilder that has hampered us ever since with our hateful 'compartments,' instead of the commodious and comfortable open American saloon carriages.
So, too, the earliest firearms were modelled on the stock of the old cross-bow, and the earliest earthenware pots and pans were shaped like the still more primitive gourds and calabashes.
It need not surprise us, therefore, to find that the earliest metal axes of which we have any knowledge were directly moulded on the original shape of the stone tomahawk.
Such a copper hatchet, cast in a mould formed by a polished neolithic stone celt, was found in an early Etruscan tomb, and is still preserved in the Museum at Berlin.
See how natural this process would be.
For, in the first place, the primitive workman, knowing already only one form of axe, the stone tomahawk, would naturally reproduce it in the new material, without thinking what improvements in shape and design the malleability and fusibility of the metal would render possible or easy.
But, more than that, the idea of coating the polished stone axe with plastic clay, and thereby making a mould for the molten metal, would be so very simple that even the neolithic savage, already accustomed to the manufacture of coarse pottery upon natural shapes, could hardly fail to think of it.
As a matter of fact, he did think of it: for celts of bronze or copper, cast in moulds made from stone hatchets, have been found in Cyprus by General di Cesnola, on the site of Troy by Dr. Schliemann, and in many other assorted localities by less distinguished but equally trustworthy archæologists.
To the neolithic hunter, herdsman, and villager this progress from the stone to the metal axe probably seemed at first a mere substitution of an easier for a more difficult material.
He little knew whither his discovery tended.
It was pure human laziness that urged the change.
How nice to save yourself all that long trouble of chipping and polishing, with ceaseless toil, in favour of a stone which you could melt at one go and pour while hot into a ready-made mould!
It must have looked, by comparison, like weapon-making by magic; for properly to cut and polish a stone axe is the work of weeks and weeks of elbow-grease.
Yet here, in a moment, a better hatchet could be turned out all finished!
But the implied effects lay deeper far than the neolithic hunter could ever have imagined.
The bronze axe was the beginning of civilization; it brought the steam-engine, the telephone, woman's rights, and the county councillor directly in its train.
With the eye of faith, had he only possessed that useful optical organ, the Stone Age artizan might doubtless have beheld Pears' soap and the deceased wife's sister looming dimly in the remote future.
Till that moment human life had been almost stationary: thenceforth, it proceeded by leaps and bounds, like a kangaroo society, on its upward path towards triumphant democracy and the penny post.
The nineteenth century and all its wiles hung by a thread upon the success of his melting pot.
Indeed, the whole history of human civilization has been one of a constantly accelerated progress.
The Older Stone Age, when men knew only how to chip flint implements, but hadn't yet invented the art of grinding and polishing them, was one of immense and incalculable duration, to be reckoned perhaps by tens of thousands of years--some bold chronologists would even suggest by hundreds of thousands.
Improvement there was, to be sure, during all that long epoch of slow development; but it was improvement at a snail's pace.
The very rude chipped axes of the naked drift age give way after thousands and thousands of years to the shapelier chipped lances, javelins, and arrowheads of the skin-clad cavemen.
M. Gabriel de Mortillet, indeed, most indefatigable of theorists, has even pointed out four stages of culture, marked by four different types of weapons, into which he subdivides the Older Stone Age.
Yet vast epochs elapsed before some prehistoric Stephenson or dusky Morse first, half by accident, smote out the idea of grinding his tomahawk smooth to a sharp cutting edge, instead of merely chipping it sharp, and so initiated the Neolithic Period.
This Neolithic Period itself, again, was immensely long as compared with the Bronze Age which followed, though short by comparison with the Palæolithic epoch which preceded it.
Then the Bronze Age saw enormous changes come faster and faster, till the use of iron still further accelerated the rate of progress.
For each new improvement becomes, in turn, the parent of yet newer triumphs, so that at last, as in the present day, a single century sees vaster changes in the world of man than whole ages before it have done in far longer intervals.
But the invention of bronze, or, in other words, the introduction of hard metal, was really perhaps the very greatest epoch of all, the most distinct turning-point in the whole history of humanity.
True, some beginnings of civilisation were already found in the Newer Stone Age.
Man did not then live by slaughter alone.
Hand-made pottery and rude tissues of flax are found in neolithic lake dwellings in Switzerland.
Agriculture was already practised in a feeble way on small open clearings, cautiously cleaved with fire or hewn with the tomahawk in the native forests.
The cow, the sheep, and the goat were more or less domesticated, though the horse was yet riderless; and the pastoral had therefore, to some extent, superseded the pure hunting stage.
But what inroad could the stone hatchet make unaided upon the virgin forests of those remote days?
The neolithic clearing must have been a mere stray oasis in a desert of woodland, like the villages of the New Guinea savages at the present day, lying few and far between among vast stretches of primæval forest.
With the advent of bronze, everything was different; and the difference showed itself with extraordinary rapidity.
One may compare the revolution effected by bronze in the early world, indeed, with the revolution effected by railways in our own time; only the neolithic world had been so very simple a one that the change was perhaps even more marvellous in its suddenness and its comprehensiveness.
Metal itself implied metal-working; and metal-working brought about, not only the arts of smelting and casting, but also endless incidental arts of design and decoration.
The bronze hatchets, for example, to take our typical implement, begin by being mere copies of the stone originals; but, as time goes on, they acquire rapidly innumerable improvements.
First, metal is economized in the upper part which fits into the handle, while the lower or cutting edge is widened out sideways, so as to form an elegant and gracefully curved outline for the whole implement.
Next come the flanged axes, with projecting ledges on either side; and then the palstaves with loops and ribs, each marking some new improvement in the character of the weapon, which the inventor would no doubt have patented but for the unfortunate fact that patents were as yet wholly unknown to Bronze Age humanity.
Later still come the socketed hatchets of many patterns, with endless ingenious little devices for securing some small advantage to the special manufacturer.
I can fancy the Bronze Age smith showing them off with pride to his interested customers: 'These are our own patterns--the newest thing out in bronze axes; observe the advantage you gain from the ribs and pellets, and the peculiar character which the octagonal socket gives to the hafting!'
Indeed, in this single department of bronze celts alone, Mr. Evans in his great monumental work figures over a hundred and eighty distinct specimens (out of thousands known), each one presenting some well-marked advance in type upon its predecessor.
There is almost a Yankee ingenuity of design in many of the dodges thus registered for our inspection.
Many of the celts, I may add, are most beautifully decorated with geometrical patterns, some of which belong to a very high order of ornamental art.
This is still more the case with the daggers, swords, and defensive armour, often intended for the use of great chieftains, and executed with an amount of taste and feeling long since dead among the degenerate workmen of our iron age.
But the indirect effects of the introduction of metal working were far more interesting and important in their way than the direct effects.
With bronze began the great age of agriculture, of commerce, and of navigation.
Of agriculture first, because the bronze hatchet enabled men to make such openings in the forest as neolithic man had never ever dreamed of.
For the first time in the history of our race, whole tracts of country at once began to be cleared and cultivated.
Stone Age tillage was the tillage of tiny plots in the forest's depths; Bronze Age tillage was the tillage of fields and wide open spaces in the champaign country.
The Stone Age knew no specials implements of agriculture as such; its tomahawk was indiscriminately applied to all purposes alike of war or gardening.
You scalped your enemy with it, or you cut up your dinner, or you dug your field, or you planted your seed-corn, according as taste or circumstances directed.
But while the Bronze Age men had axes to hew down the wood, they had also sickles and reaping-hooks to cut their crops, and a sort of hoe or scraper to till the soil with.
Specialisation reached a very high pitch.
All the remains of the Bronze Age show us an agricultural people by no means idyllic in their habits to be sure, and not all disposed to join the Peace Preservation Society, but cultivating large stretches of wheat or barley, grinding their meal in regular mills, and possessed of implements of considerable diversity, some of which I shall proceed to notice later.
The evidences of commerce and of navigation are equally obvious.
Bronze itself consists of tin and copper: and there are only two parts of the world from which tin in any large quantities can be procured--namely, Cornwall and the Malay Archipelago.
The very existence of bronze, therefore, necessarily implies the existence of a sea-going trade in tin, for which some corresponding benefits must of course have been offered by the early purchaser.
As a matter of fact, we know with some probability that it was Cornish tin which first tempted the Phoenicians out of the inland sea, past the Pillars of Hercules, to brave the terrors of the open Atlantic.
Long before the days of such advanced navigation, however, the Cornish tin was transported by land across the whole breadth of Southern Britain and shipped for the Continent from the Isle of Thanet.
A very old trackway runs along the crest of the Downs from the West Country to Kent, known now as the Pilgrim's Way, because it was followed in far later times by mediæval wayfarers from Somerset and Dorset to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.
But Mr. Charles Elton has shown conclusively that the Pilgrim's Way is many centuries more ancient than the martyr of King Henry's epoch, and that it was used in the Bronze Age for the transport of tin from the mines in Cornwall to the port of Sandwich.
To this day antique ingots of the valuable metal are often dug up in hoards or finds along the line of the ancient track.
They were evidently buried there in fear and trembling, long ages since, in what Indian _voyageurs_ still call a _cache_, by caravans hurriedly surprised by the enemy; and owing to the unfortunate accident of the possessors all getting killed off in the ensuing fray, the ingots have been left undisturbed for centuries for the benefit of antiquaries at the present time.
'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.'
Probably the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii had very little notion what valuable relics their bodies and houses would prove in the end for curious posterity.
The converse evidence of a return trade in other goods is no less striking.
Not only are articles in amber found in Bronze Age tombs all over Europe (though the gum itself belongs to the Baltic and the North Sea alone), but also gold objects of southern workmanship occur in British barrows; while sometimes even ivory from Africa is noticed in the inlaid handles of some Welsh or Brigantian chieftain's sword.
Glass beads were likewise imported into Britain, as were also ornaments of Egyptian porcelain.
In fact, the Bronze Age clearly marks for us the period when trade routes extended in every direction from the Mediterranean, north and south, and when the world began to be commercially solidified by a primitive theory of foreign exchange.
It is a little odd that the basis of all this traffic was tin, and that we still use the name of that same metal as a brief equivalent for coin in general: but persons of serious economical or philological intelligence are particularly requested not to enter into grave correspondence with the author of this paper on any possible levity which they may detect lurking in this innocent remark.
Some small idea of the rapid advance in civilization which marked the Bronze Age may perhaps be formed from a brief enumeration of the principal classes of remains which have come down to us intact from that first epoch of metal.
Besides all the various celts, hatchets, and adzes, whose name is legion, and whose patterns are manifold, many other tools or implements occur abundantly in the barrows or _caches_.
Chisels, either plain, tanged, with lugs, or socketed; gouges, hammers, anvils, and tongs; punches, awls, drills, and prickers; tweezers, needles, fish-hooks, and weights; all these are found by dozens in endless variety of design.
Knives are common, and the vanity of Bronze Age man made him even put up without a murmur with the pangs of shaving with a bronze razor.
Daggers and rapiers naturally abound, many of them of rare and beautiful workmanship.
Halberds turn up less frequently, but swords are abundant, and are sometimes tastefully decorated with gold or ivory.
Even the scabbards sometimes survive, while the shields, adorned with concentric rings or with knobs and bosses, would put to shame the rank and file of cheap modern metal work.
Nay, the very trumpets which sounded the onset often lie buried by the warrior's side, and the bells which adorned his horse's neck bring back to us vividly the Homeric pictures of Bronze Age warfare.
The private life of Bronze Age man and his correlative wife is illustrated for us by another great group of more strictly personal relics.
There are pins simple and pins of the infantile safety-pin order: there are brooches which might be worn by modern ladies, and ear-rings so huge that even modern ladies would in all probability object to wearing them, unless, indeed, a princess or an actress made them the fashion.
The torques, or necklets, are among the best known male decorations, and are still famous in Ireland, where Malachi (whoever he may have been) wore the collar of gold which he tore from the proud invader.
Many of the bracelets are extremely beautiful; but, strange to say, as if on purpose to spite the common prejudice about the degeneracy of modern man, they are all so small in girth as to betoken a race with arms and legs hardly any bigger than the Finns or Laplanders.
Of the clasps, buttons, and buckles I will say nothing here.
I have enumerated enough to suggest to even the most casual observer the vastness of the revolution which the Bronze Age wrought in the mode of life and the civilisation of ancient man.
Bronze found our early ancestor, in fact, a half-developed savage: it left him a semi-civilized Homeric Greek.
It came in upon a world of skin-clad hunters and fishers: it went out upon a world of Phoenician navigators, Egyptian architects, Achæan poets, and Roman soldiers.
And all this wide difference was wrought in a period of some eight or ten centuries at the outside, almost entirely by the advent of the simple bronze axe.
THE ISLE OF RUIM.
Perhaps you have never heard its name before; yet in the earlier ages of this kingdom of Britain, Ruim Isle, rising dim through the mist of prehistoric oceans, was once in its own way famous and important.
Off the old and obliterated south-eastern promontory of our island, where the land of Kent shelved almost imperceptibly into the Wantsum Strait, Ruim Island--the Holm of the Headland--stood out with its white wall of broken cliffs into the German Sea.
The greater part of it consisted of gorse-clad chalk down, the last subsiding spur of that great upland range which, starting from the central boss of Salisbury Plain, runs right across the face of Surrey and Kent, and, bifurcating near Canterbury, falls sheer into the sea at the end of either fork by Ramsgate or Dover.
But in earlier days Ruim Isle was not joined as now by flats and marshes to the adjacent mainland; the chalk dipped under the open Wantsum Strait, much as the chalk of Hampshire dips to-day under the Solent Sea, and reappeared again on the other side in the Thanet Downs, as it reappears in the Isle of Wight at the ridge of St. Boniface and the central hills about Newport and Carisbrooke.
For now the murder indeed is out, and you have discovered already that Ruim--his dim, mysterious Ruim--is only just the commonplace, vulgarized Isle of Thanet.
Still, it is not without cause that I have ventured to call it by that strange and now almost forgotten old-world name.
There is reason, we know, in the roasting of eggs, and, if I have gone out of my way to introduce the ancient isle to you by its title of Ruim, it is in order that we might start clear of the odour of tea and shrimps, the artificial niggers, and cheap excursionists, that the name of Thanet brings up most prominently at the present day before the travelled mind of the modern Londoner.
I want to carry you back to a time when Ramsgate was still but a green gap in the long line of chalk cliff, and Margate but the chine of a little trickling streamlet that tumbled seaward over the undesecrated sands; when a broad arm of the sea still cut off Westgate from the Reculver cliffs, and when the tide swept unopposed four times a day over the submerged sands of Minster Level.
You must think of Thanet as then greatly resembling Wight in geographical features, and the Wantsum as the equivalent of the Solent Sea.
In the very earliest period of our history, before ever the existing names had been given at all to the towns or villages--nay, when the towns and villages themselves were not--Ruim was already a noteworthy island.
For there is now very little doubt indeed that Thanet is the Ictis or 'Channel Island' to which Cornish tin was conveyed across Britain for shipment to the continent.
The great harbour of Britain was then the Wantsum Sea, known afterwards as the Rutupine Port, and later still as Sandwich Haven.
To that port came Gaulish and Phoenician vessels, or possibly even at times some belated Phocæan galley from Massilia.
But the trade in tin was one of immense antiquity, long antedating these almost modern commercial nations: for tin is a necessary component of bronze, and the bronze age of Europe was entirely dependent for its supply of that all-important metal upon the Cornish mines.
From a very early date, therefore, we may be sure that ingots of tin were exported by this route to the continent, and then transported overland by the Rhone valley to the shores of the Mediterranean.
The tin road, to give it its more proper name, followed the crest of the Hog's Back and the Guildford downs, crossing the various rivers at spots whose very names still attest the ancient passages--the Wey at Shalford, the Mole at Burford, the Medway at Aylesford, and the Wantsum Strait at Wade, in which last I seem to hear the dim echo to this day of the Roman Vada.
Ruim itself, as less liable to attack than an inland place, formed the depôt for the tin trade, and the ingots were no doubt shipped near the site of Richborough.
We may regard it, in fact, as a sort of prehistoric Hong-Kong or Zanzibar, a trading island, where merchants might traffic at ease with the shy and suspicious islanders.
Ruim at that time must have consisted almost entirely of open down, sloping upward from the tidal Wantsum, and extending a little farther out to sea than at the present moment.
Pegwell Bay was then a wide sea-mouth; Sandwich flats did not yet exist; and the Stour itself fell into the Wantsum Strait at the place which still bears the historic name of Stourmouth.
Round the outer coast only a few houseless gaps marked the spots where 'long lines of cliff, breaking, had left a chasm'--the gaps that afterwards bore the familiar names of Ramsgate, that is to say Ruim's Gate, or 'the Door of Thanet;' Margate, that is to say, Mere Gate, the gap of the mere (Kentish for a brook), Broadstairs, Kingsgate, Newgate, and Westgate.
The present condition of Dumpton Gap (minus the telegraph) will give some idea of what these Gates looked like in their earliest days; only, instead of seeing the cultivated down, we must imagine it wildly clad with primæval undergrowth of yew and juniper, like the beautiful tangled district near Guildford, still known as Fairyland.
Thanet is now all sea-front--it turns its face, freckled with summer resorts, towards the open German Ocean.
Ruim had then no sea-front at all, save the bare and inaccessible white cliffs; it turned, such as it was, not toward the sea, but toward the navigable Wantsum.
Even until late in the middle ages Minster was the most important place in the whole island; and after it ranked Monkton, St. Nicholas, and Birchington--villages, all of them, on the flat western slope.
The growth in importance of the seaward escarpment dates only from the days when Thanet became practically a London suburb.
With the Roman invasion Ruim saw a new epoch begin.
A great organization took hold of Britain.
Roads were made and colonies established.
Verulam and Camulodun gave place in part as centres of life and trade to York and London.
Even in the native days, I believe, the Thames must always have been a great commercial focus, and the Pool by Tower Hill must always have been what Bede called it many centuries later, 'a mart of many nations.'
But under the Romans London grew into a considerable city; and as the regular sea highway to the Thames lay through the Wantsum, in the rear of Thanet, that strip of estuary became of immense importance.
In those days of coasting navigation, indeed, the habit was to avoid headlands, and take advantage everywhere of shallow short cuts.
Ships from the continent, therefore, avoided the North Foreland by running through the Wantsum at the back of Thanet; as they avoided Shellness and Warden Point by running through the Swale, at the back of Sheppey.
To protect this main navigable channel, accordingly, the Romans built the two great guardian fortresses of the coast, Rutupiæ, or Richborough, at the southern entrance, and Regulbium, or Reculver, at the northern exit.
Under the walls of these powerful strongholds, whose grim ruins still frown upon the dry channel at their feet, ships were safe from piracy, while Ruim itself sheltered them from the heavy sea that now beats with north-east winds upon the Foreland beyond.
In fact, the Wantsum was an early Spithead: it stood to Rutupiæ as the Solent stands to Portsmouth and Southampton.
But Thanet Isle hardly shared at all in this increased civilisation; on the contrary, Rutupiæ (the precursor of Sandwich Haven) seems to have diverted all its early commerce.
For Rutupiæ became clearly the naval capital of our island, the seat of that _vir spectabilis_, the Count of Saxon Shore, and the rendezvous of the fleets of those British 'usurpers' Maximus and Carausius.
It was also the Dover of its own day, the favourite landing place for continental travellers; while its famous oysters, the true natives, now driven by the silting up of their ancient beds to Whitstable, were as much in repute with Roman epicures as their descendants are to-day with the young Luculluses of the Gaiety and the Criterion.
I have ventured by this time to speak of Ruim as Thanet; and indeed that was already one of the names by which the island was known to its own inhabitants.
The ordinary history books, to be sure, will tell you in their glib way that Thanet is 'Saxon' for Ruim; but, when they say so, believe not the fond thing, vainly imagined.
The name is every day as old as the Roman occupation.
Solinus, writing in the third century, calls it Thanaton, and in the torn British fragment of the Peutinger Tables--that curious old map of the later empire--it is marked as Tenet.
Indeed, it is a matter of demonstration that every spot which had a known name in Roman Britain retained that name after the English conquest.
Kent itself is a case in point, and every one of its towns bears out the law, from Dover and Lymne to Reculver and Richborough, which last is spelt 'Ratesburg' by Leland, Henry the Eighth's commissioner.
In some ways, however, Thanet, under the Romans, must have shared in the general advance of the country.
Solinus says it was 'glad with corn-fields'--_felix frumentariis campis_--but this could only have been on the tertiary slope facing Kent, as agriculture had not yet attempted to scale the flanks of the chalk downs.
As lying so near Rutupiæ, too, villas must certainly have occupied the soil in places, as we know they did in the Isle of Wight; while the immense number of Roman coins picked up in the island appears to betoken a somewhat dense provincial population.
The advent of the English brings Thanet itself, as distinct from its ancient port, the Wantsum, into the full glare of legendary history.
According to tradition, it was at Ebb's Fleet, a little side creek near Minster, that Hengest and Horsa first disembarked in Britain.
As a matter of fact, there is reason to suppose that at a very early time an English colony did really settle down in peace in Thanet.
On Osengal Hill, not far from Ebb's Fleet, the cemetery of these earliest English pioneers in England was laid bare by the building of the South Eastern Railway.
The graves are dug very shallow in the chalk, seldom as deep as four feet; and in them lie the remains of the old heathen pirates, buried with their arms and personal ornaments, their amber beads and strings of glass, and the coins that were to pay their way in the other world.
But, what is oddest of all, a few of the graves in this earliest English cemetery are Roman in character, and in them the interment is made in the Roman fashion.
The inference is almost irresistible that the first settlement of Thanet by the English was a purely friendly one, and that Roman and Jute lived on side by side as neighbours and allies on the Kentish island.
I don't doubt, myself, that the whole settlement of Kent was equally friendly, and that the population of the county contains throughout an almost balanced mixture of Celtic and Teutonic elements.
However, the century and a half that succeeded the English colonization of south-eastern Britain were, no doubt, a time of great retrogression towards barbarism, as everywhere else in Romanised Europe.
The villas that must have covered the gentle slopes towards the Wantsum fell into decay; the fortresses were destroyed; the roads ran wild; and the sea and river began slowly to slit up the central part of the great navigable backwater.
A hundred and fifty years after Hengest and Horsa, if those excellent gentlemen ever really existed, another famous landing took place in Thanet.
Augustine and his companions disembarked at Ebb's Fleet, and held close by (on the hill behind Prospect House) their first interview with Æthelberht.
But though this epoch-making event happened to occur in Thanet, it has no special connection with the history of the island, any further than as a component of England generally.
And indeed, even through the garbled version of Bede, it is plain enough to see that British Christendom was not yet wholly wiped out in eastern Britain.
The conversion of Kent was essentially a conversion of the king and nobles to the Roman communion; it brought back once more the part of Britain most in connection with the continent into the broad fold of continental Christendom.
It is quite clear, in fact, that Rutupiæ and Durovernum, Richborough and Canterbury, had never ceased to hold close intercourse with the opposite shore, whose cliffs still shine so distinctly from the hills about Ramsgate.
For Æthelberht himself was married to a Christian Frankish princess of the house of the Merwings; and coins of the Frankish kings and of the Byzantine emperors have been found on the surface or in contemporary Jutish graves in Kent.
It is interesting to observe, too, that of the monks whom Gregory chose to accompany Augustine on his easy mission, one was Lawrence, who succeeded his leader as second Archbishop of Canterbury, and another was Peter, the first Abbot of St. Augustine's monastery.
Out of compliment to these pioneer missionaries, or to their Roman house of St. Andrew's, almost every old church in that part of Kent is dedicated accordingly, either to St. Augustine, St. Lawrence, St. Peter, St. Gregory, St. Andrew, or St. Martin (patron of Bertha's first church at Canterbury).
Thus, as we shall see hereafter, St. Lawrence was the mother church of Ramsgate, and St. Peter's of Broadstairs, while the entire lathe bears the name of St. Augustine.
In Thanet, too, the first evidence of the new order of things was the foundation in the island of that great civilizing agency of mediæval England, a monastery.
The site chosen for its home was still, however, characteristic of the old point of view of Thanet.
It was the place that yet bears the name of Minster, situated on a little creek of the Wantsum sea, where some slight remains of an ancient pier may even now be traced among the silt of the marshes.
The island still looked towards the narrow seas and the port of Rutupiæ, not, as now, towards the tall cliffs and the German Ocean.
Ecgberht, fourth Christian king of Kent, by the advice of Theodore, the monk of Tarsus who became Archbishop of Canterbury, made over to the lady whose name is conveniently Latinised as Dompneva, first abbess, some forty-eight plough-lands in the Isle of Thanet.
This cultivated district, bounded by the ancient earthwork known (from the name of the second abbess) as St. Mildred's Lynch, lay almost entirely within the westward-sloping and mainly tertiary lands; the higher chalk country was as yet apparently considered unfit for tillage.
The existing remains of Minster Abbey are, of course, of comparatively late Plantagenet date; but as parts of a great grange, whose still larger granary was burnt down only in the last century, they serve well to show the importance of the monastic system as a civilizing agency in the country districts of England.
Already in Bede's time the Wantsum was beginning to get silted up, mainly by the muddy deposits brought down by the Stour.
It was then only three furlongs wide, and could be forded at two points, near Sarr and at Wade.
The seaward mouth was also beginning to be encumbered with sand, and the first indication we get of this important impending change is the fact that we now hear less of Richborough, and more of Sandwich, the new port a little nearer the sea, whose very name of the Wick or haven on the Sand, in itself sufficiently tells the history of its origin.
As the older port got progressively silted up, the newer one grew into ever greater importance, exactly as Norwich ousted Caister, or as Portsmouth has taken the place of Porchester.
Nevertheless, the central channel still remained navigable for the vessels of that age--they can only have drawn a very few feet of water--and this made the Wantsum in time the great highway for the Danish pirates on their way to London, and exposed Thanet exceptionally to their relentless incursions.
In fact, the Danes and Northmen were just what they loved to call themselves, vik-ings or wickings, men of the viks, wicks, bays, or estuaries.
What they loved was a fiord, a strait, a peninsula, an island.
Everywhere round the coast of Britain they seized and fortified the projecting headlands.
But in the neighbourhood of the Thames, the high road to the great commercial port of London, the mementoes of their presence are particularly frequent.
The whole nomenclature of the lower Thames navigation, as Canon Isaac Taylor has pointed out, is Scandinavian to this day.
Deptford (the deep fiord), Greenwich (the green reach), and Woolwich (the hill reach) all bear good Norse names.
So do the Foreness, the Whiteness, Shellness, Sheerness, Shoeburyness, Foulness, Wrabness, and Orfordness.
Walton-on-the-Naze near Harwich in like manner still recalls the time when a Danish 'wall'--that is to say, a _vallum_, or earthwork--ran across the isthmus to defend the Scandinavian peninsula from its English enemies.
At such a time Sandwich, with its shallow fiord, was sure to afford good shelter to the northern long ships; and isolated Thanet, overlooking the navigable strait, was a predestined depôt for the northern pirates, as four centuries earlier it had been for the followers of those mythical personifications, Hengest and Horsa.
Long before the unification of England under a single West Saxon overlordship the Danes used to land in the island every year, to plunder the crops, and in 851, when Æthelwulf was lord of Wessex at Winchester, 'heathen men,' says the Winchester Chronicle, with its usual charming conciseness, 'first sat over winter in Tenet.'
From that time forward the 'heathen men' continually returned to the island, which they used apparently as a base of operations, with their ships lying in Sandwich Haven; in fact, Thanet must long have been a sort of irregular Danish colony.
Still, St. Mildred's nuns appear to have lived on somehow at Minster through the dark time, for in 988 the Danes landed and burnt the abbey, as they did again under Swegen in 1011, killing at the same time the abbess and all the inmates.
On the whole, it is probable that life and property in Thanet were far from secure any time in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries.
At least as late as the Norman conquest the Wantsum remained a navigable channel, and the usual route to London by sea was in at Sandwich and out at Northmouth.
It was thus that King Harold's fleet sailed on its plundering expedition round the coast of Kent (a small unexplained incident of the early English type, only to be understood by the analogies of later Scotch history), and thus too, that many other expeditions are described in the concise style of our unsophisticated early historians.
But from the eleventh century onward we hear little of the Wantsum as a navigable channel; it has dwindled down almost entirely to Sandwich Haven, 'the most famous of English ports,' says the writer of the life of Emma of Normandy, about 1050.
Sandwich is indeed the oldest of the Cinque Ports, succeeding in this matter to the honours of Rutupiæ, and all through the middle ages it remained the great harbour for continental traffic.
Edward III.
sailed thence for France or Flanders, and as late as 1446 it is still spoken of by a foreign ambassador as the resort of ships from all quarters of Europe.
Still, the Wantsum was all this while gradually silting up, a grain at a time, and the Isle of Ruim was slowly becoming joined to the opposite mainland.
When Leland visited it, in Henry VIII.
's reign, the change was almost complete.
'At Northmouth,' says the royal commissioner, in his quaint dry way, 'where the estery of the se was, the salt water swelleth yet up at a Creeke a myle or more toward a place called Sarre, which was the commune fery when Thanet was fulle iled.'
Sandwich Haven itself began to be difficult of access about 1500 (Henry VII.
being king), and in 1558 (under Mary) a Flemish engineer, 'a cunning and expert man in waterworks,' was engaged to remedy the blocking of the channel.
By a century later it was quite closed, and the Isle of Thanet had ceased to exist, except in name, the Stour now flowing seaward by a long bend through Minster Level, while hardly a relic of the Wantsum could be traced in the artificial ditches that intersect the flat and banked-up surface of the St. Nicholas marshes.
Meanwhile, Thanet had been growing once more into an agricultural country.
Minster, untenable by its nuns, had been made over after the Danish invasions to the monks of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and it was they who built the great barn and manor house which were the outer symbol of its new agricultural importance.
Monkton, close by, belonged to the rival house of Christ Church at Canterbury (the cathedral monastery), as did also St. Nicholas at Wade, remarkable for its large and handsome Early English church.
All these ecclesiastical lands were excellently tilled.
After the Reformation, however, things changed greatly.
The silting up of the Wantsum and the decay of Sandwich Haven left Thanet quite out of the world, remote from all the main highroads of the new England.
Ships now went past the North Foreland to London, and knew it only as a dangerous point, not without a sinister reputation for wrecking.
On the other hand, on the land side, the island lay off the great highways, surrounded by marsh or half-reclaimed levels; and it seems rapidly to have sunk into a state resembling that of the more distant parts of Cornwall.
The inhabitants degenerated into good wreckers and bad tillers.
They say an Orkney man is a farmer who owns a boat, while a Shetlander is a fisherman who owns a farm.
In much the same spirit, Camden speaks of the Elizabethan Thanet folks as 'a sort of amphibious creatures, equally skilled in holding helm and plough'; while Lewis, early in the last century, tells us they made 'two voyages a year to the North Seas, and came home soon enough for the men to go to the wheat season.'
With genial tolerance the Georgian historian adds, 'It's a thousand pities they are so apt to pilfer stranded ships.'
Piracy, which ran in the Thanet blood, seemed to their good easy local annalist a regrettable peccadillo.
In all this, however, we begin to catch the first faintly-resounding note of modern Thanet.
The intelligent reader will no doubt have observed, with his usual acuteness, that up to date we have heard practically nothing of Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs, which now form the real centres of population in the nominal island.
Its relations have all been with Rutupiæ, Sandwich, Canterbury, and the mainland.
But the silting up of the Wantsum turned the new Thanet seaward, by the chalky cliffs; and the gaps or gates in that natural sea-wall now began to be of comparative importance as fishing stations and small havens.
Ebb's Fleet was no longer the port of Ruim.
The centre of gravity of the island shifts at this point, accordingly, from Minster to Ramsgate.
The change is well marked by certain interesting ecclesiastical facts.
Neither Ramsgate nor Broadstairs had originally churches of their own.
The first formed part of the parish of St. Lawrence, which was itself a mere chapelry of Minster till late in the thirteenth century.
The old village lies half a mile inland, and Ramsgate itself was throughout the middle ages nothing more than a mere gap and cove where the fishermen of St. Lawrence kept their boats.
The first church in the town proper was not erected till 1791.
Similarly, Broadstairs formed part of the parish of St. Peter's, the village of which lies back at about the same distance from the sea as St. Lawrence; and St Peter's, too, was at first a chapelry of Minster.
The cliffs were then nothing; the inward slope was everything.
Margate seems to have been the first place in the new Thanet to attain the honour of a place in history.
As in two previous cases, the Mere Gate was at first but a fisherman's station for the village of St. John's, which gathered about the old church at the south end of the existing town.
But as the Northmouth closed up, and Sandwich Haven decayed, the Mere Gate naturally became the little local port for corn grown on the island and wool raised on the newly-reclaimed Minster Level.
A wooden pier existed at Margate long before the reign of Henry VIII., when Leland found it "sore decayed," and the village was in repute for fishery and coasting trade.
Throughout the Stuart period Margate was the ordinary place of departure and arrival for Flushing and the Low Countries.
William of Orange frequently sailed hence, and Maryborough used it for almost all his expeditions.
It was about the middle of the last century, however, that the real prosperity of Margate first began.
Then it was that citizens of credit and renown in London first hit upon the glorious discovery of the seaside, and that watering-places tentatively and timidly raised their unobtrusive heads along the nearer beaches.
The journey from London could be made far more easily by river than that to Brighton by coach; and so Margate, the nearest spot to town (by water) on the real sea with any accommodation for visitors, became in point of fact the earliest London seaside resort.
It was, if not the first place, at least one of the first places in England to offer to its guests the perilous joy of bathing machines, which were inaugurated here about 1790.
With the introduction of steamers Margate's fortune was made.
Floods of Cockneydom were let loose upon the nascent lodging-houses.
Then came the London, Chatham and Dover, and South Eastern Railways, and with them an ever-increasing inundation of good-humoured cheap-trippers.
The Hall-by-the-Sea and other modern improvements and attractions followed.
Like the rest of Thanet, Margate has now become a mere suburb of London, and what it resembles at the present day a delicate regard for the feelings of the inhabitants forbids me to enlarge upon.
I will merely add that the recognized modern name of Margate is an etymological blunder, due to the idea immortalized in the borough motto, "Porta maris, Portus salutis," that it means Door of the Sea.
The true word is still universally preserved on the lips of the local fisher-folk, who always religiously call it either Meregate or Mergate.
Ramsgate, a much more attractive and enjoyable centre, rich in excursions to points of genuine interest, dates somewhat later.
It first came into note about the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it did a modest trade with the Levant and the Black Sea, or, as contemporary English more prettily phrases it, 'with Russia and the east country.'
In 1750 the first pier was built, as a national work, mainly to serve as a harbour of refuge for ships caught in gales off the Downs.
The engineer was Smeaton, and he succeeded in creating an artificial harbour of great extent, which has lasted substantially up to the present time.
This new port, rendered safer by the enlargement in 1788, made Ramsgate at once into an important seafaring town, the capital of the Kentish herring trade, alive with smacks in the busy season.
The steamers did it less good at first than they did to Margate; but the completion of the two railways, and the building of the handsome extensions on the east and west cliffs, turned it at once into a frequented watering-place.
It is the fashion nowadays rather to laugh at Ramsgate.
Marine painters know better.
Few harbours are livelier with red and brown sails; few coasts more enjoyable than the cliff walk looking across towards the Goodwins, the low shore by Sandwich, the higher ground about Deal and Dover, and the dim white line of Cape Blancnez in the distance.
Broadstairs, close by the lighthouse on the North Foreland (the Cantium Promontorium of Roman geography), is still newer as a place of public resort.
But as a fishing village it dates back to the middle ages, when the little chapel of "Our Lady of Bradstow" stood in the gap of the cliffs, and was much addressed by anxious sailors rounding the dangerous point after the silting up of the Wantsum.
Ships as they passed lowered their top-sails to do it reverence.
Under Henry VIII.
a small wooden pier was thrown out to protect the fishing boats; and about the same time, as part of the general scheme of coast defence inaugurated by the king, a gate and portcullis were erected to close the gap seaward, in case of invasion.
The archway and portcullis groove remain to this day, with an inscription recording their repair in 1795 by Sir John Henniker.
The railway has turned Broadstairs into a minor rival of Ramsgate and Margate and 'a favourite resort for gentry,' where 'those who require quietness, either from ill health or a retiring disposition,' says a local guide-book, may enjoy 'the united advantages of tranquillity and seclusion.'
Hundreds of retiring souls indeed may be observed on the beach any day during the season, seeking tranquillity in a game of cards, repairing their health with the stimulus of donkey exercise, or soothing their souls in secret hour with music sweet as love, discoursed to them by gentlemen in loose pink suits and artificially imitated Æthiopian countenances.
Westgate is the very latest-born of these Thanet gates, a brand-new watering-place, where every house proclaims the futility of the popular belief that Queen Anne is dead, and where fashionable physicians send fashionable patients to cure imaginary diseases by a dose of fresh air.
It has no history, for only a few years since it consisted entirely of a coastguard station and three or four cottages: but it is interesting as casting light on the nature of the revolution which has turned Thanet inside out and hind part before, making the open sea take the place of the Kentish mainland, and the railway to London that of the silted Wantsum.
At the present day Thanet as a whole consists of two parts: the live sea front, which is one long succession of suburban watering-places; and the agricultural interior, including the reclaimed estuary, which ranks among the best-farmed and most productive districts in all England, Yet till a very recent date the Thanet farmers still retained the use of the old Kentish plough, the coulter of which is reversed at the end of every furrow; and many other curious insular customs mark off the agriculture of the island even now from that which prevails over the rest of the country.
I don't know whether I'm wrong, but it often seems to me the very best way to gain an idea of the real history of England is thus to take a single district piecemeal, and trace out for one's self the main features of its gradual evolution.
By so doing we get away from mere dynastic or political considerations, leave behind the bang of drums or the blare of trumpets, and reach down to the living facts of common human activity themselves--the realities of the workaday world of toilers and spinners.
By narrowing our field of view, in fact, we gain a clearer picture on our smaller focus.
We see how the big historical revolutions actually affected the life of the people; and we trace more readily the true nature of deep-reaching changes when we follow them out in detail over a particular area.
A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD.
'Why, what did they want to build a city right up here for, anyway?'
the pretty American asked, who had come with us to Fiesole, as we rested, panting, after our long steep climb, on the cathedral platform.
Now the question was a pertinent and in its way a truly philosophical one.
Fiesole crests the ridge of a Tuscan hill, and in America they don't build cities on hill-tops.
You may search through the length and breadth of the United States, from Maine to California, and I venture to bet a modest dollar you won't find a single town perched anywhere in a position at all resembling that of many a glowing Etrurian fastness, that 'Like an eagle's nest Hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine.'
Towns in America stand all on the level: most of them are built by harbours of sea or inland lake; or by navigable rivers; or at the junction of railways; or at a point where cataracts (sadly debased) supply ample water-power for saw-mills and factories; or else in the immediate neighbourhood of coal, iron, oil wells, or gold and silver mines.
In short, the position of American towns bears always an immediate and obvious reference to the wants and necessities of our modern industrial and commercial system.
They are towns that have grown up in a state of profound peace, and that imply advanced means of communication, with a free interchange of agricultural and manufactured products.
Hence in America it is always quite easy to see at a glance the _raison d'être_ of every town or village one comes across.
New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore--New Orleans, Montreal, San Francisco, Charleston--are all great ports for the exportation of corn, pork, 'lumber,' cotton, or tobacco, and the importation of European manufactured goods.
Chicago is the main collecting and distributing centre for the wide basin of the upper Great Lakes, as Cincinnati is for the Ohio Valley, and St. Louis for the Mississippi and Missouri confluents.
Pittsburg bases itself upon its coal and its iron; Buffalo exists as the point of transfer where elevators raise the corn of Chicago from lake-going vessels into the long, low barges of the Erie Canal.
In every case, in that newest of worlds, one can see for oneself at a glance exactly why so large a body of human beings has collected just at that precise spot, and at no other.
But when you have toiled up, hot and breathless, through olive and pine, from the Viale at Florence to the antique Cyclopean walls of Etruscan Fæsulæ, you wonder to yourself, like our American friend, as you pant on the terrace of the Romanesque cathedral, what on earth they could ever have wanted to build a town up there for, anyway.
If we look away from Tuscany to our own England, however, we shall find on many a deserted down or lonely tor ample evidence of the causes which led the people of this ancient Etruscan town to build their citadel at so great a height above the neighbouring valley.
Fiesole, says Dante, in a well-known verse, was the mother of Florence.
Even so in England, Old Sarum was indeed the mother of Salisbury, and Caer Badon or Sulis was the mother of Bath.
And when there was first a Fæsulæ on the hill here there could be no Florence, as when first there was an Old Sarum on the Wiltshire downs there could be no Salisbury, and when first there was a Caer Badon on the heights of Avon there could be no Bath.
In very early times indeed, in the European land area, when men began first to gather together into towns or villages, two necessities determined their choice of a place to dwell in: first, food-supply (including water); and second, defence.
Hence every early community stands, to start with, near its own cultivable territory, usually a broad river-valley, an alluvial plain, a 'carse' or lowland, for uplands as yet were incapable of tillage by the primitive agriculture of those early epochs.
But it does not stand actually _in_ the carse; it occupies as a rule the nearest convenient height or hill-top, most often the one that juts out farthest into the subjacent plain, by way of security against the attack of enemies.
This is the beginning of almost every great historical European town; it is an arx or acropolis overhanging its own tilth or _ager_; and though in many cases the town came down at last into the valley, retaining still its old name, yet the remains of the old earthworks or walls on the hill-top above often bear witness to our own day to the original site of the antique settlement upon the high places.
One can mark, too, various stages in this gradual process of secular descent from the wind-swept hills into the valleys below, as freer communications and greater security made access to water, roads, and rivers of greater importance than mere defence or elevated position.
At Bath, for example, it was the Pax Romana that brought down the town from the stockaded height of Caer Badon, and the Hill of Solisbury to the ford and the hot springs in the valley of the Avon.
At Old Sarum, on the other hand, the hill-top town remained much longer: it lived from the Celtic first into the Roman and then into the West Saxon world; it had a cathedral of its own in Norman times; and even long after Bishop Roger Poore founded the New Sarum, which we now call Salisbury, at the point where the great west road passed the river below, the hill-top town continued to be inhabited, and, as everybody knows, when all its population had finally dwindled away, retained some vestige of its ancient importance by returning a member of its own for a single farmhouse to the unreformed Parliament till '32.
As for Fiesole, though Florence has long since superseded it as the capital of the Arno Valley, the town itself still lives on to our own time in a dead-alive way, and, like Norman.
Old Sarum, retains even now its beautiful old cathedral, its Palazzo Pretorio, and its acknowledged claims to ancient boroughship.
In England, I know by personal experience only one such hill-top town of the antique sort still surviving, and that is Shaftsbury; but I am told that Launceston, with its strong castle overlooking the Tamar, is even a finer example.
This relatively early disappearance of the hill-top fortress from our own midst is in part due, no doubt, to the early growth of the industrial spirit in England, and our long-continued freedom from domestic warfare.
But all over Southern Europe, as everybody must have noticed, the hill-top town, perched, like Eza, on the very summit of a pointed pinnacle, still remains everywhere in evidence as a common object of the country in our own day.
I said above that Fiesole was the mother of Florence, and, in spite of formal objections to the contrary, I venture to defend that now somewhat obsolete and heretical opinion.
For why does Fiesole stand just where it does?
What made them build a city up there, anyway?
Well, a town always exists just where it does exist for some good and amply sufficient reason.
Even if, like Fiesole, it is mainly a survival (though at Fiesole there are, indeed, olives in plenty and other live trades to keep a town going), it yet exists there in virtue of facts which once upon a time were quite sufficient to bring the world to the spot, and it goes on existing, partly by mere conservative use and wont, no doubt, but partly also because there are houses, churches, mills, and roads all ready built there.
Now, a town must always, from a very early period, have existed upon the exact site of Fiesole.
And why?
To answer that question you have only to look at the view from the platform.
I do not mean to suggest that the ancient Etruscans came there to enjoy the prospect as we go nowadays to the hotels on the Rigi or to the summit of Mount Washington.
The ancient Etruscan was a practical man, and his views about views were probably rudimentary.
But gaze down for a moment from the cathedral platform upon the valley of the Arno, spread like a glowing picture at your feet, and see how immediately it resolves the doubt.
Not, indeed, the valley of the Arno as it stands at present, thick set with tower and spire and palace.
In order to arrive at the _raison d'être_ of Fiesole you must blot out mentally Arnolfo's vast pile, and Brunelleschi's dome, and Giotto's campanile, and Savonarola's monastery, and the tall and slender tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, rising like a shaft sheer into the air far, far below--you must blot out, in short, all that makes the world now congregate at Florence, and all Florence itself into the bargain.
Nowhere on earth do I know a more peopled plain than that plain of Arno in our own time, seen on a sunny autumn day, when the light glints clearly on each white villa and church and hamlet, from this specular mount of antique Fiesole.
But to understand why Fiesole itself stands there at all you must neglect all this, neglect all the wealth of art that makes each inch of that valley classic ground, and look only, if you can for a brief moment, at the bare facts of primitive nature.
And what then do you see?
Spread far below you, and basking in the sunshine, a comparatively flat and wide, open valley; olive and stone pine and mulberry on its slopes; pasture land and flowery vale in its midst.
North and south, in two long ridges, the Apennines stretch their hard, blue outlines from Carrara to Siena against the afternoon sky--outlines of a sort that one never gets in northern lands, but which remind one so exactly of the painted background to a fifteenth-century Italian picture that nature seems here, to our topsy-turvy fancy, to be whimsically imitating an effect from art.
But in between those two tossed and tumbled guardian ridges, the valley of the Arno, as it flows towards Pisa, with the minor basins of its tributary streams, expands for a while about Florence itself into a broad and comparatively level plain.
In a mountain country so broken and heaved about as Peninsular Italy, every spare inch of cultivable plain like that has incalculable value.
True, on the terraced slopes of the hillsides generation after generation of ingenious men have managed to build up, tier by tier, a wonderful expanse of artificial tilth.
But while oil and wine can be produced upon the terraces, it is on the river valleys alone that the early inhabitants had to depend for their corn, their cheese, and their flesh-meat.
Hence, in primitive Italy and in primitive England alike, every such open alluvial plain, fit for tilth or grazing, had overhanging it a stockaded hill-fort, which grew with time into a mediæval town or a walled city.
It is just so that Caer Badon at Bath overhangs, with its prehistoric earthworks, the plain of Avon on which Beau Nash's city now spreads its streets, and it is just so that Old Sarum in turn overhangs, with its regular Roman fosses and gigantic glacis, the dale of the namesake river in Wilts, near its point of confluence with the stream of the Wily.
We find it hard, no doubt, to imagine nowadays that once upon a time England was almost as thickly covered with hill-top villages (though on minor heights) as Italy is in the present century.
Yet such was undoubtedly the case in prehistoric times.
I know no better instance of the way these stockaded villages were built than the magnificent group of antique earthworks in Dorset and Devon which rings round with a double row of fortresses the beautiful valley of the Axminster Axe.
There, on one side, a long line of strongholds built by the Durotriges caps every jutting down and hill-top on the southern and eastern bank of the river, while facing them, on the opposite northern and western side, rises a similar series of Damnonian fortresses, crowning the corresponding Devonshire heights.
Lambert's Castle, Musberry Castle, Hawksdown Castle, and so forth, the local nomenclature still calls them, but they are castles, or _castra_, only in the now obsolete Roman sense; prehistoric earthworks, with dyke and trench, once stockaded with wooden palings on top, and enclosing the huts and homes of the inhabitants.
The river ran between the hostile territories; each village held its own strip of land below its fortress-height, and drove up its cattle, its women, and its children, in times of foray, to the safety of the kraal or hill-top encampment.
In such a condition of society, of course, every community was absolutely dependent upon its own territory for the means of subsistence.
And wherever the means of subsistence existed, a village was sure to spring up in time upon the nearest hill-top.
That is how the oldest Fiesole of all first came to be perched there.
It was a hill-top refuge for the tillers and grazers of the fertile Arno vale at its feet.
But why did the people of the Arno Valley fix upon the particular site of Fiesole?
Surely on the southern side of the river, about the Viale dei Colli, the hills approach much nearer to the plain.
From San Miniato and the Bello Sguardo one looks down far more directly upon the domes and palaces and campaniles of Florence spread right at one's feet.
Why didn't the primitive inhabitants of the valley fix rather on a spur of that nearer range--say the one where Galileo's tower stands--for the site of their village?
If you know Florence and have asked that question within yourself in all seriousness as you read, I see you haven't yet begun to throw yourself into the position of affairs in prehistoric Tuscany.
You can't shuffle off your own century.
For between the broad plain and the range of hills where the Viale dei Colli now winds serpentine on its beautiful way round the glens and ravines, the Arno runs, a broad torrent flood in times of freshet: the Arno, unbridged as yet (in the days I speak of) by the Ponte Vecchio, an impassable frontier between the wide territory of prehistoric Fiesole and the narrow fields of some minor village, long since forgotten, on the opposite bank.
The great alluvial plain lies north of the river; the three streams whose silt contributes to form it flow into the main channel from Pistoja and Prato.
To live across the river on the south bank would have been absolutely impossible for the owners of the plain.
But Fiesole occupies a central spur of the northern heights, overlooking the valley to east and west, and must therefore have been always the natural place from which to command the plain of Arno.
A little above and a little below Florence gorges once more hem the river in.
So that the plain of Florence (as we call it nowadays), the plain of Fiesole, as it once was, formed at the beginning a little natural principality by itself, of which Fiesole was the obvious capital and stronghold.
For in order to understand Fiesole aright, we must always manage in our own minds to get rid entirely of that beautiful mushroom growth, Florence, and to think only of the most ancient epoch.
While we are in Florence itself, to be sure, it seems to us always, by comparison with our modern English towns, that Florence is a place of immemorial antiquity.
It was civilized when Britain was a den of thieves.
While in feudal England Edward I. was summoning his barons to repress the rising of William Wallace, in Florence, already a great commercial town, Arnolfo di Cambio had received the sublime orders of the Signoria to construct for the Duomo 'the most sumptuous edifice that human invention could desire or human labour execute,' and had carried out those orders with consummate skill.
While Edward III.
was dreaming of his lawless filibustering expeditions into France, Ciotto was encrusting the face of his glorious belfry with that magnificent decoration of many-coloured marbles which makes northern churches look so cold and grey and barbaric by comparison.
While Englishmen were burning Joan of Arc at Rouen, Fra Angelico was adorning the walls of San Marco with those rapt saints and those spotless Madonnas.
Even the very back streets of Florence recall at every step its mediæval magnificence.
But when from Florence itself one turns to Fiesole, the city by the Arno sinks at once by a sudden revulsion into a mere thing of yesterday by the side of the city on the Etruscan hill-top.
Fiesole was a town of immemorial antiquity while Florence was still, what perhaps its poetical name imports, a field of flowers.
But why this particular height rather than any other of the dozen that jut out into the plain?
Well, there we get at another fundamental point in hill-top town history.
Fiesole had water.
A spring at such a height is comparatively rare, but it is a necessary accompaniment, or rather a condition precedent, of all high-place villages.
In the Borgo Unto you will still find this spring--a natural fountain, the Fonte Sotterra--in an underground passage, now approached (so greatly did the Fiesolans appreciate its importance) by a Gothic archway.
The water supplies the whole neighbourhood; and that accounts for the position of the town on the low _col_ just below the acropolis.
Who first chose the site it would be impossible to say; the earliest stockaded fort at Fiesole (enclosing the town and arx above) must go back to the very dawn of neolithic history, long before the Etruscans had ever issued forth from their Rhætian fastnesses to occupy the blue and silver-grey hills of modern Tuscany.
Nor do we know who built the great Cyclopean walls, whose huge rough blocks still overhang the modern carriage road that leads past Boccaccio's Valley of the Ladies and Fra Angelico's earliest convent from the town in the Valley.
They are attributed to the Etruscans, of course, on much the same grounds as Stonehenge is attributed to the Druids--because in the minds of the people who made the attribution Etruscans and Druids were each in their own place the _ne plus ultra_ of aboriginal antiquity.
But at any rate, at some very early time, the people who held the valley of the Arno erected these vast megalithic walls round their city and citadel as a protection, probably, against the people who held the Ligurian sea-board.
Throughout the early historical period at least we know that Fæsulæ was an Etruscan border-town against the Ligurian freebooters, and we can see that the arx or acropolis of Fæsulæ must have occupied the hill-top now occupied by the Franciscan monastery on the height above the town, while the houses must have spread, as they still do within shrunken limits, about the spring and over the _col_ at its base.
Fæsulæ was not one of the great Etrurian cities, not one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan League.
Volterra occupies the site of the large Tuscan town which lorded it over this part of the Lower Apennines.
But Fæsulæ must still have been a considerable place, to judge by the magnitude and importance of its fortifications, and it must have gathered into itself the entire population of all the little Arno plain.
As long as _fortis Etruria crevit_, Fæsulæ must always have held its own as a frontier post against the Ligurian foe.
But when _fortis Etruria_ began to decline, and Rome to become the summit of all things, the glory of Fæsulæ received a severe shock.
Not indeed by conquest--that counts for little--but the Roman peace introduced into Italy a new order of things, fatal to the hill-tops.
Sulla, who humbled Fæsulæ, did far worse than that: he planted a Roman colony in the valley at its foot--the colony of Florentia--at the point where the road crossed the Arno--the colony that was afterwards to become the most famous commercial and artistic town of the mediæval world as Florence.
The position of the new town marks the change that had come over the conditions of life in Upper Italy.
Florence was a Fiesole descended to the plain.
And it descended for just the selfsame reason that made Bishop Poore thirteen centuries later bring down Sarum from its lofty hill-top to the new white minster by the ford of Avon.
Roads, communications, internal trade were henceforth to exist and to count for much; what was needed now was a post and trading town on the river to guard the passage from north to south against possible aggression.
Fiesole had been but a mountain stronghold; Florence was marked from the very beginning by its mere position as a great commercial and manufacturing town.
Nevertheless, just as in mediæval England the upper town on the hill, the castled town of the barons, often existed for many years side by side with the lower town on the river, the high-road town of the merchant guilds--just as Old Sarum, for example, continued to exist side by side with Salisbury--so Fæsulæ continued to exist side by side with Florentia.
As a military post, commanding the plain, it was needful to retain it; and so, though Sulla destroyed in part its population, he reinstated it before long as one of his own Roman colonies.
And for a long time, during the ages of doubtful peace that succeeded the first glorious flush of the military empire, Fæsulæ must have kept up its importance unchanged.
The remains of the Roman theatre on the slope behind the cathedral--great stone semicircles carved on a scale to seat a large audience--betoken a considerable Roman town.
And from a very early period it seems to have possessed a Christian church, whose first bishop, according to a tradition as good as most, was a convert of St. Peter's, and was martyred, says his legend, in the Neronian persecution.
The existing cathedral, its later representative, is still an early and very simple Tuscan basilica, with picturesque crypt and raised choir, of a very plain Romanesque type.
It looks like a fitting church for the mother-town of Florence; it seems to recall in its own cold and austere fabric the more ancient claims of the sombre Etruscan hill-top city.
It was the middle ages, however, that finally brought down Fiesole in earnest to the plain.
Pisa had been the earliest Tuscan town to attain importance and maritime supremacy after the dark days of barbarian incursion; but as soon as land-transit once more assumed general importance, Florence, seated on the great route from the north to Rome by Siena, and commanding the passage of the Arno and the gate of the Apennines, naturally began to surpass in time its distanced rival.
As early as the Roman days a bridge is said to have spanned the Arno on the site of the existing Ponte Vecchio.
The mediæval walls enclosed the southern _tête du pont_ within their picturesque circuit, thus securing the passage of the river and giving Florence its little Janiculus, the Oltrarno, with its southern exit by the Porta Romana.
The real 'makers of Florence' were the humble workmen who thus extended the firm hold of the growing republic to the southern bank.
By so doing, they gave their city undoubted command of the imperial route from Germany Romeward, and brought in their train Dante and Giotto, Brunelleschi and Donatello, Fra Angelico and Savonarola, the Medici and the Pitti, Michael Angelo and Raffaele, and all the glories of the Renaissance epoch.
For as at Athens, so in Florence, art and literature followed plainly in the wake of commerce.
But the rise of Florence was the fall of Fiesole.
Already in the eleventh century the undutiful daughter had conquered and annexed her venerable mother; and in proportion as the mercantile importance of the city in the plain waxed greater and greater, that of the city on the hill-top must slowly have waned to less and less.
At the present day Fiesole has degenerated into a mere suburb of Florence, which, indeed, it had almost become when Lorenzo the Magnificent held his country court at the Villa Mozzi, or even earlier, when Boccaccio's lively narrators fled from the plague to the gardens of the Palmieri, though it still retains the dignity of its ancient cathedral, its municipal palace, its gigantic seminary, and its great overgrown Franciscan monastery, that replaces the citadel on the height above the town.
Nay, more, with its local museum, its bishop's palace, and its quaint churches, it keeps up, to some extent, all the airs and graces of a real living town.
But in reality these few big buildings, and the graceful campanile which makes so fair a show in all the neighbouring views, are the best of the little city.
Fiesole looks biggest seen from afar.
All that is vital in it is the ecclesiastical establishment, which still clings, with true ecclesiastical conservatism, to the hill-top city, and the trade of the straw plaiters, who make Leghorn straw goods and pester the visitor with their flimsy wares, taking no answer to all their importunities save one in solid coin of good King Umberto.
One last question.
How does it come that in these southern climates the hill-top town has survived so much more generally to our own day than in Northern Europe?
The obvious answer seems at first sight to be that in the warmer climates life can be carried on comfortably, and agriculture can yield good results, at a greater height than in a cold climate.
Olives, vines, chestnuts, maize will grow far up on Italian hill sides, and that, no doubt, counts for something; but I do not believe it covers all the ground.
Two other points seem to me at least equally important, especially when we remember that the hill-top town was once as common in the north as in the south, and that what we have really to account for in Italy is not its existence merely, but rather its late survival into newer epochs.
One point is that in Southern Europe the state of perpetual internal warfare lasted much longer than in the feudal north.
The other point is that each little patch of country in the south is still far more self-supporting, has had its economic conditions far less disturbed by modern rearrangements and commercial necessities, than in Northern Europe.
In England every town and village stands upon some high road; the larger stand almost invariably upon some railway or some navigable river.
In Italy it is still quite possible, where agricultural conditions are favourable, to have a comparatively flourishing town perched upon some out-of-the-way mountain height.
Even a carriage road is scarcely a necessity; a mule path will do well enough for wine and oil and the other simple commodities of southern life.
The hill-top town, in short, belongs to an earlier type of civilisation than ours; it survives, unaltered, on its own pinnacle wherever that type of civilisation is still possible.
And I sincerely hope our pretty American friend will pardon me for having thus publicly answered, at so great length, her natural question.
A PERSISTENT NATIONALITY.
Standing to-day before the dim outline of Orcagna's "Hell" in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence, and mentally comparing those mediæval demons and monsters and torturers on the frescoed wall in front of me with the more antique Etruscan devils and tormentors pictured centuries earlier on the ancient tombs of Etrurian princes, the thought, which had often occurred to me before, how essentially similar were the Tuscan intellect and Tuscan art in all ages, forced itself upon me once more at a flash with an irresistible burst of internal conviction.
The identity of old and new seemed to stand confessed.
Etruria throughout has been one and the same; and it is almost impossible for any one to over-estimate the influence of the powerful, but gloomy, Etruscan character upon the whole tone, not only of popular Christianity, but of that modern civilisation which is its offspring and outcome.
I suppose it is hardly necessary, "in this age of enlightenment" (as people used to say in the last century), to insist any longer upon the obvious fact that conquest and absorption do not in any way mean extermination.
Most people still vaguely fancy to themselves, to be sure, that, when Rome conquered and absorbed Etruria, the ancient Etruscan ceased at once to exist--was swallowed, as it were, and became forthwith, in some mysterious way, first a Roman, and then a modern Italian.
And, in a certain sense, this is, no doubt, more or less true; but that sense is decidedly not the genealogical one.
Manners change, but blood persists.
The Tuscan people went on living and marrying under consul and emperor just as they had done under _lar_ and _lucumo_; Latin and Gaul, Lombard and Goth, mingled with them in time, but did not efface them; and I do not doubt that the vast mass of the population of Tuscany at the present day is still of preponderatingly Etruscan blood, though qualified, of course (and perhaps improved), by many Italic, Celtic, and Teutonic elements.
Again, when we remember that Florence, Pisa, Siena, Perugia are all practically in Tuscany, and that Florence alone has really given to the world Dante and Boccaccio, Galileo and Savonarola, Cimabue and Giotto, Botticelli and Fra Angelico, Donatello and Ghiberti, Michael Angelo and Raffael, Leonardo da Vinci and Macchiavelli and Alfieri, and a host of other almost equally great names, it will be obvious to every one that the problem of the origin of this Tuscan nationality must be one that profoundly interests the whole world.
Nay, more, we must remember, too, that Etruria had other and earlier claims than these; that it spread up to the very walls of Rome; that the Etruscan element in Rome itself was immensely strong; that the Roman religion owed, confessedly, much to Tuscan ideas; that Latin Christianity, the Christianity of all the Western world, took its shape in semi-Tuscan Rome; that the Roman Empire was largely modelled by the Etruscan Mæcenas; that the Italian renaissance was largely influenced by the Florentine Medici; that Leo the Tenth was himself a member of that great house; and that the artists whom he summoned to the metropolis to erect St. Peter's and to beautify the Vatican were, almost all of them, Florentines by birth, training, or domicile.
I think, when we have run over mentally these and ten thousand other like facts, we will readily admit to ourselves the magnitude of the world's debt to Tuscany--social, artistic, intellectual, religious--both in ancient, mediæval, and modern times.
And what, now, was this strong Tuscan nationality, which persists so thoroughly through all external historical changes, and which has contributed so large and so marvellous a part to the world's thought and the world's culture?
It is a curious consideration for those who talk so glibly, about the enormous natural superiority of the Aryan race, that the ancient Etruscans were the one people of the antique European world, who, by common consent, did _not_ belong to the Aryan family.
They were strangers in the land, or, rather, perhaps they were its oldest possessors.
Their language, their physique, their creed, their art, all point to a wholly different origin from the Aryans.
I am not going, in a brief essay like this, to settle dogmatically, off-hand, the vexed question of the origin and affinities of the Etruscan type; more nonsense, I suppose, has been talked and written upon that occult subject by learned men than even learned men have ever poured forth upon any other sublunary topic; but one thing at least, I take it, is absolutely certain amid the conflicting theories of ingenious theorists about the Etruscan race, and that one thing is that the Rasennæ stand in Europe absolutely alone, the sole representatives of some ancient and elsewhere exterminated stock, surviving only in Tuscany itself, and in the Rhætian Alps of the Canton Grisons.
At the moment when the Etruscans first appear in history, however, they appear as a race capable of acquiring and assimilating culture with great ease, rapidity, and certainty.
No sooner do they come into contact with the Greek world than they absorb and reproduce all that was best and truest in Greek civilization.
'Merely receptive--European Chinese,' says, in effect, Mommsen, the great Roman historian: to me, that judgment, though true in some small degree, seems harsh indeed on a wider view, when applied to a people who begot at last the 'Divina Commedia,' the campanile of Florence, the dome of St. Peter's, and the glories of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace.
It is quite true that the Etruscans themselves, like the Japanese in our own time, did at first accept most imitatively the Hellenic culture; but they gradually remoulded it by their own effort into something new, growing and changing from age to age, until at last, in the Italian renaissance, they burst out with a wonderful and novel message to all the rest of dormant Europe.
One of the most persistent key-notes of this underlying Etruscan character is the solemn, weird, and gloomy nature of so much of the true Etruscan workmanship.
From the very beginning they are strong, but sullen.
Solidity and power, rather than beauty and grace, are what they aim at; and in this, Michael Angelo was a true Tuscan.
If we look at the massive old Etruscan buildings, the Cyclopean walls of Fæsulæ and Volterræ, with their gigantic unhewn blocks, or the gloomy tombs of Clusium, with their heavy portals, and then at the frowning façade of the Strozzi or the Pitti Palace, we shall see in these, their earliest and latest terms, the special marks of Tuscan architecture.
'Piled by the hands of giants for mighty kings of old,' says Macaulay, well, of the Cyclopean walls.
'It somewhat resembles a prison or castle, and is remarkable for its bold simplicity of style, the unadorned huge blocks of stone being hewn smooth at the joints only,' says a modern writer, of Brunelleschi's palatial masterpiece.
Every visitor to Florence must have noticed on every side the marks of this sullen and rugged Etruscan character.
Compare for a moment the dark bosses of the Palazzo Strozzi, the '_âpre énergie_' of the Palazzo Vecchio, the '_beauté sombre et sévère_' of the mediæval Bargello, with the open, airy brightness of the Doge's Palace, or the glorious Byzantine gold-and-blue of St. Mark's at Venice, and you get at once an admirable measure of this persistent trait in the Etruscan idiosyncrasy.
Tuscan architecture is massive and morose where Venetian architecture is sunny and smiling.
Now, Tuscan religion has in all times been specially influenced by the peculiarly gloomy tinge of the Tuscan character.
It has always been a religion of fear rather than of love; a religion that strove harder to terrorize than to attract; a religion full of devils, flames, tortures, and horrors; in short, a sort of horrible Chinese religion of dragons and monstrosities, and flames and goblins.
In the painted tombs of ancient Etruria you may see the familiar devil with his three-pronged fork thrusting souls back into the seething flood of a heathen hell, as Orcagna's here thrust them back similarly into that of its more modern Christian successor.
All Etruscan art is full throughout of such horrors.
You find their traces abundantly in the antique Etruscan museum at Florence; you find them on the mediæval Campo Santo at Pisa; you find them with greater skill, but equal repulsiveness, in the work of the great Renaissance artists.
The 'ghastly glories of saints' the Tuscan revels in.
The most famous portion of the most famous Tuscan poem is the 'Inferno'--the part that gloats with minute and truly Tuscan realism over the torments of the damned in every department of the mediæval hell.
And, as if still further to mark the continuity of thought, here in Orcagna's frescoes at Santa Maria Novella you have every horror of the heathen religion incongruously mingled with every horror of the Christian--gorgons and harpies and chimæras dire are tormenting the wicked under the eyes of the Madonna; centaurs are shooting and prodding them before the God of Love from the torrid banks of fiery lakes; furies with snaky heads are directing their punishments; Minos and Æacus are superintending their tasks; and, in the centre of all, a huge Moloch demon is devouring them bodily in his fiery jaws, with hideous tusks as of a Japanese monster.
It would be a curious question to inquire how far these old and ingrained Etruscan ideas may have helped to modify and colour the gentler conceptions of primitive Christianity.
Certainly, one must never for a moment forget that Rome was at bottom nearly one-half Etruscan in character; that during the imperial period it became, in fact, the capital of Etruria; that myriads of Etruscans flocked to Rome; and that many of them, like Sejanus, had much to do with moulding and building up the imperial system.
I do not doubt, myself, that Etruscan notions large interwove themselves, from the very outset, with Roman Christianity; and whenever in the churches or galleries of Italy I see St. Lawrence frying on his gridiron, or St. Sebastian pierced through with many arrows, or the Innocents being massacred in unpleasant detail, or hell being represented with Dantesque minuteness and particularity of delineation, I say to myself, with an internal smile, 'Etruscan influence.'
How interesting it is, too, to observe the constant outcrop, under all forms and faiths, of this strange, underlying, non-Aryan type!
The Etruscans are and always were remarkable for their intellect, their ingenuity, their artistic faculty; and even to this day, after so many vicissitudes, they stand out as a wholly superior people to the rough Genoese and the indolent Neapolitans.
They have had many crosses of blood meanwhile, of course; and it seems probable that the crosses have done them good: for in ancient times it was Rome, the Etrurianised border city of the Latins, that rose to greatness, not Etruria itself; and at a later date, it was after the Germans had mingled their race with Italy that Florence almost took the place of Rome.
Nay, it is known as a fact that under Otto the Great a large Teutonic colony settled in Florence, thus adding to the native Etrurian race (especially to the nobility) that other element which the Tuscan seems to need in order that he may be spurred to the realisation of his best characteristics.
But allow as we may for foreign admixture, two points are abundantly clear to the impartial observer of Tuscan history: one, that this non-Aryan race has always been one of the finest and strongest in Italy; and the other, that from the very dawn of history its main characteristics, for good or for evil, have persisted most uninterruptedly till the present day.
CASTERS AND CHESTERS.
Everybody knows, of course, that up and down over the face of England a whole crop of places may be found with such terminations as Lancaster, Doncaster, Manchester, Leicester, Gloucester, or Exeter; and everybody also knows that these words are various corruptions or alterations of the Latin _castra_, or perhaps we ought rather to say of the singular form, _castrum_.
So much we have all been told from our childhood upward; and for the most part we have been quite ready to acquiesce in the statement without any further troublesome inquiry on our own account.
But in reality the explanation thus vouchsafed us does not help us much towards explaining the real origin and nature of these ancient names.
It is true enough as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough.
It reminds one a little of Charles Kingsley's accomplished pupil-teacher, with his glib derivation of amphibious, 'from two Greek words, _amphi_, the land, and _bios_, the water.'
A detailed history of the root 'Chester' in its various British usages may serve to show how far such a rough-and-ready solution as the pupil-teacher's falls short of complete accuracy and comprehensiveness.
In the first place, without troubling ourselves for the time being with the diverse forms of the word as now existing, a difficulty meets us at the very outset as to how it ever got into the English language at all.
'It was left behind by the Romans,' says the pupil teacher unhesitatingly.
No doubt; but if so, the only language in which it could be left would be Welsh; for when the Romans quitted Britain there were probably as yet no English settlements on any part of the eastern coast.
Now the Welsh form of the word, even as given us in the very ancient Latin Welsh tract ascribed to Nennius, is 'Caer' or 'Kair;' and there is every reason to believe that the Celtic _cathir_ or the Latin _castrum_ had been already worn down into this corrupt form at least as early as the days of the first English colonisation of Britain.
Indeed I shall show ground hereafter for believing that that form survives even now in one or two parts of Teutonic England.
But if this be so, it is quite clear that the earliest English conquerors could not have acquired the use of the word from the vanquished Welsh whom they spared as slaves or tributaries.
The newcomers could not have learned to speak of a Ceaster or Chester from Welshmen who called it a Caer; nor could they have adopted the names of Leicester or Gloucester from Welshmen who knew those towns only as Kair Legion or Kair Gloui.
It is clear that this easy off-hand theory shirks all the real difficulties of the question, and that we must look a little closer into the matter in order to understand the true history of these interesting philological fossils.
Already we have got one clear and distinct principle to begin with, which is too often overlooked by amateur philologists.
The Latin language, as spoken by Romans in Britain during their occupation of the island, has left and can have left absolutely no directs marks upon our English tongue, for the simple reason that English (or Anglo-Saxon as we call it in its earlier stages) did not begin to be spoken in any part of Britain for twenty or thirty years after the Romans retired.
Whatever Latin words have come down to us in unbroken succession from the Roman times--and they are but a few--must have come down from Welsh sources.
The Britons may have learnt them from their Italian masters, and may then have imparted them, after the brief period of precarious independence, to their Teutonic masters; but of direct intercourse between Roman and Englishman there was probably little or none.
Three ways out of this difficulty might possibly be suggested by any humble imitator of Mr. Gladstone.
First, the early English pirates may have learnt the word _castrum_ (they always used it as a singular) years before they ever came to Britain as settlers at all.
For during the long decay of the empire, the corsairs of the flat banks and islets of Sleswick and Friesland made many a light-hearted plundering expedition upon the unlucky coasts of the maritime Roman provinces; and it was to repel their dreaded attacks that the Count of the Saxon Shore was appointed to the charge of the long exposed tract from the fenland of the Wash to the estuary of the Rother in Sussex.
On one occasion they even sacked London itself, already the chief trading town of the whole island.
During some such excursions, the pirates would be certain to pick up a few Latin words, especially such as related to new objects, unseen in the rude society of their own native heather-clad wastes; and amongst these we may be sure that the great Roman fortresses would rank first and highest in their barbaric eyes.
Indeed, modern comparative philologists have shown beyond doubt that a few southern forms of speech had already penetrated to the primitive English marshland by the shores of the Baltic and the mouth of the Elbe before the great exodus of the fifth century; and we know that Roman or Byzantine coins, and other objects belonging to the Mediterranean civilisation, are found abundantly in barrows of the first Christian centuries in Sleswick--the primitive England of the colonists who conquered Britain.
But if the word _castrum_ did not get into early English by some such means, then we must fall back either upon our second alternative explanation, that the townspeople of the south-eastern plains in England had become thoroughly Latinised in speech during the Roman occupation; or upon our third, that they spoke a Celtic dialect more akin to Gaulish than the modern Welsh of Wales, which may be descended from the ruder and older tongue of the western aborigines.
This last opinion would fit in very well with the views of Mr. Rhys, the Celtic professor at Oxford, who thinks that all south-eastern Britain was conquered and colonised by the Gauls before the Roman invasion.
If so, it maybe only the western Welsh who said Caer; the eastern may have said _castrum_, as the Romans did.
In either of the latter two cases, we must suppose that the early English learnt the word from the conquered Britons of the districts they overran.
But I myself have very little doubt that they had borrowed it long before their settlement in our island at all.
However this may be--and I confess I have been a little puritanically minute upon the subject--the English settlers learned to use the word from the first moment they landed in Britain.
In its earliest English dress it appears as Ceaster, pronounced like Keaster, for the soft sound of the initial in modern English is due to later Norman influences.
The new comers--Anglo-Saxons, if you choose to call them so--applied the word to every Roman town or ruin they found in Britain.
Indeed, all the Latin words of the first crop in English--those used during the heathen age, before Augustine and his monks introduced the Roman civilisation--belong to such material relics of the older provincial culture as the Sleswick pirates had never before known: _way_ from _via_, _wall_ from _vallum_, _street_ from _strata_, and _port_ from _portus_.
In this first crop of foreign words Ceaster also must be reckoned, and it was originally employed in English as a common rather than as a proper name.
Thus we read in the brief _Chronicle_ of the West Saxon kings, under the year 577, 'Cuthwine and Ceawlin fought against the Welsh, and offslew three kings, Conmail and Condidan and Farinmail, and took three ceasters, Gleawan ceaster and Ciren ceaster and Bathan ceaster.'
We might modernise a little, so as to show the real sense, by saying 'Glevum city and Corinium city and Bath city.'
Here it is noticeable that in two of the cases--Gloucester and Cirencester--the descriptive termination has become at last part of the name; but in the third case--that of Bath--it has never succeeded in doing so.
Ages after, in the reign of King Alfred, we still find the word used as a common noun; for the _Chronicle_ mentions that a body of Danish freebooters 'fared to a waste ceaster in Wirral; it is hight Lega ceaster;' that is to say, Legionis castra, now Chester.
The grand old English epic of Beowulf, which is perhaps older than the colonisation of Britain, speaks of townsfolk as 'the dwellers in ceasters.'
As a rule, each particular Roman town retained its full name, in a more or less clipped form, for official uses; but in the ordinary colloquial language of the neighbourhood they all seem to have been described as 'the Ceaster' simply, just as we ourselves habitually speak of 'town,' meaning the particular town near which we live, or, in a more general sense, London.
Thus, in the north, Ceaster usually means York, the Roman capital of the province; as when the _Chronicle_ tells us that 'John succeeded to the bishopric of Ceaster'; that 'Wilfrith was hallowed as bishop at Ceaster'; or that 'Æthelberht the archbishop died at Ceaster.'
In the south it is employed to mean Winchester, the capital of the West Saxon kings and overlords of all Britain; as when the _Chronicle_ says that 'King Edgar drove out the priests at Ceaster from the Old Minster and the New Minster, and set them with monks.'
So, as late as the days of Charles II., 'to go to town' meant in Shropshire to go to Shrewsbury, and in Norfolk to go to Norwich.
In only one instance has this colloquial usage survived down to our own days in a large town, and that is at Chester, where the short form has quite ousted the full name of Lega ceaster.
But in the case of small towns or unimportant Roman stations, which would seldom need to be mentioned outside their own immediate neighbourhood, the simple form is quite common, as at Caistor in Norfolk, Castor in Hunts, and elsewhere.
At times, too, we get an added English termination, as at Casterton, Chesterton, and Chesterholme; or a slight distinguishing mark, as at Great Chesters, Little Chester, Bridge Casterton, and Chester-le-Street.
All these have now quite lost their old distinctive names, though they have acquired new ones to distinguish them from _the_ Chester, or from one another.
For example, Chester-le-Street was Conderco in Roman times, and Cunega ceaster in the early English period.
Both names are derived from the little river Cone, which flows through the village.
Before we pass on to the consideration of those _castra_ which, like Manchester and Lancaster, have preserved to the present day their original Roman or Celtic prefixes in more or less altered shapes, we must glance briefly at a general principle running through the modernised forms now in use.
The reader, with his usual acuteness, will have noticed that the word Ceaster reappears under many separate disguises in the names of different modern towns.
Sometimes it is _caster_, sometimes _chester_, sometimes _cester_, and sometimes even it gets worn down to a mere fugitive relic, as _ceter_ or _eter_.
But these different corruptions do not occur irregularly up and down the country, one here and one there; they follow a distinct law and are due to certain definite underlying facts of race or language.
Each set of names lies in a regular stratum; and the different strata succeed one another like waves over the face of England, from north-east to south-westward.
In the extreme north and east, where the English or Anglian blood is purest, or is mixed only with Danes and Northmen to any large extent, such forms as Lancaster, Doncaster, Caistor, and Casterton abound.
In the mixed midlands and the Saxon south, the sound softens into Chesterfield, Chester, Winchester, and Dorchester.
In the inner midlands and the Severn vale, where the proportion of Celtic blood becomes much stronger, the termination grows still softer in Leicester, Bicester, Cirencester, Gloucester, and Worcester, while at the same time a marked tendency towards elision occurs; for these words are really pronounced as if written Lester, Bister, Cisseter, Gloster, and Wooster.
Finally, on the very borders of Wales, and of that Damnonian country which was once known to our fathers as West Wales, we get the very abbreviated forms Wroxeter, Uttoxeter, and Exeter, of which the second is colloquially still further shortened into Uxeter.
Sometimes these tracts approach very closely to one another, as on the banks of the Nene, where the two halves of the Roman Durobrivæ have become castor on one side of the river, and Chesterton on the other; but the line can be marked distinctly on the map, with a slight outward bulge, with as great regularity as the geological strata.
It will be most convenient here, therefore, to begin with the _casters_, which have undergone the least amount of rubbing down, and from them to pass on regularly to the successively weaker forms in _chester_, _cester_, _ceter_, and _eter_.
Nothing, indeed, can be more deceptive than the common fashion, of quoting a Roman name from the often blundering lists of the Itineraries, and then passing on at once to the modern English form, without any hint of the intermediate stages.
To say that Glevum is now Gloucester is to tell only half the truth; until we know that the two were linked together by the gradual steps of Glevum castrum, Gleawan ceaster, Gleawe cester, Gloucester, and Gloster, we have not really explained the words at all.
By beginning with the least corrupt forms we shall best be able to see the slow nature of the change, and we shall also find at the same time that a good deal of incidental light is shed upon the importance and extent of the English settlement.
Doncaster is an excellent example of the simplest form of modernisation.
It appears in the Antonine Itinerary and in the _Notitia Imperii_ as Danum.
This, with the ordinary termination affixed, becomes at once Dona ceaster or Doncaster.
The name is of course originally derived in either form from the river Don, which flows beside it; and the Northumbrian invaders must have learnt the names of both river and station from their Brigantian British serfs.
It shows the fluctuating nature of the early local nomenclature, however, when we find that Bæda ('the Venerable Bede') describes the place in his Latinised vocabulary as Campodonum--that is to say, the Field of Don, or, more idiomatically, Donfield, a name exactly analogous to those of Chesterfield Macclesfield, Mansfield, Sheffield, and Huddersfield in the neighbouring region.
The comparison of Doncaster and Chesterfield is thus most interesting: for here we have two Roman Stations, each of which must once have had two alternative names; but in the one case the old Roman name has ultimately prevailed, and in the other case the modern English one.
The second best example of a Caster, perhaps, is Lancaster.
In all probability this is the station which appears in the _Notitia Imperii_ as Longovico, an oblique case which it might be hazardous to put in the nominative, seeing that it seems rather to mean the town on the Lune or Loan than the Long Village.
Here, as in many other cases, the formative element, vicus, is exchanged for Ceaster, and we get something like Lon-ceaster or finally Lancaster.
Other remarkable Casters are Brancaster in Norfolk, once Branadunum (where the British termination _dun_ has been similarly dropped); Ancaster in Lincolnshire, whose Roman name is not certainly known; and Caistor, near Norwich, once Venta Icenorum, a case which may best be considered under the head of Winchester.
On the other hand, Tadcaster gives us an instance where the Roman prefix has apparently been entirely altered, for it appears in the Antonine Itinerary (according to the best identification) as Calcaria, so that we might reasonably expect it to be modernised as Calcaster.
Even here, however, we might well suspect an earlier alternative title, of which we shall get plenty when we come to examine the Chesters; and in fact, in Bæda, it still bears its old name in a slightly disguised form as Kaelca ceaster.
First among the softer forms, let us examine the interesting group to which Chester itself belongs.
Its Roman name was, beyond doubt, Diva, the station on the Dee--as Doncaster is the station on the Don, and Lancaster the station on the Lune.
Its proper modern form ought, therefore, to be Deechester.
But it would seem that in certain places the neighbouring rustics knew the great Roman town of their district, not by its official title, but as the legion's Camp--Castra Legionis.
At least three such cases undoubtedly occur--one at Deva or Chester; one at Ratæ or Leicester; and one at Isca Silurum or Caerleon-upon-Usk.
In each case the modernisation has taken a very different form.
Diva was captured by the heathen English king, Æthelfrith of Northumbria, in a battle rendered famous by Bæda, who calls the place 'The City of Legions.'
The Latin compilation by some Welsh writer, ascribed to Nennius, calls it Cair Legion, which is also its name in the Irish annals.
In the _English Chronicle_ it appears as Lege ceaster, Læge ceaster, and Leg ceaster; but after the Norman Conquest it becomes Ceaster alone.
On midland lips the sound soon grew into the familiar Chester.
About the second case, that of Leicester, there is a slight difficulty, for it assumes in the _Chronicle_ the form of Lægra ceaster, with an apparently intrusive letter; and the later Welsh writers seized upon the form to fit in with their own ancient legend of King Lear.
Nennius calls it Cair Lerion; and that unblushing romancer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes it at once into Cair Leir, the city of Leir.
More probably the name is a mixture of Legionis and Ratæ, Leg-rat ceaster, the camp of the Legion at Ratæ.
This, again, grew into Legra ceaster, Leg ceaster, and Lei ceaster, while the word, though written Leicester, is now shortened by south midland voices to Lester.
The third Legionis Castra remained always Welsh, and so hardened on Cymric lips into Kair Leon or Caerleon.
Nennius applies the very similar name of Cair Legeion to Exeter, still in his time a Damnonian or West Welsh fortress.
Equally interesting have been the fortunes of the three towns of which Winchester is the type.
In the old Welsh tongue, Gwent means a champaign country, or level alluvial plain.
The Romans borrowed the word as Venta, and applied it to the three local centres of Venta Icenorum in Norfolk, Venta Belgarum in Hampshire, and Venta Silurum in Monmouth.
When the first West Saxon pirates, under their real or mythical leader, Cerdic, swarmed up Southampton Water and occupied the Gwent of the Belgæ, they called their new conquest Wintan ceaster, though the still closer form Wæntan once occurs.
Thence to Winte ceaster and Winchester is no far cry.
Gwent of the Iceni had a different history.
No doubt it also was known at first as Wintan ceaster; but, as at Winchester, the shorter form Ceaster would naturally be employed in local colloquial usage; and when the chief centre of East Anglian population was removed a few miles north to Norwich, the north wick--then a port on the navigable estuary of the Yare--the older station sank into insignificance, and was only locally remembered as Caistor.
Lastly, Gwent of the Silurians has left its name alone to Caer-Went in Monmouthshire, where hardly any relics now remain of the Roman occupation.
Manchester belongs to exactly the same class as Winchester.
Its Roman name was Mancunium, which would easily glide into Mancunceaster.
In the _English Chronicle_ it is only once mentioned, and then as Mameceaster--a form explained by the alternative Mamucium in the Itinerary, which would naturally become Mamue ceaster.
Colchester of course represents Colonia, corrupted first into Coln ceaster, and so through Col ceaster into its present form.
Porchester in Hants is Portus Magnus; Dorchester is Durnovaria, and then Dorn ceaster.
Grantchester, Godmanchester, Chesterfield, Woodchester, and many others help us to trace the line across the map of England, to the most western limit of all at Ilchester, anciently Ischalis, though the intermediate form of Givel ceaster is certainly an odd one.
Besides these Chesters of the regular order, there are several curious outlying instances in Durham and Northumberland, and along the Roman Wall, islanded, as it were, beyond the intermediate belt of Casters.
Such are Lanchester in Durham, which maybe compared with the more familiar Lancaster; Great Chesters in Northumberland, Ebchester on the northern Watling Street, and a dozen more.
How to account for these is rather a puzzle.
Perhaps the Casters may be mainly due to Danish influence (which is the common explanation), and it is known that the Danes spread but sparingly to the north of the Tees.
However, this rough solution of the problem proves too much: for how then can we have a still softer form in Danish Leicester itself?
Probably we shall be nearer the truth if we say that these are late names; for Northumberland was a desert long after the great harrying by William the Conqueror; and by the time it was repeopled, Chester had become the recognised English form, so that it would naturally be employed by the new occupants of the districts about the Wall.
No name in Britain, however, is more interesting than that of Rochester, which admirably shows us how so many other Roman names have acquired a delusively English form, or have been mistaken for memorials of the English conquest.
The Roman town was known as Durobrivæ, which does not in the least resemble Rochester; and what is more, Bæda distinctly tells us that Justus, the first bishop of the West Kentish see, was consecrated 'in the city of Dorubrevi, which the English call Hrofæs ceaster, from one of its former masters, by name Hrof.'
If this were all we knew about it, we should be told that Bæda clearly described the town as being called Hrof's Chester, from an English conqueror Hrof, and that to contradict this clear statement of an early writer was presumptuous or absurd.
Fortunately, however, we have the clearest possible proof that Hrof never existed, and that he was a pure creation of Bæda's own simple etymological guesswork.
King Alfred clearly knew better, for he omitted this wild derivation from his English translation.
The valuable fragment of a map of Roman Britain preserved for us in the mediæval transcript known as the _Peutinger Tables_, sets down Rochester as Rotibis.
Hence it is pretty certain that it must have had two alternative names, of which the other was Durobrivæ.
Rotibis would easily pass (on the regular analogies) into Rotifi ceaster, and that again into Hrofi ceaster and Rochester; just as Rhutupiæ or Ritupæ passed into Rituf burh, and so finally into Richborough.
Moreover, in a charter of King Ethelberht of Kent, older a good deal than Bæda's time, we find the town described under the mixed form of Hrofi-brevi.
After such a certain instance of philological blundering as this, I for one am not inclined to place great faith in such statements as that made by the _English Chronicle_ about Chichester, which it attributes to the mythical South Saxon king Cissa.
Whatever Cissanceaster may mean, it seems to me much more likely that it represents another case of double naming; for though the Roman town was commonly known as Regnum, that is clearly a mere administrative form, derived from the tribal name of the Regni.
Considering that the same veracious _Chronicle_ derives Portsmouth, the Roman Portus, from an imaginary Teutonic invader, Port, and commits itself to other wild statements of the same sort, I don't think we need greatly hesitate about rejecting its authority in these earlier and conjectural portions.
Silchester is another much disputed name.
As a rule, the site has been identified with that of Calleva Atrebatum; but the proofs are scanty, and the identification must be regarded as a doubtful one.
I have already ventured to suggest that the word may contain the root Silva, as the town is situated close upon the ancient borders of Pamber Forest.
The absence of early forms, however, makes this somewhat of a random shot.
Indeed, it is difficult to arrive at any definite conclusions in these cases, except by patiently following up the name from first to last, through all its variations, corruptions, and mis-spellings.
The _Cesters_ are even more degraded (philologically speaking) than the _Chesters_, but are not less interesting and illustrative in their way.
Their farthest northeasterly extension, I believe, is to be found at Leicester and Towcester.
The former we have already considered: the latter appears in the _Chronicle_ as Tofe ceaster, and derives its name from the little river Towe, on which it is situated.
Anciently, no doubt, the river was called Tofe or Tofi, like the Tavy in Devonshire; for all these river-words recur over and over again, both in England and on the Continent.
In this case, there seems no immediate connection with the Roman name, if the site be rightly identified with that of Lactodorum; but at any rate the river name is Celtic, so that Towcester cannot be claimed as a Teutonic settlement.
Cirencester, the meeting-place of all the great Roman roads, is the Latin Corinium, sometimes given as Durocornovium, which well illustrates the fluctuating state of Roman nomenclature in Britain.
As this great strategical centre--the key of the west--had formerly been the capital of the Dobuni, whose name it sometimes bears, it might easily have come down to us as Durchester, or Dobchester, instead of under its existing guise.
The city was captured by the West Saxons in 577, and is then called Ciren ceaster in the brief record of the conquerors.
A few years later, the _Chronicle_ gives it as Cirn ceaster; and since the river is called Chirn, this is the form it might fairly have been expected to retain, as in the case of Cerney close by.
But the city was too far west not to have its name largely rubbed down in use; so it softened both its initials into Cirencester, while Cissan ceaster only got (through Cisse ceaster) as far as Chichester.
At that point the spelling of the western town has stopped short, but the tongues of the natives have run on till nothing now remains but Cisseter.
If we had only that written form on the one hand, and Durocornovium on the other, even the boldest etymologist would hardly venture to suggest that they had any connection with one another.
Of course the common prefix Duro, is only the Welsh Dwr, water, and its occurrence in a name merely implies a ford or river.
The alternative forms may be Anglicised as Churn, and Churnwater, just like Grasmere, and Grasmere Lake.
I wish I could avoid saying anything about Worcester, for it is an obscure and difficult subject; but I fear the attempt to shirk it would be useless in the long run.
I know from sad experience that if I omit it every inhabitant of Worcestershire who reads this article will hunt me out somehow, and run me to earth at last, with a letter demanding a full and explicit explanation of this silent insult to his native county.
So I must try to put the best possible face upon a troublesome matter.
The earliest existing form of the name, after the English Conquest, seems to be that given in a Latin Charter of the eighth century as _Weogorna civitas_.
(Here it is difficult to disentangle the English from its Latin dress.)
A little later it appears in a vernacular shape (also in a charter) as Wigran ceaster.
In the later part of the _English Chronicle_ it becomes Wigera ceaster, and Wigra ceaster; but by the twelfth century it has grown into Wigor ceaster, from which the change to Wire ceaster and Worcester (fully pronounced) is not violent.
This is all plain sailing enough.
But what is the meaning of Wigorna ceaster or Wigran ceaster?
And what Roman or English name does it represent?
The old English settlers of the neighbourhood formed a little independent principality of Hwiccas (afterwards subdued by the Mercians), and some have accordingly suggested that the original word may have been Hwiccwara ceaster, the Chester of the Hwicca men, which would be analogous to Cant-wara burh (Canterbury), the Bury of the Kent men, or to Wiht-gara burh (Carisbrooke), the Bury of the Wight men.
Others, again, connect it with the Braunogenium of the Ravenna geographer, and the Cair Guoranegon or Guiragon of Nennius, which latter is probably itself a corrupted version of the English name.
Altogether, it must be allowed that Worcester presents a genuine difficulty, and that the facts about its early forms are themselves decidedly confused, if not contradictory.
The only other notable _Ceasters_, are Alcester, once Alneceaster, in Worcestershire, the Roman Alauna; Gloucester or Glevum, already sufficiently explained; and Mancester in Staffordshire, supposed to occupy the site of Manduessedum.
Among the most corrupted forms of all, Exeter may rank first.
Its Latin equivalent was Isca Damnoniorum, Usk of the Devonians; Isca being the Latinised form of that prevalent Celtic river name which crops up again in the Usk, Esk, Exe, and Axe, besides forming the first element of Uxbridge and Oxford; while the tribal qualification was added to distinguish it from its namesake, Isca Silurum, Usk of the Silurians, now Caerleon-upon-Usk.
In the west country, to this day, _ask_ always becomes _ax_, or rather remains so, for that provincial form was the King's English at the court of Alfred; and so Isca became on Devonian lips Exan ceaster, after the West Saxon conquest.
Thence it passed rapidly through the stages of Exe ceaster and Exe cester till it finally settled down into Exeter.
At the same time, the river itself became the Exe; and the Exan-mutha of the _Chronicle_ dropped into Exmouth.
We must never forget, however, that Exeter, was a Welsh town up to the reign of Athelstan, and that Cornish Welsh was still spoken in parts of Devonshire till the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Wroxeter is another immensely interesting fossil word.
It lies just at the foot of the Wrekin, and the hill which takes that name in English must have been pronounced by the old Celtic inhabitants much like Uricon: for of course the awkward initial letter has only become silent in these later lazy centuries.
The Romans turned it into Uriconium; but after their departure, it was captured and burnt to the ground by a party of raiding West Saxons, and its fall is graphically described in the wild old Welsh elegy of Llywarch the Aged.
The ruins are still charred and blackened by the West Saxon fires.
The English colonists of the neighbourhood called themselves the Wroken-sætas, or Settlers by the Wrekin--a word analogous to that of Wilsætas, or Settlers by the Wyly; Dorsætas, or Settlers among the Durotriges; and Sumorsætas, or Settlers among the Sumor-folk,--which survive in the modern counties of Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset.
Similar forms elsewhere are the Pecsætas of the Derbyshire Peak, the Elmedsætas in the Forest of Elmet, and the Cilternsætas in the Chiltern Hills.
No doubt the Wroken-sætas called the ruined Roman fort by the analogous name of Wroken ceaster; and this would slowly become Wrok ceaster, Wrok-cester, and Wroxeter, by the ordinary abbreviating tendency of the Welsh borderlands.
Wrexham doubtless preserves the same original root.
Having thus carried the _Castra_ to the very confines of Wales, it would be unkind to a generous and amiable people not to carry them across the border and on to the Western sea.
The Welsh corruption, whether of the Latin word or of a native equivalent _cathir_, assumes the guise of Caer.
Thus the old Roman station of Segontium, near the Menai Straits, is now called Caer Seiont; but the neighbouring modern town which has gathered around Edward's new castle on the actual shore, the later metropolis of the land of Arfon, became known to Welshmen as Caer-yn-Arfon, now corrupted into Caernarvon or even into Carnarvon.
Gray's familiar line about the murdered bards--'On Arvon's dreary shore they lie'--keeps up in some dim fashion the memory of the true etymology.
Caermarthen is in like manner the Roman Muridunum or Moridunum--the fort by the sea--though a duplicate Moridunum in South Devon has been simply translated into English as Seaton.
Innumerable other Caers, mostly representing Roman sites, may be found scattered up and down over the face of Wales, such as Caersws, Caerleon, Caergwrle, Caerhun, and Caerwys, all of which still contain traces of Roman occupation.
On the other hand, Cardigan, which looks delusively like a shortened Caer, has really nothing to do with this group of ancient names, being a mere corruption of Ceredigion.
But outside Wales itself, in the more Celtic parts of England proper, a good many relics of the old Welsh Caers still bespeak the incompleteness of the early Teutonic conquest.
If we might trust the mendacious Nennius, indeed, all our Casters and Chesters were once good Cymric Caers; for he gives a doubtful list of the chief towns in Britain, where Gloucester appears as Cair Gloui, Colchester as Cair Colun, and York as Cair Ebrauc.
These, if true, would be invaluable forms; but unfortunately there is every reason to believe that Nennius invented them himself, by a simple transposition of the English names.
Henry of Huntingdon is nearly as bad, if not worse; for when he calls Dorchester 'Kair Dauri,' and Chichester 'Kair Kei,' he was almost certainly evolving what he supposed to be appropriate old British names from the depths of his own consciousness.
His guesswork was on a par with that of the schoolboys who introduce 'Stirlingia' or 'Liverpolia' into their Ovidian elegiacs.
That abandoned story-teller, Geoffrey of Monmouth, goes a step further, and concocts a Caer Lud for London and a Caer Osc for Exeter, whenever the fancy seizes him.
The only examples amongst these pretended old Welsh forms which seem to me to have any real historical value are an unknown Kair Eden, mentioned by Gildas, and a Cair Wise, mentioned by Simeon of Durham, undoubtedly the true native name of Exeter.
Still we have a few indubitable Caers in England itself surviving to our own day.
Most of them are not far from the Welsh border, as in the case of the two Caer Caradocs, in Shropshire, crowned by ancient British fortifications.
Others, however, lie further within the true English pale, though always in districts which long preserved the Welsh speech, at least among the lower classes of the population.
The earthwork overhanging Bath bears to this day its ancient British title of Caer Badon.
An old history written in the monastery of Malmesbury describes that town as Caer Bladon, and speaks of a Caer Dur in the immediate neighbourhood.
There still remains a Caer Riden on the line of the Roman wall in the Lothians.
Near Aspatria, in Cumberland, stands a mouldering Roman camp known even now as Caer Moto.
In Carvoran, Northumberland, the first syllable has undergone a slight contraction, but may still be readily recognised.
The Carr-dyke in Norfolk seems to me to be referable to a similar origin.
Most curious of all the English Caers, however, is Carlisle.
The Antonine Itinerary gives the town as Luguvallium.
Bæda, in his barbarised Latin fashion calls it Lugubalia.
'The Saxons,' says _Murray's Guide_, with charming _naïveté_, 'abbreviated the name into Luel, and afterwards called it Caer Luel.'
This astounding hotchpotch forms an admirable example of the way in which local etymology is still generally treated in highly respectable publications.
So far as we know, there never was at any time a single Saxon in Cumberland; and why the Saxons, or any other tribe of Englishmen, should have called a town by a purely Welsh name, it would be difficult to decide.
If they had given it any name at all, that name would probably have been Lul ceaster, which might have been modernised into Lulcaster or Lulchester.
The real facts are these.
Cumberland, as its name imports, was long a land of the Cymry--a northern Welsh principality, dependent upon the great kingdom of Strathclyde, which held out for ages against the Northumbrian English invaders among the braes and fells of Ayrshire and the Lake District.
These Cumbrian Welshmen called their chief town Caer Luel, or something of the sort; and there is some reason for believing that it was the capital of the historical Arthur, if any Arthur ever existed, though later ages transferred the legend of the British hero to Caerleon-upon-Usk, after men had begun to forget that the region between the Clyde and the Mersey had once been true Welsh soil.
The English overran Cumberland very slowly; and when they did finally conquer it, they probably left the original inhabitants in possession of the country, and only imposed their own overlordship upon the conquered race.
The story is too long a one to repeat in full here: it must suffice to say that, though the Northumbrian kings had made the 'Strathclyde Welsh' their tributaries, the district was never thoroughly subdued till the days of Edmund the West Saxon, who harried the land, and handed it over to the King of Scots.
Thus it happens that Carlisle, alone among large English towns, still keeps unchanged its Cymric name, instead of having sunk into an Anglicised Chester.
The present spelling is a mere etymological blunder, exactly similar to that which has turned the old English word _igland_ into _island_, through the false analogy of _isle_, which of course comes from the old French _isle_, derived through some form akin to the Italian _isola_, from the original Latin _insula_.
Kair Leil is the spelling in Geoffrey; Cardeol (by a clerical error for Carleol, I suspect) that in the _English Chronicle_, which only once mentions the town; and Carleol that of the ordinary mediæval historians.
The surnames Carlyle and Carlile still preserve the better orthography.
To complete the subject, it will be well to say a few words about those towns which were once _Ceasters_, but which have never become Casters or Chesters.
Numerous as are the places now so called, a number more may be reckoned in the illimitable chapter of the might-have-beens; and it is interesting to speculate on the forms which they would have taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent.'
Among these still-born Chesters, Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first.
It stands on the Roman site, called, from its bridge across the Tyne, Pons Aelii, and known later on, from its position on the great wall, as Ad Murum.
Under the early English, after their conversion to Christianity, the monks became the accepted inheritors of Roman ruins; and the small monastery which was established here procured it the English name of Muneca-ceaster, or, as we should now say, Monk-chester, though no doubt the local modernisation would have taken the form of Muncaster.
William of Normandy utterly destroyed the town during his great harrying of Northumberland; and when his son, Robert Curthose, built a fortress on the site, the place came to be called Newcastle--a word whose very form shows its comparatively modern origin.
_Castra_ and _Ceasters_ were now out of date, and castles had taken their place.
Still, we stick even here to the old root: for of course castle is only the diminutive _castellum_--a scion of the same Roman stock, which, like so many other members of aristocratic families, 'came over with William the Conqueror.'
The word _castel_ is never used, I believe, in any English document before the Conquest; but in the very year of William's invasion, the _Chronicle_ tells us, 'Willelm earl came from Normandy into Pevensey, and wrought a castel at Hastings port.'
So, while in France itself the word has declined through _chastel_ into _château_, we in England have kept it in comparative purity as castle.
York is another town which had a narrow escape of becoming Yorchester.
Its Roman name was Eburacum, which the English queerly rendered as Eoforwic, by a very interesting piece of folks-etymology.
_Eofor_ is old English for a boar, and _wic_ for a town; so our rude ancestors metamorphosed the Latinised Celtic name into this familiar and significant form, much as our own sailors turn the Bellerophon into the Billy Ruffun, and the Anse des Cousins into the Nancy Cozens.
In the same way, I have known an illiterate Englishman speak of Aix-la-Chapelle as Hexley Chapel.
To the name, thus distorted, our forefathers of course added the generic word for a Roman town, and so made the cumbrous title of Eoforwic-ceaster, which is the almost universal form in the earlier parts of the _English Chronicle_.
This was too much of a mouthful even for the hardy Anglo-Saxon, so we soon find a disposition to shorten it into Ceaster on the one hand, or Eoforwic on the other.
Should the final name be Chester or York?--that was the question.
Usage declared in favour of the more distinctive title.
The town became Eoforwic alone, and thence gradually declined through Evorwic, Euorwic, Eurewic, and Yorick into the modern York.
It is curious to note that some of these intermediate forms very closely approach the original Eburac, which must have been the root of the Roman name.
Was the change partly due to the preservation of the older sound on the lips of Celtic serfs?
It is not impossible, for marks of British blood are strong in Yorkshire; and Nennius confirms the idea by calling the town Kair Ebrauc.
Among the other _Ceasters_ which have never developed into full-blown Chesters, I may mention Bath, given as Akemannes ceaster and Bathan ceaster in our old documents, so that it might have become Achemanchester or Bathceter in the course of ordinary changes.
Canterbury, again, the Roman Durovernum, dropped through Dorobernia into Dorwit ceaster, which would no doubt have turned into a third Dorchester, to puzzle our heads by its likeness to Dorne ceaster in Dorsetshire, and to Dorce ceaster near Oxford; while Chesterton in Huntingdonshire, which was once Dorme ceaster, narrowly escaped burdening a distracted world with a fourth.
Happily, the colloquial form Cantwara burh, or Kentmen's bury, gained the day, and so every trace of Durovernum is now quite lost in Canterbury.
North Shields was once Scythles-ceaster, but here the Chester has simply dropped out.
Verulam, or St. Albans, is another curious case.
Its Romano-British name was Verulamium, and Bæda calls it Verlama ceaster.
But the early English in Sleswick believed in a race of mythical giants, the Wætlingas or Watlings, from whom they called the Milky Way 'Watling Street.'
When the rude pirates from those trackless marshes came over to Britain and first beheld the great Roman paved causeway which ran across the face of the country from London to Caernarvon, they seemed to have imagined that such a mighty work could not have been the handicraft of men; and just as the Arabs ascribe the rock-hewn houses of Petra to the architectural fancy of the Devil, so our old English ancestors ascribed the Roman road to the Titanic Watlings.
Even in our own day, it is known along its whole course as Watling Street.
Verulam stands right in its track, and long contained some of the greatest Roman remains in England; so the town, too, came to be considered as another example of the work of the Watlings.
Bæda, in his Latinised Northumbrian, calls it Vætlinga ceaster, as an alternative title with Verlama ceaster; so that it might nowadays have been familiar to us all either as Watlingchester or Verlamchester.
This is one of the numerous cases where a Roman and English name lived on during the dark period side by side.
In some of Mr. Kemble's charters it appears as Walinga ceaster.
But when Offa of Mercia founded his great abbey on the very spot where the Welsh martyr Alban had suffered during the persecution of Diocletian, Roman and English names were alike forgotten, and the place was remembered only after the British Christian as St. Albans.
There are other instances where the very memory of a Roman city seems now to have failed altogether.
For example, Bæda mentions a certain town called Tiowulfinga ceaster--that is to say, the Chester of the Tiowulfings, or sons of Tiowulf.
Here an English clan would seem to have taken up its abode in a ruined Roman station, and to have called the place by the clan-name--a rare or almost unparalleled case.
But its precise site is now unknown.
However, Bæda's description clearly points to some town in Nottinghamshire, situated on the Trent; for St. Paulinus of York baptized large numbers of converts in that river at Tiowulfinga ceaster; and the site may therefore be confidently identified with Southwell, where St. Mary's Minster has always traditionally claimed Paulinus as its founder.
Bæda also mentions a place called Tunna ceaster, so named from an abbot Tunna, who exists merely for the sake of a legend, and is clearly as unhistorical as his piratical compeer Hrof--a wild guess of the eponymic sort with which we are all so familiar in Greek literature.
Simeon of Durham speaks of an equally unknown Delvercester.
Syddena ceaster or Sidna cester--the earliest see of the Lincolnshire diocese--has likewise dropped out of human memory; though Mr. Pearson suggests that it may be identical with Ancaster--a notion which appears to me extremely unlikely.
Wude cester is no doubt Outchester, and other doubtful instances might easily be recognised by local antiquaries, though they may readily escape the general archæologist.
In one case at least--that of Othonæ in Essex--town, site, and name have all disappeared together.
Bæda calls it Ythan ceaster, and in his time it was the seat of a monastery founded by St. Cedd; but the whole place has long since been swept away by an inundation of the Blackwater.
Anderida, which is called Andredes-ceaster in the _Chronicle_, becomes Pefenesea, or Pevensey, before the date of the Norman Conquest.
It must not be supposed that the list given here is by any means exhaustive of all the Casters and Chesters, past and present, throughout the whole length and breadth of Britain.
On the contrary, many more might easily be added, such as Ribbel ceaster, now Ribchester; Berne ceaster, now Bicester; and Blædbyrig ceaster, now simply Bladbury.
In Northumberland alone there are a large number of instances which I might have quoted, such as Rutchester, Halton Chesters, and Little Chesters on the Roman Wall, together with Hetchester, Holy Chesters, and Rochester elsewhere--the county containing no less than four places of the last name.
Indeed, one can track the Roman roads across England by the Chesters which accompany their route.
But enough instances have probably been adduced to exemplify fully the general principles at issue.
I think it will be clear that the English conquerors did not usually change the names of Roman or Welsh towns, but simply mispronounced them about as much as we habitually mispronounce Llangollen or Llandudno.
Sometimes they called the place by its Romanised title alone, with the addition of Ceaster; sometimes they employed the servile British form; sometimes they even invented an English alternative; but in no case can it be shown that they at once disused the original name, and introduced a totally new one of their own manufacture.
In this, as in all other matters, the continuity between Romano-British and English times is far greater than it is generally represented to be.
The English invasion was a cruel and a desolating one, no doubt; but it could not and it did not sweep away wholly the old order of things, or blot out all the past annals of Britain, so as to prepare a _tabula rasa_ on which Mr. Green might begin his _History of the English People_ with the landing of Hengest and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet.
The English people of to-day is far more deeply rooted in the soil than that: our ancestors have lived here, not for a thousand years alone, but for ten thousand or a hundred thousand, in certain lines at least.
And the very names of our towns, our rivers, and our hills, go back in many cases, not merely to the Roman corruptions, but to the aboriginal Celtic, and the still more aboriginal Euskarian tongue.
THE END.
HENDERSON & SPALDING, LTD., 3 & 5, MARYLEBONE LANE, W.
ARCHÆOLOGICAL ESSAYS ARCHÆOLOGICAL ESSAYS BY THE LATE SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, BART.
M.D., D.C.L.
ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S PHYSICIANS FOR SCOTLAND, AND PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND MIDWIFERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH EDITED BY JOHN STUART, LL.D.
SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND VOL.
I. EDINBURGH EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS PUBLISHERS TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES MDCCCLXXII _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The late Sir James Simpson, in the midst of his anxious professional labours, was wont to seek for refreshment in the pursuit of subjects of a historical and archæological character, and to publish the results in the Transactions of different Societies and in scientific journals.
Some of these papers are now scarce, and difficult of access; and a desire having been expressed in various quarters for their appearance in a collected and permanent form, I was consulted on the subject by Sir Walter Simpson, who put into my hands copies of the various essays, with notes on some of them by his father, which seemed to indicate that he himself had contemplated their republication.
Having for a long time been acquainted with their merits, I did not hesitate to express a strong opinion in favour of their publication; and I accepted with pleasure the duty of editing them, which Sir Walter requested me to perform.
The papers in question were the fruit of inquiries begun indeed as a relief from weightier cares; but as it was not in their author's nature to rest satisfied with desultory and superficial results in his treatment of any subject, so his archæological papers more resemble the exhaustive treatises of a leisurely student, than the occasional efforts of one overwhelmed in professional occupations.
In the present work will be found all the more important archæological papers of Sir James Simpson, collected from the various sources indicated in the Table of Contents.
The subjects to the antiquities of which Sir James first directed his attention were connected with his own profession; but, as time went on, his interest in historical pursuits deepened and expanded, and the questions discussed by him became more varied.
It has been thought best to arrange the papers of a general historical scope in the first volume, and those connected with professional antiquities in the second; but readers, who may wish to trace the order in which they were written by the author, will find their various dates in the Table.
The first paper, entitled "Archæology, its Past and its Future Work," was prepared as a lecture to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
This was done with a care and elaboration which are not always associated with such efforts; and, whether in indicating the object and end of the archæological student's pursuits,--sketching the past progress of the study,--and specifying the lines of research from which Scottish inductive archæology may be expected to derive additional data and facts,--nothing more thoroughly practical could be desired; while in his resumé of the difficulties and enigmas peculiar to Scottish antiquities, he may be said to have left none of them untouched, his passing allusions being, in many instances, suggestive of their solution.
The paper on "An old Stone-roofed Cell or Oratory in the Island of Inchcolm" affords an instance of the author's careful observation, and his fertility of illustration.
The humble structure in question, which, at the time when it first attracted Sir James Simpson's notice, was used as a pig-stye, had few external features to suggest the necessity of farther inquiry; but after his eye had become accustomed to the architecture of the early monastic cells in Ireland, its real character flashed upon him, and he found that his conclusions coincided with the facts of the early history of the island.
These he gleaned from many sources, but in grouping them into a picture he enriched his narrative with various instructive notes; as on the "Mos Scotticum" of our early buildings; a comparison of the ruin with the Irish oratories; notices of other Island Retreats of Saints, and of the Saints themselves.
In one of these he gives an instructive reference to a passage in the original Latin text of Boece about the round tower of Brechin, which had been overlooked by his translator Bellenden, and so was now quoted for the first time.
A copy of this paper on Inchcolm having been sent to his friend Dr. Petrie of Dublin, author of the well-known essay on the "Early Ecclesiastical Architecture and Round Towers of Ireland," it was returned after a time, enriched with many notes and illustrations.
In now reprinting the paper these have been added, and are distinguished from the author's notes by having the letter P annexed to them.
The subject of the Inchcolm oratory was one about which this great man felt much interest, and on which he could speak from the abundance of his knowledge and experience.
The notes are therefore of special value, as furnishing the latest views of the author on mooted points of Celtic Ecclesiology, while they are conspicuous for the modesty and candour which were combined with Dr. Petrie's vast learning on the subject.
Thus, in his work on the Round Towers, Dr. Petrie assigned "about the year 1020" as the date of the round tower of Brechin, but in one of the notes he corrects himself, and explains the origin of his mistake:--"The recollection of the error which I made, by a carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date 1020, instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done, has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake.
I had the year 1020 on my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the _Chron.
Pictorum_, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather of his gift."
In writing of the Early Churches or Oratories of Ireland, Dr. Petrie stated in his Essay--"they had a single doorway always placed in the centre of the west wall."
In one of his notes, now printed, he thus qualifies the statement:--"I should perhaps have written _almost_ always.
The very few exceptions did not at the moment occur to me."
Again, Sir James Simpson having quoted a passage from Dr. Petrie's work, in which the writer ascribes the old small stone-roofed church at Killaloe to the seventh century, Dr. Petrie, in his relative note, adds--"but now considers as of the tenth, or perhaps eleventh."
To the paper on "Leprosy and Leper Hospitals in Scotland and England" is now added a series of additional "Historical Notices," prepared by Dr. Joseph Robertson, with the accuracy and research for which, as is well known, my early friend was conspicuous.
The origin of the tract on "Medical Officers in the Roman Army" is explained in the following note, prefixed to the first edition:--"A few years ago my late colleague, Sir George Ballingall, asked me--'Was the Roman Army provided with Medical Officers?'
He was interested in the subject as Professor of Military Surgery, and told me that he had made, quite unsuccessfully, inquiries on the matter in various quarters, and at various persons.
I drew up for him a few remarks, which were privately printed and circulated among his class at the time.
The present essay consists of an extension of these remarks."
The essay on the monument called "THE CATSTANE" suggested an explanation, which naturally elicited divergent criticisms.
Some of these appear to have occasionally engaged Sir James Simpson's attention; and from some unfinished notes among his papers, it seems plain that he meant to notice them in an additional communication to the Society of Antiquaries.
In these notes, after recapitulating at the outset the facts adduced in his first paper, Sir James proceeds:--"These points of evidence, I ventured to conclude, '_tend at least to render it probable_' that the Catstane is a monument to Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa.
But I did not consider the question as a settled question.
I began and ended my paper by discussing this early Saxon origin of the monument as problematical and probable, but not fixed.
At the same time, I may perhaps take the liberty of remarking, that both in archæology and history we look upon some questions as sufficiently fixed and settled, regarding which we have less inferential and direct proof than we have respecting this solution of the enigma respecting the Catstane.
The idea, however, that it was possible for a monument to a historic Saxon leader to be found in Scotland of a date antecedent to the advent of Hengist and Horsa to the shores of Kent, was a notion so repugnant to many minds, that, very naturally, various arguments have been adduced against it, while some high authorities have declared in favour of it.
In this communication I propose to notice briefly some of the leading arguments that have been latterly brought forward both against and for the belief that the Catstane commemorates the ancestor of the Saxon conquerors of Kent.
"1.
One anonymous writer has maintained, that if the Catstane was a monument to the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, the inscription upon it should not have read 'In hoc tumulo jacet Vetta f(ilius) Victi,' but, on the contrary, 'Victus filius Vettæ.'
In other words, he holds that the inscription reverses the order of paternity as given by Bede, Nennius, etc.
[1] But all this is simply and altogether a mistake on the part of the writer.
All the ancient genealogies describe Hengist and Horsa as the sons of Victgils, Victgils as the son of Vetta, and Vetta as the son of Victus.
The Catstane inscriptions give Vetta and Victus in exactly the same order.
When I pointed out to the writer the mistake into which he had, perhaps inadvertently, fallen, he turned round, and argued that in such names the vowels _e_ and _i_ were more trustworthy as permanent elements than the consonants _c_ and _t_.
[2] He argued, in other words, that Vecta as a proper name would not be found spelled with an _i_.
If it were never so spelled with an _i_, that circumstance was no argument in favour of the strange error of criticism into which the writer had fallen; but the fact is, that in the famous chapter of Bede's history, in which the names Hengist and Horsa, and their genealogies, first occur, there is an instance given, showing that, contrary to the opinion of this writer, a proper name having, like _Vetta_, the letter _e_ as a component, _may_ change it to _i_.
For Bede, in telling us that the men of Kent and of the Isle of Wight (Cantuarii et Victuarii) were sprung from the Jutes, spells the Isle of Wight (Vecta) with an _e_, and the inhabitants of it (Victuarii) with an _i_.
"The same writer states it as his opinion that the lettering in the Catstane inscription is not so old as I should wish to make it.
'It is,' says he, 'in our opinion, of later date even than Hengist himself, both in the formula of the inscription and in the character of the writing.'
Perhaps the writer's opinion upon such a point is not worth alluding to, as it is maintained by no proof.
But Edward Lhuyd--one of the very best judges in such questions in former days--stated the lettering to be of the fourth or fifth century, without having any hypothesis to support or subvert by this opinion.
And the best palæographer of our own times--Professor Westwood--is quite of the same idea as to the mere age of the inscription, as drawn from its palæography and formula, an idea in which he is joined by an antiquary who has worked much with ancient lettering--viz.
Professor Stephens of Copenhagen."
Although it is to be regretted that the contemplated remarks were not completed, it may be doubted if the question admitted of much further illustration; and, however unlikely the conclusion may be that the inscription on the Catstane, VETTA F[ILIUS] VICTI, is a contemporary commemoration of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, it may not be easy to suggest a solution of the question free from difficulties as puzzling.
At all events the palæographic features of the inscription seem plainly to associate it with a class of rude post-Roman monuments, of which we have a good many examples in different parts of the kingdom; and it may be remarked that Mr. Skene, who has made this period of our history a special study, after investigating, with his usual acumen, the evidence which exists to show that the Frisians had formed settlements in Scotland at a period anterior to that usually assigned for the arrival of the Saxons in England, has established the fact of the early settlement on our northern coasts of a people called by the general name of Saxons, but in reality an offshoot from the Frisians, whose principal seat was on the shores of the Firth of Forth, and on the whole thinks it not impossible that the Catstane may be the tomb of their first leader Vitta, son of Vecta, the traditionary grandfather of Hengist and Horsa.
[3] Besides the papers now printed, Sir James Simpson contributed many shorter essays and reviews of books to magazines and newspapers.
He also prepared a memorandum, printed in the second volume of the "Sculptured Stones of Scotland," of a reading of the inscription on a sculptured cross at St. Vigeans in Forfarshire.
[4] At the time of the final adjustment of this paper Sir James was an invalid, and confined to his bed, and I well remember the extreme, almost fastidious, care bestowed by him on the proof-sheet, in the course of my frequent visits to his bedroom.
It sometimes happened also that a subject originally treated in a paper by Sir James Simpson required a volume to exhaust it.
Thus, in the spring of 1864, he read to a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland a "Notice of the Sculpturing of Cups and Concentric Rings on Stones and Rocks in various parts of Scotland;" but materials afterwards so grew on his hands that his original Notice came to be expanded into a volume of nearly 200 pages, with 36 illustrative plates.
His treatment of this curious subject furnishes a model for such investigations.
[5] Setting out with a description of the principal types of the sculptures, he investigates the chief deviations which occur.
He next classifies the various monuments on which the sculptures have been observed, as standing-stones, cromlechs, stones in chambered tumuli, and stones in sepulchral cists.
Another chapter describes their occurrence on stones connected with archaic habitations, as weems, fortified buildings, in and near ancient towns and camps, and on isolated rocks and stones.
After a description of analogous sculptures in other countries, there is a concluding chapter of general inferences founded on the facts accumulated in the previous part of the volume.
On the occasion of a rapid journey to Liverpool, Sir James Simpson visited a stone circle at Calder, near that city, and detected the true character of the sculptures on the stones, a very imperfect note of which I had recently brought under his notice.
An account of this monument, which he prepared for the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, is printed in the Transactions of that body for 1865, and the following passages are quoted from it:--"Many suggestions, I may observe, have been offered in regard to the intent and import of such lapidary cup and ring cuttings as exist on the Calder Stones; but none of the theories proposed solve, as it seems to me, the hieroglyphic mystery in which these sculpturings are still involved.
They are old enigmatical 'handwritings on the wall,' which no modern reader has yet deciphered.
In our present state of knowledge with regard to them, let us be content with merely collecting and recording the facts in regard to their appearances, relations, localities, etc.
; for all early theorising will, in all probability, end only in error.
It is surely better frankly to own that we know not what these markings mean (and possibly may never know it), rather than wander off into that vague mystification and conjecture which in former days often brought discredit on the whole study of archæology.
"But in regard to their probable era let me add one suggestion.
These cup and ring cuttings have now been traced along the whole length of the British Isles, from Dorsetshire to Orkney, and across their whole breadth from Yorkshire in England to Kerry in Ireland; and in many of the inland counties in the three kingdoms.
They are evidently dictated by some common thought belonging to some common race of men.
But how very long is it since a common race--or successive waves even of a common race--inhabited such distant districts as I have just named, and spread over Great Britain and Ireland, from the English Channel to the Pentland Firth, and from the shores of the German Ocean to those of the Atlantic?"
The special value of the inductive treatment of the subject adopted by Sir James Simpson is here conspicuous; and although no decided conclusion was come to on the age and meaning of the sculptures, or the people by whom they were made, yet a reader feels that the utmost has been made of existing materials; and that, while nothing has been left untouched which could throw light on the question, a broad and sure foundation has been laid on which all subsequent research must rest.
One of the Appendices to this volume contains an account of some ancient sculptures on the walls of certain caves in Fife.
The essay originally appeared as a communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in January 1866, and was also soon afterwards printed separately--"Inscribed to James Drummond, Esq., R.S.A., as a small token of the Author's very sincere friendship and esteem."
The discovery of these cave sculptures affords an instance of the thoroughness which Sir James carried into all his investigations.
While engaged in the preparation of his original paper for the Society of Antiquaries on the Sculpturing of Cups and Rings, he wished to ascertain all the localities and conditions of their occurrence.
After describing the sculptured circles and cups which had been found on the stones of weems and "Picts' Houses," he referred to the caves on the coast of Fife, which he suggested might be considered as natural weems or habitations.
These he had visited in the hope of discovering cup-markings; and in one near the village of Easter Wemyss he discovered faded appearances of some depressions or cups, with small single circles cut on the wall, adding to his description--"Probably a more minute and extensive search in these caves would discover many more such carvings."
This was written in 1864; and when the paper then prepared had been expanded into the volume of 1867, the passage just quoted was accompanied by the following note:--"I leave this sentence as it was written above two years ago.
Shortly after that period, I revisited Wemyss, to inspect the other caves of the district, and make more minute observations than I could do in my first hurried visit, and discovered on the walls of some of them many carvings of animals, 'spectacle ornaments,' and other symbols exactly resembling in type and character the similar figures represented on the ancient so-called sculptured stones of Scotland, and, like them, probably about a thousand years old.
"[6] In like manner, after Sir Gardner Wilkinson had detected a concentric circle of four rings sculptured on the pillar called "Long Meg," at the great stone circle of Salkeld, in Cumberland, Sir James Simpson paid a visit to the monument, when his scrutiny was rewarded by the discovery on this pillar of several additional groups of sculptures.
[7] In his lecture on Archæology, Sir James Simpson has indicated two lines of research, from which additional data and facts for the elucidation of past times might be expected--viz.
researches beneath the surface of the earth, and researches among older works and manuscripts.
By the former he meant the careful and systematised examinations in which the spade and pickaxe are so important, and have done such service in late years, and from which Sir James expected much more; and by the latter the exploring and turning to account the many stores of written records of early times yet untouched.
Being impressed with the value of the charters of our old religious houses for historical purposes, he, shortly before his death, had a transcript made of the Chartulary of the Monastery of Inchcolm, with a design to edit it as one of a series of volumes of monastic records for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
But the services of Sir James Simpson to the cause of archæological research are not to be measured by his written contributions, remarkable as these are.
Perhaps it may be said that his influence was most pregnant in kindling a love of research in others, by opening their eyes to see how much yet lay undiscovered, and how much each person could do by judicious effort in his own neighbourhood.
With this view he on various occasions delivered lectures on special subjects of antiquity, and among his papers I found very full notes of lectures on Roman antiquities, one of which, on the "Romans in Britain," he delivered at Falkirk in the winter of 1862.
For many years the house of Sir James Simpson was the rendezvous of archæological students; and it was one of his great pleasures to bring together at his table men from different districts and countries, but united by the brotherhood of a common pursuit, for the discussion of facts and the exchange of thought.
The friends who were accustomed to these easy reunions will not soon forget the radiant geniality of the host, and his success in stimulating the discussions most likely to draw out the special stores of his guests.
Others also, who were associated with Sir James in the visits to historical sites which he frequently planned, in the retrospect of the pleasant hours thus spent will feel how vain it is to hope for another leader with the attractions which were combined in him.
In the course of his numerous professional journeys he acquired a wonderfully accurate knowledge of the early remains of different districts; and so contagious was his enthusiasm for their elucidation, that both the professional brethren with whom he acted, and his patients, were speedily found among his correspondents and allies.
His presence at the meetings of Archæological Societies was ever regarded as a pleasure and benefit.
Besides the stated meetings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, which he attended with comparative frequency, and where he ever took a share in the discussions, he was present on various occasions at Congresses of the Archæological Institute, the Cambrian Association, and other kindred bodies, by means of which he was enabled to maintain an intercourse with contemporary fellow-labourers in the archæological field, and to attain that familiarity with different classes of antiquities which he turned to such account in the discussion and classification of the early remains of Scotland.
I must not speak of the wonderful combination of qualities which were conspicuous in Sir James Simpson, alongside of those which I have mentioned.
This may safely be left to the more competent hand of Professor Duns, from whose memoir of his early friend so much may be expected, and where a more general estimate of his character will naturally be found.
Yet, in bringing together this series of Sir James Simpson's Archæological Essays, it seemed not unsuitable for me to express something of my admiration of the earnest truth-seeking spirit with which they were undertaken, as well as of the genius and research with which they were executed.
JOHN STUART.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "The monument reverses the order of paternity of the two individuals, making Wecta the son of Witta, instead of Witta the son of Wecta, in which all the old genealogies agree."
--_Athenæum_, July 5, 1862, p.
17.]
[Footnote 2: "The vowel is far more distinctive of the two names than the difference of _c_ and _t_, letters which were continually interchanged."
--_Ibid._ August 2, 1862, p.
149.]
[Footnote 3: _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol.
iv.
p.
181.]
[Footnote 4: _The Sculptured Stones of Scotland_, vol.
ii.
Notices of the Plates, p.
71.]
[Footnote 5: _Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England, and other Countries._ Edin.
1867.]
[Footnote 6: _British Archaic Sculpturings_, p.
126.]
[Footnote 7: _Idem_, p.
20.]
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
PAGE I. ARCHÆOLOGY: ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE WORK 1 An Inaugural Address to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Session 1860-61.
Proc.
vol.
iv.
p. 5.
II.
ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM 67 A Paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, July 13, 1857.
Proc.
vol.
ii.
p. 489.
[With Notes by Dr. George Petrie, Author of an Essay on the "Early Ecclesiastical Architecture and Round Towers of Ireland."]
III.
ON THE CAT-STANE, KIRKLISTON 137 Read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 11th February 1861.
Proc.
vol.
iv.
p. 119.
Printed separately in 1862, and "Inscribed with Feelings of the most Sincere Esteem to Mrs. Pender, Crumpsall House, Manchester."
IV.
ON SOME SCOTTISH MAGICAL CHARM-STONES, OR CURING-STONES 199 Read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 8th April 1861.
Proc.
vol.
iv.
p. 211.
V. IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?
219 Corrected Abstract of a Communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 20th January 1868, with Notes and an Appendix.
Proc.
of the Royal Society, No.
75.
ARCHÆOLOGY: ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE WORK.
[8] It has become a practice of late years in this Society for one of the Vice-Presidents to read an Annual Address on some topic or topics connected with Archæology.
I appear here to-night more in compliance with this custom than with any hope of being able to state aught to you that is likely to prove either of adequate interest or of adequate importance for such an occasion.
In making this admission, I am fully aware that the deficiency lies in myself, and not in my subject.
For truly there are few studies which offer so many tempting fields of observation and comment as Archæology.
Indeed, the aim and the groundwork of the studies of the antiquary form a sufficient guarantee for the interest with which these studies are invested.
For the leading object and intent of all his pursuits is--MAN, and man's ways and works, his habits and thoughts, from the earliest dates at which we can find his traces and tracks upon the earth, onward and forwards along the journey of past time.
During this long journey, man has everywhere left scattered behind and around him innumerable relics, forming so many permanent impressions and evidences of his march and progress.
These impressions and evidences the antiquary searches for and studies--in the changes which have in successive eras taken place (as proved by their existing and discoverable remains) in the materials and forms of the implements and tools which man has from the earliest times used in the chase and in agriculture; in the weapons which he has employed in battle; in the habitations which he has dwelt in during peace, and in the earth-works and stone-works which he has raised during war; in the dresses and ornaments which he has worn; in the varying forms of religious faith which he has held, and the deities that he has worshipped; in the sacred temples and fanes which he has reared; in the various modes in which he has disposed of the dead; in the laws and governments under which he has lived; in the arts which he has cultivated; in the sculptures which he has carved; in the coins and medals which he has struck; in the inscriptions which he has cut; in the records which he has written; and in the character and type of the languages in which he has spoken.
All the markings and relics of man, in the dim and distant past, which industry and science can possibly extract from these and from other analogous sources, Archæology carefully collects, arranges, and generalises, stimulated by the fond hope that through such means she will yet gradually recover more and more of the earlier chronicles and lost annals of the human race, and of the various individual communities and families of that race.
The objects of antiquarian research embrace events and periods, many of which are placed within the era of written evidence; but many more are of a date long anterior to the epoch when man made that greatest of human discoveries--the discovery, namely, of the power of permanently recording words, thoughts, and acts, in symbolical and alphabetic writing.
To some minds it has seemed almost chimerical for the archæologist to expect to regain to any extent a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of man, and of the different nations of men, before human cunning had learned to collect and inscribe them on stone or brass, or had fashioned them into written or traditional records capable of being safely floated down the stream of time.
But the modern history of Archæology, as well as the analogies of other allied pursuits, are totally against any such hopeless views.
Almost within the lifetime of some who are still amongst us, there has sprung up and been cultivated--and cultivated most successfully too--a science which has no written documents or legible inscriptions to guide it on its path, and whose researches are far more ancient in their object than the researches of Archæology.
Its subject is an antiquity greatly older than human antiquity.
It deals with the state of the earth and of the inhabitants of the earth in times immeasurably beyond the earliest times studied by the antiquary.
In the course of its investigations it has recovered many strange stories and marvellous chronicles of the world and of its living occupants--long, long ages before human antiquity even began.
But if Geology has thus successfully restored to us long and important chapters in the pre-Adamite annals of the world's history, need Archæology despair of yet deciphering and reading--infinitely more clearly than it has yet done--that far later episode in the drama of the past which opens with the appearance of man as a denizen of earth.
The modes of investigating these two allied and almost continuous sciences--Geology and Archæology--are the same in principle, however much the two sciences themselves may differ in detail.
And if Geology, in its efforts to regain the records of the past state of animal and vegetable life upon the surface of the earth, has attractions which bind the votaries of it to its ardent study, surely Archæology has equal, if not stronger claims to urge in its own behoof and favour.
To the human mind the study of those relics by which the archæologist tries to recover and reconstruct the history of the past races and nations of man, should naturally form as engrossing a topic as the study of those relics by which the geologist tries to regain the history of the past races and families of the _fauna_ and _flora_ of the ancient world.
Surely, as a mere matter of scientific pursuit, the ancient or fossil states of man should--for man himself--have attractions as great, at least, as the ancient or fossil states of plants and animals; and the old Celt, or Pict, or Saxon, be as interesting a study as the old Lepidodendron or Ichthyosaurus.
Formerly, the pursuit of Archæology was not unfrequently regarded as a kind of romantic dilettanteism, as a collecting together of meaningless antique relics and oddities, as a greedy hoarding and storing up of rubbish and frivolities that were fit only for an old curiosity shop, and that were valued merely because they were old;--while the essays and writings of the antiquary were looked down upon as disquisitions upon very profitless conjectures, and very solemn trivialities.
Perhaps the objects and method in which antiquarian studies were formerly pursued afforded only too much ground for such accusations.
But all this is now, in a great measure, entirely changed.
Archæology, as tempered and directed by the philosophic spirit, and quickened with the life and energy of the nineteenth century, is a very different pursuit from the Archæology of our forefathers, and has as little relation to their antiquarianism as modern Chemistry and modern Astronomy have to their former prototypes--Alchemy and Astrology.
In proof of this, I may confidently appeal to the good work which Archæology has done, and the great advances which it has struck out in different directions within the last fifty years.
Within this brief period it has made discoveries, perhaps in themselves of as momentous and marvellous a character as those of which any other modern science can boast.
Let me cite two or three instances in illustration of this remark.
Dating, then, from the commencement of the present century, Archæology has--amidst its other work--rediscovered, through the interpretation of the Rosetta-stone, the long-lost hieroglyphic language of Egypt, and has thus found a key by which it has begun--but only as yet begun--to unlock the rich treasure-stores of ancient knowledge which have for ages lain concealed among the monuments and records scattered along the valley of the Nile.
It has copied, by the aid of the telescope, the trilingual arrow-headed inscriptions written 300 feet high upon the face of the rocks of Behistun; and though the alphabets and the languages in which these long inscriptions were "graven with a pen of iron and lead upon the rocks for ever," had been long dead and unknown, yet, by a kind of philological divination, Archæology has exorcised and resuscitated both; and from these dumb stones, and from the analogous inscriptions of Van, Elwend, Persepolis, etc., it has evoked official gazettes and royal contemporaneous annals of the deeds and dominions of Darius, Xerxes, and other Persian kings.
By a similar almost talismanic power and process, it has forced the engraved cylinders, bricks, and obelisks of the old cities of Chaldea and Babylonia--as those of Wurka, Niffer, Muqueyer, etc.--to repeat over again to this present generation of men the names of the ancient founders of their public buildings, and the wars and exploits of their ancient monarchs.
It has searched among the shapeless mounds on the banks of the Tigris, and after removing the shroud of earth and rubbish under which "Nineveh the Great" had there lain entombed for ages, it has brought back once more to light the riches of the architecture and sculptures of the palaces of that renowned city, and shown the advanced knowledge of Assyria--some thirty long centuries ago--in mechanics and engineering, in working and inlaying with metals, in the construction of the optical lens, in the manufactory of pottery and glass, and in most other matters of material civilisation.
It has lately, by these and other discoveries in the East, confirmed in many interesting points, and confuted in none, the truth of the Biblical records.
It has found, for instance, every city in Palestine and the neighbouring kingdoms whose special and precise doom was pronounced by the sure word of Prophecy, showing the exact state foretold of them twenty or thirty centuries ago,--as Askelon tenantless, the site of ancient Gaza "bald," old Tyre "scraped" up, and Samaria with its foundations exposed, and its "stones poured down in heaps" into the valley below.
It has further, within the last few years, stolen into the deserts of the Hauran, through the old vigilant guard formed around that region by the Bedouin Arabs, and there--(as if in startling contradiction to the dead and buried cities of Syria, etc.)
--it has--as was equally predicted--discovered the numerous cyclopic cities of Bashan standing perfect and entire, yet "desolate and without any to dwell therein,"--cities wrapped, as it were, in a state of mortal trance, and patiently awaiting the prophesied period of their future revival and rehabitation; some of them of great size, as Um-el-Jemâl (probably the Beth-gamul of Scripture), a city covering as large a space as Jerusalem, with its high and massive basaltic town walls, its squares, its public buildings, its paved streets, and its houses with their rooms, stairs, revolving and frequently sculptured stone-doors, all nearly as complete and unbroken, as if its old inhabitants had only deserted it yesterday.
Again, from another and more distant part of the East,--from the plains of India,--Archæology has recently brought to Europe, and at an English press printed for the first time, upwards of 1000 of the sacred hymns of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient literary work of the Aryan or Indo-European race of mankind; for, according to the calm judgment of our ripest Sanskrit scholars, these hymns were composed before Homer sung of the wrath of Achilles; and they are further remarkable, on this account, that they seem to have been transmitted down for upwards of 3000 years by oral tradition alone--the Brahmin priests up to the present day still spending--as Cæsar tells us the old Druidical priests of Gaul spent--twelve, twenty, or more years of their lives, in learning by heart these sacred lays and themes, and then teaching them in turn to their pupils and successors.
The notices of antiquarian progress in modern times, that I have hitherto alluded to, refer to other continents than our own.
But since the commencement of the present century Archæology has been equally active in Europe.
It has, by its recent devoted study of the whole works of art belonging to Greece, shown that in many respects a livelier and more familiar knowledge of the ancient inhabitants of that classic land is to be derived from the contemplation of their remaining statues, sculptures, gems, medals, coins, etc., than by any amount of mere school-grinding at Greek words and Greek quantities.
It has recovered at the same time some interesting objects connected with ancient Grecian history; having, for example, during the occupation of Constantinople in 1854 by the armies of England and France, laid bare to its base and carefully copied the inscription, engraved some twenty-three centuries ago, upon the brazen stand of the famous tripod which was dedicated by the confederate Greeks to Apollo at Delphi, after the defeat of the Persian host at Platea,--an inscription that Herodotus himself speaks of, and by which, indeed, the Father of History seems to have authenticated his own battle-roll of the Greek combatants.
Archæology has busied itself also, particularly of late years, in disinterring the ruins of numerous old Roman villas, towns, and cities in Italy, in France, in Britain, and in the other western colonies of Home; and by this measure it has gained for us a clearer and nearer insight into every-day Roman life and habits, than all the wealth of classic literature supplies us with.
Though perfectly acquainted with the Etruscan alphabet, it has hitherto utterly failed to read a single line of the numerous inscriptions found in Etruria, but yet among the unwritten records and relics of the towns and tombs of that ancient kingdom, it has recovered a wonderfully complete knowledge of the manners, and habits, and faith, of a great and prosperous nation, which--located in the central districts of Italy--was already far advanced in civilisation and refinement long before that epoch when Romulus is fabled to have drawn around the Palatine the first boundary line of the infant city which was destined to become the mistress of the world.
Latterly, among all the western and northern countries of Europe, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Denmark, in France, and in the British Islands, Archæology has made many careful and valuable collections of the numerous and diversified implements, weapons, etc., of the aboriginal inhabitants of these parts, and traced by them the stratifications, as it were, of progress and civilisation, by which our primæval ancestors successively passed upwards through the varying eras and stages of advancement, from their first struggles in the battle of life with tools of stone, and flint, and bone alone, till they discovered and applied the use of metals in the arts alike of peace and war; from those distant ages in which, dressed in the skins of animals, they wore ornaments made of sea-shells and jet, till the times when they learned to plait and weave dresses of hair, wool, and other fibres, and adorned their chiefs with torcs and armlets of bronze, silver, and gold.
Archæology also has sought out and studied the strongholds and forts, the land and lake habitations of these, our primæval Celtic and Teutonic forefathers:--and has discovered among their ruins many interesting specimens of the implements they used, the dresses that they wore, the houses they inhabited, and the very food they fed upon.
It has descended also into their sepulchres and tombs, and there--among the mysterious contents of their graves and cinerary urns--it has found revealed many other wondrous proofs of their habits and condition during this life, as well as of their creeds and faith in regard to a future state of existence.
By the aid of that new and most powerful ally, Comparative Philology, Archæology has lately made other great advances.
By proofs exactly of the same linguistic kind as those by which the modern Spanish, French, and other Latin dialects can be shown to have all radiated from Rome as their centre, the old traditions of the eastern origin of all the chief nations of Europe have been proved to be fundamentally true; for by evidence so "irrefragable" (to use the expression of the Taylorian professor of modern languages at Oxford), that "not an English jury could now-a-days reject it," Philological Archæology has shown that of the three great families of mankind--the Semitic, the Turanian, and the Aryan--this last, the Aryan, Japhetic, or Indo-European race, had its chief home about the centre of Western Asia;--that betimes there issued thence from its paternal hearths, and wended their way southward, human swarms that formed the nations of Persia and Hindustan;--that at distant and different, and in some cases earlier periods, there hived off from the same parental stock other waves of population, which wandered westward, and formed successively the European nations of the Celts, the Teutons, the Italians, the Greeks, and the Sclaves;--and that while each exodus of this western emigration, which followed in the wake of its fellow, drove its earliest predecessor before it in a general direction further and further towards the setting sun, at the same time some aboriginal, and probably Turanian races, which previously inhabited portions of Europe, were gradually pushed and pressed aside and upwards, by the more powerful and encroaching Aryans, into districts either so sterile or so mountainous and strong, that it was too worthless or too difficult to follow them further--their remnants being represented at the present day by the Laps, the Basques, and the Esths.
Philological Archæology has further demonstrated that the vast populations which now stretch from the mouth of the Ganges to the Pentland Firth,--sprung, as they are, with a few exceptions only, from the same primitive Aryan stock,--all use words which, though phonetically changed, are radically identical for many matters, as for the nearest relationships of family life, for the naming of domestic animals, and other common objects.
Some of these archaic words indicate, by their hoary antiquity, the original pastoral employment and character of those that formed the parental stock in our old original Asiatic home; the special term, for example (the "pasu" of the old Sanskrit or Zend), which signified "private" property among the Aryans, and which we now use under the English modifications, "peculiar" and "pecuniary"--primarily meaning "flocks;"[9] the Sanskrit word for Protector, and ultimately for the king himself, "go-pa," being the old word for cowherd, and consecutively for chief herdsman; while the endearing name of "daughter" (the duhitar of the Sanskrit, the [Greek: thygatêr] of the Greek), as applied in the leading Indo-European languages to the female children of our households, is derived from a verb which shows the original signification of the appellation to have been the "milker" of the cows.
At the same time the most ancient mythologies and superstitions, and apparently even the legends and traditions of the various and diversified Indo-European races, appear also, the more they are examined, to betray more and more of a common parentage.
Briefly, and in truth, then, Philological Archæology proves that the Saxon and the Persian, the Scandinavian and the Greek, the Icelander and the Italian, the fair-skinned Scottish Highlander, and his late foe, the swarthy Bengalee, are all distant, very distant, cousins, whose ancestors were brothers that parted company with each other long, long ages ago, on the plains of Iran.
That the ancestors of these different races originally lived together on these Asiatic plains "within the same fences, and separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races," is (to quote the words of Max Müller), "a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia."
Lastly, to close this too long, and yet too rapid and imperfect sketch of some of the work performed by modern inductive Archæology, let me merely here add,--for the matter is too important to omit,--that, principally since the commencement of this century, Archæology has sedulously sat down among the old and forbidding stores of musty, and often nearly illegible manuscripts, charters, cartularies, records, letters, and other written documents, that have been accumulating for hundreds of years in the public and private collections of Europe, and has most patiently and laboriously culled from them annals and facts having the most direct and momentous bearing upon the acts and thoughts of our mediæval forefathers, and upon the events and persons of these mediæval times.
By means of this last type of work, the researches of the antiquary have to a wonderful degree both purified and extended the history of this and of the other kingdoms of Europe.
These researches have further, and in an especial manner, thrown a new flood of light upon the inner and domestic life of our ancestors, and particularly upon the conditions of the middle and lower grades of society in former times,--objects ever of primary moment to the researches of Archæology in its services, as the workman and the pioneer of history.
For, truly, human history, as it has been hitherto usually composed, has been too often written as if human chronicles ought to detail only the deeds of camps and courts--as if the number of men murdered on particular battle-fields, and the intrigues and treasons perpetrated in royal and lordly antechambers, were the sum total of actual knowledge which it was of any moment to transmit from one generation of men to another.
In gathering, however, from the records of the past his materials for the true philosophy of history, the archæologist finds--and is now teaching the public to find--as great an attraction in studying the arts of peace as in studying the arts of war; for in his eyes the life, and thoughts, and faith of the merchant, and craftsman, and churl, are as important as those of the knight, and nobleman, and prince--with him the peasant is as grand and as genuine a piece of antiquity as the king.
Small in extent, scant in population, and spare in purse, as Scotland confessedly is, yet, in the cultivation of Archæology she has in these modern times by no means lagged behind the other and greater kingdoms of Europe.
This observation is attested by the rich and valuable Museum of Scottish antiquities which this Society has gathered together--a Museum which, exclusively of its large collection of foreign coins, now numbers above 7000 specimens, for nearly 1000 of which we stand indebted to the enlightened zeal and patriotic munificence of one Scottish gentleman, Mr. A. Henry Rhind of Sibster.
The same fact is attested also by the highly valuable character of the systematic works on Scottish Archæology which have been published of late years by some of our colleagues, such as the masterly _Pre-historic Annals of Scotland_, by Professor Daniel Wilson; the admirable volume on _Scotland in the Middle Ages_, by Professor Cosmo Innes; and the delightful _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, by Mr. Robert Chambers.
The essays also, and monographs on individual subjects in Scottish Archæology, published by Mr. Laing, Lord Neaves, Mr. Skene, Mr. Stuart, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Fraser, Captain Thomas, Mr. Burton, Mr. Napier, Mr. M'Kinlay, Mr. M'Lauchlan, Dr.
Wise, Dr. J.A.
Smith, Mr. Drummond, etc., all strongly prove the solid and successful interest which the subject of Scottish Archæology has in recent times created in this city.
The recent excellent town and county histories published by Dr. Peter Chalmers, Messrs. Irving, Jeffrey, Jervise, Pratt, Black, Miller, etc., afford evidences to the same effect.
Nor can I forget in such an enumeration the two complete _Statistical Accounts of Scotland_.
But if I were asked to name any one circumstance, as proving more than another the attention lately awakened among our countrymen by antiquarian inquiries, I would point, with true patriotic pride, to the numerous olden manuscript chronicles of Scotland, of Scottish towns, and Scottish monasteries, institutions, families, and persons, which have been printed within the last forty years--almost all of them having been presented as free and spontaneous contributions to Scottish Archæology and History by the members of the Bannatyne, the Abbotsford, the Maitland, and the Spalding Clubs; and the whole now forming a goodly series of works extending to not less than three hundred printed quarto volumes.
But let us not cheat and cozen ourselves into idleness and apathy by reflecting and rejoicing over what has been done.
For, after all, the truth is, that Scottish Archæology is still so much in its infancy, that it is only now beginning to guess its powers, and feel its deficiencies.
It has still no end of lessons to learn, and perhaps some to unlearn, before it can manage to extract the true metal of knowledge from the ore and dross of exaggeration in which many of its inquiries have become enveloped.
At this present hour we virtually know far less of the Archæology and history of Scotland ten or fifteen centuries ago than we know of the Archæology and history of Etruria, Egypt, or Assyria, twenty-five or thirty centuries ago.
In order to obtain the light which is required to clear away the dark and heavy mists which thus obscure the early Archæology of Scotland, how should we proceed?
In the pursuits and investigations of Archæology, as of other departments of science, there has never yet been, and never will be discovered, any direct railway or royal road to the knowledge which we are anxious to gain, but which we are inevitably doomed to wait for and to work for.
The different branches of science are Gordian knots, the threads of which we can only hope to unwind and evolve by cautious assiduity, and slow, patient industry.
Their secrets cannot be summarily cut open and exposed by the sword of any son of Philip.
But, in our daydreams, it is not unpleasant sometimes to imagine the possibility of such a feat.
It was, as we all know, very generally believed, in distant antiquarian times, that occasionally dead men could be induced to rise, and impart all sorts of otherwise unattainable information to the living.
This creed, however, has not been limited to those ancient times, for, in our own days, many sane persons still profess to believe in the possibility of summoning the spirits of the departed from the other world back to this sublunary sphere.
When they do so, they have always hitherto, as far as I have heard, encouraged these spirits to perform such silly juggling tricks, or requested them to answer such trivial and frivolous questions, as would seem to my humble apprehension to be almost insulting to the grim dignity and solemn character of any respectable and intelligent ghost.
If, like Owen Glendower, or Mr. Home, I had the power to "call spirits from the vasty deep," and if the spirits answered the call, I--being a practical man--would fain make a practical use of their presence.
Methinks I should feel grossly tempted, for example, to ask such of them as had the necessary foreknowledge, to rap out for me, in the first instance, the exact state of the English funds, or of the London stock and share-list, a week or a month hence; for such early information would, I opine--if the spirits were true spirits--be rather an expeditious and easy mode of filling my coffers, or the coffers of any man who had the good sense of plying these spiritual intelligences with one or two simple and useful questions.
If, however, the spirits refused to answer such golden interrogatories as involving matters too mercenary and not sufficiently ghostly in their character, then I certainly should next ask them--and I would of course select very ancient spirits for the purpose--hosts of questions regarding the state of society, religion, the arts, etc., at the time when they themselves were living denizens of this earth.
Suppose, for a moment, that our Secretaries, on summoning the next meeting of this Society, had the power of announcing in their billets that, by "some feat of magic mystery," a very select and intelligent deputation of ancient Britons and Caledonians, Picts, Celts, and Scots, and perhaps of Scottish Turanians, were to be present in our Museum--(certainly the most appropriate room in the kingdom for such a reunion)--for a short sederunt, somewhere between twilight and cock-crowing, to answer any questions which the Fellows might choose to ply them with, what an excitement would such an announcement create!
How eagerly would some of our Fellows look forward to the results of one or two such "Hours with the Mystics."
And what a battery of quick questions would be levelled at the members of this deputation on all the endless problems involved in Scottish Archæology.
I think we may readily, and yet pretty certainly, conjecture a few of the questions, on our earlier antiquities alone, that would be put by various members that I might name, as:-What is the signification of the so-called "crescent" and "spectacle" ornaments, and of the other unique symbols that are so common upon the 150 and odd ancient Sculptured Stones scattered over the north-eastern districts of Scotland?
What is the true reading of the old enigmatic inscriptions upon the Newton and St. Vigean's stones, and of the Oghams on the stones of Logie, Bressay, Golspie, etc.?
Had Solinus Polyhistor, in the fourth century, any ground for stating that an ancient Ulyssean altar, written with Greek letters, existed in the recesses of Caledonia?
Who were Vetta, Victus, Memor, Loinedinus, Liberalis, Florentius, Mavorius, etc., whose names are recorded on the Romano-British monuments at Kirkliston, Yarrow, Kirkmadrine, etc., and what is the date of these monuments?
By what people was constructed the Devil's Dyke, which runs above fifty miles in length from Loch Ryan into Nithsdale?
When, and for what purpose, was the Catrail dug?
Was it on the line of the Catrail, or of the Roman wall between the Forth and Clyde, or on what other ground, that there was fought the great battle or siege of Cattraeth or Kaltraez, which Aneurin sings of in his _Gododin_, and where, among the ranks of the British combatants, were "three hundred and sixty-three chieftains wearing the golden torcs" (some specimens, of which might yet perhaps be dug up on the battle-field by our Museum Committee, seeing three only of these chiefs escaped alive); and how was the "bewitching mead" brewed, that Aneurin tells us was far too freely partaken of by his British countrymen before and during this fierce struggle with the Saxon foe?
Is the poet Aneurin the same person as our earliest native prose historian Gildas, the two appellations being relatively the Cymric and Saxon names of the same individual?
Or were they not two of the sons or descendants of Caw of Cwm Cawlwyd, that North British chief whose miraculous interview with St. Cadoc near Bannawc (Stirlingshire?)
is described in the life of that Welsh saint?
Of what family and rank was the poet--Merddin Wyllt--or "Merlin the Wild," who, wearing the chieftain's golden torc, fought at the battle of Arderydd, about A.D. 573, against Rhydderch Hael, that king of Alcluith or Dumbarton, who was the friend of St. Columba, and "the champion of the (Christian) faith," as Merlin himself styles him?
And when that victory was apparently the direct means of establishing this Christian king upon the throne of Strathclyde, and the indirect means which led to the recall of St. Kentigern from St. Asaph's to Glasgow, how is it that the Welsh Triads talk of it enigmatically as a battle for a lark's nest?
If Ossian is not a myth, when and where did he live and sing?
Was he not an Irish Gael?
And could any member of the deputation give us any accurate information about our old nursery friend Fingal or Fin Mac Coul?
Was he really, after all, not greater, or larger, or any other than simply a successful and reforming general in the army of King Cormac of Tara, and the son-in-law of that monarch of Ireland?
From what part of Pictland did King Cormac obtain, in the third century, the skilled mill-wright, Mac Lamha, to build for him that first water-mill which he erected in Ireland, on one of the streams of Tara?
And is it true, as some genealogists in this earthly world believe, that the lineal descendants of this Scottish or Pictish mill-wright are still millers on the reputed site of this original Irish water-mill?
The apostate Picts (_Picti apostati_) who along with the Scots are spoken of by St. Patrick in his famous letter against Coroticus, as having bought for slaves some of the Christian converts kidnapped and carried off by that chief from Ireland, were they inhabitants of Galloway, or of our more northern districts?
And was the Irish sea not very frequently a "middle passage" in these early days, across which St. Patrick himself and many others were carried from their native homes and sold into slavery?
Was it a Pictish or Scottish, a British or a Roman architect that built "Julius' howff," at Stenhouse (_Stone-house_) on the Carron, and what was its use and object?
Were our numerous "weems," or underground houses, really used as human abodes, and were they actually so very dark, that when one of the inmates ventured on a joke, he was obliged--as suggested by "Elia"--to handle his neighbour's cheek to feel if there was any resulting smile playing upon it?
When, and by whom were reared the Titanic stone-works on the White Caterthun, and the formidable stone and earth forts and walls on the Brown Caterthun, on Dunsinane, on Barra, on the Barmekyn of Echt, on Dunnichen, on Dunpender, and on the tops of hundreds of other hills in Scotland?
How, and when, were our Vitrified Forts built?
Was the vitrification of the walls accidental, or was it not rather intentional, as most of us now believe?
In particular, who first constructed, and who last occupied the remarkable Vitrified Forts of Finhaven in Angus, and of the hill of Noath in Strathbogie?
Was not the Vitrified Fort of Craig-Phadric, near Inverness, the residence of King Brude, the son of Meilochon, in the sixth century; and if so, is it true, as stated in the Irish Life of St. Columba, that its gates were provided with iron locks?
When, by whom, and for what object, were the moats of Urr, Hawick, Lincluden, Biggar, and our other great circular earth mounds of the same kind, constructed?
Were they used for judicial and legal purposes, like the old Things of Scandinavia; and as the Tinwald Mount in the island of Man is used to this day?
And were not some of them military or sepulchral works?
Who fashioned the terraces at Newlands in Tweeddale; and what was the origin of the many hillside terraces scattered over the country?
What is the age of the rock-caves of Ancrum, Hawthornden, etc., and were they primarily used as human habitations?
The sea-cave at Aldham on the Firth of Forth--when opened in 1831, with its paved floor strewed with charred wood, animal bones, limpet-shells, and apparently with a rock-altar at its mouth, having its top marked with fire, ashes adhering to its side, and two infants' skeletons lying at its base--was it a human habitation, or a Pagan temple?
What races sleep in the chambered barrows and cairns of Clava, Yarrows, Broigar, and in the many other similar old Scottish cities and houses of the dead?
By whom and for what purpose or purposes were the megalithic circles at Stennis, Callernish, Leys, Achnaclach, Crichie, Kennethmont, Midmar, Dyce, Kirkmichael, Deer, Kirkbean, Lochrutton, Torhouse, etc., etc., reared?
What were the leading peculiarities in the religious creed, faith, and festivals of Broichan and the other Caledonian or Pictish Magi before the introduction of Christianity?
When Coifi, the pagan high-priest of Edwin, the king of Northumbria and the Lothians, was converted to Christianity by Paulinus, in A.D. 627, he destroyed, according to Bede, the heathen idols, and set fire to the heathen temples and altars; but what was the structure of the pagan temples here in these days, that he could burn them,--while at the same time they were so uninclosed, that men on horseback could ride into them, as Coifi himself did after he had thrown in the desecrating spear?
Was not our city named after this Northumbrian Bretwalda, "Edwin's-burgh?"
Or was the Eiddyn of which Aneurin speaks before the time of Edwin, and the Dinas Eiddyn that was one of the chief seats of Llewddyn Lueddog (Lew or Loth), the grandfather of St. Kentigern or Mungo of Glasgow, really our own Dun Edin?
Or if the Welsh term "Dinas" does not necessarily imply the high or elevated position of the place, was it Caer Eden (Cariden, or Blackness), at the eastern end of the Roman Wall, on the banks of the Forth?
Did our venerable castle rock obtain the Welsh name of Din or Dun Monaidh, from its being "the fortress of the hill," and was its other Cymric appellation Agnedh, connected with its ever having been given as a marriage-portion (Agwedh)?
Or did its old name of Maiden Castle, or Castrum Puellarum, not rather originate in its olden use as a female prison, or as a school, or a nunnery?
And is it true, as asserted by Conchubhranus, that the Irish lady Saint, Darerca or Monnine, founded, late in the fifth century, seven churches (or nunneries?)
in Scotland, on the hills of Dun Edin, Dumbarton, Stirling, Dunpelder, and Dundevenal, at Lanfortin near Dundee, and at Chilnacase in Galloway?
When, and by whom, were the Round Towers of Abernethy, Brechin, and Eglishay built?
Were there not in Scotland or its islands other such "_turres rotundae mirâ arte constructae_," to borrow the phrase of Hector Boece regarding the Brechin tower?
If St. Patrick was, as some of his earliest biographers aver, a Strathclyde Briton, born about A.D. 387 at Nempthur (Nemphlar, on the Clyde?)
and his father Calphurnius was, as St. Patrick himself states in his Confession, a deacon, and his grandfather Potitus a priest, then he belonged to a family two generations of which were already office-bearers in Scotland in the Christian Church;--but were there many, or any such families in Scotland before St. Ninian built his stone church at Whithern about A.D. 397, or St. Palladius, the missionary of Pope Celestine, died about A.D. 431, in the Mearns?
And was it a mere rhetorical flourish, or was there some foundation for the strong and distinct averment of the Latin father Tertullian, that, when he wrote, about the time of the invasion of Scotland by Severus (_circa_ A.D. 210), there were places in Britain beyond the limits of the Roman sway already subject to Christ?
When Dion Cassius describes this invasion of Scotland by Severus, and the Roman Emperor's loss of 50,000 men in the campaign, does he not indulge in "travellers' tales," when he further avers that our Caledonian ancestors were such votaries of hydropathy that they could stand in their marshes immersed up to the neck in water for live-long days, and had a kind of prepared homoeopathic food, the eating of a piece of which, the size of a bean, entirely prevented all hunger and thirst?
Cæsar tells us that dying the skin blue with woad was a practice common among our British ancestors some 1900 years ago;--are Claudian and Herodian equally correct in describing the very name of Picts as being derived from a system of painting or tattooing the skin, that was in their time as fashionable among some of our Scottish forefathers, as it is in our time in New Zealand, and among the Polynesians?
According to Cæsar, the Britons wore a moustache on the upper lip, but shaved the rest of the beard; and the sole stone--fortunately a fragment of ancient sculpture--which has been saved from the ruins of the old capital of the Picts at Forteviot, shows a similar practice among them.
But what did they shave with?
Were their razors of bronze, or iron, or steel?
And where, and by whom, were they manufactured?
Was the state of civilisation and of the arts among the Caledonians, when Agricola invaded them, about A.D. 80 or 81, as backward as some authorities have imagined, seeing that they were already so skilled in, for example, the metallurgic arts, as to be able to construct, for the purposes of war,--chariots, and consequently chariot-wheels, long swords, darts, targets, etc.?
As the swords of the Caledonians in the first century were, according to Tacitus, long, large, and blunt at the point, and hence in all probability made of iron, whence came the sharp-pointed leaf-shaped bronze swords so often found in Scotland, and what is the place and date of their manufacture?
Were they earlier?
And what is the real origin of the large accumulation of spears and other instruments of bronze, some whole, and others twisted, as if half-melted with heat, which, with human bones, deer and elk-horns, were dredged up from Duddingston Loch about eighty years ago, and constituted, it may be said, the foundation of our Museum?
Was there an ancient bronze-smith shop in the neighbourhood; or were these not rather the relics of a burned crannoge that had formerly existed in this lake, within two miles of the future metropolis of Scotland?
Could the deputation inform us where we might find, buried and concealed in our muirs or mosses, and obtain for our Museum some interesting antiquarian objects which we sadly covet--such as a specimen or two, for instance, of those Caledonian spears described by Dion, that had a brazen apple, sounding when struck, attached to their lower extremity?
or one of those statues of Mercury that, Cæsar says, were common among the Western Druids?
or one of the _covini_ mentioned by Tacitus--(for we are anxious to know if its wheels were of iron or bronze; how these wheels made, as Cæsar tells us the wheels of the British war-chariots made, a loud noise in running; and whether or not they had, as some authorities maintain, scythes or long swords affixed to their axles)?
or where we might dig up another specimen of such ancient and engraved silver armour as was some years ago discovered at Norrie's Law, in Fife, and unfortunately melted down by the jeweller at Cupar?
or could any of the deputation refer us to any spot where we might have a good chance of finding a concealed example of such glass goblets as were, according to Adamnan, to be met with in the royal palace of Brude, king of the Picts, when St. Columba visited him, in A.D. 563, in his royal fort and hall (_munitio, aula regalis_) on the banks of the Ness?
Whence came King "Cruithne," with his seven sons, and the Picts?
Were they of Gothic descent and tongue, as Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck maintained in rather a notorious dispute in the parlour at Monkbarns?
or were they "genuine Celtic," as Sir Arthur Wardour argued so stoutly on the same memorable occasion?
Were the first Irish or Dalriadic Gaeidhil or Scots who took possession of Argyll (_i.e._, Airer-Gaeidheal, or the district of the Gaeidhel), and who subsequently gave the name of Scot-land to the whole kingdom, the band of emigrants that crossed from Antrim about A.D. 506 under the leadership of Fergus and the other sons of Erc; or, as the name of "Scoti" recurs more than once in the old sparse notices of the tribes of the kingdom before this date, had not an antecedent colony, under Cairbre Riada, as stated by Bede, already passed over and settled in Cantyre a century or two before?
Our Reformed British Parliament is still so archæological as to listen, many times each session, to Her Majesty, or Her Majesty's Commissioners, assenting to their bills, by pronouncing a sentence of old and obsolete Norman French--a memorial in its way of the Norman Conquest; and our State customs are so archæological that, when Her Majesty, and a long line of her illustrious predecessors, have been crowned in Westminster Abbey, the old Scottish coronation-stone, carried off in A.D. 1296 by Edward I. from Scone, and which had been previously used for centuries as the coronation-stone of the Scotic, and perhaps of the Irish, or even the Milesian race of kings, has been placed under their coronation-chair--playing still its own archaic part in this gorgeous state drama.
But is this Scone or Westminster coronation-stone really and truly--as it is reputed to be by some Scottish historians--the famous _Lia Fail_ of the kings of Ireland, that various old Irish writings describe as formerly standing on the Hill of Tara, near the Mound of the Hostages?
Or does not the _Lia Fail_--"the stone that roared under the feet of each king that took possession of the throne of Ireland"--remain still on Tara--(though latterly degraded to the office of a grave-stone)--as is suggested by the distinguished author of the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill?
If any of our deputies from ghostdom formerly belonged to the court of Fergus MacErc, or originally sailed across with him in his fleet of _currachs_, perhaps they will be so good as tell us if in reality the royal or any other of the accompanying skin-canoes was ballasted then or subsequently with a sacred stone from Ireland, for the coronation of our first Dalriadic king; and especially would we wish it explained to us how such a precious monument as the _Lia Fail_ of Tara was or could be smuggled away by such a small tribe as the Dalriadic Scots at first were?
Perhaps it would be right and civil to tell the deputation at once, that the truth is we are anxious to decide the knotty question as to whether the opinions of Edward I. or of Dr. Petrie are the more correct in regard to this "Stone of Fate?"
Or if King Edward was right politically, is Dr. Petrie right archæologically, in his views on this subject?
In short, does the _Lia Fail_ stand at the present day--as is generally believed--in the vicinity of the Royal Halls of Westminster, or in the vicinity of the Royal Halls of Tara?
What ancient people, destitute apparently of metal tools and of any knowledge of mortar, built the gigantic burgs or duns of Mousa, Hoxay, Glenelg, Carloway, Bragar, Kildonan, Farr, Rogart, Olrick, etc., with galleries and chambers in the thickness of their huge uncemented walls?
Is it true, as the Irish bardic writers allege, that some of the race of the Firbolgs escaped, after the battle at one of the Moyturas to the Western Islands and shores of Scotland, and that thence, after several centuries, they were expelled again by the Picts, after the commencement of the Christian era, and subsequently returned to the coast of Galway, and built, or rebuilt, there and then, the great analogous burgs of Dun Ængus, Dun Conchobhair, etc., in the Irish isles of Aran?
[10] What is the signification of those mysterious circles formed of diminishing concentric rings which are found engraved, sometimes on rocks outside an old aboriginal village or camp, as at Rowtin Lynn and Old Bewick; sometimes on the walls of underground chambers, as in the Holm of Papa Westray, and in the island of Eday; sometimes on the walls of a chambered tumulus, as at Pickaquoy in Orkney; or on the interior of the lid of a kistvaen, as at Craigie Hall, near Edinburgh, and probably also at Coilsfield and Auchinlary; or on a so-called Druidical stone, as on "Long Meg" at Penrith?
Is it true that a long past era--and, if so, at what era--our predecessors in this old Caledonia had nothing but tools and implements of stone, bone, and wood?
Are there no gravel-beds in Scotland in which we could probably find large deposits of the celts and other stone weapons--with bored and worked deer-horns, of that distant stone-age--such as have been discovered on the banks of the Somme and the Loire in France?
And were the people of that period in Scotland Celtic or pre-Celtic?
When the first wave of Celtic emigrants arrived in Scotland, did they not find a Turanian or Hamitic race already inhabiting it, and were those Scottish streams, lakes, etc., which bear, or have borne, in their composition, the Euskarian word _Ura_ (water)--as the rivers Urr, Orr, and Ury, lochs Ur, Urr, and Orr, Urr-quhart, Cath-Ures, Or-well, Or-rea, etc., named by these Turanian aborigines?
We know that in Iona, ten or twelve centuries ago, Greek was written, though we do not know if the Iona library possessed--what Queen Mary had among the sixteen Greek volumes[11] in her library--a copy of Herodotus; but we are particularly anxious to ascertain if the story told by Herodotus of Rhampsinitus, and the robbery of his royal treasury by that "Shifty Lad" "the Master Thief,"[12] was in vogue as a popular tale among the Scottish Gaels or Britons in the oldest times?
The tale is prevalent in different guises from India to Scotland and Scandinavia among the Aryans, or alleged descendants of Japhet; Herodotus heard it about twenty-three centuries ago in Egypt, and consequently (according, at least, to some high philologists), among the alleged descendants of Shem; and could any Scottish Turanians, as alleged descendants of Ham, in the deputation, tell us whether the tale was also a favourite with them and their forefathers?
For if so, then, in consonance with the usual reasoning on this and other popular tales, the story must have been known in the Ark itself, as the sons of Noah separated soon after leaving it, and yet all their descendants were acquainted with this legend.
But have these and other such simple tales not originated in many different places, and among many different people, at different times; and have they not an appearance of similarity, merely because, in the course of their development, the earliest products of the human fancy, as well as of the human hand, are always more or less similar under similar circumstances?
Or perhaps, passing from more direct interrogatories, we might request some of the deputation to leave with us a retranslation of that famous letter preserved by Bede, which Abbot Ceolfrid addressed about A.D. 715 to Nectan III., King of the Picts, and which the venerable monk of Jarrow tells us was, immediately after its receipt by the Pictish King and court, carefully interpreted into their own language?
or to be so good as write down a specimen of the Celtic or Pictish songs that happened to be most popular some twelve or fourteen centuries ago?
or describe to us the limits at different times of the kingdoms of the Strathclyde Britons and Northumbrians, and of the Picts and Dalriadic Scots?
or fill up the sad gaps in Mr. Innes' map of Scotland in the tenth century, containing, as it does, the names of one river only, and some thirteen Scottish church establishments and towns; or tell us where the "urbs Giudi" and the Pictish "Niduari" of Bede were placed, and why Ængus the Culdee speaks (about A.D. 800) of Cuilenross, or Culross, as placed in Strath-h-Irenn in the Comgalls, between Slieve-n-Ochil and the Sea of Giudan?
or identify for us the true sites of the numerous rivers, tribes, divisions, and towns--or merely perhaps stockaded or rathed villages--which Ptolemy in the second century enters in his geographical description of North Britain?
or particularise the precise bounds of the Meatæ and Attacotti, and of the two Pictish nations mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, namely, the Dicaledonæ and Vecturiones?
or trace out for us the course of Agricola's campaigns in Scotland, especially marking the exact site of the great victory of the Mons Grampius, and thus deciding at once and for ever whether the two enormous cairns placed above the moor of Ardoch cover the remains of the 10,000 slain; or whether the battle was fought at Dealgin Ross, or at Findochs, or at Inverpeffery, or at Urie Hill in the Mearns, or at Mormond in Buchan, or at the "Kaim of Kinprunes?"
which last locality, however, was, it must be confessed, rather summarily and decisively put out of Court some time ago by the strong personal evidence of Edie Ochiltree.
* * * * * If these, and some thousand-and-one similar questions regarding the habits, arts, government, language, etc., of our Primæval and Mediæval Forefathers could be at once summarily and satisfactorily answered by any power of "gramarye," then the present and the future Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland would be saved an incalculable amount of difficult investigation and hard work.
But unfortunately I, for one at least, have no belief that any human power can either unsphere the spirits of the dead for a night's drawing-room amusement, or seduce the "wraiths" of our ancestors to "revisit the glimpses of the moon" even for such a loyal and patriotic object as the furtherance of Scottish Archæology.
Nevertheless I doubt not, at the same time, that many of these supposed questions on the dark points of Scottish antiquities will yet betimes be answered more or less satisfactorily.
But the answers, if ever obtained, will be obtained by no kind of magic except the magic of accumulated observations, and strict stern facts;--by no necromancy except the necromancy of the cautious combination, comparison, and generalisation of these facts;--by no enchantment, in short, except that special form of enchantment for the advancement of every science which the mighty and potent wizard--Francis Bacon--taught to his fellow-men, when he taught them the spell-like powers of the inductive philosophy.
The data and facts which Scottish antiquaries require to seek out and accumulate for the future furtherance of Scottish Archæology, lie in many a different direction, waiting and hiding for our search after them.
On some few subjects the search has already been keen, and the success correspondingly great.
Let me specify one or two instances in illustration of this remark.
As a memorable example, and as a perfect Baconian model for analogous investigations on other corresponding topics--in the way of the full and careful accumulation of all ascertainable premises and data before venturing to dogmatise upon them--let me point to the admirable work of Mr. Stuart on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland--an almost national work, which, according to Mr. Westwood (the highest living authority on such a subject), is "one of the most remarkable contributions to Archæology which has ever been published in this or any other country."
"Crannoges"--those curious lake-habitations, built on piles of wood, or stockaded islands,--that Herodotus describes in lake Prasias, five or six centuries before the Christian era, constituting dwellings there which were then impregnable to all the military resources of a Persian army,--that Hippocrates tells us were also the types of habitation employed in his day by the Phasians, who sailed to them in single-tree canoes,--that in the same form of houses erected upon tall wooden piles, are still used at the present day as a favourite description of dwelling in the creeks and rivers running into the Straits of Malacca, and on the coasts of Borneo and New Guinea, etc., and the ruins of which have been found in numerous lakes in Ireland, England, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, etc.
;--Crannoges, I say, have been searched for and found also in various lochs in our own country; and the many curious data ascertained with regard to them in Scotland will be given in the next volume of our Society's proceedings by Mr. Joseph Robertson, a gentleman whom we all delight to acknowledge as pre-eminently entitled to wield amongst us the pen of the teacher and master in this as in other departments of Scottish antiquities.
Most extensive architectural data, sketches, and measurements, regarding many of the remains of our oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland (including some early Irish Churches, with stone roofs and Egyptian doors, that still stand nearly entire in the seclusion of our Western Islands), have been collected by the indomitable perseverance and industry of Mr. Muir; and when the work which that most able ecclesiologist has now in the press is published, a great step will doubtless be made in this neglected department of Scottish antiquities.
In addition, however, to the assiduous collection of all ascertainable facts regarding the existing remains of our sculptured stones, our crannoges, and our early ecclesiastical buildings, there are many other departments of Scottish antiquities urgently demanding, at the hands of the numerous zealous antiquaries scattered over the country, full descriptions and accurate drawings of such vestiges of them as are still left--as, for example:-I.
Our ancient Hill-forts of Stone and Earth.
II.
Our old cyclopic Burgs and Duns.
III.
Our primæval Towns, Villages, and Raths.
IV.
Our Weems or Underground Houses.
V. Our Pagan sepulchral Barrows, Cairns, and Cromlechs.
VI.
Our Megalithic Circles and Monoliths.
VII.
Our early Inscribed Stones; etc.
Good and trustworthy accounts of individual specimens, or groups of specimens, of most of these classes of antiquities, have been already published in our Transactions and Proceedings, and elsewhere.
But Scottish Archæology requires of its votaries as large and exhaustive a collection as possible, with accurate descriptions, and, when possible, with photographs or drawings--or mayhap with models (which we greatly lack for our Museum)--of all the discoverable forms of each class; as of all the varieties of ancient hill-strongholds; all the varieties of our underground weems, etc.
The necessary collection of all ascertainable types, and instances of some of these classes of antiquities, will be, no doubt, a task of much labour and time, and will in most instances require the combined efforts of many and zealous workers.
This Society will be ever thankful to any members who will contribute even one or two stones to the required heap.
But all past experience has shown that it is useless, and generally even hurtful, to attempt to frame hypotheses upon one, or even upon a few specimens only.
In Archæology, as in other sciences, we must have full and accurate premises before we can hope to make full and accurate deductions.
It is needless and hopeless for us to expect clear, correct, and philosophic views of the character and of the date and age of such archæological objects as I have enumerated, except by following the triple process of (1) assiduously collecting together as many instances as possible of each class of our antiquities; (2) carefully comparing these instances with each other, so as to ascertain all their resemblances and differences; and (3) contrasting them with similar remains in other cognate countries, where--in some instances, perhaps--there may exist, what possibly is wanting with us, the light of written history to guide us in elucidating the special subjects that may happen to be engaging our investigations--ever remembering that our Scottish Archæology is but a small, a very small, segment of the general circle of the Archæology of Europe and of the World.
The same remarks, which I have just ventured to make, as to the proper mode of investigating the classes of our larger archæological subjects, hold equally true also of those other classes of antiquities of a lighter and more portable type, which we have collected in our museums; such, for instance, as the ancient domestic tools, instruments, personal ornaments, weapons, etc., of stone, flint, bone, bronze, iron, silver, and gold, which our ancestors used; the clay and bronze vessels which they employed in cooking and carrying their food; the handmills with which they ground their corn; the whorls and distaffs with which they span, and the stuff and garments spun by them, etc.
etc.
It is only by collecting, combining, and comparing all the individual instances of each antiquarian object of this kind--all ascertainable specimens, for example, of our Scottish stone celts and knives; all ascertainable specimens of our clay vessels; of our leaf-shaped swords; of our metallic armlets; of our grain rubbers and stone-querns, etc.
etc.--and by tracing the history of similar objects in other allied countries, that we will read aright the tales which these relics--when once properly interrogated--are capable of telling us of the doings, the habits, and the thoughts of our distant predecessors.
It is on this same broad and great ground--of the indispensable necessity of a large and perfect collection of individual specimens of all kinds of antiquities for safe, sure, and successful deduction--that we plead for the accumulation of such objects in our own or in other public antiquarian collections.
And in thus pleading with the Scottish public for the augmentation and enrichment of our Museum, by donations of all kinds, however slight and trivial they may seem to the donors, we plead for what is not any longer the property of this Society, but what is now the property of the nation.
The Museum has been gifted over by the Society of Antiquaries to the Government--it now belongs, not to us, but to Scotland--and we unhesitatingly call upon every true-hearted Scotsman to contribute, whenever it is in his power, to the extension of this Museum, as the best record and collection of the ancient archæological and historical memorials of our native land.
We call for such a central general ingathering and repository of Scottish antiquities for another reason.
Single specimens and examples of archæological relics are, in the hands of a private individual, generally nought but mere matters of idle curiosity and wild conjecture; while all of them become of use, and sometimes of great moment, when placed in a public collection beside their fellows.
Like stray single words or letters that have dropt from out the Book of Time, they themselves, individually, reveal nothing, but when placed alongside of other words and letters from the same book, they gradually form--under the fingers of the archæologist--into lines, and sentences, and paragraphs, which reveal secret and stirring legends of the workings of the human mind, and human hand, in ages of which, perchance, we have no other existing memorials.
In attempting to read the cypher of these legends aright, let us guard against one fault which was unfortunately too often committed in former days, and which is perhaps sometimes committed still.
Let us not fall into the mistake of fancying that everything antiquarian, which we do not see at first sight the exact use of, must necessarily be something very mysterious.
Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral barrows, have been published as Druidical astronomical instruments; and in the last century some columnar rock arrangement in Orkney was gravely adduced by Toland as a Druidical pavement.
It is this craving after the mysterious, this reprehensible irrationalism, that has brought, indeed, the whole subject of Druidism into much modern contempt with many archæologists.
No doubt Druidism is a most interesting and a most important subject for due and calm investigation, and the facts handed down to us in regard to it by Cæsar, Diodorus, Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and other classic and hagiological authors, are full of the gravest archæological bearings; but no doubt also many antiquarian relics, both large and small, have been provokingly called Druidical, merely because their origin and object were unknown.
We have not, for instance, a particle of direct evidence for the too common belief that our stone circles were temples which the Druids used for worship; or that our cromlechs were their sacrificial altars.
In fact, formerly the equanimity of the old theoretical class of archæologists was disturbed by these leviathan notions about Druids and Druidesses as much as the marine zoology of the poor sailor was long disturbed by his leviathan notions about sea-serpents and mermaids.
In our archæological inquiries into the probable uses and import of all doubtful articles in our museums or elsewhere, let us proceed upon a plan of the very opposite kind.
Let us, like the geologists, try always, when working with such problems, to understand the past by reasoning from the present.
Let us study backwards from the known to the unknown.
In this way we can easily come to understand, for example, how our ancestors made those single-tree canoes, which have been found so often in Scotland, by observing how the Red Indian, partly by fire and partly by the hatchet, makes his analogous canoe at the present day; how our flint arrows were manufactured, when we see the process by which the present Esquimaux manufactures his; how our predecessors fixed and used their stone knives and hatchets, when we see how the Polynesian fixes and uses his stone knives and hatchets now; how, in short, matters sped in respect to household economy, dress, work, and war, in this old Caledonia of ours, during even the so-called Stone Age, when we reflect upon and study the modes in which matters are conducted in that new Caledonia in the Pacific--the inhabitants of which knew nothing of metals till they came in contact with Europeans, not many years ago; how, in long past days, hand and home-made clay vessels were the chief or only vessels used for cooking and all culinary purposes, seeing that in one or two parts of the Hebrides this is actually the state of matters still.
The collection of home-made pottery on the table--glazed with milk--is the latest contribution to our Museum.
It was recently brought up, by Captain Thomas and Dr. Mitchell, from the parish of Barvas, in the Lewis.
These "craggans," jars, or bowls, and other culinary dishes, are certainly specimens of the ceramic art in its most primitive state;--they are as rude as the rudest of our old cinerary urns; and yet they constitute, in the places in which they were made and used, the principal cooking, dyeing, and household vessels possessed by some of our fellow-countrymen in this the nineteenth century.
[13] In the adjoining parish of Uig, Captain Thomas found and described to us, two years ago, in one of his instructive and practical papers, the small beehive stone houses in which some of the nomadic inhabitants of the district still live in summer.
Numerous antiquarian remains, and ruins of similar houses and collections of houses, exist in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Switzerland, and perhaps in other kingdoms; but apparently they have everywhere been long ago deserted as human habitations, except in isolated and outlying spots among the Western Islands of Scotland.
The study of human habits in these Hebridean houses, at the present day, enables us to guess what the analogous human habits probably were, when, for example, the old Irish city of Fahan--consisting of similar structures only--was the busy scene of human life and activity in times long past.
These, and other similar facts, besides teaching us the true road to some forms of archæological discovery, teach us also one other important lesson,--namely, that there are in reality two kinds of antiquity, both of which claim and challenge our attention.
One of these kinds of antiquity consists in the study of the habits and works of our distant predecessors and forefathers, who lived on this earth, and perhaps in this segment of it, many ages ago.
The other kind of antiquity consists of the study of those archaic human habits and works which may, in some corners of the world, be found still prevailing among our fellow-men--or even among our own fellow-countrymen--down to the present hour, in despite of all the blessings of human advancement, and the progress of human knowledge.
By one kind of antiquity we trace the slow march and revolutions of centuries; by the other we trace the still slower march and revolutions of civilisation, in countries and kingdoms where the glittering theories of the politician might have led us to expect a different and a happier state of matters.
Besides the antiquarian relics of a visible and tangible form to which I have adverted, as demanding investigation and collection on our part, there are various antiquarian relics of a non-material type in Scottish Archæology which this Society might perhaps do much to collect and preserve, through the agency of active committees, and the assistance of many of our countrymen, who, I doubt not, could be easily incited to assist us in the required work.
One of these matters is a fuller collection and digest than we yet possess of the old superstitious beliefs and practices of our forefathers.
And certainly some strange superstitions do remain, or at least lately did remain, among us.
The sacrifice, for example, of the cock and other animals for recovery from epilepsy and convulsions, is by no means extinct in some Highland districts.
In old Pagan and Mithraic times we know that the sacrifice of the ox was common.
I have myself often listened to the account given by one near and dear to me, who was in early life personally engaged in the offering up and burying of a poor live cow as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Murrain.
This occurred within twenty miles of the metropolis of Scotland.
In the same district a relative of mine bought a farm not very many years ago.
Among his first acts, after taking possession, was the inclosing a small triangular corner of one of the fields within a stone wall.
The corner cut off--and which still remains cut off--was the "Goodman's Croft"--an offering to the Spirit of Evil, in order that he might abstain from ever blighting or damaging the rest of the farm.
The clergyman of the parish, in lately telling me the circumstance, added, that my kinsman had been, he feared, far from acting honestly with Lucifer, after all, as the corner which he had cut off for the "Goodman's" share was perhaps the most worthless and sterile spot on the whole property.
Some may look upon such superstitions and superstitious practices as matters utterly vulgar and valueless in themselves; but in the eyes of the archæologist they become interesting and important when we remember that the popular superstitions of Scotland, as of other countries, are for the most part true antiquarian vestiges of the pagan creeds and customs of our earlier ancestors; our present Folk-lore being merely in general a degenerated and debased form of the highest mythological and medical lore of very distant times.
A collection of the popular superstitions and practices of the different districts of Scotland now, ere (like fairy and goblin forms vanishing before the break of day) they melt and disappear totally before the light and the pride of modern knowledge, would yet perhaps afford important materials for regaining much lost antiquarian knowledge.
For as the palæontologist can sometimes reconstruct in full the types of extinct animals from a few preserved fragments of bones, possibly some future archæological Cuvier may one day be able to reconstruct from these mythological fragments, and from other sources, far more distinct figures and forms than we at present possess of the heathen faith and rites of our forefathers.
Perhaps a more important matter still would be the collection, from every district and parish of Scotland, of local lists of the oldest names of the hills, rivers, rocks, farms, and other places and objects; and this all the more that in this age of alteration and change many of these names are already rapidly passing away.
Yet the possession of a Scottish antiquarian gazetteer or map of this kind would not only enable us to identify many localities mentioned in our older deeds and charters, but more--the very language to which these names belong would, perhaps, as philological ethnology advances, betimes serve as guides to lead our successors, if they do not lead us, to obtain clearer views than we now have of the people that aboriginally inhabited the different districts of our country, and the changes which occurred from time to time in these districts in the races which successively had possession of them.
In this, as in other parts of the world, our mountains and other natural objects often obstinately retain, in despite of all subsequent changes and conquests, the appellations with which they were originally baptised by the aboriginal possessors of the soil; as, for example, in three or four of the rivers which enter the Forth nearest to us here--viz., the Avon, the Amond, and the Esk on this side; and the Dour, at Aberdour, on the opposite side of the Firth.
For these are all old Aryan names, to be found as river appellations in many other spots of the world, and in some of its oldest dialects.
The Amond or Avon is a simple modification of the present word of the Cymric "Afon," for "river," and we have all from our schooldays known it under its Latin form of "Amnis."
The Esk, in its various modifications of Exe, Axe, Uisk, etc., is the present Welsh word, "Uisk," for "water," and possibly the earliest form "asqua," of the Latin noun "aqua."
Again, the noun "Dour"--Douro--so common an appellative for rivers in many parts of Europe, is, according to some of our best etymologists, identical with, or of the same Aryan source as the "Uda," or water, of the sanskrit, "[Greek: hydôr]" of the Greeks, and the "Dwr" or "Dour" of the Cambrian and Gael.
The archæologist, like the Red Indian when tracking his foe, teaches himself to observe and catch up every possible visible trace of the trail of archaic man; but, like the Red Indian also, he now and again lays his ear on the ground to listen for any sounds indicating the presence and doings of him who is the object of his pursuit.
The old words which he hears whispered in the ancient names of natural objects and places supply the antiquary with this kind of audible archæological evidence.
For, when cross-questioned at the present day as to their nomenclature, many, I repeat, of our rivers and lakes, of our hills and headlands, do, in their mere names, telegraph back to us, along mighty distances of time, significant specimens of the tongue spoken by the first inhabitants of their district--in this respect resembling the doting and dying octogenarian that has left in early life the home of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last--ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed--one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in his earliest infancy.
The special sources and lines of research from which Scottish inductive Archæology may be expected to derive the additional data and facts which it requires for its elucidation are many and various.
Let me here briefly allude to two only, and these two of rather opposite characters,--viz.
(1), researches beneath the surface of the earth; and (2), researches among olden works and manuscripts.
In times past Scottish Archæology has already gained much from digging; and in times to come it is doubtless destined to gain yet infinitely more from a systematised use of this mode of research.
For the truth is, that beneath the surface of the earth on which we tread--often not above two or three feet below that surface, sometimes not deeper than the roots of our plants and trees--there undoubtedly lie, in innumerable spots and places,--buried, and waiting only for disinterment,--antiquarian relics of the most valuable and important character.
The richest and rarest treasures contained in some of our antiquarian museums have been exhumed by digging; and that digging has been frequently of the most accidental and superficial kind--like the discovery of the silver mines of Potosi through the chance uprooting of a shrub by the hand of a climbing traveller.
The magnificent twisted torc, containing some £50 worth of pure gold, which was exhibited in Edinburgh in 1856, in the Museum of the Archæological Institute, was found in 1848 in Needwood Forest, lying on the top of some fresh mould which had been turned up by a fox, in excavating for himself a new earth-hole.
Formerly, on the sites of the old British villages in Wiltshire, the moles, as Sir Richard Hoare tells us, were constantly throwing up to the surface numerous coins and fragments of pottery.
We are indebted to the digging propensities of another animal for the richest collection of silver ornaments which is contained in our Museum: For the great hoard of massive silver brooches, torcs, ingots, Cufic and other coins, etc., weighing some 16 lbs.
in all, which was found in 1857 in the Bay of Skaill in Orkney, was discovered in consequence of several small pieces of the deposit having been accidentally uncovered by the burrowings of the busy rabbit.
That hoard itself is interesting on this other account, that it is one of 130 or more similar silver deposits, almost all found by digging, that have latterly been discovered, stretching from Orkney, along the shores and islands of the Baltic, through Russia southward, towards the seat of the government of those Eastern Caliphs who issued the Cufic coins which generally form part of these collections--this long track being apparently the commercial route along which those merchants passed, who, from the seventh or eighth to the eleventh century, carried on the traffic which then subsisted between Asia and the north of Europe.
The spade and plough of the husbandman are constantly disinterring relics of high value to the antiquary and numismatist.
The matchless collection of gold ornaments contained in the Museum of the Irish Academy has been almost entirely discovered in the course of common agricultural operations.
The pickaxe of the ditcher, and of the canal and railway navvies, have often also, by their accidental strokes, uncovered rich antiquarian treasures.
The remarkable massive silver chain, ninety-three ounces in weight, which we have in our Museum, was found about two feet below the surface, when the Caledonian Canal was dug in 1808.
One of the largest gold armlets ever discovered in Scotland was disinterred at Slateford in cutting the Caledonian Railway.
Our Museum contains only a model of it; for the original--like many similar relics, when they consisted of the precious metals--was sold for its mere weight in bullion, and lost--at least to Archæology--in the melting-pot of the jeweller, in consequence of the former unfortunate state of our law of treasure-trove.
And it cannot perhaps be stated too often or too loudly, that such continued wanton destruction of these relics is now so far provided against; for by a Government ordinance, the finder of any relics in ancient coins, or in the precious metals, is now entitled by law, on delivering them up to the Crown for our National Museum, to claim "the full intrinsic value" of them from the Sheriff of the district in which they chance to be discovered--a most just and proper enactment, through the aid of which many such relics will no doubt be henceforth properly preserved.
But the results of digging to which I have referred are, as I have already said, the results merely of accidental digging.
From a systematised application of the same means of discovery, in fit and proper localities, with or without previous ground-probing, Archæology is certainly entitled to expect most valuable consequences.
The spade and pickaxe are become as indispensable aids in some forms of archæological, as the hammer is in some forms of geological research.
The great antiquarian treasures garnered up in our sepulchral barrows and olden kistvaen cemeteries, are only to be recovered to antiquarian science by digging, and by digging, too, of the most careful and methodised kind.
For in such excavations it is a matter of moment to note accurately every possible separate fact as to the position, state, etc., of all the objects exposed; as well as to search for, handle, and gather these objects most carefully.
In excavating, some years ago, a large barrow in the Phoenix Park at Dublin, two entire skeletons were discovered within the chamber of the stone cromlech which formed the centre of the sepulchral mound.
A flint knife, a flint arrow-head, and a small fibula of bone were found among the rubbish, along with some cinerary urns; but no bronze or other metallic implements.
The human beings buried there had lived in the so-called Stone Period of the Danish archæologists.
Some hard bodies were observed immediately below the head of one of the skeletons, and by very cautious and careful picking away of the surrounding earth, there was traced around the neck of each a complete necklace formed of the small sea-shells of the Nerita, with a perforation in each shell to admit of a string composed of vegetable fibres being passed through them.
Without due vigilance how readily might these interesting relics have been overlooked!
The spade and mattock, however, have subserved, and will subserve, other important archæological purposes besides the opening of ancient cemeteries.
They will probably enable us yet to solve to some extent the vexed question of the true character of our so-called "Druidical circles" and "Druidical stones," by proving to us that one of their uses at least was sepulchral.
The bogs and mosses of Ireland, Denmark, and other countries, have, when dug into, yielded up great stores of interesting antiquarian objects--usually wonderfully preserved by the qualities of the soil in which they were immersed--as stone and metallic implements, portions of primæval costume, combs, and other articles of the toilet, pieces of domestic furniture, old and buried wooden houses, and even, as in the alleged case of Queen Gunhild, and other "bogged" or "pitted" criminals, human bodies astonishingly entire, and covered with the leathern and other dresses in which they died.
All this forms a great mine of antiquarian research, in which little or nothing has yet been accomplished in Scotland.
It is only by due excavations that we can hope to acquire a proper analytical knowledge of the primæval abodes of our ancestors,--whether these abodes were in underground "weems," or in those hitherto neglected and yet most interesting objects of Scottish Archæology, namely, our archaic villages and towns, the vestiges and marks of which lie scattered over our plains and mountain sides--always near a stream, or lake, or good spring--usually marked by groups of shallow pits or excavations (the foundations of their old circular houses) and a few nettles--generally protected and surrounded on one or more sides by a rath or earth-wall--often near a hill-fort--and having attached to them, at some distance in the neighbourhood, stone graves, and sometimes, as on the grounds about Morton Hall, monoliths and barrows.
Last year we had detailed at length to the Society the very remarkable results which Mr. Neish had obtained by simple persevering digging upon the hill of the Laws in Forfarshire, exposing, as his excavations have done, over the whole top of the hill, extensive Cyclopic walls of several feet in height, formerly buried beneath the soil, and of such strange and puzzling forms as to defy as yet any definite conjecture of their character.
No doubt similar works, with similar remains of implements, ornaments, querns, charred corn, etc., will yet be found by similar diggings on other Scottish hills; and at length we may obtain adequate data for fixing their nature and object, and perhaps even their date.
Certainly every Scotch antiquary must heartily wish that the excellent example of earnest and enlightened research set by Mr. Neish was followed by others of his brother landholders in Scotland.
At the present time the sites and remains of some Roman cities in England are being restored to light in this way--as the old city of Uriconium (Wroxeter), where already many curious discoveries have rewarded the quiet investigations that are being carried on;--and Borcovicus in Northumberland (a half-day's journey from Edinburgh), one of the stations placed along the magnificent old Roman wall which still exists in wonderful preservation in its neighbourhood, and itself a Roman town, left comparatively so entire that "Sandy Gordon" described it long ago as the most remarkable and magnificent Roman station in the whole island, while Dr. Stukely spoke of it enthusiastically as the "Tadmor of Britain."
I was lately told by Mr. Longueville Jones, that in the vicinity of Caerleon--the ancient Isca Silurum of the Roman Itinerary--the slim sharpened iron rod used as a ground-probe had detected at different distances a row of buried Roman houses and villas, extending from the old city into the country for nearly three miles in length.
Here, as elsewhere, a rich antiquarian mine waits for the diggings of the antiquary; and elsewhere, as here, the ground-probe will often point out the exact spots that should be dug, with far more certainty than the divining rod of any Dousterswivel ever pointed out hidden hoards of gold or hidden springs of water.
But it is necessary, as I have already hinted, to seek and hope for additional archæological materials in literary as well as in subterraneous researches.
And certainly, one especial deficiency which we have, to deplore in Scottish Archæology is the almost total want of written documents and annals of the primæval and early mediæval portions of Scottish history.
The antiquaries of England and Ireland are much more fortunate in this respect than we are; for they possess a greater abundance of early documents than we can boast of.
Indeed, after Tacitus' interesting account of the first Roman invasion of Scotland under Agricola, and a few meagre allusions to, and statements regarding this country and its inhabitants by some subsequent classic authors, we have, for a course of seven or eight centuries, almost no written records of any authority to refer to.
The chief, if not the only, exceptions to this general remark, consist of a few scattered entries bearing upon Scotland in the Irish Annals--as in those of Tighernach and Ulster; some facts related by Bede; some statements given in the lives and legends of the early Scottish, Welsh, and Irish saints;[14] and various copies of the list of the Pictish kings.
When we come down beyond the eleventh and twelfth centuries, our written memorials rapidly increase in quantity and extent.
I have already alluded to the fact that three hundred quarto volumes--nearly altogether drawn from unpublished manuscripts--have been printed by the Scottish clubs within the last forty years.
Mr. Robertson informs me that in the General Register House alone (and independently of other and private collections), there is material for at least a hundred volumes more; and the English Record Office contains, as is well known, many unedited documents referring to the building of various Scottish castles by Edward I., and to other points interesting to Scottish Archæology and History.
The Welsh antiquaries have obtained from the Government offices in London various important documents of this description referring to Wales.
Why should the antiquaries of Scotland not imitate them in this respect?
Modern experience has shown that it is not by any means chimerical to expect, that we may yet recover, from various quarters, and from quite unexpected sources, too, writings and documents of much interest and importance in relation both to British and to Scottish Archæology.
Of that great fossil city Pompeii, not one hundredth part, it is alleged, has as yet been fully searched; and, according to Sir Charles Lyell, the quarters hitherto cleared out are those where there was the least probability of discovering manuscripts.
It would be almost hoping beyond the possibility of hope to expect that in some of its unexplored mansions, one of the rich libraries of those ancient Roman times may turn up, presenting papyri deeply interesting to British antiquaries, and containing, for example, a transcript of that letter on the habits and character of the inhabitants of Britain which Cicero himself informs us that he desired his brother Quintus to write, when, as second in command, he accompanied Julius Cæsar in his first invasion of our island;--or a copy of that account which Himilico the Carthaginian, had drawn up of his voyage, some centuries before the Christian era, to the Tin Islands, and other parts northwards of the Pillars of Hercules;--or a roll of those Punic Annals which Festus Avienus tells us that he himself consulted when (probably in the fourth century) he wrote those lines in his "_Ora Maritima_" in which he gives a description of Great Britain and Ireland.
The antiquaries of Scotland would heartily rejoice over the discovery of lost documents far less ancient than these.
Perhaps I could name two or three of our colleagues who would perfectly revel over the recovery, for instance, of one or two leaves of those old Pictish annals (_veteres Pictorum libri_) that still existed in the twelfth century, and in which, among other matters, was a brief account (once copied by the Pictish clerk Thana, the son of Dudabrach, for King Ferath, at Meigle) of the solemn ceremony which took place when King Hungus endowed the church of St. Andrews, in presence of twelve members of the Pictish regal race, with a grant of many miles of broad acres, and solemnly placed with his royal hands on the altar of the church a piece of fresh turf in symbolisation of his royal land-gift.
We all deplore that we possess no longer what the Abbot Ailred of Rievaulx, and the monk Joceline of Furness possessed, namely, biographies, apparently written in the old language of our country, of two of our earliest Scottish saints--St. Ninian of Whithorn, and St. Kentigern of Glasgow; and we grieve that we have lost even that Life of St. Serf, which, along with a goodly list of service and other books (chained to the stalls and desks), was placed, before the time of the Reformation, in the choir of the Cathedral of Glasgow, as we know from the catalogue which has been preserved of its library.
But let us not at the same time forget that Scottish archæological documents, as ancient as any of these, have been latterly rediscovered, and rediscovered occasionally in the most accidental way; and let us not, therefore, despair of further, and perhaps even of greater success in the same line.
Certainly the greatest of recent events in Scottish Archæology was the casual finding, within the last two or three years, in one of the public libraries at Cambridge, of a manuscript of the Gospels, which had formerly belonged to the Abbey of Deer, in Aberdeenshire.
The margin and blank vellum of this ancient volume contain, in the Celtic language, some grants and entries reaching much beyond the age of any of our other Scottish charters and chronicles.
The oldest example of written Scottish Gaelic that was previously known was not earlier than the sixteenth century.
Portions of the Deer Manuscript have been pronounced by competent scholars to be seven centuries older.
The most ancient known collection of the laws of Scotland--a manuscript written about 1270--was detected in the public library of Berne, and lately restored to this country.
In 1824, Mr. Thomson, a schoolmaster at Ayr, picked up, on an old bookstall in that town, a valuable manuscript collection of Scotch burghal laws written upwards of four centuries ago.
Sometimes, as in this last instance, documents of great value in Scottish Archæology have made narrow escapes from utter loss and destruction.
I was told by the late Mr. Thomas Thomson--a gentleman to whom we are all indebted for promoting and systematising our studies--that a miscellaneous, but yet in some points valuable collection of old vellum manuscripts was left, at the beginning of the present century, by a poor peripatetic Scottish tailor, who could not read one word of the old black letter documents which he spent his life and his purse in collecting.
Being a visionary claimant to one of the dormant Scottish peerages, he buoyed himself up with the bright hope that some clever lawyer would yet find undoubted proofs of his claims in some of the written parchments which he might procure.
Sir Robert Cotton is said to have discovered one of the original vellum copies of the Magna Charta in the shop of another tailor, who, holding it in his hand, was preparing to cut up this charter of the liberties of England into tape for measuring some of England's sons for coats and trousers.
The missing manuscript of the History of Scotland, from the Restoration to 1681, which was written by Sir George Mackenzie, the King's Advocate, was rescued from a mass of old paper that had been sold for shop purposes to a grocer in Edinburgh.
Some fragments of the Privy Council Records of Scotland--now preserved in the General Register House--were bought among waste snuff-paper.
[15] Occasionally even a very small preserved fragment of an ancient document has proved of importance.
Mr. Robertson informs me that, in editing the old Canons of the Scottish Church, he has derived considerable service from a single leaf of a contemporary record of the Canons of the sixteenth century, which had been used and preserved in the old binding of a book.
This single leaf is the only bit of manuscript of the Scotch sixteenth century Canons that is known to exist in Scotland.
In 1794 eight official volumes of the Scottish Secretary of State's Register of Seisins were discovered in a bookseller's shop in Edinburgh, after they had remained concealed for more than 185 years.
Among the great mass of interesting Scottish manuscripts preserved in our General Register House, there is one dated Arbroath,--April 1320;--perhaps the noblest Scottish document of that era.
It is the official duplicate of a letter of remonstrance addressed to Pope John XXII.
by the Barons, Freeholders, and Community of Scotland, in which these doughty Scotsmen declare, that so long as a hundred of them remain alive, they will never submit to the dominion of England.
This venerable record and precious declaration of Scottish independence, written on a sheet of vellum, and authenticated by the dependant seals of its patriotic authors, was detected by a deceased Scottish nobleman in a most precarious situation; for he discovered it ruthlessly stuck into the fire-place of his charter-room.
Contested points in Scottish Archæology and history have been occasionally settled by manuscript discoveries that were perfectly accidental.
After the blowing up of the Kirk of the Field, the only one of Darnley's servants that escaped was brought by the Earl of Murray before the English Council, and there gave evidence, implying that Queen Mary--that ever-interesting princess, who has been doubtlessly both over-decried by her foes and over-praised by her friends--was cognisant of the intended murder of her husband, inasmuch as, beforehand, she ordered an old bed to be placed in Darnley's room, and the richer bed that previously stood in it to be removed.
Nearly three hundred years after that dark and sordid insinuation was made, a roll of papers was casually found, during a search among some legal documents of the early part of the seventeenth century, and one of the leaves in that roll contained a contemporary and authenticated official return of the royal furniture lost by the blowing up of the King's residence.
Among other items, this leaf proved, beyond the possibility of further cavil, that the bed which stood in Darnley's room was, up to the time of his death, unchanged, and was not, as alleged by Mary's enemies, an old and worthless piece of furniture, but, on the contrary, was "a bed of violet velvet, with double hangings, braided with gold and silver (ung lictz de veloux viollet a double pante passemente dor et argent)."
The finest old Teutonic cross in Scotland is the well-known pillar which stands in the churchyard of Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire.
It was ignominiously thrown down, by a decree of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in 1642; but its broken fragments were collected, as far as possible, and the cross itself again erected, by the late clergyman of the parish, Dr. Henry Duncan, who published in the Transactions of this Society correct drawings of the Runic inscription on this ancient monument.
Two Danish antiquaries, Repp and Finn Magnusen, tried to read these Runic lines, and tortured them into very opposite, and let me simply add, very ridiculous meanings, about a grant of land and cows in Ashlafardhal, and Offa, a kinsman of Woden, transferring property to Ashloff, etc., all which they duly published.
That great antiquary and Saxon scholar, the late Mr. Kemble, then happened to turn his attention to the Ruthwell inscription, and saw the runes or language to be Anglo-Saxon, and in no ways Scandinavian, as had been supposed.
He found that the inscription consisted of a poem, or extracts from a poem, in Anglo-Saxon, in which the stone cross, speaking in the first person, described itself as overwhelmed with sorrow because it had borne Christ raised upon it at His crucifixion, had been stained with the blood poured from His side, and had witnessed His agonies,-"I raised the powerful King, The Lord of the heavens; I dared not fall down," etc.
etc.
Who was to decide between the very diverse opinions, and still more diverse readings, of this inscription by the English antiquary and his Danish rivals?
An accidental discovery in an old manuscript may be justly considered as having settled the whole question.
For, two or three years after Mr. Kemble had published his reading of the inscription, the identical Anglo-Saxon poem which he had found written on the Ruthwell cross was casually discovered in an extended form under the title of the "Dream of the Rood."
The old MS. volume of Saxon homilies and religious lays from which the book containing it was printed, was found by Dr. Blum in a library at Vercelli, in Italy.
With these rambling remarks I have already detained you far too long.
Ere concluding, however, bear with me for a minute or two longer, while I shortly speak of one clamant subject--viz.
the strong necessity of this Society, and of every Scotsman, battling and trying to prevent, if possible, the further demolition of the antiquarian relics scattered over Scotland.
Various human agencies have been long busy in the destruction and obliteration of our antiquarian earth and stone works.
At no period has this process of demolition gone on in Scotland more rapidly and ruthlessly than during the last fifty or a hundred years.
That tide of agricultural improvement which has passed over the country, has, in its utilitarian course, swept away--sometimes inevitably, often most needlessly--the aggers and ditches of ancient camps, sepulchral barrows and mounds, stone circles and cairns, earth-raths, and various other objects of deep antiquarian interest.
Indeed, the chief antiquarian remains of this description which have been left on the surface of our soil are to be found on our mountain-tops, on our moors, or in our woods, where the very sterility or inaccessibility of the spot, or the kind protection and sympathy of the old forest-trees, have saved them, for a time at least, from reckless ruin and annihilation.
Some of the antiquarian memorials that I allude to would have endured for centuries to come, had it not been for human interference and devastation.
For, in the demolition of these works of archaic man, the hand of man has too generally proved both a busier and a less scrupulous agent than the hand of time.
Railways have proved among the greatest, as well as the latest, of the agents of destruction.
In our island various cherished antiquities have been often most unnecessarily swept away in constructing these race-courses for the daily rush and career of the iron horse.
His rough and ponderous hoof, for example, has kicked down, at one extremity of a railway connected with Edinburgh (marvellously and righteously to the dispeace of the whole city), that fine old specimen of Scottish Second-Pointed architecture, the Trinity College Church; while, at the other extremity of the same line, it battered into fragments the old Castle of Berwick, a fort rich in martial and Border memories, and a building rendered interesting by the fact, that in connection with one of its turrets there was--at the command of Edward I.
"the greatest of the Plantagenets," (as his latest biographer boastfully terms him)--constructed, some six centuries ago, a cage of iron and wood, in which he immured, with Bomba-like ferocity, for four weary years, a poor prisoner, and that prisoner a woman--the Countess of Buchan--whose frightful crime consisted in having assisted at the coronation of her liege sovereign, Robert the Bruce.
In the construction of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway the line was driven, with annihilating effect, through the centre of the old and rich Roman Station on the Wall of Antoninus at Castlecary.
Some years ago, as I passed along the line, I saw the farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of this station busily removing a harmless wall,--among the last, if not the very last remnants of Roman masonry in Scotland.
The largest stone circle near the English Border--the Stonehenge or Avebury of the north of England--formerly stood near Shap.
The stone avenues leading to it are said to have been nearly two miles in length.
The engineer of the Carlisle and Lancaster railway carried his line right through the very centre of the ancient stone circle forming the head of the chief avenue, leaving a few of its huge stones standing out on the western side, where they may be still seen by the passing traveller about half a mile south of the Shap station.
If the line had been laid only a few feet on either side, the wanton desecration and destruction of this fine archaic monument might have been readily saved.
Railway engineers, however, and railway directors, care far more for mammon and money than for mounds and monoliths.
But other and older agents have overturned and uprooted the memorials transmitted down from ancient times, with as much wantonness as the railways.
Towards the middle of the last century the Government of the day ordered many miles of the gigantic old Roman wall, which stretches across Northumberland and Cumberland, to be tossed over and pounded into road metal.
About the same time a Scottish proprietor--with a Vandalism which cast a stigma on his order--pulled down that antique enigmatical building, "Arthur's Oven," in order to build, with its ashlar walls, a mill-dam across the Carron.
At its next flood the indignant Carron carried away the mill-dam, and buried for ever in the depths of its own water-course those venerable stones which were begrudged any longer by the proprietor of the soil the few feet of ground which they had occupied for centuries on its banks.
In many parts of our country our old sepulchral cairns, hill-forts, castles, churches, and abbeys, have been most thoughtlessly and reprehensibly allowed, by those that chanced to be their proprietors for the time, to be used as mere quarries of ready stones for the building of villages and houses, and for the construction of field-dikes and drains.
In the perpetration of this class of sad and discreditable desecrations, many parties are to blame.
Such outrages have been practised by both landlord and tenant, by both State and Church; and I fear that the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is by no means free from much culpability in the matter.
But let us, at the same time, rejoice that a better spirit is awakened on the whole question; and let us hope that our Scottish landlords will all speedily come to imitate, when required, the excellent example of Mr. Baillie, who, when some years ago he found that one of his tenants had pulled down and carried off, for building purposes, some portions of the walls of the four grand old burgs standing in Glenelg, in Inverness-shire, prosecuted the delinquent farmer before the sheriff-court of the county, and forced him to restore and replace _in situ_, as far as possible, and at his own expense, all the stones which he had removed.
Almost all the primæval stone circles and cromlechs which existed in the middle and southern districts of Scotland have been cast down and removed.
The only two cromlechs in the Lothians, the stones of which have not been removed, are at Ratho and Kipps; and though the stones have been wantonly pulled down, they could readily be restored, and certainly deserve to be so.
In 1813 the cromlech at Kipps was seen by Sir John Dalzell still standing upright.
In describing it, in the beginning of the last century, Sir Robert Sibbald states that near this Kipps cromlech was a circle of stones, with a large stone or two in the middle; and he adds, "many such may be seen all over the country."
They have all disappeared; and latterly the stones of the Kipps circle have been themselves removed and broken up, to build, apparently, some neighbouring field-walls, though there was abundance of stones in the vicinity equally well suited for the purpose.
Among the most valuable of our ancient Scottish monuments are certainly our Sculptured Stones.
Most of them, however, and some even in late times, have been sadly mutilated and destroyed, to a greater or less degree, by human hands, and converted to the most base uses.
The stone at Hilton of Cadboll, remarkable for its elaborate sculpture and ornamental tracery, has had one of its sides smoothed and obliterated in order that a modern inscription might be cut upon it to commemorate "Alexander Duff and His Thrie Wives."
The beautiful sculptured stone of Golspie has been desecrated in the same way.
Only two of these ancient sculptured stones are known south of the Forth.
One of them has been preserved by having been used as a window-lintel in the church of Abercorn--the venerable episcopal see, in the seventh century, of Trumwine, the Bishop of the Picts.
The other serves the purpose of a foot-bridge within a hundred yards of the spot where we are met; and it is to be hoped that its proprietors will allow this ancient stone to be soon removed from its present ignominious situation to an honoured place in our Museum.
I saw, during last autumn, in Anglesey, a stone bearing a very ancient Romano-British legend, officiating as one of the posts of a park gate--a situation in which several such inscribed stones have been found.
Still more lately, I was informed of the large central monolith in a stone circle, not far from the Scottish border, having been thrown down and split up into seven pairs of field gate-posts.
"Standing-stones"--the old names of which gave their appellations to the very manors on which they stood--have been repeatedly demolished in Scotland.
An obelisk of thirteen feet in height, and imparting its name to a landed estate in Kincardineshire, was recently thrown down; and a large monolith, which lent its old, venerable name to a property and mansion within three or four miles of Edinburgh, was, within the memory of some living witnesses, uprooted and totally demolished when the direction of the turnpike road in its neighbourhood happened to be altered.
* * * * * A healthier and finer feeling in regard to the propriety of preserving such national antiquities as I have referred to, subsists, I believe, in the heart of the general public of Scotland, than perhaps those who are their superiors in riches and rank generally give them credit for.
Within this century the standing-stones of Stennis in Orkney were attacked, and two or three of them overthrown by an iconoclast; but the people in the neighbourhood resented and arrested the attempt by threatening to set fire to the house and corn of the barbaric aggressor.
After the passing of the Parliamentary Reform Bill, during a keen contest for the representation of a large Scottish county, there was successfully urged in the public journals against one of the candidates, the damaging fact that one of his forefathers had deliberately committed one of the gross acts of barbarism which I have already specified, in the needless destruction, in a distant part of Scotland, of one of the smallest but most interesting of Scottish antiquarian relics; and the voters at the polling-booths showed that they deemed a family, however rich and estimable, unfit to be intrusted with the parliamentary guardianship of the county, which had outraged public feeling by wantonly pulling down one of the oldest stone memorials in the kingdom.
* * * * * In the name of this Society, and in the name of my fellow-countrymen generally, I here solemnly protest against the perpetration of any more acts of useless and churlish Vandalism, in the needless destruction and removal of our Scottish antiquarian remains.
The hearts of all leal Scotsmen, overflowing as they do with a love of their native land, must ever deplore the unnecessary demolition of all such early relics and monuments as can in any degree contribute to the recovery and restoration of the past history of our country and of our ancestors.
These ancient relics and monuments are truly, in one strong sense, national property; for historically they belong to Scotland and to Scotsmen in general, more than they belong to the individual proprietors upon whose ground they accidentally happen to be placed.
There is an Act of Parliament against the wilful defacing and demolition of public monuments; and, perhaps the Kilkenny Archæological Association were right when they threatened to indite with the penalties of "misdemeanour" under that statute, any person who should wantonly and needlessly destroy the old monumental and architectural relics of his country.
Many of these relics might have brought only a small price indeed in the money-market, while yet they were of a national and historical value which it would be difficult to estimate.
For, when once swept away, their full replacement is impossible.
They cannot be purchased back with gold.
Their deliberate and ruthless annihilation is, in truth, so far the annihilation of the ancient records of the kingdom.
If any member of any ancient family among us needlessly destroyed some of the olden records of that one family, how bitterly, and how justly too, would he be denounced and despised by its members?
But assuredly antiquarian monuments, as the olden records of a whole realm, are infinitely more valuable than the records of any individual family in that realm.
Let us fondly hope and trust that a proper spirit of patriotism--that every feeling of good, generous, and gentlemanly taste--will insure and hallow the future consecration of all such Scottish antiquities as still remain--small fragments only though they may be of the antiquarian treasures that once existed in our land.
Time, like the Sibyl, who offered her nine books of destiny to the Roman king, has been destroying, century after century, one after another of the rich volumes of antiquities which she formerly tendered to the keeping of our Scottish fathers.
But though, unhappily, our predecessors, like King Tarquin, rejected and scorned the rich antiquarian treasures which existed in their days, let us not now, on that account, despise or decline to secure the three books of them that still perchance remain.
On the contrary,--like the priests appointed by the Roman authorities to preserve and study the Sibylline records which had escaped destruction,--let this Society carefully guard and cherish those antiquities of our country which yet exist, and let them strive to teach themselves and their successors to decipher and interpret aright the strange things and thoughts that are written on those Sibylline leaves of Scottish Archæology which Fate has still spared for them.
Working earnestly, faithfully, and lovingly in this spirit, let us not despair that, as the science of Archæology gradually grows and evolves, this Society may yet, in full truth, restore Scotland to antiquity, and antiquity to Scotland.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: An inaugural Address delivered to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Session 1860-61] [Footnote 9: As an illustration of this primitive pastoral idea of wealth, Dr. Livingstone told me, that on more than one occasion, when Africans were discoursing with him on the riches of his own country and his own chiefs at home, he was asked the searching and rather puzzling question, "But how many cows has the Queen of England?"]
[Footnote 10: As some confirmation of the views suggested in the preceding question, my friend Captain Thomas pointed out to me, after the Address was given, that the name of the fort in St. Kilda was, as stated by Martin and Macaulay, "Dun Fir-bholg."]
[Footnote 11: Including the works of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, etc.
Her library catalogue shows also a goodly list of "Latyn Buikis," and classics.
In a letter to Cecil, dated St. Andrews, 7th April 1562, Randolph incidentally states that Queen Mary then read daily after dinner "somewhat of Livy" with George Buchanan.]
[Footnote 12: See these stories in Mr. Dasent's _Norse Tales_, and in Mr. Campbell's collection of the _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_.]
[Footnote 13: Among the people of the district of Barvas, most of them small farmers or crofters, a metal vessel or pot was a thing almost unknown twelve or fourteen years ago.
Their houses have neither windows nor chimneys, neither tables nor chairs; and the cattle and poultry live under the same roof with their human possessors.
If a Chinaman or Japanese landed at Barvas, and went no further, what a picture might he paint, on his return home, of the state of civilisation in the British Islands.]
[Footnote 14: One of these Lives--that of St. Columba by Adamnan--has been annotated by Dr. Reeves with such amazing lore that it really looks as if the Editor had acquired his wondrous knowledge of ancient Iona and Scotland by some such "uncanny" aids as an archæological "deputation of spirits."]
[Footnote 15: This alludes to the portion of a mutilated volume for the year 1605, which came into Mr. Laing's hands, and was given by him to the Deputy Clerk Register.
But singular enough, as Mr. Laing has since informed me, the identical MS. of Sir George Mackenzie, above noticed, was brought to him for sale as probably a curious volume; it having by some accident been _a second time sold for waste paper_!
Having no difficulty in recognising the volume, he of course secured it, and, agreeably to the expressed intention of the Editor of the work in 1821, the MS. has been deposited in the Advocates' Library, where, it is to be hoped, it may now remain in safety.]
ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.
[16] Among the islands scattered along the Firth of Forth, one of the most interesting is the ancient Aemonia, Emona, St. Columba's Isle, or St. Colme's Inch--the modern Inchcolm.
The island is not large, being little more than half-a-mile in length, and about a hundred and fifty yards across at its broadest part.
At either extremity it is elevated and rocky; while in its intermediate portion it is more level, though still very rough and irregular, and at one point--a little to the east of the old monastic buildings--it becomes so flat and narrow that at high tides the waters of the Forth meet over it.
Inchcolm lies nearly six miles north-west from the harbour of Granton, or is about eight or nine miles distant from Edinburgh; and of the many beautiful spots in the vicinity of the Scottish metropolis, there is perhaps none which surpasses this little island in the charming and picturesque character of the views that are obtained in various directions from it.
Though small in its geographical dimensions, Inchcolm is rich in historical and archæological associations.
In proof of this remark, I might adduce various facts to show that it has been at one time a favoured seat of learning, as when, upwards of four hundred years ago, the Scottish historian, Walter Bower, the Abbot of its Monastery, wrote there his contributions to the ancient history of Scotland;[17] and at other times the seat of war, as when it was pillaged at different periods by the English, during the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
[18] For ages it was the site of a monastic institution and the habitation of numerous monks;[19] and at the beginning of the present century it was temporarily degraded to the site of a military fort, and the habitation of a corps of artillery.
[20] During the plagues and epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it formed sometimes a lazaretto for the suspected and diseased;[21] and during the reign of James I. it was used as a state-prison for the daughter of the Earl of Ross and the mother of the Lord of the Isles[22]--"a mannish, implacable woman," as Drummond of Hawthornden ungallantly terms her;[23] while fifty years later, when Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was "decernit ane heretique, scismatike, symoniak, and declarit cursit, and condamnit to perpetuall presoun," he was, for this last purpose, "first transportit to St. Colmes Insche.
"[24] Punishments more dark and dire than mere transportation to, and imprisonment upon Inchcolm, have perhaps taken place within the bounds of the island, if we do not altogether misinterpret the history of "a human skeleton standing upright," found several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic walls.
[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St. Columba,--and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his own alleged dwelling-place,[26]--devoid in its history of the usual amount of old monkish miracles and legends.
The Scotichronicon contains long and elaborate details of several of them.
When, in 1412, the Earl of Douglas thrice essayed to sail out to sea, and was thrice driven back by adverse gales, he at last made a pilgrimage to the holy isle of Aemonia, presented an offering to Columba, and forthwith the Saint sped him with fair winds to Flanders and home again.
[27] When, towards the winter of 1421, a boat was sent on a Sunday (die Dominica) to bring off to the monastery from the mainland some house provisions and barrels of beer brewed at Bernhill (in barellis cerevisiam apud Bernhill brasiatam), and the crew, exhilarated with liquor (alacres et potosi), hoisted, on their return, a sail, and upset the barge, Sir Peter the Canon,--who, with five others, was thrown into the water,--fervently and unceasingly invoked the aid of Columba, and the Saint appeared in person to him, and kept Sir Peter afloat for an hour and a half by the help of a truss of tow (adminiculo cujusdam stupæ), till the boat of Portevin picked up him and two others.
[28] When, in 1385, the crew of an English vessel (quidam filii Belial) sacrilegiously robbed the island, and tried to burn the church, St. Columba, in answer to the earnest prayers of those who, on the neighbouring shore, saw the danger of the sacred edifice, suddenly shifted round the wind and quenched the flames, while the chief of the incendiaries was, within a few hours afterwards, struck with madness, and forty of his comrades drowned.
[29] When, in 1335, an English fleet ravaged the shores of the Forth, and one of their largest ships was carrying off from Inchcolm an image of Columba[30] and a store of ecclesiastical plunder, there sprung up such a furious tempest around the vessel immediately after she set sail, that she drifted helplessly and hopelessly towards the neighbouring island of Inchkeith, and was threatened with destruction on the rocks there till the crew implored pardon of Columba, vowed to him restitution of their spoils, and a suitable offering of gold and silver, and then they instantly and unexpectedly were lodged safe in port (et statim in tranquillo portu insperate ducebantur).
[31] When, in 1336, some English pirates robbed the church at Dollar--which had been some time previously repaired and richly decorated by an Abbot of Aemonia--and while they were, with their sacrilegious booty, sailing triumphantly, and with music on board, down the Forth, under a favouring and gentle west wind, in the twinkling of an eye (non solum subito sed in ictu oculi), and exactly opposite the abbey of Inchcolm, the ship sank to the bottom like a stone.
Hence, adds the writer of this miracle in the _Scotichronicon_,--and no doubt that writer was the Abbot Walter Bower,--in consequence of these marked retaliating propensities of St. Columba, his vengeance against all who trespassed against him became proverbial in England; and instead of calling him, as his name seems to have been usually pronounced at the time, St. Callum or St. Colam, he was commonly known among them as _St.
Quhalme_ ("et ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos vulgariter _Sanct Quhalme_ nuncupatur"[32]).
But without dwelling on these and other well-known facts and fictions in the history of Inchcolm, let me state,--for the statement has, as we shall afterwards see, some bearing upon the more immediate object of this notice,--that this island is one of the few spots in the vicinity of Edinburgh that has been rendered classical by the pen of Shakspeare.
In the second scene of the opening act of the tragedy of Macbeth, the Thane of Ross comes as a hurried messenger from the field of battle to King Duncan, and reports that Duncan's own rebellious subjects and the invading Scandinavians had both been so completely defeated by his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, that the Norwegians craved for peace:-"Sueno, the Norways' King, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes Inch, Ten thousand dollars to our general use."
Inchcolm is the only island of the east coast of Scotland which derives its distinctive designation from the great Scottish saint.
But more than one island on our western shores bears the name of St. Columba; as, for example, St. Colme's Isle, in Loch Erisort, and St. Colm's Isle in the Minch, in the Lewis; the island of Kolmbkill, at the head of Loch Arkeg, in Inverness-shire; Eilean Colm, in the parish of Tongue;[33] and, above all, Icolmkill, or Iona itself, the original seat and subsequent great centre of the ecclesiastic power of St. Columba and his successors.
[34] An esteemed antiquarian friend, to whom I lately mentioned the preceding reference to Inchcolm by Shakspeare, at once maintained that the St. Colme's Isle in Macbeth was Iona.
Indeed, some of the modern editors[35] of Shakspeare, carried away by the same view, have printed the line which I have quoted thus:-"Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's-kill Isle," instead of "Saint Colmes ynch," as the old folio edition prints it.
But there is no doubt whatever about the reading, nor that the island mentioned in Macbeth is Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth.
For the site of the defeat of the Norwegian host was in the adjoining mainland of Fife, as the Thane of Ross tells the Scotch king that, to report his victory, he had come from the seat of war-"from Fife, Where the Norwegian banners flout the sky."
The reference to Inchcolm by Shakspeare becomes more interesting when we follow the poet to the original historical foundations upon which he built his wondrous tragedy.
It is well known that Shakspeare derived the incidents for his story of Macbeth from that translation of Hector Boece's _Chronicles of Scotland_, which was published in England by Raphael Holinshed in 1577.
In these Chronicles, Holinshed, or rather Hector Boece, after describing the reputed poisoning, with the juice of belladonna, of Sueno and his army, and their subsequent almost complete destruction, adds, that shortly afterwards, and indeed while the Scots were still celebrating this equivocal conquest, another Danish host landed at Kinghorn.
The fate of this second army is described by Holinshed in the following words:-"The Scots hauing woone so notable a victorie, after they had gathered and diuided the spoile of the field, caused solemne processions to be made in all places of the realme, and thanks to be giuen to almightie God, that had sent them so faire a day ouer their enimies.
But whilest the people were thus at their processions, woord was brought that a new fleet of Danes was arriued at Kingcorne, sent thither by Canute, King of England, in reuenge of his brother Suenos ouerthrow.
To resist these enimies, which were alreadie landed, and busie in spoiling the countrie, Makbeth and Banquho were sent with the Kings authoritie, who hauing with them a conuenient power, incountred the enimies, slue part of them, and chased the other to their ships.
They that escaped and got once to their ships, obteined of Makbeth for a great summe of gold, that such of their friends as were slaine at this last bickering, might be buried in Saint Colmes Inch.
In memorie whereof, manie old sepultures are yet in the said Inch, there to be seene grauen with the armes of the Danes, as the maner of burieng noble men still is, and hieretofore hath beene vsed.
A peace was also concluded at the same time betwixt the Danes and Scotishmen, ratified (as some haue written) in this wise: that from thencefoorth the Danes should neuer come into Scotland to make anie warres against the Scots by anie maner of meanes.
And these were the warres that Duncane had with forren enimies, in the seuenth yiere of his reigne.
"[36] To this account of Holinshed, as bearing upon the question of the St. Colme's Isle alluded to by Shakspeare, it is only necessary to add one remark:--Certainly the western Iona, with its nine separate cemeteries, could readily afford fit burial-space for the slain Danes; but it is impossible to believe that the defeated and dejected Danish army would or could carry the dead and decomposing bodies of their chiefs to that remote place of sepulture.
And, supposing that the dead bodies had been embalmed, then it would have been easier to carry them back to the Danish territories in England, or even across the German Ocean to Denmark itself, than round by the Pentland Firth to the distant western island of Icolmkill.
On the other hand, that St. Colme's Inch, in the Firth of Forth, is the island alluded to, is, as I have already said, perfectly certain, from its propinquity to the seat of war, and the point of landing of the new Scandinavian host, namely, Kinghorn; the old town of Wester Kinghorn lying only about three or four miles below Inchcolm, and the present town of the same name, or Eastern Kinghorn, being placed about a couple of miles further down the coast.
We might here have adduced another incontrovertible argument in favour of this view by appealing to the statement, given in the above quotation, of the existence on Inchcolm, in Boece's time, of Danish sepulchral monuments, provided we felt assured that this statement was in itself perfectly correct.
But before adopting it as such, it is necessary to remember that Boece describes the sculptured crosses and stones at Camustane and Aberlemno,[37] in Forfarshire, as monuments of a Danish character also; and whatever may have been the origin and objects of these mysteries in Scottish archæology,--our old and numerous Sculptured Stones, with their strange enigmatical symbols,--we are at least certain that they are not Danish either in their source or design, as no sculptured stones with these peculiar symbols exist in Denmark itself.
That Inchcolm contained one or more of those sculptured stones, is proved by a small fragment that still remains, and which was detected a few years ago about the garden-wall.
A drawing of it has been already published by Mr.
Stuart.
[38] (See woodcut, Fig.
1.)
In the quotation which I have given from Holinshed's Chronicles, the "old sepultures there (on Inchcolm) to be seene grauen with the armes of the Danes," are spoken of as "manie" in number.
[39] Bellenden uses similar language: "Thir Danes" (he writes) "that fled to thair schippis, gaif gret sowmes of gold to Makbeth to suffer thair freindis that war slane at his jeoperd to be buryit in Sanct Colmes Inche.
In memory heirof, _mony_ auld sepulturis ar yit in the said Inche, gravin with armis of Danis.
"[40] In translating this passage from Boece, both Holinshed and Bellenden overstate, in some degree, the words of their original author.
Boece speaks of the Danish monuments still existing on Inchcolm in his day, or about the year 1525, as plural in number, but without speaking of them as many.
After stating that the Danes purchased the right of sepulture for their slain chiefs (nobiles) "in Emonia insula, loco sacro," he adds, "extant et hac ætate notissima Danorum monumenta, lapidibusque insculpta eorum insignia.
"[41] For a long period past only one so-called Danish monument has existed on Inchcolm, and is still to be seen there.
It is a single recumbent block of stone above five feet long, about a foot broad, and one foot nine inches in depth, having a rude sculptured figure on its upper surface.
In his _History of Fife_, published in 1710, Sir Robert Sibbald has both drawn and described it.
"It is (says he) made like a coffin, and very fierce and grim faces are done on both the ends of it.
Upon the middle stone which supports it, there is the figure of a man holding a spear in his hand.
"[42] He might have added that on the corresponding middle part of the opposite side there is sculptured a rude cross; but both the cross and "man holding a spear" are cut on the single block of stone forming the monument, and not, as he represents, on a separate supporting stone.
Pennant, in his _Tour through Scotland_ in 1772, tells us that this "Danish monument" "lies in the south-east [south-west] side of the building (or monastery), on a rising ground.
It is (he adds) of a rigid form, and the surface ornamented with scale-like figures.
At each end is the representation of a human head.
"[43][44] In its existing defaced form,[45] the sculpture has certainly much more the appearance of a recumbent human figure, with a head at one end and the feet at the other, than with a human head at either extremity.
The present condition of the monument is faithfully given in the accompanying woodcut, which, like most of the other woodcuts in this little essay, have been copied from sketches made by the masterly pencil of my esteemed friend, Mr. James Drummond, R.S.A.
[Illustration: Fig.
1.
Sculptured Stone, Inchcolm.]
[Illustration: Fig.
2.
Danish Monument.]
It is well known that, about a century after the occurrence of these Danish wars, and of the alleged burial of the Danish chiefs on Inchcolm,--or in the first half of the thirteenth[47] century,--there was founded on this island, by Alexander I., a monastery, which from time to time was greatly enlarged, and well endowed.
The monastic buildings remaining on Inchcolm at the present day are of very various dates, and still so extensive that their oblong light-grey mass, surmounted by a tall square central tower, forms a striking object in the distance, as seen in the summer morning light from the higher streets and houses of Edinburgh, and from the neighbouring shores of the Firth of Forth.
These monastic buildings have been fortunately protected and preserved by their insular situation,--not from the silent and wasting touch of time, but from the more ruthless and destructive hand of man.
The stone-roofed octagonal chapter-house is one of the most beautiful and perfect in Scotland; and the abbot's house, the cloisters, refectory, etc., are still comparatively entire.
But the object of the present communication is not to describe the well-known conventual ruins on the island, but to direct the attention of the Society to a small building, isolated, and standing at a little distance from the remains of the monastery, and which, I am inclined to believe, is of an older date, and of an earlier age, than any part of the monastery itself.
[Illustration: Fig 3.
Inchcolm.]
The small building, cell, oratory, or chapel, to which I allude, forms now, with its south side, a portion of the line of the north wall of the present garden, and is in a very ruinous state; but its more characteristic and original features can still be accurately made out.
[Illustration: Fig.
4.
Ground-plan of Oratory.]
The building is of the quadrangular figure of the oldest and smallest Irish churches and oratories.
But its form is very irregular, partly in consequence of the extremely sloping nature of the ground on which it is built, and partly perhaps to accommodate it in position to three large and immovable masses of trap that lie on either side of it, and one of which masses is incorporated into its south-west angle.
It is thus deeper on its north than on its south side; and much deeper at its eastern than at its western end.
Further, its remaining eastern gable is set at an oblique angle to the side walls, while both the side walls themselves seem slightly curved or bent.
Hence it happens, that whilst externally the total length of the north side of the building is 19 feet and a half, the total length of its south side is 21 feet and a half, or 2 feet more.
Internally, also, it gradually becomes narrower towards its western extremity; so that, whilst the breadth of the interior of the building is about 6 feet 3 inches at its eastern end, it is only 4 feet and 9 inches at its western end.
Some of these peculiarities are shown in the accompanying ground-plan drawn by Mr.
Brash (see woodcut, Fig.
4), in which the line A B represents the whole breadth of the building; A the north, and B the south wall of it.
Unfortunately, as far as can be gathered amid the accumulated debris at the western part of the building, the gable at that end is almost destroyed, with the exception of the stones at its base; but, judging from the height of the vaulted roof, this gable probably did not measure externally above 8 feet, while the depth of the eastern gable, which is comparatively entire, is between 14 and 15 feet.
The interior of the building has been originally, along its central line, about 16 feet in length; it is nearly 8 feet in height from the middle of the vaulted roof to the present floor; and the interior has an average breadth of about 5 feet.
Internally the side walls are 5 feet in height from the ground to the spring of the arch or vault.
Three feet from the ground there is interiorly, in the south wall, a small four-sided recess,[48] 1 foot in breadth, and 15 inches in height and depth.
(See C in ground plan, Fig.
4; and also Fig.
8.)
In the same south-side wall, near the western gable, is an opening extending from the floor to the spring of the roof.
It has apparently been the original door of the building; but as it is now built up by a layer of thin stone externally, and the soil of the garden has been heaped up against it and the whole south wall to the depth of several feet, it is difficult to make out its full relations and character.
There is a peculiarity, however, about the head of this entrance which deserves special notice.
The top of the doorway, as seen both from within and from without the building, is arched, but in two very different ways.
When examined from within, the head of the doorway is found to be composed of stones laid in the form of a horizontal arch, the superincumbent stones on each side projecting more and more over each other to constitute its sides, and then a large, flat, horizontal stone closing the apex.
(See woodcut, Fig.
5.)
On the contrary, when examined from without, the top of the doorway is formed by stones laid in the usual form of the radiating arch, and roughly broken off, as if that arch at a former period had extended beyond the line of the wall.
(See woodcut, Fig.
6.)
This doorway, let me add, is 5 feet high, and on an average about 4 feet wide,[49] but it is 2 or 3 inches narrower at the top, or at the spring of the arch, than it is at the bottom.
[50] The north side wall of the building is less perfect; as, in modern times, a large rude opening has been broken through as an entrance or door (see woodcut, Fig.
7, and ground-plan, Fig.
4), after the original door on the other side had become blocked up.
[Illustration: Fig.
5.
Horizontal arch of the door, as seen from within the cell.]
[Illustration: Fig.
6.
Semi-circular arch of the door as seen from without, the garden earth filling the doorway.]
The eastern gable is still very entire, and contains a small window,[51] which, as measured outside, is 1 foot 11 inches in height, and 10 inches in breadth.
But the jambs of this window incline or splay internally, so as to form on the internal plane of the gable an opening 2 feet 3 inches in breadth.
[Illustration: Fig.
7.
Eastern gable and north side of the building.]
The squared sill stone of the window is one of the largest in the eastern gable.
Its flat lintel stone projects externally in an angled or sharpened form beyond the plane of the gable, like a rude attempt at a moulding or architrave, but probably with the more utilitarian object of preventing entrance of the common eastern showers into the interior of the cell.
The thin single flat sandstones composing the jambs are each large enough to extend backwards the whole length of the interior splay of the window, and, from the marks upon them, have evidently been hammer-dressed.
[53] Internally, in this eastern gable, there is placed below the window, and in continuation of its interior splay, a recess about 18 inches in depth, and of nearly the same breadth as the divergence of the jambs of the window.
The broken base or floor of this recess is in the position of the altar-stone in some small early Irish chapels.
The accompanying sketch (see woodcut, Fig.
7) of the exterior of the eastern gable shows that the stones of which it is built have been prepared and dressed with sufficient care--especially those forming the angles--to entitle us to speak of it as presenting the type of rude ashlar-work.
The stones composing it, particularly above the line of the window, are laid in pretty regular horizontal courses; lower down they are not by any means so equable in size.
The masonry of the side walls is much less regular, and more of a ruble character.
The walls are on an average about 3 feet in thickness.
[54] The stones of which the building is composed are, with a few exceptions, almost all squared sandstone.
The exceptions consist of some larger stones of trap or basalt, placed principally along the base of the walls.
Both secondary trap and sandstone are found _in situ_ among the rocks of the island.
A roundish basalt stone, 2 feet long, forms a portion of the floor of the building at its southern corner.
At other points there is evidence of a well-laid earth floor.
The whole interior of the building has been carefully plastered at one time.
The surface of this plaster-covering of the walls, wherever it is left, is so dense and hard as to be scratched with difficulty.
The lime used for building and cementing the walls, as shown in a part at the west end which has been lately exposed, contains oyster and other smaller sea-shells, and is as firm and hard as some forms of concrete.
I have reserved till the last a notice of one of the most remarkable architectural features in this little building, namely, its arched or vaulted stone roof,--the circumstance, no doubt, to which the whole structure owes its past durability and present existence.
Stone roofs are found in some old Irish buildings, formed on the principle of the horizontal arch, or by each layer of stone overlapping and projecting within the layer placed below it till a single stone closes the top.
A remarkable example of this type of stone roof is presented by the ancient oratory of Gallerus in the county of Kerry; and stone roofs of the same construction covered most of the old beehive houses and variously shaped cloghans that formerly existed in considerable numbers in the western and southern districts of Ireland, and more sparsely on the western shores of Scotland.
In the Inchcolm oratory the stone roof is constructed on another principle--on that, namely, of the radiating arch--a form of roof still seen in some early Irish oratories and churches, whose reputed date of building ranges from the sixth or seventh onward to the tenth or eleventh centuries.
The mode of construction of the stone roof of the Inchcolm cell is well displayed in the accidental section of it that has been made by the falling in of the western gable.
One of Mr. Drummond's sketches (see woodcut, Fig.
9) represents the section as seen across the collection of flower-tipped rubbish and stones made by the debris of the gable and some accumulated earth.
The roof is constructed, first, of stones placed in the shape of a radiating arch; secondly, of a thin layer of lime and small stones placed over the outer surface of this arch; and, thirdly, the roof is finished by being covered externally with a layer of oblong, rhomboid stones, laid in regular courses from the top of the side walls onwards and upwards to the ridge of the building.
This outer coating of squared stones is seen in the external surface of the roof to the left in one sketch (see woodcut, Fig.
9); but a more perfect and better preserved specimen of it exists immediately above the entrance-door, as shown in another of Mr. Drummond's drawings (see woodcut, Fig.
6).
[Illustration: Fig.
8.
Interior of the building, showing splayed window in eastern gable, recess in interior of south wall, vaulted roof, etc.]
[Illustration: Fig.
9.
Exposed section of the arch of the vault.]
The arch or vault of the roof has one peculiarity, perhaps worthy of notice (and seen in the preceding woodcut, Fig.
9).
The central keystone of the arch has the form of a triangular wedge, or of the letter V, a type seen in other rude and primitive arches.
Interiorly, a similar keystone line appears to run along the length of the vault, but not always perfectly straight; and the whole figure of the arch distinctly affects the pointed form.
Several years ago I first saw the building which I have described when visiting Inchcolm with Captain Thomas, Dr. Daniel Wilson, and some other friends, and its peculiar antique character and strong rude masonry struck all of us, for it seemed different in type from any of the other buildings around it.
Last year I had an opportunity of visiting several of the oldest remaining Irish churches and oratories at Glendalough, Killaloe, Clonmacnoise, and elsewhere, and the features of some of them strongly recalled to my recollection the peculiarities of the old building in Inchcolm, and left on my mind a strong desire to re-inspect it.
Later in the year Mr. Fraser and I visited Inchcolm in company with our greatest Scottish authority on such an ecclesiological question--Mr. Joseph Robertson.
That visit confirmed us in the idea, first, that the small building in question was of a much more ancient type than any portion of the neighbouring monastery; and, secondly, that in form and construction it presented the principal architectural characters of the earliest and oldest Irish churches and oratories.
More lately I had an opportunity of showing the various original sketches which Mr. Drummond had made for me of the building to the highest living authority on every question connected with early Irish and Scoto-Irish ecclesiastical architecture--namely, Dr. Petrie of Dublin; and before asking anything as to its site, etc., he at once pronounced the building to be "a Columbian cell."
The tradition, as told to our party by the cicerone on the island on my first visit, was, that this neglected outbuilding was the place in which "King Alexander lived for three days with the hermit of Inchcolm."
There was nothing in the rude architecture and general character of the building to gainsay such a tradition, but the reverse; and, on the contrary, when we turn to the notice of a visit of Alexander I. to the island in 1123, as given by our earliest Scotch historians, their account of the little chapel or oratory which he found there perfectly applies to the building which I have been describing.
In order to prove this, let me quote the history of Alexander's visit from the _Scotichronicon_ of Fordun and Bower, the _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, and the _Scotorum Historia_ of Hector Boece.
[55] The _Scotichronicon_ contains the following account of King Alexander's adventure and temporary sojourn in Inchcolm:-"About the year of our Lord 1123, under circumstances not less wonderful than miraculous, a monastery was founded on the island Aemonia, near Inverkeithing.
For when the noble and most Christian Sovereign Alexander, first of this name, was, in pursuit of some state business, making a passage across the Queensferry, suddenly a tremendous storm arose, and the fierce south-west wind forced the vessel and sailors to make, for safety's sake, for the island of Aemonia, where at that time lived an island hermit (_eremita insulanus_), who, belonging to the service of St. Columba, devoted himself sedulously to his duties at a certain little chapel there (_ad quandam inibi capellulam_), content with such poor food as the milk of one cow and the shell and small sea fishes which he could collect.
On the hermit's slender stores the king and his suite of companions, detained by the storm, gratefully lived for three consecutive days.
But on the day before landing, when in very great danger from the sea, and tossed by the fury of the tempest, the king despaired of life, he vowed to the Saint, that if he should bring him and his companions safe to the island, he would leave on it such a memorial to his honour as would render it a future asylum and refuge to sailors and those that were shipwrecked.
Therefore, it was decided on this occasion that he should found there a monastery of prebendaries, such as now exists; and this the more so, as he had always venerated St. Columba with special honour from his youth; and chiefly because his own parents were for several years childless and destitute of the solace of offspring, until, beseeching St. Columba with suppliant devotion, they gloriously obtained what they sought for so long a time with anxious desire.
Hence the origin of the verse-'M.C, ter, I. bis, et X literis à tempore Christi, Aemon, tunc ab Alexandro fundata fuisti Scotorum primo.
Structorem Canonicorum Transferat ex imo Deus hunc ad alta polorum.
'"[56] The preceding account of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm, and his founding of the monastery there, occurs in the course of the fifth book (lib.
v. cap.
37) of the _Scotichronicon_, without its being marked whether the passage itself exists in the original five books of Fordun, or in one of the additions made to them by the Abbot Walter Bower.
[57] The first of these writers, John of Fordun, lived, it will be recollected, in the reigns of Robert II.
and III., and wrote about 1380; while Walter Bower, the principal continuator of Fordun's history, was Abbot of Inchcolm from 1418 to the date of his death in 1449.
In the work known under the title of _Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie_,[58] there is an account of Alexander's fortuitous visit to Inchcolm, exactly similar to the above, but in an abridged form.
Mr. Tytler, in his _History of Scotland_,[59] supposes the _Extracta_ to have been written posterior to the time of Fordun, and prior to the date of Bower's _Continuation of the Scotichronicon_,--a conjecture which one or more passages in the work entirely disprove.
[60] If the opinion of Mr. Tytler had been correct, it would have been important as a proof that the story of the royal adventure of Alexander upon Inchcolm was written by Fordun, and not by Bower, inasmuch as the two accounts in the _Scotichronicon_ and in the _Extracta_ are on this, as on most other points, very similar, the _Extracta_ being merely somewhat curtailed.
As evidence of this remark, let me here cite the original words of the _Extracta_:-"Emonia insula seu monasterium, nunc Sancti Columbe de Emonia, per dictum regem fundatur circa annum Domini millesimum vigesimum quartum miraculose.
Nam cum idem nobilis rex transitum faciens per Passagium Regine, exorta tempestas valida, flante Africo, ratem cum naucleris, vix vita comite, compulit applicare ad insulam Emoniam, ubi tunc degebat quidam heremita insulanus, qui seruicio Sancti Columbe deditus, ad quamdam inibi capellulam tenui victu, utpote lacte vnius vacce et conchis ac pisiculis marinis contentatus, sedule se dedit, de quibus cibariis rex cum suis, tribus diebus, vento compellente, reficitur.
Et quia Sanctum Columbam a juventute dilexit, in periculo maris, ut predicitur, positus, vouit se, si ad prefatam insulam veheretur incolumis, aliquid memoria dignum ibidem facere, et sic monasterium ibidem construxit canonicorum, et dotauit.
"[61] I shall content myself with citing from our older Scottish historians one more account of Alexander's adventure upon Inchcolm--namely, that given by Hector Boece, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, in his _Scotorum Historia_, a work written during the reign of James V., and first published in 1526.
In this work, after alluding to the foundation of the Abbey of Scone, Boece proceeds to state that--(to quote the translation of the passage as given by Bellenden)--"Nocht long efter King Alexander come in Sanct Colmes Inche; quhair he was constrainit, be violent tempest, to remane thre dayis, sustenand his life with skars fude, be ane heremit that dwelt in the said inche: in quhilk, he had ane litill chapell, dedicat in the honoure of Sanct Colme.
Finaly, King Alexander, becaus his life was saiffit be this heremit, biggit ane Abbay of Chanonis regular, in the honour of Sanct Colme; and dotat it with sindry landes and rentis, to sustene the abbot and convent thairof.
"[62] As Bellenden's translation of Boece's work does not in this and other parts adhere by any means strictly to the author's original context, I will add the account given by Boece in that historian's own words:[63] "Nec ita multo post Fortheæ rex æstuarium trajiciens, coorta tempestate in Emoniam insulam appulsus descendit, repertoque Divi Columbæ _saccllo_, viroque Eremita, triduo tempestatis vi permanere illic coactus est, exiguo sustentatus cibo, quem apud Eremitam quendam sacelli custodem reperiebat, nec tamen comitantium multitudini ulla ex parte sufficiente.
Itaque eo periculo defunctus Divo Columbæ ædem vovit.
Nec diu voto damnatus fuit, coenobio paulo post Regularium, ordinis Divi Augustini extructo, agrisque atque redditibus ad sumptus eorum collatis."
That the very small and antique-looking edifice which I have described as still standing on Inchcolm is identically the little chapel or cell spoken of by Fordun and Boece as existing on the island at the time of Alexander's visit to it, upwards of seven centuries ago, is a matter admitting of great probability, but not of perfect legal proof.
One or two irrecoverable links are wanting in the chain of evidence to make that proof complete; and more particularly do we lack for this purpose any distinct allusions or notices among our mediæval annalists, of the existence or character of the building during these intervening seven centuries, except, indeed, we consider the notice of it which I have cited from the _Scotichronicon_ "_ad quandam inibi capellulam_," to be written by the hand of Walter Bower, and to have a reference to the little chapel as it existed and stood about the year 1430, when Bower wrote his additions to Fordun, while living and ruling on Inchcolm as Abbot of its Monastery.
But various circumstances render it highly probable that the old stone-roofed cell still standing on the island is the ancient chapel or oratory in which the island hermit (_eremita insulanus_) lived and worshipped at the time of Alexander's royal but compulsory visit in 1123.
I have already adduced in favour of this belief the very doubtful and imperfect evidence of tradition, and the fact that this little building itself is, in its whole architectural style and character, evidently far more rude, primitive, and ancient, than any of the extensive monastic structures existing on the island, and that have been erected from the time of Alexander downwards.
In support of the same view there are other and still more valuable pieces of corroborative proof, which perhaps I may be here excused from now dwelling upon with a little more fullness and detail.
The existing half-ruinous cell answers, I would first venture to remark--and answers most fitly and perfectly--to the two characteristic appellations used respectively in the _Scotichronicon_ and in the _Historiæ Scotorum_, to designate the cell or oratory of the Inchcolm anchorite at the time of King Alexander's three days' sojourn on the island.
These two appellations we have already found in the preceding quotations to be _capellula_ and _sacellum_.
As applied to the small, rude, vaulted edifice to which I have endeavoured to draw the attention of the Society, both terms are strikingly significant.
The word used by Fordun or Bower in the _Scotichronicon_ to designate the oratory of the Inchcolm anchorite, namely "capellula," or little chapel, is very descriptive of a diminutive church or oratory, but at the same time very rare.
Du Cange, in his learned glossary, only adduces one example of its employment.
It occurs in the testament of Guido, Bishop of Auxerrè, in the thirteenth century (1270), who directs that "oratorium seu _capellulam_ super sepulchrum dicti Robini construent."
This passage further proves the similar signification of the two names of oratorium and capellula.
The other appellation "sacellum," applied by Boece to the hermit's chapel, is a better known and more classical word than the capellula of the _Scotichronicon_.
It is, as is well known, a diminutive from sacer, as tenellus is from tener, macellus from macer, etc.
; and Cicero himself has left us a complete definition of the word, for he has described "sacellum" as "locus parvus deo sacratus cum ara.
"[64] Again, in favour of the view that the existing building on Inchcolm is the actual chapel or oratory in which the insular anchorite lived and worshipped there in the twelfth century, it may be further argued, that, where they were not constructed of perishable materials, it was in consonance with the practice of these early times to preserve carefully houses and buildings of religious note, as hallowed relics.
Most of the old oratories and houses raised by the early Irish and Scottish saints were undoubtedly built of wattles, wood, or clay, and other perishable materials, and of necessity were soon lost.
[65] But when of a more solid and permanent construction, they were sometimes sedulously preserved, and piously and punctually visited for long centuries as holy shrines.
There still exist in Ireland various stone oratories of early Irish saints to which this remark applies--as, for example, that of St. Kevin at Glendalough, of St. Columba at Kells, those of St. Molua and St. Flannan at Killaloe, of St. Benan on Aranmore, St. Ceannanach on Inishmaan, etc.
etc.
Let us take the first two examples which I have named, to illustrate more fully my remark.
St. Kevin died at an extreme old age, in the year 618; and St. Columba died a few years earlier, namely in the year 597.
When speaking of the two houses at Glendalough and Kells, respectively bearing the names of these two early Irish saints, Dr. Petrie--and I certainly could not quote either a higher or a more cautious antiquarian authority--observes, "I think we have every reason to believe that the buildings called St. Columba's House at Kells, and St. Kevin's House at Glendalough, buildings so closely resembling each other in every respect, were erected by the persons whose names they bear.
"[66] If Dr. Petrie's idea be correct, and he repeats it elsewhere,[67] then these houses were constructed about the end of the sixth century, and their preservation for so long an intervening period was no doubt in a great measure the result of their being looked upon, protected, and visited, as spots hallowed by having been the earthly dwellings of such esteemed saints.
In the great work on _The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, which I have just quoted--a work, let me add, overflowing with the richest and ripest antiquarian lore, and yet written with all the fascination of a romance--Dr. Petrie, after describing the two houses I speak of, St. Kevin's and St. Columba's, farther states his belief that both of these buildings "served the double purpose of a habitation and an oratory.
"[70] They were, in this view, the residences, as well as the chapels, of their original inhabitants; and subsequently the house of St. Kevin at Glendalough, of St. Flannan at Killaloe, etc., were publicly used as chapels or churches.
[71] In all probability the _capellula_ of the hermit on Inchcolm was, in the same way, at once both the habitation and the oratory of this solitary anchorite, and apparently the only building on the island when Alexander was tossed upon its shores.
The sacred character of the humble cell, as the dwelling and oratory of a holy Columbite hermit, and possibly also the interest attached to it as an edifice which had afforded for three days such welcome and grateful shelter to King Alexander and his suite, would in all probability--judging from the numerous analogies which we might trace elsewhere--led to its preservation, and perhaps its repair and restoration, when, a few years afterwards, the monastery rose in its immediate neighbourhood, in pious fulfilment of the royal vow.
[72] Indeed, that the holy cell or chapel of the Inchcolm anchorite would, under the circumstances in question, be carefully saved and preserved by King Alexander I., is a step which we would specially expect, from all that we know of the religious character of that prince, and his peculiar love for sacred buildings and the relics of saints.
For, according to Fordun, Alexander "vir literatus et pius" "erat in construendis ecclesiis, et reliquis Sanctorum perquirendis, in vestibus sacerdotalibus librisque sacris conficiendis et ordinandis, studiosissimus."
For the antiquity of the Inchcolm cell there yet remains an additional argument, and perhaps the strongest of all.
I have already stated that, in its whole architectural type and features, the cell or oratory is manifestly older, and more rude and primitive, than any of the diverse monastic buildings erected on the island from the twelfth century downwards.
But more, the Inchcolm cell or oratory corresponds in all its leading architectural features and specialities with the cells, oratories, or small chapels, raised from the sixth and eighth, down to the tenth and twelfth centuries, in different parts of Ireland, and in some districts in Scotland, by the early Irish ecclesiastics, and their Irish or Scoto-Irish disciples and followers, of these distant times and dates.
It is now acknowledged on all sides, that, though not the first preachers of Christianity in Scotland,[73] the Irish were at least by far the most active and the most influential of our early missionaries; and truly a new epoch began in Scottish history when, in the year 563, St. Columba, "pro Christo peregrinari volens," embarked, with his twelve companions, and sailing across from Ireland to the west coast of Scotland, founded the monastery of Iona.
It is certainly to St. Columba and his numerous disciples and followers that the spread of Christianity in this country, during the succeeding two or three centuries, is principally due.
At the same time we must not forget that numerous other Irish saints in these early times engaged in missionary visits to Scotland, and founded churches there, which still bear their names, as (to quote part of the enumeration of Dr. Reeves) St. Finbar, St. Comgall, St. Blaan, St. Brendan, the two St. Fillans, St. Ronan, St. Flannan, St. Beranch, St. Catan, St. Merinus, St. Mernoc, St. Molaise, St. Munna, St. Vigean, etc.
[74] Along with their Christian doctrines and teachings these Irish ecclesiastics brought over to Scotland their peculiar religious habits and customs, and, amongst other things, imported into this country their architectural knowledge and practices with regard to sacred and monastic buildings.
In the western parts of Scotland, more particularly, numerous ecclesiastical structures were raised similar to those which were peculiar to Ireland; and various material vestiges of these still exist.
[75] In the eastern parts of Scotland, to which the personal teaching of the Irish missionaries speedily spread, we have still remaining two undoubted examples of the repetition in this country of Irish ecclesiastical architecture in the well-known Round Towers of Abernethy and Brechin, and perhaps we have a third example in the stone-roofed oratory of Inchcolm.
Various ancient stone oratories still exist in a more or less perfect condition in different parts of Ireland, sometimes standing by themselves, sometimes with the remains of a round beehive-shaped cell or dwelling near them, and sometimes forming one of a group of churches, or of a series of monastic buildings.
Such, for example, are the small chapels or oratories of St. Gobnet, St. Benen, and St. MacDuach, in the Isles of Aran,[76] of St. Senan on Bishop's Island, of St. Molua on Friar's Island, Killaloe, the Leabha Mollayga near Mitchelstown, in the County Cork, and probably the so-called dormitory of St. Declan at Ardmore.
Among the old sacred buildings of Ireland we find, in fact, two kinds or classes of churches, the "ecclesiæ majores" and "minores," if we may call them so, and principally distinguished from each other by their comparative length or size.
It appears both from the remains of the first class which still exist, and from the incidental notices which occur of their erection, measurements, etc., in the ancient annals and hagiology of Ireland, that the larger abbey or cathedral churches of that country, whose date of foundation is anterior to the twelfth century, were oblong quadrangular buildings, which rarely, if ever, exceeded the length of 60 feet, and were sometimes less.
In the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, he is described as prescribing 60 feet as the length of the church of Donagh Patrick.
[77] This "was also," says Dr. Petrie, "the measure of the other celebrated chapels erected by him throughout Ireland, and imitated as a model by his successors.
"[78] "Indeed," he further observes, "that the Irish, who have been ever remarkable for a tenacious adherence to their ancient customs, should preserve with religious veneration that form and size of the primitive church introduced by the first teachers of Christianity, is only what might be naturally expected, and what we find to have been the fact.
We see," Dr. Petrie adds, "the result of this feeling exhibited very remarkably in the conservation, down to a late period, of the humblest and rudest _oratories_ of the first ecclesiastics in all those localities where Irish manners and customs remained, and where such edifices, too small for the services of religion, would not have been deemed worthy of conservation, but from such feeling.
"[79] The second or lesser type of the early Irish churches, or, in other words, of the humble and rude oratories to which Dr. Petrie refers in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, were of a similar form, but of a much smaller size than the larger or abbey churches.
[80] We have ample and accurate evidence of this, both in the oratories which still remain, and in a fragment of the Brehon laws, referring to the different payments which ecclesiastical artificers received according as the building was--(1.)
a duirtheach or small chapel or oratory; (2.)
a large abbey church or damhliag, etc.
[81] Generally, according to Dr. Petrie, the average of the smaller type of churches or oratories may be stated to be about 15 feet in length, and 10 feet in breadth, though they show no fixed similarity in regard to size.
[82] "In the general plan," he observes, "of this class of buildings there was an equal uniformity.
They had a single doorway, always placed in the centre of the west wall,[83] and were lighted by a single window placed in the centre of the east wall, and a stone altar usually, perhaps always, placed beneath this window.
"[84] In these leading architectural features (with an exception to which I shall immediately advert), the Inchcolm cell or oratory corresponds to the ancient cells or oratories existing in Ireland, and presents the same ancient style of masonry--the same splaying internally of the window which is so common in the ancient Irish churches, both large and small--and the same configuration of doorway which is seen in many of them, the opening forming it being narrower at the top than at the bottom.
[Illustration: Fig.
10.
St. Senan's Oratory on Bishop's Island.]
In the Inchcolm oratory there is one exception, as I have just stated, to the general type and features of the ancient Irish oratory.
I allude to the position of the door, which is placed in the south side of the Inchcolm cell, instead of being placed, as usual, in the western gable of the building.
But this position of the door in the south wall is not without example in ancient Irish oratories that still exist.
[85] The door occupies in this respect the same position in the Inchcolm oratory as in an oratory on Bishop's Island upon the coast of Clare, the erection of which is traditionally ascribed to St. Senan, who lived in the sixth century.
This oratory of St. Senan (says Mr. Wakeman) "measures 18 feet by 12; the walls are in thickness 2 feet 7 inches.
The doorway, which occupies an unusual position in the south side, immediately adjoining the west end wall, is 6 feet in height, and 1 foot 10 inches wide at the top, 2 feet 4 inches at the bottom.
The east window splays externally, and in this respect is probably unique in Ireland.
"[86][87] These peculiarities are shown in the accompanying woodcut, Fig.
10, taken from Mr. Wakeman's _Handbook of Irish Antiquities_.
The Irish ecclesiastics did not scruple to deviate from the established plans of their sacred buildings, when the necessities of individual cases required it.
In the Firth of Forth west winds are the most prevalent of all; and sometimes the western blast is still as fierce and long continued as when of old it drove King Alexander on the shores of Inchcolm.
The hermit's cell or oratory is placed on perhaps the most protected spot on the island; and yet it would have been scarcely habitable with an open window exposing its interior to the east, and with a door placed directly opposite it in the western gable.
It has been rendered, however, much more fit for a human abode by the door being situated in the south wall; and the more so, because the ledge of rock against which the south-west corner of the building abuts, protects in a great degree this south door from the direct effects of the western storm.
The building itself is narrower than the generality of the Irish oratories, but this was perhaps necessitated by another circumstance, for its breadth was probably determined by the immovable basaltic blocks lying on either side of it.
The head of the doorway in the Inchcolm oratory is, as pointed out in a preceding page, peculiar in this respect, that externally it is constructed on the principle of the radiating arch, whilst internally it is built on the principle of the horizontal arch.
But in other early Irish ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland, as well as in Ireland, the external and internal aspect of the doorway is sometimes thus constructed on opposite principles.
In the round tower, for example, of Abernethy, the head of the doorway externally is formed of a large single stone laid horizontally, and having a semicircular opening cut out of the lower side of the horizontal block; while the head of the doorway internally is constructed of separate stones on the plan of the radiating arch.
One striking circumstance in the Inchcolm oratory--viz., its vaulted or arched roof, has been already sufficiently described; and, in describing it, I have stated that the arch is of a pointed form.
In many of the ancient Irish oratories the roof was of wood, and covered with rushes or shingles; and most of them had their walls even constructed of wood or oak, as the term _duir-theach_ originally signifies.
But apparently, though the generic name duir-theach still continued to be applied to them, some of them were constructed, from a very early period, entirely of stone; and of these the roofs were occasionally formed of the same material as the walls, and arched or vaulted, as in the Inchcolm oratory.
In speaking of the construction of the primitive larger churches of Ireland, Dr. Petrie states, that their "roof appears to have been constructed generally of wood, even where their walls were of stone;" while in the oratories or primitive smaller stone churches, "the roofs (says he) generally appear to have been constructed of stone, their sides forming at the ridge a very acute angle.
"[88] The selection of the special materials of which both walls and roof were composed, was no doubt, in many cases, regulated and determined by the comparative facility or difficulty with which these materials were obtained.
At no time, perhaps, did timber exist on Inchcolm that could have been used in constructing such a building; whilst plenty of stones fit for the purpose abounded on the island, and there was abundance of lime on the neighbouring shore.
Stone-roofed oratories of a more complex and elaborate architectural character than that of Inchcolm still exist in Ireland, and of a supposed very early date.
We have already found, for instance, Dr. Petrie stating that "we have every reason to believe" that the stone-roofed oratories known as St. Kevin's House at Glendalough, and St. Columba's House at Kells, "were erected by the persons whose names they bear,"[89] and consequently that they are as old as the sixth century.
These two oratories, are, as it were, two storeyed buildings; for each consists of a lower and larger stone-arched or vaulted chamber below, and of another higher and smaller stone-arched or vaulted chamber or over-croft above.
The old small stone-roofed church still standing at Killaloe, and the erection of which Dr. Petrie is[90] inclined to ascribe to St. Flannan in the seventh century[91] presents also in its structure this type of double stone-vault or arch, as shown in the following section of it by Mr.
Fergusson.
[92] When treating of the early Irish oratories, Mr. Fergusson observes, "One of the peculiarities of these churches is, that they were nearly all designed to have stone roofs, no wood being used in their construction.
The section (Fig.
11) of the old church at Killaloe, belonging probably to the tenth century, will explain how this was generally managed.
The nave was roofed with a tunnel-vault with a pointed one over it, on which the roofing slabs were laid."
Mr. Fergusson adduces Cormac's Chapel on the Rock of Cashel, St. Kevin's House or Kitchen at Glendalough, which he thinks "may belong to the seventh century;" and St. Columba's House at Kells, "and several others in various parts of Ireland, as all displaying the same peculiarity" in the stone roofing.
[Illustration: Fig.
11.
Section of St. Flannan's Church at Killaloe.]
[Illustration: Fig.
12.
Section of the Church of Killaghy.]
Like some oratories and churches in Ireland, more simple and primitive than those just alluded to, the building on Inchcolm is an edifice consisting of a single vaulted chamber, analogous in form to the over-croft of the larger oratories or minor churches.
The accompanying section of the old and small stone-roofed church of Killaghy, at the village of Cloghereen, near Killarney, is the result of an accurate examination of that building by Mr.
Brash of Cork.
Its stones look better dressed and more equal in size, but otherwise it is so exactly a section of the Inchcolm oratory, that it might well be regarded as a plan of it, intended to display the figure and mode of construction of its walls and stone roof, formed as that roof is of three layers--viz., 1.
The layer consisting of the proper stones of the arch of the cell interiorly; 2.
The layer of outer roofing stones placed exteriorly; and 3.
The intermediate layer of lime, and grit or small stones, cementing and binding together these other two courses.
[93] It was once suggested to me as an argument against the Irish architectural character and antiquity of the Inchcolm oratory, that its vault or arch was slightly but distinctly pointed, and that pointed arches did not become an architectural feature in ecclesiastical buildings before the latter half of the twelfth century.
But if there existed any truth in this objection, it would equally disprove the early character and antiquity of those ecclesiastical buildings at Killaloe, Glendalough, and Kells, in which the arch of the over-croft is of the same pointed form.
The over-croft in King Cormac's Chapel at Cashel shows also a similar pointed vault or arch; and no one now ventures to challenge it as an established fact in ecclesiological history, that this edifice was consecrated in 1134, or at a date anterior to the introduction[94] of Gothic church architecture or pointed arches in sacred buildings in England.
[95] In truth, the pointed form of arched vault was sometimes used by Irish ecclesiastics structurally, and for the sake of more simply and easily sustaining the stone roof, long before that arch became the distinctive mark of any architectural style.
Indeed, in the very oldest existing Irish oratory--viz.
that of Gallerus, which is generally reckoned[96] as early as, if not earlier than, the time of St. Patrick, or about the fifth century--the stone roof, though constructed on the principle of the horizontal arch, is of the pointed form.
The whole section of the oratory of Gallerus is that of a pointed arch commencing directly at the ground line.
[97] "I have," Mr.
Brash writes me, and I could not well quote a better judge or more learned ecclesiastic antiquary, "carefully examined the oratory at Inchcolm, and it is my conviction that the pointed arch supporting the stone roof does not in any wise whatever militate against its antiquity, particularly when taking it in connection with the extreme rudeness and simplicity of the rest of the structure, and the total absence of any pointed form in either door or window.
"[98] Let me add one word more as to the probable or possible age of the capellula on Inchcolm.
Granting, for a moment, that the building on Inchcolm is the small chapel existing on the island when visited by King Alexander in 1123, have we any reason to suppose the structure to be one of a still earlier date?
Inchcolm was apparently a favourite place of sepulture up, indeed, to comparatively late times; and may possibly have been so in old Pagan times, and previously to the introduction of Christianity into Scotland.
The soil of the fields to the west of the monastery is, when turned over, found still full of fragments of human bones.
Allan de Mortimer, Lord of Aberdour, gave to the Abbey of Inchcolm a moiety of the lands of his town of Aberdour for leave of burial in the church of the monastery.
[100] In Scottish history various allusions occur with regard to persons of note, and especially the ecclesiastics of Dunkeld, being carried for sepulture to Inchcolm.
[101] The Danish chiefs who, after the invasion of Fife, were buried in the cemetery of Inchcolm, were, as we have already found, interred there in the seventh or last year of King Duncan's reign, or in 1039, nearly a century before the date of Alexander's visit to the island.
But if there was, a century before Alexander's visit, a place of burial on the island, there was almost certainly also this or some other chapel attached to the place, as a Christian cemetery had in these early times always a Christian chapel or church of some form attached to it.
The style and architecture of the building is apparently, as I have already stated, as old, or even older than this; or, at all events, it corresponds in[102] its features to Irish houses and oratories that are regarded as having been built two or three centuries before the date even of the of the Danes in the island.
The manuscript copy of the _Scotichronicon_, which belonged to the Abbey of Cupar, and which, like the other old manuscripts of the _Scotichronicon_, was written before the end of the fifteenth century,[103] describes Inchcolm as the temporary abode of St. Columba himself,[104] when he was engaged as a missionary among the Scots and Picts.
In enumerating the islands of the Firth of Forth, Inchcolm is mentioned in the Cupar manuscript as "alia insuper insula ad occidens distans ab Inchcketh, quæ vocatur Æmonia, inter Edinburch et Inverkethyn; _quam quondam incoluit, dum Pictis et Scotis fidem prædicavit, Sanctus Columba Abbas_.
"[105] We do not know upon what foundation, if any, this statement is based; but it is very evidently an allegation upon which no great assurance can be placed.
Nor, in alluding to this statement here, have I any intention of arguing that this cell might even have served St. Columba both as a house and oratory, such as the house of the Saint still standing at Kells is believed by Dr. Petrie to have possibly been.
The nameless religious recluse whom Alexander found residing on Inchcolm is described by Fordun and Boece as leading there the life of a hermit (_Eremita_), though a follower of the order or rule of Saint Columba.
The ecclesiastical writers of these early times not unfrequently refer to such self-denying and secluded anchorites.
The Irish Annals are full of their obits.
Thus, for example, under the single year 898, the Four Masters[106] record the death of, at least, four who had passed longer or shorter periods of their lives as hermits, namely, "Suairleach, anchorite and Bishop of Treoit;" "Cosgrach, who was called Truaghan [the meagre], anchorite of Inis-Cealtra;" "Tuathal, anchorite;" "Ceallach, anchorite and Bishop of Ard-Macha;"--and probably we have the obit of a fifth entered in this same year under the designation of "Caenchomhrac of the Caves of Inis-bo-fine," as these early ascetics sometimes betook themselves to caves, natural or artificial, using them for their houses and oratories.
[107] Various early English authors also allude to the habitations and lives of different anchorites belonging to our own country.
Thus the venerable Bede--living himself as a monk in the Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, in the early part of the eighth century--refers by name to several, as to Hemgils, who, as a religious solitary (_solitarius_), passed the latter portion of his life sustained by coarse bread and cold water; and to Wicbert,[108] who, "multos annos in Hibernia peregrinus anchoreticam in magna perfectione vitam egerat.
"[109] Reginald of Durham has left a work on the life, penances, medical and other miracles, of the celebrated St. Godric, who, during the twelfth century, lived for about forty years as an anchorite in the hermitage of Finchale, on the river Weir, near Durham.
[110] The same author speaks of, as contemporary holy hermits, St. Elric of Walsingham, and an anchorite at Yareshale, on the Derwent.
[111][112] A succession of hermits occupied a cell near Norham.
[113] Small islands appear to have been specially selected by the early anchorets for their heremitical retreats.
Hereberct, the friend of St. Cuthbert, lived, according to Bede, an anchoret life upon one of the islands in the lake of Derwentwater; and St. Cuthbert himself, Ethelwald, and Felgeld, when they aspired to the rank of anchoretish perfection (gradum anchoreticæ sublimitatis), successively betook themselves for this purpose to Farne, on the coast of Northumberland, a small isle about eight or nine miles south of Lindisfarne.
[114] Among other anchorets who subsequently lived on Farne, Reginald incidentally mentions Aelric, Bartholomew, and Aelwin.
[115] On Coquet Island, lying also off the Northumbrian coast, St. Henry the Dane led the life of a religious hermit, and died about the year 1120.
[116] Inchcolm is not the only island in the Firth of Forth which is hallowed by the reputation of having been the residence of anchorets, seeking for scenes in which they might practise uninterrupted devotion.
Thus, St. Baldred or Balther lived for some time, during the course of the seventh century, as a religious recluse, upon the rugged and precipitous island of the Bass, as stated by Boece, Leslie, Dempster,[117] etc., and, as we know with more certainty from a poem written--upwards now of one thousand years ago--by a native of this country, the celebrated Alcuin.
[118] The followers of the order of St. Columba who desired to follow a more ascetic life than that which the society of his religious houses and monasteries afforded to its ordinary members, sometimes withdrew (observes Dr. Reeves[120]) to a solitary place in the neighbourhood of the monastery, where they enjoyed undisturbed meditation, without breaking the fraternal bond.
Such, in 634, was Beccan, the "solitarius," as he is designated in Cummian's contemporary Paschal letter to Segene, the Abbot of Iona; and such was Finan, the hermit of Darrow, in the words of Adamnan, "vitam multis anchoreticam annis irreprehensibiliter ducebat."
According to the evidence of the Four Masters, an anchorite held the Abbacy of Iona in 747; another anchorite was Abbot-elect in 935; and a third was made Bishop in 964[121] "The abode of such anchorites was (adds Dr. Reeves) called in Irish a 'desert' (Dysart), from the Latin _desertum_; and as the heremitical life was held in such honour among the Scotic Churches, we frequently find this word 'desert' an element in religious nomenclature.
There was a 'desert' beside the monastery of Derry; and that belonging to Iona was situate near the shore, in the low ground north of the Cathedral, as may be inferred from Port-an-diseart, the name of a little bay in this situation."
The charters of the Columbian House at Kells show that a "desert" existed in connection with that institution.
Could the old building or capellula on Inchcolm have served as a "desert" to the Monastery there?
[122] The preceding remarks have spun out to a most unexpected extent; and I have to apologise both for their extravagant length and rambling character.
At the same time, however, I believe that it would be considered an object of no small interest if it could be shown to be at all probable that we had still near us a specimen, however rude and ruinous, of early Scoto-Irish architecture.
All authorities now acknowledge the great influence which, from the sixth to the eleventh or twelfth century, the Irish Church and Irish clergy exercised over the conversion and civilisation of Scotland.
But on the eastern side of the kingdom we have no known remains of Scoto-Irish ecclesiastical architecture except the beautiful and perfect Round Tower of Brechin,[123] and the ruder and probably older Round Tower of Abernethy.
If, to these two instances, we dare to conjoin a specimen of a house or oratory of the same Scoto-Irish style, and of the same ancient period, such as the Oratory on Inchcolm seems to me probably to be, we would have in such a specimen an addition of some moment to this limited and meagre list.
Besides, it would surely not be uninteresting could we feel certain that we have still standing, within eight or ten miles of Edinburgh, a building whose roof had covered the head of King Alexander I., though it covered it for three days only; for that very circumstance would at the same time go far to establish another fact, namely, that any such building might claim to be now the oldest roofed stone habitation in Scotland.
[127] [Illustration: Fig.
13.
Oratory on Inchcolm, as lately repaired by the Earl of Moray.]
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 16: From the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol.
ii.
part iii.]
[Footnote 17: These contributions by the "Abbas Aemoniæ Insulæ" are alluded to by Boece, who wrote nearly a century afterwards, as one of the works upon which he founded his own _Scotorum Historiæ_.--(See his _Praefatio_, p. 2; and Innes' _Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland_, vol.
i., pp.
218 and 228.)
Bower, in a versified colophon, claims the merit of having completed eleven out of the sixteen books composing the _Scotichronicon_ lib.
xvi.
cap.
39:-"Quinque libros Fordun, undenos auctor arabat, Sic tibi clarescit sunt sedecim numero, Ergo pro precibus, petimus te, lector eorum," etc.]
[Footnote 18: See _Scotichronicon_, lib.
xiii.
cap.
34 and 37; lib.
xiv.
cap.
38, etc.
In 1547 the Duke of Somerset, after the battle of Pinkie, seized upon Inchcolm as a post commanding "vtterly ye whole vse of the Fryth it self, with all the hauens uppon it," and sent as "elect Abbot, by God's sufferance, of the monastery of Sainct Coomes Ins, Sir Jhon Luttrell, knight, with C. hakbutters and l. pioners, to kepe his house and land thear, and ii.
rowe barkes, well furnished with municion, and lxx.
mariners to kepe his waters, whereby (naively remarks Patten) it is thought he shall soon becum a prelate of great power.
The perfytnes of his religion is not alwaies to tarry at home, but sumetime to rowe out abrode a visitacion; and when he goithe, I haue hard say he taketh alweyes his sumners in barke with hym, which ar very open mouthed, and neuer talk but they are harde a mile of, so that either for loove of his blessynges, or feare of his cursinges, he is lyke to be soouveraigne ouer most of his neighbours."
--(See Patten's _Account of the late Expedition in Scotlande_, dating "out of the parsonage of S. Mary Hill, London," in Sir John Dalyell's _Fragments of Scottish History_, pp.
79 and 81.)
In Abbot Bower's time, the island seems to have been provided with some means of defence against these English attacks; for, in the _Scotichronicon_, in incidentally speaking of the return of the Abbot and his canons in October 1421 from the mainland to the island, it is stated that they dared not, in the summer and autumn, live on the island for fear of the English, for, it is added, the monastery at that time was not fortified as it is now, "non enim erant tunc, quales ut nunc, in monasterio munitiones" (lib.
xv.
cap.
38).]
[Footnote 19: Iona itself has not an air of stiller solitude.
Here, within view of the gay capital, and with half the riches of the Scotland of earlier days spread around them, the brethren might look forth from their secure retreat on that busy ambitious world, from which, though close at hand, they were effectually severed.--(Billings' _Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland_, vol.
iii.
Note on Inchcolm.)]
[Footnote 20: Alexander Campbell, in his _Journey through North Britain_ (1802), after speaking of a fort in the east part of Inchcolm having a corps of artillery stationed on it, adds, "so that in lieu of the pious orisons of holy monks, the orgies of lesser deities are celebrated here by the sons of Mars," etc., vol.
ii.
p.
69.]
[Footnote 21: See MS. Records of the Privy Council of Scotland, 23d September 1564, etc.]
[Footnote 22: Bellenden's translation of Boece's _History of Scotland_, vol.
ii.
p.
500.]
[Footnote 23: _Works_ of William Drummond, Edinburgh, 1711, p.
7.]
[Footnote 24: Bishop Lesley's _History of Scotland_, p.
42.]
[Footnote 25: See General Hutton's MSS.
in the Advocates' Library, as quoted in Billings' _Ecclesiastical Antiquities, loc.
cit._] [Footnote 26: See his Life in Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, vol.
ii.
p.
466.]
[Footnote 27: _Scotichronicon_, lib.
xv.
cap.
23.]
[Footnote 28: _Scotichronicon_, lib.
xv.
cap.
38.]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid._ lib.
xv.
cap.
48.]
[Footnote 30: Images, or statues in wood, of the founders or patrons of churches of the sixth and seventh centuries, were common in Ireland, and no doubt in the Gaelic portion of Scotland.
Some of these "images" are still preserved in islands on the west coast of Ireland.
"St. Barr's wooden image" was preserved in his church in the island of Barray.--See Martin's _Western Isles of Scotland_, pp.
92, 93.
But Macaulay, in his _History of St. Kilda_, p. 75, says, that this was an image of St. Brandan, to whom the church was consecrated.--P.]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid._ lib.
xiii.
cap.
34.
When, in 1355, the navy of King Edward came up the Forth, and "spulyeit" Whitekirk, in East Lothian, still more summary vengeance was taken upon such sacrilege.
For "trueth is (says Bellenden) ane Inglisman spulyeit all the ornamentis that was on the image of our Lady in the Quhite Kirk; and incontinent the crucifix fel doun on his head, and dang out his harnis."
--(Bellenden's _Translation of Hector Boece's Croniklis_, lib.
xv.
c. 14; vol.
ii.
p.
446.)]
[Footnote 32: _Scotichronicon_, lib.
xiii.
cap.
37.]
[Footnote 33: See George Chalmers' _Caledonia_, vol.
i. p.
320.]
[Footnote 34: "Within the bay call'd _Loch-Colmkill_, three miles further south, lies _Lough Erisort_, which hath an anchoring-place on the south and north."
--Martin, p. 4.
"The names of the churches in Lewis Isles, and the saints to whom they were dedicated, are St. _Columbkil's_, in the island of that name," etc.--_Ibid._ p. 27.
I suspect that all the churches founded by Columba bore anciently the name of Columbkill.
Bede tells that the saint bore the united name of Columbkill.--_Hist.
Ec._ v. 9; and all the churches founded by him in Ireland, or places called after him, are, I think, invariably so designated.
Thus also the lake near Mugstot, in Skye, now drained, and on the island of which the most undoubted remains of a monastic establishment of Columb's time still exist, was called Lough Columbkill, and the island Inch Columbkill.--P.]
[Footnote 35: See, for example, the notes on this passage in the editions of Steevens and Malone.]
[Footnote 36: Holinshed's _Chronicles_, vol.
v. p.
268.]
[Footnote 37: _Scotorum Historiæ_, lib.
xi.
f. 225, 251.]
[Footnote 38: See his great work on the _Sculptured Stones of Scotland_, plate cxxv.
p.
39.]
[Footnote 39: I do not believe that there is a single example of armorial bearings to be found either in Scotland or Ireland of an earlier date than the close of the twelfth century.--P.]
[Footnote 40: Bellenden's _Translation of Boece's Croniklis of Scotland_, lib.
xii.
2, vol.
ii.
p.
258.]
[Footnote 41: _Scotorum Historiæ_ (1526), lib.
xii.
p.
257.]
[Footnote 42: _History of Fife and Kinross_, p.
35.]
[Footnote 43: _A Tour in Scotland_, part ii.
p. 210.
See also Grose's _Antiquities of Scotland_ (1797), vol.
ii.
p.
135.]
[Footnote 44: I feel quite satisfied that this monumental stone is of a much earlier date than the thirteenth century, and that it is most probably a Danish or Dano-Scottish monument.--P.]
[Footnote 45: In the _Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland_, or metrical version of the History of Hector Boece, by William Stewart, lately published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, and edited by Mr. Turnbull, there is a description of the Danish monument on Inchcolm from the personal observation of the translator; and we know that this metrical translation was finished by the year 1535.
The description is interesting, not only from being in this way a personal observation, but also as showing that, at the above date, the recumbent sculptured "greit stane," mentioned in the text, was regarded as a monument of the Danish leader, and that there stood beside it a Stone Cross, which has since unfortunately disappeared.
After speaking of the burial of the Danes-Into an yle callit Emonia, Sanct Colmis hecht now callit is this da, and the great quantity of human bones still existing there, he adds in proof-As _I myself quhilk has bene thair and sene._ Ane croce of stane thair standis on ane grene, Middis the feild quhair that they la ilk one, Besyde the croce thair lyis ane greit stane; Under the stane, in middis of the plane, Their chiftane lyis quhilk in the feild was slane.
(See vol.
ii.
p. 635).
Within the last few months there has been discovered by Mr. Crichton another sculptured stone on Inchcolm.
But the character of the sculptures on it is still uncertain, as the stone is in a dark corner, the exposed portion of it forming the ceiling of the staircase of the Tower, and the remainder of the stone being built into, and buried in the wall.
The sculptures are greatly weather-worn, and the stone itself had been used in the original building of the Tower.
The Tower of St. Mary's Church, or of the so-called Cathedral at Iona, is known to have been erected early in the thirteenth century.
Mr. Huband Smith, who believes the Tower of the Cathedral in Iona, and perhaps the larger portion of the nave and aisles, to be "probably the erection of the twelfth and next succeeding century," found, in 1844, on the abacus of one of the supporting columns, the inscription "DONALDUS OBROLCHAN FECIT HOC OPUS;" and already this inscription has been broken and mutilated.--(See Ulster _Journal of Archæology_, vol.
i. p.
86.)
The obit of a person of this name, and probably of this builder, occurs, as Dr. Reeves has shown, in the _Annals of Ulster_ in 1203, and in the _Annals of the Four Masters_ in 1202; and Dr. Reeves considers the Church or Cathedral at Iona as "an edifice of the early part of the thirteenth century."
--(_Life of Columba_, pp.
411 and 416.)
But the Tower of the Church of Inchcolm is so similar in its architectural forms and details to that of Icolmkill, that it is evidently a structure nearly, if not entirely, of the same age; and the new choir (novum chorum) built to the church in 1265 (see _Scotichronicon_, lib.
x. c. 20) is apparently, as seen by its remaining masonic connections, posterior in age to the Tower upon which it abuts.
Hence we are, perhaps, fairly entitled to infer that this sculptured stone thus incidentally used in the construction of the Tower on Inchcolm, existed on the island long, at least, before the thirteenth century, as by that time it was already very weather-worn, and consequently old.
[46]] [Footnote 46: I, too, consider this church to be of the early part of the thirteenth century.
Parts of it, however, I believe to be of the twelfth century.
I allude particularly to that portion on one of the columns of which the name of the builder appears, and who, I have little doubt, was the eminent person whose death--1202--is recorded by the Annalists.
Pinkerton, vol.
ii.
p. 258, is in error in supposing any portion of the church to be of the eleventh century.
The family of the O'Brolchans were of distinguished rank in the county of Derry, and intimately connected with the churches there.
See my notices of them in the _Ordnance Memoir of the Parish of Temple More_, pp.
21, 22, 29.
It may be worthy of remark that this family of O'Brolchain, or a branch of it, appear to have been eminent, hereditarily, after the Irish usage, as architects or builders.
At the year 1029 the _Annals of Ulster_ record the death of Maolbride O'Brolchan, "_chief mason_ of Ireland."
And at the year 1097, the death of Maelbrighde _Mac-an-tsaeir_ (son of the mason) O'Brolchan.
And, lastly, we have the name of Donald O'Brolchan as the architect of the great church at Iona.
But if this Donald be the person whose death is recorded in the _Annals_ as "a noble senior" in 1202, that part of the building in which the inscription is found must be surely of the twelfth century; and the style of its architecture supports that conclusion.--P.]
[Footnote 47: Twelfth.--P.]
[Footnote 48: Square recesses or ambries of this kind are common in the most ancient Irish oratories.--P.]
[Footnote 49: The unusual breadth, 4 feet, of this doorway, is perhaps the only feature in the structure likely to excite a doubt of its early antiquity.
I cannot remember ever having seen in any very ancient church or oratory in Ireland a doorway so wide.
The widest doorway that I have met with is, I think, that of the great church at Glandelough, which is 3 feet 10 inches wide at its base.
The usual width in doorways of small churches and oratories is from 2 feet to 2 feet 10 inches.--P.]
[Footnote 50: When I first visited Inchcolm the ancient cell described in the present paper was the abode of one or two pigs; and on another occasion I found it inhabited by a cow.
In consequence of the attention of the Earl of Moray (the proprietor of the island), and his active factor, Mr. Philipps, having been directed to the subject, all such desecration has been put an end to, and the whole building has been repaired in such a way as to retard its dilapidation.
The plans required for its proper repair were kindly drawn out by my friend Mr.
Brash of Cork, a most able architect and archæologist, who had performed on various occasions previously a similar duty in reference to the restoration of old ecclesiastical buildings in the south and west of Ireland.
All these restorations preserve, as far as possible, in every respect the original characteristics of the building.
In making these restorations, several points mentioned in the text as visible in the former dilapidated state of the building, are now of course covered up, such as the section of the arch of the roof, represented in woodcut, Fig.
9, etc.
Other new points, not alluded to in the text, were cleared up and brought to light as the necessary repairs were proceeded with.
The opening in the western part of the south wall of the building was found to be the undoubted original door of the cell; and when the earth accumulated up against it externally was cleared away, there was discovered, leading from this door to the south, and in the direction of the well of the island, a built way or passage,[52] gently sloping upwards out of the cell, 4 feet in width, like the door itself, but becoming slightly wider when it reached the limit to which it has been as yet traced--viz., about 13 or 14 feet from the building.
The built sides of this passage still stand about 3 or 4 feet in height; the lime used, as cement in constructing these sides is apparently the same as that used in the construction of the walls of the cell itself; and, further, the passage has been coated over with the same dense plaster as that still seen adhering at different points to the interior of the oratory.
It is impossible to fix the original height of the walls of this passage, but probably these walls were so high at one time, near the entrance at least into the oratory, as to be there arched over; for, as stated in the text, the stones composing the outer or external arch of the doorway offer that appearance of irregular fracturing which they would necessarily show if the archway had been originally continued forward, and subsequently broken across parallel with the line or face of the south side wall.
It is perhaps not uninteresting here to add, that in Icolmkill a similar walled walk or entrance led into the small house or building of unknown antiquity, named the "Culdee's Cell."
In the old _Statistical Account_ (1795), this cell is described as "the foundation of a small circular house, upon a reclining plain.
From the door of the house a walk ascends to a small hillock, with the remains of a wall upon each side of the walk, which grows wider to the hillock."
--(_Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol.
xiv.
p.
200.)
At the old heremetical establishment of St. Fechin, on High Island, Connemara, there is "a covered passage, about 15 feet long and 3 wide," leading from the oratory to the supposed nearly circular, dome-roofed cell of the Abbot.--(Dr.
Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p.
425.)]
[Footnote 51: This window seems very ancient, and no mistake!
Compare it with the window of the oratory near Kilmalkedar, in my _Towers_, p. 184.
First edition.--P.]
[Footnote 52: This fact is, I think, very interesting and important as an evidence of the great antiquity of the building.
Such built-passages are often found in Ireland connected with small churches and oratories of the sixth and seventh centuries, but never, to my knowledge, with any of a later age.
They may, in fact, be considered as characteristic appendages, or accompanying features, to the ecclesiastical structures of those times.
There is one at Rathmichael, near Dublin, where there is the butt of a round tower.
I have seen many of them in various states of preservation, and I think all were about 4 feet both in breadth and height.
They were, however, never arched, but roofed with large flags, laid horizontally, and their upper surface level with the surrounding ground.--P.]
[Footnote 53: After this sentence Dr. Petrie adds, "Good--very good."]
[Footnote 54: This is a strong evidence in favour of the antiquity of the structure.--P.]
[Footnote 55: See other similar notices of the visit of Alexander I. to Inchcolm in Buchanan's _Rerum Scoticarum Historia_, lib.
vii.
cap.
27; Leslæus _de Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, lib.
vi.
p. 219, etc.]
[Footnote 56: Joannis de Fordun _Scotichronicon_, cum Supplementis et Continuatione Walteri Boweri Insulæ St. Columbæ Abbatis; cura Walteri Goodall (1759), vol.
i. p.
286.]
[Footnote 57: My friend Mr. David Laing, with his usual kindness, has examined, with a view to this point, several manuscripts of the _Scotichronicon_, and has found that the account in that work of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm is from the pen of Bower, and, as Mr. Laing adds in his note to me, "not the less curious and interesting on that account."
In his original portion of the History, Fordun himself merely refers to the foundation of the Monastery of Inchcolm by Alexander.]
[Footnote 58: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p.
66.]
[Footnote 59: _History of Scotland_, vol.
iii.
p.
336.]
[Footnote 60: See Mr. Turnbull's Introductory Notice to the Abbotsford Club edition of the _Extracta_, p.
xiv.]
[Footnote 61: _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_, p.
66.]
[Footnote 62: Boece's _History and Chronicles of Scotland_, translated by John Bellenden, book xii.
chap.
15, vol.
ii.
p.
294.]
[Footnote 63: _Scotorum Historiæ_, lib.
v. fol.
cclxxii.
First Paris Edition of 1526.]
[Footnote 64: _De Divinitate_, cap.
46.]
[Footnote 65: Though Roman houses, temples, and other buildings of stone and lime abounded in this country in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, yet the first Christian churches erected at Glastonbury in England, and at St. David's in Wales, were--according to the authority, at least, of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis--made of wattles.
The first Christian church which is recorded as having been erected in Scotland, namely, the _Candida Casa_, reared at Whithern, towards the beginning of the fifth century, by St. Ninian, was constructed, as mentioned in a well-known passage of Bede, of stone, forming "ecclesiam insignem ... de lapide insolito Britonibus more."
--(_Historia Ecclesiast._, lib.
iii.
cap.
4.)
According to the _Irish Annals_, the three churches first erected by Palladius, in Ireland, about the year 420, were of wood, one of them being termed House of the Romans, "Teach-na-Romhan," but not apparently from its Roman mode of building.--(See Dr. O'Donovan's _Annals of the Four Masters_, vol.
i. p.
129.)
The church of Duleck, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, which St. Patrick erected in Ireland, and the first bishop of which, St. Cianan, died in the year 490, was built of stone, as its original name of Daimhllag (stone house) signifies; and the same word, _damhliag_ or _stone house_, came subsequently to be applied as a generic term to the larger Irish churches.--(See Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p. 142, with a quotation from an old Irish poem of the names of the three masons in the household of St. Patrick, who "made damhliags first in Erin.")
When, in the year 652, Finan succeeded to the Bishopric of Lindisfarne, he built there a suitable Episcopal church, constructed of oak planks, and covered with reeds, "more Scotorum non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit, atque arundine texit."
--(Bede's _Hist.
Eccl._, lib.
iii.
cap.
25.)
When St. Cuthbert erected his anchorite retreat on the island of Farne he made it of two chambers, one an oratory, and the other for domestic purposes; and he finished the walls of these buildings by digging round and cutting away the natural soil within and without, forming the roof out of rough wood and straw, "de lignis informibus et foeno."
--(Vita S. Cuthberti, cap.
17.)
Planks or "tabulæ," also, were employed in building or reconstructing the walls of this oratory on Farne Island, as St. Ethelwald, Cuthbert's successor, finding hay and clay insufficient to fill up the openings that age made between its boards, obtained a calf's skin, and nailed it as a protection against the storms in that corner of the oratory, where, like his predecessor, he used to kneel or stand when praying.--(_Ibid._, cap.
46.)
St. Godric's first rude hermitage at Finchale, on the Wear, was made of turf (vili cespite), and afterwards of rough wood and twigs (de lignis informibus et virgulis).--(See chaps 21 and 29 of his Life by Reginald.)
On the construction, by wattles and wood, of some early Irish and Scoto-Irish monastic and saints' houses and oratories, as those of St. Wolloc, St. Columba, and St. Kevin, see Dr. Reeves' notes in his edition of the _Life of St. Columba_, pp.
106, 114, and 177.
In some districts where wood was scarce, and stone abundant and easily worked, as in the west coast of Ireland, all ecclesiastical buildings were--like the far more ancient duns and forts in these parts--made principally or entirely of stone.
But even in parts where wood was easily procured, oratories seem to have been sometimes, from an early period, built of stone.
Thus, in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, the devout virgin Crumtherim is described as living in a stone-built oratory, "in cella sive _lapideo_ inclusorio," in the vicinity of Armagh, as early as the fifth century.--(Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, p.
163.)
And, at the city of Armagh again, we have an incidental notice of a stone oratory in the eighth century; for, in the _Ulster Annals_, under the year 788, there is reported "Contentio in Ardmacae in qua jugulatur vir in hostio [ostio] Oratorii _lapidei_."--(Dr.
O'Conor's _Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores_, tom.
iv.
p.
113.)
Dr. Petrie believes that all the churches at Armagh erected by St. Patrick and his immediate successors were built of stone, as well indeed as all the early abbey and cathedral churches throughout Ireland.--(_Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p.
159.)]
[Footnote 66: The _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, anterior to the Anglo-Saxon Invasion, comprising an Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, pp.
437, 435 and 430.]
[Footnote 67: "That these buildings (St. Columb's House at Kells and St. Kevin's at Glendalough), which are so similar in most respects to each other, are of a very early antiquity, can scarcely admit of doubt; indeed, I see no reason to question their being of the times of the celebrated ecclesiastics whose names they bear."--(Dr.
Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p.
430.)
In his late edition of Adamnan's _Life of St. Columba_, Dr. Reeves, when describing the Columbite monasteries and churches founded in Ireland, speaks (p. 278) of Kells as "having become the chief seat of the Columbian monks" shortly after the commencement of the ninth century.
Among the indications of the ancient importance of the place which still remain, he enumerates the fine old Round Tower of Kells, its three ancient large sculptured crosses, the "curious oratory called St. Columbkille's House," and its great literary monument now preserved in Trinity College, Dublin--namely, the _Book of Kells_.
He quotes the old Irish _Life of St. Columba_, followed by O'Donnell, to show that it is there stated that the saint himself "marked out the city of Kells in extent as it now is, and blessed it;" but he doubts if any considerable church here was founded by Columba himself, or indeed before 804.
He grounds his doubts chiefly on the negative circumstance that there is "no mention of the place in the _Annals_ as a religious seat" till the year 804.
But the _Annals of the Four Masters_ record two years previously, or in 802, that "the church of Columcille at Céanannus (or Kells) was destroyed" (vol.
i. p. 413), referring of course to an _old_ or former church of St. Columba's there; whilst the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_ mention that two years afterwards, or in 804, "there was a new church founded in Kells in honour of St.
Colume."
--(See _Ibid._, footnote.
)[68] The learned editor of the _Annals of the Four Masters_, Professor O'Donovan, has translated and published, in the first volume of the _Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society_, an ancient poem attributed to St. Columba, and which, at all events, was certainly composed at a period when some remains of Paganism existed in Ireland.
In this production the poet makes St. Columba say, "My order is at Cennanus (Kells)," etc.
; and in his note to this allusion Dr. O'Donovan states that at Kells "St. Columbkille erected a monastery in the sixth century."
--(_Miscellany of Archæological Society_, vol.
i. p.
13.)
Some minds would trust such a question regarding the antiquity of a place more to the evidence of parchment than to the evidence of stone and lime.
The beautiful _Evangeliarium_, known as the _Book of Kells_, is mentioned by the _Four Masters_ under the year 1006 as being then the "principal relic of the western world," on account of its golden case or cover, and as having been temporarily stolen in that year from the erdomh or sacristy of the great church of Kells.
In the same ancient entry this book is spoken of as "the Great Gospel of Columcille," and whether originally belonging to Kells or not, is certainly older than the ninth century, if not indeed as old as Columba.
The corresponding _Evangeliarium_ of Durrow, placed now also in Trinity College, Dublin,--"a manuscript" (says Dr. Reeves, p. 276) "approaching, if not reaching to the Columbian age,"--is known from the inscription on the silver-mounted case which formerly belonged to it, to have been "venerable in age, and a reliquary in 916" (p. 327).
In the remarkable colophon which closes this manuscript copy of the Evangelists, St. Columba himself is professed to be the copyist or writer of it, the reader being adjured to cherish the memory "Columbæ scriptoris _qui hoc scripsi_."
In the _Ulster Annals_, under the year 904, there is the following entry regarding Kells: "Violatio Ecclesiæ Kellensis per Flannum mac Maelsechnalli contra Donchad filium suum, et alii decollati sunt circa _Oratorium_."--(Dr.
O'Conor's _Rerum Hibern.
Scriptores_, tom.
iv.
p.
243.)
Is the scene of slaughter thus specialised the Oratory or "House of St. Columb," which is still standing at Kells?
[69]] [Footnote 68: I would say yes, beyond question!
It was both oratory and house, like that of St. Cuthbert on Farne island, described in the passage quoted _ante_, p. 101, note.--P.]
[Footnote 69: St. Colume, as translated by Mageochagan or Macgeoghegan.
In the original this would be Columbkille, as in all the other Annals.--P.]
[Footnote 70: In treating of the subsequent fate of the old Irish oratories, Dr. Petrie remarks, "Such structures came in subsequent times to be used by devotees as penitentiaries, and to be generally regarded as such exclusively.
Nor is it easy to conceive localities as such better fitted, in a religious age, to excite feelings of contrition for past sins, and of expectations of forgiveness, than those which had been rendered sacred by the sanctity of those to whom they had owed their origin.
Most certain, at all events, it is, that they came to be regarded as sanctuaries the most inviolable, to which, as our annals show, the people were accustomed to fly in the hope of safety--a hope, however, which was not always realised."--(P.
358.)]
[Footnote 71: _Scotichronicon_, lib.
v. cap.
36.
Goodall's edition, vol.
i. p.
286.]
[Footnote 72: Such cells or oratories, as relics of the holy men who had been their founders, were always regarded by the Irish, like every other kind of relics, as their bells, croziers, books, etc.
etc., with the deepest sentiments of veneration, and their injury or violation--"dishonouring," as the annalists often term it--was regarded as a sacrilege of the most revolting and sinful character.
And to this pious feeling we may ascribe the singular preservation to our own times of so many of such buildings--though, indeed, in many instances, they may only retain the general form, or a portion of the walls, of the original structure--owing to the injuries inflicted by time, or, as more frequently, by foreign violence.
Thus, in the great Aran of the _Tiglach Enda_, or "House of Enda," a portion only--the east end--is of the Saint's time, the rest is some centuries later; and of St. Ciarn's oratory at Clonmacnoise--called in the _Irish Annals_ "Temple Ciaron," or "Eaglais-beag," and, sometimes, "_Temple-beg_," or "The Little Church," though the original form was carefully preserved, there was, when I first examined it, more than forty years ago, apparently no portion of its masonry that was not obviously of much later times--in parts even as late as the seventeenth century.
Our annalists record the names of Airchinneachs of this oratory from 893 to 1097.--P.]
[Footnote 73: In reference to this observation, it is scarcely necessary to refer to the teachings in Scotland of St. Kentigern of Strathclyde in the first half of the sixth century, of St. Serf of Culross in the latter, and of St. Palladius and St. Ninian in the earlier parts of the fifth century, with the more immediate converts and followers of these ancient missionaries.
In his _Demonstratio quod Christus sit Deus contra Judæos atque Gentiles_, written about the year 387, St. Chrysostom avers that "the British Islands ([Greek: Bretanikai nêsoi]), situated beyond the Mediterranean Sea, and in the very ocean itself, had felt the power of the Divine Word, churches having been found there, and altars erected."
(_Opera omnia_, vol.
i. p. 575, Paris edition of Montfaucon, 1718.)
Perhaps St. Chrysostom founded his statement upon a notice in reference to the alleged extension of Christianity to the northern parts of Britain, given a hundred and fifty years previously by Tertullian, when discussing a similar argument.
In his dissertation _Adversus Judæos_, supposed to be written about 210, Tertullian, when treating of the propagation of Christianity, states (chap.
vii.
), that at that time already places among the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, were yet subject to Christ--"Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita."
(Oehler's edition of _Tertullian_, vol.
iii.
p.
713.)
Among the numerous inscriptions and sculptures left here by the Romans while they held this country during the first four centuries of the Christian era, not one has, I believe, been yet found containing a single Christian notice or emblem, or affording by itself any direct evidence of the existence of Christianity among the Roman colonists and soldiers in Britain.
But there is indirect lapidary or monumental evidence of its propagation in another manner.
In England, as in Germany, France, etc., there exist among the old Roman remains, altars and temples dedicated to Mithras, originally the god of the Sun among the Persians, with sculptures and inscriptions referring to Mithraic worship.
They have been found in the cities along the Roman wall in Northumberland; at York, etc.
Various references among the old Fathers seem to show that when a knowledge of the Christian religion began to spread to the Western Colonies of Rome, the worship of Mithras was set up in opposition to Christianity, and Christian rites were imitated by the Mithraic priests and followers.
Thus, for example, the author whom I have just cited, Tertullian, tells us, in his tract _De Præscriptione Hæreticorem_, chap.
40, that the worshippers of Mithras practised the remission of sins by water (as in baptism), made a sign upon their foreheads (as if simulating the sign of the cross), celebrated the offering of bread (as if in imitation of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper), etc.
(See his _Works_, vol.
iii.
p. 38, of Oehler's Leipsic edition of 1854.)]
[Footnote 74: See Dr. Reeves' admirable edition of Adamnan's _Life of St. Columba_, pp.
lxxiv and lxxv,--a book which is a perfect model of learned annotation and careful editing.]
[Footnote 75: I think it might be well to strengthen your statement by adducing a few examples--thus, as for example, the remains of a monastery of Columba's time on an island--now drained--called Lough Columbkill, in the island of Skye--the churches and clochans, or stone-houses of the monks, on St. Kilda, and probably many similar remains on other islands of the Hebrides.--P.]
[Footnote 76: Of St. MacDara of Cruach MicDara, an island off the coast of Connamara, of St. Brendan in Inis Gloria, an island off the coast of Errus, and very many more.--P.]
[Footnote 77: Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, p.
129.]
[Footnote 78: _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p.
195.]
[Footnote 79: _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p.
194.]
[Footnote 80: And which, moreover, had often chancels attached to them.--P.]
[Footnote 81: _Ibid._, pp.
365, 351.]
[Footnote 82: _Ibid._, p.
351.]
[Footnote 83: I should, perhaps, have written _almost_ always.
The very few exceptions did not at the moment occur to me.
Perhaps, indeed, there is but one exception, that most important one, on Bishop's Island, the others belonging rather to churches.--P.]
[Footnote 84: _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p.
352.]
[Footnote 85: South doorways are certainly very rarely to be met with in the very ancient churches or oratories in Ireland.
In addition to this important one on Bishop's Island, I can only call to mind three others, namely, in Kilbaspugbrone, near Sligo; the Templemor, or great church of St. Mochonna, in Inismacnerin, or, as now called, Church Island, in Lough Key, county of Roscommon; and Killcrony, near Bray, in the county of Wicklow.
The two last named are fine specimens of doorways of Cyclopean style and masonry.--P.]
[Footnote 86: Wakeman's _Archæologia Hibernica_, pp.
59, 60.]
[Footnote 87: My pupil is in error in this supposition.
He should have remembered--for he drew it on the block for me--that the window in the oratory near the church of Kilmalkedar, county of Kerry, which is built without cement, splays both externally and internally.--See my work, p. 184.
I should also observe another feature common to both these windows, namely, that it is only the jambs that are splayed.--P.]
[Footnote 88: _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p.
186.]
[Footnote 89: _Ibid._ p.
437.]
[Footnote 90: Was.--P.]
[Footnote 91: But now considers as of the tenth or perhaps eleventh.--P.]
[Footnote 92: See his _Illustrated Handbook of Architecture_, vol.
ii.
p.
918.]
[Footnote 93: I confess that I should not like to adduce this stone-roofed church of Killaghy in support of the antiquity of the oratory; for I could never bring myself to believe that it was of an age anterior to the thirteenth century.--P.]
[Footnote 94: See Dr. Petrie's work (p. 291) for full quotations in confirmation of this date, from the _Annals of Clonmacnoise and Kilronan_, the _Annals of Munster_, the _Annals of the Four Masters_, the _Chronicon Scotorum_, etc.]
[Footnote 95: When discussing the history of the pointed arch, Mr. Parker observes: "The choir of Canterbury Cathedral, commenced in 1175, is usually referred to as the earliest example in England, and none of earlier date has been authenticated."
--_Glossary of Terms in Architecture_ (1845), p.
28.]
[Footnote 96: Dr. Petrie's _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, p.
133.]
[Footnote 97: Pointed arches, constructed both on the radiating and horizontal principles, are found still standing in the antiquated mason-work of Assyria, Nubia, Greece, and Etruria.
(See drawings and descriptions of different specimens from these countries in Mr. Fergusson's _Handbook of Architecture_, vol.
i. pp.
253, 254, 257, 259, 294, 381, etc.)
The pointed arch was used in the East in sacred architecture as early as the time of Constantine, as is still witnessed in the oldest existing Christian church, namely, the church built by that emperor, in the earlier part of the fourth century, over the alleged tomb of our Saviour at Jerusalem.
[99] For notices of the prevalence of the pointed arch in early Eastern and in Saracenic architecture, see Fergusson's _Handbook_, p. 380, 598, etc.]
[Footnote 98: In this opinion of Mr.
Brash's I fully concur.--P.]
[Footnote 99: I must confess that I am very sceptical as to any portion now existing of the church of the Holy Sepulchre being of the time of Constantine, and also as to the early age of any portion of it in which a pointed arch is found.
More walls of the original edifice may _possibly_ exist; but it is certain that the church was more than once modified, and the ornamental work is assuredly of a much later age.--P.]
[Footnote 100: "Alanus de Mortuo Mari, Miles, Dominus de Abirdaur, dedit omnes et totas dimidietates terrarum Villæ suæ de Abirdaur, Deo et Monachis de Insula Sancti Columbi, pro sepultura sibi et posteris suis in Ecclesia dicti Monasterii."
(Quoted from the MS. Register or Chartulary of the Abbey by Sir Robert Sibbald in his _History of Fife_, p.
41.)
The same author adds, that, in consequence of this grant to the Monastery of Inchcolm for leave of sepulture, the Earl of Murray (who represents "Stewart Abbott of Inchcolm," that sat as a lay Commendator in the Parliament of 1560, when the Confession of Faith was approved of) now possesses "the wester half of Aberdour."
Sir Robert Sibbald further mentions the story that "Alain, the founder, being dead, the Monks, carrying his corpse in a coffin of lead, by barge, in the night-time, to be interred within their church, some wicked Monks did throw the samen in a great deep betwixt the land and the Monastery, which to this day, by the neighbouring fishermen and salters, is called _Mortimer's deep_."
He does not give the year of the preceding grant by Alain de Mortimer, but states that "the Mortimers had this Lordship by the marriage of Anicea, only daughter and sole heiress of Dominus Joannes de Vetere Ponte or Vypont, in anno 1126."
It appears to have been her husband who made the above grant.
(See Nisbet's _Heraldry_, vol.
i. p.
294.)]
[Footnote 101: Thus, in 1272, Richard of Inverkeithing, Chamberlain of Scotland, died, and his body was buried at Dunkeld, but his heart was deposited in the choir of the Abbey of Inchcolm.
(_Scotichronicon_, lib.
x. c.
30.)
In Hay's _Scotia Sacra_ is a description of the sepultures on this monument in Inchcolm Church, p. 471.
In 1173, Richard, chaplain to King William, died at Cramond, and was buried in Inchcolm.
(Mylne's _Vitæ_, p.
6.)
In 1210, Richard, Bishop of Dunkeld, died at Cramond, and was buried in Inchcolm.
(_Scotichronicon_, lib.
viii.
c. 27); and four years afterwards, Bishop Leycester died also at Cramond, and was buried at Inchcolm (_Ibid._ lib.
ix.
c. 27).
In 1265, Richard, Bishop of Dunkeld, built a new choir in the church of St. Columba on Inchcolm; and in the following year the bones of three former bishops of Dunkeld were transferred and buried, two on the north, and the third on the south side of the altar in this new choir.
(_Scotichronicon_, lib.
x. c. 20, 21.)
See also the _Extracta e Cronicis Scocie_ for other similar notices, pp.
90, 95, etc.
; and Mylne's _Vitæ Dunkeldensis Ecclesiæ Episcoporum_, pp.
6, 9, 11, etc.]
[Footnote 102: Many, if not all of.--P.]
[Footnote 103: "There are" (observes Father Innes) "still remaining many copies of Fordun, with continuations of his history done by different hands.
The chief authors were Walter Bower or Bowmaker, Abbot of Inchcolm, Patrick Russell, a Carthusian monk of Perth, _the Chronicle of Cupar_, the Continuation of Fordun, attributed to Bishop Elphinstone, in the Bodleian Library, and many others.
All these were written in the fifteenth age, or in the time betwixt Fordun and Boece, by the best historians that Scotland then afforded, and unquestionably well qualified for searching into, and finding out, what remained of ancient MSS.
histories anywhere hidden within the kingdom, and especially in abbeys and monasteries, they being all either abbots or the most learned churchmen or monks in their respective churches or monasteries."
(Innes' _Critical Inquiry_, vol.
i. p.
228.)]
[Footnote 104: I confess I have still some doubt as to this island having received its name from a church founded by S. Columba-_cill_, or that he ever resided in it, and I should like to have your present opinion upon the matter.
Fordun _alone_ seems to me a very insufficient authority for a fact which is very improbable; and the legend of the seal, which I published, appears to me to be a better authority for the ancient name of the island--"_Colmanus nomine, qui ab alijs Mocholmocus._ Quia Colmôe & Colmân sunt diminutiva, a _Colum._ 1.
Columba, et affectus vel venerationis causa additur _mo_; et hinc _Mocholmocus_," Colgan, vol.
i. p. 155.
Colgan's authority is of no value, as his statement is wholly founded on Fordun.
This is proved by his notice of the monastery in his catalogue of the churches founded by Columba.
"Colmis-inse Monasterium canonicorum Regularium in Æmonia insula inter Edinburgum et InverKithin.
_Fordonus, ibid._" As the cautious Dr. Lanigan observes--"Colgan was, to use a vulgar phrase, bewitched as to the mania of ascribing foundations of monasteries to our eminent saints."
Further, it should not be forgotten that Fordun tells us that in his time the island was called "_Saint Colmy's Inche_."
See the passage quoted by Ussher, _De Brit.
Ec._, p. 704.
Now, I know of no instance of the corruption of Columb, or Columba, into Colmy, which appears rather a corruption of Colmoc or Colman.
If this be not the Insula Colmoci of the _regal_ seal--"round seals have something royal"--where are we to find it?
Not in Ireland, certainly, though our calendars record the names of two islands called Inch Mocholmoc, from saints of that name.
One of these was in Leinster; the locality of the other is unknown.
They also record the patron day of a St. Mocholmoc, _na hainse_, "of the island," at the 30th October.
Could we find what was the patron day of the saint of Inche Colm it might help to settle the matter.
One of the above saints is called Colman _Ailither_, or the pilgrim.
Chattering in my discursive way, let me add that a Saint Mocholmoc appears to have been a favourite with the Danes of Dublin in the twelfth century, for we find in the lists of the Danish Kings of Dublin that of Donald MacGilloholmoch as reigning from 1125 to 1134; and another of the name is noticed by Regan as an Irish king, who lived not far from Dublin, and who offered his services to the English against the Irish and Danes in 1171.
There was a Gillmeholmoc's Lane in Dublin, near Christ's Church, where, as Harris conjectures, he, or some of his family, inhabited.
Did this royal Danish family adopt its surname in honour of St. Colman of Lindisfarne, of whom it must have heard a great deal during the Danish occupation of Northumbria, the kings of which were for a long time also kings of Dublin?
Or may it have been from a remembrance of the shelter and honourable interment to their dead, given to their predecessors in the little island of St. Colme (or Colmoch!)
something more than a century before--said island having derived its name from the Lindisfarne Saint, who may have occasionally occupied it as his desert or hermitage?
I do not expect that you will not laugh at all this!
but a hearty laugh is not a bad thing in this gloomy weather.--P.]
[Footnote 105: See extract in Goodall's edition of the _Scotichronicon_, vol.
i. p. 6.
(footnote), and in Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, vol.
ii.
p.
466.]
[Footnote 106: Dr. O'Donovan's _Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland_, vol.
i. p.
557.]
[Footnote 107: In Scotland we have various alleged instances of caves being thus employed as anchorite or devotional cells, and some of them still show rudely cut altars, crosses, etc.--as the so-called cave of St. Columba on the shores of Loch Killesport in North Knapdale, with an altar, a font or piscina, and a cross cut in the rock (_Origines Parochiales_, vol.
ii.
p. 40); the cave of St. Kieran on Loch Kilkerran in Cantyre (_Ibid._ vol.
ii.
p. 12); the cave of St. Ninian on the coast of Wigtonshire (_Old Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol.
xvii.
p. 594); the cave of St. Molio or Molaise, in Holy Island, in the Clyde, with Runic inscriptions on its walls (see an account of them in Dr. Daniel Wilson's admirable _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, pp.
531 to 533, etc).
The island of Inchcolm pertains to Fifeshire, and in this single county there are at least four caves that are averred to have been the retreats which early Christian devotees and ascetics occupied as temporary abodes and oratories, or in which they occasionally kept their holy vigils; namely, the cave at Dunfermline, which bears the name of Malcolm Canmore's devout Saxon queen St. Margaret, and which is said to have contained formerly a stone table or altar, with "something like a crucifix" upon it (Dr. Chalmers' _Historical Account of Dunfermline_, vol.
i. pp.
88, 89); the cave of St. Serf at Dysart (the name itself--Dysart--an instance, in all probability, of the "_desertum_" of the text, p. 124), in which that saint contested successfully in debate, according to the _Aberdeen Breviary_, with the devil, and expelled him from the spot (see _Breviarium Aberdonense_, Mens.
Julii, fol.
xv, and Mr. Muir's _Notices of Dysart_ printed for the Maitland Club, p. 3); the caves of Caplawchy, on the east Fifeshire coast, marked interiorly with rude crosses, etc., and which, according to Wynton, were inhabited for a time by "St. Adrian wyth hys cumpany" of disciples (_Orygynale Chronykel of Scotland_, book iii.
c.
viii.
); and the cave of St. Rule at St. Andrews, containing a stone table or altar on its east side, and on its west side the supposed sleeping cell of the hermit excavated out of the rock (_Old Statistical Account_, vol.
xiii.
p. 202).
In _Marmion_(Canto i.
29) Sir Walter Scott describes the "Palmer" as, with solemn vows to pay, "To fair St. Andrews bound, Within the _ocean-cave_ to pray, Where good St. Rule his holy lay, From midnight to the dawn of day, Sung to the billows' sound."]
[Footnote 108: _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, lib.
v. cap.
12.]
[Footnote 109: _Ibid._ lib.
v. c. 9.
Bede further states that this anchoret subsequently went to Frisland to preach as a missionary there, but he reaped no fruit from his labours among his barbarous auditors.
"Returning then (adds Bede) to the beloved place of his peregrination, he gave himself up to our Lord in his wonted repose; for since he could not be profitable to strangers by teaching them the faith, he took care to be the more useful to his own people by the example of his virtue."]
[Footnote 110: Published in 1845 by the Surtees Society, _Libellus de Vita, etc., S. Godrici_, p. 65, etc.]
[Footnote 111: _Ibid._ pp.
45 and 192.]
[Footnote 112: See Wordsworth's beautiful inscription--"For the spot where the hermitage stood on St. Herbert's island, Derwentwater."--Ed.
of 1858, p.
258.--P.]
[Footnote 113: _Ibid._ footnote, p.
46.]
[Footnote 114: Bede's _Vita Sancti Cuthberti_, cap.
16, 28, 46, etc.]
[Footnote 115: _De Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus_, pp.
63 and 66.]
[Footnote 116: See, _The Flowers of the Lives of the most renowned Saincts of the Three Kingdoms_, by Hierome Porter, p.
321.]
[Footnote 117: Boece's _History and Chronicles of Scotland_, book ix.
c. 17, or vol.
ii.
p. 98; Leslie's _De Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, lib.
iv.
p. 152; Dempster's _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum_, lib.
ii.
p. 122, or vol.
i. p.
66.]
[Footnote 118: The poem alluded to is designated "De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiæ Eboracencis."
A copy of it is printed in Gale's _Historiæ Britannicæ, etc.
Scriptores_, vol.
iii.
p. 703, _seq._ The famous author of this poem, Alcuin, who was brought up at York, and probably born there about the year 735, became afterwards, as is well known, the councillor and confidant of Charlemagne.
The application to the Bass of the lines in which he describes the anchoret residence of St. Balther is evident: Est locus undoso circumdatus undique ponto, Rupibus horrendis prærupto et margine septus, In quo belli potens terreno in corpore miles Sæpius aërias vincebat Balthere turmas; etc.
The Bass was not the only hermit's island on our eastern coasts which was imagined, in these credulous times, to be the occasional abode of evil spirits.
According to Bede no one had dared to dwell alone on the island of Farne before St. Cuthbert selected it as his anchoret habitation, because demons resided there (propter demorantium ibi phantasias demonum).
_Vita Cuthberti_, cap.
16.
See also the undevilling of the cave of Dysart by St. Serf in the footnote of page 125, _supra_; and some alleged feats of St. Patrick and St. Columba in this direction in Dr. O'Donovan's _Annals of the Four Masters_, vol.
i. p. 156.
Two other islands in the Firth of Forth are noted in ancient ecclesiastical history--viz., Inch May and Inch Keith.
"The ile of May, decorit (to use the words of Bellenden) with the blude and martirdome of Sanct Adriane and his fallowis," was the residence of that Hungarian missionary and his disciples when they were attacked and murdered about the year 874 by the Danes (Bellenden's _Translation of Boece's History_, vol.
i. p. 37); see also vol.
ii.
p. 206; Dempster's _Historia Eccl.
Gentis Scotorum_, lib.
i.
17, and vol.
i. p. 20; and Fordun, in the _Scotichronicon_, lib.
i. c.
vi., where he describes "Maya, prioratus cujus est cella canonicorum Sancti Andreæ de Raymonth; ubi requiescit Sanctus Adrianus, cum centum sociis suis sanctis martyribus."
Inch Keith is enumerated by Dr. Reeves (_Preface to Life of Columba_, p. 66) as one of the Scotch churches of St. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona from A.D. 679 to 704, and the biographer of St. Columba[119]--Fordun having long ago described it as a place "in qua præfuit Sanctus Adamnanus abbas, qui honorifice suscepit Sanctum Servanum, cum sociis suis, in ipsa insula, ad primum suum adventum in Scotiam."
Andrew Wynton, himself the Prior of St. Serf's Isle in Lochlevin, describes also, in his old metrical _Orygynale Chronykil of Scotland_, vol.
i. p. 128, this apocryphal meeting of the two saints "at Inchkeith, The ile betweene Kingorne and Leth."
_The Breviary of Aberdeen_, in alluding to this meeting, points out that the St. Serf received by Adamnan was not the St. Serf of the Dysart Cave, and hence also not the baptiser of St. Kentigern at Culross, as told in the legend of his mother, St. Thenew, or St. Thenuh--a female saint whose very existence the good Presbyterians of Glasgow had so entirely lost sight of, that centuries ago they unsexed the very name of the church dedicated to her in that city, and came to speak of it under the uncanonical appellation of St. Enoch's.
This first St. Serf and Adamnan lived two centuries, at least, apart.
In these early days Inch Keith was a place of no small importance, if it be--as some (see Macpherson's _Geographical Illustrations of Scottish History_) have supposed--the "urbs Giudi" of Bede, which he speaks of as standing in the midst of the eastern firth, and contrasts with Alcluith or Dumbarton, standing on the side of the western firth.
The Scots and Picts were, he says, divided from the Britons "by two inlets of the sea (duobus sinibus maris) lying betwixt them, both of which run far and broad into the land of Britain, one from the Eastern, and the other from the Western Ocean, though they do not reach so as to touch one another.
The eastern has in _the midst of it_ the city of Giudi (Orientalis habit in medio sui _urbem Giudi_).
The western has on it, that is, on the right hand thereof (ad dextram sui), the city of Alchuith, which in their language means the 'Rock of Cluith,' for it is close by the river of that name (Clyde)."
(Bede's _Hist.
Ecclesiast._, book i. c.
xii.)
In reference to the supposed identification of Inch Keith and this "urbs Giudi," let me add (1.)
that Bede's description (in medio sui) as strongly applies to the Island of Garvie, or Inch Garvie, lying midway between the two Queensferries: (2.)
it is perhaps worthy of note that the term "Giudi" is in all probability a Pictish proper name, one of the kings of the Picts being surnamed "Guidi," or rather "Guidid" (see Pinkerton's _Inquiry into the History of Scotland_, vol.
i. p. 287, and an extract from the _Book of Ballymote_, p. 504); and (3.)
that the word "urbs," in the language of Bede, signifies a place important, not so much for its size as from its military or ecclesiastic rank, for thus he describes the rock (petra) of Dumbarton as the "urbs Alcluith," and Coldingham as the "urbs Coludi" (_Hist.
Eccl._, lib.
iv.
c. 19.
etc.
),--the Saxon noun "_ham_" house or village, having, in this last instance, been in former times considered a sufficient appellative for a place to which Bede applies the Latin designation of "urbs."]
[Footnote 119: As I have not the _Life of Columba_ at hand to refer to, I must assume that so able an archæologist as my friend Dr. Reeves had sufficient authority for this statement.
If it rested only on Fordun or Wynton, I should deem their authority insufficient to establish as a fact what seems to me so improbable.
Assuming the story to have had a foundation, might not the real Adamnan have been the priest and monk of the monastery of Coludi or Coldingham, of whom Bede has written?
Coldingham, in his time, belonged to the Northumbrian kingdom.--P.]
[Footnote 120: See his edition of Adamnan's _Life of Saint Columba_, p.
366.]
[Footnote 121: Colgan refers to the Life of _S.
Fintani Eremita ad 15 Novemb., Tr.
T._, p. 606:--"Tir mille anachoritas in Momonia est.
S. Hibaro Episcopo cujusdam quæstionis decidendæ causâ simul collect [illegible] & Angelus Dei ad convivium à S. Brigida Christo paratum invitativies had so in auxilium per Jesum Christum."
Quoted from the _Book of Litanies of S. Ængus_, on the same page.
See also the _Summary of the Saints_ in that _Litany_ in Ward's _Vita S. Rumoldi_, pp.
204, 205.
In short, the notices of deserts, hermits, and anchorites to be found, lives of saints, etc.
etc., are innumerable.--P.]
[Footnote 122: I think it very improbable, if the monastery founded by Alexander be meant.--P.]
[Footnote 123: This is no fit place to discuss the ages of the two Round Towers of Brechin and Abernethy.
But it may perhaps prove interesting to some future antiquary if it is here mentioned, that when Dr. Petrie, in his _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_ (p. 410), gives "about the year 1020"[124] as the probable date of the erection of the Bound Tower of Brechin, he chiefly relied--as he has mentioned to me, when conversing upon the subject,--for this approach to the era of its building, upon that entry in the ancient _Chronicon de Regibus Scotorum_, etc., published by Innes, in which it is stated that King Kenneth MacMalcolm, who reigned from A.D. 971 to A.D. 994, "tribuit magnam civitatem Brechne domino."
(See the Chronicon in Innes' _Critical Inquiry_, vol.
ii.
p.
788.)
The peculiarities of architecture in the Round Tower of Brechin assimilate it much with the Irish Bound Towers of Donoughmore and Monasterboice, both of which Dr. Petrie believes to have been built in or about the tenth century.
If we could, in such a question, rely upon the authority of Hector Boece, the Round Tower of Brechin is at least a few years older than the probable date assigned to it by Dr. Petrie.
For, in describing the inroads of the Danes into Forfarshire about A.D. 1012, he tells us that these invaders destroyed and burned down the town of Brechin, and all its great church, except "_turrim quandam rotundam_ mira arte constructam."
(_Scotorum Historiæ_, lib.
xi.
251, of Paris Edit, of 1526.
)[125] This reference to the Round Tower of Brechin has escaped detection, perhaps because it has been omitted by Bellenden and Holinshed in their translations.
No historical notices, I believe, exist, tending to fix in any probable way the exact age of the Round Tower of Abernethy; but one or two circumstances bearing upon the inquiry are worthy of note.
We are informed, both by the _Chronicon Pictorum_ and by Bede, that in the eighth or ninth year of his reign, or about A.D. 563, Brude, King of the Picts, embraced Christianity under the personal teaching of St. Columba.
At Brude's death, in 586, Garnard succeeded, and reigned till 597; and he was followed by Nectan II., who reigned till 617.
Fordun (_Scotichronicon_, lib.
iv.
cap.
12) and Wynton (book v. ch.
12), both state that King Garnard founded the collegiate Church of Abernethy; and Fordun further adds that he had found this information in a chronicle of the Church of Abernethy itself, which, is now lost; "in quadam Chronica ecclesiæ de Abirnethy reperimus."
But the register of the Priory of St. Andrews mentions Garnard's successor on the Pictish throne, Nectan II., as the builder of Abernethy, "hic ædificavit Abernethyn" (Innes' _Critical Inquiry_, p. 800).
The probability is, that Garnard, towards the end of his reign, founded and commenced the building of the church establishment of Abernethy, and that it was concluded and consecrated in the early part of the reign of Nectan.
The church was dedicated to St. Brigid; and the _Chronicon Pictorum_ (Innes' _Inquiry_, p. 778), in ascribing its foundation to Nectan I.
(about A.D. 455) instead of Nectan II., commits a palpable anachronism, and very evident error, as St. Brigid did not die till a quarter of the next century had elapsed.
(_Annals of the Four Masters_ under the year 525; Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, p.
619.)
Again, according to the more certain evidence of Bede, another Pictish king, still of the name of Nectan (Naitanus Rex Pictorum), despatched messengers, about the year 710, to Ceolfrid, Abbot of Bede's own Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, requesting, among other matters, that architects should be sent to him to build in his country a church of stone, according to the manner of the Romans et architectos sibi mitti petiit, qui juxta morem Romanorum ecclesiam in lapide in gente ipsius facerent.
(_Hist.
Eccles._, lib.
v. c.
xxi.)
Forty years previously, St. Benedict or Biscop, the first Abbot of Jarrow, had brought there from Gaul, masons (cæmentarios) to build for him "ecclesiam lapideam juxta Romanorum morem."
(See Bede's _Vita Beatorum Abbatum_.)
Now it is probable that the Round Tower of Abernethy was not built in connection with the church established there by the Pictish kings at the beginning of the seventh century, for no such structures seem to have been erected in connection with Pictish churches in any other part of the Pictish kingdom; and if at Abernethy, the capital of the Picts, a Round Tower had been built in the seventh century of stone and lime, the Abbot of Jarrow would scarcely have been asked in the eighth century, by a subsequent Pictish king, to send architects to show the mode of erecting a church of stone in his kingdom.
Nor is it in the least degree more likely that these ecclesiastic builders, invited by King Nectan in the early years of the eighth century, erected themselves the Round Tower of Abernethy; for the building of such towers was, if not totally unknown, at least totally unpractised by the ecclesiastic architects of England and France within their own countries.
[126] The Scotic or Scoto-Irish race became united with the Picts into one kingdom in the year 843, under King Kenneth MacAlpine, a lineal descendant and representative of the royal chiefs who led the Dalriadic colony from Antrim to Argyleshire, about A.D. 506.
(See the elaborate genealogical table of the Scottish Dalriadic kings in Dr. Reeves' edition of _Adamnan's Life of Columba_, p.
438.)
The purely "Scotic period" of our history, as it has been termed, dates from this union of the Picts and Scots under Kenneth MacAlpine in 843, till Malcolm Canmore ascended the throne in 1057; and there is every probability that the Round Towers of Abernethy and Brechin were built during the period between these two dates, or during the regime of the intervening Scotic or Scoto-Irish kings,--in imitation of the numerous similar structures belonging to their original mother-church in Ireland.
We may feel very certain, also, that they were not erected later than the commencement of the twelfth century, for by that date the Norman or Romanesque style,--which presents no such structures as the Irish Round Towers, was apparently in general use in ecclesiastic architecture in Scotland, under the pious patronage of Queen Margaret Atheling and her three crowned sons.
Abernethy--now a small village--was for centuries a royal and pontifical city, and the capital of a kingdom, "fuit locus ille sedes principalis, regalis, et pontificalis, totius regni Pictorum" (Goodall's _Scotichronicon_, vol.
i. p. 189); but all its old regal and ecclesiastical buildings have utterly vanished, with the exception only of its solitary and venerable Round Tower.
And perhaps the preservation of the Round Tower in this, and in numerous instances in Ireland, amidst the general ruin and devastation which usually surround them, is owing to the simple circumstance that these Towers--whatever were their uses and objects--were structures which, in consequence of their remarkable combination of extreme tallness and slenderness, required to be constructed from the first of the very best and strongest, and consequently of the most durable building materials which could be procured; while the one-storeyed or two-storeyed wood-roofed churches, and other low and lighter ecclesiastical edifices with which they were associated, demanded far less strength in the original construction of their walls, and consequently have, under the dilapidating effects of centuries, much more speedily crumbled down and perished.]
[Footnote 124: The recollection of the error which I made by a carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date 1020 instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done, has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake.
I had the year 1020 on my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the _Chron.
Pictorum_, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather his gift.--P.]
[Footnote 125: I congratulate you warmly on the discovery of this interesting and most valuable notice.
Surely Boece could have had no object to serve by forging such a statement, nor had he such antiquarian knowledge as would have enabled him to forge a statement so consistent with the conclusion fairly to be drawn from the entry in the chronicle, and the characteristics of the architecture of the tower itself.
It appears to me that no rational scepticism can in future be indulged as to the conclusion that the erection of this beautiful tower must be referred to the last quarter of the tenth century.--P.]
[Footnote 126: The determining the age of the Brechin tower--a question which I consider as now settled--must go far towards enabling us to come to a right conclusion as to the age of the tower of Abernethy; for I think that no one possessed of ordinary powers of observation and comparison, who has examined both, can for a moment doubt that the age of the Abernethy tower is much greater than that of the tower of Brechin.
This is the opinion which I formed many years ago, after a very careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of each; and I came to the conclusion that the safest opinion which could be indulged as to the age of the Abernethy tower was, that it had been erected during the reign of the third Nectan, _i.e._ between 712 and 727, and by those Northumbrian architects of the monastery of Jarrow, for whose assistance that king, according to the high authority of Bede, had applied to build for him in his capital a stone church in the Roman style.
In the features of that style, during the eighth century, as exhibited in its doorway, and, still more, its upper apertures, this tower appeared to stand alone--there is nothing similar to it to be seen either in Scotland or Ireland.
The tower of Brechin has indeed a Romanesque doorway, but it is plainly of a later age, and its other features are quite Irish.
The circumstance of the Abernethy doorway being placed on a level with the ground, and not, as almost universally, at a considerable height from it, seemed also to support this opinion, as it indicated that the erection of the tower was of a period anterior to the irruption of the Northmen, which rendered such a defensive feature an imperative necessity.
I cannot agree with you in opinion as to the cause assigned for the preservation of the towers; for, in the first place, it is not true that their materials were stronger or better, or their construction in any way different from that of the churches with which they were connected, as proved by numerous examples in Ireland.
Their walls are rarely found of greater thickness than those of their contemporaneous churches, where such have remained; and in all such cases the character of the masonry is identical.
The cause which I should rather assign for this greater longevity would be their rotundity, and still more, their superior altitude.
A church of moderate size, and humble height, might be easily injured, or even destroyed, by neighbouring or foreign assailants, but the destruction of a tower, or even its injury, beyond the burning of its wooden floors and doorway, would be a tedious and difficult labour, requiring ladders, with which we are not to suppose the incendiaries came provided; and hence their worst antagonist was found to be the flame from heaven.--P.]
[Footnote 127: Might not _oratory_ be a safer term than _habitation_?
Surely the clochans or monks' houses, called _stone pyramids_ by Martin, in St. Kilda, and of which many are still perfect, are as old as Christianity in the _north_ of Scotland, or as any similar buildings to be found in Ireland.--P.]
ON THE CAT-STANE, KIRKLISTON.
The Mediæval Archæology of Scotland is confessedly sadly deficient in _written_ documents.
From the decline of Roman records and rule, onward through the next six or eight centuries, we have very few, or almost no written data to guide us in Scottish historical or antiquarian inquiries.
Nor have we any numismatic evidence whatever to appeal to.
In consequence of this literary dearth, the roughest lapidary inscriptions, belonging to these dark periods of our history, come to be invested with an interest much beyond their mere intrinsic value.
The very want of other contemporaneous lettered documents and data imparts importance to the rudest legends cut on our ancient lettered stones.
For even brief and meagre tombstone inscriptions rise into matters of historical significance, when all the other literary chronicles and annals of the men and of the times to which these inscriptions belong have, in the lapse of ages, been destroyed and lost.
It is needless to dwell here on the well-known fact, that in England and Scotland there have been left by the Roman soldiers and colonists who occupied our island during the first four centuries of the Christian era, great numbers of inscribed stones.
British antiquarian and topographical works abound with descriptions and drawings of these Roman lapidary writings.
But of late years another class or series of lapidary records has been particularly attracting the attention of British antiquaries,--viz., inscribed stones of a late Roman or post-Roman period.
The inscriptions on this latter class of stones are almost always, if not always, sepulchral.
The characteristically rude letters in which they are written consist--in the earliest stones--of debased Roman capitals; and--in the latest--of the uncial or minuscule forms of letters which are used in the oldest English and Irish manuscripts.
Some stones show an intermixture of both alphabetical characters.
These "Romano-British" inscribed stones, as they have been usually termed, have hitherto been found principally in Wales, in Cornwall, and in West Devon.
In the different parts of the Welsh Principality, nearly one hundred, I believe, have already been discovered.
In Scotland, which is so extremely rich in ancient sculptured stones, very few inscribed stones are as yet known; but if a due and diligent search be instituted, others, no doubt, will betimes be brought to light.
An inscribed Scottish stone of the class I allude to is situated in the county of Edinburgh, and has been long known under the name of the Cat-stane or Battle-stone.
Of its analogy with the earliest class of Romano-British inscribed stones found in Wales, I was not fully aware till I had an opportunity of examining last year, at the meeting of the Cambrian Archæological Society, a valuable collection of rubbings and drawings of these Welsh stones, brought forward by that excellent antiquary, Mr. Longueville Jones; and afterwards, _in situ_, one or two of the stones themselves.
I venture, in the following remarks, to direct the attention of the Society to the Cat-stane, partly in consequence of this belief in its analogy with the earliest Welsh inscribed stones; partly, also, in order to adduce an old and almost unknown description of the Cat-stane, made in the last years of the seventeenth century, by a gentleman who was perhaps the greatest antiquary of his day; and partly because I have a new conjecture to offer as to the historical personage commemorated in the inscription, and, consequently, as to the probable age of the inscription itself.
_Site and Description of the Stone._ The Cat-stane stands in the parish of Kirkliston, on the farm of Briggs,[128] in a field on the north side of the road to Linlithgow, and between the sixth and seventh milestone from Edinburgh.
It is placed within a hundred yards of the south bank of the Almond; nearly half-a-mile below the Boathouse Bridge; and about three miles above the entrance of the stream into the Firth of Forth, at the old Roman station of Cramond, or Caer Amond.
The monument is located in nearly the middle of the base of a triangular fork of ground formed by the meeting of the Gogar Water with the river Almond.
The Gogar flows into the Almond about six or seven hundred yards below the site of the Cat-stane.
[129] The ground on which the Cat-stane stands is the beginning of a ridge slightly elevated above the general level of the neighbouring fields.
The stone itself consists of a massive unhewn block of the secondary greenstone-trap of the district, many large boulders of which lie in the bed of the neighbouring river.
In form it is somewhat prismatic, or irregularly triangular, with its angles very rounded.
This large monolith is nearly twelve feet in circumference, about four feet five inches in width, and three feet three inches in thickness.
Its height above ground is about four feet and a half.
The Honourable Mrs. Ramsay of Barnton, upon whose son's property the monument stands, very kindly granted liberty, last year, for an examination by digging beneath and around the stone.
The accompanying woodcut is a copy of a sketch, made at the time, by my friend Mr. Drummond, of the stone as exposed when pursuing this search around its exposed basis.
We found the stone to be a block seven feet three inches in total length, and nearly three feet buried in the soil.
It was placed upon a basis of stones, forming apparently the remains of a built stone grave, which contained no bones[130] or other relics, and that had very evidently been already searched and harried.
I shall indeed have immediately occasion to cite a passage proving that a century and a half ago the present pillarstone was surrounded, like some other ancient graves, by a circular range of large flat-laid stones; and when this outer circle was removed,--if not before,--the vicinity and base of the central pillar were very probably dug into and disturbed.
[Illustration: Fig.
14.]
_Different Readings of the Inscription._ The inscription upon the stone is cut on the upper half of the eastern and narrowest face of the triangular monolith.
Various descriptions of the legend have been given by different authors.
The latest published account of it is that given by Professor Daniel Wilson in his work on _Scottish Archæology_.
He disposes of the stone and its inscription in the two following short sentences:--"A few miles to the westward of this is the oft-noted Catt Stane in Kirkliston parish, on which the painful antiquary may yet decipher the imperfect and rudely-lettered inscription--the work, most probably, of much younger hands than those that reared the mass of dark whinstone on which it is cut--IN [H]OC TVMVLO IACET VETTA.. VICTR.. About sixty yards to the west of the Cat-stane a large tumulus formerly stood, which was opened in 1824, and found to contain several complete skeletons; but nearly all traces of it have now disappeared.
"[131] In the tenth volume of the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, collected by Sir John Sinclair, and published in 1794, the Rev.
Mr. John Muckarsie, in giving an account of the parish of Kirkliston, alludes in a note to the "Cat-stane standing on the farm of that name in this parish."
In describing it he observes "The form is an irregular prism, with the following inscription on the south-east face, deeply cut in the stone, in a most uncouth manner:-IN OC T VMVLO IACI VETTA D VICTA We are informed," continues Mr. Muckarsie, "by Buchanan and other historians, that there was a bloody battle fought near this place, on the banks of the Almond, in the year 995, between Kennethus, natural brother and commander of the forces of Malcolm II., King of Scotland, and Constantine, the usurper of that crown, wherein both the generals were killed.
About two miles higher up the river, on the Bathgate road, is a circular mound of earth (of great antiquity, surrounded with large unpolished stones, at a considerable distance from each other, evidently intended in memory of some remarkable event).
The whole intermediate space, from the human bones dug up, and graves of unpolished stones discovered below the surface, seems to have been the scene of many battles.
"[132] In the discourse which the Earl of Buchan gave in 1780 to a meeting called together for the establishment of the present Society of Scottish Antiquaries, his Lordship took occasion to allude to the Cat-stane when wishing to point out how monuments, rude as they are, "lead us to correct the uncertain accounts which have been handed down by the monkish writers."
"Accounts, for example, have (he observes) been given of various conflicts which took place towards the close of the tenth century between Constantine IV.
and Malcolm, the general of the lawful heir of the Scottish Crown, on the banks of the River Almond, and decided towards its confluence to the sea, near Kirkliston.
Accordingly, from Mid-Calder, anciently called Calder-comitis, to Kirkliston, the banks of the river are filled with the skeletons of human bodies, and the remains of warlike weapons; and opposite to Carlowrie there is a well-known stone near the margin of the river, called by the people _Catt Stane_.
The following inscription was legible on the stone in the beginning of this (the eighteenth) century; and the note of the inscription I received from the Rev.
Mr. Charles Wilkie, minister of the parish of Ecclesmachan, whose father, Mr. John Wilkie, minister of the parish of Uphall, whilst in his younger days an inhabitant of Kirkliston, had carefully transcribed:-IN HOC TUM · JAC · CONSTAN · VIC · VICT·"[133] Lord Buchan adduces this alleged copy of the Cat-stane inscription as valuable from having been taken early in the last century.
The copy of the inscription, though averred to be old, is, as we shall see in the sequel, doubtlessly most inaccurate.
And there exist accounts of the inscription both older and infinitely more correct and trustworthy.
The oldest and most important notice of the Cat-stane and its inscription that I know of is published in a work where few would expect to find it--viz., in the _Mona Antiqua Restaurata_ of the Rev.
Mr. Rowlands.
It is contained in a letter addressed to that gentleman by the distinguished Welsh archæologist, Edward Lhwyd.
The date of Mr. Lhwyd's letter is "Sligo, March 12th, 1699-1700."
A short time previously he had visited Scotland, and "collected a considerable number of inscriptions."
At that time the Cat-stane was a larger and much more imposing monument than it is now, as shown in the following description of it.
"One monument," says he, "I met with within four miles of Edinburgh, different from all I had seen elsewhere, and never observed by their antiquaries.
I take it to be the tomb of some Pictish king; though situate by a river side, remote enough from any church.
It is an area of about seven yards diameter, raised a little above the rest of the ground, and encompassed with large stones; all which stones are laid length-wise, excepting one larger than ordinary, which is pitched on end, and contains this inscription in the barbarous characters of the fourth and fifth centuries, IN OC TUMULO JACIT VETTA F. VICTI.
This the common people call the _Cat-Stene_, whence I suspect the person's name was _Getus_, of which name I find three Pictish kings; for the names pronounced by the Britons with _G_, were written in Latin with _V_, as we find by Gwyrtheyrn, Gwyrthefyr, and Gwythelyn, which were written in Latin Vortigernus, Vortimerus, and Vitelinus.
"[134] [Illustration: Fig.
15.]
Besides writing the preceding note to Dr. Rowland regarding the Cat-stane, Mr. Lhwyd, at the time of his visit, took a sketch of the inscription itself.
In the _Philosophical Transactions_ for February 1700, this sketch of the Cat-stane inscription was, with eight others, published by Dr. Musgrave, in a brief communication entitled, "An Account of some Roman, French, and Irish Inscriptions and Antiquities, lately found in Scotland and Ireland, by Mr. Edward Lhwyd, and communicated to the publisher from Mr. John Hicks of Trewithier, in Cornwall."
The accompanying woodcut (Fig.
15) is an exact copy of Mr. Lhwyd's sketch, as published in the _Philosophical Transactions_.
In the very brief communication accompanying it, the Cat-stane is shortly described as "A Pictish monument near Edinburgh, IN OC TUMULO JACIT VETA F. VICTI.
This the common people call the Ket-stean; note that the British names beginning with the letter Gw began in Latin with V [and the three examples given by Lhwyd in his letter to Dr. Rowland follow].
So I suppose (it is added) this person's name was Gweth or Geth, of which name were divers kings of the Picts, whence the vulgar name of Ketstone.
"[135] In the course of the last century, notices or readings of the Cat-stane inscription, more or less similar to the account of it in the _Philosophical Transactions_, were published by different writers, as by Sir Robert Sibbald, in 1708,[136]--by Maitland, in 1753,[137]--by Pennant, in his journey through Scotland in 1772,[138]--and by Gough, in 1789, in the third volume of his edition of Camden's _Britannia_.
[139] All the four authors whom I have quoted agree as to the reading of the inscription, and give the two names mentioned in it, as VETTA and VICTI.
But in printing the first of these names, VETTA, Maitland and Pennant, following perhaps the text in the _Philosophical Transactions_, carelessly spell it with a single instead of a double T; and Gough makes the first vowel in VICTI an E instead of an I.
Sir Robert Sibbald gives as a K the mutilated terminal letter in the third line, which Mr. Lhwyd deciphered as an F. Sibbald's account of the stone and its inscription, in 1708, is short but valuable, as affording an old independent reading of the legend.
It is contained in his folio essay or work entitled, _Historical Inquiries Concerning the Roman Monuments and Antiquities in Scotland_ (p. 50).
"Close (says he) by Kirkliston water, upon the south side, there is a square pillar over against the Mannor of Carlowry with this inscription:-IN OC TV MVLO IACIT VETTA K VICTI This (Sibbald continues) seemeth to have been done in later times than the former inscriptions [viz., those left in Scotland by the Romans].
Whether it be a Pictish monument or not is uncertain; the vulgar call it the CAT _Stane_."
Mr. Gough, when speaking of the stone in the latter part of the last century, states that the inscription upon it was "not now legible."
It is certainly still even sufficiently legible and entire to prove unmistakably the accuracy of the reading of it given upwards of a century and a half ago by Lhwyd and Sibbald.
The letters come out with special distinctness when examined with the morning sun shining on them; and indeed few ancient inscriptions in this country, not protected by being buried, are better preserved,--a circumstance owing principally to the very hard and durable nature of the stone itself, and the depth to which the letters have been originally cut.
The accompanying woodcut is taken from a photograph of the stone by my friend Dr. Paterson, and very faithfully represents the inscription.
The surface of the stone upon which the letters are carved has weathered and broken off in some parts; particularly towards the right-hand edge of the inscription.
This process of disintegration has more or less affected the terminal letters of the four lines of the inscriptions.
Yet, out of the twenty-six letters composing the legend, twenty are still comparatively entire and perfectly legible; four are more or less defective; and two nearly obliterated.
The two which are almost obliterated consist of the first V in TVMVLO, constituting the terminal letter of the first line, and the last vowel I, or rather, judging from the space it occupies, E in JACIT.
A mere impress of the site of the bars of the V is faintly traceable by the eye and finger, though the letter came out in the photograph.
Only about an inch of the middle portion of the upright bar of I or E in JACIT can be traced by sight or touch.
In this same word, also, the lower part of the C and the cross stroke of the T is defective.
But even if the inscription had not been read when these letters were more entire, such defects in particular letters are not assuredly of a kind to make any palæographer entertain a doubt as to the two words in which these defects occur being TVMVLO and JACIT.
[Illustration: Fig.
16.
The Cat-Stane, Kirkliston, _from a Photograph_.]
The terminal letter in the third line[140] was already defective in the time of Edward Lhwyd, as shown by the figure of it in his sketch.
(See woodcut, No.
15.)
Sibbald prints it as a K, a letter without any attachable meaning.
Lhwyd read it as an F (followed apparently by a linear point or stop), and held it to signify--what F so often does signify in the common established formula of these old inscriptions--F(ILIVS).
The upright limb of this F appears still well cut and distinct; but the stone is much hollowed out and destroyed immediately to the right, where the two cross bars of the letter should be.
The site of the upper cross-bar of the letter is too much decayed and excavated to allow of any distinct recognition of it.
The site, however, of a small portion of the middle cross bar is traceable at the point where it is still united to and springs from the upright limb of the letter.
Beyond, or to the right of this letter F, a line about half-an-inch long, forming possibly a terminal stop or point of a linear type, commences on the level of the lower line of the letters, and runs obliquely upwards and outwards, till it is now lost above in the weathered and hollowed-out portion of stone.
Its site is nearer the upright limb or basis of the F than it is represented to be in the sketch of Mr. Lhwyd, where it is figured as constituting a partly continuous extension downwards of the middle bar of the letter itself.
And perhaps it is not a linear point, but more truly, as Lhwyd figures it, the lower portion of a form of the middle bar of F, of an unusual though not unknown type.
The immediate descent or genealogy of those whom these Romano-British inscriptions commemorate is often given on the stones, but their status or profession is seldom mentioned.
We have exceptions in the case of one or two royal personages, as in the famous inscription in Anglesey to "CATAMANUS, REX SAPIENTISSIMUS OPINATISSIMUS OMNIUM REGUM."
The rank and office of priests are in several instances also commemorated with their names, as in the Kirkmadrine Stone in Galloway.
In the churchyard of Llangian, in Caernarvonshire, there is a stone with an ancient inscription written not horizontally, but vertically (as is the case with regard to most of the Cornish inscribed stones), and where MELUS, the son of MARTINUS, the person commemorated, is a physician--MEDICVS.
But the inscription is much more interesting in regard to our present inquiry in another point.
For--as the accompanying woodcut of the Llangian inscription shows--the F in the word FILI is very much of the same type or form as the F seen by Lhwyd in the Cat-stane, and drawn by him.
(See his sketch in the preceding woodcut, Fig.
15.)
The context and position of this letter F in the Llangian legend leaves no doubt of its true character.
The form is old; Mr. Westwood considers the age of the Llangian inscription as "not later than the fifth century.
"[141] An approach to the same form of F in the same word FILI, is seen in an inscribed stone which formerly stood at Pant y Polion in Wales, and is now removed to Dolan Cothy House.
Again, in some instances, as in the Romano-British stones at Llandysilir, Clyddan, Llandyssul, etc., where the F in Filius is tied to the succeeding I, the conjoined letters present an appearance similar to the F on the Cat-stane as figured by Lhwyd.
[Illustration] While all competent authorities are nearly agreed as to the lettering and reading of the first three lines, latterly the terminal letter of the fourth or last line has given rise to some difference of opinion.
Lhwyd, Sibbald, and Pennant, unhesitatingly read the whole last line as VICTI.
Lhwyd, in his sketch of the inscription, further shows that, following the last I, there is a stop or point of a linear form.
The terminal I is three inches long, while the linear point or stop following it is fully an inch in length.
Between it and the terminal I is a smooth space on the stone of five or six lines.
Latterly this terminal I, with its superadded linear point, has been supposed by Mr. Muckarsie to be an A, and by Dr. Wilson to be an R. Both suppositions appear to me to be erroneous; and of this one or two considerations will, I think, satisfy any cautious observer who will examine carefully either the stone itself, or the cast of the inscription that was made in 1824--copies of which are placed in our own and in other museums.
Mr. Muckarsie and Dr. Wilson hold the upright bar forming the letter I to be the primary upright bar of an A or R; and they think the remaining portions of these letters to be indicated or formed by the linear stop figured by Lhwyd.
That the letter is not A, is shown by the bar being quite perpendicular, and not oblique or slanting, as in the two other A's in the inscription.
Besides, the middle cross stroke of the A is wanting; and the second descending bar of the letter is quite deficient in length--a deficiency not explicable by mutilation from the weathering of the stone, as the stone happens to be still perfectly entire both at the uppermost and the lowest end of this bar or line.
This last reason is also in itself a strong if not a sufficient ground for rejecting the idea that the letter is an R; inasmuch as if it had been an R, the tail of the letter would have been found prolonged downwards to the base line of the other letters in the word.
For it is to be held in remembrance, that though the forms of the letters in this inscription are rude and debased, yet they are all cut with firmness and fulness.
The idea that the terminal letter of the inscription is an R seems still more objectionable in another point of view.
To make it an R at all, we can only suppose the disputed "line" to be the lowest portion of the segment of the loop or semicircular head of the R. The line, which is about an inch long, is straight, however, and not a part of a round curve or a circle, such as we know the mason who carved this inscription could and did cut, as witnessed by his O's and C's.
Besides, if this straight line had formed the lower segment of the semicircular loop or head of an R, then the highest point of that R would have stood so disproportionately elevated above the top line or level of the other letters in this word, as altogether to oppose and differ from what we see in the other parts of this inscription.
This same reason bears equally against another view which perhaps might be taken; namely, that the straight line in question is the tail or terminal right-hand stroke of the R, placed nearly horizontally, as is occasionally the form of this letter in some early inscriptions, like those of Yarrow and Llangian.
But if this view be adopted, then the loop or semicircular head of the R must be considered as still more disproportionately displaced upwards above the common level of the top line; for in this view the whole loop or head must have stood entirely above this straight horizontal line, which line itself reaches above the middle height of the upright bar forming the I.
Immediately above the horizontal line, for a space about an inch or more in depth, and some ten or twelve inches in length, there has been a weathering and chipping off of a splinter of the surface of the stone, as indicated by its commencement in an abrupt, curved, rugged edge above.
This lesion or fracture of the stone has, I believe, originally given rise to the idea of the semblance of this terminal letter of the inscription to an R. Probably, also, this disintegration is comparatively recent; for in the last century Lhwyd, Sibbald, Maitland, and Pennant, all unhesitatingly lay down the terminal letter as an I.
But even if it were an A or an R, and not an I and hyphen point, this would not affect or alter the view which I will take in the sequel, that the last word in the inscription is a Latinised form of the surname VICTA or WECTA; as, amid the numberless modifications to which the orthography of ancient names is subjected by our early chroniclers, the historic name in question is spelled by Ethelwerd with a terminal R,--in one place as UUITHAR, and in another as WITHER.
[142] Altogether, however, I feel assured that the more accurately we examine the inscription as still left, and the more we take into consideration the well-known caution and accuracy of Edward Lhwyd as an archæologist, the more do we feel assured that his reading of the Cat-stane legend, when he visited and copied it upwards of a hundred and sixty years ago is strictly correct, viz.-IN OC TV MVLO JACIT VETTA F. VICTI.
_Palæographic Peculiarities._ The palæographic characters of the inscription scarcely require any comment.
As in most other Roman and Romano-British inscriptions, the words run into each other without any intervening space to mark their separation.
The letters all consist of debased Roman capitals.
They generally vary from two and a half to three inches in length; but the O in the first line is only one and a half inch deep.
The O in TVMVLO in these ancient inscriptions is often, as in the Cat-stane, smaller than the other letters.
M. Edmond Le Blant gives numerous marked instances of this peculiarity of the small O in the same words, "IN HoC TVMVLo," in his work on the early Romano-Gaulish inscriptions of France.
[143] Most of the letters in the Cat-stane inscription are pretty well formed, and firmly though rudely cut.
The oblique direction of the bottom stroke of L in TVMVLO is a form of that letter often observable in other old Romano-British inscriptions, as on the stone at Llanfaglan in Wales.
The M in the same word has its first and last strokes splaying outwardly; a peculiarity seen in many old Roman and Romano-British monuments--as is also the tying together of this letter with the following V. In the Romano-British inscription upon the stone found at Yarrow, and which was brought under the notice of the Society by Dr. John Alexander Smith, there are three interments, as it were, recorded, the last of them in these words;[144] ... HIC IACENT IN TVMVLO DVO FILI LIBERALI.
The letters on this Yarrow stone are--with one doubtful exception[145]--Roman capitals, of a ruder, and hence perhaps later, type than those cut on the Cat-stane; but the letters MV in TVMVLO are tied together in exactly the same way on the two stones.
The omission of the aspirate in (H)OC, as seen on the Cat-stane, is by no means rare.
The so-called bilingual, or Latin and Ogham, inscribed stone at Llanfechan, Wales, has upon it the Latin legend TRENACATVS IC JACET FILIVS MAGLAGNI--the aspirate being wanting in the word HIC.
It is wanting also in the same way, and in the same word, in the inscription on the Maen Madoc stone, near Ystradfellte--viz., DERVACI FILIVS IVLII IC IACIT; and on the Turpillian stone near Crickhowel.
In a stone, described by Mr. Westwood, and placed on the road from Brecon to Merthyr, the initial aspirate in "hoc" is not entirely dropped, but is cut in an uncial form, while all the other letters are Roman capitals; thus IN hOC TVMULO.
Linear hyphen-like stops, such as Lhwyd represents at the end of the fourth, and probably also of the third line on the Cat-stane inscription, seem not to be very rare.
In the remarkable inscription on the Caerwys stone, now placed at Downing Whitford, "Here lies a good and noble woman"--[146] HIC JACIT / MVLI ER BONA NOBILI(S) an oblique linear point appears in the middle of the legend, after the word JACIT.
The linear stop on the Cat-stane inscription, at the end of the fourth line, is, as already stated, fully an inch in length, but it is scarcely so deep as the cuts forming the letters; and the original surface of the stone at both ends of this terminal linear stop is very perfect and sound, showing that the line was not extended either upwards or downwards into any form of letter.
Straight or hyphen lines, at the end both of words--especially of the proper names--and of the whole inscriptions, have been found on various Romano-British stones, as on those of Margan (the Naen Llythyrog), Stackpole, and Clydau, and have been supposed to be the letter I, placed horizontally, while all the other letters in these inscriptions are placed perpendicularly.
Is it not more probable that they are merely points?
Or do they not sometimes, like tied letters, represent both an I and a stop?
WHO IS COMMEMORATED IN THE CAT-STANE INSCRIPTION?
In the account which Mr. George Chalmers gives of the Antiquities of Linlithgowshire in his _Caledonia_, there is no notice of the inscription on the Cat-stane taken; but, with a degree of vagueness of which this author is seldom guilty, he remarks, that this monolith "is certainly a memorial of some conflict and of _some_ person.
"[147] Is it not possible, however, to obtain a more definite idea of the person who is named on the stone, and in commemoration of whom it was raised?
In the extracts that have been already given, it has been suggested, by different writers whom I have cited, that the Cat-stane commemorates a Scottish king, Constantine IV., or a Pictish king, Geth.
Let us first examine into the probability of these two suggestions.
1.
CONSTANTINE?--In the olden lists of our Scottish kings, four King Constantines occur.
The Cat-stane has been imagined by Lord Buchan and Mr. Muckarsie to have been raised in memory of the last of these--viz., of Constantine IV., who fell in a battle believed by these writers to have been fought on this ground in the last years of the tenth century, or about A.D. 995.
In the _New Statistical Account of Scotland_, the Reverend Mr. Tait, the present minister of Kirkliston, farther speaks of the "Catstean (as) supposed to be a corruption of Constantine, and to have been erected to the honour of Constantine, one of the commanders in the same engagement, who was there slain and interred.
"[148] In the year 970 the Scottish king Culen died, having been "killed (according to the Ulster Annals), by the Britons in open battle;" and in A.D. 994, his successor, Kenneth MacMalcolm, the founder of Brechin, was slain.
[149] Constantine, the son of Culen, reigned for the next year and a half, and fell in a battle for the crown fought between him and Kenneth, the son of Malcolm I.
The site of this battle was, according to most of our ancient authorities, on the Almond.
There are two rivers of this name in Scotland, one in Perthshire and the other in the Lothians.
George Chalmers places the site of the battle in which Constantine fell on the Almond in Perthshire; Fordun, Boece, and Buchanan place it on the Almond in the Lothians, upon the banks of which the Cat-stane stands.
The battle was fought, to borrow the words of the Scotichronicon, "in Laudonia juxta ripam amnis Almond.
"[150] _The Chronicle of Melrose_ gives (p. 226) the "Avon"--the name of another large stream in the Lothians--as the river that was the site of the battle in question.
Wynton (vol.
i. p. 182) speaks of it as the "Awyne."
Bishop Leslie transfers this same fight to the banks of the Annan in Dumfriesshire, describing it as having occurred during an invasion of Cumbria, "ad Annandiæ amnis ostia.
"[151] Among the authorities who speak of this battle or of the fall of Constantine, some describe these events as having occurred at the source, others at the mouth of the Almond or Avon.
Thus the ancient rhyming chronicle, cited in the Scotichronicon, gives the locality of Constantine's fall as "ad caput amnis Amond.
"[152] _The Chronicle of Melrose_, when entering the fall of "Constantinus Calwus," quotes the same lines, with such modifications as follows:[153]-"Rex Constantinus, Culeno filius ortus, Ad caput amnis Avon ense peremtus erat, In Tegalere; regens uno rex et semis annis, Ipsum Kinedus Malcolomida ferit."
Wyntown cites the two first of these Latin lines, changing, as I have said, the name of the river to Awyne, almost, apparently, for the purpose of getting a vernacular rhyme, and then himself tells us, that "At the Wattyr hed of Awyne, The King Gryme slwe this Constantyne.
"[154] If the word "Tegalere" in the _Melrose Chronicle_ be a true reading,[155] and the locality could be identified under the same or a similar derivative name, the site of the battle might be fixed, and the point ascertained whether it took place, as the preceding authorities aver, at the source, "water-head" or "caput" of the river; or, as Hector, Boece and George Buchanan[156] describe it, at its mouth or entrance into the Forth at Cramond; "ad Amundæ amnis ostia tribus passuum millibus ab Edinburgo.
"[157] A far older and far more valuable authority than either Boece or Buchanan, namely, the collector of the list of the Scottish and Pictish kings, extracted by Sir Robert Sibbald from the now lost register of the Priory of St. Andrews,[158] seems also to place the death of King Constantine at the mouth of the Almond, if we interpret aright the entry in it of "interfectus in Rathveramoen" as meaning "Rath Inver Amoen,"--the rath or earth-fortress at the mouth of the Amoen.
[159] Even, however, were it allowed that the battle in which Constantine perished was fought upon the Almond, and not upon the Avon, on the stream of the former name in the Lothians and not in Perthshire, at the mouth and not at the source of the river, there still, after all, remains no evidence whatever that the Cat-stane was raised in commemoration of the fall of the Scottish king; whilst there is abundant evidence to the contrary.
The very word "Inver," in the last of the designations which I have adduced, is strongly against this idea.
For the term "Inver," when applied to a locality on a stream, almost invariably means the mouth of it,[160] and not a site on its course--such as the Cat-stane occupies--three miles above its confluence.
Nor is there any probability that an inscribed monument would be raised in honour of a king who, like Constantine, fell in a civil war,--who was the last of his own branch of the royal house that reigned,--and was distinguished, as the ancient chroniclers tell us, by the contemptuous appellation of _Calvus_.
There is great reason, indeed, to believe that the idea of the Cat-stane being connected with the fall of Constantine is comparatively modern in its origin.
Oral tradition sometimes creates written history; but, on the other hand, written history sometimes creates oral tradition.
And in the present instance a knowledge of the statements of our ancient historians in all probability gave rise to such attempts as that of Mr. Wilkie--to find, namely, a direct record of Constantine in the Cat-stane inscription.
But when we compare the inscription itself, as read a century and a half ago by Lhwyd and Sibbald, and as capable of being still read at the present day, with the edition of it as given by Lord Buchan, it is impossible not to conclude that the idea of connecting the legend with the name of Constantine is totally without foundation.
For, besides minor errors in punctuation and letterings, such as the total omission in Lord Buchan's copy of the inscription of the three last letters VLO of "TVMVLO," the changing of VETTA to VIC, etc., we have the two terminal letters of JACIT--viz.
the IT, changed into the seven-lettered word CONSTAN, apparently with no object but the support of a theory as to the person commemorated in the legend and the monolith.
Most assuredly there is not the very slightest trace of any letters on the surface of the stone where the chief part of the word CONSTAN is represented as existing--viz., after JACIT.
It would be difficult, perhaps, to adduce a case of more flagrant incorrectness in copying an inscription than Mr. Wilkie's and Lord Buchan's reading of the Cat-stane legend affords.
Mr. Gough, in his edition of Camden's _Britannia_ (1784), only aggravates this misrepresentation.
For whilst he incorrectly states that the inscription is "not now legible," he carelessly changes Mr. Wilkie's alleged copy of the leading word from CONSTAN to CONSTANTIE, and suppresses altogether the word VIC.
GETUS, GWETH, or GETH?--I have already cited Mr. Lhwyd's conjecture that the Cat-stane is "the tomb of some Pictish King," and the opinion expressed by him and Mr. Hicks, that taking the V in the Latin VETTA of the inscription as equal to the Pictish letters G or Gw, the name of the Pictish king commemorated by the stone was Getus, "of which name," observes Mr. Lhwyd, "I find three Pictish kings."
In the analogous account sent by Mr. Hicks to the _Philosophical Transactions_ along with Mr. Lhwyd's sketch of the Cat-stane, it is stated that the person's name on "this Pictish monument" was Gweth or Geth, "of which name," it is added, "were divers kings of the Picts, whence the vulgar name of Ketstone."
It is unnecessary to stop and comment on the unsoundness of this reasoning, and the improbability--both as to the initial and terminal letters--of the surname VETTA in this Latin inscription being similar to the Pictish surname Geth or GETUS, as Lhwyd himself gives and writes it in its Latin form.
Among the lists of the Pictish kings, whilst we have several names beginning with G, we have some also commencing in the Latinised forms of the Chronicles with V, as Vist, Vere, Vipoignamet, etc.
But a much more important objection exists against the conjecture of Mr. Lhwyd, in the fact that his memory had altogether misled him as to there having been "three" Pictish kings of the name of "Getus," or "divers kings of the Picts of the names of Geth or Gweth," to use the words employed in the _Philosophical Transactions_.
Lists, more or less complete, of the Pictish kings have been found in the Histories of Fordun and Winton, in the pages of the Scalacronica and Chronicles of Tighernach, in the Irish copy of Nennius, in the extracts published by Sir Robert Sibbald and Father Innes from the lost Register of St. Andrews, and in the old Chronicum Regum Pictorum, supposed to be written about A.D. 1020, and preserved in the Colbertine Library.
None of these lists include a Pictish king of the name of Getus, Geat, or Gweth.
Some of the authorities--as the Register of St. Andrews, Fordun, and Winton--enter as the second king of the Picts Ghede or Gede, the Gilgidi of the _Chronicum Regum Pictorum_; and this latter chronicle contains in its more mythical and earlier part the appellations Got, Gedeol, Guidid, and Brude-Guith; but none of these surnames sufficiently correspond either to Mr. Lhwyd's statement or to the requirements of the inscription.
But whilst thus setting aside the conjectures as to the Cat-stane commemorating the name of a Scottish King Constantine, or of a Pictish King Geth, I would further remark that the surname in the inscription, namely--VETTA FILIUS VICTI--is one which appears to me to be capable of another and a more probable solution.
With this view let us proceed then to inquire who was VETTA, _the son_ of VICTUS?
And _first_, I would beg to remark, that the word Vetta is still too distinct upon the Cat-stane to allow of any doubt as to the mere name of the person commemorated in the inscription upon it.
_Secondly_, The name of Vetta, or, to spell the word in its more common Saxon forms, Wetta or Witta, is a Teutonic surname.
To speak more definitely, it pertains to the class of surnames which characterised these so-called Saxon or Anglo-Saxon invaders of our island, and allied Germanic tribes, who overran Britain upon the decline of the Roman dominion amongst us.
Bede speaks, as is well known, of our original Teutonic conquerors in the fifth century as coming from three powerful tribes of Germany; namely, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes.
"Advenerant autem de tribus Germaniæ populis fortioribus, id est, Saxonibus, Anglis, Jutis" (lib.
i. c.
20).
[161] Ubo Emmius, in his _History of the Frisians_, maintains that "more colonies from Friesland than Saxony, settled in Briton, whether under the names of Jutes, or of Angles, or later of the Saxons.
"[162] Procopius, who lived nearly two centuries before Bede, and had access to good means of information from being the secretary of the Emperor Belisarius, states that at the time of his writing (about A.D. 548) three numerous nations possessed Britain, the Angles and Frisians ([Greek: Angeloi te kai phrissones]), and those surnamed, from the Island, Brittones.
[163] Modern Friesland seems to have yielded a considerable number of our Teutonic invaders and colonists; and it is in that isolated country that we find, at all events, the characteristics and language of our Teutonic forefathers best preserved.
In his _History of England during the Anglo-Saxon Period_, the late Sir Francis Palgrave remarks, "The tribes by whom Britain was invaded, appear principally to have proceeded from the country now called Friesland.
Of all the continental dialects (he adds), the ancient Frisick is the one which approaches most nearly to the Anglo-Saxon of our ancestors.
"[164] "The nearest approach," according to Dr. Latham, "to our genuine and typical German or Anglo-Saxon forefathers, is not to be found within the four seas of Britain, but in the present Frisian or Friesland.
"[165] At present, about one hundred thousand inhabitants of Friesland speak the ancient or Country-Friesic, a language unintelligible to the surrounding Dutch, but which remains still nearly allied to the old Anglo-Saxon of England.
Some even of their modern surnames are repetitions of the most ancient Anglo-Saxon surnames in our island, and, among others, still include that of Vetta or Witta; thus showing its Teutonic origin.
In discussing the great analogies between ancient Anglo-Saxon and modern Friesic, Dr. Bosworth, the learned Professor of Anglo-Saxon Literature at Oxford, incidentally remarks, "I cannot omit to mention that the leaders of the Anglo-Saxons bear names which are now in use by the Friesians, though by time a little altered or abbreviated.
They have Horste, Hengst, WITTE, Wiggele, etc., for the Anglo-Saxon Horsa, Hengist, WITTA, Wightgil, etc.
"[166] But Witta or Vetta was not a common name among our more leading Anglo-Saxon forefathers.
Among the many historical surnames occurring in ancient Saxon annals and English chronicles, the name of Vetta, as far as I know, only occurs twice or thrice.
I.
It is to be found in the ancient Saxon poem of _The Scop_, or _Traveller's Tale_, where, among a list of numerous kings and warriors, Vetta or Witta is mentioned as having ruled the Swaefs-"Witta weold Swæfum.
"[167] The Swaefs or Suevi were originally, as we know from classical writers, a German tribe, or confederacy of tribes, located eastward of the old Angles; and Ptolemy indeed includes these Angles as a branch of the Suevi.
But possibly the Swaefs ruled by Wittan, and mentioned in _The Scop_ in the preceding line, and in others (see lines 89 and 123), were a colony from this tribe settled in England.
II.
In the list of the ancient Anglo-Saxon Bishops of Lichfield, given by Florence of Worcester, the name "Huita" occurs as tenth on the roll.
[168] Under the year 737, Simeon of Durham enters the consecration of this bishop, spelling his name as Hweicca and Hweitta.
[169] In a note appended to Florence's Chronicle, under the year 775, his death is recorded, and his name given as Witta.
[170] III.
The name Vetta occupies a constant and conspicuous place in the lineage of Hengist and Horsa, as given by Bede, Nennius, the Saxon Chronicle, etc.
In the list of their pedigree, Vetta or Witta is always represented as the grandfather of the Teutonic brothers.
The inscription on the Cat-stane further affords, however, a most important _additional element_ or criterion for ascertaining the particular Vetta in memory of whom it was raised; for it records the name of his father, Victus or Victa.
And in relation to the present inquiry, it is alike interesting and important to find that in the genealogy given by our ancient chronicles of the predecessors of Hengist and Horsa, whilst Vetta is recorded as their grandfather, Victi or Wecta is, with equal constancy, represented as their great-grandfather.
The old lapidary writing on the Cat-stane describes the Vetta for whom that monument was raised as the son of Vecta; and the old parchment and paper writings of our earliest chroniclers invariably describe the same relationship between the Vetta and Victa of the forefathers of Hengist and Horsa.
Thus Bede, when describing the invasion of England by the German tribes in the time of Vortigern, states that their "leaders were two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, who were the sons of Victgils, whose father was Vitta, whose father was Vecta, whose father was Woden, from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduces its origin," "Erant autem filii Victgilsi, cujus pater Vitta, cujus pater Vecta, cujus pater Voden, de cujus stirpe multarum provinciarum regum genus originem duxit.
"[171] In accordance with a common peculiarity in his orthography of proper names, and owing also, perhaps, to the character of the Northumbrian dialect of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, Bede spells the preceding and other similar surnames with an initial V, while by most other Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, and in most other Anglo-Saxon dialects, the surnames are made to commence with a W. Thus, the Vilfrid, Valchstod, Venta, etc., of Bede,[172] form the Wilfrid, Walchstod, Wenta (Winchester), etc., of other Saxon writers.
In this respect Bede adheres so far to the classic Roman standard in the spelling of proper names.
Thus, for example, the Isle of Wight, which was written as Wecta by the Saxons, is the Vecta and Vectis of Ptolemy and Eutropius, and the Vecta also of Bede; and the name Venta, just now referred to as spelled so by Bede, is also the old Roman form of spelling that word, as seen in the _Itinerary_ of Antonine.
The _Saxon Chronicle_ gives the details of the first advent of the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa in so nearly the same words as the _Historia Ecclesiastica_, as to leave no doubt that this, like many other passages in the earlier parts of the _Saxon Chronicle_, were mere translations of the statements of Bede.
But most copies of the _Saxon Chronicle_ were written in the dialect of the West Saxons, and, consequently, under A.D. 449, they commence the surnames in the pedigree of our Saxon invaders with a W,--as Wightgils, Witta, Wecta, etc.
; telling us that Hengist and Horsa, "waeron Wihtgilses suna, Wihtgils waes Witting, Witta Wecting, Wecta Wodning," etc.
Ethelwerd, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, who himself claimed to be a descendant of the royal stock of Woden, has left us a Latin history or Chronicle, "nearly the whole of which is an abridged translation of the _Saxon Chronicle_, with a few trivial alterations and additions.
"[173] In retranslating back into Latin, the Anglo-Saxon names in the genealogy of Hengist and Horsa, he makes the Wecta of the _Saxon Chronicle_ end with an R,--a matter principally of interest because, as we have already seen, some have supposed the corresponding name in the Cat-stane to terminate with an R. Speaking of Hengist as leader of the Angles[174] Ethelwerd describes his pedigree thus:--"Cujus pater fuit Wihtgels avus Wicta; proavus WITHER, atavus Wothen," etc.
In a previous page,[175] the same author tells us that "Hengest et Horsa filii Uuyrhtelsi, avus eorum Uuicta, et proavus eorum Uuithar, atavus eorum Uuothen, qui est rex multitudinis barbarorum."
In the preceding paragraphs we find the same authors, or at least the scribes who copied their writings, spelling the same names in very diverse ways.
All know how very various, and sometimes almost endless, is the orthography of proper nouns and names among our ancient chroniclers, and among our mediæval writers and clerks also.
Thus Lord Lindsay, in his admirable _Lives of the Lindsays_, gives examples of above a hundred different ways in which he has found his own family name spelled.
In the _Historia Britonum_, usually attributed to Nennius, the pedigree of the Saxon invaders of Kent is given at greater length than by Bede; for it is traced back four or five generations beyond Woden[176] up to Geat, and the spelling of the four races from Woden to Hengist and Horsa is varied according to the Celtic standard of orthography, as cited already from Edward Lhwyd--namely, the Latin and Saxon initials V and W are changed to the Cymric or British G, or GU.
In the same way, the Isle of Wight, "Vecta" or "Wecta," is spelled in Nennius "Guith" and "Guied;" Venta (Winchester) is written Guincestra; Vortigernus, Guorthigernus; Wuffa, king of the east Angles, Guffa; etc.
etc.
In only one, as far as I am aware, of the old manuscript copies of the _Historia Britonum_, is the pedigree of Hengist and Horsa spelled as it is by Bede and all the Saxon writers, with an initial V or W, as Wictgils, Witta, Wecta, and Woden.
This copy belongs to the Royal Library in Paris, and the orthography alone sufficiently determines it to have been made by an Anglo-Saxon scribe or editor.
Of some twenty-five or thirty other known manuscripts of the same work, most, if not all, spell the ancestors of Hengist with the initial Keltic GU,--as "Guictgils, Guitta, Guechta"--one, among other arguments, for the belief that the original and most ancient part of this composite _Historia_ was penned, if not, as asserted in many of the copies, by Gildas, a Strathclyde Briton, at least by a British or Cymric hand.
The account given in the work of the arrival of the Saxons is as follows:--"Interea venerunt tres ciulæ a Germania expulsæ in exilio, in quibus erant Hors et Hengist, qui et ipsi fratres erant, filii Guictgils, filii Guitta, filii Guechta, filii Vuoden, filii Frealaf, filii Fredulf, filii Finn, filii Folcwald, filii Geta, qui fuit, aiunt filius Dei.
Non ipse est Deus Deorum Amen, Deus exercitum, sed unus est ab idolis eorum quæ ipsi colebant.
"[177] In this pedigree of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, it is deserving of remark that Woden, from whom the various Anglo-Saxon kings of England, and other kings of the north-west of Europe generally claimed their royal descent, is entered as a historical personage, living (according to the usual reckoning applied to genealogies) about the beginning of the third century, and who could count his descent back to Geat; while the Irish and other authorities affect to trace his pedigree for some generations even beyond this last-named ancestor.
[178] According to Mallet, the true name of this great conqueror and ruler of the north-western tribes of Europe was "Sigge, son of Fridulph; but he assumed the name of Odin, who was the supreme god among the Teutonic nations, either to pass, among his followers, for a man inspired by the gods, or because he was chief priest, and presided over the worship paid to that deity.
"[179] In his conquering progress towards the north-west of Europe, he subdued, continues Mallet, "all the people he found in his passage, giving them to one or other of his sons for subjects.
Many sovereign families (he adds) of the north are said to be descended from those princes."
And Hengist and Horsa were thus, as was many centuries ago observed by William of Malmesbury, "the great-great-grandsons of that Woden from whom the royal families of almost all the barbarous nations derive their lineage, and to whom the Angles have consecrated the fourth day of the week (Wodens-day), and the sixth unto his wife Frea (Frey-day), by a sacrilege which lasts even _to this time_.
"[180] Henry of Huntingdon, in his _Historiæ Anglorum_, gives the pedigree of Hengist and Horsa according to the list which he found in Nennius; but he changes back the spelling to the Saxon form.
They were, he says, "Filii Widgils, filii Wecta, filii Vecta, filii Woden, filii Frealof, filii Fredulf, filii Fin, filii Flocwald, filii Ieta (Geta)."
Florence of Worcester follows the shorter genealogy of Bede, giving in his text the names of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa as Wictgils, Witta, and Wecta; and in his table of the pedigrees of the kings of Kent spelling these same names Wihtgils, Witta, and Wehta.
[181] In giving the ancient genealogy of Hengist and Horsa, we thus find our old chroniclers speaking of their grandfather under the various orthographic forms of Guitta, Uuicta, Witta, Vitta; and their great-grandfather as Guechta, Uuethar, Wither, Wechta, Wecta, and Vecta.
In the Cat-stane inscription the last--Vecta or Victa--is placed in the genitive, and construed as a noun of the second declension, whilst Vetta retains, as a nominative, its original Saxon form.
The older chroniclers frequently alter the Saxon surnames in this way.
Thus, Horsa is sometimes made, like Victa, a noun of the second declension, in conjunction with the use of Hengist, Vortimer, etc., as unaltered nominatives.
Thus, Nennius tells us,[182] "Guortemor cum Hengist et Horso ...
pugnabat."
(cap.
xlvi.)
According to Henry of Huntingdon, "Gortimer ... ex obliquo aciem Horsi desrupit," etc.
(Lib.
ii.)
The double and distinctive name of "Vetta filius Victa," occurring, as it thus does, in the lineage of Hengist and Horsa, as given both (1) in our oldest written chronicles and (2) in the old inscription carved upon the Cat-stane, is in itself a strong argument for the belief that the same personage is indicated in these two distinct varieties of ancient lettered documents.
This inference, however, becomes still stronger when we consider the rarity of the appellation Vetta, and the great improbability of there having ever existed two historic individuals of this name both of them the sons of two Victas.
But still, it must be confessed, various arguments naturally spring up in the mind against the idea that in the Cat-stane we have a memorial of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa.
Let us look at some of these reasons, and consider their force and bearing.
_Some Objections considered._ Perhaps, as one of the first objections, I should notice the doubts which some writers have expressed as to such leaders as Hengist and Horsa having ever existed, and as to the correctness, therefore, of that genealogy of the Saxon kings of Kent in which Hengist and Horsa are included.
[183] The two most ancient lists of that lineage exist, as is well known, in the "Historia Britonum" of Gildas or Nennius, and in the "Historia Ecclesiastica" of Bede.
The former of these genealogical lists differs from the latter in being much longer, and in carrying the pedigree several generations beyond the great Teutonic leader Woden, backwards to his eastern forefather, Geat, whom Mr. Kemble and others hold to have been probably the hero Woden, whose semi-divine memory the northern tribes worshipped.
Both genealogical lists agree in all their main particulars back to Woden--and so far corroborate the accuracy of each other.
Whence the original author of the _Historia Britonum_ derived his list, is as unknown as the original authorship of the work itself.
Some of Bede's sources of information are alluded to by himself.
Albinus, Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and Nothhelm, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, "appear," observes Mr. Stevenson, "to have furnished Bede with chronicles in which he found accurate and full information upon the pedigrees, accessions, marriages, exploits, descendants, deaths and burials of the kings of Kent.
"[184] That the genealogical list itself is comparatively accurate, there are not wanting strong reasons for believing.
The kings of the different seven or eight small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England all claimed--as the very condition and charter of their regality--a direct descent from Woden, through one or other of his several sons.
To be a king among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, it was necessary, and indeed indispensable, both to be a descendant of Woden, and to be able to prove this descent.
The chronicles of most ancient people, as the Jews, Irish, Scots, etc., show us how carefully the pedigree of their royal and noble families was anciently kept and retained.
And surely there is no great wonder in the Saxon kings of Kent keeping up faithfully a knowledge of their pedigree--say from Bede's time, backwards, through the nine or ten generations up to Hengist, or the additional four generations up to Woden.
The wonder would perhaps have been much greater if they had omitted to keep up a knowledge, by tradition, poems, or chronicles, of a pedigree upon which they, and the other kings of the Saxon heptarchy, rested and founded--as descendants of Woden--their whole title to royalty, and their claim and charter to their respective thrones.
[185] But a stronger objection against the idea of the Cat-stane being a monument to the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa rises up in the question,--Is there any proof or probability that an ancestor of Hengist and Horsa fought and fell in this northern part of the island, two generations before the arrival of these brothers in Kent?
It is now generally allowed, by our best historians, that before the arrival of Hengist and Horsa in Kent, Britain was well known at least to the Saxons and Frisians, and other allied Teutonic tribes.
Perhaps from a very early period the shores and comparative riches of our island were known to the Teutons or Germans inhabiting the opposite continental coast.
"It seems hardly conceivable," observes Mr. Kemble, "that Frisians who occupied the coast (of modern Holland) as early as the time of Cæsar, should not have found their way to Britain.
"[186] We know from an incident referred to by Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, that at all events the passage in the opposite direction from Britain to the north-west shores of the Continent was accidentally revealed--if not, indeed, known long before--during the first years of the Roman conquest of Scotland.
For Tacitus tells us that in A.D. 83 a cohort of Usipians, raised in Germany, and belonging to Agricola's army, having seized some Roman vessels, sailed across the German Ocean, and were seized as pirates, first by the Suevi and afterwards by the Frisians (_Vita Agricolæ_, xlv.
2, and xlvi.
2).
In Agricola's Scottish army there were other Teutonic or German conscripts.
According to Tacitus, at the battle of the Mons Grampius three cohorts of Batavians and two cohorts of Tungrians specially distinguished themselves in the defeat of the Caledonian army.
Various inscriptions by these Tungrian cohorts have been dug up at Cramond, and at stations along the two Roman walls, as at Castlecary and Housesteads.
At Manchester, a cohort of Frisians seems to have been located during nearly the whole era of the Roman dominion.
[187] Another cohort of Frisian auxiliaries seems, according to Horsley, to have been stationed at Bowess in Richmondshire.
[188] Teutonic officers were occasionally attached to other Roman corps than those of their own countrymen.
A Frisian citizen, for example, was in the list of officers of the Thracian cavalry at Cirencester.
[189] The celebrated Carausius, himself a Menapian, and hence probably of Teutonic origin, was, before he assumed the emperorship of Britain, appointed by the Roman authorities admiral of the fleet which they had collected for the purpose of repressing the incursions of the Franks, Saxons, and other piratical tribes, who at that date (A.D. 287) ravaged the shores of Britain and Gaul.
[190] In the famous Roman document termed "Notitia utriusque Imperii," the fact that there were Saxon settlers in England before the arrival of Hengist and Horsa seems settled, by the appointment of a "Comes Littoris Saxonici in Britannica.
"[191] The date of this official and imperial Roman document is fixed by Gibbon between A.D. 395 and 407.
About forty years earlier we have--what is more to our present purpose--a notice by Ammianus Marcellinus of Saxons being leagued with the Picts and Scots, and invading the territories south of the Forth, which were held by the Romans and their conquered allies and dependants--the Britons.
To understand properly the remarks of Ammianus, it is necessary to remember that the two great divisional military walls which the Romans erected in Britain, stretched, as is well known, entirely across the island--the most northerly from the Forth to the Clyde, and the second and stronger from the Tyne to the Solway.
The large tract of country lying between these two military walls formed from time to time a region, the possession of which seems to have been debated between the Romans and the more northerly tribes; the Romans generally holding the country up to the northern wall or beyond it, and occasionally being apparently content with the southern wall as the boundary of their empire.
About the year A.D. 369, the Roman general Theodosius, the father of the future emperor of the same name, having collected a disciplined army in the south, marched northward from London, and after a time conquered, or rather reconquered, the debateable region between the two walls; erected it into a fifth British province, which he named "Valentia," in honour of Valens, the reigning emperor; and garrisoned and fortified the borders (_limites_ que vigiliis tuebatur et praetenturis).
[192] The notices which the excellent contemporary historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, has left us of the state of this part of Britain during the ten years of active rebellion and war preceding this erection of the province of Valentia are certainly very brief, but yet very interesting.
Under the year 360, he states that "In Britain, the stipulated peace being broken, the incursions of the Scots and Picts, fierce nations, laid waste the grounds lying next to the boundaries (loca _limitibus_ vicina vastarent)."
"These grounds were," says Pinkerton, "surely those of the future province of Valentia.
"[193] Four years subsequently, or in 364, Ammianus again alludes to the Britons being vexed by continued attacks from the same tribes, namely the Picts and Scots, but he describes these last as now assisted by, or leagued with, the Attacots and with the _Saxons_--"Picti, SAXONESQUE, et Scotti, et Attacotti, Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis."
Again, under the year 368, he alludes to the Scots and Attacots still ravaging many parts; but now, instead of speaking of them as leagued with the Picts and Saxons, he describes them as combined with the Picts, divided into two nations, the Dicaledonæ and Vecturiones:--"Eo tempore Picti in duas gentes divisi, Diacaledonæ et Vecturiones, itidemque Attacotti, bellicosa hominum natio, et Scotti per diversa vagantes, multa populabuntur."
In both of these two last notices for the years 364 and 368, the invaders are described as consisting of four different tribes.
The Scots and Attacots are mentioned under these appellations in both.
But whilst, in the notice for 364, the two remaining assailants are spoken of as Picts and Saxons (Picti, Saxonesque), in the notice for 368 the remaining assailants are described as the "Picts, divided into the Dicaledonæ and Vecturiones."
Is it possible that the Saxon allies were now amalgamated with the Picts, and that they assumed the name of Vecturiones after their leader Vetta or Vecta?
The idea, at all events, of naming nations patronymically from their leaders or founders was common in ancient times, though the correctness of some of the instances adduced is more than doubtful.
Early Greek and Roman history is full of such alleged examples; as the Trojans from Tros; the Achæans from Achæus; the Æolians from Æolus; the Peloponnesians from Pelops; the Dorians from Dorus; the Romans from Romulus, etc.
etc.
; and so is our own.
The Scots from Ireland are, observes Bede, named to this day Dalreudins (Dalriads), from their commander Reuda.
[194] The Irish called (according to some ancient authorities) the Picts "Cruithne," after their alleged first king, Crudne or Cruthne.
In a still more apocryphal spirit the word Britons was averred by some of the older chroniclers to be derived from a leader, Brito--"Britones Bruto dicti," to use the expression of Nennius(§ 18); Scots from Scota "Scoti ex Scota," in the words of the (_Chronicon Rythmicum_), etc.
The practice of eponymes was known also, and followed to some extent among the Teutonic tribes, both in regard to royal races and whole nations.
The kings of Kent were known as Aescingas, from Aesc, the son of Hengist;[195] those of East Anglia were designated Wuffingas, after Wuffa ("Uffa, a quo reges Orientalium Anglorum Vuffingus appellant"[196]).
In some one or other of his forms, Woden (observes Mr. Kemble) "is the eponymus of tribes and races.
Thus, as Geat, or through Geat, he was the founder of the Geatas; through Gewis, of the Gewissas; through Scyld, of the Scyldingas, the Norse Skjoldungar; through Brand, of the Brodingas; perhaps, through Baetwa, of the Batavians.
"[197] It could therefore scarcely be regarded as very exceptional at least, if Vetta, one of the grandsons of Woden, should have given, in the same way, his name to a combined tribe of Saxons and Picts, over whom he had been elected as leader.
[198] That a Saxon force, like that mentioned by Ammianus as being joined to the Picts and Scots in A.D. 364, was led by an ancestor of Hengist and Horsa is quite in accordance with all that is known of Saxon laws and customs.
As in some other nations, the leaders and kings were generally, if not always, selected from their royal stock.
"Descent" (observes Mr. Kemble) "from Heracles was to the Spartans what descent from Woden was to the Saxons--_the_ condition of royalty.
"[199] All the various Anglo-Saxon royal families that, during the time of the so-called Heptarchy, reigned in different parts of England certainly claimed this descent from Woden.
Hengist and Horsa probably led the band of their countrymen who invaded Kent, as members of this royal lineage; and a royal pre-relative or ancestor would have a similar claim and chance of acting as chief of that Saxon force which joined the Picts and Scots in the preceding century.
If we thus allow, for the sake of argument, that Vetta, the son of Victus, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, is identical with Vetta the son of Victus commemorated in the Cat-stane inscription, and that he was the leader of those Saxons mentioned by Ammianus that were allied with the Picts in A.D. 364, we shall find nothing incompatible in that conjecture with the era of the descent upon Kent of Hengist and Horsa.
Bede, confusing apparently the arrival of Hengist and Horsa with the date of the second instead of the first visit of St. Germanus to Britain, has placed at too late a date the era of their first appearance in Kent, when he fixes it in the year 449.
The facts mentioned in the earlier editions or copies of Nennius have led our very learned and accurate colleague Mr. Skene, and others, to transfer forwards twenty or more years the date at which Hengist and Horsa landed on our shores.
[200] But whether Hengist and Horsa arrived in A.D. 449, or, as seems more probable, about A.D. 428, if we suppose them in either case to have been born about A.D. 400, we shall find no incongruity, but the reverse, in the idea that their grandfather Vetta was the leader of a Saxon force thirty-six years previously.
Hengist was in all probability past the middle period of life when he came to the Court of Vortigern, as he is generally represented as having then a daughter, Rowena, already of a marriageable age.
On the cause or date of Vetta's death we have of course no historical information; but the position of his monument renders it next to a certainty that he fell in battle; for, as we have already seen, the Cat-stane stands, in the words of Lhwyd, "situate on a river side, remote enough from any church."
The barrows and pillar stones placed for miles along that river prove how frequently it had served as a strategic point and boundary in ancient warfare.
[201] The field in which the Cat-stane itself stands was, as we have already found Dr. Wilson stating, the site formerly of a large tumulus.
In a field, on the opposite bank of the Almond, my friend, Mr. Hutchison of Caerlowrie, came lately, when prosecuting some draining operations on his estate, upon numerous stone-kists, which had mutual gables of stone, and were therefore, in all probability, the graves of those who had perished in battle.
Whether the death of Vetta occurred during the war with Theodosius in A.D. 364, or, as possibly the appellation Vecturiones tends to indicate, at a later date, we have no ground to determine.
The vulgar name of the monument, the Cat-stane, seems, as I have already hinted, to be a name synonymous with Battle-stane, and hence, also, so far implies the fall of Vetta in open fight.
Maitland is the first author, as far as I am aware, who suggests this view of the origin of the word Cat-stane.
According to him, "Catstean is a Gaelic and English compound, the former part thereof (Cat) signifying a battle, and stean or stan a stone; so it is the battlestane, in commemoration probably of a battle being fought at or near this place, wherein Veta or Victi, interred here, was slain.
"[202] I have already quoted Mr. Pennant, as taking the same view of the origin and character of the name; and Mr. George Chalmers, in his _Caledonia_, propounds the same explanation of the word:--"In the parish of Liberton, Edinburghshire, there were (he observes) several large cairns, wherein were found various stone chests, including urns, which contained ashes and weapons; some of these cairns which still remain are called the _Cat_-stanes or Battle-stanes.
[203] Single stones in various parts of North Britain are still known under the appropriate name of _Cat_-stanes.
The name (he adds) is plainly derived from the British _Cad_, or the Scoto-Irish _Cath_, which signify a battle.
"[204] But the word under the form _Cat_ is Welsh or British, as well as Gaelic.
Thus, in the _Annales Cambriæ_, under the year 722, the battle of Pencon is entered as "Cat-Pencon.
"[205] In his edition of the old Welsh poem of the Gododin, Williams (verse 38) prints the battle of Vannau (Manau) as "Cat-Vannau."
The combination of the Celtic word "Cat" with the Saxon word "stane" may appear at first as an objection against the preceding idea of the origin and signification of the term Cat-stane.
But many of our local names show a similar compound origin in Celtic and Saxon.
In the immediate neighbourhood, for example, of the Cat-stane,[206] we have instances of a similar Celtic and Saxon amalgamation in the words Gogar-burn, Lenny-bridge, Craigie-hill, etc.
One of the oldest known specimens of this kind of verbal alloy, is alluded to above a thousand years ago by Bede,[207] in reference to a locality not above fourteen or fifteen miles west from the Cat-stane.
For, in his famous sentence regarding the termination of the walls of Antoninus on the Forth, he states that the Picts called this eastern "head of the wall" Pean-fahel, but the Angles called it Pennel-_tun_.
To a contracted variety of this Pictish word signifying head of the wall, or to its Welsh form Pengual, they added the Saxon word "town," probably to designate the "villa," which, according to an early addition to Nennius, was placed there.
"Pengaaul, quæ villa Scottice Cenail [Kinneil], Anglice verò Peneltun dicitur.
"[208] The palæographic peculiarities of the inscription sufficiently bear out the idea of the monument being of the date or era which I have ventured to assign to it--a point the weight and importance of which it is unnecessary to insist upon.
"The inscription," says Lhwyd, "is in the barbarous characters of the fourth and fifth centuries."
Professor Westwood, who is perhaps our highest authority on such a question, states to me that he is of the same opinion as Lhwyd as to the age of the lettering in the Cat-stane legend.
To some minds it may occur as a seeming difficulty that the legend or inscription is in the Latin language, though the leader commemorated is Saxon.
But this forms no kind of valid objection.
The fact is, that all the early Romano-British inscriptions as yet found in Great Britain, are, as far as they have been discovered and deciphered, in Latin.
And it is not more strange that a Saxon in the Lothians should be recorded in Latin, and not in Saxon or Keltic, than that the numerous Welshmen and others recorded on the early Welsh inscribed stones should be recorded in Latin and not in the Cymric tongue.
Doubtless, the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists settled among them were, with their descendants, more or less acquainted with Latin in both its spoken and written forms.
As early as the second year of his march northward for the conquest of this more distant part of Britain, or A.D. 79, Agricola, as Tacitus takes special care to inform us, took all possible means to introduce, for the purposes of conquest and civilisation, a knowledge of the Roman language and of the liberal arts among the barbarian tribes whom he went to subdue.
[209] The same policy was no doubt continued to a greater or less extent during the whole era of the Roman dominion here as elsewhere; so that there is no wonder that such arts as lapidary writing, and the composition of brief Latin inscriptions, should have been known to and transmitted to the native Britons.
There was, however, another class of inhabitants, besides these native Britons, who were, as we know from the altars and stone monuments which they have left, sufficiently learned in the formation and cutting of inscriptions in Latin,--a language which was then, and for some centuries subsequently, the only language used in this country, either in lapidary or other forms of writing.
The military legions and cohorts which the Roman emperors employed to keep Britain under due subjection, obtained, under the usual conditions, grants of lands in the country, married, and became betimes fixed inhabitants.
When speaking of the veteran soldiers of Rome settling down at last as permanent proprietors of land in Britain--as in other Roman colonies,--Sir Francis Palgrave remarks, "Upwards of forty of these barbarian legions, _some of Teutonic origin_, and others Moors, Dalmatians, and Thracians, whose forefathers had been transplanted from the remotest parts of the empire, obtained their domicile in various parts of our island, though principally upon the northern and eastern coasts, and _in the neighbourhood of the Roman walls_.
"[210] Such colonists undoubtedly possessed among their ranks, and were capable of transmitting to their descendants, a sufficient knowledge of the Latin tongue, and a sufficient amount of art, to form and cut such stone inscriptions as we have been considering; and perhaps I may add, that in such a mixed population, the Teutonic elements[211] in particular, would, towards the decline of the Roman dominion and power, not perhaps be averse to find and follow a leader, like Vetta, belonging to the royal stock of Woden; nor would they likely fail to pay all due respect, by the raising of a monument or otherwise, to the memory of a chief of such an illustrious race, if he fell amongst them in battle.
* * * * * Besides, a brief incidental remark in Bede's History proves that the erection of a monument like the Cat-stane, to record the resting-place of the early Saxon chiefs, was not unknown.
For, after telling us that Horsa was slain in battle by the Britons, Bede adds that "this Saxon leader was buried in the eastern parts of Kent, where a monument bearing his name is still in existence"[212] (hactenus in orientalibus Cantiæ partibus monumentum habet suo nomine insigne).
[213] The great durability of the stone forming Vetta's monument has preserved it to the present day; while the more perishable material of which Horsa's was constructed has made it a less faithful record of that chief, though it was still in Bede's time, or in the eighth century, "suo nomine insigne.
"[214] * * * * * The chief points of evidence which I have attempted to adduce in favour of the idea that the Cat-stane commemorates the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa may be summed up as follows:-1.
The surname of VETTA upon the Cat-stane is the name of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, as given by our oldest genealogists.
2.
The same historical authorities all describe Vetta as the son of Victa; and the person recorded on the Cat-stane is spoken of in the same distinctive terms--"VETTA F(ILIUS) VICTI."
3.
Vetta is not a common ancient Saxon name, and it is highly improbable that there existed in ancient times two historical Vettas, the sons of two Victas.
4.
Two generations before Hengist and Horsa arrived in England, a Saxon host--as told by Ammianus--was leagued with the other races of modern Scotland (the Picts, Scots, and Attacots), in fighting with a Roman army under Theodosius.
5.
These Saxon allies were very probably under a leader who claimed royal descent from Woden, and consequently under an ancestor or pre-relative of Hengist and Horsa.
6.
The battle-ground between the two armies was, in part at least, the district placed between the two Roman walls, and consequently included the tract in which the Cat-stane is placed; this district being erected by Theodosius, after its subjection, into a fifth Roman province.
7.
The palæographic characters of the inscription accord with the idea that it was cut about the end of the fourth century.
8.
The Latin is the only language[215] known to have been used in British inscriptions and other writings in these early times by the Romanised Britons and the foreign colonists and conquerors of the island.
9.
The occasional erection of monuments to Saxon leaders is proved by the fact mentioned by Bede, that in his time, or in the eighth century, there stood in Kent a monument commemorating the death of Horsa.
[216] * * * * * If, then, as these reasons tend at least to render probable, the Cat-stane be the tombstone of Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, this venerable monolith is not only interesting as one of our most ancient national historic monuments, but it corroborates the floating accounts of the early presence of the Saxons upon our coast; it presents to us the two earliest individual Saxon names known in British history; it confirms, so far as it goes, the accuracy of the genealogy of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, as recorded by Bede and our early chroniclers; while at the same time it forms in itself a connecting link, as it were, between the two great invasions of our island by the Roman and Saxon--marking as it does the era of the final declinature of the Roman dominion among us, and the first dawn and commencement of that Saxon interference and sway in the affairs of Britain, which was destined to give to England a race of new kings and new inhabitants, new laws, and a new language.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 128: The farm is called "Briggs, or Colstane" (Catstane), in a plan belonging to Mr. Hutchison, of his estate of Caerlowrie, drawn up in 1797.
In this plan the bridge (brigg) over the Almond, at the boathouse, is laid down.
But in another older plan which Mr. H. has of the property, dated 1748, there is no bridge, and in its stead there is a representation of the ferry-boat crossing the river.]
[Footnote 129: In this strategic angular fork or tongue of ground, formed by the confluence of these two rivers, Queen Mary and her suite were, according to Mr. Robert Chambers, caught when she was carried off by Bothwell on the 24th of April 1567.
(See his interesting remarks "On the Locality of the Abduction of Queen Mary" in the _Proceedings of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol.
ii.
p.
331.)]
[Footnote 130: The comparative rapidity or slowness with which bones are decomposed and disappear in different soils, is sometimes a question of importance to the antiquary.
We all know that they preserve for many long centuries in dry soils and dry positions.
In moist ground, such as that on which the Cat-stane stands, they melt away far more speedily.
On another part of Mrs. Ramsay's property, namely in the policy, and within two hundred yards of the mansion-house of Barnton, I opened, several years ago, with Mr. Morritt of Rokeby, the grave of a woman who had died--as the tombstone on the spot told us--during the last Scottish plague in the year 1648.
The only remains of sepulture which we found were some fragments of the wooden coffin, and the enamel crowns of a few teeth.
All other parts of the body and skeleton had entirely disappeared.
The chemical qualities of the ground, and consequently of its water, will of course modify the rapidity of such results.]
[Footnote 131: _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, p.
96.]
[Footnote 132: _Statistical Account of Scotland_, collected by Sir John Sinclair, vol.
x. pp.
68, 75.]
[Footnote 133: The _Scots Magazine_ for 1780, p. 697.
See also Smellie's _Account of the Institution and Progress of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_ (1782), p.
8.]
[Footnote 134: Rowlands' _Mona Antiqua Restaurata_, second edition, p. 313.
The inscription is printed in italics by Rowland.
I have printed this and some of the following readings in small Roman capitals, in order to assimilate them all the more with each other.]
[Footnote 135: _Philosophical Transactions_, vol.
xxii.
p.
790.]
[Footnote 136: _Historical Inquiries concerning the Roman Monuments and Antiquities in Scotland_, p.
50.]
[Footnote 137: _The History of Edinburgh_, p.
508.]
[Footnote 138: _Tour in Scotland_ in 1772, Part ii.
p. 237.
When describing his ride from Kirkliston to Edinburgh, he observes: "On the right hand, at a small distance from our road are some rude stones.
On one called the _Cat-stean_, a compound of Celtic and Saxon, signifying the Stone of Battle, is this inscription: IN HOC TUMULO JACET VETA F. VICTI; supposed in memory of a person slain there."]
[Footnote 139: Camden's _Britannia_, edited by Richard Gough, vol.
iii.
p. 317.
Mr. Gough cites also as Mr. Wilkie's reading, "IN HOC TUM, JAC.
CONSTANTIE VICT."]
[Footnote 140: In the VETTA of this line the cross bar in A is wanting, from the stone between the upright bars being chipped or weathered out.]
[Footnote 141: _Archæologia Cambrensis_ (for 1848), vol.
iii.
p.
107.]
[Footnote 142: See his "Chronicon," in the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, pp.
502 and 505.
Nouns, and names ending thus in "r," preceded by a vowel, were often written without the penultimate vowel, particularly in the Scandinavian branches of the Teutonic language; as Baldr for Balder and Baldur; Folkvangr for Folkvangar; Surtr for Surtur and Surtar, etc.
(See the Glossary to the prose Edda in Bohn's edition of Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, and Kemble's _Saxons in England_, pp.
346, 363, etc.)
For genealogical lists full of proper names ending in "r" with the elision of the preceding vowel, see the long tables of Scandinavian and Orcadian pedigrees printed at the end of the work on the pre-Columbian discovery of America, _Antiquitates Americanæ_, etc., which was published at Copenhagen in 1837 by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries.
In the first table of genealogies giving the pedigree of Thorfinn, the son of Sigurd, of the Orkney dynasty, etc., we have, among other names--Olafr, Grismr, Ingjaldr, Oleifr (_Rex Dublini_); Thorsteinn Raudr (_partis Scotiæ Rex_); Dungadr (_Earl of Katanesi_); Arfidr, Havadr, Thorfinnr, etc.
(_Earls of Orkney_); etc.
etc.]
[Footnote 143: _Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule, anterieures au VIII.
Siècle._ See Plates Nos.
10, 11, 15, 16, 24, 25, etc.]
[Footnote 144: The name LIBERALIS is probably the Latinised form of a British surname having the same meaning.
Rydderch, King of Strathclyde, in the latter part of the sixth century, and the personal friend of Kentigern and Columba, was sometimes, from his munificence, termed Rydderch _Hael_, or, in its Latinised form, Rydderch _Liberalis_.
The first lines of the Yarrow inscription appear to me to read as far as they are decipherable, as follows:-HIC MEMOR IACIT F LOIN:::NI:::: HIC PE::M DVMNOGENL The true character of the G in the fourth line was first pointed out by Dr. Smith.
It is of the same form as the G in the famous SAGRAMANVS stone, etc.]
[Footnote 145: The exception is the letter D in DVO, which verges to the uncial form.]
[Footnote 146: In the inscription all the words are, as usual, run together, with the exception of the Jacit and Mulier, which are separated from each other by the oblique linear point.
See a plate of the inscription in the _Archæologia Cambrensis_ for 1855, p.
153.]
[Footnote 147: _Caledonia_, vol.
ii.
p.
844.]
[Footnote 148: _New Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol i. p. 138.
For the same supposed corruption of the name Constantine into Cat-stane, see also Fullarton's _Gazetteer of Scotland_, vol.
ii.
p.
182.]
[Footnote 149: The brief history of Kenneth, his parentage, reign, and mode of death, as given in one of the earliest Chronicles of the Kings of Scotland, quoted by Father Innes (p. 802), contains in its few lines a very condensed and yet powerful story of deep maternal affection and fierce female revenge.
The whole entry is as follows:--"Kinath Mac-Malcolm 24, an.
et 2. mens.
Interfectus in Fotherkern a suis per perfidium Finellæ filiæ Cunechat comitis de Angus; cujus Finellæ filium unicum prædictus Kinath interfecit apud Dunsinoen."
The clumsy additions of some later historians only spoil and mar the original simplicity and force of this "three-volume" historical romance.]
[Footnote 150: Tom.
i. p. 219, of Goodall's edition.]
[Footnote 151: _De Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, chap.
lxxxi.
p.
200.]
[Footnote 152: _Joannis Forduni Scotichronicon_, tom.
i. p.
219.]
[Footnote 153: _Chronicon de Mailros_, p. 226 (Bannatyne Club edition).]
[Footnote 154: Wyntown's _Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland_, vol.
i. p.
183.]
[Footnote 155: In the _Scotichronicon_ instead of "In Tegalere," the third of these lines commences "Inregale regens," etc.
; and it is noted that in the "Liber Dumblain" the line begins "Indegale," etc.]
[Footnote 156: Buchanan, in his _Rerum Scoticorum Historia_, gives the locality as "ad Almonis amnis ostium."
(Lib.
vi.
c.
81.)]
[Footnote 157: _Scotorum Historiæ_, p. 235 of Paris edition of 1574.
Bellenden and Stewart, in their translations of Boece's _History_ both place the fight at "Crawmond."]
[Footnote 158: This document, entitled _Nomina Regum Scottorum et Pictorum_ and published by Father Innes in his _Critical Essay_, p. 797, etc., is described by that esteemed and cautious author as a document the very fact of the registration of which among the records and charters of the ancient church of St. Andrews "is a full proof of its being held authentick at the time it was written, that is about A.D.
1251."
(P.
607.)]
[Footnote 159: The orthography of the copy of this Chronicle, as given by Innes, is very inaccurate, and the omission of the two initial letters of "_in_ver," not very extraordinary in the word Rathveramoen.
Apparently the same word Rathinveramon occurs previously in the same Chronicle, when Donald MacAlpin, the second king of the combined Picts and Scots, is entered as having died "in Raith in Veramont" (p. 801).
In another of the old Chronicles published by Innes, this king is said to have died in his palace at "Belachoir" (p. 783).
If, as some historians believe, the Lothians were not annexed to Scotland before his death in A.D. 859, by Kenneth the brother of Donald, and did not become a part of the Scottish kingdom till the time of Indulf (about A.D. 954), or even later, then it is probable that the site of King Donald's death in A.D. 863, at Rathinveramon, was on the Almond in Perthshire, within his own territories.]
[Footnote 160: I am only aware of one very marked exception to this general law Malcolm Canmore is known to have been killed near Alnwick, when attacking its castle.
Alnwick is situated on the Alne, about five or six miles above the village of Alnmouth, the ancient Twyford, on the Alne, of Bede, on the mount near which St. Cuthbert was installed as a bishop.
But in the ancient Chronicle from the Register of St. Andrews, King Malcolm is entered (see Innes, p. 803) as "interfectus in Inneraldan."
The error has more likely originated in a want of proper local knowledge on the part of the chronicler than in so unusual a use of the Celtic word "inver;" for, according to all analogies, while the term is applicable to Alnmouth, it is not at all applicable to Alnwick.]
[Footnote 161: _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_.
(Stevenson's Edit.
p.
35.)]
[Footnote 162: _De Bello Gothico_, lib.
iv.
c. 20.
See other authorities in Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol.
i. p.
182.]
[Footnote 163: _Emmii Rerum Friescarum Historia_, p.
41.]
[Footnote 164: _History of England_, vol.
i.--Anglo-Saxon Period, pp.
33, 34.]
[Footnote 165: _The Ethnology of the British Islands_, p. 259.
At p. 240, Dr. Latham "A native tradition makes Hengist a Frisian."
Dr. Bosworth cites (see his _Origin of the English, etc., Language and Nation_, p. 52) Maerlant in his Chronicle as doubtful whether to call Hengist a Frisian or a Saxon.]
[Footnote 166: See his _Origin of the English, German, and Scandinavian Languages_, p. 54.
Some modern authorities have thought it philosophical to object to the whole story of Hengist and Horsa, on the alleged ground that these names are "equine" in their original meaning--"henges" and "hors" signifying stallion and horse in the old Saxon tongue.
If the principles of historic criticism had no stronger reasons for clearing the story of the first Saxon settlement in Kent of its romantic and apocryphal superfluities, this argument would serve us badly.
For some future American historian might, on a similar hypercritical ground, argue against the probability of Columbus, a Genoese, having discovered America, and carried thither (to use the language of his son Ferdinand) "the olive branch and oil of baptism across the ocean,"--of Drake and Hawkins having, in Queen Elizabeth's time, explored the West Indies, and sailed round the southernmost point of America,--of General Wolfe having taken Quebec,--or Lord Lyons being English ambassador to the United States in the eventful year 1860, on the ground that Colombo is actually the name of a dove in Italian, Drake and Hawkins only the appellations of birds, and Wolfe and Lyons the English names for two wild beasts.]
[Footnote 167: See Thorpe's edition of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon Poems, p. 219, line 45.]
[Footnote 168: _Monumenta Historica_, p.
623.]
[Footnote 169: _Ib._, p.
659.]
[Footnote 170: _Ib._, p.
544.]
[Footnote 171: _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, lib.
i. cap.
15, p. 34 of Mr. Stevenson's edition.
In some editions of Bede's _History_ (as in Dr. Giles' Translation, for example) the name of Vitta is carelessly omitted, as a word apparently of no moment.
Such a discussion as the present shows how wrong it is to tamper with the texts of such old authors.]
[Footnote 172: See these names in page 414 of Stevenson's edition of the _Historia Ecclesiastica_.]
[Footnote 173: _Monumenta Historica Britt._, preface, p.
82.]
[Footnote 174: "Ethelwerdi Chronicorum," lib.
ii.
c. 2, in _Monumenta Historica_, p.
505.]
[Footnote 175: _Ibid._ lib.
i. p. 502 of _Monumenta Historica_.]
[Footnote 176: The historical personage and leader Woden is represented in all these genealogies as having lived four generations, or from 100 to 150 years earlier than the age of Hengist and Horsa.]
[Footnote 177: See p. 24 of Mr. Stevenson's edition of _Nennii Historia Britonum_, printed for the English Historical Society.
In the Gaelic translation of the _Historia Britonum_, known as the Irish Nennius, the name Wetta or Guitta is spelled in various copies as "Guigte" and "Guite."
The last form irresistibly suggests the Urbs Guidi of Bede, situated in the Firth of Forth.
Might not he have thus written the Keltic or Pictish form of the name of a city or stronghold founded by Vitta or Vecta; and does this afford any clue to the fact, that the waters of the Forth are spoken of as the Sea of Guidi by Angus the Culdee, and as the Mare Fresicum by Nennius, while its shores are the Frisicum Litus of Joceline?
In the text I have noted the transformation of the analogous Latin name of the Isle of Wight, "Vecta," into "Guith," by Nennius.
The "urbs Guidi" of Bede is described by him as placed in the middle of the Firth of Forth, "in medio sui."
Its most probable site is, as I have elsewhere (see _Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, vol.
ii.
pp.
254, 255) endeavoured to show, Inch Keith; and, phonetically, the term "Keith" is certainly not a great variation from "Guith" or "Guidi."
At page 7 of Stevenson's edition of Nennius, the Isle of Wight, the old "Insula Vecta" of the Roman authors, is written "Inis Gueith"--a term too evidently analogous to "Inch Keith" to require any comment.]
[Footnote 178: See Irish Nennius, p. 77; _Saxon Chronicle_, under year 855, etc.]
[Footnote 179: _Northern Antiquities_, Bohn's edition, p. 71.
Sigge is generally held as the name of one of the sons of Woden.]
[Footnote 180: _Gest._ I. sec.
5, I.
11.]
[Footnote 181: _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, p.
707.]
[Footnote 182: See his "Chronicon ex Chronicis," in the _Monumenta Historica_, pp.
523 and 627.]
[Footnote 183: See preceding note (1), p. 168.
In answer to the vague objection that the alleged leaders were two brothers, Mr. Thorpe observes that the circumstance of two brothers being joint-kings or leaders, bearing, like Hengist and Horsa, alliterative names, is far from unheard of in the annals of the north; and as instances (he adds) may be cited, Ragnar, Inver, Ulba, and two kings in Rumedal--viz.
Haerlang and Hrollang.--See his Translation of Lappenberg's _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol.
i. pp.
78 and 275.]
[Footnote 184: See Mr. Stevenson's Introduction, p.
xxv., to the Historical Society's edition of Bede's _Historia Ecclesiastica_; and also Mr. Hardy in the Preface, p. 71, to the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_.]
[Footnote 185: The great importance attached to genealogical descent lasted much longer than the Saxon era itself.
Thus the author of the latest Life (1860) of Edward I., when speaking of the birth of that monarch at London in 1239, observes (p. 8), "The kind of feeling which was excited by the birth of an English prince in the English metropolis, and by the king's evident desire to connect the young heir to the throne with his Saxon ancestors, is shown in the _Worcester Chronicle_ of that date.
The fact is thus significantly described:-'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress; whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret, Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son of Alfred.'"
--(_The Greatest of the Plantagenets_, pp.
8 and 9.)
Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to Alfred.
The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic, the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the eleven from Alfred to Edward.
(See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.)
But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and wanting.]
[Footnote 186: _The Saxons in England_, vol.
i. p.
11.]
[Footnote 187: See the inscription, etc., in Whittaker's _Manchester_, vol.
i. p.
160.]
[Footnote 188: On these Frisian cohorts, and consequently also Frisian colonists, in England, see the learned _Memoir on the Roman Garrison at Manchester_, by my friend Dr. Black.
(Manchester, 1849.)]
[Footnote 189: Buckman and Newmarch's work on _Ancient Corinium_, p.
114.]
[Footnote 190: Palgrave's _Anglo-Saxons_, p.
24.]
[Footnote 191: For fuller evidence on this point, see the remarks by Mr. Kemble in his _Saxons in England_, vol.
i. p. 13, etc.]
[Footnote 192: _Ammiani Marcellini Historiæ_, lib.
xxviii.
c. 1.
The poet Claudian, perhaps with the full liberty of a poet, sings of Theodosius' forces in this war having pursued the Saxons to the very Orkneys:-----maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.]
[Footnote 193: _Inquiry into the History of Scotland_, vol.
i. p. 116.
See also Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chap.
xxv.]
[Footnote 194: _Histor.
Eccles._, lib.
i. c. 1, § 8.]
[Footnote 195: Bede's _Hist.
Eccles._, lib.
ii.
cap.
v. (Oisc, a quo reges Cantuariorum solent Oiscingas cognominare.)]
[Footnote 196: _Ibid._, lib.
ii.
cap.
xv.]
[Footnote 197: _The Saxons in England_, vol.
i. p.
341.]
[Footnote 198: In his account of the kings of the Picts, Mr. Pinkerton (_Inquiry into History of Scotland_, vol.
i. p. 293) calculates that the sovereign "Wradech Vechla" of the _Chronicon Pictorum_ reigned about A.D. 380.
In support of his own philological views, Mr. Pinkerton alters the name of this Pictish king from "Wradech Vechla" to "Wradech _Vechta_."
There is not, however, I believe, any real foundation whatever for this last reading, interesting as it might be, in our present inquiry, if true.]
[Footnote 199: _The Saxons in England_, vol.
i. p.
149.]
[Footnote 200: Mr. Hardy, in the preface (p. 114, etc.)
to the _Monumenta Historica Britannica_, maintains also, at much length, that the advent and reception of the Saxons by Vortigern was in A.D. 428, and not 449.
He contests for an earlier Saxon invasion of Britain in A.D. 374.
See also Lappenberg in his _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_, vol.
i. pp.
62, 63.]
[Footnote 201: Two miles higher up the river than the Cat-stane, four large monoliths still stand near Newbridge.
They are much taller than the Cat-stane, but contain no marks or letters on their surfaces.
Three of them are placed around a large barrow.]
[Footnote 202: _History of Edinburgh_, p.
509.]
[Footnote 203: _Transactions of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol.
i. p. 308.
Maitland, in his _History of Edinburgh_, p. 307, calls these cairns the "Cat-heaps."]
[Footnote 204: _Caledonia_, vol.
i. p. 86.
The only references, however, which Mr. Chalmers gives to a "single stone" in Scotland, bearing the name of Cat-stane, all relate to this monument in Kirkliston parish:--"The tallest and most striking ancient monolith in the vicinity of Edinburgh is a massive unhewn flat obelisk, standing about ten feet high, in the parish of Colinton."
Maitland (_History of Edinburgh_, p. 507), and Mr. Whyte (_Trans.
of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol.
i. p. 308) designate this monument the Caiy-stone.
"Whether this (says Maitland) be a corruption of the Catstean I know not."
The tall monolith is in the neighbourhood of the cairns called the Cat-stanes or Cat-heaps (see preceding note).
Professor Walker, in an elaborate Statistical Account of the Parish of Colinton, published in 1808, in his _Essays on Natural History_ describes the Cat-heaps or cairns as having been each found, when removed, to cover a coffin made of _hewn_ stones.
In the coffins were found mouldering human bones and fragments of old arms, including two bronze spear-heads.
"When the turnpike road which passes near the above cairns was formed, for more than a mile the remains of dead bodies were everywhere thrown up."
Most of them had been interred in stone coffins made of coarse slabs.
To use the words of Professor Walker, "Not far from the three cairns is the so called 'Caiy-stone' of Maitland and Whyte.
It has always, however (he maintains), been known among the people of the country by the name of the Ket-stane."
It is of whinstone, and "appears not to have had the chisel, or any inscription upon it."
"The craig (he adds) or steep rocky mountain which forms the northern extremity of the Pentland Hills, and makes a conspicuous figure at Edinburgh, hangs over this field of battle.
It is called Caer-_Ket_an Craig.
This name appears to be derived from the Ket-stane above described, and the fortified camp adjacent, which, in the old British, was termed a Caer."
(P.
611.)]
[Footnote 205: See "Annales Cambriæ," in the _Monumenta Hist.
Britannica_, p.
833.]
[Footnote 206: In Maitland's time (1753), there was a farm-house termed "Catstean," standing near the monument we are describing.
And up to the beginning of the present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition--viz., Cat-elbock.
This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.]
[Footnote 207: _Historia Ecclesiast._, lib.
i. c. xii.
"Sermone Pictorum Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur."]
[Footnote 208: _Historia Britonum_, c. xix.
At one time I fancied it possible that the mutilated and enigmatical remains of ancient Welsh poetry furnished us with a name for the Cat-stane older still than that appellation itself.
Among the fragments of old Welsh historical poems ascribed to Taliesin, one of the best known is that on the battle of Gwen-Ystrad.
In this composition the poet describes, from professedly personal observation, the feats at the above battle of the army of his friend and great patron, Urien, King of Rheged, who was subsequently killed at the siege of Medcaut, or Lindisfarne, about A.D. 572.
Villemarque places the battle of Gwen-Ystrad between A.D. 547 and A.D. 560.
The British kingdom of Rheged, over which Urien ruled, is by some authorities considered as the old British or Welsh kingdom of Cumbria, or Cumberland; but, according to others, it must have been situated further northwards.
In the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad (see the _Myvyrian Archæology_, vol.
i. p. 53), Urien defeats the enemy--apparently the Saxons or Angles--under Ida, King of Bernicia.
In one line near the end of the poem, Taliesin describes Urien as attacking his foes "by the white stone of Galysten:" "Pan amwyth ai alon yn Llech wen Galysten."
The word "Galysten," when separated into such probable original components as "Gal" and "lysten," is remarkable, from the latter part of the appellation, "lysten," corresponding with the name, "Liston," of the old barony or parish in which the Cat-stane stands; the prefix Kirk (Kirk-liston) being, as is well known, a comparatively modern addition.
The word "Gal" is a common term, in compound Keltic words, for "stranger," or "foreigner."
In the Gaelic branch of the Keltic, "lioston" signifies, according to Sir James Foulis, "an inclosure on the side of a river."
(See Mr. Muckarsie on the origin of the name of Kirkliston, in the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, vol.
x. p.
68.)
The Highland Society's _Gaelic Dictionary_ gives "liostean" as a lodging, tent, or booth.
In the Cymric, "lystyn" signifies, according to Dr. Owen Pughe, "a recess, or lodgment."
(See his _Welsh Dictionary_, _sub voce_.)
The compound word Gal-lysten would perhaps not be thus overstrained, if it were held as possibly originating in the meaning, "the lodgment, inclosure, or resting-place of the foreigner;" and the line quoted would, under such an idea, not inaptly apply to the grave-stone of such a foreign leader as Vetta.
Urien's forces are described in the first line of the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, as "the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn."
Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archæologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth--Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures.
Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia--this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire and part of the Lothians.
An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near the site of the Cat-stane.
A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem.
The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name of two forts or "caers" are still left--viz.
Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?)
and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three miles below it.
But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to identify the name of "the fair or white strath."
"Lenny"--the name of the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its "strath" or "dale"--presents insurmountable philological difficulties to its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being interchangeable.
The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)--the seat in the twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle of the noble house of Sutherland--runs into the valley of the Almond about two miles above the Cat-stane.
In this, as in other Welsh and Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river.
In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates.
The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley--"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract.
In his learned edition of _Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siècle_, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry--a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane.
But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore.
Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town--a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin.
And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight--owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen--is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet--indulging in the utmost poetical license--to have sung of it as "the white stone."
After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle--"Gwenn Ystrad."
Winchburgh, the name of the second largest village in the parish of Kirkliston, and a station on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, is perhaps worthy of note, from its being placed in the same district as the stone of Vetta, the son of Victa, and from the appellation possibly signifying originally, according to Mr. Kemble (our highest authority in such a question), the burgh of Woden, or Wodensburgh.
(See his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol.
i. p.
346.)]
[Footnote 209: _Vita Agricolæ_, xliv.
2.]
[Footnote 210: _History of England_--Anglo-Saxon Period, p.
20.]
[Footnote 211: On the probable great extent of the Teutonic or German element of population in Great Britain as early as about A.D. 400; see Mr. Wright, in his excellent and interesting work _The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon_, p.
385.]
[Footnote 212: _Historia Ecclesiastica_, lib.
i. c. 1; or Dr. Giles' _Translation_, in Bohn's edition, p.
5.]
[Footnote 213: Dr. Giles' _Translation_, in Bohn's edition, p.
24.]
[Footnote 214: _Historia Ecclesiastical_, lib.
i. c.
15.]
[Footnote 215: Perhaps it is right to point out, as exceptions to this general observation, a very few Greek inscriptions to Astarte, Hercules, Esculapius, etc., left in Britain by the Roman soldiers and colonists.]
[Footnote 216: On the supposed site, etc.
of this monument to Horsa, in Kent, see Mr. Colebrook's paper in _Archæologia_, vol.
ii.
p. 167; and Halsted's _Kent_, vol.
ii.
p. 177.
In 1631, Weever, in his _Ancient Funeral Monuments_, p. 317, acknowledges that "stormes and time have devoured Horsa's monument."
In 1659 Phillpot, when describing the cromlech called Kits Coty House--the alleged tomb of Catigern--speaks of Horsa's tomb as utterly extinguished "by storms and tempests under the conduct of time."]
ON SOME SCOTTISH MAGICAL CHARM-STONES, OR CURING-STONES.
Throughout all past time, credulity and superstition have constantly and strongly competed with the art of medicine.
There is no doubt, according to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in medicine, and that it insinuated itself first amongst mankind under the plausible guise of promoting health.
[217] In proof of the antiquity of the belief, this great Roman encyclopædist cites Eudoxus, Aristotle, and Hermippus, as averring that magical arts were used thousands of years before the time of the Trojan war.
Assuredly, in ancient times, faith in the effects of magical charms, amulets, talismans, etc., seems to have prevailed among all those ancient races of whom history has left any adequate account.
In modern times a belief in their efficiency and power is still extensively entertained amongst most of the nations of Asia and Africa.
In some European kingdoms, also, as in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, belief in them still exists to a marked extent.
In our own country, the magical practices and superstitions of the older and darker ages persist only as forms and varieties, so to speak, of archæological relics,--for they remain at the present day in comparatively a very sparse and limited degree.
They are now chiefly to be found among the uneducated, and in outlying districts of the kingdom.
But still, some practices, which primarily sprung up in a belief in magic, are carried on, even by the middle and higher classes of society, as diligently as they were thousands of years ago, and without their magical origin being dreamed of by those who follow them.
The coral is often yet suspended as an ornament around the neck of the Scottish child, without the potent and protective magical and medicinal qualities long ago attached to it by Dioscorides and Pliny being thought of by those who place it there.
Is not the egg, after being emptied of its edible contents, still, in many hands, as assiduously pierced by the spoon of the eater as if he had weighing upon his mind the strong superstition of the ancient Roman, that--if he omitted to perforate the empty shell--he incurred the risk of becoming spell-bound, etc.?
Marriages seem at the present day as much dreaded in the month of May as they were in the days of Ovid, when it was a proverbial saying at Rome that "Mense malas _Maio_ nubere vulgus ait."
And, in the marriage ceremony itself, the finger-ring still holds among us as prominent a place as it did among the superstitious marriage-rites of the ancient pagan world.
Among the endless magical and medical properties that were formerly supposed to be possessed by human saliva, one is almost universally credited by the Scottish schoolboy up to the present hour; for few of them ever assume the temporary character of pugilists without duly spitting into their hands ere they close their fists; as if they retained a full reliance on the magical power of the saliva to increase the strength of the impending blow--if not to avert any feeling of malice produced by it--as was enunciated, eighteen centuries ago, by one of the most laborious and esteemed writers of that age,[218] in a division of his work which he gravely prefaces with the assertion that in this special division he has made it his "object (as he declares) to state no facts but such as are established by nearly uniform testimony."
In a separate chapter (chap.
iv.)
in his 30th Book, Pliny alludes to the prevalence of magical beliefs and superstitious practices in the ancient Celtic provinces of France and Britain.
"The Gaelic provinces," says he, "were pervaded by the magical art, and that even down to a period within memory; for it was the Emperor Tiberius who put down the Druids and all that tribe of wizards and physicians."
We know, however, from the ancient history of France posterior to Pliny's time, that the Druids survived as a powerful class in that country for a long time afterwards.
Writing towards the end of the first century, Pliny goes on to remark;--"At the present day, struck with fascination, Britannia still cultivates this art, and that with ceremonials so august, that she might almost seem to have been the first to communicate them to the people of Persia."
"To such a degree," adds this old Roman philosopher, "are nations throughout the whole world, totally different as they are, and quite unknown to one another, in accord upon _this_ one point.
"[219] Some supposed vestiges of a most interesting kind, of very ancient Gallic or Celtic word-charms, have recently been brought before archæologists by the celebrated German philologist Grimm, and by Pictet of Geneva.
Marcellus, the private physician of the Roman Emperor Theodosius, was a Gaul born in Aquitane, and hence, it is believed, was intimately acquainted with the Gaulish or Celtic language of that province.
He left a work on quack medicines (_De Medicamentis Empiricis_), written probably near the end of the fourth century.
This work contains, amongst other things, a number of word-charms, or superstitious cure-formulas, that were, till lately, regarded--like Cato's word-cure for fractures of the bones--as mere unmeaning gibberish.
Joseph Grimm and M. Pictet, however, think that they have found in these word-charms of Marcellus, specimens of the Gaulish or Celtic language several centuries older than any that were previously known to exist--none of the earliest glosses used by Zeuss, in his famous _Grammatica Celtica_, being probably earlier than the eighth or ninth centuries.
If the labours of Grimm and Pictet prove successful in this curious field of labour, they will add another proof to the prevalence of magical charms among the Celtic nations of antiquity, and afford us additional confirmation of the ancient prevalence, as described by Pliny, of a belief in the magical art among the Gaelic inhabitants of France and Britain.
[220] The long catalogue of the medical superstitions and magical practices originally pertaining to our Celtic forefathers, was no doubt from time to time increased and swelled out in Britain by the addition of the analogous medical superstitions and practices of the successive Roman[221] and Teutonic [222] invaders and conquerors of our island.
A careful analysis would yet perhaps enable the archæologist to separate some of these classes of magical beliefs from each other; but many of them had, perhaps, a common and long anterior origin.
We know further that, in its earlier centuries among us, the teachers of Christianity added greatly to the number of existing medical superstitions, by maintaining the efficacy, for example, of a visit to the cross of King Edwin of Northumberland, for the cure of agues, etc.,--the marvellous alleged recoveries worked by visiting the grave of St. Ninian at Whitehorn, or the cross of St. Mungo in the Cathedral churchyard at Glasgow; the sovereign virtues of the waters of wells used by various anchorets, and dedicated to various saints throughout the country; the curative powers of holy robes, bells, bones, relics, etc.
Numerous forms of medical superstitions, charms, amulets, incantations, etc., derived from the preceding channels, and possibly also from other sources, seem to have been known and practised among our forefathers, and for the cure of almost all varieties of human maladies, whether of the mind or body.
Our old Scottish hagiologies, witch trials, ecclesiastical records, etc., abound with notices of them.
Nor have some of the oldest and most marked medical superstitions of ancient times been very long obliterated and forgotten.
I know, for example, of two localities in the Lowlands, one near Biggar in Lanarkshire, the other near Torphichen in West Lothian, where, within the memory of the present and past generation, living cows have been sacrificed for curative purposes, or under the hope of arresting the progress of the murrain in other members of the flock.
In both these instances the cow was sacrificed by being buried alive.
The sacrifice of other living animals,[223] as of the cat, cock, mole, etc., for the cure of disease, and especially of fits, epilepsy, and insanity, continues to be occasionally practised in some parts of the Highlands up to the present day.
And in the city of Edinburgh itself, every physician knows the fact that, in the chamber of death, usually the face of the mirror is most carefully covered over, and often a plate with salt in it is placed upon the chest of the corpse.
The Museum of the Society contains a few medicinal charms and amulets, principally in the form of amber beads (which were held potent in the cure of blindness), perforated stones, and old distaff whorls, whose original use seems to have been forgotten, and new and magical properties assigned to them.
But the most important medicinal relic in the collection is the famous "Barbreck's bone," a slice or tablet of ivory, about seven inches long, four broad, and half-an-inch in thickness.
It was long in the possession of the ancient family of Barbreck in Argyleshire, and over the Western Highlands had the reputation of curing all forms and degrees of insanity.
It was formerly reckoned so valuable that a bond of £100 was required to be deposited for the loan of it.
But the main object of the present communication is, through the kind permission of Struan Robertson, Lady Lockhart of Lee, and others, to show to the Society two or three of the principal curing-stones of Scotland.
Several of these curing-stones long retained their notoriety, but they have now almost all fallen entirely into disuse, at least for the cure of human diseases.
In some districts, however, they are still employed in the treatment of the diseases of domestic animals.
A very ancient example of the use of a "curing-stone" in this country is detailed in what may be regarded as the first or oldest historical work which has been left us in reference to Scotland, namely, in Adamnan's _Life of St. Columba_.
This biography of the founder of Iona was probably written in the last years of the seventh century, Adamnan having died in A.D. 705.
He was elected to the Abbacy of Iona A.D. 679, and had there the most favourable opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the existing traditions and records regarding St. Columba.
About the year 563 of the Christian era, Columba visited Brude, King of the Picts, in his royal fort on the Ness, and found the Pictish sovereign attended by a court or council, and with Brochan as his chief Druid or Magus.
Brochan retained an Irish female, and consequently a countrywoman of Columba's, as a slave.
The 33d chapter of the second book of Adamnan's work is entitled, "Concerning the Illness with which the Druid (_Magus_) Brochan was visited for refusing to liberate a Female Captive, and his Cure when he restored her to Liberty."
The story told by Adamnan, under this head, is as follows:-_Curing-Stone of St. Columba._ "About the same time the venerable man, from motives of humanity, besought Brochan the Druid to liberate a certain Irish female captive, a request which Brochan harshly and obstinately refused to grant.
The Saint then spoke to him as follows:--'Know, O Brochan, know, that if you refuse to set this captive free, as I desire you, you shall die before I return from this province.'
Having said this in presence of Brude the king, he departed from the royal palace and proceeded to the river Nesa, from which he took a white pebble, and showing it to his companions, said to them:--'Behold this white pebble, by which God will effect the cure of many diseases.'
Having thus spoken, he added, 'Brochan is punished grievously at this moment, for an angel sent from heaven, striking him severely, has broken in pieces the glass cup which he held in his hands, and from which he was in the act of drinking, and he himself is left half dead.
Let us await here, for a short time, two of the king's messengers, who have been sent after us in haste, to request us to return quickly and relieve the dying Brochan, who, now that he is thus terribly punished, consents to set his captive free.'
"While the saint was yet speaking, behold, there arrived as he had predicted, two horsemen, who were sent by the king, and who related all that had occurred, according to the prediction of the saint--the breaking of the drinking goblet, the punishment of the Druid, and his willingness to set his captive at liberty.
They then added:--'The king and his councillors have sent us to you to request that you would cure his foster father, Brochan, who lies in a dying state.'
"Having heard these words of the messengers, Saint Columba sent two of his companions to the king, with the pebble which he had blessed, and said to them; 'If Brochan shall first promise to free his captive, immerse this little stone in water and let him drink from it, but if he refuse to liberate her, he will that instant die.'
"The two persons sent by the saint proceeded to the palace and announced the words of the holy man to the king and to Brochan, an announcement which filled them with such fear, that he immediately liberated the captive and delivered her to the saint's messengers."
The stone was then immersed in water, and in a wonderful manner, and contrary to the laws of nature, it floated on the water like a nut or an apple, nor could it be submerged.
Brochan drank from the stone as it floated on the water, and instantly recovered his perfect health and soundness of body.
"This little pebble (adds Adamnan) was afterwards preserved among the treasures of the king, retained its miraculous property of floating in water, and through the mercy of God effected the cure of sundry diseases.
And, what is very wonderful, when it was sought for by those sick persons whose term of life had arrived it could not be found.
An instance of this occurred the very day king Brude died, when the stone, though sought for with great diligence, could not be found in the place where it had been previously left.
"[224] In the Highlands of Scotland there have been transmitted down, for many generations, various curing or charm-stones, used in the same manner as that of Columba, and reckoned capable, like his, of imparting to the _water in which they were immersed_[225] wondrous medicinal powers.
One of the most celebrated of these curing-stones belongs to Struan Robertson, the chief of the Clan Donnachie.
I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Robertson, for the following notes regarding the curing-stone, of which her family are the hereditary proprietors.
Its local name is _Clach-na-Bratach, or Stone of the Standard._ "This stone has been in possession of the Chiefs of Clan Donnachaidh since 1315.
"It is said to have been acquired in this wise.
"The (then) chief, journeying with his clan to join Bruce's army before Bannockburn, observed, on his standard being lifted one morning, a glittering something in a clod of earth hanging to the flagstaff.
It was this stone.
He showed it to his followers, and told them he felt sure its brilliant lights were a good omen and foretold a victory--and victory was won on the hard-fought field of Bannockburn.
[Illustration: Fig.
17.
Clach-na-Bratach.]
"From this time, whenever the clan was 'out,' the Clach-na-Bratach accompanied it, carried on the person of the chief, and its varying hues were consulted by him as to the fate of battle.
On the eve of Sheriffmuir (13th November 1715), of sad memory, on Struan consulting the stone as to the fate of the morrow, the large internal flaw was first observed.
The Stuarts were lost--and Clan Donnachaidh has been declining in influence ever since.
"The virtues of the Clach-na-Bratach are not altogether of a martial nature, for it cures all manner of diseases in cattle and horses, and formerly in human beings also, if they drink the water in which this charmed stone has been thrice dipped by the hands of Struan."
The Clach-na-Bratach is a transparent, globular mass of rock crystal, of the size of a small apple.
(See accompanying woodcut, Fig.
17.)
Its surface has been artificially polished.
Several specimens of round rock-crystal, of the same description and size, and similarly polished, have been found deposited in ancient sepulchres, and were formerly used also in the decoration of shrines and sceptres.
Another well-known example of the Highland curing-stone is the _Clach Dearg, or Stone of Ardvoirloch._ [Illustration: Fig.
18.
Stone of Ardvoirloch.]
This stone is a clear rock-crystal ball of a similar character, but somewhat smaller than the Clach-na-Bratach, and placed in a setting (see Fig.
18) of four silver bands or slips.
The following account of the Ardvoirloch curing-stone is from the pen of one of the present members of that ancient family:-"It has been in the possession of our family from _time immemorial_, but there is no writing about it in any of the charters, nor even a tradition as to _when_ and _how_ it became possessed of it.
It is supposed to have been brought from the _East_, which supposition is corroborated by the fact of the silver setting being recognised as of Eastern workmanship.
Its healing powers have always been held in great repute in our own neighbourhood, particularly in diseases of cattle.
I have even known persons come for the water into which it has been dipped from a distance of forty miles.
It is also believed to have other properties which you know of.
"These superstitions would have existed up to the present day, had I not myself put a stop to them; but six years ago, I took an opportunity to do away with them, by depositing the stone with some of the family plate in a chest which I sent to the bank.
Thus, when applied to for it (which I have been since then), I had the excuse of not having it in my possession; and when the Laird returns from India, it is hoped the superstition may be forgotten, and "the stone" preserved only as a very precious _heirloom_.
"I may mention that there were various forms to be observed by those who wished to benefit by its healing powers.
The person who came for it to Ardvoirloch was obliged to draw the water himself, and bring it into the house in some vessel into which this stone was to be dipped.
A bottle was filled and carried away; and in its conveyance home, if carried into any house by the way, the virtue was supposed to leave the water; it was therefore necessary, if a visit had to be paid, that the bottle should be left outside."
Other charm-stones enjoyed, up to the present century, no small medical reputation among the inhabitants of the Highlands.
In some districts, every ancient family of note appears to have affected the possession of a curing-stone.
The Campbells of Glenlyon have long been the hereditary proprietors of a charm-stone similar to those that I have already mentioned.
It consists of a roundish or ovoidal ball, apparently of rock-crystal, about an inch and a half in diameter, and protected by a silver mounting.
To make the water in which it was dipped sufficiently medicinal and effective, the stone, during the process, required to be held in the hand of the Laird.
The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed another of these celebrated northern amulets.
The Auchmeddan Stone is a ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver.
A legend engraved on this silver setting--in letters probably of the last century--states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174."
In the middle of the last century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of Findrack, when an intermarriage with the Bairds occurred.
Curing-stones seem to have formerly been by no means rare in this country, to the south also of the Highland Borders.
In a letter written by the distinguished Welsh archæologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads or Snake stones.
[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass.
"They have also," he says, "the _Ombriæ pellucidæ_, which are crystal balls or hemispheres, or depressed ovals, in great esteem for curing of cattle; and some on May-day put them into a tub of water, and besprinkle all their cattle with that water, to prevent being elf-struck, bewitched, etc."
In the Lowlands, the curing-stone of greatest celebrity, and the one which has longest retained its repute, is _The Lee Penny._ In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a world-wide reputation as the original of the _Talisman_ of Sir Walter Scott, though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined, and almost entirely ceased.
[227] The enchanted stone has long been in the possession of the knightly family of the Lockharts of Lee, in Lanarkshire.
According to a mythical tradition, it was, in the fourteenth century, brought by Sir Simon Lockhart from the Holy Land, where it had been used as a medical amulet, for the arrestment of hæmorrhage, fever, etc.
It is a small dark-red stone, of a somewhat triangular or heart shape, as represented in the adjoining woodcut (Fig.
19).
It is set in the reverse of a groat of Edward IV., of the London Mint.
[228] [Illustration: Fig.
19.
The Lee Penny.]
When the Lee Penny was used for healing purposes, a vessel was filled with water, the stone was drawn once round the vessel, and then dipped three times in the water.
In his _Account of the Penny in the Lee_, written in 1702, Hunter states, that "it being taken and put into the end of a cloven stick, and washen in a tub full of water, and given to cattell to drink, infallibly cures almost all manner of deseases.
The people," he adds, "come from all airts of the kingdom with deseased beasts."
One or two points in its history prove the faith that was placed in the healing powers of the Lee Penny in human maladies of the most formidable type.
About the beginning of last century, Lady Baird of Saughtonhall was attacked with the supposed symptoms of hydrophobia.
But on drinking of, and bathing in, the water in which the Lee Penny had been dipped, the symptoms disappeared; and the Knight and Lady of Lee were for many days sumptuously entertained by the grateful patient.
In one of the epidemics of plague which attacked Newcastle in the reign of Charles I., the inhabitants of that town obtained the loan of the Lee Penny by granting a bond of £6000 for its safe return.
Such, it is averred, was their belief in its virtues, and the good that it effected, that they offered to forfeit the money, and keep the charm-stone.
About the middle of the seventeenth century the Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland zealously endeavoured, as the English Church under King Edgar had long before done, to "extinguish every heathenism, and forbid well-worshippings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshippings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with elders, and also with other trees, and with stones, etc.
"[229] They left, however, other practices, equally superstitious, quite untouched.
Thus, while they threatened "the seventh son of a woman" with the "paine of Kirk censure," for "cureing the cruelles (scrofulous tumours and ulcers),"[230] by touching them, they still allowed the reigning king this power (Charles II.
alone "touched" 92,000 such patients);[231] and the English Church sanctioned a liturgy to be used on these superstitious occasions.
Again, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Glasgow examined into the alleged curative gifts of the Lee Penny; but, finding that it was employed "wtout using onie words such as charmers and sorcerers use in their unlawfull practisess; and considering that in nature there are mony things seen to work strange effects, q^{r}of no human witt can give a reason, it having pleasit God to give to stones and herbes special virtues for the healing of mony infirmities in man and beast, advises the brethern to surcease their process, as q^{r}in they perceive no ground of offence: And admonishes the said Laird of Lee, in the useing of the said stone to tak heed that it be used hereafter w^t the least scandal that possiblie may be.
"[232] [Footnote 217: _Natural History_, Book xxx.
chapters i.
ii.]
[Footnote 218: "What we are going to say," observes Pliny, "is marvellous, but it may easily be tested by experiment.
If a person repents of a blow given to another, either by hand or with a missile, he has nothing to do but to spit at once into the palm of the hand which has inflicted the blow, and all feeling of resentment will be instantly alleviated in the person struck.
This, too, is often verified in the case of a beast of burden, when brought on its haunches with blows: for, upon this remedy being adopted, the animal will immediately step out and mend its pace.
Some persons, also, before making an effort, spit into the hand in the manner above stated, in order to make the blow _more_ heavy."
--Pliny's _Natural History_, xxviii.
§ 7.]
[Footnote 219: _Natural History_, Book xxx.
§ 4.
Archæologists are now fully aware of "the accord" of the ancient inhabitants of Britain with those of Persia and the other eastern branches of the Aryan race in many other particulars, as in their language, burial customs, etc.
According to some Indian observers, stone erections, like our so-called Druidical circles, cromlechs, etc., are common in the East.
Is it vain to hope that amid the great and yet unsearched remains of old Sanscrit literature, allusions may yet be found to such structures, that may throw more light upon their uses in connection with religious, sepulchral, or other services?]
[Footnote 220: Grimm thinks that the formulæ of Marcellus partake more of the Celtic dialects of the Irish, and consequently of the Scotch, than of the Welsh.
As one of the shortest specimens of Marcellus's charm-cures, let me cite, from Pictet, the following, as given in the _Ulster Journal of Archæology_, vol.
iv.
p. 266:--"Formula 12.
He who shall labour under the disease of watery (or blood-shot) eyes, let him pluck the herb Millefolium up by the roots, and of it make a hoop, and look through it, saying three times, '_Excicumacriosos_;' and let him as often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and then plant the herb again."
"I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula thus: _exci cuma criosos_, and translate it, 'See the form of the girdle.'"
After a long and learned disquisition on the component words Pictet adds--"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a character altogether symbolical.
Girdles (_cris_), which we shall meet with again in formula No.
27, seem to have performed an important part in Celtic medicine.
By making the eye look through the circle formed by the plant, a girdle, as it were, was put round it; and it is for this reason that the formula says, see the form (or model) of the girdle.
The action of spitting afterwards through the little ring expressed symbolically the expulsion of the pain."
The so-called Celtic word-charms in the formulæ of Marcellus are usually longer than the above; as, "_Tetune resonco bregan gresso_;" "Heilen prossaggeri nome sipolla na builet ododieni iden olitan," etc.
etc.]
[Footnote 221: On this subject I elsewhere published, two years ago, the following remarks:--"The medical science and medical lore of the past has become, after a succession of ages, the so-called folk-lore and superstitious usages of times nearer our own.
Up to the end of the last century, patients attacked with insanity were occasionally dipped in lakes and wells, and left bound in the neighbouring church for a night.
Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, and St. Fillan's Pool, in Perthshire, were places in which such unfortunate patients were frequently dipped.
Heron, in his _Journey through Scotland_ in the last century, states that it was affirmed that two hundred invalids were carried annually to St. Fillan's for the cure of various diseases, but principally of insanity.
The proceedings at this famous pool were in such cases an imitation of the old Greek and Roman worship of Æsculapius.
Patients consulting the Æsculapian priest were purified first of all, by bathing in some sacred well; and then having been allowed to enter into and sleep in his temple, the god, or rather some priest of the god, came in the darkness of the night and told them what treatment they were to adopt.
The poor lunatics brought to St. Fillan's were, in the same way, first purified by being bathed in his pool, and then laid bound in the neighbouring church during the subsequent night.
If they were found loose in the morning, a full recovery was confidently looked for, but the cure remained doubtful when they were found at morning dawn still bound.
I was lately informed by the Rev.
Mr Stewart of Killin, that in one of the last cases so treated--and that only a few years ago--the patient was found sane in the morning, and unbound; a dead relative, according to the patient's own account, having entered the church during the night, and loosened her both from the ropes that bound her body and the delusions that warped her mind.
It was a system of treatment by mystery and terrorism that might have made some sane persons insane; and hence, perhaps, conversely, some insane persons sane.
Mr. Pennant tells us that at Llandegla, in Wales, where similar rites were performed for the cure of insanity, viz., purification in the sacred well, and forced detention of the patient for a night in the church, under the communion-table, the lunatics or their friends were obliged to leave a cock in the church if he were a male, and a hen if she were a female--an additional circumstance in proof of the Æsculapian type of the superstition.
But perhaps, after all, the whole is a medical or mythological belief, older than Greece or Rome, and which was common to the whole Aryan or Indo-European race in Asia before they sent off, westward, over Europe, those successive waves of population that formed the nations of the Celt and Teuton, of the Goth, and Greek, and Latin.
The cock is still occasionally sacrificed in the Highlands for the cure of epilepsy and convulsions.
A patient of mine found one, a few years ago, deposited in a hole in the kitchen floor; the animal having been killed and laid down at the spot where a child had, two or three days previously, fallen down in a fit of convulsions."
--See the _Medical Times and Gazette_ of Dec. 8, 1860, p.
549.]
[Footnote 222: See, for example, Kemble's work on the Anglo-Saxons, vol.
i. p. 528, for various Teutonic medical superstitions and cures.]
[Footnote 223: A very intelligent patient from the North Highlands, to whom I happened lately to speak on this subject, has written out the following instances that have occurred within her own knowledge:--"Twenty years or more ago, in the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire, there was a lad of fifteen ill with epilepsy.
To cure him, his friends first tried the charm of mole's blood.
A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop into the plate.
Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but without effect.
Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred miles.
This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water, which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents.
This I heard from a sister of the lad's.
There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some kind.
They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment.
A woman in Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption, who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm.
This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."]
[Footnote 224: In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is again alluded to as follows:--"He took a white stone (_lapidem candidum_) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an apple when placed in the water."]
[Footnote 225: For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being brought in contact with saint's bones--such as St. Marnan's head, with St. Conval's chariot, etc.
etc., see Dalyell's _Superstitions of Scotland_, p. 151, etc.
Sibbald's _Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of Physicians_, p.
39.]
[Footnote 226: See _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1713, p. 98.
For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's _Western Isles_, p. 134, 166, etc.]
[Footnote 227: I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from its rafters.
Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out during the present generation.]
[Footnote 228: I state this on the high numismatic authority of my friend, Mr. Sim.
Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of Edward I.]
[Footnote 229: Kemble's _Anglo-Saxons_, vol.
i. p. 527, etc.]
[Footnote 230: See a case of this prohibition in the _Ecclesiastical Records of the Presbytery of St. Andrews_ for September 1643.
"It is manifest by experience," says Upton, "that the seventh male child by just order, never a girle or wench being borne betweene, doth heall only with touching, by a natural gift, the king's evil; which is a speciall gift of God, given to kings and queens, as daily experience doth witnesse."
See Upton's Notable Things (1631), p. 28.
Charles I. when he visited Scotland in 1633, in Holyrood Chapel, on St. John's day, "heallit 100 persons of the cruelles, or kingis eivell, yong and olde."
--Dalyell's _Superstitions_, p.
62.]
[Footnote 231: See the "_Charisma Basilicon_" (1684) of John Browne, "Chirurgion to His Majesty," for a full and charming account of the whole process and ceremonies of the royal "touch," the prayers used on the occasion, and due proofs of the alleged wondrous effects of this "sanative gift, which hath (says Dr. Browne) for above 640 years been confirmed and continued in our English Princely line, wherein is not so much of their Majesty shown as of their Divinity," and which is only doubted by "Ill affected men and Dissenters."]
[Footnote 232: See the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for December 1787.]
IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?
The following observations form a corrected Abstract, from No.
75 of the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, of a communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and entitled _Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the Objects of their Erection_.
Some additional points are dwelt upon in the Notes and Appendix.
As stated at the time, the communication was not at all spontaneous, but enforced by the previous criticisms of Professor Smyth.
There are many proposed derivations of the word Pyramid.
Perhaps the origin of the name suggested by the distinguished Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, from two Coptic words, "_pouro_," "ing," and "_emahau_," or "_maha_," "tomb,"--the two in combination signifying "the king's tomb,"--is the most correct.
"_Men_," in Coptic, signifies "monument," "memorial;" and "_pouro-men_," or "king's monument," may possibly also be the original form of the word.
[233] Various English authors, as Pope,[234] Pownall,[235] Professor Daniel Wilson,[236] Burton,[237] had long applied the term pyramid to the larger forms of conical and round sepulchral mounds, cairns, or barrows--such as are found in Ireland, Brittany, Orkney, etc., and also in numerous districts of the New and Old World;[238] and which are all characterised by containing in their interior chambers or cells, constructed usually of large stones, and with megalithic galleries leading into them.
In these chambers (small in relation to the hills of stone or earth in which they were imbedded) were found the remains of sepulture, with stone weapons, ornaments, etc.
The galleries and chambers were roofed, sometimes with flags laid quite flat, or placed abutting against each other; and occasionally with large stones arranged over the internal cells in the form of a horizontal arch or dome.
In his travels to Madeira and the Mediterranean (1840), Sir W. Wilde details in interesting terms his visit to the pyramids of Egypt; and in describing the roof of the interior chambers of one of the pyramids at Sakkara,[239] he remarks on the analogy of its construction to the great barrow of Dowth in Ireland; and again, when writing--in his work on the _Beauties of the Boyne_ (1849)--an account of the great old barrows of Dowth, New Grange, etc., placed on its banks above Drogheda, he describes at some length the last of these mounds (New Grange),--stating that it "consists" of an enormous cairn or "hill of small stones, calculated at 180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the natural undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the north.
It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in circumference, and now about 80 feet higher than the adjoining natural surface.
Various excavations (he adds) made into its sides and upon its summit, at different times, in order to supply materials for building and road-making, having assisted to lessen its original height, and also to destroy the beauty of its outline."
Like the other analogous mounds and pyramids placed there and elsewhere, New Grange has a long megalithic gallery, of above 60 feet in length, leading inward into three dome-shaped chambers or crypts.
After describing minutely, and with a master-hand, the construction of these interior parts, and the carvings of circles, spirals, etc.,[240] upon the enormous stones of which the gallery and crypts are built, Sir William Wilde goes on to observe:--"We believe with most modern investigators into such subjects, that it was a tomb, or great sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every respect to those now standing by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to Gizeh, each consisting of a great central chamber containing one or more sarcophagi, entered by a long stone-covered passage.
The external aperture was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of stones or earth in a conical form.
The early Egyptians, and the Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids; _but the type and purpose is all the same_.... How far anterior to the Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its brethren on the Nile."
Other pyramidal barrows at Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, etc., were referred to and illustrated; showing that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its mass an unbuilt pyramid; or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built cairn.
SEPULCHRAL CHARACTER, ETC., OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS.
All authors, from the Father of History downwards, have generally agreed in considering the pyramids of Egypt as magnificent and regal sepulchres; and the sarcophagi, etc., of the dead have been found in them when first opened for the purposes of plunder or curiosity.
The pyramidal sepulchral mounds on the banks of the Boyne were opened and rifled in the ninth century by the invading Dane, as told in different old Irish annals; and the Pyramids of Gizeh, etc., were reputedly broken into and harried in the same century by the Arabian Caliph, Al Mamoon,--the entrances and galleries blocked up by stones being forced and turned, and in some parts the solid masonry perforated.
The largest of the Pyramids of Gizeh--or "the Great Pyramid," as it is generally termed--is now totally deprived of the external polished limestone coating which covered it at the time of Herodotus's visit, some twenty-two centuries ago; and "now" (writes Mr. Smyth) "is so injured as to be, in the eyes of some passing travellers, little better than a heap of stones."
But all the internal built core of the magnificent structure remains, and contains in its interior (besides a rock chamber below) two higher built chambers or crypts above--the so-called King's Chamber and Queen's chamber--with galleries and apartments leading to them.
The walls of these galleries and upper chambers are built with granite and limestone masonry of a highly-finished character.
This, the largest and most gigantic of the many pyramids of Egypt, had been calculated by Major Forlong (Asso.
Inst.
C.
Engrs.
), as a structure which in the East would cost about £1,000,000.
Over India, and the East generally, enormous sums had often been expended on royal sepulchres.
The Taj Mahal of Agra, built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite queen, cost perhaps double or triple this sum; and yet it formed only a portion of an intended larger mausoleum which he expected to rear for himself.
The great Pyramid contains in its interior, and directly over the King's Chamber, five entresols or "chambers of construction," as they have been termed, intended apparently to take off the enormous weight of masonry from the cross stones forming the roof of the King's Chamber itself.
These entresols are chambers, small and unpolished, and never intended to be opened.
But in two or three of them, broken into by Colonel H. Vyse, a most interesting discovery was made about thirty years ago.
The surfaces of some of the stones were found painted over in red ochre or paint, with rudish hieroglyphics--being, as first shown by Mr. Birch, quarry marks, written on the stones 4000 years ago, and hence, perhaps, forming the oldest preserved writing in the world.
These accidental hieroglyphics usually marked only the number and position of the individual stones.
Among them, however, Mr. Birch discovered two royal ovals, viz., Shufu (the Cheops of Herodotus) and Nu Shufu--"a brother" (writes Professor Symth) "of Shufu, also a king and a co-regent with him."
Most, if not all, of the other pyramids are believed to have been erected by individual kings during their individual or separate reigns.
If these hieroglyphics proved that _two_ kings were connected with the building of the Great Pyramid, that circumstance would perhaps account for its size and the duplicity and position of its sepulchral chambers.
[241] The pyramid standing next the Great Pyramid, and nearly of equal size, is said by Herodotus to have been raised by the brother of Cheops.
The other pyramids at Gizeh are usually regarded as later in date.
But the exact era of the reign or reigns of their builders has not as yet been determined, in consequence of the break made in Egyptian chronology by the invasion of the Shepherd Kings.
In their mode of building, the various pyramids of Gizeh, etc., are all similar, and the Great Pyramid does not specially differ from the others.
"There is nothing" (observes Professor Smyth) "in the stone-upon-stone composition of the Great Pyramid which speaks of the mere building problem to be solved there, as being of a different character, or requiring inventions by man of absolutely higher order than elsewhere."
But the Great Pyramid has been imagined to contain some hidden symbols and meanings.
For "it is the manner of the Pyramid" (according to Professor Smyth) "not to wear its most vital truths in prominent outside positions."
ALLEGED METROLOGICAL OBJECT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.
By several authorities the largest[242] of the group of pyramids at Gizeh, or "Great Pyramid," has been maintained--and particularly of late by Gabb, Jomard, Taylor, and Professor Smyth--not to be a royal mausoleum, but to be a marvellous metrological monument, built some forty centuries ago, as "a necessarily material centre," to hold and contain within it, and in its structure, material standards, "in a practicable and reliable shape," "down to the ends of the world," as measures of length, capacity, weight, etc., for men and nations for all time--"a monument" (in the language of Professor Smyth) "devoted to weights and measures, not so much as a place of frequent reference for them, but one where the original standards were to be preserved for some thousands of years, safe from the vicissitudes of empires and the decay of nations."
Messrs. Taylor and Smyth further hold that this Great Pyramid was built for these purposes of mensuration under Divine inspiration--the standards being, through superhuman origination and guidance, made and protected by it till they came to be understood and interpreted in these latter times.
For, observes Professor Smyth, "the Great Pyramid was a sealed book to all the world _until_ this present day, when modern science, aided in part by the dilapidation of the building and the structural features thereby opened up--has at length been able to assign the chief interpretations."
Professor Smyth has, in his remarkable devotedness and enthusiasm, lately measured most of the principal points in the Great Pyramid; and for the great zeal, labour, and ability which he has displayed in this self-imposed mission, the Society have very properly and justly bestowed upon him the Keith Medal.
But the exactitude of the measures does not necessarily imply exactitude in the reasoning upon them; and on what grounds can it be possibly regarded as a metrological monument and not a sepulchre, is legitimately the subject of our present inquiry.
In such an investigation springs up first this question-_Who was the Architect of the Great Pyramid?_ Mr. Taylor ascribes to Noah the original idea of the metrological structure of the Great Pyramid.
"To Noah" (observes Mr. Taylor) "we must ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent purpose.
He who built the Ark, was of all men the most competent to direct the building of the Great Pyramid.
He was born 600 years before the Flood and lived 350 years after that event, dying in the year 1998 B.C.
Supposing the pyramids were commenced in 2160 B.C.
(that is 4000 years ago), _they_ were founded 168 years before the death of Noah.
We are told" (Mr. Taylor continues) "that Noah was a 'preacher of righteousness,' but nothing could more illustrate this character of a preacher of righteousness after the Flood than that he should be the first to publish a system of weights and measures for the use of all mankind, based upon the measure of the earth."
Professor Smyth, computing by another chronology, rejects the presence of Noah, and makes a shepherd--Philition, slightly and incidentally alluded to in a single passage by Herodotus[243]--the presiding and directing genius of the structure;--holding him to be a Cushite skilled in building, and under whose inspired direction the pyramid rose, containing within it miraculous measures and standards of capacity, weight, length, heat, etc.
THE COFFER IN THE KING'S CHAMBER IN THE GREAT PYRAMID AN ALLEGED STANDARD FOR MEASURES OF CAPACITY.
A granite coffer, stone box, or sarcophagus standing in that interior cell of the pyramid, called the King's Chamber, is held by Messrs. Taylor and Smyth to have been hewn out and placed there as a measure of capacity for the world, so that the ancient Hebrew, Grecian, and Roman measures of capacity on the one hand, and our modern Anglo-Saxon on the other, are all derived, directly or indirectly, from the parent measurements of this granite vessel.
"For," argues Mr. Taylor, "the porphyry coffer in the King's Chamber was intended to be a standard measure of capacity and weights for all nations; and all chief nations did originally receive their weights and measures from thence."
The works of these authors show, in numerous passages and extracts,[244] that, in their belief, the great object for which the whole pyramid was created, was the preservation of this coffer as a standard of measures, and the "whole pyramid arranged in subservience to it."
The accounts of it published by Mr. Taylor, and in Mr. Smyth's first work, further aver that the coffer is, internally and externally, a rectangular figure of mathematical form, and of "exquisite geometric truth," "highly polished, and of a fine bell-metal consistency" (p. 99).
"The chest or coffer in the Great Pyramid" (writes Mr. Taylor in 1859) "is so shaped as to be in every part rectangular from side to side, and from end to end, and the bottom is also cut at right angles to the sides and end, and made perfectly level."
"The coffer," said Professor Smyth in 1864, "exhibits to us a standard measure of 4000 years ago, with the tenacity and hardness of its substance unimpaired, and the polish and evenness of its surface untouched by nature through all that length of time."
But later inquiries and observations upset entirely all these notions and strong averments in regard to the coffer.
For-* * * * * (1.)
_The Coffer, though an alleged actual standard of capacity-measure, has yet been found difficult or impossible to measure._--In his first work, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," Professor Smyth had cited the measurements of it, made and published by twenty-five different observers, several of whom had gone about the matter with great mathematical accuracy.
[245] Though imagined to be a great standard of measure, yet all these twenty-five, as Professor Smyth owned, varied from each other in their accounts of this imaginary standard in "every element of length, breadth, and depth, both inside and outside."
Professor Smyth has latterly measured it himself, and this twenty-sixth measurement varies again from all the preceding twenty-five.
Surely a measure of capacity should be measureable.
Its mensurability indeed ought to be its most unquestionable quality; but this imagined standard has proved virtually unmeasurable--in so far at least that its twenty-six different and skilled measurers all differ from each other in respect to its dimensions.
Still, says Professor Smyth, "this affair of the coffer's precise size is _the question of questions_."
* * * * * (2.)
_Discordance between its actual and its theoretical measure._--Professor Smyth holds that _theoretically_ its capacity ought to be 71,250 "pyramidal" cubic inches, for that cubic size would make it the exact measure for a chaldron, or practically the vessel would then contain exactly four quarters of wheat, etc.
Yet Professor Smyth himself found it some 60 cubic inches less than this; while also the measurements of Professor Greaves, one of the most accurate measurers of all, make it 250 cubic inches, and those of Dr. Whitman 14,000 _below_ this professed standard.
On the other hand, the measurements of Colonel Howard Vyse make it more than 100, those of Dr. Wilson more than 500, and those of the French academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, about 6000 cubic inches _above_ the theoretical size which Professor Smyth has latterly fixed on.
* * * * * (3.)
_Its theoretical measure varied._--The _actual_ measure of the coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers.
But even its _theoretical_ measure is varied also; for the size which the old coffer really _ought_ to have as "a grand capacity standard," is, strangely enough, not a determined quantity.
In his last work (1867), Professor Smyth declares, as just stated, its proper theoretical cubic capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches.
But in his first work (1864), he declared something different, for "we _elect_," says he, "to take 70,970·2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 pyramidal cubic inches) as the true, because the theoretically _proved_ contents of the porphyry coffer, and therefore accept these numbers as giving the cubic size of the grand _standard_ measure of capacity in the Great Pyramid."
Again, however, Mr. Taylor, who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the ancient cubit of Karnak.
[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard.
But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 71,328, it is quite equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth that the Sacred Laver of the Israelites, and the Molten Sea of the Scriptures, also conform and correspond to its (yet undetermined) standard "with _all_ conceivable practical exactness;" though the standard of capacity to which they thus conform and correspond is itself a size or standard which has not been yet fixed with any exactness.
Professor Smyth, in speaking of the calculations and theoretical dimensions of this coffer--as published by Mr. Jopling, a believer in its wonderful standard character--critically and correctly observes, "Some very astonishing results were brought out in the play of arithmetical numerations."
* * * * * (4.)
_The dilapidation of the Coffer._--Thirty years ago this stone coffer was pointed out, and indeed delineated by Mr. Perring, as "_not_ particularly well polished," and "chipped and broken at the edges."
Professor Smyth, in his late travels to Egypt, states that he found every possible line and edge of it chipped away with large chips along the top, both inside and outside, "chip upon chip, woefully spoiling the original figure; along all the corners of the upright sides too, and even along every corner of the bottom, while the upper south-eastern corner of the whole vessel is positively broken away to a depth and breadth of nearly a third of the whole."
Yet this broken and damaged stone vessel is professed to be the _permanent_ and perfect miraculous standard of capacity-measure for the world for "present and still future times;" and, according to Mr. Taylor--that it might serve this purpose, "is formed of one block of the hardest kind of material, such as porphyry or granite, _in order_ that it might _not_ fall into decay;" for "in this porphyry coffer we have" (writes Professor Smyth in 1864) "the very closing end and aim of the whole pyramid."
* * * * * (5.)
_Alleged mathematical form of the Coffer erroneous._--But in regard to the coffer as an exquisite and marvellous standard of capacity to be revealed in these latter times, worse facts than these are divulged by the tables, etc., of measurements which Professor Smyth has recently published of this stone vessel or chest.
His published measurements show that it is not at all a vessel, as was averred a few years ago, of pure mathematical form; for, externally, it is in length an inch greater on one side than another; in breadth half-an-inch broader at one point than at some other point; its bottom at one part is nearly a whole inch thicker than it is at some other parts; and in thickness its sides vary in some points about a quarter of an inch near the top.
"But," Professor Smyth adds, "if calipered lower down, it is extremely probable that a _notably_ different thickness would have been found there;"--though it does not appear why they were not thus calipered.
[247] Further, externally, "all the sides" (says Professor Smyth) "were slightly hollow, excepting the east side;" and the "two external ends" also show some "concavity" in form.
"The outside," (he avows) "of the vessel was found to be by no means so perfectly accurate as many would have expected, for the length was greater on one side than the other, and _different_ also according to the height at which the measure was made."
"The workmanship" (he elsewhere describes) "of the _inside_ is in advance of the outside, but yet _not_ perfect."
For internally there is a convergence at the bottom towards the centre; both in length and in breadth the interior differs about half-an-inch at one point from another point; the "extreme points" (also) "of the corners of the bottom not being perfectly worked out to the intersection of the general planes of the entire sides;" and thus its cavity seems really of a form utterly unmeasurable in a correct way by mere linear measurement--the only measure yet attempted.
If it were an object of the slightest moment, perhaps liquid measurements would be more successful in ascertaining at least as much of the mensuration of the lower part of the coffer as still remains.
* * * * * (6.)
_Coffer cut with ledges and catch-holes for a lid, like other sarcophagi._--More damaging details still remain in relation to the coffer as "a grand standard measure of capacity," and prove that its object or function was very different.
In his first work Professor Smyth describes the coffer as showing no "symptoms" whatever of grooves, or catchpins or other fastenings or a lid.
"More modern accounts," he re-observes, "have been further precise in describing the smooth and geometrical finish of the upper part of the coffer's sides, _without any_ of those grooves, dovetails, or steady-pin-holes which have been found elsewhere in true polished sarcophagi, where the firm fastening of the lid is one of the most essential features of the whole business."
Mr. Perring, however, delineated the catchpin-holes for a lid in the coffer thirty years ago.
[248] On his late visit to it Professor Smyth found its western side lowered down in its whole extent to nearly an inch and three-quarters (or more exactly, 1·72 inch), and ledges cut out around the interior of the other sides at the same height.
Should we measure on this western side from this actual ledge brim, or from the imaginary higher brim?
If reckoned as the true brim, "this ledge" (according to Professor Smyth) would "take away near 4000 inches from the cubic capacity of the vessel."
Besides, he found three holes cut on the top of the coffer's lowered western side, as in all the other Egyptian sarcophagi, where these holes are used along with the ledge and grooves to admit, and form a simple mechanism to lock the lids of such stone chests.
[249] In other words, it presents the usual ledge and apparatus pertaining to Egyptian stone sarcophagi, and served as such.
* * * * * (7.)
_Sepulchral contents of Coffer when first discovered._--When, about a thousand years ago, the Caliph Al Mamoon tunnelled into the interior of the pyramid, he detected by the accidental falling, it is said, of a granite portcullis, the passage to the King's Chamber, shut up from the building of the pyramid to that time.
"Then" (to quote the words of Professor Smyth) "the treasures of the pyramid, sealed up almost from the days of Noah, and undesecrated by mortal eye for 3000 years, lay full in their grasp before them."
On this occasion, to quote the words of Ibn Abd Al Hakm or Hokm--a contemporary Arabian writer, and a historian of high authority,[250] who was born, lived, and died in Egypt--they found in the pyramid, "towards the top, a chamber [now the so-called King's Chamber] with an hollow stone [or coffer] in which there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]--a description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, the arrangements now well known to belong to the higher class of Egyptian mummies.
In short (to quote the words of Professor Smyth), "that wonder within a wonder of the Great Pyramid--viz., the porphyry coffer,"--that "chief mystery and boon to the human race which the Great Pyramid was built to enshrine,"--"this vessel of exquisite meaning," and of "far-reaching characteristics,"--mathematically formed under alleged Divine inspiration as a measure of capacity (and, according to M. Jomard, probably of length also) for all men and all nations, for all time,--and particularly for these latter profane times,--is, in simple truth, nothing more and nothing less than--an old and somewhat misshapen stone coffin.
STANDARD OF LINEAR MEASURE IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.
The standard in the Great Pyramid, according to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, for _linear_ measurements, is the length of the base line or lines of the pyramid.
This, Professor Smyth states, is "_the function proper of the pyramids base_."
It is professed also that in this base line there has been found a new mythical inch--one-thousandth of an inch longer than the British standard inch; and in the last sections of his late work Professor Smyth has earnestly attempted to show that the status of the kingdoms of Europe in the general and moral world may be measured in accordance with their present deviation from or conformity to this suppositious pyramidal standard in their modes of national measurement.
[253] "For the linear measure" (says Professor Smyth) "of the base line of this colossal monument, viewed in the light of the philosophical connection between time and space, has yielded a standard measure of length which is more admirably and learnedly earth-commensurable than anything which has ever yet entered into the mind of man to conceive, even up to the last discovery in modern metrological science, whether in England, France, or Germany."
The engineers and mathematicians of different countries have repeatedly measured arcs of meridians to find the form and dimensions of the earth, and the French made the metre (their standard of length), 1/10,000,000 of the quadrant of the meridian.
Professor Smyth holds that the basis line of the pyramid has been laid down by Divine authority as such a guiding standard measure.
* * * * * _What, then, is the exact length of one of its basis lines?_ The sides of the pyramid have been measured by many different measurers.
Linear standards have, says Professor Smyth, "been already looked for by many and many an author on the sides of the base of the Great Pyramid, even before they knew that the terminal points of those magnificent base lines had been carefully marked in the solid rock of the hill by the socket-holes of the builders."
But--as in the case of the cubic capacity of the coffer--these measurers sadly disagree with each other in their measurements, which, in fact, vary from some 7500 or 8000 inches to 9000 and upwards.
Thus, for example, Strabo makes it under 600 Grecian feet, or under 7500 English inches; Dr. Shawe makes it 8040 inches; Shelton makes it 8184 inches; Greaves, 8316; Davison, 8952: Caviglia, 9072; the French academicians, 9163; Dr. Perry, 9360, etc., etc.
At the time at which Professor Smyth was living at the Pyramids, Mr. Inglis of Glasgow visited it, and, for correct measurement, laid bare for the first time the four corner sockets.
Mr. Inglis's measurements not only differed from all the other measurements of "one side" base lines made before him, but he makes the four sides differ from each other; one of them--namely, the north side--being longer than the other three.
Strangely, Professor Smyth, though in Egypt for the purpose of measuring the different parts of the pyramid--and holding that its base line ought to be our grand standard of measure, and further holding that the base line could only be accurately ascertained by measuring from socket to socket--never attempted that linear measurement himself after the sockets were cleared.
These four corner sockets were never exposed before in historic times; and it may be very long before an opportunity of seeing and using them again shall ever be afforded to any other measurers.
Before the corner sockets were exposed, Professor Smyth attempted to measure the bases, and made each side of the present masonry courses "between 8900 and 9000 inches in length," or (to use his own word) "_about_" 8950 inches for the mean length of one of the four sides of the base; exclusive of the ancient casing and backing stones--which last Colonel Howard Vyse found and measured to be precisely 108 inches on each side, or 216 on both sides.
These 216 inches, added to Professor Smyth's measure of "about" 8950 inches, make one side 9166 inches.
But Professor Smyth has "elected" (to use his own expression) not to take the mathematically exact measure of the casing stones as given by Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, who alone ever saw them and measured them (for they were destroyed shortly after their discovery in 1837), but to take them, without any adequate reason, and contrary to their mathematical measurement, as equal only to 202 inches, and hence "accept 9152 inches as the original length of one side of the base of the finished pyramid."
He deems, however, this "determination" not to be so much depended upon as the measurements made from socket to socket.
The mean of the only four series of such socket or casing stone measures as have been recorded hitherto by the French Academicians (9163), Vyse (9168), Mahmoud Bey (9162), and Inglis (9110), amounts to nearly 9150.
The first three of these observers were only able to measure the north side of the pyramid.
Mr. Inglis measured all the four sides, and found them respectively 9120, 9114, 9102, and 9102, making a difference of 18 inches between the shortest and longest.
Professor Smyth thinks the measures of Mr. Inglis as on the whole probably too _small_, and he takes two of them, 9114 and 9102--(but, strangely, not the largest, 9120)--as data, and strikes a new number out of these two, and out of the three previous measures of the French Academicians, Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey; from these five quantities making a calculation of "means," and electing 9142 as the proper measure of the basis line of the pyramid--(which exact measure certainly none of its many measurers ever yet found it to be); and upon this _foundation_, "derived" (to use his own words) "from the best modern measures yet made," he proceeds to reason, "as the happy, useful, and perfect representation of 9142," and the great standard for linear measure revealed to man in the Great Pyramid.
Surely it is a remarkably strange _standard_ of linear measure that can only be thus elicited and developed--not by direct measurement but by indirect logic; and regarding the exact and precise length of which there is as yet no kind of reliable and accurate certainty.
Lately, Sir Henry James, the distinguished head of the Ordnance Survey Department, has shown that the length of one of the sides of the pyramid base, with the casing stones added, as measured by Colonel H. Vyse--viz.
9168 inches--is precisely 360 derahs, or land cubits of Egypt; the derah being an ancient land measure still in use, of the length of nearly 25-1/2 British inches, or, more correctly, of 25·488 inches; and he has pointed out that in the construction of the body of the Great Pyramid, the architect built 10 feet or 10 cubits of horizontal length for every 9 feet or 9 cubits of vertical height; while in the construction of the inclined passages the proportion was adhered to of 9 on the incline to 4 in vertical height, rules which would altogether simplify the building of such a structure.
[254] The Egyptian derah of 25·48 inches is practically one-fourth more in length than the old cubit of the city of Memphis.
Long ago Sir Isaac Newton showed, from Professor Greaves' measurements of the chambers, galleries, etc., that the Memphis cubit (or cubit of "ancient Egypt generally") of 1·719 English feet,[255] or 20·628 English inches, was apparently the _working_ cubit of the masons in constructing the Great Pyramid[256]--an opinion so far admitted more lately by both Messrs Taylor and Smyth; "the length" (says Professor Smyth) "of the cubit employed by the masons engaged in the Great Pyramid building, or that of the ancient city of Memphis," being, he thinks, on an average taken from various parts in the interior of the building, 20·73 British inches.
[257] According to Mr. Inglis' late measurement of the four bases of the pyramid, after its four corner sockets were exposed, the length of each base line was possibly 442 Memphis cubits, or 9117 English inches; or, if the greater length of the French Academicians, Colonel Vyse, and Mahmoud Bey, be held nearer the truth, 444 Memphis cubits, or 9158 British inches.
But Professor Smyth tries to show that (1.)
if 9142 only be granted to him as the possible base line of the pyramid; and (2.)
if 25 pyramidal inches be allowed to be the length of the "Sacred Cubit," as revealed to the Israelites (and as revealed in the pyramid), then the base line might be found very near a multiple of this cubit by the days of the year,[258] or by 365·25; for these two numbers multiplied together amount to 9131 "pyramidal" inches, or 9140 British inches--the British inch being held, as already stated, to be 1000th less than the pyramidal inch.
Was, however, the "Sacred Cubit"--upon whose alleged length of 25 "pyramidal" inches this idea is entirely built--really a measure of this length?
In this matter--the most important and vital of all for his whole linear hypothesis--Professor Smyth seems to have fallen into errors which entirely upset all the calculations and inferences founded by him upon it.
* * * * * _Length of the Sacred Cubit._--Sir Isaac Newton, in his remarkable _Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews_ (republished in full by Professor Smyth in the second volume of his _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_), long ago came to the conclusion that it measured 25 unciæ of the Roman foot, and 6/10 of an uncia, or 24·753 British inches; and in this way it was one-fifth longer than the cubit of Memphis--viz.
20·628 inches, as previously deduced by him from Greaves' measurements of the King's Chamber and other parts of the interior of the Great Pyramid.
Before drawing his final inference as to the Sacred Cubit being 24·75 inches, and as so many steps conducting to that inference, Sir Isaac shows that the Sacred Cubit was some measurement intermediate between a long and moderate human step or pace, between the third of the length of the body of a tall and short man, etc.
etc.
Professor Smyth has collected several of the estimations thus adduced by Newton as "methods of approach" to circumscribe the length of the Sacred Cubit, and omitted others.
Adding to eight of these alleged data, what he mistakingly avers to be Sir Isaac's deduction of the actual length of the Sacred Cubit in British inches--(namely, 24·82 instead of 24·753)--as a ninth quantity, he enters the whole nine in a table as follows:-_Professor Smyth's Table of Newton's data of Inquiry regarding the Sacred Cubit._[259] "First between 23·28 and 27·94 British inches.
Second " 23·3 27·9 " Third " 24·80 25·02 " Fourth " 24·91 25·68[260] " And Fifth, somewhere near 24·82."
"The mean of all which numbers" (Professor Smyth remarks) "amounts to 25·07 British inches.
The Sacred Cubit, then, of the Hebrews" (he adds) "in the time of Moses--_according to Sir Isaac Newton_--was equal to 25·07 British inches, with a probable error of ±·1."
But--"_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton"--the Sacred Cubit of the Jews was _not_ 25·07, as Professor Smyth makes him state in this table, but 24·75 British inches, as Sir Isaac himself more than once deliberately infers in his Dissertation.
[261] Besides, in such inquiries, is it not altogether illogical to attempt to draw mathematical deductions by these calculations of "means," and especially by using the ninth quantity in the table--viz.
Sir Isaac's own avowed and deliberate deduction regarding the actual length of the Sacred Cubit--as one of the nine quantities from which that length was to be again deduced by the very equivocal process of "means?"
Errors, however, of a far more serious kind exist.
The "mean" of the nine quantities in Professor Smyth's table is, he infers, 25·07 inches; and hence he avows that this, or near this figure, is the length of the Sacred Cubit.
But the real mean of the nine quantities which Professor Smyth has collected is not 25·07 but 25·29--a number in such a testing question as this of a very different value.
For the days of the year (365·25) when multiplied by this, the true mean of these nine quantities, would make the base line of the pyramid 9237 inches instead of Professor Smyth's theoretical number of 9142 inches; a difference altogether overturning all his inferences and calculations thereanent.
And again, if we take Sir Isaac Newton's own conclusion of 24·75, and multiply it by the days of the year, the pretended length of the pyramid base comes out as low as 9039.
_Alleged "really glorious Consummation" in Geodesy._ The incidentally but totally erroneous summation which Professor Smyth thus makes of the nine equivocal quantities in his table, as amounting to 25·07, he declares (to use his own strong words) as a "_really glorious consummation_ for the geodesical science of the present day to have brought to light;" for he avers this length of 25·07--(which he forthwith elects to alter and change, without any given reason whatever, to 25·025 British inches)--being, he observes, "practically the sacred Hebrew cubit, is _exactly_ one ten-millionth (1-10,000,000th) of the earth's semi-axis of rotation; and _that is_ the very best mode of reference to the earth-ball as a whole, for a linear standard through all time, that the highest science of the existing age of the world has yet struck out or can imagine.
In a word, the Sacred Cubit, _thus_ realised, forms an instance of the most advanced and perfected human science supporting the truest, purest, and most ancient religion; while a linear standard which the chosen people in the earlier ages of the world were merely told by maxim to look on as _sacred_, compared with other cubits of other lengths, is proved by the progress of human learning in the latter ages of time, to have had, and still to have, a philosophical merit about it which no men or nations at the time it was first produced, or within several thousand years thereof, could have possibly thought of for themselves."
Besides, adds he elsewhere, "an _extraordinarily_[262] convenient length too, for man to handle and use in the common affairs of life is the one ten-millionth of the earth's semi-axis of rotation when it comes to be realised, for it is extremely close to the ordinary human arm, or to the ordinary human pace in walking, with a purpose to measure."
Of course all these inferences and averments regarding the Sacred Cubit being an exact segment of the polar axis disappear, when we find Sir Isaac Newton's length of the Sacred Cubit is not, as Professor Smyth elects it to be, 25·025 British inches; nor 25·07, as he incorrectly calculated it to be from the mean of the nine quantities selected and arranged in his table; nor 25·29, as is the actual mean of these nine quantities in his table; but, "_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton's" own reiterated statement and conclusion, 24·753.
(See footnote, p.
245.)
A Sacred Cubit, according to Sir Isaac Newton's admeasurements of it, of 24·75 inches, would not, by thousands of cubits, be one ten-millionth of the measure of the semi-polar axis of the earth; provided the polar axis be, as Professor Smyth elects it to be, 500,500,000 British inches.
[263] AXIS OF THE EARTH AS A STANDARD OF MEASURE.
The standards of measure in France and some other countries are, as is well known, referred to divisions of arcs of the meridian, measured off upon different points of the surface of the earth.
These measures of arcs of the meridian, as measurements of a known and selected portion of the surface of the spheroidal globe of the earth, have, more or less, fixed mathematical relations with the axis of the earth; as the circumference of a sphere has an exact mathematical ratio to its diameter.
The difference in length of arcs of the meridian at different parts of the earth's surface, in consequence of the spheroidal form of the globe of the earth, has led to the idea that the polar diameter or axis of the earth would form a more perfect and more universal standard than measurements of the surface of the earth.
In the last century, Cassini[264] and Callet[265] proposed, on these grounds, that the polar axis of the earth should be taken as the standard of measure.
Without having noticed these propositions of Cassini and Callet,[266] Professor Smyth adopts the same idea, and avers that 4000 years ago it had been adopted and used also by the builders of the Great Pyramid, who laid out and measured off the basis of the pyramid as a multiple by the days of the year of the Sacred Cubit, and hence of the Pyramidal Cubit while the Sacred or Pyramidal Cubit were both the results of superhuman or divine knowledge, and were both, or each, one ten-millionth of the semi-polar axis of the earth.
We have already seen, however, that the Sacred Cubit, "_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton," is not a multiple by the days of the year of the base line of the Great Pyramid; and is not one twenty-millionth of the polar axis of the earth, when that polar axis is laid down as measuring, according to the numbers elected by Professor Smyth, 500,500,000 British inches.
* * * * * But is there any valid reason whatever for fixing and determining, as an ascertained mathematical fact, the polar axis of the earth to be this very precise and exact measure, with its formidable tail of cyphers?
None, except the supposed requirements or necessities of Professor Smyth's pyramid metrological theory.
The latest and most exact measurements are acknowledged to be those of Captain Clarke, who, on the doctrine of the earth being a spheroid of revolution computes the polar axis to be 500,522,904 British inches, calculating it from the results of all the known arcs of meridian measures.
If we grant that the Sacred Cubit could be allowed to be exactly 25·025 inches, which Sir Isaac Newton found it not to be; and if we grant that the polar axis is exactly 500,500,000 British inches, which Captain Clarke did not find it to be; then, certainly, as shown by Professor Smyth, there would be 20,000,000 of these supposititious pyramidal cubits, or 500,000,000 of the supposititious pyramidal inches in this supposititious polar axis of the earth.
"In so far, then" (writes Professor Smyth), "we have in the 5, with the many 0's that follow, a pyramidally commensurable and symbolically appropriate unit for the earth's axis of rotation."
But such adjustments have been made with as great apparent exactitude when entirely different earth-axes and quantities were taken.
Thus Mr. John Taylor shows the inches, cubits, and axes to answer precisely, although he took as his standard a totally different diameter of the earth from Professor Smyth.
The diameter of the earth at 30° of latitude--the geographical position of the Great Pyramid--is, he avers, some seventeen miles, or more exactly 17·652 miles longer than at the poles.
[267] But Mr. Taylor fixed upon this diameter of the earth at latitude 30°--and not, like Professor Smyth, upon its polar diameter--as the standard for the metrological linear measures of the Great Pyramid; and yet, though the standard was so different, he found, like Mr. Smyth, 500,000,000 of inches also in his axis, and 20,000,000 of cubits also.
[268] The resulting figures appear to fit equally as well for the one as for the other.
Perhaps they answer best on Mr. Taylor's scheme.
For Mr. Taylor maintained that the diameter of the earth before the Flood, at this selected point of 30°, was less by nearly 37 miles than what it was subsequently to the flood,[269] and is now; a point by which he accounts for otherwise unaccountable circumstances in the metrological doctrines which have been attempted to be connected with the Great Pyramid.
For while Mr. Taylor believes the Sacred Cubit to be 24·88, or possibly 24·90 British inches, he holds the new Pyramidal cubit to be 25 inches in full; and the Sacred and Pyramidal cubits to be different therefore from each other, though both inspired.
In explanation of this startling difference in two measures supposed to be equally of sacred[270] origin, Mr. Taylor observes--"The smaller 24·88 is the Sacred Cubit which measured the diameter of the Earth _before_ the Flood; the one by which Noah measured the Ark, as tradition says; and the one in accordance with which all the interior works of the Great Pyramid were constructed.
[271] The larger (25) is the Sacred Cubit of the _present_ Earth, according to the standard of the Great Pyramid when it was completed."
Surely such marked diversities and contradictions, and such strange hypothetical adjustments and re-adjustments of the data and calculations, entirely upset the groundless and extraordinary theory of the base of the pyramid being a standard of linear measurement; or a segment of any particular axis of the earth; or a standard for emitting a system of new inches and new cubits;--seeing, on the one hand, more particularly, that the basis line of the pyramid is still itself an unknown and undetermined linear quantity, as is also the polar axis of the earth of which it is declared and averred to be an ascertained, determined, and measured segment.
M. Paucton, in 1780, wrote a work in which he laid down the base side of the pyramid as 8754 inches; maintained, like Mr. Taylor and Mr. Smyth, that this length was a standard of linear measures; found it to be the measure of a portion of a degree of the meridian, such degree being itself the 360th part of a circle;--and apparently the calculations and figures answered as well as when the measurement was declared to be 9142 inches, and the line not a segment of an arc of the circumference of the earth, but a segment of the polar axis of the earth; for De l'Isle lauds Paucton's meridian degree theory as one of the wondrous efforts of human genius, or (to use his own words) "as one of the chief works of the human mind!"
Yet the errors into which Paucton was seduced in miscalculating the base line of the Pyramid as 8754 inches, and the other ways he was misled, are enough--suggests Professor Smyth--"to make poor Paucton turn in his grave."
SIGNIFICANCE OF CYPHERS AND FIVES.
M. Paucton, Mr. Taylor, and those who have adopted and followed their pyramid metrological ideas, seem to imagine that if, by multiplying one of their measures or objects, they can run the calculation out into a long tail of terminal 0's, then something very exact and marvellous is proved.
"When" (upholds Mr. Taylor), "we find in so complicated a series of figures as that which the measures of the Great Pyramid and of the Earth require for their expression, _round numbers_ present themselves, or such as leave no remainder, we may be sure we have arrived at _primitive_ measures."
But many small and unimportant objects, when thus multiplied sufficiently, give equally startling strings of 0's.
Thus, if the polar axis of the earth be held as 500,000,000 inches, and Sir Isaac Newton's "Sacred Cubit" be held, as Professor Smyth calculated it to be, viz.
24·82 British inches--then the long diameter of the brim of the lecturer's hat, measuring 12·4 inches, is 1-40,000,000th of the earth's polar axis; a page of the print of the Society's Transactions is 1-60,000,000th of the same; a print page of Professor Smyth's book, 6·2 inches in length, is 1-80,000,000th of this "great standard;" etc.
etc.
etc.
Professor Smyth seems further to think that the figure or number "five" plays also a most important symbolical and inner part in the configuration, structure, and enumeration of the Great Pyramid.
"The pyramid" (says he) "embodies in a variety of ways the importance of five."
It is itself "five-angled, and with its plane a five-sided solid, in which everything went by fives, or numbers of fives and powers of five."
"With five, then, as a number, times of five, and powers of five, the Great Pyramid contains a mighty system of consistently subdividing large quantities to suit human happiness."
To express this, Mr. Smyth suggests the new noun "fiveness."
But it applies to many other matters as strongly, or more strongly than to the Great Pyramid.
For instance, the range of rooms belonging to the Royal Society is "five" in number; the hall in which it meets has five windows; the roof of that hall is divided into five transverse ornamental sections; and each of these five transverse sections is subdivided into five longitudinal ones; the books at each end of the hall are arranged in ten rows and six sections--making sixty, a multiple of five; the official chairs in the hall are ten in number, or twice five; the number of benches on one side for ordinary fellows is generally five; the office-bearers of the Society are twenty-five in number, or five times five; and so on.
These arrangements were doubtless, in the first instance, made by the Royal Society without any special relation to "fiveness," or the "symbolisation" of five; and there is not the slightest ground for any belief that the apparent "fiveness" of anything in the Great Pyramid had a different origin.
GREAT MINUTENESS OF MODERN PRACTICAL STANDARDS OF GAUGES.
In all these "standards" of capacity and length alleged to exist about the Great Pyramid, not only are the theoretical and actual sizes of the supposed "standards" made to vary in different books--which it is impossible for an actual "standard" to do--but the evidences adduced in proof of the conformity of old or modern measures with them is notoriously defective in complete aptness and accuracy.
Measures, to be true counterparts, must, in mathematics, be not simply "near," or "very near," which is all that is generally and vaguely claimed for the supposed pyramidal proofs, but they must be entirely and _exactly_ alike, which the pyramidal proofs and so-called standards fail totally and altogether in being.
Mathematical measurements of lines, sizes, angles, etc., imply exactitude, and not mere approximation; and without that exactitude they are not mathematical, and--far more--are they not "superhuman" and "inspired."
Besides, it must not be forgotten that our real _practical_ standard measures are infinitely more refined and many thousand-fold more delicate than any indefinite and equivocal measures alleged to be found in the pyramid by even those who are most enthusiastic in the pyramidal metrological theory.
At the London Exhibition in 1851, that celebrated mechanician and engineer, Mr. Whitworth, of Manchester, was the first to show the possibility of ascertaining by the sense of touch alone the one-millionth of an inch in a properly-adjusted standard of linear measure; and in his great establishment at Manchester they work and construct machinery and tools of all kinds with differences in linear measurements amounting to one ten-thousandth of an inch.
The standards of the English inch, etc., made by him for the Government--and now used by all the engine and tool makers, etc., of the United Kingdom--lead to the construction of machinery, etc., to such minute divisions; and the adoption of these standards has already effected enormous saving to the country by bringing all measured metal machinery, instruments, and tools, wherever constructed and wherever afterwards applied and used, to the same identical series of mathematical and precise gauges.
THE SABBATH, ETC.
TYPIFIED IN THE PYRAMID.
The communication next discussed some others amongst the many and diversified matters which Professor Smyth fancifully averred to be typified and symbolised in the Great Pyramid.
One, for example, of the chambers in the Great Pyramid--the so-called Queen's Chamber--has a roof composed of two large blocks of stone leaning against each other, making a kind of slanting or double roof.
This double roof, and the four walls of the chamber count six, and typify, according to Professor Smyth, the six days of the week, whilst the floor counts, as it were, a seventh side to the room, "nobler and more glorious than the rest," and typifying something, he conceives, of a "nobler and more glorious order"--namely, the Sabbath; it is surely difficult to fancy anything more strange than this strange idea.
[272] In forming this theory liberties are also confessedly taken with the floor in order to make it duly larger than the other six sides of the room, and to do so he theoretically lifts up the floor till it is placed higher than the very entrance to the chamber; for originally the floor and sides are otherwise too nearly alike in size to make a symbolic _seven_-sided room with one of the sides proportionally and properly larger than the other six sides.
Yet Professor Smyth holds that, in the above typical way, he has "shown," or indeed "proved entirely," that the Sabbath had been heard of before Moses, and that thus he finds unexpected and confirmatory light of a fact which, he avers, is of "extraordinary importance, and possesses a ramifying influence through many departments of religious life and progress."
He believes, also, that the corner-stone--so frequently alluded to by the Psalmist and the Apostles as a symbol of the Messiah--is the head or corner-stone of the Great Pyramid, which, though long ago removed, may yet possibly, he thinks, be discovered in the Cave of Machpelah; though how, why, or wherefore it should have found its way to that distant and special locality is not in any way solved or suggested.
GREAT PYRAMID ALLEGED TO BE A SUPERHUMAN, AND MORE OR LESS AN INSPIRED METROLOGICAL ERECTION.
Professor Smyth holds the Great Pyramid to be in its emblems, and intentions and work "superhuman;" as "not altogether of human origination; and in that case whereto" (he asks) "should we look for any human assistance to men but from Divine inspiration?"
"Its metrology is," he conceives, "directed by a higher Power" than man; its erection "directed by the _fiat_ of Infinite Wisdom;" and the whole "built under the direction of chosen men divinely inspired from on high for this purpose."
If of this Divine origin, the work should be absolutely perfect; but, as owned by Professor Smyth, the structure is not entirely correct in its orientation, in its squareness, etc.
etc.--all of them matters proving that it is human, and not superhuman.
It was, Professor Smyth further alleges, intended to convey standards of measures to all times down to, and perhaps beyond, these latter days, "to herald in some of those accompaniments of the promised millennial peace and goodwill to all men."
Hence, if thus miraculous in its forseen uses, it ought to have remained relatively perfect till now.
But "what feature of the pyramid is there" (asks Professor Smyth) "which renders at once in its measurements in the present day its ancient proportions?
None."
If the pyramid were a miracle of this kind, then the Arabian Caliph Al Mamoon so far upset the supposititious miracle a thousand years ago--(of course he could not have done so provided the miracle had been truly Divine)--when he broke into the King's Chamber and unveiled its contents; inasmuch as the builders, according to Professor Smyth, intended to conceal its secrets for the benefit of these latter times, and for this purpose had left a mathematical sign of two somewhat diagonal lines or joints in the floor of the descending passage, by which secret sign or clue[273] some men or man in the far distant future, visiting the interior, should detect the entrance to the chambers; and which secret sign Professor Smyth himself was, as he believes, the first "man" to discover two years ago.
The secret, however, thus averred to be placed there for the detection of the entrance to the interior chambers in these latter times, has been discovered some 1000 years at least too late for the evolution of the alleged miraculous arrangement.
And in relation to the Great Pyramid, as to other matters, we may be sure that God does not teach by the medium of miracle anything that the unaided intellect of man can find out; and we must beware of erroneously and disparagingly attributing to Divine inspiration and aid, things that are imperfect and human.
* * * * * The communication concluded by a series of remarks, in which it was pointed out that at the time at which the Great Pyramid was built, probably about 4000 years ago, mining, architecture, astronomy, etc., were so advanced in various parts of the East as to present no obstacle in the way of the erection of such magnificent mausoleums, as the colossal Great Pyramid and its other congener pyramids undoubtedly are.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 233: See on other proposed significations and origins of the word pyramid, APPENDIX, No.
I.]
[Footnote 234: In the plain of Troy, and on the higher grounds around it, various barrows still remain, and have been described from Pliny, Strabo, and Lucia down to Lechevalier, Forchhammer, and Maclaren.
In later times, Choiseul and Calvert have opened some of them.
Homer gives a minute account of the obsequies of Patroclus and the raising of his burial-mound, which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus.
Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, uses the word pyramid.
For ... "those deputed to inter the slain, Heap with a rising _pyramid_ the plain."
Professor Daniel Wilson, in alluding, in his _Prehistoric Annals_, vol.
i. p. 74, to this account by Homer of the ancient funeral-rites, and raising of the funeral-mound, speaks of the erection of Patroclus' barrow as "the methodic construction of the Pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit and preserved the memory of the honoured dead."]
[Footnote 235: Colonel Pownall, while describing in 1770 the barrow of New Grange, in Ireland, to the London Society of Antiquaries, speaks of it as "a pyramid of stone."
"This pyramid," he observes, "was encircled at its base with a number of enormous unhewn stones," etc.
"The pyramid, in its present state, is but a ruin of what it was," etc.
etc.
See _Archæologia_, vol.
vi.
p. 254; and Higgins' _Celtic Druids_, p. 40, etc.]
[Footnote 236: In his _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, Dr. Daniel Wilson states (vol.
i. p. 87), that "the Chambered Cairn properly possesses as its peculiar characteristic the enclosed catacombs and galleries of megalithic masonry, branching off into various chambers symmetrically arranged, and frequently exhibiting traces of constructive skill, such as realise in some degree the idea of the regular pyramid."
He speaks again of the stone barrows or cairns of Scotland as "monumental pyramids" (vol.
i. p. 67); of the earth barrow being an "earth pyramid or tumulus" (p. 70); of Silbury Hill as an "earth pyramid" (p. 62): and in the same page, in alluding to the large barrow-tomb of the ancient British chief or warrior, he states, "in its later circular forms we see the rude type of the great pyramids of Egypt."
The same learned author, in his work on _Prehistoric Man_, refers to the great monuments of the American mound-builders as "earth pyramids" (p. 202), "huge earth pyramids" (p. 205), "pyramidal earth-works" (p. 203); etc.]
[Footnote 237: In his _History of Scotland_, Mr. Burton speaks of the barrows of New Grange and Maeshowe (Orkney), as erections which "may justly be called minor pyramids" (vol.
i. p.
114).]
[Footnote 238: In mentioning the great numbers of sepulchral barrows spread over the world, Sir John Lubbock observes--"In our own island they may be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone it is estimated that two thousand still remain; and in Denmark they are even more abundant; they are found all over Europe from the shores of the Atlantic to the Oural Mountains; in Asia they are scattered over the great steppes from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; in America we are told that they are numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they wanting in Africa, where the pyramids themselves exhibit the most magnificent development of the same idea; so that the whole world is studded with these burial-places of the dead."
--_Prehistoric Times_, p. 85.
See similar remarks in Dr. Clarke's _Travels_, 4th edition, vol.
i. p. 276, vol.
ii.
p. 75, etc.]
[Footnote 239: Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson thinks that the pyramids of Sakkara are probably older than the other groups of these structures, as those of Gizeh or the Great Pyramid erected during the fourth dynasty of kings.--See Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol.
ii.
chap.
viii.
Manetho assigns to Uènophes, one of the monarchs in the first dynasty, the erection of the Pyramids of Cochome.
See Kenrick's _Ancient Egypt_, ii.
p. 112, 122, 123; Bunsen's _Egypt_, ii.
99, etc.]
[Footnote 240: On these Archaic forms of sculpture, see APPENDIX, No.
II.
In many barrows the gallery in its course--and in some as it enters the crypt--is contracted, and more or less occluded by obstructions of stone, etc., which Mr. Kenrick likens to the granite portcullises in the Great Pyramid.
See his _Ancient Egypt_, vol.
i. p.
121.]
[Footnote 241: Mr. Birch, however--and it is impossible to cite a higher authority in such a question--holds the cartouches of Shufu and Nu Shufu to refer only to one personage--namely, the Cheops of Herodotus; and, believing with Mr. Wilde and Professor Lepsius, that the pyramids were as royal sepulchres built and methodically extended and enlarged as the reigns of their intended occupants lengthened out, he ascribes the unusual size of the Great Pyramid to the unusual length--as testified by Manetho, etc.--of the reign of Cheops; the erection of a sepulchral chamber in its built portion above being, perhaps, a step adopted in consequence of some ascertained deficiency in the rock chamber or gallery below.
Indeed, the subterranean chamber under the Great Pyramid has, to use Professor Smyth's words, only been "begun to be cut out of the rock from the ceiling downwards, and left in that _unfinished_ state."
(Vol.
i.
156.)
Mr. Perring, who--as engineer--measured, worked, and excavated so very much at the Pyramids of Gizeh, under Colonel Howard Vyse, held, at the end of his researches, that "the principal chamber" in the Second Pyramid is still undetected.
See Vyse's _Pyramid of Gizeh_, vol.
i.
99.]
[Footnote 242: The Mexican Pyramid of Cholula has a base of more than 1420 feet, and is hence about twice the length of the basis of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh.
See Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, book iii.
chap.
i., and book v. chap.
iv.]
[Footnote 243: Herodotus states that the Egyptians detested the memories of the kings who built the two larger Pyramids, viz., Cheops and Cephren; and hence, he adds, "they commonly call the Pyramids after Philition, a shepherd, who at that time fed his flocks about the place."
They thus called the Second, as well as the Great Pyramid, after him (iii.
§ 128); but, according to Professor Smyth, the Second Pyramid, though architecturally similar to the first, and almost equal in size, has nothing about it of the "superhuman" character of the Great Pyramid.]
[Footnote 244: The extracts within inverted commas, here, and in other parts, are from--(1.)
Mr. John Taylor's work, entitled _The Great Pyramid--Why was it Built, and Who Built it?_ London, 1859; and (2.)
Professor Smyth's work, _Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_, Edinburgh, 1864; (3.)
his later three-volume work, _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, Edinburgh, 1867; and (4.)
_Recent Measures at the Great Pyramid_, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1865-66.]
[Footnote 245: Professor Smyth has omitted to state--what, after all, it was perhaps unnecessary to state--that one set of these measurements, which he has tabulated and published, viz., that given by Dr. Whitman, was taken for him "by a British officer of engineers;" as, when Dr. Whitman visited Gizeh, he did not himself examine the interior of the Great Pyramid.--See Colonel Vyse's work, vol.
ii.
p.
286.]
[Footnote 246: "Its contents," says Mr. Taylor (p. 299), "are equal in cubic inches to the cube of 41,472 inches--the cubit of Karnak--viz., to 71,328 cubic inches."
Elsewhere (p. 304) he states--"The Pyramid coffer contains 256 gallons of wheat;"--"It also contains 256 gallons of water, etc."]
[Footnote 247: At a later meeting of the Royal Society, on 20th April, Professor Smyth explained that, among the numerous instruments he carried out, he was not provided with calipers fit for this measurement.]
[Footnote 248: See plate iii.
Fig.
1, in his great folio work on the _Pyramids of Gizeh from Actual Survey and Admeasurement_, Lond.
1839.
"The sarcophagus is," he remarks, "of granite, not particularly well polished; at present it is chipped and broken at the edges.
There are not any remains of the lid, _which was however_, fitted on in the same manner as those of the other pyramids."]
[Footnote 249: "The western side," observes Professor Smyth, "of the coffer is, through almost its entire length, rather lower than the other three, and these have _grooves_ inside, or the remains of grooves once cut into them, about an inch or two below their summits, and on a level with the western edge; _in fact_, to _admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid_; and there were the remains of three fixing pin-holes on the western side, for fastening such cover into its place."
(Vol.
i. p.
85.)]
[Footnote 250: For age, etc., of Al Hakm, see Dr. Rieu in APPENDIX No.
III.
; and Jomard on length of the Sarcophagus, No.
IV.]
[Footnote 251: In the original Arabic, the expression is "birdlike (or hieroglyphic) characters writ with a reed."]
[Footnote 252: See Greaves' _Works_, vol.
i. p. 61 and p. 115.
In Colonel Vyse's works are adduced other Arabian authors who allude to this discovery of a body with golden armour, etc., etc., in the sarcophagus of the King's Chamber; as Alkaisi, who testifies that "he himself saw the case (the cartonage or mummy-case) from which the body had been taken, and that it stood at the door of the King's Palace at Cairo, in the year 511" A.H. (See _The Pyramids of Gizeh_, vol.
ii.
p. 334).
See also to the same effect _Abon Szalt_, p. 357; and Ben Abd Al Rahman, as cited in the _Description de l'Egypte_, vol.
ii.
p. 191.
"It may be remarked," observes Dr. Sprenger in Colonel Vyse's work, "that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids, with little or no variation, for above a thousand years."
(Vol.
ii.
p.
328.)
See further APPENDIX, p.
270.]
[Footnote 253: See APPENDIX, No.
VII.]
[Footnote 254: Our great Scottish architect, Mr. Bryce, believes that, with these data given, any well-informed master-mason or clerk of works could have drawn or planned and superintended the building.]
[Footnote 255: See Newton's _Essay_, in Professor Smyth's work, vol.
ii.
360; and Sir Henry James' masterly _Memorandum on the Length of the cubit of Memphis_, in APPENDIX, No.
V.] [Footnote 256: Sir Isaac Newton says--"In the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis, I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the pyramid."
Greaves gives this length 34·38 = 20 cubits of 20·628 inches.]
[Footnote 257: Yet this, the Memphian cubit, "need not" (somewhat mysteriously adds Professor Smyth), "and actually is not, by any means the same as the cubit _typified_ in the more concealed and _symbolised_ metrological system of the Great Pyramid."]
[Footnote 258: Godfrey Higgins, in his work on _The Celtic Druids_, shows how, among the ancients, superstitions connected with numbers, as the days of the year or the figures 365, have played a prominent part.
"Amongst the ancients" (says he) "there was no end of the superstitious and trifling play upon the nature and value of numbers.
The first men of antiquity indulged themselves in these fooleries" (p. 244).
Mr. Higgins points out that the old Welsh or British word for Stonehenge, namely Emrys, signifies, according to Davies, 365; as do the words Mithra, Neilos, etc.
; that certain collections of the old Druidic stones at Abury may be made to count 365; that "the famous Abraxas only meant the solar period of 365 days, or the sun," etc.
"It was all judicial astrology....
It comes" (adds Mr. Higgins) "from the Druids."]
[Footnote 259: See this table in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol.
ii.
p. 458.
The table professes to give some of Sir Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into English inches.
But all the figures and measurements are transferred into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac himself lays down--viz., that the English foot is 0·967 of the Roman foot; and, consequently, _in every one of the instances given_ in Mr. Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac Newton are assuredly _not_ their lengths in English inches as understood and laid down by Newton himself.]
[Footnote 260: The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest importance is professed to be attached.
This fourth line gives the measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who laid down its length as 25·68 inches of Roman measurement.
Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24·91 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus--viz., 24·91 and 25·68--not as _one_ identical quantity, which they are--but as _two_ different and contrasting quantities; and further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit.
Never, perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical and mathematical character.]
[Footnote 261: Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:--"From hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciæ of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an _uncia_."
(See his _Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit_, as republished in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol.
ii.
p.
362.)
Again, at p. 363, Sir Isaac speaks of "the cubit which we have concluded to have been in the time of Moses 25-60/100 inches" of the Roman foot; and at p. 365, in closing his Dissertation, he remarks--"The Roman cubit therefore consists of 18 unciæ, and the Sacred Cubit of 25-3/5 unciæ, of the Roman foot."
In other words, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Sacred Cubit of 25·60 inches of the Roman foot is equal to 24·75 British inches; for, as he calculated, the Roman foot "was equal to 967/1000 the English foot."
(See p.
342.)
This is the measurement of the Roman foot laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in his Dissertation, and the only standard of it mentioned in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_; yet in that work Professor Smyth calculates Sir Isaac's Sacred Cubit to be 24·82 instead of 24·75 British inches.
In doing so, he has calculated the English foot as equal to ·970 of the Roman foot; but was he entitled to do so when using Sir Isaac's own data, and when employing Sir Isaac's own calculated conclusion as to the length of the Sacred Cubit?
In the published _Proceedings_ of the Royal Society, in consequence of following the calculation by Professor Smyth of Sir Isaac Newton's conclusion from Sir Isaac's own data as to the length of the Sacred Cubit, it was erroneously spoken of as 24·82, instead of 24·75 British inches.]
[Footnote 262: This word "extraordinarily," was, by a clerical or printer's error, spelled "extraordinary" in the _Proceedings_ of the Royal Society; and a friend who looked over the printed proof, and suggested two or three corrections, placed the word (sic) on the margin after it, from whence it slipped into the text:--accidents to be much regretted, as, from Professor Smyth's remarks to the Society on the 20th April, they had evidently given him much, but most unintentional offence.]
[Footnote 263: At the close of a subsequent meeting of the Royal Society, on the 20th April 1868, Professor Smyth gave away a printed Appendix to his three-volume work, in which he has acknowledged the erroneous character--as pointed out in this communication--of his all-important table, p. 22, on the length of the Sacred Cubit, by withdrawing it, and offering one of a new construction and character, but without being able to make the length of the cubit come nearer to his theory.
See further, APPENDIX, No.
VI] [Footnote 264: _Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre._ Amsterdam edition (1723), p.
195.]
[Footnote 265: _Tables Portatives de Logarithmes._ Paris, 1795, p.
100.]
[Footnote 266: The same idea of using the earth's axis as a standard of length has been suggested also by Professor Hennessy of Dublin, and by Sir John Herschel.
See _Athenæum_ for April 1860, pp.
581 and 617.]
[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in latitude 30° is really about 20 miles longer than the polar axis.
But Mr. Taylor obviously did not know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls into the most inconsistent assertions respecting the length of this particular diameter.
Thus, in pp.
75 and 87, he asserts the diameter in latitude 30° to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891·414 miles], which is 7·756 miles _less_ than the polar axis--_the least_ diameter of all; whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat.
30° to be 17·652 miles _greater_ than the polar axis.]
[Footnote 268: "The diameter of the earth, according to the measures taken at the Pyramids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000 inches."
(See _The Great Pyramid_, p.
75.)
"Dividing this number by 20,000,000 we obtain the measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred Cubit" (p.
67).]
[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the _new_ Earth was measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the _old_ Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36·868 miles."]
[Footnote 270: _Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell Measure._--Professor Smyth tries to show (iii.
597), that if Britain stands too low in his metrological testing of the European kingdoms and races, its "low entry is due to accepting the yard for the country's popular measure of length."
But long ago the "divine" origin of the Scottish ell--as in recent times the divine origin of the so-called pyramidal cubit and inch--was pleaded rather strenuously.
For when, in the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope Boniface his reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of England, he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of this appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St. John of Beverley, prayed that through the intervention of that saint, it "might be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all future ages might be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to the King of England.
His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword, and left a score which proved to be the _precise_ length of an ell, and was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length."
This legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley.
(See Burton's _History of Scotland_, ii.
319.)
In the official account of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its performance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of Athelstane's sword.
"Extrahens gladium de vaginâ percussit in cilicem, quæ adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eâdem horâ lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem, evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata; monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante."
(Foedera, tom.
i. pars ii.
771.)]
[Footnote 271: Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac Newton's opinion that the _working_ cubit by which the Pyramid was built was the cubit of Memphis.]
[Footnote 272: The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within, contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.]
[Footnote 273: "The _clue_ was not prepared for any immediate successors of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most remote period.
And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down to those our own days."
(Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, vol.
i. p.
157.)
"The builders, or planners rather, of the Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had existed these _two diagonal joints_ in the passage floor, pointing directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite them, and no one ever thought of it.
Practically, then, we may say with full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide _men_ who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on rightly-informed principles, to look for the entrance to the upper parts of the Pyramid."
(Vol.
i. p.
156-7.)
At p. 270 Professor Smyth again alludes to this supposed mark, made up by two diagonal joints in the passage floor, as evading the notice of all visitors, except "those very few, or perhaps even that _one only man_, who had been previously instructed to look for a certain almost microscopic mark on the floor."]
APPENDIX.
I.--DERIVATION OF THE TERM PYRAMID.
(_Page_ 219.)
Professor Smyth suggests the origin of the term Pyramid from the two Coptic words, "_pyr_," "division," and "_met_," "ten."
This derivation, which he first heard of in Cairo, is, he believes, a significant appellation for a metrological monument such as the Great Pyramid, and coincides with its five-sided, five-cornered, etc., features (see anteriorly, p. 255) and decimal divisions.
But surely a name, which in this metrological and arithmetical view of "powers and times of ten and five," meant _division into ten_, and which divisional metrological ideas applied, according to Professor Smyth, to one pyramid only, namely the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, was not likely to have been applied as a general term to all the other pyramidal structures in Egypt--not one of which had, according to Professor Smyth himself, anything whatsoever of this metrological or divisional character in their composition and object.
It is not likely that all these structures should have been named from a series of qualities supposed to belong to _one_; but altogether hidden and concealed, in these early times, even in that one pyramid, being for the information of future times and generations.
In a similar spirit of exclusiveness, Mr. John Taylor derives the word pyramid from the two Greek words [Greek: pyros], _wheat_, and [Greek: metron], _measure_--apparently in the belief that the coffer or sarcophagus within one pyramid (the Great Pyramid) was intended as a chaldron measure of wheat--though none of the sarcophagi, in any of the many other royal pyramidal sepulchres of Egypt, were at all intended for such standard measures; and although, according to Mr. Taylor's theory, the Greeks, too, who out of their own language applied the term of Pyramid, or Wheat-Measurer, to all these structures,--never dreamed of the Great Pyramid or of any other of them having locked up in one of its concealed chambers a supposed standard measure of capacity of wheat, water, etc., for all nations and all times.
Fifteen centuries ago, Ammianus Marcellinus derived the word pyramid from another Greek word [Greek: pyr], _fire_; because, as he argues, the Egyptian Pyramid rises to a sharp pointed top, like to the form of a fire or flame.
This derivation, which, of course, excludes the mathematical idea of the sides of the pyramid being a series of flattened triangles that meet in a point at the apex, has been adopted by various authors.
Keats, the poor surgeon, but rich poet, who died at Rome at the early age of twenty-six, was buried in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery there, amid the ruins of the Aurelian Walls.
His grave is surmounted by a pyramidal tomb, which Petrarch romantically ascribed to Remus, but which antiquarians generally accord, in conformity with the inscription which it bears, to Caius Cestius, a tribune of the people, who is remembered for nothing else than his sepulchre.
In his elegy of Adonais, Shelley, in alluding to the resting-place of Keats beside this remarkable monument, brings in, with rare poetical power, the idea of the word pyramid being derived from [Greek: pyr], and signifying the shape of flame:-And one keen _pyramid_ with edge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Life _flame transformed to marble_.
[274] If the word pyramid is of Greek origin, the suggestion of that able writer and scholar, Mr. Kenrick of York, is probably more true, viz.
that the term [Greek: pyramis] (from [Greek: pyros], wheat, and [Greek: melitos], honey) was applied by the Greeks to a pointed or cone-shaped cake, used by them at the feasts of Bacchus (as shown on the table at the reception of Bacchus by Icarus; see Hope's _Costumes_, vol.
ii.
p. 224), and when they became acquainted with the Pyramids of Egypt, they, in this as in other instances, applied a term to a thing till then unknown, from a thing well known to them; in the very same way as they applied to the tall pointed monoliths peculiar to Egypt, the word obelisk--no doubt a direct derivation from the familiar Greek word [Greek: obelos], a _spit_.
For a learned discussion on various other supposed origins of the word pyramid, see Jomard, in the _Description de l'Egypte_, vol.
ii.
p. 213, etc.
II.--ARCHAIC CIRCLE AND RING SCULPTURES.
(_Page_ 222.)
Representations of incised cups, rings, circles, and spirals, are found on stones connected with other forms of ancient sculpture besides chambered barrows or cairns,--as on the lids of stone cists, megalithic circles, etc.
; and, from this connection with the burial of the dead, these antique sculpturings were possibly of a religious character.
In a work on "Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Rings, etc.
upon Stones and Rocks of Scotland, England, and other Countries," published last year by the author of the present communication, it was further argued that they were probably also ornamental in their character, in a chapter beginning as follows:-"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all probability devoted--namely, ornamentation.
From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration.
In prehistoric times the same taste for circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the mind of archaic man.
This observation as to the probable ornamental origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as existing in Scotland and England.
For instance, the cut single and double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag, and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import may be."
In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the preceding extract, on two grounds: _First_, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form; being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp.
219 and 220, it was often applied archæologically to sepulchral mounds and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series of triangles meeting in an apex.
_Secondly_, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind.
Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods."
Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation?
Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii.
100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii.
as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.
[275] All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid.
The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured.
"It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol.
ii.
168).
This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (_Handbook of Architecture_, p. 222).
Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the _fourth_ dynasty.
Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or _third_ dynasty of kings.
Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions.
One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,--the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc.
Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, _The Pyramids of Gizeh_, plate xiii.
Fig.
7.
Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.
Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared the larger Pyramids of Gizeh.
Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes--"The Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche, miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns.
They are to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."
--_Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians,_ ii.
290.
III.--ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM.
(_Page_ 236.)
Professor Smyth owns that the grooves and pin holes which the coffer in the King's Chamber presents, were (to use his own words) "in fact to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid" (see _ante_, p. 236, footnote).
But in his recent communication to the Royal Society on the 20th April, he doubted Al Hakm's account of the mummy having been actually found in the sarcophagus when the King's Chamber was first entered by the Caliph Al Mamoon, in the ninth century, arguing, on the authority of a Glasgow gentleman, that the historian himself, Al Hakm, did not live for three or four centuries afterwards, and, therefore, could not be relied upon.
But all this reasoning or assertion is simply a mistake.
In a late letter (7th April), Dr. Rieu of the British Museum,--the chief living authority among us on any such Arabic question,--writes, "The statement relating to Al Mamoon's discovery could hardly rest on a better authority than that of Ibn Abd Al Hakm; for not only was he a contemporary writer (having died at Old Cairo, A.H. 269, that is, thirty-eight years after Al Mamoon's death), but he is constantly quoted by later writers as an historian of the highest authority.
You will find a notice of him in Khallikan's _Biographical Dictionary_, vol.
ii.
etc."
He was a native of Egypt, and chief of the Shafite sect.
Born in A.D. 799, he died in A.D. 882, or at the age of 83.
IV.--LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER.
(_Page_ 236.)
M. Jomard, in the _Description de l'Egypte_, drawn up by the French Academicians, remarks in vol.
ii.
p. 182, that looking to the length of the cavity or interior of the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber, that it could not hold within it a cartonage or mummy case, enclosing a man of the ordinary height.
This statement proceeds entirely upon a miscalculation.
The length of the interior or cavity of the sarcophagus is six and a half English feet; and the average stature of the ancient Egyptians, "judging from their mummies, did not" observes Mr. Kenrick, "exceed five feet and a half."
(See his _Ancient Egypt_, vol.
i. p.
97.)
The space thus left, of one foot, is much more than sufficient for the thickness of the two ends of a cartonage or mummy case; and the embalmed body was generally, or indeed always, closely packed within them.
The length of the coffin was, long ago, quaintly observed Professor Greaves, "large enough to contain a most potent and dreadful monarch being dead, to whom, living, all Egypt was too strait and narrow a circuit" (_Works_, i. p. 131).
V.--MEMORANDUM ON THE CUBIT OF MEMPHIS AND THE SACRED CUBIT, BY SIR HENRY JAMES.
(_Page_ 242.)
Sir Isaac Newton says, "for the precise determination of the cubit of Memphis I should choose to pitch upon the length of the chamber in the middle of the Pyramid, where the king's monument stood, which length contained 20 cubits, and was very carefully measured by Mr.
Greaves."
(_See_ vol.
ii.
p. 362 of Professor Smyth's _Life at the Pyramids_, etc.)
Greaves' measures of the King's chamber are given at p. 335, vol.
ii.
of the same work.
The length of the chamber on the south side, he says, is 34·380 feet = 20 cubits.
17·190 " = 10 cubits.
12 ------206·280 inches = 10 cubits, and 20·628 " = 1 cubit of Memphis; and Newton himself says, at p. 360, vol.
ii.
_Life at the Pyramids_,-"The cubit of Memphis of 1·719 English feet," 12 -----or 20·628 inches, and, therefore, there can be no possible doubt but that this is Newton's determination of the length of the cubit of Memphis.
But Newton goes on to say in the same page, the cubit "double the length of 12-3/8 English inches (=24·75 inches) will be to the cubit of Memphis as 6 to 5."
Therefore, if we add 1/5 to 20·628 inches, 4·126 -----we have 24·754 as Newton's determination of the length of the Sacred Cubit.
Newton's determinations are therefore-Length of Sacred Cubit 24·754 inches. "
Cubit of Memphis 20·628 " The cubit measured by Mersennus (_see_ p. 362, vol.
ii.
_Life at the Pyramids_) was 23-1/4 Paris inches, and Mr. Greaves estimated the Paris foot as equal to 1·068 of the English foot; therefore 23·25 + 1·068=24·831 was the length of this cubit, if we take Greaves' proportion of the Paris to the English foot; but by the more exact determination of the proportion of the Paris to the English foot made at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, it is found to be as 1 to 1·06576 and 23·25 + 1·06576=24·780 English inches, which differs only in excess ·026 from the length of the Sacred Cubit determined by Newton.
The double Royal Cubit of Karnak, which is in the British Museum, was found by Sir Henry James to measure 41·398 inches; the length of the single cubit was therefore 20·699 inches, and differs only in excess ·071 inches from the length of the cubit of Memphis, as determined by Newton.
It will be observed that the lengths of the cubits derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber are shorter than the measured lengths of the cubits which have come down to us.
But if we add 1/5 or = 4·140 to the length of the Karnak cubit = 20·699, -----we have 24·839 for the Sacred Cubit.
The one measured by Mersennus = 24·780 and the -----mean of the two = 24·810, whilst the length derived by Newton was = 24·754, showing -----a difference of only ·056 between the ====== length of the Sacred Cubit derived from the actual lengths of the two cubits which have come down to us, and the length of the Sacred Cubit derived by Newton from the length of the King's chamber.
The method adopted by Professor P. Smyth, to find the length of the Sacred Cubit, in p. 458, vol.
ii.
_Life at the Pyramids_, is also wrong in principle.
He has no right to take the means between the limits of approach, or to say that the Sacred Cubit was, according to Sir Isaac Newton, 25·07 inches, when, as I have shown in his own words, Sir Isaac says it was 24·754 inches.
VI.--PROFESSOR SMYTH'S RECENT COMMUNICATION TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY ON 20TH APRIL 1868.
It has been already stated (see footnote, p. 248) that, on the 20th April Professor Smyth brought before the Royal Society a new communication on the pyramids, the principal part of which consisted of a criticism upon the preceding observations, and a defence of his hypotheses regarding the Great Pyramid.
His chief criticisms related to points already adverted to, and answered in footnotes, pp.
234, 248, etc.
In addition, he expressed great dissatisfaction that the quotation from Sprenger, in Vyse's Work, quoted in footnote, p. 237, was not extended beyond the semicolon in the original, at which the quotation ends, and made to embrace the other or latter half of the sentence, viz., " ...; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents, certainly not of Mahometan invention.
"[276] But this latter half, or the traditions about the pyramid builders, Surid, Ben Shaluk, Ben Sermuni, etc., who lived "before the Flood," etc.
etc., did assuredly not require to be quoted, as they had really nothing whatever to do with the object under discussion--viz., the opening of the sarcophagus under the Caliph Al Mamoon, and the accounts or history of the pyramids, as given by Arabian authors themselves.
In the course of this communication to the Royal Society, Professor Smyth did not allude to or rescind the erroneous table and calculations from Sir Isaac Newton regarding the Sacred Cubit, printed and commented upon in some of the preceding pages (see _ante_, p. 244, etc.)
But, at the end of the subsequent discussion he handed round, as a printed "Appendix" to his three volume work, a total withdrawal of this table, etc., and in this way so far confessed the justice of the exposition of his errors on this all-vital and testing point in his theory of the Sacred Cubit, as given in p. 243, etc., of the present essay.
He attributes his errors to "an unfortunate misprinting of the calculated numbers;" and (though he does not at all specialise what numbers were thus misprinted) he gives from Sir Isaac Newton's Dissertation on the Sacred Cubit a new and more lengthened table instead of the old and erroneous table.
For this purpose, instead of selecting as he did, without any attempted explanation in his old table, _only five_ of Sir Isaac Newton's estimations or "methods of approach," he now, in his new table, takes _seven_ of them to strike out new "means."
The simple "mean" of all the seven quantities tabulated--as calculated, in the way followed, in his first published table--is 25·47 British inches; and the "mean" of all the seven means in the Table is 25·49 British inches.
Unfortunately for Professor Smyth's theory of the Sacred Cubit being 25·025 British inches, either of these numbers makes the Sacred Cubit nearly half a British inch longer than his avowed standard of length--an overwhelming difference in any question relating to a _standard_ measure.
What would any engineer, or simple worker in metal, wood, or stone, think of an alleged _standard_ measure or cubit which varied so enormously from its own alleged length?
But, surely, such facts and such results require no serious comment.
In this, his latest communication on the Pyramids, Professor Smyth also offered some new calculations regarding the measurements of the interior of the broken stone coffin standing in the King's Chamber.
Formerly (1864), he elected the cubic capacity of this sarcophagus to be 70,900 "pyramidal" cubic inches; latterly he has elected it to be 71,250 cubic inches.
According, however, to his own calculations, he found, practically, that it measured neither of these two numbers; but instead of them 71,317 pyramidal inches (_see_ vol.
iii.
p. 154).
The capacity of the interior of this coffin does not hence correspond at all to the supposititious standard of 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches; but in order to make it appear to do so he has now struck a "mean" between the measurement of the interior of the vessel and some of the measurements of its exterior, in a way that was not easily comprehensible in his demonstration.
But what other hollow vessel in the world, and with unequal walls too (_see_ p. 233), had the capacity of its interior ever before attempted to be altered and rectified by any measurements of the size of its exterior?
What, for example, would be thought of the very strange proposition of ascertaining and determining the capacity of the interior of a pint, a gallon, a bushel, or any other such standard measure by measuring, not the capacity of the interior of the vessel, but by taking some kind of mean between that interior capacity and the size or sizes of the exterior of the vessel?
According to Messrs. Taylor and Smyth, this standard measure--along with other supposed perfect metrological standards--in the Great Pyramid is "of an origin higher than human," or "divinely inspired;" and yet it has proved so incapable of being readily measured, and hence used as a standard, that hitherto it has been found impossible to make the _actual_ capacity of this coffer to correspond to its standard theoretical or supposititious capacity; whilst even its standard theoretical capacity has been declared different by different observers, and even at different times by the same observer, as shown previously at p. 231.
VII.--METROLOGICAL TABLES AND TESTS OF THE EUROPEAN RACES.
(_See_ p.
238.)
Professor Smyth believes that among the nations of Europe the metrology used will be found closer and closer to the Hebrew and "Pyramid" standards, according to the amount of Ephraimitic blood in each nation.
He further inclines to hold, with Mr. Wilson, that the Anglo-Saxons have no small share of this Israelitish blood, as shown in their language, and in their weights and measures, etc.
After giving various Tables of the metrological standards of different European nations, Professor Smyth adds, "It is not a little striking to see all the Protestant countries standing first and closest to the Great Pyramid; then Russia, and her Greek, but freely Bible-reading church; then the Roman Catholic lands; then, after a long interval, and last but one on the list, France with its metrical system--voluntarily adopted, under an atheistical form of government, in place of an hereditary pound and ancient inch, which were not very far from those of the Great Pyramid; and last of all Mahommedan Turkey."
Subsequently, when speaking of British standards of length, etc., Professor Smyth remarks,--"But let the island kingdom look well that it does not fall; for not only has the 25·344 inch length not yet travelled beyond the region of the Ordnance maps,--but the Government has been recently much urged by, and has partly yielded to, a few ill-advised but active men, who want these invaluable hereditary measures (preserved almost miraculously to this nation from primeval times, for apparently a Divine purpose) to be instantly abolished _in toto_,--and the recently atheistically-conceived measures of France to be adopted in their stead.
In which case England would have to descend from her present noble pre-eminence in the metrological scale of nations, and occupy a place almost the very last in the list; or next to Turkey, and in company with some petty princedoms following France, and blessed with little history and less nationality.
'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!'
might be then, indeed, addressed to England with melancholy truth.
Or more plainly (Professor Smyth adds), and in words seemingly almost intended for such a case, and uttered with depressing grief of heart, 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself!'"
(Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the Great Pyramid_, 1867, vol.
iii.
p.
598.)
In his previous work in 1864, Professor Smyth denounced also, in equally strong terms, the French decimal system of metrology, considering it as--to use his own words--"precisely one of the most hearty aids which Satan, and traitors to their country, ever had to their hands."
(_Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_, p. 185, etc.)
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 274: Shelley himself is now interred in the same cemetery, near the pyramid of Cestius, and a little above the grave of Keats.]
[Footnote 275: In vol.
i. p. 365, this "raised ornament" is described as "a very curious, and, for the Pyramid, perfectly unique adornment, of a semicircular form, raised about one inch above the general surface, and bevelled off on either side and above," etc.]
[Footnote 276: The whole sentence runs thus, and is punctuated thus:--"It may be remarked that the Arabian authors have given the same accounts of the pyramids with little or no variation, for above a thousand years; and that they appear to have repeated the traditions of the ancient Egyptians, mixed up with fabulous stories and incidents, certainly not of Mahometan invention."
Vol.
iii.
p.
328.]
END OF VOL.
I.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._
PRIMITIVE MAN.
[Illustration: A Family of the Stone Age (Frontispiece).]
PRIMITIVE MAN.
By LOUIS FIGUIER.
Revised Translation.
ILLUSTRATED WITH THIRTY SCENES OF PRIMITIVE LIFE, AND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE FIGURES OF OBJECTS BELONGING TO PRE-HISTORIC AGES.
"Arma antiqua manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt.
Et lapides, et item silvarum fragmina rami.
Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.
Posterius ferri vis est ærisque reperta; Et prior æris erat quam ferri cognitus usus."
_Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, lib.
V., v. 1281-5._ LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1870.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
[Illustration] The Editor of the English translation of 'L'Homme Primitif,' has not deemed it necessary to reproduce the original Preface, in which M. Figuier states his purpose in offering a new work on pre-historic archæology to the French public, already acquainted in translation with the works on the subject by Sir Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock.
Now that the book has taken its position in France, it is only needful to point out its claims to the attention of English readers.
The important art of placing scientific knowledge, and especially new discoveries and topics of present controversy, within easy reach of educated readers not versed in their strictly technical details, is one which has for years been carried to remarkable perfection in France, in no small measure through the labours and example of M. Figuier himself.
The present volume, one of his series, takes up the subject of Pre-historic Man, beginning with the remotely ancient stages of human life belonging to the Drift-Beds, Bone-Caves, and Shell-Heaps, passing on through the higher levels of the Stone Age, through the succeeding Bronze Age, and into those lower ranges of the Iron Age in which civilisation, raised to a comparatively high development, passes from the hands of the antiquary into those of the historian.
The Author's object has been to give within the limits of a volume, and dispensing with the fatiguing enumeration of details required in special memoirs, an outline sufficient to afford a reasonable working acquaintance with the facts and arguments of the science to such as cannot pursue it further, and to serve as a starting-ground for those who will follow it up in the more minute researches of Nilsson, Keller, Lartet, Christy, Lubbock, Mortillet, Desor, Troyon, Gastaldi, and others.
The value of the work to English archæologists, however, is not merely that of a clear popular manual; pre-historic archæology, worked as it has been in several countries, takes in each its proper local colour, and brings forward its proper local evidence.
It is true that much of its material is used as common property by scientific men at large.
But, for instance, where an English writer in describing the ancient cave-men would dwell especially on the relics from the caves of Devon and Somerset as worked by Falconer and Pengelly, a French writer would take his data more amply from the explorations of caves of the south of France by De Vibraye, Garrigou, and Filhol--where the English teacher would select his specimens from the Christy or the Blackmore Museum, the French teacher would have recourse to the Musée de Saint-Germain.
Thus far, the English student has in Figuier's 'Primitive Man' not a work simply incorporated from familiar materials, but to a great extent bringing forward evidence not readily accessible, or quite new to him.
Some corrections and alterations have been made in the English edition.
The illustrations are those of the original work; the facsimiles of pre-historic objects have been in great part drawn expressly for it, and contribute to its strictly scientific value; the page illustrations representing scenes of primitive life, which are by another hand, may seem somewhat fanciful, yet, setting aside the Raffaelesque idealism of their style, it will be found on examination that they are in the main justified by that soundest evidence, the actual discovery of the objects of which they represent the use.
The solid distinctness of this evidence from actual relics of pre-historic life is one of the reasons which have contributed to the extraordinary interest which pre-historic archæology has excited in an age averse to vague speculation, but singularly appreciative of arguments conducted by strict reasoning on facts.
The study of this modern science has supplied a fundamental element to the general theory of civilisation, while, as has been the case with geology, its bearing on various points of theological criticism has at once conduced to its active investigation, and drawn to it the most eager popular attention.
Thus, in bringing forward a new work on 'Primitive Man,' there is happily no need of insisting on the importance of its subject-matter, or of attempting to force unappreciated knowledge on an unwilling public.
It is only necessary to attest its filling an open place in the literature of pre-historic archæology.
E. B. T. CONTENTS.
PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 THE STONE AGE.
I.
THE EPOCH OF EXTINCT SPECIES OF ANIMALS; OR, OF THE GREAT BEAR AND MAMMOTH.
CHAPTER I.
The earliest Men--The Type of Man in the Epoch of Animals of extinct Species--Origin of Man--Refutation of the Theory which derives the Human Species from the Ape 25 CHAPTER II.
Man in the Condition of Savage Life during the Quaternary Epoch--The Glacial Period, and its Ravages on the Primitive Inhabitants of the Globe--Man in Conflict with the Animals of the Quaternary Epoch--The Discovery of Fire--The Weapons of Primitive Man--Varieties of Flint Hatchets--Manufacture of the earliest Pottery--Ornamental objects at the Epoch of the Great Bear and the Mammoth 39 CHAPTER III.
The Man of the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch lived in Caverns-Bone Caverns in the Quaternary Rock during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch--Mode of Formation of these Caverns--Their Division into several Classes--Implements of Flint, Bone, and Reindeer-horn, found in these Caverns--The Burial Place at Aurignac--Its probable Age--Customs which it reveals--Funeral Banquets during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch 56 CHAPTER IV.
Other Caves of the Epoch of the Great Bear and Mammoth--Type of the Human Race during the Epochs of the Great Bear and the Reindeer--The Skulls from the Caves of Engis and Neanderthal 72 II.
EPOCH OF THE REINDEER; OR, OF MIGRATED ANIMALS.
CHAPTER I. Mankind during the Epoch of the Reindeer--Their Manners and Customs--Food--Garments--Weapons, Utensils, and Implements-Pottery--Ornaments--Primitive Arts--The principal Caverns-Type of the Human Race during the Epoch of the Reindeer 85 III.
THE POLISHED-STONE EPOCH; OR, THE EPOCH OF TAMED ANIMALS.
CHAPTER I.
The European Deluge--The Dwelling-Place of Man during the Polished-stone Epoch--The Caves and Rock-Shelters still used as Dwelling-Places--Principal Caves belonging to the Polished-stone Epoch which have been explored up to the present time--The Food of Man during this Period 125 CHAPTER II.
The _Kjoekken-Moeddings_ or "_Kitchen-middens_" of Denmark--Mode of Life of the Men living in Denmark during the Polished-stone Epoch--The Domestication of the Dog--The Art of Fishing during the Polished-stone Epoch--Fishing Nets--Weapons and Instruments of War--Type of the Human Race; the Borreby Skull 129 CHAPTER III.
Tombs and Mode of Interment during the Polished-stone Epoch-_Tumuli_ and other Sepulchral Monuments formerly called _Celtic_--Labours of MM.
Alexander Bertrand and Bonstetten-Funeral Customs 184 THE AGE OF METALS.
I.
THE BRONZE EPOCH.
CHAPTER I.
The Discovery of Metals--Various Reasons suggested for explaining the origin of Bronze in the West--The Invention of Bronze--A Foundry during the Bronze Epoch--Permanent and Itinerant Foundries existing during the Bronze Epoch--Did the Knowledge of Metals take its Rise in Europe owing to the Progress of Civilisation, or was it a Foreign Importation?
205 CHAPTER II.
The Sources of Information at our Disposal for reconstructing the History of the Bronze Epoch--The Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland--Enumeration and Classification of them--Their Mode of Construction--Workmanship and Position of the Piles--Shape and Size of the Huts--Population--Instruments of Stone, Bone, and Stag's Horn--Pottery--Clothing--Food--_Fauna_--Domestic Animals 215 CHAPTER III.
Lacustrine Habitations of Upper Italy, Bavaria, Carinthia and Carniola, Pomerania, France, and England--The _Crannoges_ of Ireland 227 CHAPTER IV.
Palustrine Habitations or Marsh-Villages--Surveys made by MM.
Strobel and Pigorini of the _Terramares_ of Tuscany--The _Terramares_ of Brazil 232 CHAPTER V. Weapons, Instruments, and Utensils contained in the various Lacustrine Settlements in Europe, enabling us to become acquainted with the Manners and Customs of Man during the Bronze Epoch 240 CHAPTER VI.
Industrial Skill and Agriculture during the Bronze Epoch--The Invention of Glass--Invention of Weaving 258 CHAPTER VII.
The Art of War during the Bronze Epoch--Swords, Spears and Daggers--The Bronze Epoch in Scandinavia, in the British Isles, France, Switzerland and Italy--Did the Man of the Bronze Epoch entertain any religious or superstitious Belief?
271 CHAPTER VIII.
Mode of Interment and Burial-places of the Bronze Epoch-Characteristics of the Human Race during the same Period 284 II.
THE IRON EPOCH.
CHAPTER I.
Essential Characteristics of the Iron Epoch--Preparation of Iron in Pre-historic Times--Discovery of Silver and Lead--Earthenware made on the Potter's Wheel--Invention of Coined Money 297 CHAPTER II.
Weapons--Tools, Instruments, Utensils, and Pottery--The Tombs of Hallstadt and the Plateau of La Somma--The Lake-Settlements of Switzerland--Human Sacrifices--Type of Man during the Iron Epoch--Commencement of the Historic Era 312 PRIMITIVE MAN IN AMERICA 333 CONCLUSION 343 LIST OF PLATES.
FIG.
PAGE A Family of the Stone Age (Frontispiece).
1.
Human Jaw-bone found at Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in 1863 18 2.
Skull of a Man belonging to the Stone Age (The _Borreby Skull_) 27 3.
Skull of the Gorilla 28 4.
Skull of the Orang-Outang _ib._ 5.
Skull of the Cynocephalus Ape 29 6.
Skull of the _Macacus_ Baboon _ib._ 7.
The Production of Fire (whole page engraving).
8.
_Dendrites_ or Crystallisations found on the Surface of wrought Flints 46 9.
Section of a Gravel Quarry at Saint-Acheul, which contained the wrought Flints found by Boucher de Perthes 47 10.
Hatchet of the _Almond-shaped_ type from the Valley of the Somme 48 11.
Flint Hatchet from Saint-Acheul of the so-called _Almond-shaped_ type 49 12.
Wrought Flint (_Moustier_ type) _ib._ 13.
Flint Scraper 50 14.
Flint Knife, found at Menchecourt, near Abbeville _ib._ 15.
Flint Core or Nucleus 51 16.
Man in the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch (whole page engraving).
17.
The First Potter (whole page engraving).
18.
Fossil Shells used as Ornaments, and found in the Gravel at Amiens 54 19.
Theoretical Section of a Vein of Clay in the Carboniferous Limestone, _before_ the hollowing out of Valleys by Diluvial Waters 56 20.
Theoretical Section of the same Vein of Clay converted into a Cavern, _after_ the hollowing out of Valleys by Diluvial Waters 57 21.
The Cave of Galeinreuth, in Bavaria 59 22.
Section of the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac 62 23.
Flint Knife, found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac 63 24.
Implement made of Reindeer's or Stag's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac _ib._ 25.
Series of Perforated Discs of the _Cardium_ Shell, found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac 64 26.
Fragment of the Lower Jaw of a Cave-Bear found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac _ib._ 27.
Upper Molar of a Bison found in the Ashes of the Fire-Hearth of the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac 65 28.
Arrow-head made of Reindeer's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave of Aurignac 66 29.
Bodkin made of Roebuck's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave of Aurignac _ib._ 30.
Truncated Blade in Reindeer's Horn bearing two Series of transversal Lines and Notches, probably used for numeration 67 31.
Funeral Feast during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch (whole page engraving).
32.
Carved and perforated Canine Tooth of a young Cave-Bear 69 33.
Head of a Cave-Bear found in the Cave of Aurignac 70 34.
Head of the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_, found in the Cave of Aurignac _ib._ 35.
Head of a great Stag (_Megaceros hibernicus_), found in the Cave of Aurignac 71 36.
Sketch of the Great Bear on a Stone, found in the Cave of Massat 75 37.
Portion of the Skull of an Individual belonging to the Epoch of the Great Bear and the Mammoth, found in the Cave of Engis 80 38.
Portion of the so-called Neanderthal Skull _ib._ 39.
Man of the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
40.
Rock-Shelter at Bruniquel, a supposed Habitation of Man during the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
41.
A Feast during the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
42.
Flint Bodkin or Stiletto for sewing Reindeer Skins, found in the Cave of Les Eyzies (Périgord) 92 43.
Bone Needle for Sewing _ib._ 44.
The Canine Tooth of a Wolf, bored so as to be used as an Ornament 93 45.
Ornament made of the bony part of a Horse's Ear _ib._ 46.
Spear-head, found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Périgord) 95 47.
Worked Flint from Périgord (Knife) 96 48.
Worked Flint from Périgord (Hatchet) _ib._ 49.
Chipped Flint from Périgord (Knife) 97 50.
Chipped Flint from Périgord (Scraper) _ib._ 51.
Small Flint Saw, found in the Rock-Shelter at Bruniquel 98 52.
The Chase during the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
53.
Barbed Arrow of Reindeer Horn 99 54.
Arrow of Reindeer Horn with Double Barbs _ib._ 55.
Animal Bone, pierced by an Arrow of Reindeer Horn 100 56.
Tool made of Reindeer Horn, found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Stiletto?)
_ib._ 57.
Tool made of Reindeer Horn, found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Needle?)
_ib._ 58.
Spoon of Reindeer Horn 101 59.
Knuckle-bone of a Reindeer's Foot, bored with a hole and used as a Whistle 102 60.
Staff of authority, in Reindeer's Horn, found in the Cave of Périgord _ib._ 61.
Another Staff of authority in Reindeer's Horn _ib._ 62.
A Geode, used as a Cooking Vessel(?
), found in the Cave of La Madelaine (Périgord) 103 63.
Earthen Vase, found in the Cave of Furfooz (Belgium) 104 64.
Sketch of a Mammoth graven on a Slab of Ivory 106 65.
Hilt of a Dagger carved in the Shape of a Reindeer 107 66.
Representation of a Stag drawn on a Stag's Horn 108 67.
Representation of some large Herbivorous Animal on a Fragment of Reindeer's Horn _ib._ 68.
Arts of Drawing and Sculpture during the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
69.
Representation of an Animal sketched on a Fragment of Reindeer's Horn 109 70.
Fragment of a Slab of Schist bearing the representation of some Animal, and found in the Cave of Les Eyzies _ib._ 71.
A kind of Harpoon of Reindeer's Horn carved in the Shape of an Animal's Head 110 72.
Staff of Authority, on which are graven Representations of a Man, two Horses, and a Fish 111 73.
Skull, found at Furfooz by M. Édouard Dupont 114 74.
Skull of an Old Man, found in a _Rock-shelter_ at Bruniquel 115 75.
A Funeral Ceremony during the Reindeer Epoch (whole page engraving).
76.
Man of the Polished-stone Epoch (whole page engraving).
77.
Bone Skewers used as Fish-hooks 134 78.
Fishing-net with wide Meshes 136 79.
Stone Weight used for sinking the Fishing-nets _ib._ 80.
Fishing during the Polished-stone Epoch (whole page engraving).
81.
Flint Knife from one of the Danish Beds 138 82.
Nucleus off which Knives are flaked _ib._ 83.
Flint Hatchet from one of the Danish Beds _ib._ 84.
Flint Scraper from one of the Danish Beds _ib._ 85.
Refuse from the Manufacture of wrought Flints 139 86.
Weight to sink Fishing-nets _ib._ 87.
Danish Axe of the Polished-stone Epoch 140 88.
Double-edged Axe _ib._ 89.
Danish Axe-hammer drilled for handle 141 90.
Ditto _ib._ 91.
Spear-head from Denmark 142 92.
Ditto _ib._ 93.
Toothed Spear-head of Flint 143 94.
Flint Poniard from Denmark _ib._ 95.
Type of the Danish Arrow-head _ib._ 96.
Another Type of Arrow-head _ib._ 97.
Arrow-head 144 98.
Arrow-head from Denmark _ib._ 99.
Flint Chisel from Denmark _ib._ 100.
Small Stone Saw from the Danish Deposits 145 101.
Another Stone Saw from Denmark _ib._ 102.
Bone Harpoon of the Stone Age, from Denmark _ib._ 103.
Bone Comb from Denmark 146 104.
Necklace and various Ornaments of Amber _ib._ 105.
Nucleus in the Museum of Saint-Germain, from the Workshop of Grand-Pressigny 148 106.
Polisher from Grand-Pressigny, both faces being shown 150 107.
The earliest Manufacture and Polishing of Flints (whole page engraving).
108.
Polisher found by M. Leguay 154 109.
Spear-head from Spiennes 158 110.
Polished Jade Hatchet in the Museum of Saint-Germain 159 111.
Polished Flint Hatchet with a Sheath of Stag's Horn fitted for a Handle 161 112.
Flint Hatchet fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath having an Oak Handle, from Boucher de Perthes' Illustration 162 113.
Hatchet Handle made of Oak 163 114.
Stag's-horn Sheath open at each end, so as to receive two Hatchets _ib._ 115.
Polished Flint Hatchet, from Belgium, fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath _ib._ 116.
Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes) 164 117.
Ditto _ib._ 118.
Ditto 165 119.
Flint Tool in a Bone Handle 166 120.
Flint Tool with Bone Handle _ib._ 121.
Ornamented Bone Handle _ib._ 122.
Necklace made of Boars' Tusks longitudinally divided 167 123.
Flint Knife from the Peat Bogs near Antwerp 168 124.
Primitive Corn-mill 170 125.
The Art of Bread Making in the Stone Age (whole page engraving).
126.
The Earliest Navigators (whole page engraving).
127.
The Earliest regular Conflicts between Men of the Stone Age; or, The Entrenched Camp of Furfooz (whole page engraving).
128.
Flint Arrow-head from Civita-Nova (Italy) 180 129.
The Borreby Skull 182 130.
Danish _Dolmen_ 185 131.
_Dolmen_ at Assies (department of Lot) _ib._ 132.
_Dolmen_ at Connéré (Marne) 186 133.
Vertical Section of the _Dolmen_ of Lockmariaker, in Brittany.
In the Museum of Saint-Germain _ib._ 134.
_Tumulus-Dolmen_ at Gavr'inis (Morbihan) 187 135.
A Portion of the _Dolmen_ of Gavr'inis _ib._ 136.
General Form of a covered Passage-Tomb 188 137.
Passage-Tomb at Bagneux, near Saumur _ib._ 138.
Passage-Tomb at Plauharmel (Morbihan) 189 139.
Passage-Tomb, the so-called _Table de César_, at Lockmariaker (Morbihan) _ib._ 140.
A Danish _Tumulus_ or chambered Sepulchre 190 141.
Usual Shape of a _Menhir_ 191 142.
The Rows of _Menhirs_ at Carnac _ib._ 143.
_Dolmen_ with a Circuit of Stones (_Cromlech_), in the Province of Constantine 192 144.
Group of Danish _Cromlechs_ _ib._ 145.
Position of Skeletons in a Swedish Tomb of the Stone Age 194 146.
A _Tumulus_ of the Polished Stone Epoch (whole page engraving).
147.
A Founder's Workshop during the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
148.
Section of the _Ténevière_ of Hauterive 220 149.
A Swiss Lake Village of the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
150.
Vertical Section of a _Crannoge_ in the Ardakillin Lake 230 151.
Vertical Section of the _Marniera_ of Castione 233 152.
Floor of the _Marniera_ of Castione 234 153.
Plan of the Piles and Cross-beams in the _Marniera_ of Castione _ib._ 154.
The Chase during the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
155.
Stone Hatchet from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 241 156.
Stone Chisel with Stag's-horn Handle, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 241 157.
Flint Hammer fitted with a Stag's-horn Handle 242 158.
Stone Hatchet with Double Handle of Wood and Stag's Horn _ib._ 159, 160.
Serpentine Hatchet-Hammers from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 243 161.
Another Hatchet-hammer from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 162.
Flint Saw fitted into a Piece of Stag's Horn 244 163.
Flint Spear-head from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland _ib._ 164.
Various Shapes of Flint Arrow-heads from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland _ib._ 165.
Arrow-head of Bone fixed on the Shaft by means of Bitumen 245 166.
Stone Arrow-head fixed on the Shaft by means of Bitumen _ib._ 167.
Arrow-head fixed on the Shaft by a Ligature of String _ib._ 168.
Bone Bodkin, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 246 169.
Ditto _ib._ 170.
Carpenter's Chisel, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 171.
Bone Needle _ib._ 172.
Pick-axe of Stag's Horn 247 173.
Harpoon made of Stag's Horn, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 174.
Ditto _ib._ 175.
Vessel made of Stag's Horn _ib._ 176.
Bronze Winged Hatchet, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 249 177.
Winged Hatchet (front and side view), from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 178.
Socketed Hatchet, from the Lacustrine Habitations _ib._ 179.
Knife Hatchet (front and side view) from the Lacustrine Habitations _ib._ 180.
Carpenter's Chisel, in Bronze 250 181.
Hexagonal Hammer _ib._ 182.
Knife with a Tang to fit into a Handle, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland _ib._ 183.
Socketed Knife, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 251 184.
Bronze Sickle, found by M. Desor at Chevroux _ib._ 185.
Bronze Fish-hook, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 252 186.
Double Fish-hook, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland _ib._ 187.
Hair-pin, found by M. Desor in one of the Swiss Lakes 253 188.
Ditto _ib._ 189.
Hair-pin with Cylindrical Head _ib._ 190.
Hair-pin with Curled Head _ib._ 191.
Bronze Bracelet, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 254 192.
Another Bronze Bracelet 255 193.
Bronze Ring _ib._ 194.
Bronze Pendant, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 256 195.
Another Bronze Pendant, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 196.
Bronze Ring, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland _ib._ 197.
Another Ornamental Ring _ib._ 198.
Earthenware Vessel with Conical Bottom, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland 259 199.
Earthen Vessel placed on its Support _ib._ 200.
Fragment of an Earthen Vessel with a Handle 259 201.
Vessel of Baked Clay, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 260 202.
Ditto _ib._ 203.
Cloth of the Bronze Age, found in the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 262 204.
The First Weaver (whole page engraving).
205.
Spindle-whorls, made of Baked Clay, found in the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 263 206.
Principal Designs for the Ornamentation of Pottery during the Bronze Epoch 264 207.
The Cultivation of Gardens during the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
208.
A Feast during the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
209.
Bronze Sword in the Museum of Neuchâtel 272 210.
Bronze Dagger, found in one of the Swiss Lakes _ib._ 211.
Bronze Spear-head, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 273 212.
Bronze Arrow-head, found in a Lacustrine Settlement of Switzerland _ib._ 213.
Scandinavian Sword 274 214.
Hilt of a Scandinavian Sword _ib._ 215.
Mode of fixing the Handle to a Scandinavian Hatchet _ib._ 216.
Another Mode of fixing the Handle to a Scandinavian Hatchet _ib._ 217.
Danish Bronze Knife of the Bronze Epoch 275 218.
Ditto _ib._ 219.
Blade of a Danish Razor of the Bronze Epoch 276 220.
Woollen Cloak of the Bronze Epoch, found in 1861, in a Tomb in Denmark 277 221.
Woollen Shawl, found in the same Tomb _ib._ 222.
Woollen Shirt, taken from the same Tomb 278 223.
First Woollen Cap, found in the same Tomb _ib._ 224.
Second Woollen Cap, found in the same Tomb _ib._ 225.
Bronze Comb, found in the same Tomb _ib._ 226.
Warriors during the Bronze Epoch (whole page engraving).
227.
Bronze Hatchet Mould, found in Ireland 279 228.
Stone Crescent, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 280 229.
Skull found at Meilen, Front View 289 230.
Skull found at Meilen, Profile View _ib._ 231.
Primitive Furnace for Smelting Iron (whole page engraving).
232.
Bronze Coin, from the Lake of Neuchâtel 310 233.
Sword, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (with a Bronze Hilt and Iron Blade) 313 234.
Ditto _ib._ 235.
Dagger, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (Bronze Handle and Iron Blade) 314 236.
Ditto _ib._ 237.
Funeral Ceremonies during the Iron Epoch (whole page engraving).
238.
A Skeleton, portions of which have been burnt, from the Tombs of Hallstadt 315 239.
A Necklace with Pendants, from the Tombs of Hallstadt 316 240.
Bracelet, from the Tombs of Hallstadt 317 241.
Ditto _ib._ 242.
Bronze Vase, from the Tombs of Hallstadt _ib._ 243.
Bronze Vase, from the Tombs of Hallstadt 317 244.
Warriors of the Iron Epoch (whole page engraving).
245, 246.
Fore-arm encircled with Bracelets, found in the Tombs of Belleville (Savoy) 319 247.
Iron Sword, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 321 248.
Sword with Damascened Blade, found in one of the Swiss Lakes _ib._ 249.
Sheath of a Sword, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 322 250.
Lance-head, found in one of the Swiss Lakes 323 251.
Head of a Javelin, found in the Lacustrine Settlement of La Tène (Neuchâtel) 324 252.
The Chase during the Iron Epoch (whole page engraving).
253.
Square-socketed Iron Hatchet, found in one of the Lakes of Switzerland 325 254.
Sickle _ib._ 255.
Scythe, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland 326 256.
Iron Point of Boat-hook, used by the Swiss Boatmen during the Iron Epoch _ib._ 257.
Horse's Bit, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel _ib._ 258.
_Fibula_, or Iron Brooch, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel 327 259.
Iron Buckle for a Sword-belt, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel 328 260.
Iron Pincers, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel _ib._ 261.
Iron Spring-scissors, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel _ib._ 262.
Razor 329 263.
Agriculture during the Iron Epoch (whole page engraving).
PRIMITIVE MAN.
INTRODUCTION.
Forty years have scarcely elapsed since scientific men first began to attribute to the human race an antiquity more remote than that which is assigned to them by history and tradition.
Down to a comparatively recent time, the appearance of primitive man was not dated back beyond a period of 6000 to 7000 years.
This historical chronology was a little unsettled by the researches made among various eastern nations--the Chinese, the Egyptians, and the Indians.
The _savants_ who studied these ancient systems of civilisation found themselves unable to limit them to the 6000 years of the standard chronology, and extended back for some thousands of years the antiquity of the eastern races.
This idea, however, never made its way beyond the narrow circle of oriental scholars, and did nothing towards any alteration in the general opinion, which allowed only 6000 years since the creation of the human species.
This opinion was confirmed, and, to some extent, rendered sacred by an erroneous interpretation of Holy Writ.
It was thought that the Old Testament stated that man was created 6000 years ago.
Now, the fact is, nothing of the kind can be found in the Book of Genesis.
It is only the commentators and the compilers of chronological systems who have put forward this date as that of the first appearance of the human race.
M. Édouard Lartet, who was called, in 1869, to the chair of palæontology in the Museum of Natural History of Paris, reminds us, in the following passage taken from one of his elegant dissertations, that it is the chronologists alone who have propounded this idea, and that they have, in this respect, very wrongly interpreted the statements of the Bible: "In _Genesis_," says M. Lartet, "no date can be found which sets a limit to the time at which primitive mankind may have made its first appearance.
Chronologists, however, for fifteen centuries have been endeavouring to make Biblical facts fall in with the preconcerted arrangements of their systems.
Thus, we find that more than 140 opinions have been brought forward as to the date of the creation alone, and that, between the varying extremes, there is a difference of 3194 years--a difference which only applies to the period between the commencement of the world and the birth of Jesus Christ.
This disagreement turns chiefly on those portions of the interval which are in closest proximity to the creation.
"From the moment when it becomes a recognised fact that the origin of mankind is a question independent of all subordination to dogma, this question will assume its proper position as a scientific thesis, and will be accessible to any kind of discussion, and capable, in every point of view, of receiving the solution which best harmonises with the known facts and experimental demonstrations.
"[1] Thus, we must not assume that the authority of Holy Writ is in any way questioned by those labours which aim at seeking the real epoch of man's first appearance on the earth.
In corroboration of M. Lartet's statement, we must call to mind that the Catholic church, which has raised to the rank of dogma so many unimportant facts, has never desired to treat in this way the idea that man was created only 6000 years ago.
There is, therefore, no need for surprise when we learn that certain members of the Catholic clergy have devoted themselves with energy to the study of pre-historic man.
Mgr.
Meignan, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, is one of the best-informed men in France as respects this new science; he cultivates it with the utmost zeal, and his personal researches have added much to the sum of our knowledge of this question.
Under the title of 'Le Monde et l'Homme Primitif selon la Bible,'[2] the learned Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne published, in 1869, a voluminous work, in which, taking up the subjects discussed by Marcel de Serres in his "Cosmogonie de Moïse, comparée aux Faits Géologiques,"[3] and enlarging upon the facts which science has recently acquired as to the subject of primitive man, he seeks to establish the coincidence of all these data with the records of Revelation.
M. l'Abbé Lambert has recently published a work on 'L'Homme Primitif et la Bible,'[4] in which he proves that the discoveries of modern science concerning the antiquity of man are in no way opposed to the records of Revelation in the Book of Moses.
Lastly, it is a member of the clerical body, M. l'Abbé Bourgeois, who, more a royalist than the king--that is, more advanced in his views than most contemporary geologists--is in favour of tracing back to the tertiary epoch the earliest date of the existence of man.
We shall have to impugn this somewhat exaggerated opinion, which, indeed, we only quote here for the sake of proving that the theological scruples which so long arrested the progress of inquiry with regard to primitive man, have now disappeared, in consequence of the perfect independence of this question in relation to catholic dogma being evidently shown.
Thanks to the mutual support which has been afforded by the three sister-sciences--geology, palæontology, and archæology,--thanks to the happy combinations which these sciences have presented to the efforts of men animated with an ardent zeal for the investigation of the truth;--and thanks, lastly, to the unbounded interest which attaches to this subject, the result has been that the limits which had been so long attributed to the existence of the human species have been extraordinarily extended, and the date of the first appearance of man has been carried back to the night of the darkest ages.
The mind, it may well be said, recoils dismayed when it undertakes the computation of the thousands of years which have elapsed since the creation of man.
But, it will naturally be asked, on what grounds do you base this assertion?
What evidence do you bring forward, and what are the elements of your proof?
In the following paragraphs we give some of the principal means of examination and study which have directed the efforts of _savants_ in this class of investigation, and have enabled them to create a science of the antiquity of the human species.
If man existed at any very remote epoch, he must have left traces of his presence in the spots which he inhabited and on the soil which he trod under his feet.
However savage his state may be assumed to have been, primitive man must have possessed some implements of fishing and hunting--some weapons wherewith to strike down any prey which was stronger or more agile than himself.
All human beings have been in possession of some scrap of clothing; and they have had at their command certain implements more or less rough in their character, be they only a shell in which to draw water or a tool for cleaving wood and constructing some place of shelter, a knife to cut their food, and a lump of stone to break the bones of the animals which served for their nutriment.
Never has man existed who was not in possession of some kind of defensive weapon.
These implements and these weapons have been patiently sought for, and they have also been found.
They have been found in certain strata of the earth, the age of which is known by geologists; some of these strata precede and others are subsequent to the cataclysm of the European deluge of the quaternary epoch.
The fact has thus been proved that a race of men lived upon the earth at the epoch settled by the geological age of these strata--that is, during the quaternary epoch.
When this class of evidence of man's presence--that is, the vestiges of his primitive industry--fails us, a state of things, however, which comparatively seldom occurs, his existence is sometimes revealed by the presence of human bones buried in the earth and preserved through long ages by means of the deposits of calcareous salts which have petrified or rather _fossilised_ them.
Sometimes, in fact, the remains of human bones have been found in quaternary rocks, which are, consequently, considerably anterior to those of the present geological epoch.
This means of proof is, however, more difficult to bring forward than the preceding class of evidence; because human bones are very liable to decay when they are buried at shallow depths, and require for any length of preservation a concurrence of circumstances which is but rarely met with; because also the tribes of primitive man often burnt their dead bodies; and, lastly, because the human race then formed but a very scanty population.
Another excellent proof, which demonstrates the existence of man at a geological epoch anterior to the present era, is to be deduced from the intermixture of human bones with those of antediluvian animals.
It is evident that if we meet with the bones of the mammoth, the cave-bear, the cave-tiger, &c.,--animals which lived only in the quaternary epoch and are now extinct--in conjunction with the bones of man or the relics of his industry, such as weapons, implements, utensils, &c., we can assert with some degree of certainty that our species was contemporaneous with the above-named animals.
Now this intermixture has often been met with under the ground in caves, or deeply buried in the earth.
These form the various kinds of proof which have been made use of to establish the fact of man's presence upon the earth during the quaternary epoch.
We will now give a brief recital of the principal investigations which have contributed to the knowledge on which is based the newly-formed science which treats of the practical starting-point of mankind.
Palæontology, as a science, does not count more than half a century of existence.
We scarcely seem, indeed, to have raised more than one corner of the veil which covers the relics of an extinct world; as yet, for instance, we know absolutely nothing of all that sleeps buried in the depths of the earth lying under the basin of the sea.
It need not, therefore, afford any great ground for surprise that so long a time elapsed before human bones or the vestiges of the primitive industry of man were discovered in the quaternary rocks.
This negative result, however, always constituted the chief objection against the very early origin of our species.
The errors and deceptions which were at first encountered tended perhaps to cool down the zeal of the earlier naturalists, and thus retarded the solution of the problem.
It is a well-known story about the fossil salamander of the Oeningen quarries, which, on the testimony of Scheuchzer, was styled in 1726, the "human witness of the deluge" (_homo diluvii testis_).
In 1787, Peter Camper recognised the fact that this pretended _pre-Adamite_ was nothing but a reptile; this discomfiture, which was a source of amusement to the whole of scientific Europe, was a real injury to the cause of antediluvian man.
By the sovereign ascendancy of ridicule, his existence was henceforth relegated to the domain of fable.
The first step in advance was, however, taken in 1774.
Some human bones, mingled with remains of the great bear and other species then unknown, were discovered by J. F. Esper, in the celebrated cavern of Gailenreuth, in Bavaria.
Even before this date, in the early part of the eighteenth century, Kemp, an Englishman, had found in London, by the side of elephants' teeth, a stone hatchet, similar to those which have been subsequently found in great numbers in various parts of the world.
This hatchet was roughly sketched, and the design published in 1715.
The original still exists in the collection at the British Museum.
In 1797, John Frere, an English archæologist, discovered at Hoxne, in Suffolk, under strata of quaternary rocks, some flint weapons, intermingled with bones of animals belonging to extinct species.
Esper concluded that these weapons and the men who made them were anterior to the formation of the beds in which they were found.
According to M. Lartet, the honour of having been the first to proclaim the high antiquity of the human species must be attributed to Aimé Boué, a French geologist residing in Germany.
In 1823, he found in the quaternary loam (loess) of the Valley of the Rhine some human bones which he presented to Cuvier and Brongniart as those of men who lived in the quaternary epoch.
In 1823, Dr. Buckland, the English geologist, published his 'Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,' a work which was principally devoted to a description of the Kirkdale Cave, in which the author combined all the facts then known which tended in favour of the co-existence of man and the antediluvian animals.
Cuvier, too, was not so indisposed as he is generally said to have been, to admit the existence of man in the quaternary epoch.
In his work on 'Ossements Fossiles,' and his 'Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe,' the immortal naturalist discusses the pros and cons with regard to this question, and, notwithstanding the insufficiency of the data which were then forthcoming, he felt warranted in saying:-"I am not inclined to conclude that man had no existence at all before the epoch of the great revolutions of the earth....
He might have inhabited certain districts of no great extent, whence, after these terrible events, he repeopled the world; perhaps, also, the spots where he abode were swallowed up, and his bones lie buried under the beds of the present seas."
The confident appeals which have been made to Cuvier's authority against the high antiquity of man are, therefore, not justified by the facts.
A second and more decisive step in advance was taken by the discovery of shaped flints and other implements belonging to primitive man, existing in diluvial beds.
In 1826, M. Tournal, of Narbonne, a French archæologist and geologist, published an account of the discoveries which he had made in a cave in the department of Aude, in which he found bones of the bison and reindeer fashioned by the hand of man, accompanied by the remains of edible shell-fish, which must have been brought there by men who had made their residence in this cave.
Three years afterwards, M. de Christol, of Montpellier, subsequently Professor in the University of Science of Grenoble, found human bones intimately mixed up with remains of the great bear, hyæna, rhinoceros, &c., in the caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues (Hérault).
In the last of these caverns fragments of pottery formed a part of the relics.
All these striking facts were put together and discussed by Marcel de Serres, Professor in the University of Science at Montpellier, in his 'Essai sur les Cavernes.'
The two bone-caverns of Engis and Enghihoul (Belgium) have furnished proofs of the same kind.
In 1833, Schmerling, a learned Belgian geologist, discovered in these caverns two human skulls, mixed with the teeth of the rhinoceros, elephant, bear, hyæna, &c. The human bones were rubbed and worn away like those of the animals.
The bones of the latter presented, besides, traces of human workmanship.
Lastly, as if no evidence should be wanting, flints chipped to form knives and arrow-heads were found in the same spot.
In connection with his laborious investigations, Schmerling published a work which is now much esteemed, and proves that the Belgian geologist well merited the title of being the founder of the science of the antiquity of man.
In this work Schmerling describes and represents a vast quantity of objects which had been discovered in the caverns of Belgium, and introduced to notice the human skull which has since become so famous under the name of the _Engis skull_.
But at that time scientific men of all countries were opposed to this class of ideas, and thus the discoveries of the Belgian geologist attracted no more attention than those of his French brethren who had brought forward facts of a similar nature.
In 1835, M. Joly, at that time Professor at the Lyceum of Montpellier--where I (the author) attended on his course of Natural History--now Professor in the Faculty of Sciences at Toulouse, found in the cave of Nabrigas (Lozère) the skull of a cave-bear, on which an arrow had left its evident traces.
Close by was a fragment of pottery bearing the imprints of the fingers of the man who moulded it.
We may well be surprised that, in the face of all these previous discoveries, Boucher de Perthes, the ardent apostle in proclaiming the high antiquity of our species, should have met with so much opposition and incredulity; or that he should have had to strive against so much indifference, when, beginning with the year 1836, he began to maintain this idea in a series of communications addressed to the Société d'Emulation of Abbeville.
The horizontal strata of the quarternary beds, known under the name of _diluvial_, form banks of different shades and material, which place before our eyes in indelible characters the ancient history of our globe.
The organic remains which are found in them are those of beings who were witnesses to the diluvial cataclysm, and perhaps preceded it by many ages.
"Therefore," says the prophet of Abbeville, "it is in these ruins of the old world, and in the deposits which have become his sole archives, that we must seek out the traditions of primitive man; and in default of coins and inscriptions we must rely on the rough stones which, in all their imperfection, prove the existence of man no less surely than all the glory of a Louvre."
Strong in this conviction, M. Boucher de Perthes devoted himself ardently to the search in the diluvial beds, either for the bony relics of man, or, at all events, for the material indications of his primitive industry.
In the year 1838 he had the honour of submitting to the Société d'Emulation, at Abbeville, his first specimens of the antediluvian hatchet.
In the course of the year 1839, Boucher de Perthes took these hatchets to Paris and showed them to several members of the Institute.
MM.
Alexandre Brongniart, Flourens, Elie de Beaumont, Cordier, and Jomard, gave at first some encouragement to researches which promised to be so fruitful in results; but this favourable feeling was not destined to last long.
These rough specimens of wrought flint, in which Boucher de Perthes already recognised a kind of hatchet, presented very indistinct traces of chipping, and the angles were blunted; their flattened shape, too, differed from that of the polished hatchets, the only kind that were then known.
It was certainly necessary to see with the eyes of faith in order to discern the traces of man's work.
"I," says the Abbeville archæologist, "had these 'eyes of faith,' but no one shared them with me."
He then made up his mind to seek for help in his labour, and trained workmen to dig in the diluvial beds.
Before long he was able to collect, in the quarternary beds at Abbeville, twenty specimens of flint evidently wrought by the hand of man.
In 1842, the Geological Society of London received a communication from Mr. Godwin Austen, who had found in Kent's Hole various wrought objects, accompanied by animal remains, which must have remained there since the deluge.
In 1844, appeared Lund's observations on the caverns of Brazil.
Lund explored as many as 800 caves.
In one of them, situated not far from the lake of Semidouro, he found the bones of no less than thirty individuals of the human species, showing a similar state of decomposition to that of the bones of animals which were along with them.
Among these animals were an ape, various carnivora, rodents, pachyderms, sloths, &c. From these facts, Lund inferred that man must have been contemporaneous with the megatherium, the mylodon, &c., animals which characterised the quarternary epoch.
Nevertheless, M. Desnoyers, librarian of the Museum of Natural History at Paris, in a very learned article on 'Grottos and Caverns,' published in 1845 in the 'Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle,' still energetically expressed himself in opposition to the hypothesis of the high antiquity of man.
But the discoveries continued to go on; and, at the present time, M. Desnoyers himself figures among the partisans of the antediluvian man.
He has even gone beyond their opinions, as he forms one among those who would carry back to the tertiary epoch the earliest date of the appearance of our species.
In 1847, M'Enery found in Kent's Hole, a cavern in England, under a layer of stalagmite, the remains of men and antediluvian animals mingled together.
The year 1847 was also marked by the appearance of the first volume of the 'Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes,' by Boucher de Perthes; this contained about 1600 plates of the objects which had been discovered in the excavations which the author had caused to be made since the year 1836.
The strata at Abbeville, where Boucher de Perthes carried out his researches, belong to the quaternary epoch.
Dr. Rigollot, who had been for ten years one of the most decided opponents of the opinions of Boucher de Perthes, actually himself discovered in 1854 some wrought flints in the quaternary deposits at Saint Acheul, near Amiens, and it was not long before he took his stand under the banner of the Abbeville archæologist.
The _fauna_ of the Amiens deposits is similar to that of the Abbeville beds.
The lower deposits of gravel, in which the wrought flints are met with, have been formed by fresh water, and have not undergone either alteration or disturbance.
The flints wrought by the hand of man which have been found in them, have in all probability lain there since the epoch of the formation of these deposits--an epoch a little later than the diluvial period.
The number of wrought flints which have been taken out of the Abbeville beds is really immense.
At Menchecourt, in twenty years, about 100 well-characterised hatchets have been collected; at Saint Gilles twenty very rough, and as many well-made ones; at Moulin-Quignon 150 to 200 well-formed hatchets.
Similar relics of primitive industry have been found also in other localities.
In 1853, M. Noulet discovered some in the Infernat Valley (Haute-Garonne); in 1858, the English geologists, Messrs. Prestwich, Falconer, Pengelly, &c., also found some in the lower strata of the Baumann cavern in the Hartz.
To the English geologists whose names we have just mentioned must be attributed the merit of having been the first to bring before the scientific world the due value of the labours of Boucher de Perthes, who had as yet been unsuccessful in obtaining any acceptation of his ideas in France.
Dr. Falconer, Vice-president of the Geological Society in London, visited the department of the Somme, in order to study the beds and the objects found in them.
After him, Messrs. Prestwich and Evans came three times to Abbeville in the year 1859.
They all brought back to England a full conviction of the antiquity and intact state of the beds explored, and also of the existence of man before the deluge of the quaternary epoch.
In another journey, made in company with Messrs.
Flower, Mylne, and Godwin Austen, Messrs. Prestwich, Falconer, and Evans were present at the digging out of human bones and flint hatchets from the quarries of St. Acheul.
Lastly, Sir C. Lyell visited the spot, and the English geologist, who, up to that time, had opposed the idea of the existence of antediluvian man, was able to say, _Veni, vidi, victus fui!_ At the meeting of the British Association, at Aberdeen, September the 15th, 1855, Sir C. Lyell declared himself to be in favour of the existence of quaternary man; and this declaration, made by the President of the Geological Society of London, added considerable weight to the new ideas.
M. Hébert, Professor of Geology at the Sorbonne, next took his stand under the same banner.
M. Albert Gaudry, another French geologist, made a statement to the Academy of Sciences, that he, too, had found flint hatchets, together with the teeth of horses and fossil oxen, in the beds of the Parisian _diluvium_.
During the same year, M. Gosse, the younger, explored the sand-pits of Grenelle and the avenue of La Mothe-Piquet in Paris, and obtained from them various flint implements, mingled with the bones of the mammoth, fossil ox, &c. Facts of a similar character were established at Précy-sur-Oise, and in the diluvial deposits at Givry.
The Marquis de Vibraye, also, found in the cave of Arcy, various human bones, especially a piece of a jaw-bone, mixed with the bones of animals of extinct species.
In 1859, M. A. Fontan found in the cave of Massat (department of Ariége), not only utensils testifying to the former presence of man, but also human teeth mixed up with the remains of the great bear (_Ursus spelæus_), the fossil hyæna (_Hyæna spelæa_), and the cave-lion (_Felis spelæa_).
In 1861, M. A. Milne Edwards found in the cave of Lourdes (Tarn), certain relics of human industry by the side of the bones of fossil animals.
The valleys of the Oise and the Seine have also added their contingent to the supply of antediluvian remains.
In the sand-pits in the environs of Paris, at Grenelle, Levallois-Perret, and Neuilly, several naturalists, including MM.
Gosse, Martin, and Reboux, found numerous flint implements, associated, in certain cases, with the bones of the elephant and hippopotamus.
In the valley of the Oise, at Précy, near Creil, MM.
Peigné Delacour and Robert likewise collected a few hatchets.
Lastly, a considerable number of French departments, especially those of the north and centre, have been successfully explored.
We may mention the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Aisne, Loire-et-Cher, Indre-et-Loire, Vienne, Allier, Yonne, Saône-et-Loire, Hérault, Tarn-et-Garonne, &c. In England, too, discoveries were made of an equally valuable character.
The movement which was commenced in France by Boucher de Perthes, spread in England with remarkable rapidity.
In many directions excavations were made which produced excellent results.
In the gravel beds which lie near Bedford, Mr. Wyatt met with flints resembling the principal types of those of Amiens and Abbeville; they were found in company with the remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, ox, horse, and deer.
Similar discoveries were made in Suffolk, Kent, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, &c. Some time after his return from Abbeville, Mr. Evans, going round the museum of the Society of Antiquaries in London, found in their rooms some specimens exactly similar to those in the collection of Boucher de Perthes.
On making inquiries as to their origin, he found that they had been obtained from the gravel at Hoxne by Mr. Frere, who had collected them there, together with the bones of extinct animals, all of which he had presented to the museum, after having given a description of them in the 'Archæologia' of 1800, with this remark: ... "Fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals....
The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present world."
Thus, even at the commencement of the present century, they were in possession, in England, of proofs of the co-existence of man with the great extinct pachyderms; but, owing to neglect of the subject, scarcely any attention had been paid to them.
We now come to the most remarkable and most characteristic discoveries of this class which have ever been made.
We allude to the explorations made by M. Édouard Lartet, during the year 1860, in the curious pre-historic human burial-place at Aurignac (Haute-Garonne).
Going down the hill on the road leading from Aurignac, after proceeding about a mile, we come to the point where, on the other side of the dale, the ridge of the hill called _Fajoles_ rises, not more than 65 feet above a rivulet.
We then may notice, on the northern slope of this eminence, an escarpment of the rock, by the side of which there is a kind of niche about six feet deep, the arched opening of it facing towards the north-west.
This little cave is situated forty-two feet above the rivulet.
Below, the calcareous soil slopes down towards the stream.
The discovery of this hollow, which is now cleared out, was made entirely by chance.
It was hidden by a mass of _débris_ of rock and vegetable-earth which had crumbled down; it had, in fact, only been known as a rabbits' hole.
In 1842, an excavating labourer, named Bonnemaison, took it into his head one day to thrust his arm into this hole, and out of it he drew forth a large bone.
Being rather curious to search into the mystery, he made an excavation in the slope below the hole, and, after some hours' labour, came upon a slab of sandstone which closed up an arched opening.
Behind the slab of stone, he discovered a hollow in which a quantity of human bones were stored up.
It was not long before the news of this discovery was spread far and wide.
Crowds of curious visitors flocked to the spot, and many endeavoured to explain the origin of these human remains, the immense antiquity of which was attested by their excessive fragility.
The old inhabitants of the locality took it into their heads to recall to recollection a band of coiners and robbers who, half a century before, had infested the country.
This decidedly popular inquest and decision was judged perfectly satisfactory, and everyone agreed in declaring that the cavern which had just been brought to light was nothing but the retreat of these malefactors, who concealed all the traces of their crimes by hiding the bodies of their victims in this cave, which was known to these criminals only.
Doctor Amiel, Mayor of Aurignac, caused all these bones to be collected together, and they were buried in the parish cemetery.
Nevertheless, before the re-inhumation was proceeded with, he recorded the fact that the skeletons were those of seventeen individuals of both sexes.
In addition to these skeletons, there were also found in the cave a number of little discs, or flat rings, formed of the shell of a species of cockle (_cardium_).
Flat rings altogether similar to these are not at all unfrequent in the necklaces and other ornanments of Assyrian antiquity found in Nineveh.
Eighteen years after this event, that is in 1860, M. Édouard Lartet paid a visit to Aurignac.
All the details of the above-named discovery were related to him.
After the long interval which had elapsed, no one, not even the grave-digger himself, could recollect the precise spot where these human remains had been buried in the village cemetery.
These precious relics were therefore lost to science.
M. Lartet resolved, however, to set on foot some excavations in the cave from which they had been taken, and he soon found himself in possession of unhoped-for treasures.
The floor of the cavern itself had remained intact, and was covered with a layer of "made ground" mixed with fragments of stone.
Outside this same cave M. Lartet discovered a bed of ashes and charcoal, which, however, did not extend to the interior.
This bed was covered with "made ground" of an ossiferous and vegetable character.
Inside the cave, the ground contained bones of the bear, the fox, the reindeer, the bison, the horse, &c., all intermingled with numerous relics of human industry, such as implements made of stag or reindeer's-horn, carefully pointed at one end and bevelled off at the other--a pierced handle of reindeer's-horn--flint knives and weapons of different kinds; lastly, a canine-tooth of a bear, roughly carved in the shape of a bird's head and pierced with a hole, &c. The excavations, having been carried to a lower level, brought to light the remains of the bear, the wild-cat, the cave-hyæna, the wolf, the mammoth, the horse, the stag, the reindeer, the ox, the rhinoceros, &c., &c. It was, in fact, a complete Noah's ark.
These bones were all broken lengthwise, and some of them were carbonised.
_Striæ_ and notches were found on them, which could only have been made by cutting instruments.
M. Lartet, after long and patient investigations, came to the conclusion that the cave of Aurignac was a human burial-place, contemporary with the mammoth, the _Rhinocerus tichorhinus_, and other great mammals of the quarternary epoch.
The mode in which the long bones were broken shows that they had been cracked with a view of extracting the marrow; and the notches on them prove that the flesh had been cut off them with sharp instruments.
The ashes point to the existence of a fire, in which some of these bones had been burnt.
Men must have resorted to this cavern in order to fulfil certain funereal rites.
The weapons and animals' bones must have been deposited there in virtue of some funereal dedication, of which numerous instances are found in Druidical or Celtic monuments and in Gallic tombs.
Such are the valuable discoveries, and such the new facts which were the result of the investigations made by M. Édouard Lartet in the cave of Aurignac.
In point of fact, they left no doubt whatever as to the co-existence of man with the great antediluvian animals.
In 1862, Doctor Felix Garrigou, of Tarrascon, a distinguished geologist, published the results of the researches which he, in conjunction with MM.
Rames and Filhol, had made in the caverns of Ariége.
These explorers found the lower jaw-bones of the great bear, which, with their sharp and projecting canine-tooth, had been employed by man as an offensive weapon, almost in the same way as Samson used the jaw-bone of an ass in fighting with the Philistines.
"It was principally," says M. Garrigou, "in the caves of Lombrives, Lherm, Bouicheta, and Maz-d'Azil that we found the jaw-bones of the great bear and the cave-lion, which were acknowledged to have been wrought by the hand of man, not only by us, but also by the numerous French and English _savants_ who examined them and asked for some of them to place in their collections.
The number of these jaw-bones now reaches to more than a hundred.
Furnished, as they are, with an immense canine-tooth, and carved so as to give greater facility for grasping them, they must have formed, when in a fresh state, formidable weapons in the hands of primitive man.... "These animals belong to species which are now extinct, and if their bones while still in a fresh state (since they were gnawed by hyænas) were used as weapons, man must have been contemporary with them."
In the cave of Bruniquel (Tarn-et-Garonne), which was visited in 1862 by MM.
Garrigou and Filhol, and other _savants_, there were found, under a very hard osseous _breccia_, an ancient fire-hearth with ashes and charcoal, the broken and calcined bones of ruminants of various extinct species, flint flakes used as knives, facetted nuclei, and both triangular and quadrangular arrow-heads of great distinctness, utensils in stags' horn and bone--in short, everything which could prove the former presence of primitive man.
About three-quarters of a mile below the cave there was subsequently found, at a depth of about twenty feet, an osseous _breccia_ similar to the first, and likewise containing broken bones and a series of ancient fire-hearths filled with ashes and objects of antediluvian industry.
Bones, teeth, and flints were to be collected in bushels.
At the commencement of 1863, M. Garrigou presented to the Geological Society of France the objects which had been found in the caves of Lherm and Bouicheta, and the Abbé Bourgeois published some remarks on the wrought flints from the _diluvium_ of Pont-levoy.
This, therefore, was the position of the question in respect to fossil man, when in 1863, the scientific world were made acquainted with the fact of the discovery of a human jaw-bone in the diluvial beds of Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville.
We will relate the circumstances attending this memorable discovery.
On the 23rd of March, 1863, an excavator who was working in the sand-quarries at Moulin-Quignon brought to Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville, a flint hatchet and a small fragment of bone which he had just picked up.
Having cleaned off the earthy coat which covered it, Boucher de Perthes recognised this bone to be a human molar.
He immediately visited the spot, and assured himself that the locality where these objects had been found was an argilo-ferruginous vein, impregnated with some colouring matter which appeared to contain organic remains.
This layer formed a portion of a _virgin_ bed, as it is called by geologists, that is, without any infiltration or secondary introduction.
On the 28th of March another excavator brought to Boucher de Perthes a second human tooth, remarking at the same time, "that something resembling a bone was just then to be seen in the sand."
Boucher de Perthes immediately repaired to the spot, and in the presence of MM.
Dimpré the elder and younger, and several members of the Abbeville _Société d'Emulation_, he personally extracted from the soil the half of a human lower jaw-bone, covered with an earthy crust.
A few inches from this, a flint hatchet was discovered, covered with the same black patina as the jaw-bone.
The level where it was found was about fifteen feet below the surface of the ground.
After this event was duly announced, a considerable number of geologists flocked to Abbeville, about the middle of the month of April.
The Abbé Bourgeois, MM.
Brady-Buteux, Carpenter, Falconer, &c., came one after the other, to verify the locality from which the human jaw-bone had been extracted.
All were fully convinced of the intact state of the bed and the high antiquity of the bone which had been found.
Boucher de Perthes also discovered in the same bed of gravel two mammoth's teeth, and a certain number of wrought hatchets.
Finally, he found among the bones which had been taken from the Menchecourt quarries in the early part of April, a fragment of another jaw-bone and six separate teeth, which were recognised by Dr. Falconer to be also human.
The jaw-bone found at Moulin-Quignon is very well preserved.
It is rather small in size, and appears to have belonged to an aged individual of small stature.
It does not possess that ferocious aspect which is noticed in the jaw-bones of certain of the existing human races.
The obliquity of the molar-tooth may be explained by supposing some accident, for the molar which stood next had fallen out during the lifetime of the individual, leaving a gap which favoured the obliquity of the tooth which remained in the jaw.
This peculiarity is found also in several of the human heads in the collection of the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
[Illustration: Fig.
1.--Human Jaw-bone found at Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in 1863.]
The jaw-bone of the man of Moulin-Quignon, which is represented here (fig.
1) in its natural size, and drawn from the object itself, which is preserved in the Anthropological Gallery of the Museum of Natural History of Paris, does not show any decided points of difference when compared with those of individuals of existing races.
The same conclusion was arrived at as the result of the comparative examination which was made of the jaw-bones found by MM.
Lartet and De Vibraye in the caves of Aurignac and Arcy; the latter remains were studied by M. Quatrefages in conjunction with Pruner-Bey, formerly physician to the Viceroy of Egypt, and one of the most distinguished French anthropologists.
On the 20th of April, 1863, M. de Quatrefages announced to the institute the discovery which had been made by Boucher de Perthes, and he presented to the above-named learned body the interesting object itself, which had been sent from Abbeville.
When the news of this discovery arrived in England it produced no slight sensation.
Some of the English _savants_ who had more specially devoted their attention to the study of this question, such as Messrs. Christy, Falconer, Carpenter, and Busk, went over to France, and in conjunction with Boucher de Perthes and several members of the Académie des Sciences of Paris, examined the exact locality in which the hatchets and the human jaw-bone had been found; they unanimously agreed in recognising the correctness of the conclusions arrived at by the indefatigable geologist of Abbeville.
[5] This discovery of the hatchets and the human jaw-bone in the quaternary beds of Moulin-Quignon completed the demonstration of an idea already supported by an important mass of evidence.
Setting aside its own special value, this discovery, added to so many others, could not fail to carry conviction into most minds.
From this time forth the doctrine of the high antiquity of the human race became an acknowledged idea in the scientific world.
Before closing our historical sketch, we shall have to ask, what was the precise geological epoch to which we shall have to carry back the date of man's first appearance on this our earth.
The beds which are anterior to the present period, the series of which forms the solid crust of our globe, have been divided, as is well known, into five groups, corresponding to the same number of periods of the physical development of the earth.
These are in their order of age: the _primitive rocks_, the _transition rocks_, the _secondary rocks_, the _tertiary_ and _quaternary rocks_.
Each of these epochs must have embraced an immense lapse of time, since it has radically exhausted the generation both of animals and plants which was peculiar to it.
Some idea may be formed of the extreme slowness with which organic creatures modify their character, when we take into consideration that our contemporary _fauna_, that is to say, the collection of animals of every country which belong to the geological period in which we exist, has undergone little, if any, alteration during the thousands of years that it has been in being.
Is it possible for us to date the appearance of the human race in those prodigiously-remote epochs which correspond with the primitive, the transition, or the secondary rocks?
Evidently no!
Is it possible, indeed, to fix this date in the epoch of the tertiary rocks?
Some geologists have fancied that they could find traces of the presence of man in these tertiary rocks (the miocene and pliocene).
But this is an opinion in which we, at least, cannot make up our minds to agree.
In 1863, M. Desnoyers found in the upper strata of the tertiary beds (pliocene) at Saint-Prest, in the department of Eure, certain bones belonging to various extinct animal species; among others those of an elephant (_Elephas meridionalis_), an animal which did not form a part of the quaternary _fauna_.
On most of these bones he ascertained the existence of cuts, or notches, which, in his opinion, must have been produced by flint implements.
These indications, according to M. Desnoyers, are signs of the existence of man in the tertiary epoch.
This opinion, however, Sir Charles Lyell hesitates to accept.
Moreover, we could hardly depend upon an accident so insignificant as that of a few cuts or notches made upon a bone, in order to establish a fact so important as that of the high antiquity of man.
We must also state that it is a matter of question whether the beds which contained these notched bones really belong to the tertiary group.
The beds which correspond to the quaternary epoch are, therefore, those in which we find unexceptionable evidence of the existence of man.
Consequently, in the quaternary epoch which preceded the existing geological period, we must place the date of the first appearance of mankind upon the earth.
If the purpose is entertained of discussing, with any degree of certainty, the history of the earliest days of the human race--a subject which as yet is a difficult one--it is requisite that the long interval should be divided into a certain number of periods.
The science of primitive man is one so recently entered upon, that those authors who have written upon the point can hardly be said to have properly discussed and agreed upon a rational scheme of classification.
We shall, in this work, adopt the classification proposed by M. Édouard Lartet, which, too, has been adopted in that portion of the museum of Saint-Germain which is devoted to pre-historic antiquities.
Following this course, we shall divide the history of primitive mankind into two great periods: 1st.
The Stone Age; 2nd.
The Metal Age.
These two principal periods must also be subdivided in the following mode.
The "Stone Age" will embrace three epochs: 1st.
The epoch of extinct animals (or of the great cave-bear and the mammoth).
2nd.
The epoch of migrated existing animals (or the reindeer epoch).
3rd.
The epoch of domesticated existing animals (or the polished-stone epoch).
The "Metal Age" may also be divided into two periods: 1st.
The Bronze Epoch; 2nd.
The Iron Epoch.
The following synoptical table will perhaps bring more clearly before the eyes of our readers this mode of classification, which has, at least, the merit of enabling us to make a clear and simple statement of the very incongruous facts which make up the history of primitive man: { 1st.
Epoch of extinct animals (or of the great bear { and mammoth).
THE STONE AGE.
{ 2nd.
Epoch of migrated existing animals (or the { reindeer epoch).
{ 3rd.
Epoch of domesticated existing animals (or the { polished-stone epoch).
THE METAL AGE.
{ 1st.
The Bronze Epoch.
{ 2nd.
The Iron Epoch.
FOOTNOTES: [1] 'Nouvelles Recherches sur la Coexistence de l'Homme et des grands Mammifères Fossiles réputés charactéristiques de la dernière période Géologique,' by Éd.
Lartet, 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles,' 4th ser.
vol.
xv.
p. 256.
[2] 1 vol.
8vo., Paris, 1869; V. Palme.
[3] 2 vols.
12mo., 3rd edit., Paris, 1859; Lagny frères.
[4] Pamphlet, 8vo., Paris, 1869; Savy.
[5] It should rather have been said, that the ultimate and well-considered judgment of the English geologists was against the authenticity of the Moulin-Quignon jaw.--See Dr. Falconer's 'Palæontological Memoirs,' vol.
ii.
p. 610; and Sir C. Lyell's 'Antiquity of Man,' 3rd ed.
p. 515.
(Note to Eng.
Trans.)
THE STONE AGE.
I.
THE EPOCH OF EXTINCT SPECIES OF ANIMALS; OR, OF THE GREAT BEAR AND MAMMOTH.
CHAPTER I.
The earliest Men--The type of Man in the Epoch of Animals of extinct Species--Origin of Man--Refutation of the Theory which derives the Human Species from the Ape.
Man must have lived during the time in which the last representatives of the ancient animal creation--the mammoth, the great bear, the cave-hyæna, the _Rhinoceros tichorinus_, &c.--were still in existence.
It is this earliest period of man's history which we are now about to enter upon.
We have no knowledge of a precise nature with regard to man at the period of his first appearance on the globe.
How did he appear upon the earth, and in what spot can we mark out the earliest traces of him?
Did he first come into being in that part of the world which we now call Europe, or is it the fact that he made his way to this quarter of our hemisphere, having first seen the light on the great plateaux of Central Asia?
This latter opinion is the one generally accepted.
In the work which will follow the present volume we shall see, when speaking of the various races of man, that the majority of naturalists admit nowadays one common centre of creation for all mankind.
Man, no doubt, first came into being on the great plateaux of Central Asia, and thence was distributed over all the various habitable portions of our globe.
The action of climate and the influences of the locality which he inhabited have, therefore, determined the formation of the different races--white, black, yellow, and red--which now exist with all their infinite subdivisions.
But there is another question which arises, to which it is necessary to give an immediate answer, for it has been and is incessantly agitated with a degree of vehemence which may be explained by the nature of the discussion being of so profoundly personal a character as regards all of us: Was man created by God complete in all parts, and is the human type independent of the type of the animals which existed before him?
Or, on the contrary, are we compelled to admit that man, by insensible transformations, and gradual improvements and developments, is derived from some other animal species, and particularly that of the ape?
This latter opinion was maintained at the commencement of the present century by the French naturalist, de Lamarck, who laid down his views very plainly in his work entitled 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
The same theory has again been taken up in our own time, and has been developed, with no small supply of facts on which it might appear to be based, by a number of scientific men, among whom we may mention Professor Carl Vogt in Switzerland, and Professor Huxley in England.
We strongly repudiate any doctrine of this kind.
In endeavouring to establish the fact that man is nothing more than a developed and improved ape, an orang-outang or a gorilla, somewhat elevated in dignity, the arguments are confined to an appeal to anatomical considerations.
The skull of the ape is compared with that of primitive man, and certain characteristics of analogy, more or less real, being found to exist between the two bony cases, the conclusion has been arrived at that there has been a gradual blending between the type of the ape and that of man.
We may observe, in the first place, that these analogies have been very much exaggerated, and that they fail to stand their ground in the face of a thorough examination of the facts.
Only look at the skulls which have been found in the tombs belonging to the stone age, the so-called _Borreby skull_ for instance--examine the human jaw-bone from Moulin-Quignon, the Meilen skull, &c., and you will be surprised to see that they differ very little in appearance from the skulls of existing man.
One would really imagine, from what is said by the partisans of Lamarck's theory, that primitive man possessed the projecting jaw of the ape, or at least that of the negro.
We are astonished, therefore, when we ascertain that, on the contrary, the skull of the man of the stone age is almost entirely similar in appearance to those of the existing Caucasian species.
Special study is, indeed, required in order to distinguish one from the other.
If we place side by side the skull of a man belonging to the Stone Age, and the skulls of the principal apes of large size, these dissimilarities cannot fail to be obvious.
No other elements of comparison, beyond merely looking at them, seem to be requisite to enable us to refute the doctrine of this debased origin of mankind.
The figure annexed represents the skull of a man belonging to the stone age, found in Denmark; to this skull, which is known by the name of the Borreby skull, we shall have to allude again in the course of the present work; fig.
3 represents the skull of a gorilla; fig.
4 that of an orang-outang; fig.
5 that of the _Cynocephalus_ ape; fig.
6 that of the _Macacus_.
Place the representation of the skull found in Denmark in juxtaposition with these ill-favoured animal masks, and then let the reader draw his own inference, without pre-occupying his mind with the allegations of certain anatomists imbued with contrary ideas.
[Illustration: Fig.
2.--Skull of a Man belonging to the Stone Age (the _Borreby Skull_).]
[Illustration: Fig.
3.--Skull of the Gorilla.]
[Illustration: Fig.
4.--Skull of the Orang-Outang.]
[Illustration: Fig.
5.--Skull of the Cynocephalus Ape.]
[Illustration: Fig.
6.--Skull of the _Macacus_ Baboon.]
Finding themselves beaten as regards the skulls, the advocates of transmutation next appeal to the bones.
With this aim, they exhibit to us certain similarities of arrangement existing between the skeleton of the ape and that of primitive man.
Such, for instance, is the longitudinal ridge which exists on the thigh-bone, which is as prominent in primitive man as in the ape.
Such, also, is the fibula, which is very stout in primitive man, just as in the ape, but is rather slender in the man of the present period.
When we are fully aware how the form of the skeleton is modified by the kind of life which is led, in men just as in animals, we cannot be astonished at finding that certain organs assume a much higher development in those individuals who put them to frequent and violent use, than in others who leave these same organs in a state of comparative repose.
If it be a fact that the man of the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth had a more robust leg, and a more largely developed thigh-bone than most of the races of existing man, the reason simply is, that his savage life, which was spent in the midst of the wild beasts of the forest, compelled him to make violent exertions, which increased the size of these portions of his body.
Thus it is found that great walkers have a bulky calf, and persons leading a sedentary life have slender legs.
These variations in the structure of the skeleton are owing, therefore, to nothing but a difference in the mode of life.
Why is it, however, that the skeleton is the only point taken into consideration when analogies are sought for between man and any species of animal?
If equal investigation were given to other organs, we should arrive at a conclusion which would prove how unreasonable comparisons of this kind are.
In fact, if man possesses the osseous structure of the ape, he has also the anatomical structure of many other animals, as far as regards several organs.
Are not the viscera of the digestive system the same, and are they not organised on the same plan in man as in the carnivorous animals?
As the result of this, would you say that man is derived from the tiger, that he is nothing but an improved and developed lion, a cat transmuted into a man?
We may, however, just as plausibly draw this inference, unless we content ourselves with devoting our attention to the skeleton alone, which seems, indeed, to be the only part of the individual in which we are to interest ourselves, for what reason we know not.
But, in point of fact, this kind of anatomy is pitiable.
Is there nothing in man but bones?
Do the skeleton and the viscera make up the entire sum of the human being?
What will you say, then, ye blind rhetoricians, about the faculty of intelligence as manifested in the gift of speech?
Intelligence and speech, these are really the attributes which constitute man; these are the qualities which make him the most complete being in creation, and the most privileged of God's creatures.
Show me an ape who can speak, and then I will agree with you in recognising it as a fact that man is nothing but an improved ape!
Show me an ape who can make flint hatchets and arrow-heads, who can light a fire and cook his food, who, in short, can act like an intelligent creature--then, and then only, I am ready to confess that I am nothing more than an orang-outang revised and corrected.
It is not, however, our desire to speak of a question which has been the subject of so much controversy as that of the anatomical resemblance between the ape and the man without thoroughly entering into it; we have, indeed, no wish to shun the discussion of the point.
On the present occasion, we shall appeal to the opinion of a _savant_ perfectly qualified in such matters; we allude to M. de Quatrefages, Professor of Anthropology in the Museum of Natural History at Paris.
M. de Quatrefages, in his work entitled 'Rapport sur le Progrès de l'Anthropologie,' published in 1868, has entered rather fully into the question whether man is descended from the ape or not.
He has summed up the contents of a multitude of contemporary works on this subject, and has laid down his opinion--the perfect impossibility, in an anatomical point of view, of this strange and repugnant genealogy.
The following extract from his work will be sufficient to make our readers acquainted with the ideas of the learned Professor of Anthropology with regard to the question which we are now considering: "Man and apes in general," says M. de Quatrefages, "present a most striking contrast--a contrast on which Vicq-d'Azyr, Lawrence, and M. Serres have dwelt in detail for some considerable time past.
The former is a _walking animal_, who walks upon his hind legs; all apes are _climbing animals_.
The whole of the locomotive system in the two groups bears the stamp of these two very different intentions; the two types, in fact, are perfectly distinct.
"The very remarkable works of Duvernoy on the 'Gorilla,' and of MM.
Gratiolet and Alix on the 'Chimpanzee,' have fully confirmed this result as regards the anthropomorphous apes--a result very important, from whatever point of view it is looked at, but of still greater value to any one who wishes to apply _logically_ Darwin's idea.
These recent investigations prove, in fact, that the ape type, however highly it may be developed, loses nothing of its fundamental character, and remains always perfectly distinct from the type of man; the latter, therefore, cannot have taken its rise from the former.
"Darwin's doctrine, when rationally adapted to the fact of the appearance of man, would lead us to the following results: "We are acquainted with a large number of terms in the Simian series.
We see it branching out into secondary series all leading up to anthropomorphous apes, which are not members of one and the same family, but corresponding superior _terms_ of three distinct families (Gratiolet).
In spite of the secondary modifications involved by the developments of the same natural qualities, the orang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee remain none the less fundamentally mere _apes_ and _climbers_ (Duvernoy, Gratiolet, and Alix).
Man, consequently, in whom everything shows that he is a _walker_, cannot belong to any one of these series; he can only be the higher term of a distinct series, the other representatives of which have disappeared, or, up to the present time, have evaded our search.
Man and the anthropomorphous apes are the final terms of two series, which commence to diverge at the very latest as soon as the lowest of the apes appear upon the earth.
"This is really the way in which a true disciple of Darwin must reason, even if he solely took into account the _external morphological characteristics_ and the _anatomical characteristics_ which are the expression of the former in the adult animal.
"Will it be said that when the degree of organisation manifested in the anthropomorphous apes had been once arrived at, the organism underwent a new impulse and became adapted for walking?
This would be, in fact, adding a fresh hypothesis, and its promoters would not be in a position to appeal to the organised gradation presented by the quadrumanous order as a whole on which stress is laid as leading to the conclusion against which I am contending: they would be completely outside _Darwin's theory_, on which these opinions claim to be based.
"Without going beyond these purely morphological considerations, we may place, side by side, for the sake of comparison, as was done by M. Pruner-Bey, the most striking general characteristics in man and in the anthropomorphous apes.
As the result, we ascertain this general fact--that there exists 'an _inverse order_ of the final term of development in the sensitive and vegetative apparatus, in the systems of locomotion and reproduction' (Pruner-Bey).
"In addition to this, this _inverse order_ is equally exhibited in the series of phenomena of individual development.
"M. Pruner-Bey has shown that this is the case with a portion of the permanent teeth.
M. Welker, in his curious studies of the sphenoïdal angle of Virchow, arrived at a similar result.
He demonstrated that the modifications of the base of the skull, that is, of a portion of the skeleton which stands in the most intimate relation to the brain, take place inversely in the man and ape.
This angle diminishes from his birth in man, but, on the contrary, in the ape it becomes more and more obtuse, so as sometimes to become entirely extinct.
"But there is also another fact which is of a still more important character: it is that this inverse course of development has been ascertained to exist even in the brain itself.
This fact, which was pointed out by Gratiolet, and dwelt upon by him on various occasions, has never been contested either at the _Société d'Anthropologie_ or elsewhere, and possesses an importance and significance which may be readily comprehended.
"In man and the anthropomorphous ape, _when in an adult state_, there exists in the mode of arrangement of the cerebral folds a certain similarity on which much stress has been laid; but this resemblance has been, to some extent, a source of error, for the result is attained by an _inverse course of action_.
In the ape, the temporo-sphenoïdal convolutions, which form the middle lobe, make their appearance, and are completed, before the anterior convolutions which form the frontal lobe.
In man, on the contrary, the frontal convolutions are the first to appear, and those of the middle lobe are subsequently developed.
"It is evident that when two organised beings follow an inverse course in their growth, the more highly developed of the two cannot have descended from the other by means of evolution.
"Embryology next adds its evidence to that of anatomy and morphology, to show how much in error they are who have fancied that Darwin's ideas would afford them the means of maintaining the simial origin of man.
"In the face of all these facts, it may be easily understood that anthropologists, however little in harmony they may sometimes be on other points, are agreed on this, and have equally been led to the conclusion that there is nothing that permits us to look at the brain of the ape as the brain of man smitten with an arrest of development, or, on the other hand, the brain of man as a development of that of the ape (Gratiolet); that the study of animal organism in general, and that of the extremities in particular, reveals, in addition to a general plan, certain differences in shape and arrangement which specify two altogether special and distinct adaptations, and are incompatible with the idea of any filiation (Gratiolet and Alix); that in their course of improvement and development, apes do not tend to become allied to man, and conversely the human type, when in a course of degradation, does not tend to become allied to the ape (Bert); finally, that no possible point of transition can exist between man and the ape, unless under the condition of inverting the laws of development (Pruner-Bey), &c. "What, we may ask, is brought forward by the partisans of the simial origin of man in opposition to these general facts, which here I must confine myself to merely pointing out, and to the multitude of details of which these are only the abstract?
"I have done my best to seek out the proofs alleged, but I everywhere meet with nothing but the same kind of argument--exaggerations of morphological similarities which no one denies; inferences drawn from a few exceptional facts which are then generalised upon, or from a few coincidences in which the relations of cause and effect are a matter of supposition; lastly, an appeal to _possibilities_ from which conclusions of a more or less affirmative character are drawn.
"We will quote a few instances of this mode of reasoning.
"1st.
The bony portion of the hand of man and of that of certain anthropomorphous apes present marked similarities.
Would it not therefore have been possible for an almost imperceptible modification to have ultimately led to identity?
"MM.
Gratiolet and Alix reply to this in the negative; for the muscular system of the thumb establishes a profound difference, and testifies to an _adaptation_ to very different uses.
"2nd.
It is only in man and the anthropomorphous apes that the articulation of the shoulder is so arranged as to allow of rotatory movements.
Have we not here an unmistakable resemblance?
"The above-named anatomists again reply in the negative; for even if we only take the bones into account, we at once see that the movements could not be the same; but when we come to the muscular system, we find decisive differences again testifying to certain special _adaptations_.
"These rejoinders are correct, for when _locomotion_ is the matter in question, it is evident that due consideration must be paid to the muscles, which are the active agents in that function at least as much as the bones, which only serve as points of attachment and are only passive.
"3rd.
In some of the races of man, the arch of the skull, instead of presenting a uniform curve in the transverse direction, bends a little towards the top of the two sides, and rises towards the median line (New Caledonians, Australians, &c.).
It is asked if this is not a preliminary step towards the bony crests which rise in this region in some of the anthropomorphous apes?
"Again we reply in the negative; for, in the latter, the bony crests arise from the walls of the skull, and do not form any part of the arch.
"4th.
Is it not very remarkable that we find the orang to be brachycephalous, just like the Malay, whose country it inhabits, and that the gorilla and chimpanzee are dolichocephalous like the negro?
Is not this fact a reason for our regarding the former animal as the ancestor of the Malays, and the latter of the African nations?
"Even if the facts brought forward were correct, the inference which is drawn from them would be far from satisfactory.
But the coincidence which is appealed to does not exist.
In point of fact, the orang, which is essentially a native of Borneo, lives among the Dyaks and not among the Malays; now the Dyaks are rather dolichocephalous than brachycephalous.
With respect to gorillas being dolichocephalous, they cannot at least be so generally; as out of _three_ female specimens of this ape which were examined, two were brachycephalous (Pruner-Bey).
"5th.
The brains of microcephalous individuals present a mixture of human and simial characteristics, and point to some intermediate conformation, which was normal at some anterior epoch, but at the present time is only realised by an arrest of development and a fact of atavism.
"Gratiolet's investigations of the brain of the ape, normal man and small-brained individuals, have shown that the similarities pointed out are purely fallacious.
People have thought that they could detect them, simply because they have not examined closely enough.
In the last named, the human brain is simplified; but this causes no alteration in the _initial plan_, and this plan is not that which is ascertained to exist in the ape.
Thus Gratiolet has expressed an opinion which no one has attempted to controvert: 'The human brain differs the more from that of the ape the less the former is developed, and an arrest of development could only exaggerate this natural difference....
The brains of microcephalous individuals, although often less voluminous and less convoluted than those of the anthropomorphous apes, do not on this account become like the latter....
The idiot, however low he may be reduced, is not a beast; he is nothing but a deteriorated man.'
"The laws of the development of the brain in the two types, laws which I mentioned before, explain and justify this language; and the laws of which it is the summary are a formal refutation of the comparison which some have attempted to make between the _contracted human brain_, and the _animal brain, however developed_.
"6th.
The excavations which have been made in intact ancient beds have brought to light skulls of ancient races of man, and these skulls present characteristics which approximate them to the skull of the ape.
Does not this pithecoïd stamp, which is very striking on the Neanderthal skull in particular, argue a transition from one type to another, and consequently _filiation_?
"This argument is perhaps the only one which has been brought forward with any degree of precision, and it is often recurred to.
Is it, on this account, more demonstrative?
Let the reader judge for himself.
"We may, in the first place, remark that Sir C. Lyell does not venture to pronounce affirmatively as to the high antiquity of the human remains discovered by Dr. Fuhlrott, and that he looked upon them, at the most, as contemporary with the Engis skull, in which the Caucasian type of head was reproduced.
"Let us, however, admit that the Neanderthal skull belongs to the remote antiquity to which it has been assigned; what, then, is in reality the significance of this skull?
Is it actually a link between the head of the man and that of the ape?
And does it not find some analogy in comparatively modern races?
"Many writings have been published on these questions, and, as it appears to me, some light has gradually been thrown upon the subject.
There is no doubt that this skull is really remarkable for the enormous size of its superciliary ridges, the length and narrowness of the bony case, the slight elevation of the top of the skull.
But these features are found to be much less exceptional than was at first supposed, in default of any means of instituting a just comparison; very far, indeed, from justifying the approximation which some have endeavoured to make, this skull is, in all its characteristics, essentially human.
Mr. Busk, in England, has pointed out the great affinity which is established, by the prominence of the superciliary ridges and the depression of the upper region, between certain Danish skulls from Borreby and the Neanderthal skull.
Dr. Barnard Davis has described the still greater similarities existing between this very _fossil_ and a skull in his collection.
Gratiolet forwarded to the Museum the skull of an idiot of the present time, which was almost identical with it in everything, although in slighter proportions, &c. "The following appears to me to be decisive: "In spite of its curious characteristics, the Neanderthal skull none the less belonged to an individual, who, to judge by other bones which have been found, diverged but little from the average type of the present Germanic races, and by no means approximated to that of the ape.
"Is it probable, proceeding even on the class of ideas which I am opposing, that in a being in a state of transition between man and the anthropomorphous apes, the body would have become entirely human in its character, whilst the head presented its simial peculiarities?
If a fact like this is admitted, does it not render the hypothesis absolutely worthless?
"Notwithstanding all the discussion to which these curious remains have given rise, it appears to me impossible to look upon them in any other light than as the remains of an individuality, exceptional, no doubt, but clearly belonging to the human species, and, in addition to this, to the Celtic race, one of the branches of our Aryan stock.
M. Pruner-Bey appears to me to have placed this fact beyond all question by the whole mass of investigations which he has published on this subject.
The most convincing proofs are based on the very great similarity which may be noticed in a Celtic skull taken from a tumulus in Poitou to the skull which has become so well known and, indeed, so celebrated owing to the writings of Doctor Schaaffhausen.
This similarity is not merely external.
An internal cast taken from one skull fits perfectly into the interior of the other.
It was, therefore, the _brains_ and not merely the _skulls_ which bore a resemblance to one another.
The proof appears to me to be complete, and, with the learned author of this work, I feel no hesitation in concluding that the Neanderthal skull is one of Celtic origin.
"After all, neither experience nor observation have as yet furnished us with the slightest data with regard to man at his earliest origin.
Science, therefore, which pretends to solidity of character, must put this problem on one side till fresh information is obtained.
We really approach nearer to the truth when we confess our ignorance than when we attempt to disguise it either to ourselves or others.
"With regard to the simial origin of man, it is nothing but pure hypothesis, or rather nothing but a mere _jeu d'esprit_ which everything proves utterly baseless, and in favour of which no solid fact has as yet been appealed to."
In dealing with this question in a more general point of view, we must add that the most enlightened science declares to us in unmistakable accents, that species is immutable, and that no animal species can be derived from another; they may change, but all bear witness to an independent creation.
This truth, which has been developed at length by M. de Quatrefages in his numerous works, is a definitive and scientific judgment which must decide this question as far as regards any unprejudiced minds.
CHAPTER II.
Man in the condition of Savage Life during the Quaternary Epoch--The Glacial Period, and its Ravages on the Primitive Inhabitants of the Globe--Man in Conflict with the Animals of the Quaternary Epoch--The Discovery of Fire--The Weapons of Primitive Man--Varieties of Flint-hatchets--Manufacture of the earliest Pottery--Ornamental objects at the Epoch of the Great Bear and the Mammoth.
After this dissertation, which was necessary to confute the theory which gives such a degrading explanation of our origin, we must contemplate man at the period when he was first placed upon the earth, weak and helpless, in the midst of the inclement and wild nature which surrounded him.
However much our pride may suffer by the idea, we must confess that, at the earliest period of his existence, man could have been but little distinguished from the brute.
Care for his natural wants must have absorbed his whole being; all his efforts must have tended to one sole aim--that of insuring his daily subsistence.
At first, his only food must have been fruits and roots; for he had not as yet invented any weapon wherewith to destroy wild animals.
If he succeeded in killing any creatures of small size he devoured them in a raw state, and made a covering of their skins to shelter himself against the inclemency of the weather.
His pillow was a stone, his roof was the shadow of a wide-spreading tree, or some dark cavern which also served as a refuge against wild beasts.
For how many ages did this miserable state last?
No one can tell.
Man is an improvable being, and indefinite progress is the law of his existence.
Improvement is his supreme attribute; and this it is which gives him the pre-eminence over all the creatures which surround him.
But how wavering must have been his first steps in advance, and how many efforts must have been given to the earliest creation of his mind and to the first work of his hands--doubtless some shapeless attempt in which we nowadays, perhaps, should have some difficulty in recognising the work of any intelligent being!
Towards the commencement of the quaternary epoch, a great natural phenomenon took place in Europe.
Under the influence of numerous and varied causes, which up to the present time have not been fully recognised, a great portion of Europe became covered with ice, on the one hand, making its way from the poles down to the most southern latitudes, and, on the other, descending into the plains from the summits of the highest mountain chains.
Ice and ice-fields assumed a most considerable extension.
As all the lower parts of the continent were covered by the sea, there were only a few plateaux which could afford a refuge to man and animals flying from this deadly cold.
Such was the _Glacial Period_, which produced the annihilation of so many generations of animals, and must have equally affected man himself, so ill-defended against this universal and sudden winter.
Man, however, was enabled to resist the attacks of revolted nature.
Without doubt, in this unhappy period, he must have made but little progress, even if his intellectual development were not completely stopped.
At all events, the human species did not perish.
The glacial period came to an end, the ice-fields shrank back to their original limits, and Nature reassumed its primitive aspect.
When the ice had gradually retired into the more northern latitudes, and had become confined to the higher summits, a new generation of animals--another _fauna_, as naturalists call it--made its appearance on the globe.
This group of animals, which had newly come into being, differed much from those that had disappeared in the glacial cataclysm.
Let us cast an inquiring glance on these strange and now extinct creatures.
First we have the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_), or the woolly-haired and maned elephant, carcases of which were found, entire and in good preservation, in the ice on the coasts of Siberia.
Next comes the rhinoceros with a complete nasal septum (_Rhinoceros tichorhinus_), likewise clad in a warm and soft fur, the nose of which is surmounted with a remarkable pair of horns.
Then follow several species of the hippopotamus, which come as far north as the rivers of England and Russia; a bear of great size inhabiting caverns (_Ursus spelæus_), and presenting a projecting forehead and a large-sized skull; the cave lion or tiger (_Felis spelæa_), which much surpassed in strength the same animals of the existing species; various kinds of hyænas (_Hyæna spelæa_), much stronger than those of our epoch; the bison or aurochs (_Biso europæus_), which still exists in Poland; the great ox, the Urus of the ancients (_Bos primigenius_); the gigantic Irish elk (_Megaceros hibernicus_), the horns of which attained to surprising dimensions.
Other animals made their appearance at the same epoch, but they are too numerous to mention; among them were some of the Rodent family.
Almost all these species are now extinct, but man certainly existed in the midst of them.
The mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, stag, and hippopotamus were then in the habit of roaming over Europe in immense herds, just as some of these animals still do in the interior of Africa.
These animals must have had their favourite haunts--spots where they assembled together in thousands; or else it would be difficult to account for the countless numbers of bones which are found accumulated at the same spot.
Before these formidable bands, man could dream of nothing but flight.
It was only with some isolated animal that he could dare to engage in a more or less unequal conflict.
Farther on in our work, we shall see how he began to fabricate some rough weapons, with a view of attacking his mighty enemies.
The first important step which man made in the path of progress was the acquisition of fire.
In all probability, man came to the knowledge of it by accident, either by meeting with some substance which had been set on fire by lightning or volcanic heat, or by the friction of pieces of wood setting a light to some very inflammable matter.
[Illustration: Fig.
7.--The Production of Fire.]
In order to obtain fire, man of the quaternary epoch may have employed the same means as those made use of by the American aborigines, at the time when Christopher Columbus first fell in with them on the shores of the New World--means which savage nations existing at the present day still put in practice.
He rubbed two pieces of dry wood one against the other, or turned round and round with great rapidity a stick sharpened to a point, having placed the end of it in a hole made in the trunk of a very dry tree (fig.
7).
As among the savages of the present day we find certain elementary mechanisms adapted to facilitate the production of fire, it is not impossible that these same means were practised at an early period of the human race.
It would take a considerable time to set light to two pieces of dry wood by merely rubbing them against one another; but if a bow be made use of, that is, the chord of an arc fixed firmly on a handle, so as to give a rapid revolution to a cylindrical rod of wood ending in a point which entered into a small hole made in a board, the board may be set on fire in a few minutes.
Such a mode of obtaining fire may have been made use of by the men who lived in the same epoch with the mammoth and other animals, the species of which are now extinct.
The first rudiments of combustion having been obtained, so as to serve, during the daytime, for the purposes of warmth and cooking food, and during the night, for giving light, how was the fire to be kept up?
Wood from the trees that grew in the district, or from those which were cast up by the currents of the rivers or sea; inflammable mineral oils; resin obtained from coniferous trees; the fat and grease of wild animals; oil extracted from the great cetaceans;--all these substances must have assisted in maintaining combustion, for the purposes both of warmth and light.
The only fuel which the Esquimaux of the present day have either to warm their huts or light them during the long nights of their gloomy climate, is the oil of the whale and seal, which, burnt in a lamp with a short wick, serves both to cook their food and also to warm and illumine their huts.
Even, nowadays, in the Black Forest (Duchy of Baden), instead of candles, long splinters of very dry beech are sometimes made use of, which are fixed in a horizontal position at one end and lighted at the other.
This forms an economical lamp, which is really not to be despised.
We have also heard of the very original method which is resorted to by the inhabitants of the Faroe Isles in the northern seas of Europe, in order to warm and light up their huts.
This method consists in taking advantage of the fat and greasy condition of the young Stormy Petrel (Mother Carey's Chicken), so as to convert its body into a regular lamp.
All that is necessary is to draw a wick through its body, projecting at the beak, which when lighted causes this really animal candle to throw out an excellent light until the last greasy morsel of the bird is consumed.
This bird is also used by the natives of the Isles as a natural fuel to keep up their fires and cook other birds.
Whatever may have been the means which were made use of by primitive man in order to procure fire, either the simple friction of two pieces of wood one against the other, continued for a long time, the _bow_, or merely a stick turning round rapidly by the action of the hand, without any kind of mechanism--it is certain that the acquisition of fire must be classed amongst the most beautiful and valuable discoveries which mankind has made.
Fire must have put an end to the weariness of the long nights.
In the presence of fire, the darkness of the holes and caverns in which man made his first retreat, must have vanished away.
With the aid of fire, the most rigorous climates became habitable, and the damp which impregnated the body of man or his rough garments, made of the skin of the bear or some long-haired ruminant, could be evaporated.
With fire near them, the danger arising from ferocious beasts must have much diminished; for a general instinct leads wild animals to dread the light and the heat of a fire.
Buried, as they were, in the midst of forests infested with wild beasts, primitive men might, by means of a fire kept alight during the night, sleep in peace without being disturbed by the attacks of the huge wild beasts which prowled about all round them.
Fire, too, gave the first starting-point to man's industry.
It afforded means to the earliest inhabitants of the earth for felling trees, for procuring charcoal, for hardening wood for the manufacture of their rudimentary implements, and for baking their primitive pottery.
Thus, as soon as man had at his disposal the means for producing artificial heat, his position began to improve, and the kindly flame of the hearth became the first centre round which the family circle was constituted.
Ere long man felt the need of strengthening his natural powers against the attacks of wild beasts.
At the same time he desired to be able to make his prey some of the more peaceable animals, such as the stag, the smaller kinds of ruminants, and the horse.
Then it was that he began to manufacture weapons.
He had remarked, spread about the surface of the ground, certain flints, with sharp corners and cutting edges.
These he gathered up, and by the means of other stones of a rather tougher nature, he broke off from them pieces, which he fashioned roughly in the shape of a hatchet or hammer.
He fixed these splinters into split sticks, by way of a handle, and firmly bound them in their places with the tendons of an animal or the strong stalks of some dried plant.
With this weapon, he could, if he pleased, strike his prey at a distance.
When man had invented the bow and chipped out flint arrow-heads, he was enabled to arrest the progress of the swiftest animal in the midst of his flight.
Since the time when the investigations with regard to primitive man have been set on foot in all countries, and have been energetically prosecuted, enormous quantities have been found of these chipped flints, arrow-heads, and various stone implements, which archæologists designate by the common denomination of _hatchets_, in default of being able, in some cases, to distinguish the special use for which they had been employed.
Before going any further, it will be necessary to enter into some details with regard to these flint implements--objects which are altogether characteristic of the earliest ages of civilisation.
For a long time past chipped stones of a somewhat similar character have been met with here and there in several countries, sometimes on the surface of, and sometimes buried deeply in, the ground; but no one understood what their significance was.
If the common people ever distinguished them from ordinary stones, they attached to them some superstitious belief.
Sometimes they called them "thunder-stones," because they attributed to them the power of preserving from lightning those who were in possession of them.
It was not until the middle of the present century that naturalists and archæologists began to comprehend the full advantage which might be derived from the examination of these chipped stones, in reconstructing the lineaments of the earliest of the human race and in penetrating, up to a certain point, into their manners, customs, and industry.
These stone-hatchets and arrow-heads are, therefore, very plentiful in the present day in collections of antiquities and cabinets of natural history.
Most of these objects which are found in Europe are made of flint, and this circumstance may be easily explained.
Flint must have been preferred as a material, on account both of its hardness and its mode of cleavage, which may be so readily adapted to the will of the workman.
One hard blow, skilfully applied, is sufficient to break off, by the mere shock, a sharp-edged flake of a blade-like shape.
These sharp-edged blades of silex might serve as knives.
Certainly they would not last long in use, for they are very easily notched; but primitive men must have been singularly skilful in making them.
Although the shapes of these stone implements are very varied, they may all be classed under a certain number of prevailing types; and these types are to be found in very different countries.
The flint hatchets are at first very simple although irregular in their shape; but they gradually manifest a much larger amount of talent exhibited in their manufacture, and a better judgment is shown in adapting them to the special uses for which they were intended.
The progress of the human intellect is written in ineffaceable characters on these tablets of stone, which, defended as they were, by a thick layer of earth, bid defiance to the injuries of time.
Let us not despise these first and feeble efforts of our primitive forefathers, for they mark the date of the starting-point of manufactures and the arts.
If the men of the stone age had not persevered in their efforts, we, their descendants, should never have possessed either our palaces or our masterpieces of painting and sculpture.
As Boucher de Perthes says, "The first man who struck one pebble against another to make some requisite alteration in its form, gave the first blow of the chisel which has resulted in producing the Minerva and all the sculpture of the Parthenon."
Archæologists who have devoted their energies to investigating the earliest monuments of human industry, have found it necessary to be on their guard against certain errors, or rather wilful deceptions, which might readily pervert their judgment and deprive their discoveries of all character of authenticity.
There is, in fact, a certain class of persons engaged in a deceptive manufacture who have taken a delight in misleading archæologists by fabricating apocryphal flint and stone implements, in which they drive a rather lucrative trade.
They assert, without the least scruple, the high antiquity of their productions, which they sell either to inexperienced amateurs, who are pleased to put them in their collections duly labelled and ticketed, or--which is a more serious matter--to workmen who are engaged in making excavations in fossiliferous beds.
These workmen hide the fictitious specimens in the soil they are digging, using every requisite precaution so as to have the opportunity of subsequently extracting them and fingering a reward for them from some too trusting naturalist.
These imitations are, moreover, so cleverly made, that it sometimes requires well-practised eyes to recognise them; but they may be recognised with some degree of facility by the following characteristics:-[Illustration: Fig.
8.--_Dendrites_ or Crystallisations found on the surface of wrought Flints.]
The ancient flints present a glassy surface which singularly contrasts with the dull appearance of the fresh cleavages.
They are also for the most part covered with a whitish coating or _patina_, which is nothing but a thin layer of carbonate of lime darkened in colour by the action of time.
Lastly, many of these flints are ornamented with branching crystallisations, called _dendrites_, which form on their surface very delicate designs of a dark brown; these are owing to the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese (fig.
8).
We must add that these flint implements often assume the colour of the soil in which they have been buried for so many centuries; and as Mr. Prestwich, a learned English geologist, well remarks, this agreement in colour indicates that they have remained a very considerable time in the stratum which contains them.
Among the stone implements of primitive ages, some are found in a state of perfect preservation, which clearly bears witness to their almost unused state; others, on the contrary, are worn, rounded, and blunted, sometimes because they have done good service in bygone days, and sometimes because they have been many times rolled over and rubbed by diluvial waters, the action of which has produced this result.
Some, too, are met with which are broken, and nothing of them remains but mere vestiges.
In a general way, they are completely covered with a very thick coating which it is necessary to break off before they can be laid open to view.
They are especially found under the soil in grottos and caves, on which we shall remark further in some detail, and they are almost always mixed up with the bones of extinct mammalian species.
Certain districts which are entirely devoid of caves contain, however, considerable deposits of these stone implements.
We may mention in this category the alluvial quarternary beds of the valley of the Somme, known under the name of drift beds, which were worked by Boucher de Perthes with an equal amount of perseverance and success.
[Illustration: Fig.
9.--Section of a Gravel Quarry at Saint-Acheul, which contained the wrought Flints found by Boucher de Perthes.]
This alluvium was composed of a gravelly deposit, which geologists refer to the great inundations which, during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, gave to Europe, by hollowing out its valleys, its present vertical outline.
The excavations in the sand and gravel near Amiens and Abbeville, which were directed with so much intelligence by Boucher de Perthes, have been the means of exhuming thousands of worked flints, affording unquestionable testimony of the existence of man during the quaternary epoch.
All these worked flints may be classed under some of the principal types, from which their intended use may be approximately conjectured.
One of the types which is most extensively distributed, especially in the drift beds of the valley of the Somme, where scarcely any other kind is found, is the _almond-shaped_ type (fig.
10).
[Illustration: Fig.
10.--Hatchet of the _Almond-shaped_ type, from the Valley of the Somme.]
The instruments of this kind are hatchets of an oval shape, more or less elongated, generally flattened on both sides, but sometimes only on one, carefully chipped all over their surface so as to present a cutting edge.
The workmen of the Somme give them the graphic name of _cats' tongues_.
They vary much in size, but are generally about six inches long by three wide, although some are met with which are much larger.
The Pre-historic Gallery in the Universal Exposition of 1867, contained one found at Saint-Acheul, and exhibited by M. Robert, which measured eleven inches in length by five in width.
This remarkable specimen is represented in fig.
11.
[Illustration: Fig.
11.--Flint Hatchet from Saint-Acheul of the so-called _Almond-shaped type_.]
Another very characteristic form is that which is called the _Moustier type_ (fig.
12), because they have been found in abundance in the beds in the locality of Moustier, which forms a portion of the department of Dordogne.
This name is applied to the pointed flints which are only wrought on one side, the other face being completely plain.
[Illustration: Fig.
12.--Wrought Flint (_Moustier type_).]
To the same deposit also belongs the flint _scraper_, the sharp edge of which forms the arc of a circle, the opposite side being of some considerable thickness so as to afford a grasp to the hand of the operator.
[Illustration: Fig.
13.--Flint Scraper.]
Some of these instruments (fig.
13) are finely toothed all along their sharp edge; they were evidently used for the same purposes as our saws.
[Illustration: Fig.
14.--Flint Knife, found at Menchecourt, near Abbeville.]
The third type (fig.
14) is that of _knives_.
They are thin and narrow tongue-shaped flakes, cleft off from the lump of flint at one blow.
When one of the ends is chipped to a point, these knives become scratchers.
Sometimes these flints are found to be wrought so as to do service as augers.
The question is often asked, how these primitive men were able to manufacture their weapons, implements, and utensils, on uniform models, without the help of metallic hammers.
This idea has, indeed, been brought forward as an argument against those who contend for the existence of quaternary man.
Mr. Evans, an English geologist, replied most successfully to this objection by a very simple experiment.
He took a pebble and fixed it in a wooden handle; having thus manufactured a stone hammer, he made use of it to chip a flint little by little, until he had succeeded in producing an oval hatchet similar to the ancient one which he had before him.
The flint-workers who, up to the middle of the present century, prepared gun-flints for the army, were in the habit of splitting the stone into splinters.
But they made use of steel hammers to cleave the flint, whilst primitive man had nothing better at his disposal than another and rather harder stone.
Primitive man must have gone to work in somewhat the following way: They first selected flints, which they brought to the shape of those cores or _nuclei_ which are found in many places in company with finished implements; then, by means of another and harder stone of elongated shape, they cleft flakes off the flint.
These flakes were used for making knives, scratchers, spear or arrow-heads, hatchets, tomahawks, scrapers, &c. Some amount of skill must have been required to obtain the particular shape that was required; but constant practice in this work exclusively must have rendered this task comparatively easy.
[Illustration: Fig.
15.--Flint Core or Nucleus.]
How, in the next place, were these clipped flints fitted with handles, so as to make hatchets, poniards and knives?
Some of them were fixed at right angles between the two split ends of a stick: this kind of weapon must have somewhat resembled our present hatchets.
Others, of an oval shape and circular edge, might have been fastened transversely into a handle, so as to imitate a carpenter's adze.
In case of need, merely a forked branch or a piece of split wood might serve as sheath or handle to the flint blade.
Flints might also have been fixed as double-edged blades by means of holes cut in pieces of wood, to which a handle was afterwards added.
These flint flakes might, lastly, be fitted into a handle at one end.
The wide-backed knives, which were only sharp on one side, afforded a grasp for the hand without further trouble, and might dispense with a handle.
The small flints might also be darted as projectiles by the help of a branch of a tree forming a kind of spring, such as we may see used as a toy by children.
The mere description of these stone hatchets, fitted on to pieces of wood, recall to our mind the natural weapons used by some of the American savages, and the tribes which still exist in a state of freedom in the Isles of Oceania.
We allude to the tomahawk, a name which we so often meet with in the accounts of voyages round the world.
Among those savage nations who have not as yet bent their necks beneath the yoke of civilisation, we might expect to find--and, in fact, we do find--the weapons and utensils which were peculiar to man in primitive ages.
A knowledge of the manners and customs of the present Australian aborigines has much conduced to the success of the endeavours to reconstruct a similar system of manners and customs in respect to man of the quaternary age.
It was with the weapons and implements that we have just described that man, at the epoch of the great bear and mammoth, was able to repulse the attacks of the ferocious animals which prowled round his retreat and often assailed him (fig.
16).
[Illustration: Fig.
16.--Man in the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch.]
But the whole life of primitive man was not summed up in defending himself against ferocious beasts, and in attacking them in the chase.
Beyond the needs which were imposed upon him by conflict and hunting, he felt, besides, the constant necessity of quenching his thirst.
Water is a thing in constant use by man, whether he be civilised or savage.
The fluid nature of water renders it difficult to convey it except by enclosing it in bladders, leathern bottles, hollowed-out stumps of trees, plaited bowls, &c. Receptacles of this kind were certain ultimately to become dirty and unfit for the preservation of water; added to this they could not endure the action of fire.
It was certainly possible to hollow out stone, so as to serve as a receptacle for water; but any kind of stone which was soft enough to be scooped out, and would retain its tenacity after this operation, is very rarely met with.
Shells, too, might be used to hold a liquid; but then shells are not to be found in every place.
It was, therefore, necessary to resolve the problem--how far it might be possible to make vessels which would be strong, capable of holding water, and able to stand the heat of the fire without breaking or warping.
What was required was, in fact, the manufacture of pottery.
The potter's art may, perhaps, be traced back to the most remote epochs of man.
We have already seen, in the introduction to this work, that, in 1835, M. Joly found in the cave of Nabrigas (Lozère), a skull of the great bear pierced with a stone arrow-head, and that by the side of this skull were also discovered fragments of pottery, on which might still be seen the imprint of the fingers which moulded it.
Thus, the potter's art may have already been exercised in the earliest period which we can assign to the development of mankind.
Other causes also might lead us to believe that man, at a very early period of his existence, succeeded in the manufacture of rough pottery.
The clay which is used in making all kinds of pottery, from the very lowest kitchen utensil up to the most precious specimens of porcelain, may be said to exist almost everywhere.
By softening it and kneading it with water, it may be moulded into vessels of all shapes.
By mere exposure to the heat of the sun, these vessels will assume a certain amount of cohesion; for, as tradition tells us, the towers and palaces of ancient Nineveh were built entirely with bricks which had been baked in the sun.
Yet the idea of hardening any clayey paste by means of the action of fire is so very simple, that we are not of opinion that pottery which had merely been baked in the sun was ever made use of to any great extent, even among primitive man.
Mere chance, or the most casual observation, might have taught our earliest forefathers that a morsel of clay placed near a fire-hearth became hardened and altogether impenetrable to water, that is, that it formed a perfect specimen of pottery.
Yet the art, though ancient, has not been universally found among mankind.
Ere long, experience must have taught men certain improvements in the manufacture of pottery.
Sand was added to the clay, so as to render it less subject to "flying" on its first meeting the heat of the fire; next, dried straw was mixed with the clay in order to give it more coherence.
In this way those rough vessels were produced, which were, of course, moulded with the hand, and still bear the imprints of the workman's fingers.
They were only half-baked, on account of the slight intensity of heat in the furnace which they were then obliged to make use of, which was nothing more than a wood fire, burning in the open air, on a stone hearth.
From these data we give a representation (fig.
17) of the _workshop of the earliest potter_.
[Illustration: Fig.
17.--The First Potter.]
In the gravel pits in the neighbourhood of Amiens we meet with small globular bodies with a hole through the middle, which are, indeed, nothing but fossil shells found in the white chalk (fig.
18).
It is probable that these stony beads were used to adorn the men contemporary with the diluvial period.
The natural holes which existed in them enabled them to be threaded as bracelets or necklaces.
This, at least, was the opinion of Dr. Rigollot; and it was founded on the fact that he had often found small heaps of these delicate little balls collected together in the same spot, as if an inundation had drifted them into the bed of the river without breaking the bond which held them together.
[Illustration: Fig.
18.--Fossil Shells used as Ornaments, and found in the Gravel at Amiens.]
The necklaces, which men and women had already begun to wear during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, were the first outbreak of the sentiment of adornment, a feeling so natural to the human species.
The way in which these necklaces were put together is, however, exactly similar to that which we meet with during the present day among savage tribes--a thread on which a few shells were strung, which was passed round the neck.
It has been supposed, from another series of wrought flints, found at Saint-Acheul by Boucher de Perthes, that the men of the epoch of the great bear and mammoth may have executed certain rough sketches of art-workmanship, representing either figures or symbols.
Boucher de Perthes has, in fact, found flints which he considered to show representations, with varying degrees of resemblance, of the human head, in profile, three-quarter view, and full face; also of animals, such as the rhinoceros and the mammoth.
There are many other flints, evidently wrought by the hand of man, which were found by Boucher de Perthes in the same quaternary deposits; but it would be a difficult matter to decide their intention or significance.
Some, perhaps, were religious symbols, emblems of authority, &c. The features which enable us to recognise the work of man in these works of antediluvian art, are the symmetry of shape and the repetition of successive strokes by which the projecting portions are removed, the cutting edges sharpened, or the holes bored out.
The natural colour of all the wrought flints we have just been considering, which bring under our notice the weapons and utensils of man in the earliest epoch of his existence, is a grey which assumes every tint, from the brightest to the darkest; but, generally speaking, they are stained and coloured according to the nature of the soil from which they are dug out.
Argillaceous soils colour them white; ochreous gravels give them a yellowish brown hue.
Some are white on one side and brown on the other, probably from having lain between two different beds.
This _patina_ (to use the established term) is the proof of their long-continued repose in the beds, and is, so to speak, the stamp of their antiquity.
CHAPTER III.
The Man of the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch lived in Caverns--Bone Caverns in the Quaternary Rock during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch--Mode of Formation of these Caverns--Their Division into several Classes--Implements of Flint, Bone, and Reindeer-horn found in these Caverns--The Burial-place at Aurignac--Its probable Age--Customs which it reveals--Funeral Banquets during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch.
Having given a description of the weapons and working implements of the men belonging to the great bear and mammoth epoch, we must now proceed to speak of the habitations.
Caverns hollowed out in the depth of the rocks formed the first dwellings of man.
We must, therefore, devote some degree of attention to the simple and wild retreats of our forefathers.
As the objects which have been found in these caverns are both numerous and varied in their character, they not only throw a vivid light on the manners and customs of primitive man, but also decisively prove the fact of his being contemporary with mammals of species now extinct, such as the mammoth, the great bear, and the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_.
But before proceeding any further, it is necessary to inquire in what way these caverns could have been formed, in which we find accumulated so many relics of the existence of primitive man.
M. Desnoyers, Librarian of the Museum of Natural History at Paris, is of opinion that these caverns are crevices of the same class as metalliferous _lodes_, only instead of containing metallic ores they must have been originally filled by the deposits of certain thermal springs.
[Illustration: Fig.
19.--Theoretical Section of a Vein of Clay in the Carboniferous Limestone, _before_ the hollowing out of Valleys by diluvial Waters.]
Fig.
19 represents, according to M. Desnoyers' treatise on _caverns_, one of these primordial veins in the carboniferous limestone.
At the time of the diluvial inundation, these veins were opened by the impetuous action of the water.
When thus cleared out and brought to the light of day, they assumed the aspect of caves, as represented in fig.
20.
[Illustration: Fig.
20.--Theoretical section of the same Vein of Clay converted into a Cavern, _after_ the hollowing out of Valleys by diluvial Waters.]
The European diluvial inundation was, as we know, posterior to the glacial epoch.
It is also likely that caverns were sometimes produced by the falling in of portions of some of the interior strata, or that they were formerly the natural and subterranean channels of certain watercourses; many instances of this kind being now known in different countries.
We must also add that it is not probable that all caverns originated in the same way; but that one or other of the several causes just enumerated must have contributed to their formation.
Under the general denomination of _caverns_, all kinds of subterranean cavities are comprehended; but it will be as well to introduce several distinctions in this respect.
There are, in the first place, simple clefts or crevices, which are only narrow pits deviating but slightly from the vertical.
Next we have grottos (or _baumes_ as they are called in the south of France), which generally have a widely opening inlet, and are but of small extent.
Lastly, we must draw a distinction between these and the real bone caverns, which consist of a series of chambers, separated by extremely narrow passages, and are often of very considerable dimensions.
Some of these caverns occupy an extent of several leagues underground, with variations of level which render their exploration very difficult.
They are generally very inaccessible, and it is almost always necessary to ply the pick-axe in order to clear a way from one chamber to another.
In most of these grottos and caverns the ground and sides are covered with calcareous deposits, known by the name of _stalactite_ and _stalagmite_, which sometimes meet one another, forming columns and pillars which confer on some of these subterranean halls an elegance replete with a kind of mysterious charm.
These deposits are caused by the infiltrated water charged with carbonate of lime, which, oozing drop by drop through the interstices of the rock, slowly discharge the carbonic acid which held the carbonate of lime in solution, and the salts gradually precipitating form the crystalline or amorphous deposits which constitute these natural columns.
The calcareous deposits which spread over the ground of the caverns are called _stalagmite_, and the name of _stalactite_ is given to those which hang down from the roof, forming pendants, natural decorations, and ornaments as of alabaster or marble, producing sometimes the most magnificent effects.
Under the stalagmite the largest number of animal bones have been found.
This crust, which has been to them a preservatory grave, is so thick and hard that a pick-axe is required in order to break it.
Thanks to the protecting cover, the bones have been sheltered from all the various causes of decomposition and destruction.
The limestone formed a kind of cement which, uniting clay, mud, sand, flints, bones of men and animals, weapons and utensils into a compact mass, has preserved them for the study and consideration of scientific men in our own days.
The soil called _bone-earth_ is, in fact, found under the crystalline bed which covers the ground of the caverns.
Fig.
21, which represents a section of the cave of Galeinreuth, in Bavaria, will enable us clearly to understand the position occupied by the bones in most of these caverns.
[Illustration: Fig.
21.--The Cave of Galeinreuth, in Bavaria.]
Bone-earth consists of a reddish or yellowish clay, often mixed with pebbles, which seem to have come from some distant beds, for they cannot be attributed to the adjacent rocks.
This stratum varies considerably in depth; in some spots it is very thin, in others it rises almost to the top of the cavern, to a height of forty or fifty feet.
But in this case it is, in reality, composed of several strata belonging to different ages, and explorers ought to note with much attention the exact depth of any of the organic remains found in their mass.
There are, however, in several bone-caverns certain peculiarities which demand a special explanation.
Caves often contain large heaps of bones, situated at heights which it would have been absolutely inaccessible to the animals which lived in these places.
How, then, was it possible that these bones could have found their way to such an elevated position?
It is also a very strange fact, that no cavern has ever produced an entire skeleton or even a whole limb of the skeleton of a man, and scarcely of any animal whatever.
The bones, in fact, not only lie in confusion and utter disorder, but, up to the present time, it has been impossible to find all the bones which in times past formed an individual.
It must, therefore, be admitted, that the accumulation of bones and human remains in most of the caves are owing to other causes than the residence of man and wild animals in these dark retreats.
It is supposed, therefore, that the bones in question were deposited in these hollows by the rushing in of the currents of diluvial water, which had drifted them along in their course.
A fact which renders this hypothesis likely is that drift-pebbles are constantly found in close proximity to these bones.
Now these pebbles come from localities at considerable distances from the cavern; often, indeed, terrestrial and fluviatile shells accompany these bones.
It may sometimes be remarked that the femurs and tibias of large mammals have their points rubbed off, and the smallest bones are reduced to rounded fragments.
These are all evident indications that these bones had been carried along by rapid currents of water, which swept away everything in their course; or, in other words, by the current of the waters of the deluge which signalised the quaternary epoch.
During this period of the existence of primitive man, all these caverns were not applied to the same purpose.
Some were the dens of wild beasts, others formed the habitations of man, and others again were used as burial-places.
There is no difficulty in the idea that dens of wild beasts might very readily be occupied by man, after he had killed or driven out the fierce inhabitants; no discovery, however, has as yet confirmed this supposition.
It can hardly be doubted that primitive man seldom dared to take up his abode in dens which had been, for some time, the refuge of any of the formidable carnivora; if he did, it was only after having assured himself that these retreats had been altogether abandoned by their terrible inhabitants.
We shall now proceed to consider these three classes of caverns.
Caves which, during the quaternary epoch, have served as dens for wild animals, are very numerous.
Experienced _savants_ are enabled to recognise them by various indications.
The bones they contain are never fractured; but it may be seen that they have been gnawed by carnivorous animals, as they still bear the marks of their teeth.
Into these retreats the cave-lion (_Felis spelæa_) and the hyæna (_Hyæna spelæa_) were accustomed to drag their prey, in order there to tear it to pieces and devour it, or divide it into portions for their young ones.
In fact, in these caverns, excrements of the hyæna mixed with small and undigested bones are often found.
The cave bear retired into the same retreats, but he probably only came there to pass the period of his hibernal sleep.
Lastly, the same dens no doubt offered a refuge to sick or dying animals, who resorted thither in order to expire in peace.
We have a proof of this in the traces of wounds and caries on some of the bones of animals found by Schmerling in the caverns of the Meuse; also in the skull of a hyæna, the median ridge of which had been bitten and appeared to be half healed.
Those caverns which formed a shelter for primitive man are, like the preceding ones, to be recognised by a mere inspection of the bones contained in them.
The long bones of the ox, horse, stag, rhinoceros, and other quadrupeds which formed the food of man during the quaternary epoch, are always split; and they are all broken in the same way, that is, lengthwise.
The only cause for their having been split in this manner must have been the desire of extracting the marrow for the purpose of eating.
Such a mode of breaking them would never have been practised by any animal.
This apparently trivial circumstance is, however, of the highest importance.
In fact, it leads to the following conclusion: "That man, having eaten large mammals of species now extinct, must have been contemporary with these species."
We shall now proceed to examine the caverns which were used as burial-places for man.
To M. Édouard Lartet, the celebrated palæontologist, the honour must be ascribed of having been the first to collect any important data bearing on the fact that caverns were used for burial-places by the primitive man of the great bear and mammoth epoch.
We have thus been led to discover the traces of a funeral custom belonging to the man of these remote ages; we allude to the _funeral banquet_.
The source of this information was the discovery of a pre-historic burial-place at Aurignac (Haute-Garonne), of which we have given an account in the Introduction to this work, which, however, we must again here refer to.
Near the town of Aurignac rises the hill of Fajoles, which the inhabitants of the country, in their _patois_, call "_mountagno de las Hajoles_" (beech-tree mountain), a circumstance showing that it was formerly covered with beech-trees.
As we have already stated, in the Introduction to this work, it was on one of the slopes of this hill that, in the year 1842, an excavator, named Bonnemaison, discovered a great slab of limestone placed in a vertical position and closing up an arched opening.
In the cave closed up by this slab the excavator discovered the remains of seventeen human skeletons!
We have already told how these skeletons were removed to the village cemetery, and thus, unfortunately, for ever lost to the researches of science.
Eighteen years after, in 1860, M. Lartet, having heard of the event, repaired to the spot, accompanied by Bonnemaison; he quite understood how it had happened that, during a long course of centuries, the cave had escaped the notice of the inhabitants of the country.
The entrance to it was concealed by masses of earth which, having been brought down from the top of the hill by the action of the water, had accumulated in front of the entrance, hiding a flat terrace, on which many vestiges of pre-historic times were found.
As no disturbance of the ground had taken place in this spot subsequent to the date of the burial, this _talus_ had been sufficient to protect the traces of the men who were contemporary with the mammoth, and to shield their relics from all exterior injury.
[Illustration: Fig.
22.--Section of the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
Fig.
22, taken from M. Lartet's article, represents a vertical section of the sepulchral cave at Aurignac.
After a rapid inspection of the cave and its surroundings, M. Lartet resolved to make complete and methodical excavations, aided by intelligent workmen labouring under his superintendence; the following are the results he obtained.
A bed of "made ground" two feet thick covered the ground of the cave.
In this were found some human remains which had escaped the first investigations; also bones of mammals in good preservation, and exhibiting no fractures or teeth-marks, wrought flints, mostly of the _knife_ type (fig.
23), and carved reindeer horns, among which there was an instrument carefully tapered off and rounded, but deprived of its point (fig.
24), the other end being bevelled off, probably to receive a handle.
[Illustration: Fig.
23.--Flint Knife found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
[Illustration: Fig.
24.--Implement made of Reindeer's or Stag's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
We must here add, that at the time of his discovery Bonnemaison collected, from the midst of the bones, eighteen small discs which were pierced in the centre, and doubtless intended to be strung together in a necklace or bracelet.
These discs, which were formed of a white compact substance were recognised as sea-shells of a _Cardium_ species.
[Illustration: Fig.
25.--Series of perforated Discs of the _Cardium_ Shell found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
The cavern of Aurignac was a burial-place of the quaternary epoch, for M. Lartet found in it a quantity of the bones of the cave-bear, the bison, the reindeer, the horse, &c. In fig.
26, we give a representation of a fragment of the lower jaw of a great bear as an example of the state of the bones found in this cavern.
[Illustration: Fig.
26.--Fragment of the Lower Jaw of a Cave-Bear, found in the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
The perfect state of preservation of these bones shows that they were neither broken to furnish food for man nor torn by carnivorous animals, particularly by hyænas, as is seen in a great many caverns.
We must therefore conclude from this peculiarity, that the stone which closed the entrance to the cave was moved away for every interment and carefully put back into its place immediately afterwards.
In order to explain the presence of so many foreign objects by the side of the human skeletons--such as animals' bones--implements of flint and reindeers' horn--necklaces or bracelets--we must admit as probable that a funeral custom existed among the men of the great bear and mammoth epoch, which has been preserved in subsequent ages.
They used to place in the tomb, close to the body, the weapons, hunting trophies, and ornaments of all sorts, belonging to the defunct.
This custom still exists among many tribes in a more or less savage state.
In front of the cave, there was, as we have already said, a kind of flat spot which had afterwards become covered with earth which had fallen down from the top of the hill.
When the earth which covered this flat spot was cleared away, they met with another deposit containing bones.
This deposit was situated on a prolongation of the ground on which the skeletons were placed in the interior of the cavern.
Under this deposit, was a bed of ashes and charcoal, 5 to 7 inches thick.
This was, therefore, the site of an ancient fire-hearth.
In other words, in front of the sepulchral cave there was a kind of terrace upon which, after the interment of the body in the cavern, a feast called the _funeral banquet_ was held.
[Illustration: Fig.
27.--Upper Molar of a Bison, found in the Ashes of the Fire-hearth of the Sepulchral Cave at Aurignac.]
In this bed, situated in front of the cavern an immense number of the most interesting relics were discovered--a large number of the teeth and broken bones of herbivorous animals (fig.
27); a hundred flint knives; two chipped flints, which archæologists believe to be sling projectiles; a rounded pebble with a depression in the middle, which, according to Mr. Steinhauer, keeper of the Ethnographical Museum at Copenhagen, was used to flake off flint-knives; lastly, a large quantity of implements made of reindeers' horn, which exhibit the most varied shapes.
We may mention, for instance, the arrow-heads fashioned very simply, without wings or barbs (fig.
28); some of these heads appear to have been subjected to the action of fire, as if they had been left in the body of the animal during the process of cooking; a bodkin made of roebuck's horn (fig.
29) very carefully pointed, and in such a good state of preservation that it might still be used, says M. Lartet, to perforate the skins of animals before sewing them; and this must, in fact, have been its use; a second instrument, similar to the preceding, but less finely pointed, which M. Lartet is inclined to consider as an instrument for tatooing; some thin blades of various sizes, which, according to Steinhauer, much resemble the reindeer-horn polishers still used by the Laplanders to flatten down the seams of their coarse skin-garments; another blade, accidentally broken at both ends, one of the sides of which is perfectly polished and shows two series of transversal lines at equal distances apart; the lateral edges of this blade are marked with deeper notches at almost regular intervals (fig.
30).
M. Lartet considers that these lines and notches are signs of numeration, and Mr. Steinhauer has propounded the idea that they are hunting-marks.
Both hypotheses are possible, and the more so as they do not contradict each other.
[Illustration: Fig.
28.--Arrow-head made of Reindeer's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave of Aurignac.]
[Illustration: Fig.
29.--Bodkin made of Roebuck's Horn, found in the Sepulchral Cave of Aurignac].
[Illustration: Fig.
30.--Truncated Blade in Reindeer's Horn, bearing two Series of transversal Lines and Notches, probably used for numeration.]
Among the bones, some were partly carbonised, others, only scorched, but the greater number had not been subjected at all to the action of fire.
All the bones having medullary hollows, and commonly called marrow-bones, were broken lengthwise, a certain indication that this operation had been effected to extract the marrow, and that these bones had been used at a feast carried on according to the manners and customs of that epoch, when the marrow out of animal bones was regarded as the most delicious viand--many men of our own days being also of this opinion.
A certain number of these bones exhibited shallow cuts, showing that a sharp instrument had been used to detach the flesh from them.
Nearly all those which had not been subjected to the action of fire bore the mark of the teeth of some carnivorous animal.
This animal, doubtless, came to gnaw them after man had taken his departure from the spot.
This carnivorous animal could have been none other than the hyæna, as is shown by the excrements left in the place.
The ossiferous mound situated immediately above the fire-hearth contained, like the subjacent ashes, a large number of the bones of certain herbivorous animals.
The discovery of the fire-hearth situated in front of the cave of Aurignac, and the various remains which were found intermingled underneath it, enable us to form some idea of the way in which funeral ceremonies took place among the men of the great bear epoch.
The parents and friends of the defunct accompanied him to his last resting-place; after which, they assembled together to partake of a feast in front of the tomb soon to be closed on his remains.
Then everyone took his departure, leaving the scene of their banquet free to the hyænas, which came to devour the remains of the meal.
This custom of funeral-feasts is, doubtless, very natural, as it has been handed down to our days; though it now chiefly exists among the poorer classes.
In accordance with the preceding data we here represent (fig.
31) a _funeral feast during the great bear and mammoth epoch_.
[Illustration: Fig.
31.--Funeral Feast during the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch.]
On a flat space situated in front of the cave destined to receive the body of the defunct, some men covered merely with bears' skins with the hair on them are seated round a fire, taking their part in the funeral-feast.
The flesh of the great bear and mammoth forms the _menu_ of these primitive love-feasts.
In the distance may be seen the colossal form of the mammoth, which forms the chief dish of the banquet.
The manner of eating is that which distinguishes the men of that epoch; they suck the marrow from the long bones which have previously been split lengthwise, and eat the flesh of the animals cooked on the hearth.
The dead body is left at the entrance of the cavern; the primitive grave-stone will soon close on it for ever.
The relics found in the interior of the sepulchral cave of Aurignac have led to a very remarkable inference, which shows how interesting and fertile are the studies which have been made by naturalists on the subject of the antiquity of man.
The weapons, the trophies, the ornaments, and the joints of meat, placed by the side of the defunct--does not all this seem to establish the fact that a belief in a future life existed at an extraordinarily remote epoch?
What could have been the use of these provisions for travelling, and these instruments of war, if the man who had disappeared from this world was not to live again in another?
The great and supreme truth--that the whole being of man does not die with his material body is, therefore, innate in the human heart; since it is met with in the most remote ages, and even existed in the mental consciousness of the man of the stone age.
An instinct of art also appears to have manifested itself in the human race at this extremely ancient date.
Thus, one of the articles picked up in the sepulchral cave of Aurignac consisted of a canine tooth of a young cave-bear, perforated so as to allow of its being suspended in some way or other.
Now this tooth is so carved that no one can help recognising in it a rough outline of some animal shape, the precise nature of which is difficult to determine, although it may, perhaps, be the head of a bird.
It was, doubtless, an amulet or jewel belonging to one of the men interred in the cave, and was buried with him because he probably attached a great value to it.
This object, therefore, shows us that some instincts of art existed in the men who hunted the great bear and mammoth.
[Illustration: Fig.
32.--Carved and perforated Canine Tooth of a young Cave-Bear.]
We shall close this account of the valuable discoveries which were made in the sepulchral cave of Aurignac, by giving a list of the species of mammals the bones of which were found either in the interior or at the exterior of this cavern.
The first six species are extinct; the others are still living:-The great cave-bear (_Ursus spelæus_); the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_); the rhinoceros (_Rhinoceros tichorhinus_); the great cave-lion (_Felis spelæa_); the cave-hyæna (_Hyæna spelæa_); the gigantic stag (_Megaceros hibernicus_); the bison, the reindeer, the stag, the horse, the ass, the roe, the wild boar, the fox, the wolf, the wild-cat, the badger, and the polecat.
We think it as well to place before the eyes of our readers the exact forms of the heads of the three great fossil animals found in the cave of Aurignac, which geologically characterise the great bear and mammoth epoch, and evidently prove that man was contemporary with these extinct species.
Figs.
33, 34, and 35 represent the heads of the cave-bear, the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_, and the _megaceros_ or gigantic stag; they are taken from the casts which adorn the great hall of the Archæological and Pre-historic Museum at Saint-Germain, and are among the most curious ornaments of this remarkable museum.
[Illustration: Fig.
33.--Head of a Cave-Bear found in the Cave of Aurignac.]
[Illustration: Fig.
34.--Head of the _Rhinoceros Tichorhinus_ found in the Cave of Aurignac.]
[Illustration: Fig.
35.--Head of a great Stag (_Megaceros hibernicus_) found in the Cave of Aurignac.]
Of all these species, the fox has left behind him the largest number of remains.
This carnivorous animal was represented by about eighteen to twenty individual specimens.
Neither the mammoth, great cave-lion, nor wild boar appear to have been conveyed into the cave in an entire state; for two or three molar or incisive teeth are the only remains of their carcases which have been found.
But still it is a certain fact that the men who fed on the _Rhinoceros tichorinus_ buried their dead in this cavern.
In fact, M. Lartet asserts that the bones of the rhinoceros had been split by man in order to extract the marrow.
They had also been gnawed by hyænas, which would not have been the case if these bones had not been thrown away, and left on the ground in a fresh state.
The burial-place of Aurignac dates back to the earliest antiquity, that is to say, it was anterior to the European diluvial period.
Thus, according to M. Lartet, the great cave-bear was the first of the extinct species to disappear; then the mammoth and _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_ were lost sight of; still later, the reindeer first, and then the bison, migrated to the northern and eastern regions of Europe.
Now, the _diluvium_, that is to say, the beds formed by drifted pebbles and originating in the great derangement caused by the inundation of the quaternary epoch, does not contain any traces of the bones of the cave-bear.
It, therefore, belongs to an epoch of the stone age more recent than the cave of Aurignac.
[6] All this goes to prove that this sepulchral cave, which has furnished the science of the antiquity of man with so much valuable information, belonged to the great bear and mammoth epoch, which preceded the diluvial cataclysm.
FOOTNOTE: [6] 'Nouvelles Recherches sur la Coexistence de l'Homme et des grands Mammifères fossiles.'
('Annales de Sciences naturelles, Zoologie,' vol.
xv.)
CHAPTER IV.
Other Caves of the Epoch of the Great Bear and Mammoth--Type of the Human Race during the Epochs of the Great Bear and the Reindeer--The Skulls from the Caves of Engis and Neanderthal.
With regard to the bone-caves, which have furnished us with such valuable information as to the men who lived in the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, we have laid down a necessary distinction, dividing them into caves which served as dens for wild beasts, those which have afforded a refuge for man, and those which were used as his burial-places.
In order to complete this subject and set forth the whole of the discoveries which have been made by science on this interesting point, we will say a few words as to the principal bone-caves belonging to the same epoch which have been studied in France, England and Belgium.
We will, in the first place, call attention to the fact that these caverns, taken together, embrace a very long period of time, perhaps an enormous number of centuries, and that hence a considerable difference must result in the nature of the remains of human industry which they contain.
Some certainly manifest a perceptible superiority over others in an industrial point of view; but the reason is that they belong to a period somewhat nearer our own, although still forming a part of the epoch of the great bear and mammoth.
We shall divide the caves in France into three groups--those of the east, those of the west and centre, and those of the south.
In the first group, we shall mention the _Trou de la Fontaine_ and the _Cave of Sainte-Reine_, both situated in the environs of Toul (Meurthe).
These two caves have furnished bones of bears, hyænas, and the rhinoceros, along with the products of human industry.
That of Sainte-Reine has been explored by M. Guérin, and especially by M. Husson, who has searched it with much care.
The second group includes the grottos _des Fées_, of Vergisson, Vallières, and La Chaise.
The Grotte des Fées, at Arcy (Yonne), has been searched and described by M. de Vibraye, who ascertained the existence of two distinct beds, the upper one belonging to the reindeer epoch, the lower one to the great bear epoch.
These two beds were divided from each other by matter which had formed a part of the roof of the cave, and had fallen down on the earlier deposit.
In the more ancient bed of the two, M. de Vibraye collected fractured bones of the bear and cave-hyæna, the mammoth, and the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_, all intermingled with flints wrought by the hand of man, amongst which were chips of hyaline quartz (rock-crystal.)
His fellow-labourer, M. Franchet, extracted from it a human _atlas_ (the upper part of the vertebral column).
The cave of Vergisson (Saône-et-Loire), explored by M. de Ferry, furnished the same kind of bones as the preceding cave, and also bones of the bison, the reindeer, the horse, the wolf, and the fox, all intermixed with wrought flints and fragments of rough pottery.
The presence of this pottery indicated that the cave of Vergisson belonged to the latter period of the great bear epoch.
The cave of Vallières (Loir-et-Cher), was worked, first by M. de Vibraye, and subsequently by the Abbé Bourgeois.
There was nothing particular to be remarked.
The cave of La Chaise, near Vouthon (Charente), explored by MM.
Bourgeois and Delaunay, furnished bones of the cave-bear, the rhinoceros, and the reindeer, flint blades and scrapers, a bodkin and a kind of hook made of bone, an arrow-head in the shape of a willow-leaf likewise of bone, a bone perforated so as to hang on a string, and, what is more remarkable, two long rods of reindeer's horn, tapering at one end and bevelled off at the other, on which figures of animals were graven.
These relics betray an artistic feeling of a decided character as existing in the men, the traces of whom are found in this cave.
Among the caves in the south of France, we must specify those of Périgord, those of Bas-Languedoc, and of the district of Foix (department of Ariége).
The caves of Périgord have all been explored by MM.
Lartet and Christy, who have also given learned descriptions of them.
We will mention the caves of the _Gorge d'Enfer_ and _Moustier_, in the valley of the Vézère, and that of _Pey de l'Azé_, all three situate in the department of Dordogne (arrondissement of Sarlat).
The two caves of the _Gorge d'Enfer_ were, unfortunately, cleared out in 1793, in order to utilise the deposits of saltpetre which they contained in the manufacture of gunpowder.
They have, however, furnished flints chipped into the shapes of scrapers, daggers, &c., a small pebble of white quartz, hollowed out on one side, which had probably been used as a mortar, and instruments of bone or reindeer's horn, three of which showed numerous notches.
Bones of the great bear clearly indicated the age of these settlements.
The cave of Moustier, situated about 80 feet above the Vézère, is celebrated for the great number and characteristic shapes of its stone implements, which we have before spoken of.
Hatchets of the almond-shaped type, like those of the _diluvium_ of Abbeville and Saint-Acheul, were very plentiful.
Bi-convex spear-heads were also found, of very careful workmanship, and instruments which might be held in the hand, some of them of considerable dimensions; but no pieces of bone or of reindeer's horn were discovered which had been adapted to any purpose whatever.
The bones were those of the great bear and cave-hyæna, accompanied by separate _laminæ_ of molars of the mammoth, the use of which it is impossible to explain.
Similar fragments were met with in some of the other Périgord settlements, and M. Lartet also found some at Aurignac.
Next to the cave of Pey de l'Azé, on which we shall not dwell, come the caverns of Bas-Languedoc, which we shall only enumerate.
They consist of the caves of Pondres and Souvignargues (Hérault), which were studied in 1829 by M. de Christol, who recognised, from the data he derived from them, the co-existence of man and the great extinct mammals; also those of Pontil and La Roque, the first explored by M. Paul Gervais, the second by M. Boutin.
We shall now consider the caves of the department of Ariége, some of which furnish objects of very considerable interest.
They consist of the caves of _Massat_, _Lherm_, and _Bouicheta_.
Two caves, very remarkable on account of their extent, have been explored by M. Fontan; they are situate in the valley of Massat, which contains others of less importance.
One is placed at the foot of a limestone mountain, about 60 feet above the bottom of the valley; the opening of the other is much higher up; only the latter belongs to the great bear epoch.
From the results of his explorations, M. Fontan is of opinion that the ground in them has been greatly altered by some violent inundation which has intermingled the remains of various geological epochs.
This _savant_ found in the cave of Massat the bones of the bear, the hyæna and the great cave-lion, the fox, the badger, the wild boar, the roe, &c., two human teeth, and a bone arrow-head.
Two beds of ashes and charcoal were also remarked at different depths.
In the upper cave of Massat was found the curious stone on which is designed with tolerable correctness a sketch of the great cave-bear (fig.
36).
This singular record marks out for us the earliest trace of the art of design, which we shall find developing itself in a more decisive way during the pre-historic period which follows the one we are now considering.
[Illustration: Fig.
36.--Sketch of the Great Bear on a Stone found in the Cave of Massat.]
The caves of Lherm and Bouicheta were inspected by MM.
Garrigou and Filhol, who found in them bones of most of the great mammals belonging to extinct species, and particularly those of the great bear, many of which are broken, and still show the marks of the instruments which were used for cutting the flesh off them.
Some have been gnawed by hyænas, as proved by the deep grooves with which they are marked.
Lower jaw-bones of the great bear, and of the great cave-lion, have been found fashioned, according to a uniform plan, in the shape of hoes.
MM.
Garrigou and Filhol were of opinion that these jaw-bones, when thus modified, might have been used as offensive weapons.
The cave of Lherm contained also human bones; namely, three teeth, a fragment of a _scapula_, a broken _ulna_ and _radius_, and the last joint of the great toe; all these remains presented exactly the same appearance and condition as those of the _Ursus spelæus_, and must, therefore, have belonged to the same epoch.
We have stated that numerous caves have been explored in England, Belgium, and several other countries.
We shall not undertake to give with regard to each details which would only be a reproduction of those which precede.
We therefore confine ourselves to mentioning the most celebrated of the caverns belonging to the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth.
In England we have the Kent's Hole and Brixham caverns, near Torquay in Devonshire, the latter of which is many hundred yards in extent; the caves of the Gower peninsula, in Glamorganshire (South Wales), which have been carefully studied within the last few years by Messrs. Falconer and Wood; in these were found flint instruments along with bones of the _Elephas antiquus_ and the _Rhinoceros hemitæchus_, species which were still more ancient than the mammoth and the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_; those of Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, explored by Dr. Buckland, the geologist; those near Wells in Somersetshire, Wokey Hole, Minchin Hole, &c. We must mention, in the north of Italy, the caves of Chiampo and Laglio, on the edge of the Lake of Como, in which, just as at Vergisson, fragments of rough pottery have been discovered, indicating some degree of progress in the manufacture; also the caves in the neighbourhood of Palermo, and especially those of San Ciro and Macagnone.
In the last-mentioned cave, in the midst of an osseous _breccia_ which rose to the roof, Dr. Falconer collected flint instruments, splinters of bone, pieces of baked clay and wood charcoal mixed up with large land-shells (_Helix vermiculata_), in a perfect state of preservation, horses' teeth, and the excrements of the hyæna, all cemented together in a deposit of carbonate of lime.
In a lower bed were found the bones of various species of the hippopotamus, the _Elephas antiquus_, and other great mammals.
Lastly, Spain, Algeria, Egypt, and Syria also present to our notice caves belonging to the Stone Age.
In the New World various bone-caverns have been explored.
We must especially mention Brazil, in which country Lund searched no less than eight hundred caves of different epochs, exhuming in them a great number of unknown animal species.
In one of these caves, situated near the Lake of Sumidouro, Lund found some human bones which had formed a part of thirty individuals of different ages, and were "in a similar state of decomposition, and in similar circumstances to the bones of various extinct species of animals."
Thus far we have designedly omitted to mention the Belgian caves.
They have, in fact, furnished us with such remarkable relics of former ages that, in dealing with them, we could not confine ourselves to a mere notice.
The caves in the neighbourhood of Liége, which were explored in 1833 by Schmerling, deserve to be described in some detail.
Schmerling examined more than forty caves in the Valley of the Meuse and its tributaries.
The access to some of these caves was so difficult that in order to reach them it was necessary for the explorer to let himself down by a cord, and then to crawl flat on his face through narrow galleries, so as to make his way into the great chambers; there he was obliged to remain for hours, and sometimes whole days, standing up to his knees in mud, with water dripping from the walls upon his head, while overlooking the workmen breaking up with their pick-axes the layer of stalagmite, so as to bring to light the bone earth--the records on which are inscribed the palpable evidences of the high antiquity of man.
Schmerling was compelled to accomplish a perilous expedition of this kind in his visit to the cave of Engis, which has become celebrated by the two human skulls found there by him.
Nearly all the caves in the province of Liége contain scattered bones of the great bear, the cave-hyæna, the mammoth, and the rhinoceros, intermixed with those of species which are still living, such as the wolf, the wild boar, the roe, the beaver, the porcupine, &c. Several of them contained human bones, likewise much scattered and rubbed; they were found in all positions, and at every elevation, sometimes above and sometimes below the above-mentioned animal remains; from this it may be concluded that these caves had been filled with running water, which drifted in all kinds of _débris_.
None of them, however, contained any gnawed bones, or the fossil excrement of any animal species, which puts an end to the hypothesis that these caves had been used as dens by wild beasts.
Here and there bones were found belonging to the same skeleton, which were in perfect preservation, and lying in their natural juxtaposition; they were probably drifted into the cave by gently flowing water, while still covered with their flesh, and no movement of the ground had since separated them.
But no complete skeleton has as yet been discovered, even among the smaller species of mammiferous animals, the disjunction of which is generally less complete.
In almost all the caves Schmerling met with flint implements chipped into the form of hatchets and knives, and he calls attention to the fact "that none of them could have been introduced into the caves at a posterior epoch, as they were found in the same position as the animal remains which accompanied them."
In the cave of Clokier, about two and a half miles from Liége, he picked up a polished bone in the shape of a needle, having an eye pierced at the base; in the cave of Engis he likewise found a carved bone, and also some worked flints.
We here close our enumeration of the various sources of the archæological records which have served to reconstruct the history of primitive man during that period of the stone age which we have designated under the name of the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth.
Before concluding our remarks as to this period, there is one question which we must enter upon, although there is a great deficiency in any positive records by which it might be solved.
What was the organic type of man during this epoch?
Could we, for instance, determine what amount of intellect man possessed in this earliest and ancient date of his history?
The answer to this question--although a very uncertain answer--has been supposed to have been found in the caves of Engis and Engihoul, of which we have just spoken as having been explored by Schmerling with such valuable results.
The cave of Engis contained the remains of three human beings, among which were two skulls, one that of a youth, the other that of an adult.
The latter only was preserved, the former having fallen into dust while it was being extracted from the ground.
Two small fragments of a human skull were likewise found at Engihoul; also a great many of the bones of the hands and feet of three individuals.
The Engis skull has been a subject of protracted argument to the palæontologists and anatomists of the present day.
Floods of ink have been spilt upon the question; discussions without end have taken place with respect to this piece of bone, in order to fix accurately the amount of intellect possessed by the inhabitants of Belgium during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth.
Up to a certain point the development of the brain may, in fact, be ascertained from the shape of the cranial envelope, and it is well known that a remarkable similarity exists between the cerebral capacity and the intellectual development of all mammiferous animals.
But in a question of this kind we must carefully avoid a quicksand on which anthropologists too often make shipwreck; this danger consists in basing a theory on a too limited number of elements, and of generalising conclusions which are perhaps drawn from one special case.
Because we find a portion of a skull--not even a whole skull--belonging to a human being contemporary with the great bear, we assume that we can determine the amount of intellect possessed by man during this epoch.
But what proof have we that this skull is not that of an idiot, or, on the contrary, the skull of an individual possessing a superior degree of intelligence?
What deduction can be logically drawn from the examination of one single skull?
None whatever!
"_Testis unus testis nullus_;" and what is said by jurisprudence, which is nothing but good sense in legal matters--science, which is nothing but good sense in learned questions, ought likewise to repeat.
If we found ten or twelve skulls, each presenting the same characteristics, we should be justified in thinking that we had before our eyes the human type corresponding to the epoch we are considering; but, we again ask, what arguments could be based on a few fragments of one single skull?
These reservations having been laid down, let us see what some of our great anatomical reasoners have thought about the Engis skull.
The representation which we here give (fig.
37) of the Engis skull was taken from the cast in the Museum of Saint-Germain, and we may perceive from it that the skull is not complete; the entire base of the skull is wanting, and all the bones of the face have disappeared.
Consequently it is impossible either to measure the facial angle or to take account of the development of the lower jaw.
[Illustration: Fig.
37.--Portion of a Skull of an Individual belonging to the Epoch of the Great Bear and the Mammoth, found in the Cave of Engis.]
We shall not, therefore, surprise any of our readers when we state that the opinions on this subject differ in the most extraordinary degree.
In the eyes of Professor Huxley, the English anatomist, this skull offers no indication of degradation; it presents "a good average," and it might just as well be the head of a philosopher as the head of an uncivilised savage.
To others--for instance, to Carl Vogt--it indicates an altogether rudimentary degree of intellect.
Thus Hippocrates-Huxley says _yes_, Galen-Vogt says _no_, and Celsus-Lyell says neither _yes_ nor _no_.
This causes us but little surprise, but it induces us not to waste more time in discussing a question altogether in the dark, that is, upon altogether incomplete data.
[Illustration: Fig.
38.--Portion of the so-called Neanderthal Skull.]
We will now turn our attention to another skull, equally celebrated, which was found in 1857 by Dr. Fuhlrott, near Dusseldorf, in a deep ravine known by the name of Neanderthal.
This skull (fig.
38) was discovered in the midst of a small cave under a layer of mud about 5 feet in thickness.
The entire skeleton was doubtless buried on the same spot, but the workmen engaged in clearing out the cave must have inadvertently scattered a great portion of the bones, for the largest only could be collected.
It is well to call attention to the fact that no animal remains were found near these bones; there is, therefore, no certain proof that the latter can be assigned to the epoch of the great bear: they might, in fact, be either more recent or more modern.
Most geologists are, however, of opinion that they ought to be referred to the above-named early date.
The Neanderthal skull, of which we possess even a smaller portion than of the preceding, differs from the Engis skull.
It is characterised by an extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses; that is, by an enormous projection of the superciliary ridges, behind which the frontal bone presents a considerable depression.
The cranium is very thick, and of an elongated elliptical shape; the forehead is narrow and low.
These remarks were made by Professor Schaaffhausen, who also established the fact of the identity in length of the femur, the humerus, the radius, and the ulna, with the same bones of a modern European of equal size.
But the Prussian _savant_ was surprised at the really remarkable thickness of these bones, and also at the large development of the projections and depressions which served for the insertion of the muscles.
Fig.
38 represents this skull, which is drawn from the cast in the Museum of St. Germain.
Professor Schaaffhausen's opinion with regard to this skull is, that it manifests a degree of intelligence more limited than that of the races of negroes who are least favoured by nature, in other words, it approaches the nature of the beast more nearly than any other known human skull.
But, on the other hand, Mr. Busk and Dr. Barnard Davis look upon this skull as very closely allied to the present race of men; and Professor Gratiolet produced before the Anthropological Society of Paris an idiot's head of the present day, which showed all the osteological characteristics peculiar to the Neanderthal skull.
Lastly, an anthropologist of great authority, Dr. Pruner-Bey, has brought forward all requisite evidence to prove that the Neanderthal skull is identical, in all its parts, with the cranium of the Celt.
We see, therefore, that the opinion propounded by Dr. Schaaffhausen at the commencement of his studies was not able to stand its ground before the opposition resulting from subsequent labours on the point; and that this head of a man belonging to the epoch of the great bear and mammoth, which he regarded as manifesting the most limited amount of intelligence, differed in no way from the heads belonging to Celts of historic times, whose moral qualities and manly courage make Frenchmen proud to call themselves their descendants.
We need scarcely add that the examination of this latter skull, which dated back to the first origin of mankind, is sufficient to set at naught all that has been written as to the pretended analogy of structure existing between primitive man and the ape, and to wipe out for ever from scientific phraseology the improper and unhappy term _fossil man_, which has not only been the cause of so many lamentable misunderstandings, but has also too long arrested the formation and the progress of the science of the first starting-point of man.
Other remains of human skulls, appearing to date back to a very ancient epoch, have been found in various countries, since the discovery of those above-named.
We will mention, a jaw-bone found by M. Édouard Dupont in the cave of Naulette, near Dinant, in Belgium--a frontal and parietal bone, extracted from the _Lehm_ in the valley of the Rhine, at Eggisheim near Colmar, by Dr. Faudel--a skull found by Professor Bocchi, of Florence, in the Olmo pass, near Arezzo--lastly, the celebrated jaw-bone from Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, found in 1863 by Boucher de Perthes, in the _diluvium_, of which bone we have given an illustration in the introduction to this volume.
It is acknowledged by all anthropologists that this portion of the skull of the man of Moulin-Quignon bears a perfect resemblance to that of a man of small size of the present age.
From the small number of skulls which we possess, it is impossible for us to estimate what was the precise degree of intelligence to be ascribed to man at the epoch of the great bear and mammoth.
No one, assuredly, will be surprised at the fact, that the human skull in these prodigiously remote ages did not present any external signs of great intellectual development.
The nature of man is eminently improvable; it is, therefore, easily to be understood, that in the earliest ages of his appearance on the earth his intelligence should have been of a limited character.
Time and progress were destined both to improve and extend it; the flame of the first-lighted torch was to be expanded with the lapse of centuries!
II.
EPOCH OF THE REINDEER, OR OF MIGRATED ANIMALS.
CHAPTER I. Mankind during the Epoch of the Reindeer--Their Manners and Customs--Food--Garments--Weapons, Utensils, and Implements-Pottery--Ornaments--Primitive Arts--The principal Caverns-Type of the Human Race during the Epoch of the Reindeer.
We have now arrived at that subdivision of the stone age which we designate by the name of the _Reindeer Epoch_, or the _Epoch of migrated animals_.
Many ages have elapsed since the commencement of the quaternary geological epoch.
The mighty animals which characterised the commencement of this period have disappeared, or are on the point of becoming extinct.
The great bear (_Ursus spelæus_) and the cave-hyæna (_Hyæna spelæa_) will soon cease to tread the soil of our earth.
It will not be long before the final term will be completed of the existence of the cave-lion (_Felis spelæa_), the mammoth, and the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_.
Created beings diminish in size as they improve in type.
To make up for these losses, numerous herds of reindeer now inhabit the forests of western Europe.
In that part of the continent which was one day to be called France, these animals make their way as far as the Pyrenees.
The horse (_Equus caballus_), in no way different from the present species, is the companion of the above-named valuable ruminant; also the bison (_Biso europæus_), the urus (_Bos primigenius_), the musk-ox (_Ovibos moschatus_), the elk, the deer, the chamois, the ibex, and various species of rodents, amongst others, the beaver, the hamster-rat, the lemming, the spermophilus, &c. After the intense cold of the glacial period the temperature has become sensibly milder, but it is still much lower than at the present day in the same countries; as the reindeer, an animal belonging to a hyperborean climate, can both enjoy life and multiply in the comparatively southern part of Europe.
The general composition of the _fauna_ which we have just described is a striking proof of the rigorous cold which still characterised the climate of central Europe.
Animals which then inhabited those countries are now only met with in the high northern latitudes of the old and new worlds, in close proximity to the ice and snow, or on the lofty summits of great mountain-chains.
To localities of this kind have now retired the reindeer, the musk-ox, the elk, the chamois, the wild-goat, the hamster-rat, the lemming and the spermophilus.
The beaver, too, is at the present day confined almost entirely to Canada.
Mr. Christy, an English naturalist, has remarked with much acuteness that the accumulations of bones and other organic remains in caves actually imply the existence of a rigorous climate.
Under the influence of even a merely moderate temperature, these accumulations of bones and animal remains would, in fact, have given forth putrid exhalations which would have prevented any human being from living in close contiguity to these infectious heaps.
The Esquimaux of the present day live, in this respect, very much like the people of primitive ages, that is, close by the side of the most fetid _débris_; but, except in the cold regions of the north, they would be quite unable to do this.
[Illustration: Fig.
39.--Man of the Reindeer Epoch.]
What progress was made by the man of the reindeer epoch (fig.
39) beyond that attained by his ancestors?
This is the question we are about to consider.
But we must confine the sphere of our study to the only two countries in which a sufficient number of investigations have been made in respect to the epoch of the reindeer.
We allude to that part of Europe which nowadays forms France and Belgium.
During the reindeer epoch, man wrought the flint to better effect than in the preceding period.
He also manufactured somewhat remarkable implements in bone, ivory, and reindeers' horn.
In the preceding period, human bones were found in caves, mixed up indiscriminately with those of animals; in the epoch we are now considering, this promiscuous intermingling is no longer met with.
We shall first pass in review man as existing in this epoch, in respect to his habitation and food.
We shall then proceed to speak of the productions of his industry, and also of the earliest essays of his artistic genius.
Lastly, we shall briefly consider his physical organisation.
With respect to his habitation, man, during the reindeer epoch, still took up his abode in caves.
According to their depth and the light penetrating them, he either occupied the whole extent of them or established himself in the outlet only.
About the centre of the cavern some slabs of stone, selected from the hardest rocks, such as sandstone or slate, were bedded down in the ground, and formed the hearth for cooking his food.
During the long nights of winter the whole family must have assembled round this hearth.
Sometimes, in order the better to defend himself against the various surprises to which he was exposed, the man of the reindeer epoch selected a cavern with a very narrow inlet which could only be entered by climbing.
A cave formed naturally in the deepest clefts and hollows of some rock constituted, in every climate, the earliest habitation of man.
In cold climates it was necessary for him to find some retreat in which to pass the night, and in warmer latitudes he had to ward off the heat of the day.
But these natural dwellings could only be met with in districts where rocks existed which offered facilities for cover in the way of clefts and holes.
When man took up his abode in a level country, he was compelled to construct for himself some place of shelter.
By collecting together stones, brought from various directions, he then managed to build an artificial cavern.
Choosing a spot where some natural projection overhung the ground, he enlarged, as far as he was able, this natural roof, and, bringing art to the assistance of nature, he ultimately found himself in possession of a convenient retreat.
We must not omit to add that the spot in which he established his dwelling was always in the vicinity of some running stream.
In this way, therefore, the inhabitants of the plains formed their habitations during the epoch which we are considering.
We have, also, certain proofs that primitive tribes, during this period, did not take up their abode in natural caverns exclusively, but that they were able to make for themselves more convenient sheltering-places under the cover of some great overhanging rock.
In various regions of France, especially in Périgord, numerous ancient open-air human settlements have been discovered.
They must have been mere sheds or places of shelter, leaning against the base of some high cliff, and protected against the inclemency of the weather by projections of the rock which, more or less, hung over them, forming a kind of roof.
The name of _rock-shelters_ has been given to these dwellings of primitive man.
These wild retreats are generally met with in the lower part of some valley in close proximity to a running stream.
They, like the caverns, contain very rich deposits of the bones of mammals, birds and fishes, and also specimens of hatchets and utensils made of flint, bone, and horn.
Traces of hearths are also discovered.
One of the most remarkable of these natural shelters belonging to the reindeer epoch has been discovered at Bruniquel, in the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, not far from Montauban.
[Illustration: Fig.
40.--Rock-shelter at Bruniquel, a supposed Habitation of Man during the Reindeer Epoch.]
On the left bank of the river Aveyron, under the overhanging shelter of one of the highest rocks of Bruniquel and in close proximity to a _château_, the picturesque ruins of which still stand on the brow of the cliff above, there was discovered, in 1866, a fire-hearth of the pre-historic period; this hearth and its surroundings have afforded us the most complete idea of one of the rock-shelters of man during the reindeer epoch.
This rock, known by the name of Montastruc, is about 98 feet high, and it overhangs the ground below for an extent of 46 to 49 feet.
It covers an area of 298 square yards.
In this spot, M. V. Brun, the Director of the Museum of Natural History at Montauban, found a host of objects of various descriptions, the study of which has furnished many useful ideas for the history of this epoch of primitive humanity.
By taking advantage of the photographic views of the pre-historic settlement of Bruniquel, which M. V. Brun has been kind enough to forward to us, we have been enabled to compose the sketch which is presented in fig.
40 of a rock-shelter, or an open-air settlement of man in the reindeer epoch.
Men during the reindeer epoch did not possess any notion of agriculture.
They had not as yet subdued and domesticated any animal so as to profit by its strength, or to ensure by its means a constant supply of food.
They were, therefore, like their forefathers, essentially hunters; and pursued wild animals, killing them with their spears or arrows.
The reindeer was the animal which they chiefly attacked.
This mammal, which then existed all over Europe, in the centre as well as in the south (although it has now retired or migrated into the regions of the extreme north), was for the man of this period all that it nowadays is to the Laplander--the most precious gift of nature.
They fed upon its flesh and made their garments of its skin, utilising its tendons as thread in the preparation of their dress; its bones and its antlers they converted into all kinds of weapons and implements.
Reindeer's horn was the earliest raw material in the manufactures of these remote ages, and to the man of this epoch was all that iron is to us.
The horse, the ox, the urus, the elk, the ibex, and the chamois, all formed a considerable part of the food of men during this epoch.
They were in the habit of breaking the long bones and the skulls of the recently-killed animals, in order to extract the marrow and the brain, which they ate all steaming with the natural animal heat, as is done in the present day by certain tribes in the Arctic regions.
The meat of this animal was cooked on their rough hearths; for they did not eat it raw as some naturalists have asserted.
The animal bones which have been found, intermingled with human remains, in the caverns of this epoch bear evident traces of the action of fire.
To this animal prey they occasionally added certain birds, such as the great heath-cock, willow-grouse, owl, &c. When this kind of game fell short, they fell back upon the rat.
Round the hearthstone, in the cave of Chaleux, M. Dupont found more than twenty pounds weight of the bones of water-rats, half roasted.
Fish is an article of food which has always been much sought after by man.
By mere inference we might, therefore, readily imagine that man during the reindeer epoch fed on fish as well as the flesh of animals, even if the fact were not attested by positive evidence.
This evidence is afforded by the remains of fish-bones which are met with in the caves of this epoch, intermingled with the bones of mammals, and also by sketches representing parts of fishes, which are found roughly traced on a great number of fragments of bone and horn implements.
The art of fishing, therefore, must certainly have been in existence during the reindeer epoch.
We cannot assert that it was practised during that of the great bear and the mammoth; but, as regards the period we are now considering, no doubt can be entertained on the point.
In an article on the 'Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche,' M. G. de Mortillet expresses himself as follows: "The epoch of the reindeer presents to our notice several specimens of fishing-tackle.
The most simple is a little splinter of bone, generally about one to two inches long, straight, slender, and pointed at both ends.
This is the primitive and elementary fish-hook.
This small fragment of bone or reindeer horn was fastened by the middle and covered with a bait; when swallowed by a fish, or even by an aquatic bird, it became fixed in the interior of the body by one of the pointed ends, and the voracious creature found itself caught by the cord attached to the primitive hook.
At the museum of Saint-Germain, there are several of these hooks which came from the rich deposits of Bruniquel, near Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne).
"Hooks belonging to the reindeer epoch have also been found in the caves and retreats of Dordogne, so well explored by MM.
Lartet and Christy.
Along with those of the simple form which we have just described, others were met with of a much more perfect shape.
These are likewise small fragments of bone or reindeer's horn, with deep and wide notches on one side, forming a more or less developed series of projecting and sharp teeth, or barbs.
Two of them are depicted in Plate B, VI.
of the 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ.'
M. Lartet is in possession of several of them; but the most remarkable specimen forms a part of the beautiful collection of M. Peccadeau de l'Isle, of Paris.
"[7] There are strong reasons for believing that man during this epoch did not confine himself to a diet of an exclusively carnivorous character, for vegetable food is in perfect harmony with the organisation of our species.
By means of wild fruits, acorns, and chestnuts, he must have introduced some little variety into his ordinary system of sustenance.
From the data which we have been considering, we furnish, in fig.
41, a representation of _a feast during the reindeer epoch_.
Men are engaged in cleaving the head of a urus, in order to extract and devour the smoking brains.
Others, sitting round the fire in which the flesh of the same animal is being cooked, are sucking out the marrow from the long bones of the reindeer, which they have broken by blows with a hatchet.
[Illustration: Fig.
41.--A Feast during the Reindeer Epoch.]
It becomes a very interesting question to know whether the men of these remote periods practised cannibalism or not.
On this point we have as yet no certain information.
We will, however, state some facts which seem to make in favour of this idea.
Human skulls have been found in Scotland mixed up promiscuously with sculptured flints, remains of pottery, and children's bones; on the latter, Professor Owen thinks that he can recognise the trace of human teeth.
At Solutré, in Mâconnais, M. de Ferry has discovered human finger-joints among the remains of cooking of the epoch of the great bear and mammoth, and of that of the reindeer.
The appearance of certain bones from the caves of Ariége, dug up by MM.
Garrigou and Filhol, has led both these _savants_ to the opinion "that pre-historic man may have been anthropophagous."
The same conclusion would be arrived at from the explorations which have been undertaken in the grottos and caves of Northern Italy by M. Costa de Beauregard.
This latter _savant_ found in the caves the small shin-bone of a child which had been carefully emptied and cleansed, leading to the idea that the marrow had been eaten.
At a point near Finale, on the road from Genoa to Nice, in a vast cave which was for a long period employed as a habitation for our race, M. Issel discovered some human bones which had evidently been calcined.
Their whitish colour, their lightness, and their friability left no room for doubt on the point.
Added to this, the incrustations on their surface still contained small fragments of carbon.
Moreover, many of the bones showed notches which could not have been made without the help of some sharp instrument.
It is, therefore, probable that men in the stone age practised anthropophagy; we have, really, no cause to be surprised at this; since, in our own days, various savage tribes are addicted to cannibalism, under a considerable diversity of circumstances.
Not the least trace has been discovered of animals' bones being gnawed by dogs in any of the human settlements during the reindeer epoch.
Man, therefore, had not as yet reduced the dog to a state of domesticity.
How did primitive man dress himself during this epoch?
He must have made garments out of the skins of the quadrupeds which he killed in hunting, and especially of the reindeer's hide.
There can be no doubt on this point.
A large number of reindeers' antlers found in Périgord have at their base certain cuts which evidently could only have been produced in flaying the animal.
It is no less certainly proved that these men knew how to prepare animals' skins by clearing them of their hair, and that they were no longer compelled, like their ancestors, to cover themselves with rough bear-skins still covered with their fur.
To what purpose could they have applied the flint scrapers which are met with everywhere in such abundance, except for scraping the hair off the skins of wild beasts?
Having thus taken off the hair, they rendered them supple by rubbing them in with brains and the marrow extracted from the long bones of the reindeer.
Then they cut them out into some very simple patterns, which are, of course, absolutely unknown to us; and, finally, they joined together the different pieces by rough sewing.
The fact that man at this epoch knew how to sew together reindeer skins so as to convert them into garments, is proved by the discovery of numerous specimens of instruments which must have been used for this work; these are--and this is most remarkable--exactly the same as those employed nowadays by the Laplanders, for the same purpose.
They consist of bodkins or stilettoes made of flint and bone (fig.
42), by means of which the holes were pierced in the skin; also very carefully fashioned needles, mostly of bone or horn (fig.
43).
[Illustration: Fig.
42.--Flint Bodkin or Stiletto for sewing Reindeer Skins, found in the Cave of Les Eyzies (Périgord).]
[Illustration: Fig.
43.--Bone Needle for sewing.]
The inspection of certain reindeer bones has likewise enabled us to recognise the fact that the men of this age used for thread the sinewy fibres of this animal.
On these bones transverse cuts may be noticed, just in those very spots where the section of the tendon must have taken place.
No metal was as yet known; consequently, man continued to make use of stone instruments, both for the implements of labour, and also for offensive and defensive weapons.
The hatchet was but little employed as a weapon of war, and the flint-knife was the arm most extensively used.
We must add to this, another potent although natural weapon; this was the lower jaw-bone of the great bear, still retaining its sharp and pointed canine tooth.
The elongated and solid bone furnished the handle, and the sharp tooth the formidable point; and with this instrument man could in the chase attack and pierce any animal with which he entered into a hand-to-hand conflict.
It may be noticed that this weapon is placed in the hand of the man in fig.
39, which represents him during the reindeer epoch.
It must certainly be the case that the human race possesses to a very high degree the taste for personal ornament, since objects used for adornment are found in the most remote ages of mankind and in every country.
There can be no doubt that the men and women who lived in the reindeer epoch sacrificed to the graces.
In the midst of their precarious mode of life, the idea entered into their minds of manufacturing necklaces, bracelets, and pendants, either with shells which they bored through the middle so as to be able to string them as beads, or with the teeth of various animals which they pierced with holes with the same intention, as represented in fig.
44.
[Illustration: Fig.
44.--The Canine Tooth of a Wolf, bored so as to be used as an ornament.]
The horny portion of the ear of the horse or ox (fig.
45), was likewise used for the same purpose, that is, as an object of adornment.
[Illustration: Fig.
45.--Ornament made of the bony part of a Horse's Ear.]
It becomes a question whether man at this epoch had any belief in a future life, and practised anything which bore a resemblance to religious worship.
The existence, round the fire-hearths of the burial-caverns in Belgium, of large fossil elephant (mammoth's) bones--a fact which has been pointed out by M. Édouard Dupont--gives us some reason for answering this question in the affirmative.
According to M. Morlot, the practice of placing bones round caverns still survives, as a religious idea, among the Indians.
We may, therefore, appeal to this discovery as a hint in favour of the existence of some religious feeling among the men who lived during the reindeer epoch.
In the tombs of this epoch are found the weapons and knives which men carried during their lifetime, and sometimes even a supply of the flesh of animals used for food.
This custom of placing near the body of the dead provisions for the journey to be taken _post mortem_ is, as remarked in reference to the preceding period, the proof of a belief in another life.
Certain religious, or rather superstitious, ideas may have been attached to some glittering stones and bright fragments of ore which have been picked up in several settlements of these primitive tribes.
M. de Vibraye found at Bourdeilles (Charente), two nodules of hydrated oxide of iron mixed with _débris_ of all kinds; and at the settlement of Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne), in the middle of the hearth, a small mass of copper covered with a layer of green carbonate.
In other spots there have been met with pieces of jet, violet fluor, &c., pierced through the middle, doubtless to enable them to be suspended to the neck and ears.
The greater part of these objects may possibly be looked upon as amulets, that is, symbols of some religious beliefs entertained by man during the reindeer epoch.
The social instinct of man, the feeling which compels him to form an alliance with his fellow-man, had already manifested itself at this early period.
Communication was established between localities at some considerable distance from one another.
Thus it was that the inhabitants of the banks of the Lesse in Belgium travelled as far as that part of France which is now called Champagne, in order to seek the flints which they could not find in their own districts, although they were indispensable to them in order to manufacture their weapons and implements.
They likewise brought back fossil shells, of which they made fantastical necklaces.
This distant intercourse cannot be called in question, for certain evidences of it can be adduced.
M. Édouard Dupont found in the cave of Chaleux, near Dinant (Belgium), fifty-four of these shells, which are not found naturally anywhere else than in Champagne.
Here, therefore, we have the rudiments of commerce, that is, of the importation and exchange of commodities which form its earliest manifestations in all nations of the world.
Again, it may be stated that there existed at this epoch real manufactories of weapons and utensils, the productions of which were distributed around the neighbouring country according to the particular requirements of each family.
The cave of Chaleux, which was mentioned above, seems to have been one of these places of manufacture; for from the 8th to the 30th of May, during twenty-two days only, there were collected at this spot nearly 20,000 flints chipped into hatchets, daggers, knives, scrapers, scratchers, &c. Workshops of this kind were established in the settlements of Laugerie-Basse and Laugerie-Haute in Périgord.
The first was to all appearance a special manufactory for spear-heads, some specimens of which have been found by MM.
Lartet and Christy of an extremely remarkable nature; exact representations of them are delineated in fig.
46.
In the second were fabricated weapons and implements of reindeers' horn, if we may judge by the large quantity of remains of the antlers of those animals, which were met with by these _savants_, almost all of which bear the marks of sawing.
[Illustration: Fig.
46.--Spear-head found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Périgord).]
It is not, however, probable that the objects thus manufactured were exported to any great distance, as was subsequently the case, that is, in the polished stone epoch.
How would it be possible to cross great rivers, and to pass through wide tracts overgrown with thick forests, in order to convey far and wide these industrial products; at a time, too, when no means of communication existed between one country and another?
But it is none the less curious to be able to verify the existence of a rudimentary commerce exercised at so remote an epoch.
The weapons, utensils and implements which were used by man during the reindeer epoch testify to a decided progress having been made beyond those of the preceding period.
The implements are made of flint, bone, or horn; but the latter kind are much the most numerous, chiefly in the primitive settlements in the centre and south of France.
Those of Périgord are especially remarkable for the abundance of instruments made of reindeers' bones.
The great diversity of type in the wrought flints furnishes a very evident proof of the long duration of the historical epoch we are considering.
In the series of these instruments we can trace all the phases of improvement in workmanship, beginning with the rough shape of the hatchets found in the _diluvium_ at Abbeville, and culminating in those elegant spear-heads which are but little inferior to any production of later times.
We here give representations (fig.
47, 48, 49, 50), of the most curious specimens of the stone and flint weapons of the reindeer epoch.
Knives and other small instruments, such as scrapers, piercers, borers, &c., form the great majority; hatchets are comparatively rare.
Instruments are also met with which might be used for a double purpose, for instance, borers and also piercers.
There are also round stones which must have been used as hammers; it may, at least, be noticed that they have received repeated blows.
[Illustration: Fig.
47.--Worked Flint from Périgord (Knife).]
[Illustration: Fig.
48.--Worked Flint from Périgord (Hatchet).]
[Illustration: Fig.
49.--Chipped Flint from Périgord (Knife).]
[Illustration: Fig.
50.--Chipped Flint from Périgord (Scraper).]
Sir J. Lubbock is of opinion that some of these stones were employed in heating water, after they had been made red-hot in the fire.
According to the above-named author, this plan of procuring hot water is still adopted among certain savage tribes who are still ignorant of the art of pottery, and possess nothing but wooden vessels, which cannot be placed over a fire.
[8] We must also mention the polishers formed of sandstone or some other material with a rough surface.
They could only be used for polishing bone and horn, as the reindeer epoch does not admit of instruments of polished stone.
There have also been collected here and there pebbles of granite or quartzite hollowed out at the centre, and more or less perfectly rounded on the edges.
It has been conjectured that these were mortars, although their small dimensions scarcely countenance this hypothesis.
Neither is it probable that they were used for pounding seed, as fancied by M. de Vibraye.
Nor does the idea which has been entertained of their being used for producing fire seem to have any sufficient ground.
Among the most interesting specimens in the vast collection of flints belonging to the reindeer epoch which have been found in the countries of France and Belgium, we must mention the delicate and very finely-toothed double-edged saws.
The one we here represent (fig.
51) is in the Archæological Museum of Saint-Germain.
It does not measure more than three-quarters of an inch in length, and about one-tenth of an inch in width.
It was found by M. V. Brun in one of the _rock-shelters_ at Bruniquel.
[Illustration: Fig.
51.--Small Flint Saw, found in the Rock-shelter at Bruniquel.]
Saws of this kind were, no doubt, employed for fashioning the antlers of the reindeer, and other ruminants that shed their horns.
The antler was cut into on each side, and the fracture was finished by hand.
The objects of bone and reindeer-horn found in the caves of Périgord show a still greater variety, and a no less remarkable skilfulness in workmanship.
We may mention, for instance, the arrow and javelin-heads.
Some are slender and tapering off at both ends; in others, the base terminates in a single or double bevel.
Among the latter, the greater part seem made to fix in a cleft stick; some are ornamented with lines and hatching over their surface.
Others have notches in them, somewhat similar to an attempt at barbing.
[Illustration: Fig.
52.--The Chase during the Reindeer Epoch.]
We now come to the barbed dart-heads, designated by the name of _harpoons_.
They taper-off considerably towards the top, and are characterised by very decided barbs, shaped like hooks, and distributed sometimes on one side only, and sometimes on both (figs.
53, 54).
In the latter case the barbs are arranged in pairs, and are provided with a small furrow or middle groove, which, according to some naturalists, was intended to hold some subtle poison.
Like the present race of Indians of the American forests, primitive man may possibly have poisoned his arrows; and the longitudinal groove, which is noticed in so many reindeer arrow-heads, may have served to contain the poison.
[Illustration: Fig.
53.--Barbed Arrow of Reindeer Horn.]
[Illustration: Fig.
54--Arrow of Reindeer Horn with double Barbs.]
We must not, however, fail to state that this opinion has been abandoned since it has been ascertained that the North American Indians used in former times to hunt the bison with wooden arrows furnished with grooves or channels of a similar character.
These channels are said to have been intended to give a freer vent to the flow of the animal's blood, which was thus, so to speak, sucked out of the wound.
This may, therefore, have been the intention of the grooves which are noticed on the dart-heads of the reindeer epoch, and the idea of their having been poisoned must be dismissed.
These barbed darts or harpoons are still used by the Esquimaux of the present day, in pursuing the seal.
Such arrows, like those of the primitive hordes of the reindeer epoch which are represented above (figs.
53, 54), are sharply pointed and provided with barbs; they are fastened to a string and shot from a bow.
The Esquimaux sometimes attach an inflated bladder to the extremity of the arrow, so that the hunter may be apprized whether he has hit his mark, or in order to show in what direction he should aim again.
We give here (fig.
55) a drawing of a fragment of bone found in the cave of Les Eyzies (Périgord); a portion of one of these harpoons remains fixed in the bone.
[Illustration: Fig.
55.--Animal Bone, pierced by an Arrow of Reindeer Horn.]
We must assign to the class of implements the bone bodkins or stilettoes of different sizes, either with or without a handle (figs.
56, 57), and also a numerous series of needles found in the caves of Périgord, some of which are very slender and elegant, and made of bone, horn, and even ivory.
In some of the human settlements of the reindeer epoch, bones have been found, from which long splinters had been detached, fitted for the fabrication of needles.
The delicate points of flint have also been found which were used to bore the eyes of the needles, and, lastly, the lumps of sandstone on which the latter were polished.
[Illustration: Fig.
56.--Tool made of Reindeer Horn, found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Stiletto?).]
[Illustration: Fig.
57.--Tool made of Reindeer Horn, found in the Cave of Laugerie-Basse (Needle?).]
We must, likewise, point out the _smoothers_, intended to flatten down the seams in the skins used for garments.
One of the most important instruments of this epoch is a perfect drill with a sharpened point and cutting edge.
With this flint point rapidly twirled round, holes could be bored in any kind of material--bone, teeth, horn, or shells.
This stone drill worked as well as our tool made of steel, according to the statement of certain naturalists who have tried the effect of them.
The primitive human settlement at Laugerie-Basse has furnished several specimens of an instrument, the exact use of which has not been ascertained.
They are rods, tapering off at one end, and hollowed out at the other in the shape of a spoon.
M. Édouard Lartet has propounded the opinion that they were used by the tribes of this epoch as spoons, in order to extract the marrow from the long bones of the animals which were used for their food.
M. Lartet would not, however, venture to assert this, and adds: "It is, perhaps, probable that our primitive forefathers would not have taken so much trouble."
Be this as it may, one of these instruments is very remarkable for the lines and ornaments in relief with which it is decorated, testifying to the existence in the workman of some feeling of symmetry (fig.
58).
[Illustration: Fig.
58.--Spoon of Reindeer Horn.]
In various caves--at Les Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, and Chaffant, _commune_ of Savigné (Vienne)--whistles of a peculiar kind have been found (fig.
59).
They are made from the first joint of the foot of the reindeer or some other ruminant of the stag genus.
A hole has been bored in the base of the bone, a little in front of the metatarsal joint.
If one blows into this hole, placing the lower lip in the hollow answering to the above-named joint, a shrill sound is produced, similar to that made by blowing into a piped key.
We ourselves have had the pleasure of verifying the fact, at the Museum of Saint-Germain, that these primitive whistles act very well.
[Illustration: Fig.
59.--Knuckle-Bone of a Reindeer's Foot, bored with a hole and used as a Whistle.]
The settlements at Périgord have also furnished a certain number of staves made of reindeer horn (figs.
60, 61), the proper functions of which no one has succeeded in properly explaining.
They are invariably bored with one or more holes at the base, and are covered with designs to which we shall hereafter refer.
M. Lartet has thought that they were perhaps symbols or staves of authority.
[Illustration: Fig.
60.--Staff of authority in Reindeer's Horn, found in the Cave of Périgord.]
[Illustration: Fig.
61.--Another Staff of authority in Reindeer's Horn.]
This explanation appears the correct one when we consider the care with which these bâtons were fashioned.
If the hypothesis of their being symbols of authority be adopted, the varying number of the holes would not be without intention; it might point to some kind of hierarchy, the highest grade of which corresponded to the bâton with the most holes.
Thus, in the Chinese empire, the degree of a mandarin's authority is estimated by the number of buttons on his silk cap.
And just as in the Mussulman hierarchy there were pachas of from one to three tails, so it may be fancied that among primitive man of the reindeer epoch there were chiefs of from one to three holes!
We have already stated that in the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth the art of manufacturing a rough description of pottery was, perhaps, known in Europe.
The men of the reindeer epoch made, however, but little progress in this respect.
Nevertheless, if certain relics really belong to this period, they may have known how to make rough vessels, formed of clay, mixed with sand, and hardened by the action of fire.
This primitive art was, as yet, anything but generally adopted: for we very rarely find _débris_ of pottery in close contiguity with other remains of the reindeer epoch.
The Archæological Museum of Saint Germain is in possession of a hollow vessel, a natural geode, very large and very thick (fig.
62).
It was found in the cave of La Madelaine (department of Dordogne); on one side it has evidently been subjected to the action of fire, and may therefore be presumed to have been used as a large vessel for culinary purposes.
[Illustration: Fig.
62.--A Geode, used as a cooking Vessel (?
), found in the Cave of La Madelaine (Périgord).]
In a cave at Furfooz, near Dinant in Belgium, to which we shall subsequently refer, M. Édouard Dupont found, intermingled with human bones, an urn, or specimen of rough pottery, which is perhaps one of the most ancient monuments of the ceramic art as practised by our primitive ancestors.
This urn (fig.
63) was partly broken; by the care of M. Hauzeur it has been put together again, as we represent it from the work of M. Le Hon.
[9] [Illustration: Fig.
63.--Earthen Vase found in the Cave of Furfooz (Belgium).]
It is in the reindeer epoch that we find the earliest traces of any artistic feeling manifested in man.
It is a circumstance well worthy of remark, that this feeling appears to have been the peculiar attribute of the tribes which inhabited the south-west of the present France; the departments of Dordogne, Vienne, Charente, Tarn-et-Garonne, and Ariége, are, in fact, the only localities where designs and carvings representing organised beings have been discovered.
The departments in the east have not furnished anything of a similar character, any more than Belgium, which has been so thoroughly explored by M. Édouard Dupont, or Wurtemburg, where M. Fraas has lately described various settlements of this primitive epoch.
It is not sufficient to allege, in order to explain this singular circumstance, that the caves in the south of France belong to a later period of the reindeer epoch, and that the others go back to the earliest commencement of the same age.
Apart from the fact that this assertion is in no way proved, a complete and ready answer is involved in the well verified circumstance, that even in later ages--in the polished stone, and even in the bronze epoch--no representation of an animal or plant is found to have been executed in these localities.
No specimen of the kind has, in fact, been found in the _kitchen-middens_ of Denmark, or in the lacustrine settlements of the stone age, or even of the bronze age.
It must, then, be admitted that the tribes which were scattered over those portions of the European continent which now correspond to the south-west of France, possessed a special talent in the art of design.
There is, moreover, nothing unreasonable in such a supposition.
An artistic feeling is not always the offspring of civilisation, it is rather a gift of nature.
It may manifest its existence in the most barbarous ages, and may make its influence more deeply felt in nations which are behindhand in respect to general progress than in others which are much further advanced in civilisation.
There can be no doubt that the rudiments of engraving and sculpture of which we are about to take a view, testify to faculties of an essentially artistic character.
Shapes are so well imitated, movements are so thoroughly caught, as it were, in the sudden fact of action, that it is almost always possible to recognise the object which the ancient workman desired to represent, although he had at his disposal nothing but the rudest instruments for executing his work.
A splinter of flint was his sole graving-tool, a piece of reindeer horn, or a flake of slate or ivory, was the only plate on which primitive man could stamp his reproductions of animated nature.
Perhaps they drew on stone or horn with lumps of red-chalk or ochre, for both these substances have been found in the caves of primitive man.
Perhaps, too, as is the case with modern savages, the ochre and red-chalk were used besides for painting or tatooing his body.
When the design was thus executed on stone or horn, it was afterwards engraved with the point of some flint instrument.
Those persons who have attentively examined the interesting gallery of the _Histoire du Travail_ in the International Exposition of 1867, must have remarked a magnificent collection of these artistic productions of primeval ages.
There were no less than fifty-one specimens, which were exhibited by several collectors, and were for the most part extremely curious.
In his interesting work, 'Promenades Préhistoriques à l'Exposition Universelle,' M. Gabriel de Mortillet has carefully described these objects.
In endeavouring to obtain some knowledge of them, we shall take as our guide the learned curator of the Archæological Museum of Saint-Germain.
We have, in the first place, various representations of the mammoth, which was still in existence at the commencement of the reindeer epoch.
The first (fig.
64) is an outline sketch, drawn on a slab of ivory, from the cave of La Madelaine.
When MM.
Lartet and Christy found it, it was broken into five pieces, which they managed to put together very accurately.
The small eye and the curved tusks of the animal may be perfectly distinguished, as well as its huge trunk, and even its abundant mane, the latter proving that it is really the mammoth--that is the fossil--and not the present species of elephant.
[Illustration: Fig.
64.--Sketch of a Mammoth, graven on a Slab of Ivory.]
The second figure is an entire mammoth, graven on a fragment of reindeer horn, from the rock-shelters of Bruniquel, and belongs to M. Peccadeau de l'Isle.
This figure forms the hilt of a poniard, the blade of which springs from the front part of the animal.
It may be recognised to be the mammoth by its trunk, its wide flat feet, and especially by its erect tail, ending in a bunch of hair.
In point of fact, the present species of elephant never sets up the tail, and has no bunch of hair at the end of it.
A third object brought from the pre-historic station of Laugerie-Basse (M. de Vibraye's collection) is the lower end of a staff of authority carved in the form of a mammoth's head.
The prominent forehead, and the body of the animal stretching along the base of the staff, may both be very distinctly seen.
On another fragment of a staff of authority, found at Bruniquel by M. V. Brun, the cave-lion (_Felis spelæa_) is carved with great clearness.
The head, in particular, is perfectly represented.
Representations of reindeer, either carved or scratched on stone or horn, are very common; we mention the following:-In the first place the hilt of a dagger in reindeer's horn (fig.
65) of the same type as that shaped in the form of a mammoth.
This specimen is remarkable, because the artist has most skilfully adapted the shape of the animal to the purpose for which the instrument was intended.
The hilt represents a reindeer, which is carved out as if lying in a very peculiar position; the hind legs are stretched along the blade, and the front legs are doubled back under the belly, so as not to hurt the hand of anyone holding the dagger; lastly, the head is thrown back, the muzzle turned upwards, and the horns flattened down so as not to interfere with the grasp.
[Illustration: Fig.
65.--Hilt of a Dagger, carved in the shape of a Reindeer.]
This is, at all events, nothing but a rough sketch.
The same remark, however, does not apply to two ivory daggers found at Bruniquel by M. Peccadeau de l'Isle.
These objects are very artistically executed, and are the most finished specimens that have been found up to the present time.
Both of them represent a reindeer with the head thrown back as in the preceding plate; but whilst in one dagger the blade springs from the hinder part of the body, in the same way as in the rough-hewn horn, in the other it proceeds from the front of the body, between the head and the forelegs.
The hind legs are stretched out and meet again at the feet, thus forming a hole between them, which was probably used as a ring on which to suspend the dagger.
We must not omit to mention a slab of slate, on which is drawn in outline a reindeer fight.
It was found at Laugerie-Basse by M. de Vibraye.
The artist has endeavoured to portray one of those furious contests in which the male reindeer engages during the rutting season, in order to obtain possession of the females; he has executed his design in a spirited manner, marked by a certain _naïveté_.
There are a good many other fragments on which reindeer are either drawn or carved; we shall not dwell upon them, but add a few remarks as to several specimens on which are representations of the stag, the horse, the bison, the ibex, &c. A representation of a stag (fig.
66) is drawn on a fragment of stag's horn found in the cave of La Madelaine by MM.
Lartet and Christy.
The shape of the antlers, which are very different to those of the reindeer, leave no doubt as to the identity of the animal.
[Illustration: Fig.
66.--Representation of a Stag, drawn on a Stag's Horn.]
The ox and the bison are represented in various fashions.
We will mention here a carved head which was found in the cave of Laugerie-Basse by M. de Vibraye.
It forms the base of a staff of authority.
[Illustration: Fig.
67.--Representation of some large herbivorous Animal on a Fragment of Reindeer's Horn.]
We must, doubtless, class under the same category a fragment of reindeer's horn, found at Laugerie-Basse, on which the hind-quarters of some large herbivorous animal are sketched out with a bold and practised touch (fig.
67).
Various indications have led M. Lartet to think that the artist has not endeavoured to represent a horse, as was at first imagined, but a bison of rather a slender shape.
Unfortunately the fragment is broken at the exact spot where the bushy mane should begin, which characterises the species of the bison sub-genus.
[Illustration: Fig.
68.--Arts of Drawing and Sculpture during the Reindeer Epoch.]
In the same locality another fragment of reindeer's horn was found, on which some horned animal is depicted (fig.
69), which appears to be an ibex, if we may judge by the lines under the chin which seem to indicate a beard.
[Illustration: Fig.
69.--Representation of an Animal, sketched on a Fragment of Reindeer's Horn.]
In the cave of Les Eyzies, in the department of Dordogne, MM.
Lartet and Christy came upon two slabs of quartziferous schist, on both of which are scratched animal forms which are deficient in any special characteristics.
In one (fig.
70), some have fancied they could recognise the elk; but, as the front part only of the other has been preserved, it is almost impossible to determine what mammiferous animal it is intended to represent.
An indistinct trace of horns seems to indicate a herbivorous animal.
[Illustration: Fig.
70.--Fragment of a Slab of Schist, bearing the representation of some Animal, and found in the Cave of Les Eyzies.]
On each side of a staff of authority made of reindeer's horn, found by MM.
Lartet and Christy in the cave of the Madelaine, may be noticed three horses in demi-relief, which are very easily recognisable.
On a carved bone, found at Bruniquel by M. de Lastic, the head of a reindeer and that of a horse are drawn in outline side by side; the characteristics of both animals are well maintained.
Lastly, we may name a round shaft formed of reindeer's horn (fig.
71), found at Laugerie-Basse by MM.
Lartet and Christy, on which is carved an animal's head, with ears of a considerable length laid back upon the head.
It is not easy to determine for what purpose this shaft was intended; one end being pointed and provided with a lateral hook.
It was perhaps used as a harpoon.
[Illustration: Fig.
71.--A kind of Harpoon of Reindeer's Horn, carved in the shape of an Animal's Head.]
Representations of birds are more uncommon than those of mammals.
There are, on the other hand, a good many rough delineations of fish, principally on the so-called wands of authority, on which numbers may often be noticed following one another in a series.
We have one delineation of a fish, skilfully drawn on a fragment of the lower jaw-bone of a reindeer, which was found at Laugerie-Basse.
Also in the cave of La Vache (Ariége), M. Garrigou found a fragment of bone, on which there is a clever design of a fish.
Very few representations of reptiles have come to light, and those found are in general badly executed.
We must, however, make an exception in favour of the figure of a tadpole, scratched out on an arrow-head, found in the cave of the Madelaine.
Designs representing flowers are very rare; in the _Galerie du Travail_, at the Exposition, only three specimens are exhibited; they came from La Madelaine and Laugerie-Basse, and were all three graven on spear-heads.
But did the men of the reindeer epoch make no attempts to portray their own personal appearance?
Have not the excavations dug in the settlements of primitive man, found in Périgord, ever brought to light any imitation of the human form?
Nothing could exceed the interest of such a discovery.
Research has not been entirely fruitless in this respect, and it is hoped that the first attempt in the art of statuary of this primitive people may yet be discovered.
In the cave of Laugerie-Basse, M. de Vibraye found a little ivory statuette, which he takes to be a kind of idol of an indecent character.
The head and legs, as well as the arms, are broken off.
Another human figure (fig.
72), which, like the preceding one, is long and lean, is graven on a staff of authority, a fragment of which was found in the cave of La Madelaine by MM.
Lartet and Christy.
The man is represented standing between two horses' heads, and by the side of a long serpent or fish, having the appearance of an eel.
On the reverse side of the same bâton, which is not given in the figure, the heads of two bisons are represented.
[Illustration: Fig.
72.--Staff of Authority, on which are graven representations of a Man, two Horses, and a Fish.]
On a fragment of a spear-head, found in the same settlement of Laugerie-Basse, there is a series of human hands, provided with four fingers only, represented in demi-relief.
M. Lartet has called attention to the fact, that certain savage tribes still depict the hand without noticing the thumb.
In fig.
39, which represents man during the reindeer epoch, such as we must suppose him to have been from the sum total of our present stock of information on the point, we see a man clothed in garments sewn with a needle, carrying as his chief weapon the jaw-bone of a bear armed with its sharp fang, and also provided with his flint hatchet or knife.
Close to him a woman is seated, arrayed in all the personal ornaments which are known to have been peculiar to this epoch.
The question now arises, what were the characteristics of man during the reindeer epoch, with regard to his physical organisation?
We know a little of some of the broader features of his physiognomy from studying the objects found in the Belgian bone-caves, of which we have spoken in the introduction to this work.
These caves were explored by M. Édouard Dupont, assisted by M. Van Beneden, a Belgian palæontologist and anatomist.
The excavations in question were ordered by King Leopold's Government, which supplied the funds necessary for extending them as far as possible.
The three caves, all situated in the valley of the Lesse, are the _Trou des Nutons_, the _Trou du Frontal_, at Furfooz, near Dinant, and the _Caverne de Chaleux_, in the neighbourhood of the town from which its name is derived.
The _Trou des Nutons_ and the _Trou du Frontal_ have been completely thrown into confusion by a violent inroad of water; for the _débris_ that they contained were intermingled in an almost incredible confusion with a quantity of earthy matter and calcareous rocks, which had been drifted in by the inundation.
In the _Trou des Nutons_, which is situated about 164 feet above the level of the Lesse, M. Van Beneden recognised a great many bones of the reindeer, the urus, and many other species which are not yet extinct.
These bones were indiscriminately mixed up with bones and horns of the reindeer carved into different shapes, knuckle-bones of the goat polished on both sides, a whistle made from the tibia of a goat, from which sounds could still be produced, fragments of very coarse pottery, some remains of fire-hearths, &c. The _Trou du Frontal_ was thus named by M. Édouard Dupont, from the fact of a human frontal-bone having been found there on the day that the excavations commenced.
This was not the only discovery of the kind that was to be made.
Ere long they fell in with a great quantity of human bones, intermixed with a considerable number of the bones of reindeer and other animals, as well as implements of all kinds.
M. Van Beneden ascertained that the bones must have belonged to thirteen persons of various ages; some of them are the bones of infants scarcely a year old.
Among them were found two perfect skulls which are in good preservation; these remains are also very valuable, because they afford data from which deductions may be drawn as to the cranial conformation of the primitive inhabitants of the banks of the Lesse.
M. Édouard Dupont is of opinion that this cave was used as a burial-place.
It is, in fact, very probable that such was the purpose for which it was intended; for a large flag-stone was found in it, which was probably used to close up the mouth of the cave, and to shield the dead bodies from profanation.
If this be the case, the animal bones which were scattered around are the remains of the funeral banquets which it was the custom to provide during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth.
It is interesting to establish the existence of such a similarity between the customs of men who were separated by vast tracts of land and an interval of many thousands of years.
Immediately above the _Trou du Frontal_ there is a cave called _Trou Rosette_, in which the bones of three persons of various ages were found intermingled with the bones of reindeer and beavers; fragments of a blackish kind of pottery were also found there, which were hollowed out in rough grooves by way of ornamentation, and merely hardened in the fire.
M. Dupont is of opinion that the three men whose remains were discovered were crushed to death by masses of rock at the time of the great inundation, traces of which may still be seen in the valley of the Lesse.
By the falling in of its roof, which buried under a mass of rubbish all the objects which were contained in it at the time of the catastrophe and thus kept them in their places, the cave of Chaleux escaped the complete disturbance with which the above-mentioned caverns were visited.
The bones of mammals, of birds, and of fish were found there; also some carved bones and horns of the reindeer, some fossil shells, which, as we have before observed, came from Champagne, and were used as ornaments; lastly, and chiefly, wrought flints numbering at least 30,000.
In the hearth, which was placed in the middle of the cave, a stone was discovered with certain signs on it, which, up to the present time, have remained unexplained.
M. Dupont, as we have previously stated, collected in the immediate vicinity about twenty-two pounds' weight of the bones of the water-rat either scorched or roasted; this proves that when a more noble and substantial food failed them, the primitive inhabitants of this country were able to content themselves with these small and unsavoury rodents.
The two skulls which were found at Furfooz have been carefully examined by MM.
Van Beneden and Pruner-Bey, who are both great authorities on the subject of anthropology.
These skulls present considerable discrepancies, but Pruner-Bey is of opinion that they are heads of a male and female of the same race.
In order to justify his hypothesis the learned anthropologist says, that there is often more difference between the skulls of the two sexes of the same race, than between the skulls of the same sex belonging to two distinct races.
[Illustration: Fig.
73.--Skull found at Furfooz, by M. Édouard Dupont.]
One of these skulls is distinguished by a projecting jaw; the other, which is represented in fig.
73, has jaws even with the facial outline.
The prominent jaw of the first, which is the indication of a degraded race (like that of the negro), does not prevent its having a higher forehead and a more capacious cranium than the other skull.
We find here an actual intermingling of the characteristics which belong to the inferior races with those peculiar to the Caucasian race, which is considered to be the most exalted type of the human species.
According to Pruner-Bey, the Belgian people during the reindeer epoch were a race of small stature but very sturdy; the face was lozenge-shaped, and the whole skull had the appearance of a pyramid.
This race of a Turanian or Mongolian origin was the same as the Ligurian or Iberian race, which still exists in the north of Italy (Gulf of Genoa), and in the Pyrenees (Basque districts).
These conclusions must be accepted with the highest degree of caution, for they do not agree with the opinions of all anthropologists.
M. Broca is of opinion that the Basques have sprung from a North African race, which spread over Europe at a time when an isthmus existed where the Straits of Gibraltar are now situated.
This idea is only reasonable; for certain facts prove that Europe and Africa were formerly connected by a neck of land; this was afterwards submerged, at the spot where the Straits of Gibraltar now exist, bringing about the disjunction of Europe and Africa.
It will be sufficient proof, if we point to the analogy subsisting between the _fauna_ of the two countries, which is established by the existence of a number of wild monkeys which, even in the present day, inhabit this arid rock, and are also to be met with on the opposite African shore.
[Illustration: Fig.
74.--Skull of an old Man, found in a _Rock-shelter_ at Bruniquel.]
In the interesting excavations which were made in the _rock-shelters_ at Bruniquel, M. V. Brun found a quantity of human bones, and particularly two skulls--one that of an old man, the other that of an adult.
We here (fig.
74) give a representation of the old man's skull taken from a photograph which M. V. Brun has been kind enough to send us.
If we measure the facial angle of this skull, we shall find that it does not differ from the skulls of the men who at the present time inhabit the same climates.
From this fact, it may be gathered how mistaken the idea may be which looks upon primitive man, or the man of the stone epoch as a being essentially different from the men of the present day.
The phrase _fossil man_, we must again repeat, should be expunged from the vocabulary of science; we should thus harmonise better with established facts, and should also do away with a misunderstanding which is highly detrimental to the investigations into the origin of man.
In concluding this account of the manners and customs of man during the reindeer epoch, we must say a few words as to the funeral rites of this time, or rather, the mode of burial peculiar to this period of primitive man's history.
Those who lived in caves buried their dead in caves.
It is, also, a fact to be remarked, that man often uses the same type for both his burial-places and dwelling-places.
The burial-places of the Tartars of Kasan, says M. Nilsson, are exact likenesses, on a small scale, of their dwelling-places, and like them, are constructed of beams placed close to one another.
A Circassian burial-place is perfectly similar to a Circassian dwelling.
The tombs of the Karaite Jews, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, resemble their houses and places of worship, and the Neo-Grecian tombs, in the Crimea, are likewise imitations of their churches.
[10] We shall not, therefore, be surprised to learn that man during the reindeer epoch buried his dead in caves, just in the same way as was done by his ancestors during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, that is to say, the dead were interred in the same kind of caves as those which were then generally used as places of abode.
Fig.
75 represents a funeral ceremonial during the reindeer epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
75.--A Funeral Ceremony during the Reindeer Epoch.]
The corpse is borne on a litter of boughs, a practice which is still in use among some modern savages.
Men provided with torches, that is branches of resinous trees, preceded the funeral procession, in order to light the interior of the cavern.
The cave is open, ready to receive the corpse, and it will be closed again after it is deposited there.
The weapons, ornaments, and utensils which he had prized during his lifetime, are brought in to be laid by the side of the dead.
We will sum up the principal facts which we have laid before our readers in this account of the condition of mankind during the reindeer epoch, by quoting an eloquent passage from a report addressed by M. Édouard Dupont to the Belgian Minister of the Interior, on the excavations carried on by this eminent Belgian geologist in the caves in the neighbourhood of Furfooz.
"The data obtained from the fossils of Chaleux, together with those which have been met with in the caves of Furfooz, present us," says M. Dupont, "with a striking picture of the primitive ages of mankind in Belgium.
"These ancient tribes and all their customs, after having been buried in oblivion for thousands and thousands of years, are again vividly brought before our eyes; and, like the wondrous bird, which, in its ashes, found a new source of life, antiquity lives again in the relics of its former existence.
"We may almost fancy that we can see them in their dark and subterranean retreats, crouching round their hearths, and skilfully and patiently chipping out their flint instruments and shaping their reindeer-horn tools, in the midst of all the pestilential emanations arising from the various animal remains which their carelessness has allowed to remain in their dwellings.
Skins of wild beasts are stripped of their hair, and, by the aid of flint needles, are converted into garments.
In our mind's eye, we may see them engaged in the chase, and hunting wild animals--their only weapons being darts and spears, the fatal points of which are formed of nothing but a splinter of flint.
"Again, we are present at their feasts, in which, during the period when their hunting has been fortunate, a horse, a bear, or a reindeer becomes the more noble substitute for the tainted flesh of the rat, their sole resource in the time of famine.
"Now, we see them trafficking with the tribes inhabiting the region now called France, and procuring the jet and fossil shells with which they love to adorn themselves, and the flint which is to them so precious a material.
On one side they are picking up the fluor spar, the colour of which is pleasing to their eyes; on the other, they are digging out the great slabs of sandstone which are to be placed as hearthstones round their fire.
"But, alas!
inauspicious days arrive, and certainly misfortune does not seem to spare them.
A falling in of the roof of their cave drives them out of their chief dwelling-place.
The objects of their worship, their weapons, and their utensils--all are buried there, and they are forced to fly and take up their abode in another spot.
"The ravages of death break in upon them; how great are the cares which are now lavished upon those whom they have lost!
They bear the corpse into its cavernous sepulchre; some weapons, an amulet, and perhaps an urn, form the whole of the funeral furniture.
A slab of stone prevents the inroad of wild beasts.
Then begins the funeral banquet, celebrated close by the abode of the dead; a fire is lighted, great animals are cut up, and portions of their smoking flesh are distributed to each.
How strange the ceremonies that must then have taken place!
ceremonies like those told us of the savages of the Indian and African solitudes.
Imagination may easily depict the songs, the dances and the invocations, but science is powerless to call them into life.
"The sepulchre is often reopened; little children and adults came in turn to take their places in the gloomy cave.
Thirteen times the same ceremonial occurs, and thirteen times the slab is moved to admit the corpses.
"But the end of this primitive age is at last come.
Torrents of water break in upon the country.
Its inhabitants, driven from their abodes, in vain take refuge on the lofty mountain summits.
Death at last overtakes them, and a dark cavern is the tomb of the wretched beings, who, at Furfooz, were witnesses of this immense catastrophe.
"Nothing is respected by the terrible element.
The sepulchre, the object of such care on the part of the artless tribe, is burst open before the torrent, and the bones of the dead bodies, disjointed by the water, are dispersed into the midst of the crumbling earth and stones.
Their former habitation alone is exempt from this common destruction, for it has been protected by a previous catastrophe--the sinking in of its roof on to the ground of the cave."
Having now given a sketch of the chief features presented by man and his surroundings during the reindeer epoch; having described the most important objects of his skill, and dwelt upon the products of his artistic faculties; it now remains for us to complete, in a scientific point of view, the study of this question, by notifying the sources from which we have been able to gather our data, and to bring home to our minds these interesting ideas.
Under this head, we may state that almost all the information which has been obtained has been derived from caves; and it will, therefore, be best to make a few brief remarks on the caverns which have been the scene of these various discoveries.
Honour to whom honour is due.
In mentioning these localities, we must place in the first class the settlements of Périgord, which have contributed to so great an extent towards the knowledge which we possess of primitive man.
The four principal ones are, the cave of Les Eyzies and the rock-shelters or caverns of La Madelaine, Laugerie-Haute, and Laugerie-Basse.
All of them have been explored by MM.
Lartet and Christy, who, after having directed the excavations with the greatest ability, have set forth the results of their researches in a manner no less remarkable.
[11] The settlement of Laugerie-Basse has also been explored by M. de Vibraye, who collected there some very interesting specimens.
We have no intention of reverting to what we have before stated when describing the objects found in these various localities.
We will content ourselves with mentioning the lumbar vertebral bone of a reindeer found in the cave of Eyzies, of which we have given a representation in fig.
55; it was pierced through by an arrow-head, which may still be seen fixed in it.
If any doubts could still exist of the co-existence, in France, of man and the reindeer, this object should suffice to put an end to them for ever.
We will mention, as next in importance, the cave and rock-shelters at Bruniquel (Tarn-et-Garonne).
They have been carefully examined by a great many explorers, among whom we must specify M. Garrigou, M. de Lastic (the proprietor of the cavern), M. V. Brun, the learned Director of the Museum of Natural History at Montauban, and M. Peccadeau de l'Isle.
It is to be regretted that M. de Lastic sold about fifteen hundred specimens of every description of the relics which had been found on his property, to Professor Owen, for the British Museum.
In this large quantity of relics, there were, of course, specimens which will never be met with elsewhere; which, therefore, it would have been better in every respect to have retained in France.
The cave of Bruniquel has also furnished us with human bones, amongst which are two almost perfect skulls, one of which we have previously represented; also two half jaw-bones which resemble those found at Moulin-Quignon.
M. V. Brun has given, in his interesting work, a representation of these human remains.
[12] We will now mention the _Cave of Bize_ near Narbonne (Aude); the _Cave of La Vache_ in the valley of Tarascon (Ariége), in which M. Garrigou collected an immense quantity of bones, on one of which some peculiar characters are graven, constituting, perhaps, a first attempt in the art of writing; the _Cavern of Massat_ in the same department, which has been described by M. Fontan, and is thought by M. Lartet to have been a summer dwelling-place, the occupiers of which lived on raw flesh and snails, for no traces of a hearth are to be seen, although it must have been used for a considerable time as a shelter by primitive man; the _Cave of Lourdes_, near Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées), in which M. Milne-Edwards met with a fragment of a human skull, belonging to an adult individual; the _Cave of Espalungue_, also called the _Grotto of Izeste_ (Basses-Pyrénées), where MM.
Garrigou and Martin found a human bone, the fifth left metatarsal; the _Cave of Savigné_ (Vienne), situated on the banks of the Charente, and discovered by M. Joly-Leterme, an architect of Saumur, who there found a fragment of a stag's bone, on which the bodies of two animals are graven with hatchings to indicate shadows; the _Grottos of La Balme and Bethenas_, in Dauphiné, explored by M. Chantre; lastly, the settlement of Solutré, in the neighbourhood of Mâcon, from which MM.
Ferry and Arcelin have exhumed two human skulls, together with some very fine flint instruments of the Laugerie-Haute type.
These settlements do not all belong to the same epoch, although most of them correspond to the long period known as the reindeer epoch.
It is not always possible to determine their comparative chronology.
From the state of their _débris_ it can, however, be ascertained, that the caves of Lourdes and Espalungue date back to the most ancient period of the reindeer epoch; whilst the settlements of Périgord, of Tarn-et-Garonne, and of Mâconnais are of a later date.
The cave of Massat seems as if it ought to be dated at the beginning of the wrought stone epoch, for no bones have been found there, either of the reindeer or the horse; the remains of the bison are the sole representatives of the extinct animal species.
In concluding this list of the French bone-caves which have served to throw a light upon the peculiar features of man's existence during the reindeer epoch, we must not omit to mention the Belgian caves, which have been so zealously explored by M. Édouard Dupont.
From the preceding pages, we may perceive how especially important the latter have been in the elucidation of the characteristics of man's physical organisation during this epoch.
France and Belgium are not the only countries which have furnished monuments relating to man's history during the reindeer epoch.
We must not omit to mention that settlements of this epoch have been discovered both in Germany and also in Switzerland.
In 1866 a great quantity of bones and broken instruments were found at the bottom of an ancient glacier-moraine in the neighbourhood of Rabensburg, not far from the lake of Constance.
The bones of the reindeer formed about ninety-eight hundredths of these remains.
The other _débris_ were the bones of the horse, the wolf, the brown bear, the white fox, the glutton and the ox.
In 1858, on a mountain near Geneva, a cave was discovered about 12 feet deep and 6 feet wide, which contained, under a layer of carbonate of lime, a great quantity of flints and bones.
The bones of the reindeer formed the great majority of them, for eighteen skeletons of this animal were found.
The residue of the remains were composed of four horses, six ibex, intermingled with the bones of the marmot, the chamois, and the hazel-hen; in short, the bones of the whole animal population which, at the present time, has abandoned the valleys of Switzerland, and is now only to be met with on the high mountains of the Alps.
FOOTNOTES: [7] 'Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche.'
Paris, 1867, p. 25.
[8] 'Pre-Historic Times,' 2d ed.
p. 319.
[9] 'L'Homme Fossile.'
Brussels, 1868 (page 71).
[10] 'The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' by Sven Nilsson, p. 155.
London, 1868.
[11] 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ,' by Éd.
Lartet and H. Christy.
London, 1865, &c. [12] 'Notice sur les Fouilles Paléontologiques de l'Age de la Pierre exécutées à Bruniquel et Saint-Antonin,' by V. Brun.
Montauban, 1867.
III.
THE POLISHED-STONE EPOCH; OR, THE EPOCH OF TAMED ANIMALS.
CHAPTER I.
The European Deluge--The Dwelling-place of Man during the Polished-stone Epoch--The Caves and Rock-shelters still used as Dwelling-places--Principal Caves belonging to the Polished-stone Epoch which have been explored up to the present Time--The Food of Man during this period.
Aided by records drawn from the bowels of the earth, we have now traversed the series of antediluvian ages since the era when man first made his appearance on the earth, and have been enabled, though but very imperfectly, to reconstruct the history of our primitive forefathers.
We will now leave this epoch, through the dark night of which science seeks almost in vain to penetrate, and turn our attention to a period the traces of which are more numerous and more easily grasped by our intelligence--a period, therefore, which we are able to characterise with a much greater degree of precision.
A great catastrophe, the tradition of which is preserved in the memory of all nations, marked in Europe the end of the quaternary epoch.
It is not easy to assign the exact causes for this great event in the earth's history; but whatever may be the explanation given, it is certain that a cataclysm, caused by the violent flowing of rushing water, took place during the quaternary geological epoch; for the traces of it are everywhere visible.
These traces consist of a reddish clayey deposit, mixed with sand and pebbles.
This deposit is called in some countries _red diluvium_, and in others _grey diluvium_.
In the valley of the Rhone and the Rhine it is covered with a layer of loamy deposit, which is known to geologists by the name of _loess_ or _lehm_, and as to the origin of which they are not all agreed.
Sir Charles Lyell is of opinion that this mud was produced by the crushing of the rocks by early Alpine glaciers, and that it was afterwards carried down by the streams of water which descended from these mountains.
This mud covers a great portion of Belgium, where it is from 10 to 30 feet in thickness, and supplies with material a large number of brickfields.
This deposit, that is the _diluvial beds_, constitutes nearly the most recent of all those which form the earth's crust; in many European countries, it is, in fact the ground trodden under the feet of the present population.
The inundation to which the _diluvium_ is referred closes the series of the quaternary ages.
After this era, the present geological period commences, which is characterised by the almost entire permanency of the vertical outline of the earth, and by the formation of peat-bogs.
The earliest documents afforded us by history are very far from going back to the starting-point of this period.
The history of the ages which we call historical is very far from having attained to the beginning of the present geological epoch.
In order to continue our account of the progressive development of primitive man, we must now turn our attention to the _Polished-stone Epoch_, or the _Epoch of Tamed Animals_, which precedes the Metal Age.
As the facts which we shall have to review are very numerous, we will, in the first place, consider this epoch as it affects those parts of our continent which form the present France and Belgium; next, with reference to Denmark and Switzerland, in which countries we shall have to point out certain manners and customs of man of an altogether special character.
We shall consider in turn:-1st.
The habitation of man during the polished-stone epoch.
2nd.
His system of food.
3rd.
His arts and manufactures.
4th.
The weapons manufactured by him, and their use in war.
5th.
His attainments in agriculture, fishing, and navigation.
6th.
His funeral ceremonies.
7th.
Lastly, the characteristics of mankind during this epoch.
_Habitation._--In that part of the European continent which now forms the country called France, man, during that period we designate under the name of the polished-stone epoch, continued for a considerable time to inhabit rock-shelters and caves which afforded him the best retreat from the attacks of wild beasts.
This fact has been specially proved to have been the case in the extreme south of the above-mentioned country.
Among the investigations which have contributed towards its verification, we must give particular notice to those made by MM.
Garrigou and Filhol in the caves of the Pyrenees (Ariége).
These two _savants_ have also explored the caves of Pradières, Bedeilhac, Labart, Niaux, Ussat, and Fontanel.
[13] In one of these caves, which we have already mentioned in the preceding chapter, but to which we must again call attention--for they belong both to the polished stone, and also to the reindeer epoch--MM.
Garrigou and Filhol found the bones of a huge ox, the urus or _Bos primigenius_, a smaller kind of ox, the stag, the sheep, the goat, the antelope, the chamois, the wild boar, the wolf, the dog, the fox, the badger, the hare, and possibly those of the horse.
Neither the bones of the reindeer nor the bison are included in this list of names; on account of the mildness of the climate, these two species had already migrated towards the north and east in search of a colder atmosphere.
The remains of hearths, bones split lengthwise, and broken skulls, indicate that the inhabitants of these caves lived on much the same food as their ancestors.
It is probable that they also ate raw snails, for a large quantity of their shells were found in this cave, and also in the cavern of Massat,[14] the presence of which can only be accounted for in this way.
These remains were found intermingled with piercers, spear-heads, and arrow-heads, all made of bone; also hatchets, knives, and scratchers, made of flint, and also of various other substances, which were more plentiful than flint in that country, such as siliceous schist, quartzite, leptinite and serpentine stones.
These instruments were carefully wrought, and a few had been polished at one end on a slab of flag-stone.
In the cave of Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées), which has been explored by M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, two layers were observed; one belonging to the reindeer epoch, and the other to the polished-stone epoch.
[15] The cave of Pontil (Hérault), which has been carefully examined by Professor Gervais,[16] has furnished remains of every epoch including the bronze age; we must, however, except the reindeer epoch, which is not represented in this cave.
Lastly, we will mention the cave of Saint-Jean-d'Alcas (Aveyron), which has been explored, at different times, by M. Cazalis de Fondouce.
This is a sepulchral cave, like that of Aurignac.
When it was first explored, about twenty years ago, five human skulls, in good preservation, were found in it--a discovery, the importance of which was then unheeded, and the skulls were, in consequence, totally lost to science.
Flint, jade, and serpentine instruments, carved bones, remains of rough pottery, stone amulets, and the shells of shell-fish, which had formed necklaces and bracelets, were intermingled with human bones.
At Saint-Jean-d'Alcas, M. Cazalis de Fondouce did not meet with any remains of funeral banquets such as were found at Aurignac and Furfooz; he only noticed two large flag-stones lying across one another at the mouth of the cave, so as to make the inlet considerably narrower.
This cave, according to a recent publication of M. Cazalis, must be referred to a more recent epoch than was at first supposed, for some fragments of metallic substances were found in it.
It must, therefore, have belonged to a late period of the polished-stone epoch.
[17] _Man's System of Feeding during the Polished-stone Epoch._--In order to obtain full information on the subject of man's food in the north and centre of Europe during the polished-stone epoch, we must appeal to the interesting researches of which Denmark has been the scene during the last few years; but these researches, on account of their importance, require a detailed account.
[Illustration: Fig.
76.--Man of the Polished-stone Epoch.]
FOOTNOTES: [13] 'L'Homme Fossile des Cavernes de Lombrive et de Lherm.'
Toulouse, 1862.
Illustrated.
'L'Age de Pierre dans les Vallées de Tarascon' (Ariége).
Tarascon, 1863.
[14] 'Sur deux Cavernes découvertes dans la Montagne de Kaer à Massat' (Ariége).
Quoted by Lyell, Appendix to 'The Antiquity of Man,' p. 247.
[15] 'De l'Existence de l'Homme pendant la Période quaternaire dans la grotte de Lourdes' (Hautes-Pyrénées).
('Annales des Sciences Naturelles,' 4th series, vol.
xvii.)
[16] 'Mémoires de l'Académie de Montpellier' ('Section des Sciences'), 1857, vol.
iii, p. 509.
[17] 'Sur une Caverne de l'Age de la Pierre, située près de Saint-Jean-d'Alcas' (Aveyron), 1864.
'Derniers Temps de l'Age de la Pierre Polie dans l'Aveyron', Montpellier, 1867.
Illustrated.
CHAPTER II.
The _Kjoekken-Moeddings_ or "Kitchen-middens" of Denmark--Mode of Life of the Men living in Denmark during the Polished-stone Epoch--The Domestication of the Dog--The Art of Fishing during the Polished-stone Epoch--Fishing-nets--Weapons and Instruments of War--Type of the Human Race; the Borreby Skull.
Although classed in the lowest rank on account of the small extent of its territory and the number of its inhabitants, the Danish nation is, nevertheless, one of the most important in Europe, in virtue of the eminence to which it has attained in science and arts.
This valiant, although numerically speaking, inconsiderable people, can boast of a great number of distinguished men who are an honour to science.
The unwearied researches of their archæologists and antiquarians have ransacked the dust of bygone ages, in order to call into new life the features of a vanished world.
Their labours, guided by the observations of naturalists, have brought out into the clear light of day some of the earliest stages in man's existence and progress.
There is no part of the world more adapted than Denmark to this kind of investigation.
Antiquities may be met with at every step; the real point in question is to know how to examine them properly, so as to obtain from them important revelations concerning the manners, customs, and manufactures of the pre-historic inhabitants.
The Museum of Copenhagen, which contains antiquities from various Scandinavian states, is, in this respect, without a rival in the world.
Among the objects arranged in this well-stocked Museum a great many specimens may be observed which have come from the so-called _kitchen-middens_.
In the first place, what are these _kjoekken-moeddings_, or kitchen-middens, with their uncouth Scandinavian name?
Immense accumulations of shells have been observed on different points of the Danish coast, chiefly in the north, where the sea enters those narrow deep creeks, known by the name of _fiords_.
These deposits are not generally raised more than about 3 feet above the level of the sea; but in some steep places their altitude is greater.
They are about 3 to 10 feet in thickness, and from 100 to 200 feet in width; their length is sometimes as much as 1000 feet, with a width of from 150 to 250 feet.
On some of the more level shores they form perfect hills, on which, as at Havelse, windmills are sometimes built.
What do we meet with in these heaps?
An immense quantity of sea-shells, especially those of the oyster, broken bones of mammiferous animals, remains of birds and fish; and, lastly, some roughly-wrought flints.
The first idea formed with regard to these kitchen-middens was that they were nothing but banks of fossil shells, beds which had formerly been submerged, and subsequently brought to light by an upheaval of the earth caused by some volcanic cause.
But M. Steenstrup, a Danish _savant_, opposed this opinion, basing his contradiction on the fact that these shells belong to four different species which are never found together, and consequently they must have been brought together by man.
M. Steenstrup also called attention to the fact that almost all these shells must have belonged to full-grown animals, and that there were hardly any young ones to be found amongst them.
A peculiarity of this kind is an evident indication of the exercise of some rational purpose, in fact, of an act of the human will.
When all the _débris_ and relics which we have enumerated were discovered in these kitchen-middens, when the remains of hearths--small spots which still retained traces of fire--were found in them, the origin of these heaps were readily conjectured.
Tribes once existed there who subsisted on the products of fishing and hunting, and threw out round their cabins the remains of their meals, consisting especially of the _débris_ of shell-fish.
These remains gradually accumulated, and constituted the considerable heaps which we are discussing; hence the name of _kjoekken-moedding_, composed of two words--_kjoekken_, kitchen; and _moedding_, heap of refuse.
These "kitchen-middens," as they are called, are, therefore, the refuse from the meals of the primitive population of Denmark.
If we consider the heaps of oyster-shells and other _débris_ which accumulate in the neighbourhood of eating-houses in certain districts, we may readily understand, comparing great things with small, how these Danish kitchen-middens were produced.
I myself well recollect having noticed in the environs of Montpellier small hillocks of a similar character, formed by the accumulation of oyster-shells, mussels, and clams.
When the conviction was once arrived at that these kitchen-middens were the refuse of the meals of the primitive inhabitants, the careful excavation of all these heaps scattered along the Danish coast became an extremely interesting operation.
It might be justly expected that some data would be collected as to the customs and manufactures of the ancient dwellers in these countries.
A commission was, in consequence, appointed by the Danish Government to examine these deposits, and to publish the results of its labours.
This commission was composed of three _savants_, each of whom were eminent in their respective line--Steenstrup, the naturalist, Forchhammer, a geologist, and the archæologist, Worsaae--and performed its task with as much talent as zeal.
The observations which were made are recorded in three reports presented to the Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen.
From these documents are borrowed most of the details which follow.
Before proceeding to acquaint our readers with the facts brought to light by the Danish commission, it will be well to remark that Denmark does not stand alone in possessing these kitchen-middens.
They have been discovered in England--in Cornwall and Devonshire--in Scotland, and even in France, near Hyères (Bouches-du-Rhône).
[18] MM.
Sauvage and Hamy have pointed out to M. de Mortillet the existence of deposits of this kind in the Pas-de-Calais.
They may be noticed, say these naturalists, at La Salle (Commune of Outreau) at certain parts of the coast of Portel, and especially a very large heap at Cronquelets (Commune of Etaples.)
They chiefly consist of the _cardium edule_, which appear to abound in the kitchen-middens of the Pas-de-Calais.
Messrs. Evans, Prestwich, and Lubbock observed one of these deposits at Saint-Valery, near the mouth of the Somme.
Added to this, they have been described by various travellers as existing in different parts of the world.
Dampier studied them in Australia, and Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, where deposits of the same character are now in the course of formation.
M. Pereira da Costa found one on the coast of Portugal; Sir C. Lyell has testified to the existence of others on the coasts of Massachusetts and Georgia, in the United States; M. Strobel, on the coasts of Brazil.
But those in Denmark are the only deposits of this kind which have been the subject of investigations of a deliberate and serious character.
Almost all these kitchen-middens are found on the coast, along the _fiords_, where the action of the waves is not much felt.
Some have, however, been found several miles inland; but this must be owing to the fact that the sea once occupied these localities, from which it has subsequently retired.
They are not to be met with on some of the Danish coasts, as those of the western side; this, on the one hand, may be caused by their having been washed away by the sea, which has there encroached on the land, or, on the other hand, by the fact that the western coast was much less sheltered than the other parts of the Danish peninsula.
They are not unfrequently to be found in the adjacent islands.
These kitchen-middens form, in a general way, undulating mounds, which sink in a gentle incline from the centre to the circumference.
The spot where they are thickest indicates the site of the habitations of man.
Sometimes, we may notice one principal hillock, surrounded by smaller mounds; or else, in the middle of the heaps, there is a spot which must have been the site of the encampment.
These refuse deposits are almost entirely made up of shells of various kinds of molluscs; the principal species are the oyster, the cockle, the mussel, and the periwinkle.
Others, such as whelks, _helices_ (edible snails), _nassa_, and _trigonella_, are also found; but they are comparatively few in number.
Fishes' bones are discovered in great abundance in the kitchen-middens.
They belong to the cod, herring, dab, and eel.
From this we may infer that the primitive inhabitants of Denmark were not afraid of venturing out to brave the waves of the sea in their frail skiffs; for the herring and the cod cannot, in fact, be caught except at some little distance from the shore.
Mammalian bones are also plentifully distributed in the Danish kitchen-middens.
Those most commonly met with are the remains of the stag, the roe, and the boar, which, according to M. Steenstrup's statement, make up ninety-seven hundredths of the whole mass.
Others are the relics of the urus, the wolf, the dog, the fox, the wild-cat, the lynx, the marten, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, the water-rat, the beaver and the hedgehog.
The bison, the reindeer, the elk, the horse, and the domestic ox have not left behind them any trace which will permit us to assume that they existed in Denmark at the period when these deposits were formed.
Amongst other animals, we have mentioned the dog.
By various indications, we are led to the belief that this intelligent creature had been at this time reduced to a state of domesticity.
It has been remarked that a large number of the bones dispersed in these kitchen-middens are incomplete; exactly the same parts are almost always missing, and certain bones are entirely wanting.
M. Steenstrup is of opinion that these deficiencies may be owing to the agency of dogs, which have made it their business to ransack the heaps of bones and other matters which were thrown aside by their masters.
This hypothesis was confirmed, in his idea, when he became convinced, by experience, that the bones which were deficient in these deposits were precisely those which dogs are in the habit of devouring, and that the remaining portions of those which were found were not likely to have been subject to their attacks on account of their hardness and the small quantity of assimilable matter which was on or in them.
Although primitive man may have elevated the dog to the dignity of being his companion and friend, he was, nevertheless, sometimes in the habit of eating him.
No doubt he did not fall back upon this last resort except in cases when all other means of subsistence failed him.
Bones of the dog, broken by the hand of man, and still bearing the marks of having been cut with a knife, are amongst the remains found, and place the fact beyond any question.
We find, besides, the same taste existing here which we have seen manifested in other ages and different countries.
All the long bones have been split in order to extract their marrow--the dainty so highly appreciated by man during the epochs of the reindeer and the mammoth.
Some remains of birds have been found in the kitchen-middens; but most of the species are aquatic--a fact which may be readily explained by the seaboard position of the men who formed these deposits.
As the result of this review of the various substances which were made use of for food by the men of the polished-stone epoch, we may infer that they were both hunters and fishermen.
Animals of rapid pace were hunted down by means of the dart or arrow, and any more formidable prey was struck down at close quarters by some sharp stone weapon.
Fishing was practised, as at the present day, by means of the line and net.
We have already seen that men, during the reindeer epoch, probably used hooks fastened at the end of lines.
These hooks, as we have before remarked, were made with splinters of bone or reindeer horn.
During the polished-stone epoch this fishing instrument was much improved, and they now possessed the real hook with a recurvate and pointed end.
This kind of hook was found by Dr. Uhlmann in one of the most ancient lacustrine stations of Switzerland.
But a curved hook was both difficult to make and also not very durable; instead of it was used another and more simple sort--the straight skewer fixed to serve as a hook.
This is a simple fragment of bone, about an inch long, very slender and pointed at the two ends (fig.
77).
Sometimes it is a little flattened in the middle, or bored with a hole, into which the line was fastened.
[Illustration: Fig.
77.--Bone Skewers used as Fish-hooks.]
This little splinter of bone, when hidden by the bait and fastened to a line, was swallowed by the fish and could not be disgorged, one of the pointed ends being certain to bury itself in the entrails of the creature.
Some of our readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that men of the polished-stone epoch were in the habit of fishing with nets; but it is a fact that cannot be called into question, for the very conclusive reason, that the remains of these nets have been found.
How could it possibly come to pass that fishing-nets of the polished-stone epoch should have been preserved to so late a period as our times?
This is exactly the question we are about to answer.
On the lakes of Switzerland and of other countries, there used to exist certain habitations of man.
These are the so-called _lacustrine dwellings_ which we shall have hereafter to consider in some considerable detail, when we come to the Bronze Age.
The men who lived on these lakes were necessarily fishers; and some traces of their fishing-nets have been discovered by a circumstance which chemistry finds no difficulty in explaining.
Some of these lake-dwellings were destroyed by fire; as, for instance, the lacustrine settlements of Robenhausen and Wangen in Switzerland.
The outsides of these cabins, which were almost entirely constructed of wood, burnt, of course, very readily; but the objects inside, chiefly consisting of nets--the sole wealth of these tribes--could not burn freely for want of oxygen, but were only charred with the heat.
They became covered with a slight coating of some empyreumatic or tarry matter--an excellent medium for insuring the preservation of any organic substance.
These nets having been scorched by the fire, fell into the water with the _débris_ of the hut, and, in consequence of their precipitate fall, never having come in actual contact with the flame, have been preserved almost intact at the bottom of the lakes.
When, after a long lapse of centuries, they have been again recovered, these _débris_ have been the means of affording information as to the manufacture both of the fishing-nets, and also as to the basket-work, vegetable provisions, &c., of these remote ages.
In one of Dr. Keller's papers on these _lacustrine dwellings_, of which we shall have more to say further on, we find a description and delineation of certain fishing-nets which were recovered from the lake of Robenhausen.
In the Museum of Saint-Germain we inspected with curiosity several specimens of these very nets, and we here give a representation of one of them.
There were nets with wide meshes like that shown in fig.
78, and also some more closely netted.
The mesh is a square one, and appears to have been made on a frame by knotting the string at each point of intersection.
All these nets are made of flax, for hemp had not yet been cultivated.
[Illustration: Fig.
78.--Fishing-net with wide Meshes.]
These nets were held suspended in the water by means of floats, made, not of cork, but of the thick bark of the pine-tree, and were held down to the bottom of the water by stone weights.
We give a representation here (fig.
79), of one of these stone weights taken from a specimen exhibited in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
[Illustration: Fig.
79.--Stone Weight used for sinking the Fishing-nets.]
These stone weights, large quantities of which are to be seen in museums, and especially in that of Saint-Germain, are, in almost every case, nothing but pebbles bored through the centre.
Sometimes, however, they were round pieces of soft stone, having a hole made in the middle.
Through this hole the cord was passed and fastened by a knot on the other side.
By means of the floats and weights the nets were made to assume any position in the water which was wished.
The large size of the meshes in the nets belonging to the polished-stone epoch proves, that in the lakes and rivers of this period the fish that were used for food were of considerable dimensions.
Added to this, however, the monstrous hooks belonging to this epoch which have been found in the Seine tend to corroborate this hypothesis.
Thus, then, the art of fishing had arrived in the polished-stone epoch to a very advanced stage of improvement.
In plate 80 we give a representation of fishing as carried on during the polished-stone epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
80.--Fishing during the Polished-stone Epoch.]
Returning to the subject of the ancient Danes, we must add, that these men, who lived on the sea-coasts, clad themselves in skins of beasts, rendered supple by the fat of the seal and marrow extracted from the bones of some of the large mammals.
For dwelling-places they used tents likewise made of skins prepared in the same way.
_Arts and Manufactures._--What degree of skill in this respect was attained by the men who lived during the polished-stone epoch?
To give an answer to this question, we must again ransack those same kitchen-middens which have been the means of furnishing us with such accurate information as to the system of food of the man of that period.
We shall also have to turn our attention to the remains found in the principal caves of this epoch.
An examination of the instruments found in the kitchen-middens shows us that the flints are in general of a very imperfect type, with the exception, however, of the long splinters or knives, the workmanship of which indicates a considerable amount of skill.
Fig.
81 represents a flint knife from one of the Danish deposits, delineated in the Museum of Saint-Germain; and fig.
82 a _nucleus_, that is, a piece of flint from which splinters have been taken off, which were intended to be used as knives.
[Illustration: Fig.
81.--Flint Knife, from one of the Danish Beds.]
[Illustration: Fig.
82.--Nucleus off which Knives are flaked.]
We also give a representation of a hatchet (fig.
83) and a scraper (fig.
84), which came from the same source.
[Illustration: Fig.
83.--Flint Hatchet, from one of the Danish Beds.]
[Illustration: Fig.
84.--Flint Scraper, from one of the Danish Beds.]
Besides these instruments, bodkins, spear-heads, and stones for slings have also been found in the kitchen-middens, without taking into account a quantity of fragments of flint which do not appear to have been wrought with any special purpose in view, and were probably nothing but rough attempts, or the mere refuse of the manufacture.
[Illustration: Fig.
85.--Refuse from the Manufacture of wrought Flints.]
In the same deposits there are also found a good many pebbles, which, according to the general opinion, must have been used as weights to sink the fishing-nets to the bottom of the water.
Some are hollowed out with a groove all round them, like that depicted in fig.
86, which is designed from a specimen in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
Others have a hole bored through the middle.
This groove or hole was, doubtless, intended to hold the cord which fastened the stone weight to the net.
[Illustration: Fig.
86.--Weight to sink Fishing-nets.]
_Weapons and Tools._--We shall now pass on to the weapons and tools which were in use among the people in the north of Europe during the period we are considering.
During the latter period of the polished-stone epoch working in stone attained to a really surprising degree of perfection among the people of the North.
It is, in fact, difficult to understand how, without making use of any metallic tools, men could possibly impart to flint, when fashioned into weapons and implements of all kinds, those regular and elegant shapes which the numerous excavations that have been set on foot are constantly bringing to light.
The Danish flint may, it is true, be wrought with great facility; but nevertheless, an extraordinary amount of skill would be none the less necessary in order to produce that rectitude of outline and richness of contour which are presented by the Danish specimens of this epoch--specimens which will not be surpassed even in the Bronze Age.
The hatchets found in the north of Europe, belonging to the polished-stone epoch, differ very considerably from the hatchets of France and Belgium.
The latter are rounded and bulging at the edges; but the hatchets made use of by the people of the North (fig.
87) were flatter and cut squarely at the edge.
They were nearly in the shape of a rectangle or elongated trapezium, with the four angles cut off.
Their dimensions are sometimes considerable; some have been found which measured nearly 16 inches in length.
[Illustration: Fig.
87.--Danish Axe of the Polished-stone Epoch.]
Independently of this type, which is the most plentiful, the northern tribes used also to manufacture the drilled hatchet, which is combined in various ways with the hammer.
In these instruments, the best workmanship and the most pleasing shapes are to be noticed.
The figs.
88, 89 and 90, designed in the Museum of Saint-Germain, from authentic specimens sent by the Museum of Copenhagen, represent double-edged axes and axe-hammers.
They are all pierced with a round hole in which the handle was fixed.
The cutting edge describes an arc of a circle, and the other end is wrought into sharp angular edges.
[Illustration: Fig.
88.--Double-edged Axe] [Illustration: Fig.
89.--Danish Axe-hammer, drilled for handle.]
[Illustration: Fig.
90.--Danish Axe-hammer, drilled for handle.]
These hatchets are distinguished from those of the reindeer epoch by a characteristic which enables us to refer them without hesitation to their real date, even in cases in which they have not yet been subject to the operation of polishing.
The hatchets of the reindeer epoch have their cutting edge at the narrowest end, whilst those of the polished-stone epoch are sharp at their widest end.
This observation does not apply specially to the Danish hatchets; it refers equally to those of other European countries.
The spear-heads are masterpieces of good taste, patience, and skill.
There are two sorts of them.
The most beautiful (figs.
91, 92) assume the shape of a laurel-leaf; they are quite flat, and chipped all over with an infinite amount of art.
Their length is as much as 15 inches.
Others are shorter and thicker in shape, and terminate at the base in an almost cylindrical handle.
Sometimes they are toothed at the edge (fig.
93).
These spear-heads were evidently fixed at the end of a staff, like the halberds of the middle ages and the modern lance.
[Illustration: Fig.
91.--Spear-head from Denmark.]
[Illustration: Fig.
92.--Spear-head from Denmark.]
The poniards (fig.
94) are no less admirable in their workmanship than the spear-heads, from which they do not perceptibly differ, except in having a handle, which is flat, wide, solid, and made a little thicker at the end.
This handle is always more or less ornamented, and is sometimes covered with delicate carving.
To chip a flint in this way must have required a skilful and well-practised hand.
[Illustration: Fig.
93.--Toothed Spear-head of Flint.]
[Illustration: Fig.
94.--Flint Poniard, from Denmark.]
After these somewhat extraordinary instruments, we must mention the arrow-heads, the shapes of which are rather varied in their character.
The arrow-heads most frequently found are formed in the shape of a triangular prism, terminating at the lower end in a stem intended to be inserted into a stick (fig.
95); others are deeply indented at the base and quite flat.
Many are finely serrated on the edges, and occasionally even on the inside edge of the indentation.
Figs.
95, 96, 97, and 98 represent the various types of Danish arrow-heads, all of which are in the Museum of Saint-Germain, and from which these designs were made.
[Illustration: Fig.
95.--Type of the Danish Arrow-head.]
[Illustration: Fig.
96.--Another Type of Arrow-head.]
[Illustration: Fig.
97.--Arrow-head.]
[Illustration: Fig.
98.--Arrow-head from Denmark.]
The chisels and gouges equally merit a special mention.
The chisel (fig.
99) is a kind of quadrangular prism, chipped in a bevel down to the base.
[Illustration: Fig.
99.--Flint Chisel from Denmark.]
The gouges are hollowed out on one of their faces, so as to act as the tool the name of which has been applied to them.
We next come to some curious instruments, of which we have given designs taken from the specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain; the purpose they were applied to is still problematical.
They are small flakes, or blades, in the shape of a crescent (figs.
100, 101).
The inner edge, which was either straight or concave, is usually serrated like a saw; the convex side must have been fixed into a handle; for the traces of the handle may still be detected upon many of them.
These instruments were probably made use of as scrapers in the preparation of skins for garments; perhaps, also, they were used as knives or as saws.
[Illustration: Fig.
100.--Small Stone Saw from the Danish Deposits.]
[Illustration: Fig.
101.--Another Stone Saw from Denmark.]
We must now turn our attention to instruments made of bone or stag's horn.
They are much less numerous than those of stone, and have nothing about them of a very remarkable character.
The only implement that is worthy of notice is the harpoon (fig.
102).
It is a carved bone, and furnished with teeth all along one side, the other edge being completely smooth.
The harpoon of the reindeer epoch was decidedly superior to it.
[Illustration: Fig.
102.--Bone Harpoon of the Stone Age from Denmark.]
On account of its singularity, we must not omit to mention an object made of bone, composed of a wide flat plate, from which spring seven or eight teeth of considerable length, and placed very close together; there is a kind of handle, much narrower, and terminating in a knob, like the top of a walking-stick.
This is probably one of the first combs which ever unravelled the thickly-grown heads of hair of primitive man.
[Illustration: Fig.
103.--Bone Comb from Denmark.]
It is a well-known fact that amber is very plentiful on the coasts of the Baltic.
Even in the Stone Age, it was already much appreciated by the northern tribes, who used to make necklaces of it, either by merely perforating the rough morsels of amber and stringing them in a row, or by cutting them into spherical or elliptical beads, as is the case nowadays.
Fig.
104 represents a necklace and also various other ornaments made of yellow amber, which have been drawn from specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
[Illustration: Fig.
104.--Necklace and various Ornaments of Amber.]
Although these northern tribes of the polished-stone epoch were such skilful workmen in flint, they were, nevertheless, but poor hands at pottery.
The _débris_ of vessels collected from the Danish _kitchen-middens_, and also from the peat-bogs and tombs, are in every way rough, and testify to a very imperfect knowledge of the art of moulding clay.
They may be said to mark the first efforts of a manufacturing art which is just springing into existence, which is seeking for the right path, although not, as yet, able to find it.
The art of pottery (if certain relics be relied on) was more advanced at a more ancient period, that is, during the reindeer epoch.
We have already stated that during the reindeer epoch there existed certain manufactories of weapons and tools, the productions of which were distributed all round the adjacent districts, although over a somewhat restricted circle.
In the epoch at which we have now arrived, certain _workshops_--for really this is the proper name to give them--acquired a remarkable importance, and their relations became of a much more extensive character.
In several of the Belgian caves, flints have been found which must have come from the celebrated workshop of Grand-Pressigny, situated in that part of the present France which forms the department of Indre-et-Loire, and, from their very peculiar character, are easily recognisable.
Commerce and manufacture had then emerged from their merely rudimentary state, and were entering into a period of activity implying a certain amount of civilisation.
The great principle of division of labour had already been put into practice, for there were special workshops both for the shaping and polishing of flints.
The most important of all the workshops which have been noticed in France is, unquestionably, that of Grand-Pressigny, which we have already mentioned.
It was discovered by Dr. Léveillé, the medical man of the place; but, to tell the truth, it is not so much in itself a centre of manufacture as a series of workshops distributed in the whole neighbourhood round Pressigny.
At the time of this discovery, that is in 1864, flints were found in thousands imbedded in the vegetable mould on the surface of the soil, over a superficies of 12 to 14 acres.
The Abbé Chevalier, giving an account of this curious discovery to the _Académie des Sciences_ at Paris, wrote: "It is impossible to walk a single step without treading on some of these objects."
The workshops of Grand-Pressigny furnish us with a considerable variety of instruments.
We find hatchets in all stages of manufacture, from the roughest attempt up to a perfectly polished weapon.
We find, also, long flakes or flint-knives cleft off with a single blow with astonishing skill.
All these objects, even the most beautiful among them, are nevertheless defective in some respect or other; hence it may be concluded that they were the refuse thrown aside in the process of manufacture.
In this way may be explained the accumulation of so many of these objects in the same spot.
There were likewise narrow and elongated points forming a kind of piercer, perfectly wrought; also scrapers, and saws of a particular type which seem to have been made in a special workshop.
They are short and wide, and have at each end a medial slot intended to receive a handle.
[Illustration: Fig.
105.--Nucleus in the Museum of Saint-Germain, from the Workshop of Grand-Pressigny.]
But the objects which are the most numerous of all, and those which obviate any doubt that Pressigny was once an important centre of the manufacture of flint, are the _nuclei_ (fig.
105), or the remnants of the lump of flint, from which the large blades known under the name of knives were cleft off.
Some of these lumps which we have seen in the Museum of St. Germain were as much as 11 and 13 inches in length; but the greater part did not exceed 7 inches.
The labourers of Touraine, who often turn up these flints with their plough-shares, call them _pounds of butter_, looking at the similarity of shape.
At the present day these _nuclei_ are plentiful in all the collections of natural history and geology.
A strange objection has been raised against the antiquity of the hatchets, knives, and weapons found at Pressigny.
M. Eugène Robert has asserted that these flints were nothing else but the refuse of the siliceous masses which, at the end of the last century and especially at the beginning of the present, were used in the manufacture of gun-flints!
The Abbé Bourgeois, M. Penguilly l'Haridon, and Mr. John Evans did not find much difficulty in proving the slight foundation there was for this criticism.
In the department of Loire-et-Cher, in which the gun-flint manufacture still exists, the residue from the process bears no resemblance whatever to the _nuclei_ of Pressigny; the fragments are much less in bulk, and do not present the same constantly-occurring and regular shapes.
Added to this, they are never chipped at the edges, like a great number of the flakes coming from the workshops of Touraine.
But another and altogether peremptory argument is that the flints of Pressigny-le-Grand are unfitted, on account of the texture, for the manufacture of gun-flints.
Moreover, the records of the Artillery Depôt, as remarked by M. Penguilly l'Haridon, librarian of the Artillery Museum, do not make mention of the locality of Pressigny having ever been worked for this purpose.
Lastly, the oldest inhabitants of the commune have testified that they never either saw or heard of any body of workmen coming into the district to work flints.
M. Eugène Robert's hypothesis, which MM.
Decaisne and Elie de Beaumont thought right to patronise, is, therefore, as much opposed to facts as to probability.
Very few polished flints are found in the workshops of Pressigny-le-Grand; it is, therefore, imagined that their existence commenced before the polished-stone epoch.
According to this idea, the _nuclei_ would belong to a transitional epoch between the period of chipped stone, properly so called, and that of polished stone.
The first was just coming to an end, but the second had not actually commenced.
In other words, most of the Pressigny flints have the typical shapes and style of cutting peculiar to the polished-stone age, but the polishing is wanting.
This operation was not practised in the workshops of Pressigny until some considerable period after they were founded, and were already in full operation.
In the neighbourhood of this locality a number of polishers have been found of a very remarkable character.
They are large blocks of sandstone (fig.
106), furrowed all over, or only on a portion of their surface, with grooves of various depths, in which objects might be polished by an energetic friction.
[Illustration: Fig.
106.--Polisher from Grand-Pressigny, both faces being shown.]
Some polishers of the same kind, which have been found in various departments, are rather different from the one we have just named.
Thus, one specimen which was found by M. Leguay in the environs of Paris, in the burial-places of Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, of which we give a representation further on, is provided not only with grooves but also hollows of a basin-like shape, and of some little depth.
The polishing of the flints was carried into effect by rubbing them against the bottom of these hollows, which were moistened by water, and no doubt contained siliceous dust of a harder nature than the stone which had to be polished.
We must here pause for a moment to remark that all these operations which were carried out by our ancestors in fashioning the flint could not fail to have presented certain difficulties, and must have required a remarkable development of intelligence and skill.
Working flints into shape, which appears at first sight a very simple matter, is, however, a rather complicated operation, on account of the properties of this mineral substance and the beds in which it lies.
In its natural state the flint presents itself in the shape of nearly round lumps, which are brittle, but nevertheless very hard, and which, like glass, can be split in any direction by a blow, so as to furnish scales with sharp edges.
In consequence of this circumstance, all that would be requisite in order to produce sharp objects is to cleave off flakes in the shape of a knife or poniard, by striking a flint, held in the left hand, with another and harder flint or hammer.
Instead of holding in the left hand the flint which was to be wrought, it might also be placed on a rest and, being held fast with the left hand, suitable blows might be applied to the stone.
We must not, however, omit to mention, that to enable the flint to be cut up into sharp splinters and to be broken in any desired direction, it is necessary for it to have been very recently extracted from the bosom of the earth; it must possess the humidity which is peculiar to it, with which it is impregnated when in its natural bed.
If pieces of flint are exposed to the open air they cannot afterwards be readily broken with any degree of regularity; they then afford nothing but shapeless and irregular chips, of an entirely different character from that which would be required in fashioning them.
This moisture was well known to the workmen who used to manufacture the gun-flints, and was called the _quarry damp_.
The necessity that the flint should be wrought when newly extracted from the earth, and that the stones should only be dug just in proportion as they were wanted, brought about as a proximate result the creation and working of mines and quarries, which are thus almost as ancient as humanity itself.
Being unable to make use of flints which had been dried in the air, and consequently rendered unfit for being wrought, the workmen were compelled to make excavations, and to construct galleries, either covered or exposed to the open air, to employ wooden battening, shores, supports; in short, to put in use the whole plant which is required for working a stone-quarry.
As, in order not to endanger the lives of the labourers, it was found necessary to prevent any downfalls, they were induced to follow out a certain methodical system in their excavations, by giving a sufficient thickness to the roofs of the galleries, by sinking shafts, by building breast-walls, and by adopting the best plan for getting out the useless _detritus_.
When, as was often the case, water came in so as to hinder the miners, it was necessary to get rid of it in order that the workmen should not be drowned.
It was also sometimes requisite that the galleries and the whole system of underground ways should be supplied with air.
Thus their labour in fashioning the flint must have led our ancestors to create the art of working quarries and mines.
It has been made a subject of inquiry, how the tribes of the Stone Age could produce, without the aid of any iron tool, the holes which are found in the flints; and how they could perforate these same flints so as to be able to fit in handles for the hatchets, poniards, and knives; in fact, lapidaries of the present day cannot bore through gun-flints without making use of diamond dust.
We are of opinion that the _bow_, which was employed by primitive man in producing fire by rubbing wood against wood, was also resorted to in the workshops for manufacturing stone implements and weapons for giving a rapid revolving motion to a flint drill which was sufficient to perforate the stone.
Certain experiments which have been made in our own day with very sharp arrow-heads which belonged to primitive man have proved that it is thus very possible to pierce fresh flints, if the action of the drill is assisted by the addition of some very hard dust which is capable of increasing the bite of the instrument.
This dust or powder, consisting of corundum or zircon, might have been found without any great difficulty by the men of the Stone Age.
These substances are, in fact, to be met with on the banks of rivers, their presence being betrayed by the golden spangles which glitter in the sand.
Thus the flint-drill, assisted by one of these powders, was quite adequate for perforating siliceous stones.
When it is brought to our knowledge that the workmen of the Black Forest thus bore into Bohemian granite in less than a minute, we shall not feel inclined to call this explanation in question.
[19] Fig.
107 attempts to give a representation of the workshop at Pressigny for shaping and polishing flints--in other words, a manufacturing workshop of the polished-stone epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
107.--The earliest Manufacture and Polishing of Flints.]
In this sketch we have depicted the polisher found by M. Leguay, of which we give a representation in fig.
108.
In this picture it was indispensable for us to show the operation of polishing, for the latter is a characteristic of the epoch of mankind which we are now describing, that is, the polished-stone period.
It must, in fact, be remarked that during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, and the reindeer epoch, stone instruments were not polished, they were purely and simply flakes or fragments of stone.
During the epoch at which we have now arrived, a great improvement took place in this kind of work, and stone instruments were polished.
It is therefore essential to call attention to the latter operation.
[Illustration: Fig.
108.--Polisher found by M.
Leguay.]
We think we ought to quote here the brief account M. Leguay has given of the polisher represented in our figure.
In his 'Note sur une Pierre à polir les Silex trouvée en Septembre, 1860, à la Varenne-Saint-Hilaire (Seine),' M. Leguay thus writes:-"Amongst the many monuments of the Stone Age which I have collected at Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, on the site of the ancient settlement which once existed there, there is one which has always struck me, not only by its good state of preservation, but also by the revelations which it affords us as to one of the principal manufactures of these tribes--the fabrication of flint weapons and utensils.
"This object is a stone for polishing and fashioning the finest kind of hatchets.
I discovered it in September, 1860, at a spot called _La Pierre au Prêtre_, along with several other monuments of primitive art which I intend before long to make public.
This stone is a rough sandstone of cubical shape, showing no trace whatever of having been hewn.
It is 13 inches in its greatest thickness, and measures 37 inches long by 21 wide, and, just as in many boulders, one of its faces is well adapted to the use for which it was employed.
"This is the face which was used for many long years for rubbing and polishing the weapons made in the place, the remains of which are still found in small quantities in the neighbourhood, and abound in the burial-places, where they have been deposited as votive offerings.
"Almost the whole of its surface is occupied.
In the centre is a basin presenting an oval surface 25 inches the long way, and 12 inches the narrow way.
The stone, which has been considerably worn away in consequence of long use, has been rubbed off to a central depth of about 1 inch; this portion must have been used for rubbing the larger objects after they had been roughly shaped by chipping.
The length of the basin allowed a motion of considerable length to be given to the stone which was being worked, at the same time giving facilities to the workman for the exercise of all his strength.
Added to this, this cavity enabled the almond-like shape to be given to the objects--a form which they nearly all present.
"Either in front or to the right, according to the position in which the observer stands, and almost touching the edge of this basin, there is a hole deeply hollowed in the stone, being 30 inches long; it extends along almost the whole length of the sandstone, with the maximum breadth of about 1 inch, and presents the shape of a very elongated spindle hollowed out to a depth of something less than half an inch in the centre, which tapers off to nothing at the two ends.
"The wear of the stone and the shape of this groove point out its intention.
It must have been used to reduce the edges or the sides of the hatchet, which after the chipping and flat polishing were left either too thick or too sharp for a handle to be easily fitted to them.
Added to this, it smoothed down the roughnesses caused by chipping, which it replaced by a round form of no great thickness, which was again and again rubbed flatly on the stone to give it a square and sharp-edged level.
This last operation took place in a basin, and it gave to the hatchet a curve in a lengthwise direction which is by no means ungraceful.
"The thinning off of the edges of the groove was not an immaterial matter.
It not only assisted in forming the above-named curve, but also prevented the cutting edge being distorted, and avoided the need of subsequent repolishing, which spoiled the object by rubbing it away too much.
"It must not be for a moment imagined that the edge of the hatchet was made in this groove.
Examination proves the contrary, and that it was done flatwise while polishing the rest of the object; and if sometimes its thickness did not allow this, it was preliminarily done, and then finished in the general polishing.
"But although this basin, and its accompanying groove, on account of their dimensions, acted very well for polishing the large hatchets, the case was different with the smaller ones.
This is the reason why two other smaller basins, and also a small groove, were made on the flat part of the stone by the side of the others.
"These two basins were placed at two corners of the face of the stone, but still parallel to the larger basin and also to the larger groove, so as to be convenient for the requirements of the workman engaged in polishing without compelling him to shift his position; one is 10 inches, and the other 13 inches in length, with a mean breadth of about 2-1/2 inches.
They are both in the shape of a rather narrow almond, and end almost in a point, which seems to show that they also were used in polishing somewhat narrow objects--perhaps to set right the edges of hatchets, in which the rubbing in the larger basin had produced cavities prejudicial to the perfection of the faces.
"The small groove, placed very near the larger one, is 9 inches long.
It is the same shape as the other, but is not so deep, and scarcely half an inch wide.
"Not far from the end of this latter groove, at the point where it approaches the larger one, there are traces of a groove scarcely commenced.
"Lastly, the flat portions of the stone which are not occupied by the basins and grooves, were sometimes used for touching up the polish, or even for smoothing various objects.
"Thus, as we see, this polishing-stone, which is one of the most complete in existence, has on it three basins of different sizes, two well-defined grooves, and one only just sketched out.
It would serve for finishing off all the instruments that could be required; but, nevertheless, two other sandstones of moderate size were found near it; one round, and the other of a spindle-like shape; these, which were worn and rubbed all over their surfaces, must also have been used in polishing objects.
"Finding these stones was, however, a thing of frequent occurrence in several spots of this locality, where I often met with them; they were of all sizes and all shapes, and perfectly adapted for polishing small flints, needles, and the cutting edges of knives, deposited with them in the sepulchres.
"This polishing-stone, which is thickly covered with _dendrites_ or incrustations, must have been in use at the time it was abandoned.
I found it about 2 feet below the surface of the soil, in which it was turned upside down; that is, the basin lay next the earth.
The few monuments that were with it--one among which I looked upon as an idol roughly carved in a block of sandstone--were all likewise turned upside down.
There had been sepulchres in the neighbourhood, but they had been violated; and the displaced stones, as well as the bones themselves, only served to point out the presence of the former burial-place."
The polishing of stone instruments was effected by rubbing the object operated upon in a cavity hollowed out in the centre of the polisher, in which cavity a little water was poured, mixed with zircon or corundum powder, or, perhaps, merely with oxide of iron, which is used by jewellers in carrying out the same operation.
It is really surprising to learn what an enormous quantity of flints could be prepared by a single workman, provided with the proper utensils.
For information on this point, it is requisite to know what could be done by our former flint-workers in the departments of Indre and Loire-et-Cher, who are, in fact, the descendants of the workmen of the Stone Age.
Dolomieu, a French naturalist, desired at the beginning of the century to acquaint himself with the quantity which these workmen could produce, and at the same time to thoroughly understand the process which they employed in manufacturing gun-flints.
By visiting the workshops of the flint-workers, M. Dolomieu ascertained that the first shape which the workmen gave to the flint was that of a many-sided prism.
In the next place, five or six blows with the hammer, which were applied in a minute, were sufficient to cleave off from the mass certain fragments as exact in shape, with faces as smooth, outlines as straight, and angles as sharp, as if the stone had been wrought by a lapidary's wheel--an operation which, in the latter case, would have required an hour's handiwork.
All that was requisite, says Dolomieu, is that the stones should be fresh, and devoid of flaws or heterogeneous matter.
When operating upon a good kind of flint, freshly extracted from the ground, a workman could prepare 1000 proper flakes of flint in a day, turning out 500 gun-flints, so that in three days he would perfectly finish 1000 ready for sale.
In 1789, the Russian army was furnished with gun-flints from Poland.
The manufactory was established at Kisniew.
At this period, according to Dolomieu, 90,000 of these gun-flints were made in two months.
Besides those at Grand-Pressigny, some other pre-historic workshops have been pointed out in France.
We may mention those of Charente, discovered by M. de Rochebrune; also those of Poitou, and lastly, the field of Diorières, at Chauvigny (Loire-et-Cher), which appears to have been a special workshop for polishing flint instruments.
There is, in fact, not far from Chauvigny, in the same department, a rock on which twenty-five furrows, similar to those in the polishing-stones, are still visible; on which account the inhabitants of the district have given it the name of the "Scored Rock."
It is probable that this rock was used for polishing the instruments which were sculptured at Diorières.
The same kind of open-air workshops for the working of flints have also been discovered in Belgium.
The environs of Mons are specially remarkable in this respect.
At Spiennes, particularly, there can be no doubt that an important manufactory of wrought flints existed during the polished-stone epoch.
A considerable number of hatchets and other implements have been found there; all of them being either unfinished, defective, or scarcely commenced.
We here give a representation (fig.
109) of a spear-head which came from this settlement.
[Illustration: Fig.
109.--Spear-head from Spiennes.]
Sometimes these workshops were established in caverns, and not in the open air.
We are told this by M. J. Fournet, a naturalist of Lyons, in his work entitled, 'Influence du Mineur sur la Civilisation.'
"For a very long time past," says M. Fournet, "the caves of Mentone had been known to the inhabitants of the district, on account of the accumulation of _débris_ contained in them, a boxful of which were sent to Paris, before 1848, by the Prince of Monaco; the contents of it, however, were never subjected to any proper explanation.
Since this date, M. Grand, of Lyons, to whom I am indebted for a collection of specimens from these caves, carefully made several excavations, by which he was enabled to ascertain that the most remarkable objects are only to be met with at a certain depth in the clayey deposit with which the soil of these caves is covered.
All the instruments are rough and rudimentary in their character, and must, consequently, be assigned to the first commencement of the art.
Nevertheless, among the flints some agates were found, which, in my opinion, certainly came from the neighbourhood of Frejus; and with them also some pieces of hyaline quartz in the shape of prisms terminated by their two ordinary pyramids.
We have a right to suppose that these crystals, which resembled the _Meylan diamonds_ found near Grenoble, did not come there by chance, and that their sharp points, when fixed in a handle and acting as drills, were used for boring holes in stone."
Flint was not, however, the only substance used during this epoch in the manufacture of stone-hatchets, instruments and tools.
In the caves of France, Belgium and Denmark a considerable number of hatchets have been found, made of gneiss, diorite, ophite, fibrolite, jade, and various other very hard mineral substances, which were well adapted to the purpose required and the use to which they were put.
Among the most remarkable we may mention several jade hatchets which were found in the department of Gers, and ornamented with small hooks on each side of the edge.
One of these beautiful jade hatchets (fig.
110), the delineation of which is taken from the specimen in the Museum of Saint-Germain, was found in the department of Seine-et-Oise; it has a sculptured ridge in the middle of each face.
[Illustration: Fig.
110.--Polished Jade Hatchet in the Museum of Saint-Germain.]
But neither flint, gneiss, nor diorite exist in every country.
For these stones some less hard substance was then substituted.
In Switzerland the instruments and tools were generally made of pebbles which had been drifted down by the streams.
They were fashioned by breaking them with other stones, by rubbing them on sandstone, or by sawing them with toothed blades of flint according to their cohesive nature.
In some localities also objects of large size were made of serpentine, basalts, lavas, jades, and other rocks chosen on account of their extreme cohesiveness.
Manual skill had, however, attained such a pitch of perfection among the workmen of this period, in consequence of their being habituated to one exclusive kind of labour, that the nature of the stone became a matter of indifference to them.
The hammer, with the proper use of which our workmen are almost unacquainted, was a marvellous instrument in the hands of our ancestors; with it they executed prodigies of workmanship, which seem as if they ought to have been reserved for the file and grindstone of the lapidary of the present day.
We shall not, perhaps, surprise our readers if we add that as certain volcanic lavas, especially obsidian, fracture with the same regularity and the same facility as the flint, obsidian was employed by the natives of America as a material for making sharp instruments.
The ancient quarries whence the Indians procured this rock for the manufacture of instruments and tools, were situate at the _Cerro de Navajas_--that is, the _Mountain of Knives_--in Mexico.
M. H. de Saussure, the descendant of the great geologist, was fortunate enough to meet with, at this spot, pieces of mineral which had merely been begun upon, and allowed a series of double-edged blades to be subsequently cut off them; these were always to be obtained by a simple blow skilfully applied.
According to M. H. de Saussure, the first fashioning of these implements was confined to producing a large six-sided prism, the vertical corners of which were regularly and successively hewn off, until the piece left, or _nucleus_, became too small for the operation to be further continued.
Hernandez, the Spanish historian, states that he has seen 100 blades an hour manufactured in this way.
Added to this, the ancient aborigines of Peru, and the Guanches of Teneriffe, likewise carved out of obsidian both darts and poniards.
And, lastly, we must not omit to mention that M. Place, one of the explorers of Nineveh, found on the site of this ancient city, knives of obsidian, supposed to be used for the purpose of circumcision.
Having considered the flint instruments peculiar to the polished-stone epoch, we must now turn our attention to those made of stag's horn.
The valley of the Somme, which has furnished such convincing proof of the co-existence of man with the great mammals of extinct species, is a no less precious repository for instruments of stag's horn belonging to the polished-stone epoch.
The vast peat-bogs of this region are the localities where these relics have been chiefly found.
Boucher de Perthes collected a considerable number of them in the neighbourhood of Abbeville.
These peat-bogs are, as is well known, former marshes which have been gradually filled up by the growth of peat-moss (sphagnum), which, mixed with fallen leaves, wood, &c., and being slowly rotted by the surrounding water, became converted after a certain time into that kind of combustible matter which is called peat.
The bogs in the valley of the Somme in some places attain to the depth of 34 feet.
In the lower beds of this peat are found the weapons, the tools, and the ornaments of the polished-stone epoch.
Among these ancient relics we must mention one very interesting class; it is that formed by the association of two distinct component parts, such as stone and stag's horn, or stone and bone.
The hatchets of this type are particularly remarkable; they consist of a piece of polished flint half buried in a kind of sheath of stag's horn, either polished or rough as the case may be (fig.
111).
[Illustration: Fig.
111.--Polished Flint Hatchet, with a Sheath of Stag's Horn fitted for a Handle.]
The middle of this sheath is generally perforated with a round or oval hole intended to receive a handle of oak, birch, or some other kind of wood adapted for such a use.
Fig.
112, taken from the illustration in Boucher de Perthes' work ('Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes'), represents this hatchet fitted into a handle made of oak.
[Illustration: Fig.
112.--Flint Hatchet fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath, having an Oak Handle, from Boucher de Perthes' illustration.]
It is difficult to understand how it was that a hatchet of this kind did not fall out of its sheath in consequence of any moderately violent blow; for it seems as if there was nothing to hold it in its place.
This observation especially applies to hatchets, the whole length of which--even the portion covered by the sheath--was polished; for the latter would certainly slide out of their casing with ease.
The fact is, that complete specimens are seldom found, and, generally speaking, the flints are separated from their sheaths.
With regard to the handles, the nature of the material they were made from was unfavourable to their preservation through a long course of centuries; it is, therefore, only exceptionally that we meet with them, and even then they are always defaced.
Fig.
113 is given by Boucher de Perthes, in his 'Antiquités Celtiques,' as the representation of an oaken handle found by him.
A number of these sheaths have been found, which were provided at the end opposite to the stone hatchet with strong and pointed teeth.
These are boar's tusks, firmly buried in the stag's horn.
These instruments therefore fulfilled a double purpose; they cut or crushed with one end and pierced with the other.
Sheaths are also found which are not only provided with the boar's tusks, but are hollowed out at each end so as to hold two flint hatchets at once.
This is represented in fig.
114 from one of Boucher de Perthes' illustrations.
[Illustration: Fig.
113.--Hatchet-handle made of Oak.]
[Illustration: Fig.
114.--Stag's-horn Sheath, open at each end so as to receive two Hatchets.]
The hatchet fitted into a sheath of stag's horn which we here delineate (fig.
115), was picked up in the environs of Aerschot, and is an object well worthy of note; it is now in the Museum of Antiquities at Brussels.
Its workmanship is perfect, and superior to that of similar instruments found in the peat-bogs of the valley of the Somme.
[Illustration: Fig.
115.--Polished Flint Hatchet from Belgium, fitted into a Stag's-horn Sheath.]
Stag's horn was often used alone as a material for the manufacture of tools which were not intended to endure any very hard work; among these were instruments of husbandry and gardening.
We here give representations (figs.
116, 117, 118) from Boucher de Perthes' illustrations, of certain implements made of stag's horn which appear to have had this purpose in view.
It is remarked that they are not all perforated for holding a handle; in some cases, a portion of the stag's antler formed the handle.
[Illustration: Fig.
116.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]
[Illustration: Fig.
117.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]
[Illustration: Fig.
118.--Gardening Tool made of Stag's Horn (after Boucher de Perthes).]
In the course of his explorations in the peat-bogs of Abbeville, M. Boucher de Perthes found numerous flakes of flint of irregular shapes, the use of which he was unable to explain.
But there have also been discovered in the same deposits some long bones belonging to mammals--tibia, femur, radius, ulna--all cut in a uniform way, either in the middle or at the ends; he was led to imagine that these bones might have been the handles intended to hold the flints.
In order to assure himself that this idea was well founded, he took one of the bones and a stone which came out of the peat, and, having put them together, he found he had made a kind of chisel, well-adapted for cutting, scooping-out, scratching and polishing horn or wood.
He tried this experiment again several times, and always with full success.
If the stone did not fit firmly into the bone, one or two wooden wedges were sufficient to steady it.
After this, Boucher de Perthes entertained no doubt whatever that these bones had been formerly employed as handles for flint implements.
The same handle would serve for several stones, owing to the ease with which the artisan could take one flint out and replace it with another, by the aid of nothing but these wooden wedges.
This is the reason why, in the peat-bogs, flints of this sort are always much more plentiful than the bone handles.
We must also state that it seems as if they took little or no trouble in repairing the flints when they were blunted, knowing how easy it would be to replace them.
They were thrown away, without further care; hence their profusion.
These handles are made of extremely hard bone, from which we may conclude that they were applied to operations requiring solid tools.
Most of them held the flint at one end only; but some were open at both ends, and would serve as handles for two tools at once.
Figs.
119 and 120 represent some of these flint tools in bone handles--the plates are taken from those in Boucher de Perthes' work.
[Illustration: Fig.
119.--Flint Tool in a Bone Handle.]
[Illustration: Fig.
120.--Flint Tool with Bone Handle.]
Generally speaking, these handles gave but little trouble to those who made them.
They were content with merely breaking the bone across, without even smoothing down the fracture, and then enlarging the medullary hollow which naturally existed; next they roughly squared or rounded the end which was intended to be grasped by the hand.
In fig.
121, we delineate one of these bone handles which is much more carefully fashioned; it has been cut off smooth at the open end, and the opposite extremity has been rounded off into a knob, which is ornamented with a design.
[Illustration: Fig.
121.--Ornamented Bone Handle.]
During the polished-stone epoch, as during that which preceded it, the teeth of certain mammals were used in the way of ornament.
But they were not content, as heretofore, with merely perforating them with holes and hanging them in a string round their necks; they were now wrought with considerable care.
The teeth of the wild boar were those chiefly selected for this purpose.
They were split lengthwise, so as to render them only half their original thickness, and were then polished and perforated with holes in order to string them.
In the peat-mosses of the valley of the Somme a number of boars' tusks have been found thus fashioned.
The most curious discovery of this kind which has been made, was that of the object of which we give a sketch in fig.
122.
It was found in 1834, near Pecquigny (Somme), and is composed of nineteen boars' tusks split into two halves, as we before mentioned, perfectly polished, and perforated at each end with a round hole.
Through these holes was passed a string of some tendinous substance, the remains of which were, it is stated, actually to be seen at the time of the discovery.
A necklace of this kind must have been of considerable value, as it would have necessitated a large amount of very tedious and delicate work.
[Illustration: Fig.
122.--Necklace made of Boars' Tusks, longitudinally divided.]
In the peat-bogs near Brussels polished flints have likewise been found, associated with animal bones, and two specimens of the human _humerus_, belonging to two individuals.
The peat-bogs of Antwerp, in which were found a human frontal bone, characterised by its great thickness, and its small surface, have also furnished fine specimens of flint knives (fig.
123), which are in no way inferior to the best of those discovered at Grand-Pressigny.
[Illustration: Fig.
123.--Flint Knife, from the Peat-bogs near Antwerp.]
On none of the instruments of bone or horn, of which we have been speaking, are to be found the designs which we have described as being the work of man during the reindeer epoch.
The artistic instinct seems to have entirely vanished.
Perhaps the diluvial catastrophe, which destroyed so many victims, had, as one of its results, the effect of effacing the feeling of art, by forcing men to concentrate their ideas on one sole point--the care of providing for their subsistence and defence.
A quantity of remains, gathered here and there, bear witness to the fact that in the polished-stone epoch the use of pottery was pretty widely spread.
Most of the specimens are, as we have said, nothing but attempts of a very rough character, but still they testify to a certain amount of progress.
The ornamentation is more delicate and more complicated.
We notice the appearance of open-work handles, and projections perforated for the purpose of suspension.
In short, there is a perceptible, though but preliminary step made towards the real creations of art.
In the caves of Ariége, MM.
Garrigou and Filhol found some remains of ancient pottery of clay provided with handles, although of a shape altogether primitive.
Among the fragments of pottery found by these _savants_, there was one which measured 11 inches in height, and must have formed a portion of a vase 20 inches high.
This vessel, which was necessarily very heavy, had been hung to cords; this was proved by finding on another portion of the same specimen three holes which had been perforated in it.
_Agriculture._--We have certain evidence that man, during the polished-stone epoch, was acquainted with husbandry, or, in other words, that he cultivated cereals.
MM.
Garrigou and Filhol found in the caves of Ariége more than twenty mill-stones, which could only have been used in grinding corn.
These stones are from 8 to 24 inches in diameter.
The tribes, therefore, which, during the polished-stone epoch, inhabited the district now called Ariége, were acquainted with the cultivation of corn.
In 1869, Dr. Foulon-Menard published an article intended to describe a stone found at Penchasteau, near Nantes, in a tomb belonging to the Stone Age.
[20] This stone is 24 inches wide, and hollowed out on its upper face.
It was evidently used for crushing grain with the help of a stone roller, or merely a round pebble, which was rolled up and down in the cavity.
The meal obtained by this pressure and friction made its way down the slope in the hollowing out of the stone, and was caught in a piece of matting, or something of the kind.
To enable our readers to understand the fact that an excavation made in a circular stone formed the earliest corn-mill in these primitive ages, we may mention that, even in our own time, this is the mode of procedure practised among certain savage tribes in order to crush various seeds and corn.
[Illustration: Fig.
124.--Primitive Corn-mill.]
In the 'Voyage du Mississippi à l'Océan,' by M. Molhausen, we read:-"The principal food of the Indians consisted of roasted cakes of maize and wheat, the grains of which had been pulverised _between two stones_.
"[21] In Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi (Central Africa), it is stated that "the corn-mills of the Mangajas, Makalolos, Landines and other tribes are composed of a block of granite or syenite, sometimes even of mica-schist, 15 to 18 inches square by 5 or 6 inches thick, and a piece of quartz, or some other rock of equal hardness about the size of a half-brick; one of the sides of this substitute for a millstone is convex, so as to fit into a hollow of a trough-like shape made in the large block, which remains motionless.
When the woman wants to grind any corn, she kneels down, and, taking in both hands the convex stone, she rubs it up and down in the hollow of the lower stone with a motion similar to that of a baker pressing down his dough and rolling it in front of him.
Whilst rubbing it to and fro, the housewife leans all her weight on the smaller stone, and every now and then places a little more corn in the trough.
The latter is made sloping, so that the meal as soon as it is made falls down into a cloth fixed to catch it."
[Illustration: Fig.
125.--The Art of Bread-making in the Stone Age.]
Such, therefore, was the earliest corn-mill.
We shall soon see it reappear in another form; two mill-stones placed one over the other, one being set in motion above the other by means of a wooden handle.
This is the corn-mill of the bronze epoch.
This type maintained its place down to historic times, as it constituted the earliest kind of mill employed by the Roman agriculturist.
In order to represent the existence of agriculture during the polished-stone epoch, we have annexed a delineation of a woman grinding corn into meal in the primitive mill (fig.
125).
In the same figure may be noticed the way of preparing the meal coming from the mill for making a rough kind of cake.
The children are heating in the fire some flat circular stones.
When these stones are sufficiently heated, they rapidly withdraw them from the fire, using for the purpose two damp sticks; they then place on the stones a little of the meal mixed with water.
The heat of the stones sufficed to bake the meal and form a sort of cake or biscuit.
We may here state, in order to show that we are not dealing with a mere hypothesis, that it is just in this way that, in the poor districts of Tuscany, the _polenta_ is prepared even in the present day.
The dough made of chestnut-meal, moistened with water, is cooked between flat stones that are placed one over the other in small piles as portrayed in the annexed plate.
In the background of the same sketch we see animals, reduced to the state of domestic cattle, being driven towards the group at work.
By this particular feature we have wished to point out that the polished-stone epoch was also that of the domestication of animals, and that even at this early period the sheep, the dog and the horse had been tamed by man, and served him either as auxiliaries or companions.
The traces of agriculture which we have remarked on as existing in the caves of Ariége, are also found in other parts of France.
Round the hearths in the department of Puy-de-Dôme, M. Pommerol discovered carbonised wheat intermingled with pottery and flint instruments.
The men of the period we are now considering no longer devoted themselves exclusively to the pursuits of hunting and fishing.
They now began to exercise the noble profession of agriculture, which was destined to be subsequently the chief source of national wealth.
_Navigation._--The first origin of the art of navigation must be ascribed to the polished-stone epoch.
With regard to this subject, let us pay attention to what is said on the point by M. G. de Mortillet, curator at the Archæological and Pre-historic Museum of Saint-Germain--one of the best-informed men we have in all questions relating to the antiquity of man.
In M. de Mortillet's opinion, navigation, both marine and inland, was in actual existence during the polished-stone epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
126.--The earliest Navigators.]
The earliest boats that were made by man consisted simply of great trunks of trees, shaped on the outside, and hollowed out in the interior.
They were not provided with any rests or rowlocks for the oars or paddles, which were wielded by both hands.
In hollowing out the tree they used both their stone implements and also the action of fire.
In the earliest boats, the trunk of the tree, cut through at the two ends as well as their imperfect tools allowed, preserved its original outward form.
The boat, in fact, was nothing but the trunk of a tree first burnt out and then chipped on the inside by some cutting instrument, that is, by the stone-hatchet.
Some improvement subsequently took place in making them.
The outside of the tree was also chipped, and its two ends, instead of being cut straight through, were made to terminate in a point.
In order to give it more stability in the water and to prevent it from capsizing, it was dressed equally all over, and the bottom of the canoe was scooped out.
Cross-stays were left in the interior to give the boat more solidity, and perhaps, also, to serve as a support to the back, or, more probably, to the feet of the rowers, who sat in the bottom of the canoe.
Sails must soon have been added to these means of nautical progression.
But it would be a difficult matter to fix any precise date for this important discovery, which was the point of transition between elementary and primitive navigation, and more important voyages.
This progress could not have been made without the help of metals.
In an article entitled 'Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche,' M. de Mortillet passes in review all the discoveries, which have been made in different countries, of the earliest boats belonging to pre-historic man.
After stating that the Museum of Copenhagen contains drawings of three ancient canoes, he goes on to say:-"The first canoe is the half-trunk of a tree 17 inches wide, cut straight at the two ends, about 7 feet in length, and hollowed out in a trough-like shape.
This canoe much resembles that of Switzerland.
"The second was about 10 feet in length, one end terminating in a point, the other more rounded.
It was formed of the trunk of a tree hollowed out into two compartments, a kind of cross-stay or seat being left at a point about one-third of the length from the widest end.
"The third canoe, No.
295, likewise made of the trunk of a tree, was much longer, having a length of at least 13 feet, and was terminated by a point at both ends.
At the sharpest end, the hollow is finished off squarely, and there is also a small triangular seat at the extremity.
Two cross-stays were left in the interior.
"These three canoes are classed in the bronze series; a note of interrogation or doubt is, however, affixed to the two latter.
"Ireland, like Scandinavia, has a history which does not go back very far into the remote past; like Scandinavia, too, Ireland has been one of the first to collect with care not only the monuments, but even the slightest relics of remote antiquity and of pre-historic times.
The Royal Irish Academy has collected at Dublin a magnificent Museum, and the praiseworthy idea has also been put in practice of publishing a catalogue illustrated with 626 plates.
"In these collections there are three ancient canoes.
The first is about 23 feet long, 31 inches wide, and 12 inches deep, and is hollowed out of the trunk of an oak, which must have been at least 4-1/2 feet in diameter.
This boat, which came from the bogs of Cahore on the coast of Wexford, is roughly squared underneath.
One of the ends is rounded and is slightly raised; the other is cut across at right angles, and closed with a piece let in and fitted into grooves which were caulked with bark.
In the interior there are three cross-stays cut out of the solid oak.
"The interior, at the time the canoe was discovered, contained a wooden vessel, intended to bale out the boat, and two rollers, probably meant to assist in conveying it down to the sea.
"The second is a canoe made of one piece of oak, rather more than 23 feet long, about 12 inches wide, and 8 inches deep.
It terminates in a point at both ends, and contains three cross-stays cut out of the solid wood, and a small terminal triangular seat.
"The third, likewise made of one piece, is rather more than 20 feet long and about 21 inches wide.
On each side the wood is cut out so as to receive a seat.
This boat appears less ancient than the others, although these may not have belonged to any very remote antiquity.
In fact, Ware states that in his time there were still to be seen on some of the Irish rivers canoes hollowed out of a single trunk of oak.
"It is also well known that the lacustrine habitations constructed on the artificial islands called _Crannoges_, existed to a late period in Ireland.
All the boats found round these island-dwellings are canoes made all in one piece and hollowed out of the trunks of large trees.
"The trough-shaped canoe, consisting merely of the trunk of a tree cut straight through at the two ends, and in no way squared on the outside, also exists in Ireland.
A very singular variety has been found in the county of Monaghan;[22] at the two ends are two projections or handles, which were probably used for carrying the boat from one place to another, or to draw it up upon the beach after a voyage.
"According to Mr. John Buchanan, quoted by Sir C. Lyell,[23] at least seventeen canoes have been found in the low ground along the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow.
Mr. Buchanan examined several of them before they were dug out.
Five of them were found buried in the silt under the streets of Glasgow.
One canoe was discovered in a vertical position, with the prow upwards, as if it had foundered in a tempest; it contained no small quantity of sea-shells.
Twelve other canoes were found about 100 yards from the river, at the average depth of about 19 feet below the surface of the ground, or about 7 feet below high-water mark.
A few only of them were found at a depth of no more than 4 or 5 feet, and consequently more than 20 feet above the present level of the sea.
One was stuck into the sand at an angle of 45°; another had been turned over and lay keel upwards; the others were in a horizontal position, as if they had sunk in still water.
"Almost every one of these ancient boats had been formed of a single trunk of oak, and hollowed out with some blunt instrument, probably stone hatchets, assisted also by the action of fire.
A few of them presented clean-made cuts, evidently produced by a metallic tool.
Two of them were constructed of planks.
The most elaborate of the number bore the traces of square metal nails, which, however, had entirely disappeared.
In one canoe was found a diorite hatchet, and at the bottom of another, a cork bung, which certainly implies relations with southern France, Spain, or Italy.
"The Swiss lakes, with their lacustrine habitations, have furnished numerous specimens of canoes.
Dr. Keller, in his fifth Report on Lake-Dwellings (plate X. fig.
23), represents a canoe from Robenhausen; it is the half trunk of a tree 12 feet long and 29 inches wide, hollowed out to a depth of from 6 to 7 inches only.
Taking the centre as the widest part, this trunk has been chipped off so as to taper towards the two points which are rounded.
It is, however, very probable that the whole of this work was executed with stone implements; for the primitive settlement of Robenhausen, situated in a peat-bog near the small lake Pfæffikon in the canton of Zurich, although very rich in many kinds of objects, has not, up to the present time, furnished us with any metal instruments.
"In his first report (plate IV.
fig.
21), Dr. Keller had given the sketch of another canoe which came from the Lake of Bienne.
Like the first, mentioned by M. Worsaae, it is the half of the trunk of a tree cut almost straight through, its two ends hollowed out inside in the shape of a trough, the exterior being left entirely unwrought.
"Professor Desor mentions several canoes found in the Lake of Bienne.
One of them, near the island Saint-Pierre, was still full of stones.
According to M. Desor the builders of the lacustrine habitations during the polished-stone epoch, in order to consolidate the piles which were intended to support their dwellings, were accustomed to bank them up with stones which they fetched in boats from the shore; the bottom of the lake being completely devoid of them.
The canoe found at the isle of Saint-Pierre had therefore sunk to the bottom with its cargo, and thus may be dated back to the polished-stone epoch.
M. Troyon[24] gives some still more circumstantial details as to this canoe.
It is partly buried in the mud at the northern angle of the isle, and is made of a single piece of the trunk of an oak of large dimensions; it is not much less than 49 feet long with a breadth of from 3-1/2 feet to 4 feet.
"M. Desor, in his _Palafittes_, informs us that the Museum of Neuchâtel has lately been enriched by the addition of a canoe which was discovered in the lake; unfortunately, it was dreadfully warped in drying.
"Also M. Troyon, in his 'Habitations Lacustres,' speaks of several canoes at Estavayer and Morges.
"Estavayer is situated on the Lake of Neuchâtel.
There are two settlements near it, one of the Stone Age, and one of the bronze age.
One canoe is still lying at the bottom of the lake, near these settlements.
Another was brought out of the water by the fishermen some years ago; it was about 10 feet in length, and 2 feet in width.
The end which had been preserved was cut to a point and slightly turned upwards.
"Morges is on the Lake of Geneva, in the Canton of Vaud.
M. Forel discovered there two interesting settlements of the bronze age.
Two canoes were found.
According to M. Troyon, one of them which had been carried up on to the bank was not long before it was destroyed.
It was formed of the trunk of an oak, hollowed out like a basin.
The other still lay near some piles in 13 to 15 feet of water.
One portion of it is buried in the sand, the other part, which is not covered, measures about 10 feet in length by 2 feet in width.
It terminates in a point and has been cut out so as to provide a kind of seat, taken out of the thickness of the wood at the end, just as in the third canoe represented in the catalogue of the Copenhagen Museum.
"In France, too, several canoes have been found which date back to pre-historic times.
"On the 6th of January, 1860, the labourers who were working at the fortifications which the engineers were making at Abbeville found a canoe in the place called Saint-Jean-des-Prés, on the left bank of the canal; it was discovered in the peat, 36 feet below the road and about 220 yards from the railway station.
It was made out of a single stick of oak and was about 22 feet in length; its ends were square and cut in a slope, so that its upper surface was 8 feet longer than its bottom, which was flattened off to a width of about 14 inches.
The greatest width of its upper surface, the widest part being placed at about one-third of its length, measured nearly 3 feet; from this point the canoe contracted in width, and was not more than 18 inches in width at the furthest end.
Now, as no tree exists which diminishes to this extent in diameter on so short a length, we must conclude that the trunk which formed the canoe must have been shaped outside.
"Two projections about 4 inches in thickness, placed 6-1/2 feet from the narrowest end, and forming one piece with the sides and the bottom, which in this part are very thick, left between them an empty space which was probably intended to fit against the two sides of a piece of wood cut square at the bottom and meant to serve as a mast.
The deepest internal hollow had not more than 10 inches in rise, and the side, which at the upper part was not more than an inch in thickness, followed the natural curve of the trunk, and united with the much thicker portion at the bottom.
This canoe, although it was completely uncovered and still remained in a very good state of preservation, has not been got out from the place in which it lay.
"In 1834, another canoe was discovered at Estreboeuf, 33 feet long, about 21 inches wide, and 18 inches deep.
The bottom was flat, the sides cut vertically both within and without, which gave it nearly the shape of a squared trough.
In its widest part it bore some signs of having carried a mast.
It was conveyed to the Museum at Abbeville and became completely rotten; nothing now is left but shapeless remains.
"The Abbé Cochet relates that between 1788 and 1800, during the excavation of the basin of _La Barre_, at Havre, at 11 feet in depth, a canoe was discovered, more than 44 feet in length, and hollowed out of one trunk of a tree.
The two ends were pointed and solid, and the interior was strengthened with curved stays formed out of the solid wood.
This canoe was found to be made of elm and was hollowed out to a depth of nearly 4 feet.
It was in so good a state of preservation that it bore being carried to a spot behind the engineer's house on the south jetty; but when it was deposited there, it gradually wasted away by the successive action of the rain and sun.
"The same archæologist also mentions another canoe, with a keel of from 16 to 20 feet long, which was discovered in the year 1680, at Montéviliers, in the filled-up ditches known under the name of La Bergue.
"The Archæological Museum of Dijon also contains a canoe found in the gravel in the bed of the Loue, on the boundaries of the department of Jura, between Dôle and Salins.
It is made of a single colossal trunk of oak, shaped, in M. Baudot's opinion, by means of fire.
Its present length is 17 feet, and its width, 2 feet 4 inches; but it has become much less in the process of drying.
Some iron braces which were fixed to keep the wood in position plainly showed that the width had diminished at least 6 inches.
In the interior, the traces of two seats or supports, which had been left in the solid wood in order to give strength to the canoe, might be very distinctly seen.
The first was about a yard from one end, the other 5-1/2 feet from the other.
Both extremities terminate in a point, one end being much sharper and longer than the other.
"At the Museum of Lyons there is a canoe which was found in the gravel of the Rhone, near the bridge of Cordon, in the department of Ain.
It is 41 feet in length, and hollowed out of a single trunk of oak tapering off at the two ends.
The middle of it is squared, and the interior is strengthened by two braces left in the solid wood.
"Lastly, we must mention the canoe that was dug out of the bed of the Seine in Paris, and presented by M. Forgeais to the Emperor.
It is now in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
It was made of a single trunk of oak and had been skilfully wrought on the outside, terminating in a point at both ends.
This canoe was bedded in the mud and gravel at the extremity of the _Cité_, on the Notre-Dame side.
Close by a worked flint was met with, and various bronze weapons; among others, a helmet and several swords were also found.
In the beds of rivers objects belonging to different epochs readily get mixed up.
This flint appears to have accidentally come thither; the bronze arms, on the contrary, seem to mark the date of the canoe.
"[25] We have previously spoken of the _primitive workshop of human industry_, of which, indeed, we gave a design.
In contrast to this peaceful picture, we may also give a representation of the evidences which have been preserved even to our own days of the earliest means of attack and defence constituting regular war among nations.
War and battles must have doubtless taken their rise almost simultaneously with the origin of humanity itself.
The hatred and rivalry which first sprung up between individuals and families--hatred and rivalry which must have existed from all time--gradually extended to tribes, and then to whole nations, and were outwardly expressed in armed invasions, pillage and slaughter.
These acts of violence were, in very early days, reduced to a system in the art of war--that terrible expedient from which even modern nations have not been able to escape.
In order to find the still existing evidence of the wars which took place among men in the Stone Age, we must repair to that portion of Europe which is now called Belgium.
Yes, even in the Stone Age, at a date far beyond all written record, the people of this district already were in the habit of making war, either among themselves or against other tribes invading them from other lands.
This fact is proved by the fortified enclosures, or _entrenched camps_, which have been discovered by MM.
Hannour and Himelette.
These camps are those of Furfooz, Pont-de-Bonn, Simon, Jemelle, Hastedon, and Poilvache.
All these different camps possess certain characteristics in common.
They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on a mass of rock forming a kind of headland, which is united to the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land.
A wide ditch was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was surrounded by a thick wall of stones, simply piled one upon another, without either mortar or cement.
At the camp of Hastedon, near Namur, this wall, which was still in a good state of preservation at the time it was described, measured 10 feet in width, and about the same in height.
When an attack was made, the defenders, assembled within the enclosure, rained down on their assailants stones torn away from their wall, which thus became at the same time both a defensive and offensive work (fig.
127).
[Illustration: Fig.
127.--The earliest regular Conflicts between Men of the Stone Age; or, the Entrenched Camp of Furfooz.]
These entrenched positions were so well chosen that most of them continued to be occupied during the age which followed.
We may mention, as an instance, the camp of Poilvache.
After having been a Roman citadel it was converted in the middle ages into a strongly fortified castle, which was not destroyed until the fifteenth century.
The camps of Hastedon and Furfooz were likewise utilised by the Romans.
Over the whole inclosure of these ancient camps worked flints and remains of pottery have been found--objects which are sufficient to testify to the former presence of primitive man.
The enormous ramparts of these camps also tend to show that pre-historic man must have existed in comparatively numerous associations at the various spots where these works are found.
If we were to enter into a detailed study of the vestiges of the polished-stone epoch existing in the other countries of Europe, we should be led into a repetition of much that we have already stated with regard to the districts now forming France and Belgium.
Over a great portion of Europe we should find the same mode of life, the same manners and customs, and the same degree of nascent civilisation.
From the scope, therefore, of our present work, we shall not make it our task to take each country into special consideration.
We will content ourselves with stating that the caves of Old Castille in Spain, which were explored by M. Ed.
Lartet, have furnished various relics of the reindeer and polished-stone epochs.
Also in the provinces of Seville and Badajos, polished hatchets have been found, made for the most part of dioritic rocks.
Numerous vestiges of the same epoch have, too, been discovered in various provinces of Italy.
We give in fig.
128 the sketch of a very remarkable arrow-head found in the province of Civita-Nova (the former kingdom of Naples).
It is provided with a short stem with lateral grooves, so as to facilitate the point being fitted into a wooden shaft.
[Illustration: Fig.
128.--Flint Arrow-head, from Civita-Nova (Italy).]
Elba, too, was surveyed by M. Raffaello Foresi, who found in this Mediterranean isle a large quantity of arrows, knives, saws, scrapers, &c., formed of flint, jasper, obsidian, and even rock crystal.
There were also found in the Isle of Elba workshops for shaping flints.
Great Britain, Wurtemburg, Hungary, Poland, and Russia all furnish us with specimens of polished stone instruments; but, for the reason which we stated above, it would be superfluous to dwell upon them.
We shall now pass on to an examination of the type of the human race which existed among the northern nations of Europe during the polished-stone age.
There is a cavern of Ariége which belongs to the polished-stone epoch, and has been explored by MM.
Garrigou and Filhol--this is the cavern of _Lombrive_, or _des Echelles_; the latter name being given it because it is divided into two portions placed at such very different levels that the help of five long ladders is required in order to pass from one to the other.
This cave has become interesting from the fact that it has furnished a large quantity of human bones, belonging to individuals of both sexes and every age; also two entire skulls, which M. Garrigou has presented to the Anthropological Society of Paris.
These two skulls, which appear to have belonged, one to a child of eight to ten years of age, the other to a female, present a somewhat peculiar shape.
The forehead, which is high in the centre, is low at the sides; and the orbits of the eyes and also the hollows of the cheeks are deep.
We shall not enter into the diverse and contrary hypotheses which have been advanced by MM.
Vogt, Broca, Pruner-Bey, Garrigou and Filhol, in order to connect the skulls found in the cave of Ariége with the present races of the human species.
This ethnological question is very far from having been decided in any uniform way; and so it will always be, as long as scientific men are compelled to base their opinions on a limited number of skulls, which are, moreover, always incomplete; each _savant_ being free to interpret their features according to his own system.
Neither in the Danish kitchen-middens nor in the lower beds of the peat-bogs have any human bones been discovered; but the tombs in Denmark belonging to the polished-stone epoch have furnished a few human skulls which, up to a certain point, enable us to estimate the intellectual condition and affinities of the race of men who lived in these climates.
We may particularly mention the skull found in the _tumulus_ at Borreby in Denmark, which has been studied with extreme care by Mr. Busk.
This skull (fig.
129) presents a somewhat remarkable similarity to that of Neanderthal, of which we have spoken in a previous chapter.
The superciliary ridges are very prominent, the forehead is retiring, the occiput is short and sloped forward.
It might, therefore, find its origin among the races of which the skulls of Neanderthal and Borreby are the representatives and the relics, and the latter might well be the descendants of the former.
[Illustration: Fig.
129.--The Borreby Skull.]
Anthropologists have had much discussion about the question, to what particular human race of the present time may the skulls found in the _tumulus_ at Borreby be considered to be allied?
But all these discussions are deficient in those elements on which any serious and definite argument might be founded.
It would, therefore, be going beyond our purpose should we reproduce them here.
If, in the sketch of the Borreby skull, we place, before the eyes of our readers the type of the human cranium which existed during the period of the Stone Age, our only object is to prove that the primitive Northerner resembles the present race of man, both in the beauty and in the regularity of the shape of his skull; also, in order once more to recall to mind how false and trivial must the judgment be of those short-sighted _savants_ who would establish a genealogical filiation between man and the ape.
As we stated in the Introduction to this volume, a mere glance cast upon this skull is sufficient to bring to naught all that has been written and propounded touching the organic consanguinity which is asserted to exist between man and the ape, to say nothing of the objects produced by primitive man--objects which, in this work, we are studying in all necessary detail.
An examination of the labours of primitive man is the best means of proving--every other consideration being set aside--that a great abyss exists between him and the animal; this is the best argument against our pretended _simial_ origin, as it is called by those who seek to veil their absurd ideas under grand scientific phrases.
FOOTNOTES: [18] 'Note sur un Amas de.
Coquilles mélées à des Silex taillés, signalé sur les Côtes de Provence,' by M. A. Gory ('Revue Archéologique').
Quoted in the 'Matériaux de l'histoire positive de l'Homme,' by M. de Mortillet, vol.
i. p. 535.
[19] See J. Evans, 'On the Manufacture of Stone Implements in Pre-historic Times,' in Trans.
of the International Congress of Pre-historic Archæology (Norwich, 1868), p. 191; and C. Rau, 'Drilling in Stone without Metal,' in Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1868.
[20] 'Les Moulins Primitifs,' Nantes, 1869.
Extract from the 'Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de Nantes.'
[21] 'Tour du Monde,' p. 374, 1860.
[22] Shirley's 'Account of the Territory of Farney.'
[23] J. Buchanan, 'British Association Reports,' 1855; p. 80.
Sir C. Lyell, 'Antiquity of Man,' p. 48.
[24] 'Habitations Lacustres des Temps anciens et modernes,' pp.
119, 159, 166.
[25] 'Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche,' pp.
11-21.
Paris, 1867.
CHAPTER III.
Tombs and Mode of Interment during the Polished-stone Epoch-_Tumuli_ and other sepulchral Monuments formerly called _Celtic_--Labours of MM.
Alexandre Bertrand and Bonstetten-Funeral Customs.
Having in our previous chapters described and delineated both the weapons and instruments produced by the rudimentary manufacturing skill of man during the polished-stone epoch; having also introduced to notice the types of the human race during this period; we now have to speak of their tombs, their mode of interment, and all the facts connected with their funeral customs.
A fortunate and rather strange circumstance has both facilitated and given a degree of certainty to the information and ideas we are about to lay before our readers.
The tombs of the men of the polished-stone epoch--their funeral monuments--have been thoroughly studied, described, and ransacked by archæologists and antiquarians, who for many years past have made them the subject of a multitude of publications and learned dissertations.
In fact, these tombs are nothing but the _dolmens_, or the so-called _Celtic_ and _Druidical_ monuments; but they by no means belong, as has always been thought, to any historical period, that is, to the times of the Celts, for they go back to a much more remote antiquity--the pre-historic period of the polished-stone age.
This explanatory _datum_ having been taken into account, we shall now study the _dolmens_ and other so-called _megalithic_ monuments--the grand relics of an epoch buried in the night of time; those colossal enigmas which impose upon our reason and excite to the very highest pitch the curiosity of men of science.
_Dolmens_ are monuments composed of a great block or slab of rock, more or less flat in their shape according to the country in which they are situate, placed horizontally on a certain number of stones which are reared up perpendicularly to serve as its supports.
[Illustration: Fig.
130.--Danish _Dolmen_.]
This kind of sepulchral chamber was usually covered by earth, which formed a hillock over it.
But in the course of time this earth often disappeared, leaving nothing but the naked stones of the sepulchral monument.
[Illustration: Fig.
131.--_Dolmen_ at Assier.]
These are the bare stones which have been taken for _stone altars_, being referred to the religious worship of the Gauls.
The supposed Druidical altars are, in fact, nothing but ruined _dolmens_.
The purpose, therefore, for which they were elevated was not, as has always been stated, to serve as the scene of the sacrifices of a cruel religion; for, at the present day, it is completely proved that the _dolmens_ were the tombs of a pre-historic epoch.
These tombs were intended to receive several dead bodies.
The corpses were placed in the chamber which was formed by the upper slab and the supports.
Some of these chambers had two stages or stories, and then furnished a larger number of sepulchres.
Figs.
132 and 133 represent different _dolmens_ which still exist in France.
[Illustration: Fig.
132.--_Dolmen_ at Connéré (Marne).]
[Illustration: Fig.
133.--Vertical Section of the _Dolmen_ of Locmariaker, in Brittany.
In the Museum of Saint-Germain.]
Some _dolmens_ are completely open to view, like that represented in fig.
132, nothing impeding a perfect sight of them; others, on the contrary, are covered with a hillock of earth, the dimensions of which vary according to the size of the monument itself.
This latter kind of _dolmen_ more specially assumes the nature of a _tumulus_; a designation which conveys the idea of some mound raised above the tomb.
Figs.
134 and 135 represent the _tumulus-dolmen_ existing at Gavr'inis (Oak Island), in Brittany, or, more exactly, in the department of Morbihan.
It is the diminished sketch of an enormous model exhibited in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
This model in relief has a portion cut off it which, by means of a cord and pulley, can be elevated or lowered at will, thus affording a view of the interior of the _dolmen_.
It is composed of a single chamber, leading to which there is a long passage.
[Illustration: Fig.
134.--_Tumulus-Dolmen_ at Gavr'inis (Morbihan).]
[Illustration: Fig.
135.--A portion of the _Dolmen_ of Gavr'inis.]
Were all these _dolmens_ originally covered by earth?
This is a question which still remains unsolved.
M. Alexandre Bertrand, Director of the Archæological Museum of Saint-Germain, to whom we owe some very remarkable works on the primitive monuments of ancient Gaul, decides it in the affirmative; whilst M. de Bonstetten, a Swiss archæologist of great merit, is of the contrary opinion.
The matter, however, is of no very great importance in itself.
It is, at all events, an unquestionable fact that certain _dolmens_ which are now uncovered were once buried; for they are noticed to stand in the centre of slightly raised mounds in which the supports are deeply buried.
As we before stated, the action of time has destroyed the covering which the pre-historic peoples placed over their sepulchres in order to defend them from the injuries of time and the profanation of man.
Thus, all that we now see is the bare stones of the sepulchral chambers--for so long a time supposed to be altars, and ascribed to the religious worship of the Gauls.
[Illustration: Fig.
136.--General Form of a covered Passage-Tomb.]
In considering, therefore, the _dolmens_ of Brittany, which have been so many times described by antiquarians and made to figure among the number of our historical monuments, we must renounce the idea of looking upon them as symbols of the religion of our ancestors.
They can now only be regarded as sepulchral chambers.
[Illustration: Fig.
137.--Passage-Tomb at Bagneux, near Saumur.]
_Dolmens_ are very numerous in France; much more numerous, indeed, than is generally thought.
It used to be the common idea that they existed only in Brittany, and those curious in such matters wondered at the supposed Druidical altars which were so plentifully distributed in this ancient province of France.
But Brittany is far from possessing the exclusive privilege of these megalithic constructions.
They are found in fifty-eight of the French departments, belonging, for the most part, to the regions of the south and south-west.
The department of Finisterre contains 500 of them; Lot, 500; Morbihan, 250; Ardèche, 155; Aveyron, 125; Dordogne, 100; &c.[26] [Illustration: Fig.
138.--Passage-Tomb at Plouharnel (Morbihan).]
The authors who have written on the question we are now considering, especially Sir J. Lubbock in his work on 'Pre-historic Times,' and Nilsson, the Swedish archæologist, have given a much too complicated aspect to their descriptions of the tombs of pre-historic ages, owing to their having multiplied the distinctions in this kind of monument.
We should only perplex our readers by following these authors into all their divisions.
We must, however, give some few details about them.
[Illustration: Fig.
139.--Passage-Tomb; the so-called _Table de César_, at Locmariaker (Morbihan).]
Sir J. Lubbock gives the name of _passage grave_, to that which the northern archæologists call _Ganggraben_ (tomb with passages); of these we have given four representations (figs.
136, 137, 138, 139), all selected from specimens in France.
This name is applied to a passage leading to a more spacious chamber, round which the bodies are ranged.
The gallery, formed of enormous slabs of stone placed in succession one after the other, almost always points towards the same point of the compass; in the Scandinavian states, it generally has its opening facing the south or east, never the north.
The same author gives the name of _chambered tumuli_ (fig.
140) to tombs which are composed either of a single chamber or of a collection of large chambers, the roofs and walls of which are constructed with stones of immense size, which are again covered up by considerable masses of earth.
This kind of tomb is found most frequently in the countries of the north.
Fig.
140 represents, according to Sir J. Lubbock's work, a Danish _chambered tumulus_.
[Illustration: Fig.
140.--A Danish _Tumulus_, or chambered Sepulchre.]
Before bringing to a close this description of megalithic monuments, we must say a few words as to _menhirs_ and _cromlechs_.
_Menhirs_ (fig.
141) are enormous blocks of rough stone which were set up in the ground in the vicinity of tombs.
They were set up either separately, as represented in fig.
141, or in rows, that is, in a circle or in an avenue.
[Illustration: Fig.
141.--Usual shape of a _Menhir_.]
There is in Brittany an extremely curious array of stones of this kind; this is the range of _menhirs_ of Carnac (fig.
142).
The stones are here distributed in eleven parallel lines, over a distance of 1100 yards, and, running along the sea-shore of Brittany, present a very strange appearance.
[Illustration: Fig.
142.--The rows of _Menhirs_ at Carnac.]
When _menhirs_ are arranged in circles, either single or several together, they are called _cromlechs_.
They are vast circuits of stones, generally arranged round a _dolmen_.
The respect which was considered due to the dead appears to have converted these enclosures into places of pilgrimage, where, on certain days, public assemblies were held.
These enclosures are sometimes circular, as in England, sometimes rectangular, as in Germany, and embrace one or more ranks.
[Illustration: Fig.
143.--_Dolmen_ with a Circuit of Stones (_Cromlech_), in the Province of Constantine.]
Fig.
143 represents a _dolmen_ with a circuit of stones, that is, a _cromlech_, which has been discovered in the province of Constantine; in fig.
144 we have a group of Danish _cromlechs_.
[Illustration: Fig.
144.--Group of Danish _Cromlechs_.]
Among all these various monuments the "passage-tombs" and the _tumuli_ are the only ones which will come within the scope of this work; for these only have furnished us with any relics of pre-historic times, and have given us any information with respect to the peoples who occupied a great part of Europe at a date far anterior to any traditionary record.
These stone monuments, as we have already stated, are neither Celtic nor Druidical.
The Celts--a nation which occupied a portion of Gaul at a period long before the Christian era--were altogether innocent of any megalithic construction.
They found these monuments already in existence at the time of their immigration, and, doubtless, looked upon them with as much astonishment as is shown by observers of the present day.
Whenever there appeared any advantage in utilising them, the Celts did not fail to avail themselves of them.
The priests of this ancient people, the Druids, who plucked from off the oak the sacred mistletoe, performed their religious ceremonies in the depths of some obscure forest.
Now, no _dolmen_ was ever built in the midst of a forest; all the stone monuments which now exist stand in comparatively unwooded parts of the country.
We must, therefore, renounce the ancient and poetical idea which recognised in these _dolmens_ the sacrificial altars of the religion of our ancestors.
Some _tumuli_ attain proportions which are really colossal.
Among these is Silbury Hill, the largest in Great Britain, which is nearly 200 feet high.
The enormous amount of labour which would be involved in constructions of this kind has led to the idea that they were not raised except in honour of chiefs and other great personages.
On consulting those records of history which extend back to the most remote antiquity, we arrive at the fact that the custom of raising colossal tombs to the illustrious dead was one that was much in vogue in the ancient Eastern world.
Traces of these monuments are found among the Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, &c. Thus Semiramis, Queen of Nineveh, raised a mound over the tomb of Ninus, her husband.
Stones were likewise piled up over the remains of Laïus, father of Oedipus.
In the 'Iliad,' Homer speaks of the mounds that were raised to the memory of Hector and Patroclus.
That dedicated to Patroclus--the pious work of Achilles--was more than 100 feet in diameter.
Homer speaks of the _tumuli_ existing in Greece, which, even in his time, were considered very ancient, and calls them the tombs of the heroes.
A _tumulus_ was raised by Alexander the Great over the ashes of his friend Hephæstio, and so great were the dimensions of this monument that it is said to have cost 1200 talents, that is about £240,000 of our money.
In Roman history, too, we find instances of the same kind.
Lastly, the pyramids of Egypt, those costly and colossal funeral monuments, are the still visible representations of the highest expression of posthumous homage which was rendered by the generations of antiquity to their most illustrious and mighty men.
This, however, could not have been in every case the prevailing idea in the men of the Stone Age, in causing the construction of these _tumuli_.
The large number of bodies which have been found in some of these monuments completely does away with the notion that they were raised in honour of a single personage, or even of a single family.
They were often sepulchres or burial-places common to the use of all.
Among this class we must rank the _tumuli_ of Axevalla and of Luttra, situated not far from one another in Sweden.
The first, which was opened in 1805, contained twenty tombs of an almost cubical form, each containing a skeleton in a crouching or contracted attitude.
When the second was opened, the explorers found themselves in the presence of hundreds of skeletons placed in four rows one upon another, all in a contracted position like those at Axevalla; along with these human remains various relics of the Stone Age were also discovered.
[Illustration: Fig.
145.--Position of Skeletons in a Swedish Tomb of the Stone Age.]
Fig.
145 represents the position in which the skeletons were found.
M. Nilsson has propounded the opinion that the "passage-graves" are nothing but former habitations, which had been converted into tombs after the death of those who had previously occupied them.
When the master of the house had breathed his last--especially in the case of some illustrious individual--his surviving friends used to place near him various articles of food to provide for his long journey; and also his weapons and other objects which were most precious to him when in life; then the dwelling was closed up, and was only reopened for the purpose of bearing in the remains of his spouse and of his children.
Sir J. Lubbock shares in this opinion, and brings forward facts in its favour.
He recites the accounts of various travellers, according to which, the winter-dwellings of certain people in the extreme north bear a very marked resemblance to the "passage-tombs" of the Stone Age.
Of this kind are the habitations of the Siberians and the Esquimaux, which are composed of an oval or circular chamber placed a little under the surface of the ground, and completely covered with earth.
Sir J. Lubbock thinks, therefore, that in many cases habitations of this kind may have been taken for _tumuli_--a mistake, he adds, all the more likely to be made because some of these mounds, although containing ashes, remains of pottery, and various implements, have not furnished any relics of human bones.
In his work on the 'Sépultures de l'Age de la Pierre chez les Parisii,' M. Leguay, a learned architect and member of the Archælogical Society, has called attention to the fact that the construction of these _dolmens_ betrays, as existing in the men of this epoch, a somewhat advanced degree of knowledge of the elements of architecture:-"The interment of the dead," says M. Leguay, "took place, during the polished-stone epoch, in vaults, or a kind of tomb constructed on the spot, of stones of various thicknesses, generally flat in shape, and not elevated to any very great height, being laid without any kind of cement or mortar.
These vaults, which were at first undivided, were subsequently separated into compartments by stones of a similar character, in which compartments bodies were placed in various positions.
They were covered with earth or with flat stones, and sometimes we meet with a circular eminence raised over them, formed of a considerable heap of stones which had been subsequently brought thither; this fact was verified by M. Brouillet in 1862 at the _Tombelle de Brioux_ (Vienne).
"This kind of interment bears evidence of some real progress.
Polished flint instruments are met with intermingled with worked stones which have been brought from a distance.
Pottery of a very significant character approaches that of the epoch at which ornamentation commenced; and the _Tombelle de Brioux_ has furnished two vessels with projecting and perforated handles formed in the clay itself.
I met with specimens similar to these both in shape and workmanship in the cremation-tombs at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, which, as I have previously stated, appeared to me to be later in date than the simple interment situated below them.
"The first element in the art of construction, that is, stability, is manifested in these latter monuments.
They do not come up to the fine _dolmens_, or to the monuments which followed them, but the principle on which stones should be laid together is already arrived at.
The slab forming the covering is the first attempt at the lintel, the primitive base of architectural science.
By insensible degrees the dimensions of the monument increased, the nature of the materials were modified, and, from the small elementary monument to the grand sepulchral _dolmen_, but one step remained to be made--a giant step, certainly, but not beyond the reach of human intelligence.
"This step, however, was not accomplished suddenly and without transitional stages.
We find a proof of this in the beautiful ossuary discovered in 1863, at Chamant near Senlis (Oise), on the property of the Comte de Lavaulx.
This monument does not yet come up to the most beautiful of the class; but it possesses all the inspirations which suggested the form of its successors, of which, indeed, it is the type.
"Almost flat slabs of stone, of a greater height than those forming the vaults, and of rather considerable dimensions, are placed on edge so as to form a square chamber.
A partition, formed of stones of a similar character, leaving a space or passage between them, separates the chamber into two unequal portions.
Some arrangement of this kind has been observed in most of the finest _dolmens_; it is found at a spot not far from Chamant, in a covered way known under the name of the _Pierres Turquoises_, in the forest of Carnelle, near Beaumont-sur-Oise (Seine-et-Oise).
"At Chamant, however, the chamber was not more than 3 to 4 feet in height under the roof, which was formed of large flat stones, and was large enough to allow of a considerable number of bodies to be deposited within it, either in a recumbent or contracted position.
Near them there were placed delicately-wrought flints, and also some fine-polished hatchets, one of which was of serpentine; another of large dimensions, sculptured after the fashion of the diluvial hatchets, appeared to me to have been prepared for polishing.
"The researches which have been made have brought to light but slight traces of pottery, and the small fragments that I have examined do not point out any very remote age for this monument.
Nevertheless, the investigation of this sepulchre, in which I was guided by a somewhat different idea from that of merely studying the monument itself, was not carried out with the exact care that would be necessary for collecting all the indications which it might have furnished.
"Between the sepulchre of Chamant and the finest _dolmens_, the distinction is nothing more than a question of dimensions rather than any chronological point.
The latter are formed of colossal stones, and when one examines them and seeks to realise the process which must have been employed for raising them, the mind is utterly perplexed, and the imagination finds a difficulty in conceiving how it was possible to move these immense masses, and, especially, to place them in the positions they now occupy; for at the present day, in order to arrive at similar results, it would be necessary to employ all the means which science has at command.
"[27] The megalithic constructions do not all date back to the same epoch.
Some were raised during the Stone Age, others during the Bronze Age.
There is nothing in their mode of architecture which will enable us to recognise their degree of antiquity; but the relics which they contain afford us complete information in this respect.
Thus, in France, according to M. Alexandre Bertrand, the _dolmens_ and the _tumuli-dolmens_ contain, in a general way, nothing but stone and bone articles; those of bronze and gold are very rare, and iron is never met with.
In the _true tumuli_, on the contrary, bronze objects predominate, and iron is very abundant; this is an evident proof that these monuments are of less ancient origin than the _dolmens_.
In the same way we ascertain that the Danish _dolmens_ and the great sepulchral chambers of Scandinavia, all belong to the polished-stone epoch.
When, therefore, we class the _dolmens_ in this last-named epoch of man's history, we are deciding in full harmony with the great body of _data_ which bear upon the point.
In order to fix the period with still greater accuracy, we might add that the _dolmens_ belong to the latter portion of the polished-stone epoch and the commencement of the bronze age.
But, as we before said, we do not attach any importance to these distinctions, which would only uselessly embarrass the mind of the reader.
An examination of the Danish _dolmens_ has led the author of the 'Catalogue of Pre-historic Objects sent by Denmark to the Universal Exposition of 1867,' to sum up in the following words the details concerning these sepulchral monuments:-"As regards the Danish _dolmens_, the number of skeletons contained in them varies much; in the largest, there are as many as twenty, and in the smallest there are not more than five or six; sometimes they are placed in stages one above the other.
"The bones are never found in natural order; the head lies close to the knees, and no limb is in its natural place.
It follows from this, that in the course of interment the body was contracted into a crouching position.
"The bottom of the sepulchral chamber of a _dolmen_ is generally covered with a layer of flints which have been subjected to fire; this is the floor on which the body was deposited; it was then covered with a thin coating of earth, and the tomb was closed.
Yet, as we have just observed, it was but very rarely that _dolmens_ contained only one skeleton.
They must, therefore, have been opened afresh in order to deposit other bodies.
It must have been on these occasions, in order to contend with the miasma of putrefaction, that they lighted the fires, of which numerous and evident traces are seen inside the _dolmens_.
This course of action continued, as it appears, until the time when the _dolmen_ was entirely filled up: but even then, the tomb does not, in every case, seem to have been abandoned.
Sometimes the most ancient skeletons have been displaced to make room for fresh bodies.
This had taken place in a _dolmen_ near Copenhagen, which was opened and searched in the presence of the late King Frederick VII.
"A _dolmen_ situated near the village of Hammer, opened a few years ago by M. Boye, presented some very curious peculiarities.
In addition to flint instruments, human bones were discovered, which had also been subjected to the action of fire.
We are, therefore, led to suppose, that a funeral banquet had taken place in the vicinity of the tomb, and that some joints of human flesh had formed an addition to the roasted stag.
This is, however, the only discovery of the kind which has been made up to the present time, and we should by no means be justified in drawing the inference that the inhabitants of Denmark at this epoch were addicted to cannibalism.
"The dead bodies were deposited along with their weapons and implements, and also with certain vessels which must have contained the food which perhaps some religious usage induced them to leave close to the body.
For a long time it was supposed that it was the custom to place these weapons by the side of _men_ only.
But in a _dolmen_ at Gieruen, a hatchet was found near a skeleton which was evidently that of a woman.
"We now give the inventory of a 'find' made in a Danish _dolmen_, that of Hielm, in the Isle of Moen, which was opened in 1853.
The sepulchral chamber was 16-1/2 feet in length, 11-1/2 feet in width, and 4-1/2 feet in height.
"In it were discovered twenty-two spear-heads, the largest of which was 11 inches in length, and the smallest 5-1/2 inches; more than forty flint flakes or knives from 2 to 5 inches in length; three flat hatchets, and one rather thicker; three carpenter's chisels, the longest of which measured 8 inches; a finely-made hammer 5 inches long; three flint nuclei exactly similar to those found in the kitchen-middens; and lastly, in addition to all these flint articles, some amber beads and forty earthen vessels moulded by the hand.
"[28] What were the funeral customs in use among men during the polished-stone epoch?
and what were the ceremonies which took place at that period when they buried their dead?
These are questions which it will not be difficult to answer after a due investigation of the _dolmens_ and _tumuli_.
In a great number of _tumuli_, animal bones have been found either broken or notched by sharp instruments.
This is an indication that the funeral rites were accompanied by feasts just as in the preceding epochs.
The body which was about to be enclosed in the _tumulus_ was borne upon boughs of trees, as is the case among some savage tribes of the present day.
The men and women attending wore their best attire; necklaces of amber and shells adorned their necks.
Men carrying torches walked in front of the procession, in order to guide the bearers into the dark recesses of the sepulchral chambers.
From these data fig.
146 has been designed, which gives a representation of _a funeral ceremony during the polished-stone epoch_.
[Illustration: Fig.
146.--A _Tumulus_ of the Polished-stone Epoch.]
If we may judge by the calcined human bones which are rather frequently met with in tombs, there is reason to believe that sometimes victims were sacrificed over the body of the defunct, perhaps slaves, perhaps even his widow--the custom of sacrificing the widow still being in practice in certain parts of India.
Sir J. Lubbock is, besides, of opinion that when a woman died in giving birth to a child, or even whilst she was still suckling it, the child was interred alive with her.
This hypothesis appears a natural one, when we take into account the great number of cases in which the skeletons of a woman and child have been found together.
M. Leguay in his 'Mémoire sur les Sépultures des Parisii,' which we quoted above, expresses the opinion that after each interment, in addition to the funeral banquet, a fire was lighted on the mound above the _tumulus_, and that each attendant threw certain precious objects into the flames.
The objects which were most precious during the polished-stone epoch were flints wrought into hatchets, poniards, or knives.
"On to this burning hearth," says M. Leguay, "as numerous instances prove, those who were present were in the habit of casting stones, or more generally wrought flints, utensils and instruments, all made either of some kind of stone or of bone; also fragments of pottery, and, doubtless, other objects which the fire has destroyed.
"There are many of these objects which have not suffered any injury from the fire; some of the flints, indeed, seem so freshly cut and are so little altered by the lapse of time, that it might be readily imagined that they had been but recently wrought; these were not placed in the sepulchre, but are met with intermingled with the earth which covers or surrounds the hearth, and appear in many cases to have been cast in after the extinction of the fire as the earth was being filled in.
"Sometimes, indeed, when the archæologist devotes especial care to his digging, he comes across a kind of layer of wrought flints which are, in fact, to be looked upon as refuse rather than wrought articles.
Their position appears to indicate the surface of the soil during that epoch, a surface which has been covered up by the successive deposits of subsequent ages; and although some of these flakes may have been due to some of the objects which had been placed in the sepulchre having been chipped on the spot, there are many others which have not originated in this way, and have come from objects which have been deposited in other places.
"All these stones, which are common to three kinds of burial-places, have fulfilled, in my opinion, a votive function; that is to say, that they represent, as regards this epoch, the wreaths and coronals of _immortelles_, or the other objects which we in the present day place upon the tombs of our relations or friends; thus following out a custom the origin of which is lost in the night of time.
"And let not the reader treat with ridicule these ideas, which I hold to be not far from the truth.
Men, as individuals, may pass away, and generations may disappear; but they always hand down to their progeny and those that succeed them the customs of their epoch; which customs will undergo little or no change until the causes which have produced them also disappear.
Thus it is with all that concerns the ceremonies observed in bearing man to his last resting-place--a duty which can never change, and always brings with it its train of sorrow and regret.
Nowadays, a small sum of money is sufficient to give outward expression to our grief; but at these remote epochs each individual fashioned his own offering, chipped his own flint, and bore it himself to the grave of his friend.
"This idea will explain the diversity of shape in the flints placed round and in the sepulchres, and especially the uncouthness of many of the articles which, although all manufactured of the same material, betray a style of workmanship exercised by numerous hands more or less practised in the work.
"It may, however, be readily conceived that during an epoch when stones were the chief material for all useful implements, every wrought flint represented a certain value.
To deprive themselves of these objects of value in order to offer them to the manes of the dead was considered a laudable action, just as was the case subsequently as regards still more precious objects; and this custom, which was observed during many long ages, although sometimes and perhaps often practised with the declining energy inherent in every religious custom, was the origin of a practice adopted by many of the nations of antiquity, that, namely, of casting a stone upon the tomb of the dead.
Thus were formed those sepulchral heaps of stones called _gal-gals_, some of which still exist.
"It is, without doubt, to this votive idea that we must attribute the fact that so many beautiful objects which ornament our museums have been found deposited in these sepulchres; but we must remark that the large and roughly-hewn hatchets, and also the knives of the second epoch, are replaced, in the third epoch, by polished hatchets often even fitted with handles, and also by knives of much larger size and finer workmanship.
"As an additional corroboration of my ideas, I will mention a curious fact which I ascertained to exist in two sepulchres of this kind which I searched; the significance of this fact can only be explained by a hypothesis which any one may readily develop.
"Each of them contained one long polished hatchet, broken in two in the middle; the other portion of which was not found in the sepulchre.
"One is now in the Museum at Cluny, where I deposited it; the other is still in my own possession.
It is beyond all dispute that they were thus broken at the time of the interment.
"Numerous hatchets broken in a similar way have been found by M. A. Forgeais in the bed of the Seine at Paris, and also in various other spots; all of them were broken in the middle, and I have always been of opinion that they proceeded from sepulchres of a like kind, which, having been placed on the edge of the river, had been washed away by the flow of water which during long ages had eaten away the banks."
At a subsequent period, that is, during the bronze epoch, dead bodies were often, as we shall see, reduced to ashes either wholly or in part, and the ashes were enclosed in urns.
FOOTNOTES: [26] Alexandre Bertrand's 'Les Monuments Primitifs de la Gaule.'
[27] 'Des Sépultures à l'Age de la Pierre,' pp.
15, 16.
1865.
[28] 'Le Danemark à l'Exposition Universelle de 1867.'
Paris.
1868.
THE AGE OF METALS.
I.
THE BRONZE EPOCH.
CHAPTER I.
The Discovery of Metals--Various Reasons suggested for explaining the Origin of Bronze in the West--The Invention of Bronze--A Foundry during the Bronze Epoch--Permanent and Itinerant Foundries existing during the Bronze Epoch--Did the knowledge of Metals take its rise in Europe owing to the Progress of Civilisation, or was it a Foreign Importation?
The acquisition and employment of metals is one of the greatest facts in our social history.
Thenard, the chemist, has asserted that we may judge of the state of civilisation of any nation by the degree of perfection at which it has arrived in the workmanship of iron.
Looking at the matter in a more general point of view, we may safely say that if man had never become acquainted with metals he would have remained for ever in his originally savage state.
There can be no doubt that the free use of, or privation from, metals is a question of life and death for any nation.
When we take into account the important part that is played by metals in all modern communities, we cannot fail to be convinced that, without metals civilisation would have been impossible.
That astonishing scientific and industrial movement which this nineteenth century presents to us in its most remarkable form--the material comfort which existing generations are enjoying--all our mechanical appliances, manufactures of such diverse kinds, books and arts--not one of all these benefits for man, in the absence of metals, could ever have come into existence.
Without the help of metal, man would have been condemned to live in great discomfort; but, aided by this irresistible lever, his powers have been increased a hundredfold, and man's empire has been gradually extended over the whole of nature.
In all probability, gold, among all the metals, is the first with which man became acquainted.
Gold, in a metallic state, is drifted down by the waters of many a river, and its glittering brightness would naturally point it out to primitive peoples.
Savages are like children; they love everything that shines brightly.
Gold, therefore, must, in very early days, have found its way into the possession of the primitive inhabitants of our globe.
Gold is still often met with in the Ural mountains; and thence, perhaps, it originally spread all over the north of Europe.
The streams and the rivers of some of the central countries of Europe, such as Switzerland, France, and Germany, might also have furnished a small quantity.
After gold, copper must have been the next metal which attracted the attention of men; in the first place, because this metal is sometimes found in a native state, and also because cupriferous ores, and especially copper pyrites, are very widely distributed.
Nevertheless, the extraction of copper from the ores is an operation of such a delicate character, that it must have been beyond the reach of the metallurgic appliances at the disposal of men during the early pre-historic period.
The knowledge of tin also dates back to a very high antiquity.
Still, although men might become acquainted with tin ores, a long interval must have elapsed before they could have succeeded in extracting the pure metal.
Silver did not become known to men until a much later date; for this metal is very seldom met with in the _tumuli_ of the bronze epoch.
The fact is, that silver is seldom found in a pure state, and scarcely ever except in combination with lead ores; lead, however, was not known until after iron.
Bronze, as every one knows, is an alloy of copper and tin (nine parts of copper and one of tin).
Now it is precisely this alloy, namely bronze, which was the first metallic substance used in Europe; indeed the sole substance used, to the exclusion of copper.
We have, therefore, to explain the somewhat singular circumstance that an alloy and not a pure metal was the metallic substance that was earliest used in Europe; and we must also inquire how it was that bronze could have been composed by the nations which succeeded those of the polished-stone epoch.
At first sight, it might appear strange that an alloy like bronze should have been the first metallic substance used by man, thus setting aside iron, deposits of which are very plentiful in Europe.
But it is to be remarked, in the first place, that iron ores do not attract the attention so much as those of tin and copper.
Added to this, the extraction of iron from its ores is one of the most difficult operations of the kind.
When dealing with ferruginous ores, the first operation produces nothing more than rough cast iron--a very impure substance, which is so short and brittle that it possesses scarcely any metallic qualities, and differs but little from stone as regards any use it could be applied to.
It requires re-heating and hammering to bring it into the condition of malleable iron.
On the other hand, by simply smelting together copper and tin ores and adding a little charcoal, bronze might be at once produced, without any necessity for previously extracting and obtaining pure copper and tin in a separate state.
This will explain how it came to pass that the earliest metal-workers produced bronze at one operation, without even being acquainted with the separate metals which enter into its composition.
We are left entirely to hypothesis in endeavouring to realise to ourselves how men were led to mix together copper and tin ores, and thus to produce bronze--a hard, durable and fusible alloy, and consequently well adapted, without much trouble, for the fabrication, by melting in moulds, of hatchets, poniards, and swords, as well as agricultural and mechanical instruments.
Bronze was endowed with all the most admirable qualities for aiding the nascent industrial skill of mankind.
It is more fusible than copper and is also harder than this metal; indeed, in the latter respect, it may compete with iron.
It is a curious fact that bronze has the peculiarity of hardening when cooled gradually.
If it is made red-hot in the fire and is then suddenly cooled by plunging it into water, the metal becomes more ductile and may be easily hammered; but it regains its original hardness if it is again heated red-hot and then allowed to cool slowly.
This, as we see, is just the contrary to the properties of steel.
By taking advantage of this quality of bronze they were enabled to hammer it, and, after the necessary work with the hammer was finished, they could, by means of gradual cooling, restore the metal to its original hardness.
At the present day, cymbals and tom-toms are made exactly in this way.
All these considerations will perhaps sufficiently explain to the reader why the use of bronze preceded that of iron among all the European and Asiatic peoples.
On this quasi-absence of manufactured copper in the pre-historic monuments of Europe, certain archæologists have relied when propounding the opinion that bronze was brought into Europe by a people coming from the East, a more advanced and civilised people, who had already passed through their _copper age_, that is, had known and made use of pure copper.
This people, it is said, violently invaded Europe, and in almost every district took the place of the primitive population; so that, in every country, bronze suddenly succeeded stone for the manufacture of instruments, weapons and implements.
By the side of these _savants_, who represent to some extent, in ethnological questions, the partisans of the great geological cataclysms or revolutions of the globe, there are others who would refer the appearance of bronze in Europe to a great extension of commercial relations.
They utterly reject the idea of any conquest, of any great invasion having brought with it a complete change in manners, customs, and processes of industrial skill.
In their opinion, it was commerce which first brought bronze from the East and introduced it to the men of the West.
This is the view of Sir Cornewall Lewis, the archæologist and statesman, and also of Prof. Nilsson, who attributes to the Phoenicians the importation of bronze into Europe.
Without attaining any great result, Nilsson has taken much trouble in supporting this idea by acceptable proofs.
We are called upon to agree with the Danish archæologist in admitting that the Phoenicians, that is, the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon went _with their ships_ to procure tin from Great Britain, in order to make an alloy with it in their own country, which alloy they subsequently imported into Europe.
This is nothing but historic fancy.
To this romance of archæology we shall oppose the simple explanation which chemistry suggests to us.
Our belief is that the bronze was fabricated on the spot by the very people who made use of it.
All that was requisite in order to obtain bronze, was to mix and smelt together the ores of oxidised copper or copper pyrites, and tin ore, adding a small quantity of charcoal.
Now, copper ore abounds in Europe; that of tin is certainly rare; and it is this rarity of tin ore which is appealed to in support of the conjecture against which we are contending.
But, although tin ores are nowadays rare in Europe, except in England and Saxony, they are, nevertheless, to be met with in the centre and south of the Continent; and, doubtless, in the early ages of mankind the quantities were quite sufficient to supply the slender requirements of the dawning efforts of industrial skill.
We may, perhaps, be permitted to allege that the cause of the supplies of tin ores being so poor in the centre and south of Europe, may be the fact that they were exhausted by the workings of our ancestors.
Thus, at least, many of the deposits of copper, silver, and lead, have been exhausted by the Romans, and we now find nothing more than the mere remains of mines which were once very productive.
We may easily see that, in order to account for the presence of bronze in Europe during the primitive epochs of mankind, it was not necessary to build up such a framework of hypothesis as Prof. Nilsson has so elaborately raised.
To sum up the whole matter, we may say that the use of bronze preceded that of iron in the primitive industry of Europe and Asia; and that the people of our hemisphere were acquainted with bronze before they came to the knowledge of pure copper and tin; this is all that we can safely assert on the point.
It might of course have been the case that copper and tin were first used alone, and that the idea was subsequently entertained of combining the two metals so as to improve both.
But the facts evidently show that, so far as regards Europe, things did not take place in this way, and that bronze was employed in the works of primitive industry before copper and tin were known as existing in a separate state.
[29] We must, however, state that in the New World the matter was different.
The Indians of North America, long before they knew anything about bronze, were in the habit of hammering the copper which was procured from the mines of Lake Superior, and of making of it weapons, ornaments and implements.
After considering these general and theoretical points, we shall now pass on to the history of the employment of bronze among men of pre-historic ages, and shall endeavour to give some description of their works for the manufacture of metals.
Facts handed down by tradition evidently show that, among the peoples both of Europe and Asia, the use of bronze preceded that of iron.
Homer tells us that the soldiers of the Greek and Trojan armies were provided with iron weapons, yet he reserves for the heroes weapons made of bronze.
It seems that bronze being the most ancient, was therefore looked upon as the more noble metal; hence, its use is reserved for chiefs or great warriors.
Among all nations, that which is the most ancient is ever the most honourable and the most sacred.
Thus, to mention one instance only, the Jews of our own times still perform the ceremony of circumcision with a knife made of stone.
In this case, the stone-knife is an object consecrated by religion, because the antiquity of this instrument is actually lost in the night of time.
Bronze (or brass) is often mentioned in the Book of Genesis.
Tubal-cain, the first metal-worker of the Scriptures, who forged iron for all kinds of purposes, also wrought in bronze (or brass).
This alloy was devoted to the production of objects of ornament.
We read in the First Book of Kings (vii.
13, 14), "And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre.
He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in _brass_."
The word _brass_ must be here understood as being synonymous with bronze, and certainly the Hebrew term had this signification.
As a specially remarkable object of bronze work, we may mention the "sea of brass" of the Hebrews, which contained 3000 measures of water.
Herodotus[30] speaks of another colossal basin made of bronze, which was sixty times the size of that which Pausanias, son of Cleobrontos, presented to the temple of Jupiter Orios, a temple which had been built near the Euxine, on the borders of Scythia.
Its capacity was six hundred _amphoræ_, and it was six "fingers" in thickness.
The Greeks used to employ these enormous basins in their religious ceremonies.
In Sweden and Norway, large receptacles of a similar kind were in primitive ages employed in sacrificial ceremonies; they used to receive the blood which flowed from the slaughtered animals.
In order to produce objects of this magnitude it was of course necessary to have at disposal large foundries of bronze.
These foundries, which existed during historic periods, were preceded by others of less importance used during the pre-historic epochs which we are considering, that is, during the bronze epoch.
Vestiges of these ancient foundries have been discovered in Switzerland, at Devaine, near Thonon, and at Walflinger, near Wintherthur; especially also at Echallens, where objects have been found which evidently originated from the working of some pre-historic foundry.
At Morges, in Switzerland, a stone mould has been discovered, intended for casting hatchets.
By running bronze into this ancient mould, a hatchet has been made exactly similar to some of those in our collections.
The casting was also effected in moulds of sand, which is the more usual and more easy plan.
From these _data_, it is possible to imagine what sort of place a foundry must have been during the bronze epoch.
In the production of bronze, they used to mix oxydated tin ore, in the proportions which experience had taught them, with oxydated copper ore or copper pyrites; to this mixture was added a small quantity of charcoal.
The whole was placed in an earthen vessel in the midst of a burning furnace.
The two oxides were reduced to a metallic state by means of the charcoal; the copper and tin being set free, blended and formed bronze.
When the alloy was obtained, all that was necessary was to dip it out and pour it into sand or stone moulds which had been previously arranged for the purpose.
The art of casting in bronze must have played a very essential part among primitive peoples.
There was no instrument that they used which could not be made by casting it in bronze.
The sword-blades were thus made; and, in order to harden the edge of the weapon, it was first heated and then cooled suddenly, being afterwards hammered with a stone hammer.
In fig.
147, we represent the workshop of a caster in bronze during the epoch we are considering.
The alloy, having been previously mixed, has been smelted in a furnace, and a workman is pouring it into a sand-mould.
Another man is examining a sword-blade which has just been cast.
[Illustration: Fig.
147.--A Founder's Workshop during the Bronze Epoch.]
Bronze being precious, it is probable that in these ancient communities bronze weapons and implements were reserved for rich and powerful personages, and that stone weapons remained the attribute of the common people.
The use of bronze could only become general after the lapse of time.
The high value of bronze would lead to its being economised as much as possible.
The Pre-historic Museum at Copenhagen contains unquestionable proofs of this scarcity of the metal, and the means which were used for obviating it.
Among the bronze hatchets in the Museum of Copenhagen, there are some which could only have served as ornaments, for they contained a nucleus of clay, and the metal of which they were composed was not thicker than a sheet of paper.
We must also add that worn-out instruments of bronze and utensils which were out of use were carefully preserved in order to be re-cast; the same material re-appearing in various forms and shapes.
We have just given a representation of the _workshop of a founder of bronze_; but we must also state that in addition to these fixed establishments there must have existed, at the epoch of which we are speaking, certain itinerant founders who travelled about, carrying all their necessary utensils on their backs, and offered their services wherever they were required.
Every one is acquainted with the travelling-tinkers who, at the present day, make their way down from the mountains of Auvergne, the Black Forest, the Alps, or the Cévennes, and are called _péirerous_ and _estama-brazaïres_ in the south of France, and _épingliers_ in other districts.
These men are in the habit of working at separate jobs in the villages and even in the public places of the towns.
Of course they travel with no more of the utensils of their craft than strict necessity requires; but, nevertheless, what they carry is sufficient for every purpose.
A hollow made in the ground is the furnace in which they place the nozzle of their portable bellows, and they hammer the iron on a small anvil fixed in the earth.
Aided by these merely rudimentary means they execute pieces of metal-work, the dimensions of which are really surprising.
They make nails and tacks, and even worm screws, repair locks, clean clocks, make knives, mend skimmers, and restore umbrella-frames.
They make bronze rings out of republican _décimes_, and sell these popular trinkets to the village beauties.
Incomparable in their line of business, these men are unequalled in patching or re-tinning vessels made of tin and wrought or sheet-iron.
The mending of crockeryware also forms one of their numerous vocations; and the repairing of a broken plate by means of an iron rivet is mere play-work for their dexterous fingers.
But melting down and re-casting--these are the real triumphs of their art.
The village housewife brings to them her worn-out pewter vessel, and soon sees it reappear as a new, brilliant, and polished utensil.
Lamps, cans, covers, and tin-plates and dishes are thus made to reappear in all their primitive brightness.
The fusion and casting of bronze does not perplex them any more than working in tin.
They are in the habit of casting various utensils in brass or bronze, such as candlesticks, bells, brackets, &c. The crucible which they use in melting brass is nothing but a hole dug in the earth and filled up with burning charcoal, the fire being kept up with the help of their bellows, the nozzle of which is lengthened so as to open into the middle of the charcoal.
On this furnace they place their portable crucible, which is a kind of earthen ladle provided with a handle.
Their system of casting is simple in the extreme.
The pressed sand, which serves them for a mould, is procured from the ditch at the side of the road.
Into this mould they pour the alloy out of the very crucible in which it has been melted.
These itinerant metallurgists, these _estama-brazaïres_, who may be noticed working in the villages of Lower Languedoc, whose ways we have just depicted (not without some degree of pleasant reminiscence), are nothing but the descendants of the travelling metal-workers of the pre-historic bronze epoch.
In addition to the permanent establishment of this kind--the foundries, the remains of which have been found in Switzerland, the French Jura, Germany and Denmark, there certainly existed at that time certain workmen who travelled about singly, from place to place, exercising their trade.
Their stock of tools, like the objects which they had to make or repair, was of a very simple character; the sand from the wayside formed their moulds, and their fuel was the dry wood of the forest.
The existence, at this remote epoch in the history of mankind, of the itinerant workers in metal is proved by the fact, that practitioners of this kind were known in the earliest _historic_ periods who had already to some extent become proficients in the art.
Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, was able in the wilderness to make a brazen serpent, the sight of which healed the Israelites who had been bitten by venomous snakes; and, during the retirement of the prophet to Mount Sinai, Aaron seemed to find no difficulty in casting the golden calf, which was required of him by the murmurs of the people.
Itinerant founders must therefore have accompanied the Jewish army.
We have been compelled to dwell to some extent on the general considerations which bear upon the introduction of bronze among the ancient inhabitants of Europe who succeeded the men of the Stone Age.
In the chapters which follow we intend as far as possible to trace out the picture of that period of man's history, which is called _the Bronze Epoch_, and constitutes the first division of _the Age of Metals_.
FOOTNOTES: [29] It must, however, be observed that the author's theory does not agree with the opinion of metallurgists, who do not consider the reduction of mixed copper and tin ore a practically effective process, and would favour the more usual view that the metals were smelted separately, and afterwards fused together to form bronze.--(_Note to Eng.
Trans._) [30] Book iv.
p. 81.
CHAPTER II.
The Sources of Information at our Disposal for reconstructing the History of the Bronze Epoch--The Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland--Enumeration and Classification of them--Their Mode of Construction--Workmanship and Position of the Piles--Shape and Size of the Huts--Population--Instruments of Stone, Bone, and Stag's Horn--Pottery--Clothing--Food--_Fauna_--Domestic Animals.
In endeavouring to trace out the early history of the human race we naturally turn our attention to all the means of investigation which either study or chance have placed at our disposal.
Grottos and caves, the rock-shelters, the ancient camps, the centres of flint-working, the Scandinavian kitchen-middens, the _dolmens_, and the _tumuli_--all have lent their aid in affording those elements for the representation of the earliest epoch of the history of primitive man which we have already considered.
The data which we shall resort to for delineating the bronze epoch will be of a different kind.
Among all the sources of authentic information as to the manners and customs of man in his earliest existence, none, certainly, are more curious than those ancient remains which have lately been brought to light and explored, and have received the name of _lacustrine dwellings_.
The question may be asked, what are these _lacustrine dwellings_, and in what way do they serve to elucidate the history of the bronze epoch?
These are just the points which we are about to explain.
The most important discoveries have often depended on very slight causes.
This assertion, although it has been made common by frequent repetition, is none the less perfectly correct.
To what do we owe the knowledge of a multitude of curious details as to pre-historic peoples?
To an accidental and unusual depression of the temperature in Switzerland.
But we will explain.
The winter of 1853-1854 was, in Switzerland, so dry and cold that the waters of the lakes fell far below their ordinary level.
The inhabitants of Meilen, a place situated on the banks of the Lake of Zurich, took advantage of this circumstance, and gained from the lake a tract of ground, which they set to work to raise and surround with banks.
In carrying out these works they found in the mud at the bottom of the lake a number of piles, some thrown down and others still upright, fragments of rough pottery, bone and stone instruments, and various other relics similar to those found in the Danish peat-bogs.
This extraordinary accumulation of objects of all kinds on the dried bed of the lake appeared altogether inexplicable, and every one was at fault in their remarks; but Dr. Keller of Zurich, having examined the objects, at once came to a right understanding as to their signification.
It was evident to him that they belonged to pre-historic times.
By an association of ideas which no one had previously dreamt of, he perceived that a relation existed between the piles and the other relics discovered in the vicinity, and saw clearly that both dated back to the same epoch.
He thus came to the conclusion, that the ancient inhabitants of the Lake of Zurich were in the habit of constructing dwellings over the water, and that the same custom must have existed as regards the other Swiss lakes.
This idea was developed by Dr. Keller in five very remarkable memoirs, which were published in German.
[31] This discovery was the spark which lighted up a torch destined to dissipate the darkness which hung over a long-protracted and little-known period of man's history.
Previous to the discovery made on the dried-up bed of the Lake of Zurich, various instruments and singular utensils had been obtained from the mud of some of the lakes of Switzerland, and piles had often been noticed standing up in the depth of the water; but no one had been able to investigate these vestiges of another age, or had had any idea of ascribing to them anything like the remote antiquity which has since been recognised as belonging to them.
To Dr. Keller the honour is due of having interpreted these facts in their real bearing, at a time when every one else looked upon them as nothing but objects of curiosity.
It is, therefore, only just to pronounce the physician of Zurich to have been the first originator of pre-historic archæological science in Switzerland.
In 1854, after the publication of Dr. Keller's first article, the Swiss lakes were explored with much energy, and it was not long before numerous traces of human settlements were discovered.
At the present day more than 200 are known, and every year fresh ones are being found.
[32] Thanks to the activity which has been shown by a great number of observers, magnificent collections have been formed of these archæological treasures.
The fishermen of the lakes have been acquainted, for many years back, with the sites of some of these settlements, in consequence of having, on many occasions, torn their nets on the piles sticking up in the mud.
Numerous questions were asked them, and they were taken as guides to the different spots, and ere long a whole system of civilisation, heretofore unknown, emerged from the beds of the Swiss lakes.
Among the lakes which have furnished the largest quantity of relics of pre-historic ages, we may mention that of Neuchâtel, in which, in 1867, no less than forty-six settlements were counted; in Lake Constance (thirty-two settlements); in the Lake of Geneva (twenty-four settlements); in the Lake of Bienne, canton of Berne (twenty settlements); in the Lake of Morat, canton of Fribourg (eight settlements).
Next come several other lakes of less importance.
The Lake of Zurich (three settlements); the Lake of Pfæffikon, canton of Zurich (four settlements); the Lake of Sempach, canton of Lucerne (four settlements); the Lake of Moosseedorf, canton of Berne (two settlements); the Lake of Inkwyl, near Soleure (one settlement); the Lake of Nussbaumen, canton of Thurgau (one settlement); the Lake of Zug, &c. Pile-work has also been discovered in former lakes now transformed into peat-bogs.
We must place in this class the peat-bog of Wauwyl, canton of Lucerne (five settlements).
We will mention, in the last place, the settlement at the bridge of Thièle, on the water-course which unites the lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel.
This settlement must once have formed a portion of the Lake of Bienne, at the time when the latter extended as far as the bridge of Thièle.
The lacustrine villages of Switzerland do not all belong to the same period.
The nature of the remains that they contain indubitably prove that some are far more ancient than others.
The vestiges have been discovered of three successive epochs--the polished-stone epoch and the epochs of bronze and of iron.
The lacustrine settlements of Switzerland, when considered under the heads of the various pre-historical epochs to which they belong, may be divided in the following way:-_The Stone Age_:--The Lake of Constance (about thirty settlements); the Lake of Neuchâtel (twelve settlements); the Lake of Geneva (two settlements); the Lake of Morat (one settlement); the lakes of Bienne, Zurich, Pfæffikon, Inkwyl, Moosseedorf, Nussbaumen, Wanger, &c.; the settlements of Saint-Aubin and Concise, the peat-bog of Wauwyl, and the settlement at the Bridge of Thièle.
_The Bronze Epoch_:--The Lake of Geneva (twenty settlements); the Lake of Neuchâtel (twenty-five settlements); the Lake of Bienne (ten settlements); also the lakes of Morat and Sempach.
_The Iron Epoch_:--The lakes of Neuchâtel and Bienne.
It may appear strange that the primitive inhabitants of Switzerland should have preferred aquatic dwellings to habitations built on _terra firma_, which could certainly have been constructed much more easily.
Further on in our work we shall have something to say as to the advantages which men might derive from such a peculiar arrangement of their dwellings; but we may now remark that this custom was somewhat prevalent among the earliest inhabitants of Europe.
Ancient history furnishes us with several instances of it.
Herodotus, speaking of the Pæonians, of the Lake Prasias, in Thrace, says:-"Their habitations are built in the following way.
On long piles, sunk into the bottom of the lake, planks are placed, forming a floor; a narrow bridge is the means of access to them.
These piles used to be fixed by the inhabitants at their joint expense; but afterwards it was settled that each man should bring three from Mount Orbelus for every woman whom he married.
Plurality of wives, be it observed, was permitted in this country.
On these planks each has his hut with a trap-door down into the lake; and lest any of their children should fall through this opening they took care to attach a cord to their feet.
They used to feed their horses and beasts of burden on fish.
In this lake fish was so abundant that if a basket was let down through the trap-door it might be drawn up a short time afterwards filled with fish."
Sir J. Lubbock, repeating the statement of one of his friends who resides at Salonica, asserts that the fishermen of the Lake Prasias still inhabit wooden huts built over the water, as in the time of Herodotus.
There is nothing improbable in this, since the town of Tcherkask in Russia is constructed in a similar way over the River Don, and Venice itself is nothing but a lacustrine city built during historic times over a lagune of the Adriatic sea.
We may add that even in modern times this custom of building villages on piles still exists in some parts of the world.
According to the evidence of Dampier and Dumont d'Urville, habitations built on piles are to be met with in New Guinea, Celebes, Ceram, Mindanao, the Caroline Islands, &c. The city of Borneo is, indeed, entirely built on this plan.
In some of the isles of the Pacific Ocean there are several tribes of savages who likewise make their dwellings over water.
The Indians of Venezuela have adopted this custom with the sole intention of sheltering themselves from the mosquitoes.
It is quite permissible to suppose that the need for security was the motive which induced the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland, and other countries, thus to make settlements and live upon the lakes.
Surrounded as they were by vast marshes and impenetrable forests, they lived in dread of the attacks of numerous wild beasts.
They therefore taxed their ingenuity to insure their safety as far as they possibly could, and no means appeared more efficacious than that of surrounding themselves with water.
At a subsequent period, when men commenced to make war against one another, these aquatic habitations became still more valuable.
They then constituted something in the nature of camps or fortification in which, being well-protected from all danger of sudden surprise, the people of the country could defy the efforts of their enemies.
We must, however, add, that in more recent times these buildings on piles were--according to M. Desor--used only as storehouses for utensils and provisions; the actual dwellings for men being built on _terra firma_.
These lacustrine dwellings are designated under various names by different authors.
Dr. Keller, who was the first to describe them, gave them in German the name of _pfahlbauten_ (buildings on piles) which the Italians have translated by the word _palafitta_.
This latter appellation, when gallicized by M. Desor, becomes _palafitte_.
Lastly, the name _ténevières_ or _steinbergs_ (mountains of stone) is given to constructions of a peculiar character in which the piles are kept up by masses of stone which have been brought to the spot.
By Dr. Keller, this latter kind are called _packwerkbauten_.
When we examine as a whole the character of the lacustrine settlements which have hitherto been discovered, it may, in fact, be perceived that those who built them proceeded on two different systems of construction; either, they buried the piles very deeply in the bed of the lake, and on these piles placed the platform which was to support their huts; or, they artificially raised the bed of the lake by means of heaps of stones, fixing in these heaps somewhat large stakes, not so much for the purpose of supporting the habitations themselves as with a view of making the heaps of stones a firm and compact body.
[Illustration: Fig.
148.--Section of the _Ténevière_ of Hauterive.]
This latter mode of construction is represented in fig.
148, taken from a design given by M. Desor in his remarkable work 'Les Palafittes.
'[33] One or the other of these modes of construction was employed according to the nature of the bed of the lake.
In lakes with a muddy bottom, the first plan could be easily employed; but when the bed was rocky, it was necessary to have recourse to the second.
This is the reason why on the northern shore of the Lake of Neuchâtel, where the banks of limestone come very close to the surface, a comparatively large number of _ténevières_ may be observed.
These are the facts as generally noticed, especially in wide and deep lakes; the edifice, however, was not always constructed in this mode.
In marshes and small lakes, which have now become peat-bogs, another system was frequently applied, a remarkable instance of which is furnished by the peat-moss at Wauwyl.
In this locality were found several quadrangular spaces very distinctly enclosed by piles, between which were raised as many as five platforms one above the other.
These piles are naturally very long, and some are buried as much as seven feet in the solid ground--an operation which must have required an enormous amount of labour.
The intervals between the platforms are filled up with boughs of trees and clay, and the floors themselves are made in nearly the same way as those we have before mentioned.
The lowest rested directly on the bed of the lake, and on the upper one the huts were placed.
It is sometimes the case that these heaps of stones rise above the water; they then form perfect artificial islands, and the habitations which covered them are no longer, properly speaking, dwellings on piles.
Of this kind is the station on the Lake of Inkwyl in Switzerland; of this kind, also, are the _crannoges_ of Ireland, of which we shall subsequently make special mention.
Some of these artificial islands have braved the destructive action of ages, and are still inhabited at the present time.
M. Desor mentions the Isle of Roses in the Lake of Starnberg (Bavaria) which has never been known to have been unfrequented by man; it now contains a royal residence.
Let us revert to the mode of construction of the aquatic dwellings of Switzerland.
In all probability the stones used were conveyed to the required spot by means of canoes made of hollowed-out trunks of trees.
Several of these canoes may still be seen at the bottom of Lake Bienne, and one, indeed, is still laden with pebbles, which leads us to think that it must have foundered with its cargo.
But it is very difficult to raise these canoes from the bottom, and it is, besides, probable that when exposed to the open air they would fall to dust.
Nevertheless, one of them is exhibited in the Museum at Neuchâtel.
In the Museum at Saint-Germain there is a canoe very similar to that of Neuchâtel.
It is made out of the trunk of a hollow tree.
A second canoe, very like the first, but with the bark still on it, and in a bad state of preservation, lies in the entry of the same Museum of Saint-Germain.
It was taken out of the Seine, as we stated when speaking in a previous chapter of the first discovery of the art of navigation during the Stone Age.
It may very easily be explained how the constructors went to work in felling the trees and converting them into piles.
M. Desor has remarked that the pieces of wood composing the piles are cut cleanly through round their circumference only; the central part shows inequalities just like those which are noticed when a stick is broken in two by the hand after having been cut into all round the outside.
The builders of the lacustrine villages, therefore, when they wanted to fell a tree must have acted much as follows: having cut all round it to a depth of 3 or 4 inches, they fixed a cord to the top, and broke the tree down by forcibly pulling at the upper part.
They then cut it through in the same way with stone or bronze hatchets, giving it the requisite length, hewing it into a point at one end so that it should more easily penetrate the mud.
Sometimes a fire applied to the base of the tree prepared for, and facilitated, the effect of the sharp instruments used.
A great number of the piles that have been found still bear the marks of the fire and the cuts made by stone hatchets.
In constructing the _ténevières_, the labour of pointing the piles was needless, as the latter were thoroughly wedged in by the accumulation of stones of which we gave a representation in fig.
148.
When the piles were prepared, they had to be floated to the spot fixed upon for the village, and to be fixed in the bed of the lake.
If we consider that, in many cases, the length of these piles reached to as much as 16 or 20 feet, some idea may be formed of the difficulty of an undertaking of this kind.
In the construction of the _ténevières_ much thicker piles were used, and the labour was much less difficult.
For instance, in the more ancient _ténevières_ of the Lake of Neuchâtel piles are found made of whole trunks of trees which measure 10 to 12 inches in diameter.
The mind is almost confused when it endeavours to sum up the amount of energy and strong will which the primitive population of Switzerland must have bestowed on constructing, unaided as they were by metal implements, the earliest lacustrine settlements, some of which are of very considerable extent.
The settlement of Morges, one of the largest in the Lake of Geneva, is not less than 71,000 square yards in area.
That of Chabrey, in the Lake of Neuchâtel, measures about 60,000 square yards; another, in the same lake, 48,000 yards; and, lastly, a third, that of La Tène, 36,000 yards.
There are many others which are smaller, although of respectable dimensions.
The number of piles which must have been used in some of these constructions is really surprising.
M. Löhle has calculated that in the single lacustrine village of Wangen, in the Lake of Constance, at least 40,000 piles have been fixed, and that several generations must have been necessary to terminate the work.
The more reasonable interpretation to give to a fact of this kind is that Wangen, which was very thinly populated at first, increased in size gradually as the numbers of inhabitants augmented.
The same remark may be doubtless applied to all the important stations.
This was the plan employed in building a single habitation.
When a whole village had to be built in the open water, a methodical course of action was adopted.
They began by placing a certain number of piles parallel to the shore, and these they at once threw across the bridge which was intended to connect the village with the land, thus rendering the carriage of the materials much less difficult.
When the bridge was finished, and before fixing all the piles, the platform was commenced immediately; this constituted a base of operations, by the help of which the pile work could more easily be finished.
This platform was raised 3 or 4 feet above the surface of the water, so as to obviate any danger arising from the waves during a tempest.
It was generally composed of branches and trunks of trees not squared, and bound horizontally to each other, the whole cemented together with clay; sometimes, also, they used thick rough slabs, which were obtained by splitting trunks of trees with wedges.
The platform was fixed firmly on the pile-work, and in some cases wooden pegs were used to fasten together the largest pieces of timber, so that the cohesion and incorporation of the floor were rendered more complete.
As soon as the esplanade was finished, they then proceeded to the construction of the huts.
The huts must have opened on to the platform by doors.
Did they possess windows?
Nothing is known as to this point.
But in all probability there was an opening at the top of the roof, through which the smoke of the fire made its way.
To avoid any fear of conflagration, a stone fire-place was placed in the middle of each dwelling.
The daylight must have come in through the hole in the roof in a quantity almost sufficient to cause the absence of windows to be not much felt.
In each habitation, there was, no doubt, a trap-door in direct communication with the lake, such as those which existed in the dwellings of the Pæonians described by Herodotus.
Under this trap-door there was a reservoir made of osiers, intended for the preservation of fish.
As the inhabitants of the lacustrine villages only lived upon the water with a view of increasing their security, it would be absurd to suppose that they would construct a large number of bridges between their aquatic settlement and the banks of the lake.
There must have been, in general, but one bridge for each of these lake villages.
How were the huts constructed, and what were their shape and dimensions?
These questions certainly seem difficult to answer, for, as may be well imagined, no specimen of these ancient dwellings has been preserved to our days.
Nevertheless, a few relics, insignificant in appearance, enable us to reply to these inquiries in a way more or less satisfactory.
Everything seems to indicate that the huts were formed of trunks of trees placed upright, one by the side of the other, and bound together horizontally by interwoven branches.
A coating of earth covered this wattling.
It has been fancied, from the imprint left by some of the branches which were used in building these huts, that it might be inferred that they were circular, like those which historians attribute to the ancient Gauls.
This was Troyon's opinion, and at first Dr. Keller's also.
This author has even sketched a circular hut in a plate representing a restored lacustrine habitation, which accompanies one of his memoirs.
Sir C. Lyell, also, has reproduced this same plate in the frontispiece of his work on the 'Antiquity of Man.'
But Dr. Keller has subsequently abandoned this idea, and in another of his memoirs he has supplied a fresh design showing nothing but huts with flat or sloping roofs.
From this latter plate, taken from Dr. Keller's work, we here give a representation of a Swiss lacustrine village (fig.
149).
[Illustration: Fig.
149--A Swiss Lake Village of the Bronze Epoch.]
The suggestions for this reconstructive sketch were furnished to Dr. Keller not only by various scientific indications, but also and especially by a drawing made by Dumont d'Urville among the Papuans of New Guinea.
According to Dr. Keller, during the last century there still existed on the river Limmat, near Zurich, some fishermen's huts built in a similar way to those of the lacustrine villages.
What might have been the population of one of these settlements?
This estimate M. Troyon endeavoured to make--an undertaking of a very interesting nature.
He adopted as the base of his calculations the lacustrine village of Morges (Lake of Geneva), which, as we have already stated, had an area of 71,000 square yards.
Allowing that only one-half of this area was occupied by huts, the other half being reserved for gangways between the dwellings, and assuming an average diameter of 16 feet for each hut, M. Troyon reckoned the number of dwellings in the pre-historic village of Morges at 311.
Next, supposing that four individuals lived in each hut, the total amount of population he arrived at was 1244 inhabitants.
We might very justly be surprised if men of the bronze epoch, who were provided with metallic weapons, and were consequently in a much better position for resisting any violent attack, had continued to dwell exclusively in the midst of the water, and should not, to some extent, have dispersed over _terra firma_, which is man's natural standing-ground.
It was, therefore, nothing more than might have been expected, when the discovery was made of the relics of dwellings upon land, containing remains of the bronze epoch.
This discovery, in fact, took place, and those investigating the subject came to the conclusion that the valleys of Switzerland, as well as the lakes, were occupied during this period by an industrious and agricultural people.
At Ebersberg, canton of Zurich, there was discovered--which is a very curious fact--the remains of an ancient settlement situated on _terra firma_, and containing utensils similar to those found in the lacustrine settlements.
In 1864, Dr. Clement searched several mounds composed of pebbles bearing the traces of fire; these mounds were situated in the neighbourhood of Gorgier (canton of Neuchâtel).
One of these mounds has furnished various objects of bronze intermingled with fragments of charcoal, especially a bracelet and some sickles characterised by a projection or set-off at the spring of the blade.
On the plateau of Granges (canton of Soleure), Dr. Schild studied a certain spot which he considers to be the site of an ancient bronze foundry; for, besides finding there pebbles and calcined earth, he also discovered a number of reaping-hooks made with a shoulder, and also a fragment of a sword and four finely-made knives.
A hatchet-knife was likewise found in the gorge of the Seyon, near Neuchâtel; and a bracelet in the vicinity of Morges (canton of Geneva).
Some other bracelets, accompanied by calcined human bones, were discovered near Sion, in the Valais.
Lastly, M. Thioly obtained from a cave of Mont Salève, near Geneva, numerous fragments of pottery of the bronze epoch; and in a grotto on the banks of the Reuse, in the canton of Neuchâtel, M. Otz found relics of pottery of very fine clay, along with a quantity of bones.
Thus the people of this epoch did not dwell exclusively in settlements made over the water.
They also were in the habit of building habitations on _terra firma_, and of furnishing them with everything which was necessary for existence.
All the facts which have been observed in Switzerland may, doubtless, be applied generally; and it may be said that during the bronze epoch the nature of man's habitation became decidedly fixed.
The caves of the great bear and mammoth period, and the rock-shelters of the reindeer and polished-stone periods were now succeeded by dwelling-places which differ but little from those of the more civilised peoples who commence the era of historic times.
FOOTNOTES: [31] 'Pfahlbauten,' Zurich, 1854-1856.
[32] Various distinguished _savants_ have taken upon themselves the task of making known to the public the results of these unceasing investigations, and of bringing before the eyes of the present generation the ancient civilisation of the Swiss valleys.
Among the works which have best attained this end, we must mention Troyon's 'Habitations Lacustres des Temps anciens et modernes,' Morlot's 'Etudes Géologico-archéologiques en Danemark et en Suisse,' and M. Desor's 'Palafittes, ou Constructions Lacustres du Lac de Neuchâtel.'
These works, which have been translated into various languages, contain a statement of all the archæological discoveries which have been made in Switzerland.
[33] 'Les Palafittes, ou Constructions Lacustres du Lac de Neuchâtel.'
Paris, 1865.
CHAPTER III.
Lacustrine Habitations of Upper Italy, Bavaria, Carinthia and Carniola, Pomerania, France, and England--The _Crannoges_ of Ireland.
It was difficult to believe that Switzerland alone possessed the monopoly of these pile-work-constructions.
It was certainly to be supposed that the southern slopes of the Alps, which were all dotted over with large and beautiful lakes, must likewise contain constructions of a similar character; this, at least, was M. Desor's opinion.
After the numerous pre-historic discoveries which had been made in Switzerland, the Zurich professor proceeded in 1860 to explore the lakes of Lombardy, being well convinced that there too he should find remains of lacustrine habitations.
The hopes he had formed were not deceived.
Ere long, in fact, M. Desor obtained from the peat-bogs round Lake Maggiore piles and other objects similar to those found in the Swiss lakes.
These researches were continued by MM.
Gastaldi and Moro, who discovered in the peat-bogs round this lake several ancient villages built upon piles.
In the Lake of Varese, also in Lombardy, which was examined in 1863 by MM.
Desor, G. de Mortillet, and the Abbé Stoppani, were discovered five settlements, some of which were of the Stone Age.
Subsequently, the Abbé Ranchet pointed out four others, which raise to the number of nine the pile works found in this lake.
In order to render due honour to MM.
Keller and Desor, who have contributed so much to the investigation and popularity of lacustrine antiquities, the Abbé Stoppani gave the name of these _savants_ to two of the settlements.
One of these isles is very curious, as it is inhabited up to the present day.
It is called _Isoletta_ ("small island"), and the Litta family possess a _château_ upon it.
In the peat-mosses of Brianza, a portion of Lombardy situated to the north of Milan, the remains of lacustrine constructions have been discovered, together with bones, fragments of pottery, pieces of charcoal, and carbonised stone; also weapons, both of bronze and flint.
The Lake of Garda has been searched over by various explorers, who have discovered in it the sites of several lacustrine habitations.
The authors of these discoveries are Dr. Alberti, of Verona, and MM.
Kosterlitz and Silber, two Austrian officers, who presented all the objects which they collected to the antiquarian museums of Vienna and Zurich.
The traces of pile-works were first perceived when the works were in progress which were excavated by the Austrians in 1855 round the fortress of Peschiera; which proves, at least, that fortresses may occasionally serve some useful purpose.
A settlement of the Stone Age, which was examined by M. Paolo Lioy, is situated in a small lake in Venetia, the length of which does not exceed half a mile, and the depth 30 feet; we allude to the Lake of Fimon, near Vicenza.
M. Lioy discovered oaken piles partially charred, which proves that the village had at one time been burnt down; also slabs of timber roughly squared, a canoe hollowed out of a trunk of oak, cakes of clay which had come from the sides of huts, and still bore the imprint of the reed-stalks, and no doubt formed a kind of coating inside the huts; various instruments made of bone, flint, sandstone, granite, and stag's horn; rings or spindle-weights made of burnt earth, numerous fragments of rough pottery, merely dried in the sun, and, among all these remains, a dozen entire vessels.
There were also found stores of acorns, nuts, and water-chestnuts, the fruit of the sorb-tree, some sloe-stones, &c. A large quantity of animal bones certified to the existence of the bison, the stag, the wild boar, the fox, and several other doubtful species.
All the long bones were broken, as is usually the case, for the extraction of the marrow, but not with the ordinary regularity; they had merely been cracked by blows with stones.
The investigation of lacustrine antiquities which had been inaugurated in Switzerland could hardly stop short in its path of progress.
Attempts were made to discover _palafittes_ in other countries, and these attempts met with success.
Thanks to the initiative action taken by M. Desor, and the liberality of the Bavarian Government, pile-works of ancient date have been discovered in six of the Bavarian lakes.
Most of them go back to the Stone Age, but some belong to the bronze epoch.
Among the latter we may mention the _Isle of Roses_, in the Lake of Starnberg, which is, in fact, an artificial island, like the Isoletta in the Lake of Varese.
We have previously stated that this island has never ceased to be inhabited, and that a _château_ now exists on it.
The movement spread from one place to another.
Austria made it a point of honour not to remain in the rear of Bavaria, and Professor Hochstetter was commissioned by the Academy of Sciences at Vienna to undertake a search for _palafittes_ in the lakes of Carinthia and Carniola.
These explorations were not without result.
In four lakes of Carinthia, Dr. Hochstetter discovered piles, remains of pottery, bones, nuts, &c. In the Lake of Reutschach, which was the most closely investigated, he discovered shallows formed by stones, similar to the _steinbergs_ of Switzerland.
The marshes of Laybach have also furnished instruments of stag's horn, a perforated stone, and a canoe.
Next to Austria, Prussia took the matter up.
Specimens of pile-work were discovered in several provinces of this kingdom; among these were Brandenburg and Pomerania, a district rich in marshes.
In the environs of Lubtow the lacustrine constructions have the same characteristics as those of Robenhausen, on the Lake of Pfæffikon (Switzerland).
Two distinct archæological strata may be distinguished; in the lower are found, all mingled together, bronze and stone instruments, fragments of pottery, wheat, barley, and charred peas; the upper stratum belongs to the iron age.
We have not as yet said anything about France; lacustrine dwellings have, however, been discovered in some of the departments which border on Switzerland.
The Lakes of Bourget and Annecy, in Savoy, contain several of them.
The former of these lakes was thoroughly explored by M. Laurent Rabut, author of an article on the 'Habitations Lacustres de la Savoie,' which obtained a silver medal at the competition of the learned societies in 1863.
In the Lake of Bourget, M. Rabut ascertained the existence of five or six settlements of the bronze epoch, three of which, those of Tresserve, Grésine and Châtillon, have been distinguished as furnishing numerous ancient relics.
The Lake of Paladru (Isère) which has been searched by M. Gustave Vallier, has afforded similar results.
Pile-works are thought to exist in some other small lakes in the same district--those of Sainte-Hélène, on the left bank of the Isère, Saint-Martin-de-Belville, and Saint-Marcel, near Moutiers.
Pile-works have also been discovered on the site of an ancient lake on the banks of the Saône; and in a totally different district, at the foot of the Pyrenees, as many as five have been pointed out.
Everything therefore leads us to believe that if we searched with care the peat-mosses and pools which are very common in a good many of the French departments, we should discover the vestiges of various pre-historic epochs.
In order to complete the enumeration of the lacustrine constructions of Europe, we may state that they have been found in Denmark in the Lake of Maribo, and in England in the county of Norfolk.
With these constructions we must also connect the _crannoges_ or artificial islands of Ireland, the first of which was discovered in 1836 by Sir W. R. Wilde, a member of the Royal Academy of Dublin.
Since this date various investigations have been made of these objects, and, at the present time, no less than fifty _crannoges_ have been discovered, distributed among the various counties of Ireland.
[Illustration: Fig.
150.--Vertical Section of a _Crannoge_ in the Ardakillin Lake.]
Most of these islets were composed of heaps of stones held together by piles, nearly in the same way as in the _ténevières_ in Switzerland; but the _crannoges_ differ from the latter in being raised above the water.
Some of them, however, are formed by a collection of vertical piles and horizontal joists, constituting an external inclosure, and even internal compartments, inside which all kinds of remains were collected.
This kind are called _stockaded_ islands.
They are generally of an oval or circular shape, and their dimensions are always kept within rather narrow limits.
In his work on 'Pre-historic Times,' Sir John Lubbock gives the above sketch of a _crannoge_ in the Ardakillin Lake.
Captain Mudge, of the Royal British Navy, has described a hut which he found at a depth of 16 feet, in the Drumkellin marsh.
Its area was about 5 feet square, and its height 10 feet; it included two stories, each about 4-1/2 feet high.
The roof was flat, and the hut was surrounded by a fence of piles, doubtless intended to separate it from other adjacent huts, the remains of which are still to be perceived.
The whole construction had been executed by means of stone instruments, a fact that was proved by the nature of the cuts that were still visible on some of the pieces of wood.
Added to this, a hatchet, a chisel, and an arrow-head, all made of flint, were found on the floor of the cabin, and left no doubt whatever on this point.
This, therefore, was in fact a habitation belonging to the Stone Age.
Some nuts and a large quantity of broken shells were scattered over the ground.
A large flat stone, perforated with a little hole in the middle, was found on the spot; it was probably used to break the nuts by means of round pebbles picked up outside.
From some of these settlements considerable masses of bones have been obtained, which have, alas, been utilised as manure.
Sir John Lubbock tells us that the _crannoge_ of Dunshauglin alone has furnished more than 150 cartloads of bones.
These bones belong to the following species:--the ox, the pig, the goat, the sheep, the horse, the ass, the dog, the fox, the roe, the fallow-deer, and the great Irish stag, now extinct.
If all other proof were wanting, the presence of the remains of this latter animal would be sufficient to indicate that certain _crannoges_ date back to the Stone Age; but as in this case we evidently have to do with the polished-stone epoch, it is also proved that the gigantic antlered stag existed in Ireland at a much later date than on the continent.
Various historical records testify to the fact, that the _crannoges_ were inhabited up to the end of the sixteenth century.
They then constituted a kind of fortress, in which petty chiefs braved for a long time the royal power.
After the definitive pacification of the country they were completely abandoned.
CHAPTER IV.
Palustrine Habitations or Marsh-Villages--Surveys made by MM.
Strobel and Pigorini of the _Terramares_ of Tuscany--The _Terramares_ of Brazil.
Having described the _lacustrine_ habitations which have been discovered in various parts of Europe, we must now mention the so-called _palustrine_ habitations, as peculiar to the bronze epoch.
This name has been given to that kind of village, the remains of which have been discovered round marshes and pools.
Upper Italy is the locality in which these settlements have been pointed out.
The name of _palustrine settlements_, or _marnieras_, has been given to the sites of ancient villages established by means of piles on marshes or pools of no great size, which in the course of time have been filled up by mould of a peaty character, containing a quantity of organic and other _detritus_.
The discovery of those _palustrine settlements_ is due to MM.
Strobel and Pigorini, who have designated them by the name of _terramares_.
This term is applied by these _savants_ to the accumulation of ashes, charcoal, animal bones, and remains of all kinds which have been thrown away by man all round his dwellings, and have accumulated there during the lapse of centuries.
The name which has been given them was derived from the fact that they furnish a kind of earthy ammoniacal manure, known in the district by the name of _terra mare_.
These accumulations are the representatives of the Danish kitchen-middens; but with this difference, that instead of dating back to the Stone Age, the former belong to the bronze epoch.
_Terramares_ are numerous in the districts of Parma and Modena; they are, however, almost entirely confined to the plain which extends between the Po, the Apennines, the Adda, and the Reno, forming an area of about 60 miles long, and 30 miles wide.
In a general way, they form small mounds which rise from 6 to 12 feet above the level of the plain; as they go down some depth in the ground, their total thickness is in some places as much as 20 feet.
Very few are seen having an area exceeding 9 acres.
Excavations which have been made in several spots enable a tolerably exact account to be given of the mode of construction adopted in these palustrine settlements.
The _marniera_ of Castione, in particular, has furnished us with valuable information on this point; and we shall describe this settlement as a type of the rest.
Piles from 6 to 10 feet in length, and 4 to 6 inches in diameter (fig.
151), formed of trunks of trees, either whole or split, and pointed at the ends by some rough tool, were sunk to the depth of some inches in the bed of the hollow.
Some of them still show on their tops the marks of the blows that they received when they were driven in.
They were placed at intervals of from 18 inches to 6 feet; and connecting-beams from 6 to 10 feet in length, placed horizontally, and crossing one another, bound the piles together, and insured the solidity of the whole construction.
On these cross-beams rested a floor (fig.
152) formed of joists 1 to 3 inches thick, 6 to 12 inches wide, and 5 to 7 feet long.
[Illustration: Fig.
151.--Vertical Section of the _Marniera_ of Castione.]
[Illustration: Fig.
152.--Floor of the _Marniera_ of Castione.]
Fig.
153 gives the plan of the tie-beams and piles of the _marniera_ of Castione, taken from the author's work.
[34] These slabs or joists were not fixed in any way; at least, no trace now exists of any fastening.
They seemed to have been provided by splitting trunks of trees by means of wooden wedges, a number of these wedges having been found in the peaty earth.
Neither the saw nor the gimlet appear to have been employed; but the square holes have been cut out by means of the chisel.
The timber that was used was principally ash and oak.
[Illustration: Fig.
153.--Plan of the Piles and Cross-beams in the _Marniera_ of Castione.]
The floor was covered with beaten earth to a thickness of 10 to 12 inches.
Fragments of this kind of paving were found scattered about in two sandy heaps, almost entirely devoid of other _débris_, whilst the adjacent earth, of a blackish colour, contained a large quantity of relics of all kinds.
It is probable that the huts of the inhabitants of the _marniera_ were situated upon these sandy heaps, and that the dark-coloured earth is the final result of the accumulation of refuse and various kinds of _detritus_ on the same spot.
It is not known whether the layer of beaten earth extended over the whole surface of the floor, or was confined to the interior of the habitations.
In the former case, it is probable that it was rammed down with less care on the outside than on the inside of the huts, as is shown by the discovery of a storehouse for corn, the floor of which is formed by nothing but a layer of sandy earth placed upon the planks.
This storehouse, which, from the use to which it was put, could not have been used as a dwelling by any one, measured 13 feet in length, and 10 feet in width.
It contained carbonised beans and wheat, spread in a layer of about 4 inches thick.
MM.
Strobel and Pigorini found no remains of huts in the _marniera_ of Castione: probably because, having been built entirely of wood, they were completely destroyed by fire, numerous traces of which may still be detected.
In addition to the carbonised corn and fruit already mentioned, many other objects bearing the evident marks of fire were, in fact, collected at Castione.
The floor-slabs, the tie-beams, and the tops of the piles were often found to be half consumed.
But although at Castione there is no evidence forthcoming in respect to huts, information which bears upon this point has been obtained at other spots.
MM.
Strobel and Pigorini have ascertained that the palustrine dwellings bore a great similarity to those on the Swiss lakes.
The sides were lined with boughs, and the interior was daubed with clay.
In Italy, just as in Switzerland, certain fragments of the clayey coating which have been hardened and preserved by fire have enabled us to draw these inferences.
At Castione several beds of ashes and charcoal containing remains of meals, pointed out the sites of the domestic hearths, round which they, doubtless, assembled to eat their food.
Another bed of charcoal, mixed with straw, wheat, and pieces of burnt pottery, was found in a peculiar situation--it was embedded in a bank of calcareous pebbles vitrified on the surface; this bank was about 5 feet wide, and about 8 inches in thickness.
The explorers thought that it was, perhaps, a place which had been devoted to the fusion of metals.
On the edge of the basin of the marsh, a kind of rampart or defensive work was discovered, composed of slabs as much as 16 feet in length, laid horizontally one over the other.
These slabs were tied down by stakes driven in obliquely, and likewise placed one above the other, their ends being inserted between the slabs.
This last discovery, added to other indications, led MM.
Strobel and Pigorini to the supposition that the pile-work of Castione, and doubtless also those in all the _marnieras_, were in the first place constructed as places of defence, and were subsequently converted into fixed and permanent residences.
The basin of the marsh having been gradually filled up by the accumulations of _débris_ resulting from the presence of man, the habitations were built on a solid foundation, and a great portion of the former floor was done away with, which would account for so little of it now remaining.
The objects discovered in the _terramares_ and _marnieras_ do not essentially differ from those found in the pile-works of Switzerland.
They are almost all worn or broken, just as might be expected from finding them in rubbish heaps.
There are a great quantity of fragments of pottery of a greyish or dark-coloured clay mixed with grains of quartz, imperfectly baked, and made without the aid of a potter's wheel.
The ornamentation is, in general, of a very simple character, but the shapes of the ears, or handles, are very varied.
Some of the vessels are furnished with a spout or holes for the liquid to flow out.
The _terramares_ also contain supports for vessels with round or pointed bottoms.
In the _marniera_ of San Ambrogio a slab of pottery was found, elliptical in shape, and about half an inch in thickness, concave on one side and convex on the other, and pierced with seventeen circular holes about a quarter of an inch in diameter.
The idea was entertained that this object was used as a kind of fire-grating, for it bore traces of the long-continued action of fire.
The other objects most commonly found were weights made of baked earth, and perhaps used for the weaving-loom, much worn in the place where the cord passed through on which they were hung; _fusaiolas_, or spindle-whorls, very varied both in shape and size, likewise made of baked earth; large mill-stones with a polished surface.
Next, we have poniards or spear-heads, hatchets, and hair-pins, all made of bronze.
The _marniera_ of San Ambrogio has furnished a mould indicating that bronze was melted and cast in this district.
An attentive study of the bones of animals contained in the _terramares_ has led to the following information being obtained as to the _fauna_ of Upper Italy during the bronze epoch.
With respect to the mammals which lived in a wild state, the existence has been ascertained of a species of stag of much greater size than the present variety, and about equal to that of the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland (fig.
154); also of a wild-boar, much more powerful than that of Sardinia or even of Algeria, the roe, the bear, the rat, and the porcupine.
In different spots have been found stags' horns and bones, and also sloe-stones which have retained the impression of the teeth of some small rodent.
The bear, the wild-boar, the stag and the roe, have, at the present day, disappeared from the country.
The porcupine, too, has migrated into regions further south, which leads to the supposition that the temperature of the provinces of Parma and Modena is a little lowered since the date of the bronze epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
154.--The Chase during the Bronze Epoch.]
It is to be remarked that in these settlements, contrary to what has been noticed in Switzerland, in the lacustrine habitations belonging to the Stone Age, the remains of wild animals are met with much more rarely than those of domestic animals; this must be consequent on a superior and more advanced stage of civilisation having existed in Italy.
Among the domestic species found we may mention the dog, two breeds of which, of different sizes, must have existed; the pig of the peat-bogs, the same variety as that of which the bones were discovered in Switzerland; the horse, the remains of which, although rare, testify to the existence of two breeds, one large and bulky, the other of slighter and more elegant proportions; the ass, of which there are but few bones, could not, therefore, have been very common; the ox, the remains of which are on the contrary very abundant, like the dog and the horse, is represented by two distinct breeds, the more powerful of which appears to have descended from the _Bos primigenius_ or _Urus_; lastly, the sheep and the goat, the remains of which can scarcely be clearly distinguished on account of their great anatomical resemblance.
When we compare the present _fauna_ with that of which we have just given the details, we may perceive several important modifications.
Thus the pig of the peat-bogs, one breed of oxen, and a breed of sheep (the smallest) have become entirely extinct; and the common sheep, the goat, the horse, and the ass have assumed much more important dimensions.
With regard to the wild species of mammals, we have already said that some have become less in size, and others have disappeared.
Hence results one proof of a fact which is beyond dispute, although often called in question, namely, that the intelligent action of man working by means of domestication on wild natures, will ultimately succeed in ameliorating, reclaiming, and perfecting them.
The skulls and the long bones found in the _terramares_ are almost always broken for the purpose of extracting the brain and the marrow, a very ancient usage which had endured to this comparatively late epoch.
But instead of being split longitudinally, as was the case in preceding epochs, they are generally broken across at one end.
The _terramares_ and the _kitchen-middens_ have this peculiarity in common--that all the dogs' skulls found in them have been intentionally broken; a fact which proves that in Italy, as in Denmark, this faithful guest or servant of man was occasionally, in default of some better food, and doubtless with much regret, used as an article of subsistence.
No remains of fish have been found in these _marnieras_; from this, MM.
Strobel and Pigorini have justly concluded that the inhabitants of these pile-works were not fishermen, and that, at all events, the water which surrounded them was shallow and of limited extent.
The species of birds, molluscs and insects, the remains of which have been found in the _terramares_, are likewise determined.
The existence of the domestic fowl and the duck, no doubt living in complete liberty, has been duly recognised; but it is thought that the appearance of these species must not be dated further back than the _end_ of the bronze epoch, and perhaps even the beginning of that of iron.
The examination of the insect remains has enabled us to ascertain that the refuse food and rubbish must have lain for some little time in front of the doors of the habitations before it was pushed into the water; for in it, flies, and other insects of the kind, found time to be born, to mature, and to undergo their whole series of metamorphoses; a fact which is proved by the perforated and empty envelopes of their chrysalides.
We mention this last fact as one of the most curious instances of the results which science and inference may, in combination, arrive at when devoted to the novel and interesting study of some of the earlier stages in man's existence.
But, on the other hand, it gives us but a poor idea of the cleanliness of the Italian race during the bronze epoch.
It would seem to us that a feeling of the dignity inherent in the body of man, and the cares that it so imperiously claims, would have been now more strongly developed than at a period when men dwelt confined in caves.
This, however, is not the case.
But have we, in the present day, any right to be astonished when we see, even now, the prevalence, in some of the great cities of America, of certain practices so disgusting in character and so opposed to the public health?
Osculati, an Italian traveller, relates that at all the street corners in the city of Guayaquil, in the republic of Ecuador, heaps of filth are to be seen which exhale an insupportable odour.
Similar heaps exist at the very gates of Mexico, where, at the present time, they form small hills.
These facts ought to render us indulgent towards the neglect of cleanliness by our ancestors during the bronze epoch.
Such were the animal remains collected in the _terramares_.
The vegetable remains consisted of grains of carbonised corn, broken nuts, acorns, halves of burnt apples, stones of the dog-berry, plums and grapes.
In concluding our consideration of the palustrine settlements, we may add, that some have recently been discovered in Moravia and Mecklenburg.
At Olmutz, a city of Moravia, M. Jeitteler, a learned Viennese, has found piles sunk into the peat, along with various bronze and stone objects, ornamented pottery, charcoal, charred wheat, numerous animal bones, and a human skeleton of a brachycephalous race.
All the facts lead to the belief that this will not be the last discovery of the kind.
We must also state that the _terramares_, or deposits of the remains of habitations on the edge of marshes, are not peculiar to Europe exclusively.
On the coast of Africa (at San Vicente) M. Strobel found remains of an exactly similar nature; and Dr. Henrique Naegeli, a distinguished naturalist of Rio Janeiro, has testified to the existence on the coast of Brazil of like deposits, which he proposes to subject to a thorough examination.
[35] FOOTNOTES: [34] 'Les Terramares et les Pilotages du Parmesan;' Milan, 1864.
(Extract from the 'Atti della Società Italiana di Scienze naturali.')
[35] 'Matériaux pour l'histoire positive et philosophique de l'Homme,' by G. de Mortillet.
Paris, 1865: vol.
i. p. 397.
CHAPTER V. Weapons, Instruments, and Utensils contained in the various Lacustrine Settlements in Europe, enabling us to become acquainted with the Manners and Customs of Man during the Bronze Epoch.
We have just spoken of the discovery and investigation of the _lacustrine habitations_ found in various parts of Europe, and also of the _palustrine villages_ of Northern Italy.
These rich deposits have thrown a considerable light on the primitive history of the human race.
With the elements that have been thus placed at our disposal, it will be possible to reconstruct the domestic life of the tribes of the bronze epoch, that is, to describe the weapons, instruments, and utensils which were proper to the every-day proceedings of this period.
In order to give perspicuity to our representation or account, we have classed the lacustrine habitations under the head of the _bronze _epoch.
But we must by no means forget that these lacustrine villages contained other objects besides those belonging to the bronze epoch; there were also found in them a number of articles which must be referred to the preceding period, that is, the polished-stone epoch.
It is a question indifferent to our purpose, whether the lacustrine villages were constructed during the Stone Age, as inferred from the presence in some settlements of stone objects only, or whether the habitations were built during the bronze epoch, some of the articles made of stone and dating back to the preceding period being still preserved in use.
For it is certain that the larger number of lacustrine settlements do not go back beyond the bronze epoch.
But as certain objects made of stone form a portion of the implements found in these ancient habitations, we must commence by describing these relics of the Stone Age; although we shall considerably abridge this description, so as to avoid repeating those details which we have already given in the preceding chapters.
The stone weapons and instruments are found to consist, in Switzerland as elsewhere, of hatchets, spear-heads and arrow-heads, hammers, saws, knives and chisels.
The hatchets and hammers are made of various materials, as flint, quartzite, diorite, nephrite, jade, serpentine, &c. But the other weapons and implements are, nearly all of them, of flint.
The hatchet was in continual use, not merely as a weapon but as a tool; thus, very numerous specimens of it are found in the Swiss lakes.
The hatchets, however, are generally speaking, small in size.
Their length varies from 2 to 8 inches, and their width, at the cutting edge, from 1-1/2 to 2 inches.
Fig.
155 represents one of the flint hatchets.
They are the same shape as the Danish hatchets during the polished-stone epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
155.--Stone Hatchet from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
The most simple plan of fixing a handle to the small-sized hatchets, which were in fact chisels, consisted in inserting them into a piece of stag's horn, hollowed out for this purpose at one end.
In this way they obtained a kind of chisel which was very ready of use.
Fig.
156 represents this kind of handle.
[Illustration: Fig.
156.--Stone Chisel with Stag's-horn Handle from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
There was also another mode of fixing handles to these instruments.
The shaped flint was previously fixed in a holder of stag's horn.
This holder was itself perforated through the middle with a round hole, in order to receive a wooden handle.
It then became a complete hatchet.
Fig.
157 represents one of these hatchets fitted with a handle, in a way similar to many of the specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
[Illustration: Fig.
157.--Flint Hammer, fitted with a Stag's-horn Handle.]
This mode of insertion into a handle is frequently met with during the polished-stone epoch, as we have already stated upon the authority of Boucher de Perthes (see fig.
112).
There was also another way of adapting for use the stone chisels and hammers.
The following is the mode employed.
The flint was inserted into a short holder of stag's horn, hollowed out at one end for this purpose, the other end of the piece of horn being cut square.
This squared end, which was thinner than the rest of the holder, was fitted into a wooden handle, which had been perforated with a hole of the same shape and size.
M. Desor, in his 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes,' supplies the following sketch (fig.
158), as representing these double-handled hatchets.
[Illustration: Fig.
158.--Stone Hatchet, with double Handle of Wood and Stag's Horn.]
It is very seldom that hatchets of this type are met with in a complete state in the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland; the handles have generally disappeared.
In other localities, where the hatchets are very plentiful, very few holders are found.
Is it not the case that in these spots the stone was the special object of work and not the handles?
There were, in fact, in Switzerland, as in France and Belgium, workshops devoted to the manufacture of these articles.
The large number of hatchets, either just commenced or defective in workmanship, which have been found in some of the principal lacustrine settlements leave no doubt on this point.
The finest and most carefully-wrought instruments are the hammers and double, or hatchet-hammers.
Most of them are made of serpentine.
One of the ends is generally rounded or flattened, whilst the other tapers off either into a point or a cutting edge, as represented in figs.
159 and 160, taken from M. Desor's work.
They are perforated with a round hole intended to receive a handle of wood.
This hole is so sharply and regularly cut out, that it is difficult to believe it could have been made with nothing better than a flint tool.
Metal alone would appear to be capable of effecting such finished work.
This is one of the facts which tend to the idea that the lacustrine settlements, which have been ascribed to the Stone Age, belong rather to the bronze epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
159-160.--Serpentine Hatchet-hammers, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
Fig.
161 represents another hatchet-hammer obtained from the Swiss lakes.
[Illustration: Fig.
161.--Another Hatchet-hammer, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
The knives and saws have nothing remarkable about them.
They are mere flakes of flint, long and narrow in shape, the cutting edge or teeth being on the widest side.
There are some which are fitted into handles of stag's horn, as represented in fig.
162, taken from M. Desor's work.
[Illustration: Fig.
162.--Flint Saw fitted into a piece of Stag's Horn.]
They must have been fastened into the handles by means of bitumen, for traces of this substance have been found on some of the handles.
The same plan was adopted in order to fix the hatchets in their holders.
The spear-heads (fig.
163) are very skilfully fashioned; their shape is regular, and the chiselling very perfect, although inferior to that observed in Denmark.
They are made level on one side, and with a longitudinal middle ridge on the other.
[Illustration: Fig.
163.--Flint Spear-head from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
The arrow-heads are very varied in shape (fig.
164).
In delicacy of workmanship they are in no way inferior to the spear or javelin-heads.
[Illustration: Fig.
164.--Various shapes of Flint Arrow-heads, from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
The cutting of these small objects must have required much labour and skill.
Some are toothed on the edges, which must have rendered the wounds inflicted by them much more dangerous.
The greater part of these arrow-heads are made of flint, but some have been found the material of which is bone, and even stag's horn.
The arrow-heads were fixed into the shafts by means of bitumen.
This plan is represented in figs.
165 and 166, which are given by M. Mortillet in his 'Promenades préhistoriques à l'Exposition Universelle.'
[Illustration: Fig.
165.--Arrow-head of Bone fixed on the Shaft by means of Bitumen.]
[Illustration: Fig.
166.--Stone Arrow-head fixed on the Shaft by means of Bitumen.]
Sometimes they were merely attached to the shaft by a ligature of string (fig.
167).
[Illustration: Fig.
167.--Arrow-head fixed on the Shaft by a Ligature of String.]
A few relics have been discovered of the bows which were used to impel these arrows.
They were made of yew, and roughly cut.
Tools and instruments of bone seem, like those made of flint, to have been much in use.
In addition to the arrow-heads which we have just mentioned, there have also been found piercers, or bodkins of various shapes (figs.
168 and 169), chisels for working in wood (fig.
170), pins with lenticular heads (fig.
171), needles perforated sometimes with one eye and sometimes with two, and occasionally hollowed out round the top in a circular groove, so as to attach the thread.
Figs.
168, 169, 170 and 171 are given by M. Desor in his 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
[Illustration: Fig.
168.--Bone Bodkin, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
169.--Bone Bodkin, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
170.--Carpenter's Chisel, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
171.--Bone Needle.]
It is probable that, as during the reindeer epoch, garments were sewn by means of the needle and the bodkin, the latter piercing the holes through which the needle passed the thread.
That kind of needle which has a hole in the middle and is pointed at the two ends, which is found in large numbers in the lacustrine settlements, must doubtless have been used as a hook for fishing.
When the fish had swallowed the bait, the two points stuck into the flesh, and it was then easy to pull out the captive.
Some of these fish-hooks are carved out of boars' tusks.
Stag's horn was likewise employed for several other purposes.
A kind of pick-axe was sometimes made of it (fig.
172); also harpoons (fig.
173), harpoons with a double row of barbs (fig.
174), and small cups of conical shape (fig.
175), perforated with a hole in the upper part so that they could be suspended if required.
[Illustration: Fig.
172.--Pick-axe of Stag's Horn.]
[Illustration: Fig.
173.--Harpoon made of Stag's Horn, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
174.--Harpoon made of Stag's Horn, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
175.--Vessel made of Stag's Horn.]
The taste for personal adornment was not foreign to the nature of the primitive people of Switzerland.
Canine teeth and incisors of various animals, rings and beads made of bone or stag's horn, all united in a necklace, formed one of their most usual adornments.
They also made use of hair-pins and bone combs.
These pins were finished off with a knob, and combined elegance and simplicity in their shape; they would, indeed, be no disfigurement to the _coiffure_ of the women of modern times.
Such were the instruments, utensils and tools, used for the purpose of domestic life, which have been found in the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland belonging to the Stone Age.
We will now pass on to the objects of the same character, peculiar to the bronze epoch.
The quantity of bronze objects which, up to the present time, have been collected from the Swiss lakes is very considerable.
The finest collection in the country, that of Colonel Schwab, contained in 1867, according to a catalogue drawn up by Dr. Keller, no less than 4346 specimens.
Most of these objects have been cast in moulds, as is evident from the seams, the traces of which may be observed on several of the specimens.
Among the most remarkable of the relics of the bronze epoch which have been recovered from the Swiss lakes, the hatchets or celts are well deserving of mention.
They are from 4 to 8 inches in length, and weigh from 10 to 15 pounds.
Their shapes are varied; but all possess the distinctive characteristic of being adapted to fit longitudinally on their handles, and not transversely, as in the Stone Age.
It is but seldom that they are not furnished with a hole or ear, so as to furnish an additional means of attachment.
We have in the first place the hatchet with wings bent round on each side of the blade, so as to constitute a kind of double socket, intended to receive a handle divided in the middle and bent into an elbow.
This is the most prevalent type.
Sometimes, as may be noticed in fig.
176, the upper end is pierced with an eye, doubtless intended to hold a band for fixing firmly the curved handle.
This arrangement is peculiar to the hatchets of large size, that is, to those which had the most strain put upon them.
Another type which is very rare in Switzerland--only one specimen of it existing in the Museum of Neuchâtel--is that (fig.
177) in which the wings, instead of bending back upon the blade perpendicularly to the plane of the cutting edge, turn back in the same plane with it, or in the thickness of the blade.
[Illustration: Fig.
176.--Bronze Winged Hatchet, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
177.--Winged Hatchet (front and side view), from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
There is also the hatchet with the ordinary socket, either cylindrical (fig.
178) or angular.
This shape is very common in France, where they are known by the name of _celts_.
[Illustration: Fig.
178.--Socketed Hatchet from the Lacustrine Habitations.]
[Illustration: Fig.
179.--Knife Hatchet (front and side view), from the Lacustrine Habitations.]
M. Morlot has given the name of _knife-hatchets_ (fig.
179), to those instruments, the perforated ears of which are scarcely, if at all developed, and could by no means serve to give firmness to a handle.
It is probable that these instruments were grasped directly by the hand; and that the mere rudiments of wings which may be noticed, were merely intended to substitute a rounded surface for a sharp ridge.
Figures 176, 177, 178 and 179, are taken from M. Desor's 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
Next to the hatchets we must mention the chisels for wood-work (fig.
180), which are cut out to a great nicety, and in no way differ from our present chisels, except in the mode of fitting to the handle, which is done by means of a socket.
[Illustration: Fig.
180.--Carpenter's Chisel, in Bronze.]
[Illustration: Fig.
181.--Hexagonal Hammer.]
[Illustration: Fig.
182.--Knife with a tang to fit into a Handle, from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
There has also been discovered a kind of prismatically shaped hexagonal hammer (fig.
181), likewise provided with a socket, the length of which is about 3 inches.
This hammer forms a portion of the collection of Colonel Schwab.
The knives are the most numerous of all the sharp instruments.
The workmanship of them is, in general, very skilfully executed, and their shape is very elegant.
Some of them have a metallic handle; but the greater part terminate in a kind of tang intended to fit into a handle of wood or stag's horn, as represented in fig.
182, taken from M. Desor's 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
We also find knives furnished with a socket (fig.
183).
The blade measures from 4 to 8 inches in length, and is often adorned with tracings; in some instances the back of the blade is very much thickened.
[Illustration: Fig.
183.--Socketed Knife, from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
Together with the knives we must also class the sickles or reaping hooks.
These implements have been collected in somewhat large quantities in the settlements of Auvernier and Cortaillod (Lake of Neuchâtel).
They are of good workmanship, and frequently provided with ridges or ribs in the metal of the blade.
Fig.
184, given by M. Desor in his work, represents a sickle of this kind which was found by the author at Chevroux.
[Illustration: Fig.
184.--Bronze Sickle, found by M. Desor at Chevroux.]
The largest of these sickles does not exceed 6 inches in length.
They were fitted into a wooden handle.
We cannot of course describe all the bronze objects which have been recovered from the Swiss lakes.
After having mentioned the preceding, we shall content ourselves with naming certain saws of various shapes--razors, actual razors, indicating no small care given to personal appearance--bodkins, or piercers--needles, with eyes either at the end or some distance from the end, articles of fishing tackle, such as single and double fishing-hooks (figs.
185 and 186), with a plain or barbed point--harpoons, various small vessels, &c. [Illustration: Fig.
185.--Bronze Fish-hook, from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
186.--Double Fish-hook, from the Lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.]
We shall dwell, although briefly, on the various objects of personal ornament which have been found in the Swiss lacustrine settlements of the bronze epoch.
We will mention, in the first place, the hair-pins, &c. which have been recovered from the various lakes.
The most curious fact about them is, that no one has ever found two exactly alike both in shape and dimensions.
We borrow from M. Desor's work the four following figures representing various shapes of pins.
Some have a round head (fig.
187), and others a flat (fig.
188), or cylindrical head (fig.
189); others, again, are finished off with a twisted end to which is attached a movable end (fig.
190).
[Illustration: Fig.
187.--Hair-pin, found by M. Desor in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
[Illustration: Fig.
188.--Hair-pin, found by M. Desor in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
[Illustration: Fig.
189.--Hair-pin with cylindrical Head.]
[Illustration: Fig.
190.--Hair-pin with curled Head.]
The round-headed pins are sometimes massive in shape and unornamented, that is, exactly similar to the bone pins of the Stone Age; sometimes, and even more frequently, they are perforated with one or more round holes and adorned with a few chasings.
The flat-headed pins differ very much in the diameter of the button at the end, which is sometimes of considerable size.
There are some, the head of which is nothing more than a small enlargement of the pin, and others, in which there are two or three of these enlargements, placed a little way apart and separated by a twist.
Their sizes are very various, and in some cases are so exaggerated, that it is quite evident that the objects cannot have been used as hair-pins.
In Colonel Schwab's collection, there is one 33 inches long, and M. Troyon has mentioned some 20 and 24 inches long.
At the _Exposition Universelle_ of 1867, in the collection sent by M. Desor, the visitors' admiration might have been called forth by some of the pins which had been repolished by the care of the learned Swiss naturalist.
They were certainly very elegant, and ladies of the present day might well have decorated themselves with these ornaments, although they dated back to an era so many thousands of years ago.
Among many savage tribes, the dressing of the hair, especially among the men, is carried to an excessively elaborate pitch.
The head of hair of an Abyssinian soldier forms a species of lofty system of curls which is meant to last a whole lifetime.
He carries with him a long pin, furnished with a thick button, owing to the impossibility of reaching his skin through his _coiffure_ with the extremities of his fingers.
In the same way the New Zealanders wear an enormous "chignon," 2 feet high and ornamented with ribbons.
The Chinese and the Japanese also devote excessive attention to the dressing of their hair.
It is, therefore, probable that the inhabitants of the lacustrine villages, both men and women, devoted an immense amount of care to the cultivation of their _coiffure_.
In the tombs of the bronze epoch, pins have been found 2-1/2 feet in length, with large knobs or buttons at the end, similar to those used by the Abyssinian soldiers of our own day.
The combs, which resembled those of the present New Zealanders, although 6 inches long, had only six to eight teeth, and must have been better fitted to scratch their heads than to dress their hair.
Bracelets, too, have been found in some considerable numbers in the Swiss lakes.
They are very varied in their shapes, decidedly artistic in their workmanship, and often set off with carved designs.
Some (fig.
191) are composed of a single ring of varying width, the ends of which almost meet and terminate by a semi-circular clasp; others (fig.
192), are a combination of straight or twisted wires ingeniously joined to one another.
[Illustration: Fig.
191.--Bronze Bracelet, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
[Illustration: Fig.
192.--Another Bronze Bracelet.]
We also find certain rings, cylindrical in shape, and made all in one piece (fig.
193), which were probably placed round the legs.
[Illustration: Fig.
193.--Bronze Ring.]
Some of these ornaments remain, even up to the present day, in a perfect state of preservation.
In an urn which was recovered from the settlement of Cortaillod, six specimens were discovered, the designs of which appeared quite as clearly as if they had only just been engraved.
There is one point which must be remarked, because it forms an important _datum_ in respect to the size of the Swiss people during the bronze epoch; this is, that most of the bracelets are so small that they could scarcely be worn nowadays.
They must, therefore, have been adapted to very slender wrists--a fact which naturally leads us to believe that all the other limbs were small in proportion.
This small size in the bracelets coincides with the diminutiveness of the sword-hilts which have been found in the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland.
Earrings, also, have been found in great numbers in the Swiss lakes.
They are either metallic plates, or wires differently fashioned; all, however, testifying to a somewhat developed degree of taste.
Next after these trinkets and objects of adornment we must class certain articles of a peculiar character which must have been pendants or appendages to bracelets.
All these ornaments are, in fact, perforated at the top with a circular hole, intended, no doubt, to have a thread passed through it, by which it was hung round the neck.
Some of them (fig.
194) are small triangular plates of metal, frequently ornamented with engraved designs; others (fig.
195), are in open-work, and include several branches, each terminated by a hole similar to that at the top.
Some, again, assume the form of a ring not completely closed up (fig.
196), or rather, perhaps, of a crescent with wide and almost contiguous horns.
In the same class may be placed the rings (fig.
197) to which were suspended movable ornaments in the shape of a double spiral.
[Illustration: Fig.
194.--Bronze Pendant, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
195.--Another Bronze Pendant, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
196.--Bronze Ring, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
197.--Another Ornamental Ring.]
The four bronze objects, representations of which we have just given, are designed from the sketches supplied by M. Desor in his 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
Some few trinkets of gold have been found in the lacustrine settlements of the bronze epoch; but this sort of "find" is very rare.
They are in the form of earrings, and may be seen in the collection of Colonel Schwab.
CHAPTER VI.
Industrial Skill and Agriculture during the Bronze Epoch--The Invention of Glass--Invention of Weaving.
The manufacture of pottery, which appears to have remained stationary during the Stone Age, assumed a considerable development during the bronze epoch.
The clay intended for making pottery was duly puddled, and the objects when moulded were baked in properly formed furnaces.
At this date also commences the art of surfacing articles of earthenware.
The specimens of pottery which have been found in the settlements of man of this period are both numerous and interesting; entire vessels have indeed been discovered.
We notice indications of very marked progress beyond the objects of this kind manufactured in the preceding age.
They are still fashioned by the hand and without the aid of the wheel; but the shapes are both more varied in their character and more elegant.
In addition to this, although in the larger kind of vessels the clay used is still rough in its nature and full of hard lumps of quartz like the material employed in the Stone Age, that of the smaller vessels is much finer, and frequently covered with a black lead coating.
Most of these vessels are characterised by a conical base, a shape which we had before occasion to point out in the stag's-horn vessels of the Stone Age.
If, therefore, it was requisite to place them upright, the lower ends of them had to be stuck into the earth, or to be placed in holders hollowed out to receive them.
Some of these supports, or holders, have been discovered.
They are called _torches_, or _torchères_, by French archæologists.
Figs.
198 and 199 give a representation of a bronze vessel from the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland with its support or _torchère_.
[Illustration: Fig.
198.--Earthenware Vessel with Conical Bottom, from the Lacustrine Habitations of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
199.--Earthen Vessel placed on its support.]
In a general way, the vessels made with conical bases have no handles; but others, on the contrary, are provided with them (fig.
200).
They are nearly always ornamented with some sort of design, either mere lines parallel to the rim, triangles, chevrons, or rows of points round the handle or the neck.
Even the very roughest specimens are not altogether devoid of ornamentation, and a stripe may often be observed round the neck, on which the fingers of the potter have left their traces.
[Illustration: Fig.
200.--Fragment of an Earthen Vessel with a Handle.]
These vessels were intended to contain beverages and substances used for food.
Out of one of them M. Desor took some apples, cherries, wild plums, and a large quantity of nuts.
Some of these vessels, perforated with small holes, were used in the manufacture of cheese.
Dishes, porringers, &c., have also been found.
Relics of the pottery of the Stone Age are very frequently recovered from the Swiss lakes; but vessels in an entire state are seldom met with.
It is, however, stated as a fact, that considerable accumulations of them once existed; but, unfortunately, the importance of them was not recognised until too late.
An old fisherman of the Lake of Neuchâtel told M. Desor that in his childhood he had sometimes amused himself by pushing at _these old earthen pots_ with a long pole, and that in certain parts of the lake there were _real mountains_ of them.
At the present day, the "old earthen pots" are all broken, and nothing but pieces can be recovered.
These relics are, however, sufficient to afford a tolerably exact idea of the way in which the primitive Swiss used to fashion clay.
They seem to denote large vessels either cylindrical (figs.
201 and 202) or bulbous-shaped with a flat bottom, moulded by the hand without the aid of a potter's wheel.
The material of which they are composed is rough, and of a grey or black colour, and is always mingled with small grains of quartz; the baking of the clay is far from satisfactory.
[Illustration: Fig.
201.--Vessel of Baked Clay, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland.]
[Illustration: Fig.
202.--Vessel of Baked Clay, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland.]
The ornamentation is altogether of an ordinary character.
It generally consists of mere lines traced out in the soft clay, either by the finger, a pointed stick, or sometimes a string was used.
There are neither curves nor arabesques of any kind; the lines are almost always straight.
A few of the vessels are, however, decorated in a somewhat better style.
Some are provided with small projections perforated with holes, through which might be passed a string for the purpose of hanging them up; there are others which have a row of studs arranged all round them, just below the rim, and others, indeed, in which hollows take the place of the studs.
Several have been met with which are pierced with holes at different heights; it is supposed that they were used in the preparation of milk-curd, the holes being made to let out the whey.
The vessels of this period are entirely devoid of handles; this ornament did not appear until the bronze age.
Mill-stones, or stones for crushing grain, are not unfrequently found in the Swiss lakes.
At some date during the period we are now discussing we must place the discovery of glass.
Glass beads of a blue or green colour are, in fact, found in the tombs of the bronze epoch.
What was their origin?
Chemistry and metallurgy combine to inform us that as soon as bronze foundries existed glass must have been discovered.
What, in fact, does glass consist of?
A silicate with a basis of soda and potash, combined with some particles of the silicates of iron and copper, which coloured it blue and green.
As the scoria from bronze foundries is partly composed of these silicates it is indubitable that a kind of glass was formed in the earliest metal-works where this alloy was made.
It constituted the slag or dross of the metal works.
Thus, the classic tradition which attributes the invention of glass to certain Phoenician merchants, who produced a mass of glass by heating on the sand the _natron_, that is _soda_, brought from Egypt, ascribe too recent a date to the discovery of this substance.
It should properly be carried back to the bronze epoch.
The working of amber was carried out to a very great extent by these peoples.
Ornaments and objects of this material have been discovered in great abundance in the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.
On the whole, if we compare the industrial skill of the bronze age with that of the preceding age, we shall find that the later is vastly superior to the earlier.
The art of weaving seems to have been invented during the stone age.
We have positive and indisputable proofs that the people who lived during this epoch were acquainted with the art of manufacturing cloth.
[36] All the objects which we have thus far considered do not, in fact, surpass those which might be expected from any intelligent savage; but the art of preparing and manufacturing textile fabrics marks out one of the earliest acquisitions of man's civilisation.
In the Museum of Saint-Germain we may both see and handle some specimens of woven cloth which were met with in some of the lacustrine settlements in Switzerland, and specially at Robenhausen and Wangen.
This cloth, which is represented in fig.
203, taken from a specimen in the Museum of Saint-Germain, is formed of twists of interwoven flax; of rough workmanship, it is true, but none the less remarkable, considering the epoch in which it was manufactured.
It is owing to the fact of their having been charred and buried in the peat that these remains of pre-historic fabrics have been kept in good preservation up to the present time.
[Illustration: Fig.
203.--Cloth of the Bronze Age, found in the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland.]
Balls of thread and twine have also been found; likewise ends of cord, and ropes made of bark, nets with large and moderately-sized meshes, which we have previously represented, and lastly some fragments of a basket of straw or osier.
Ribs of animals, split through and tapering off at one end, have been considered to be the teeth of the cards or combs which were used for unravelling the flax.
The whole comb was formed of several of these bones joined firmly together with a band.
[Illustration: Fig.
204.--The First Weaver.]
There were also found in the Swiss lakes a large number of discs made of baked earth perforated with a hole in their centre, of which we here give a representation (fig.
205), taken from one of the numerous specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
These are ordinary spindle-whorls.
[Illustration: Fig.
205.--Spindle-whorls made of baked Clay, found in the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland.]
Also, terra cotta weights pierced with a hole through the centre were intended to support the thread of flax in the weaving loom.
The thread passed through the hole and was stopped by a knot at its extremity.
We think that this interpretation of the use of these objects can hardly be called in question.
We also find in the lacustrine settlements woven fabrics, threads, strings, combs used for carding the flax, and spindle-whorls; the co-existence of all these objects proves that the invention of the art of weaving may be fixed at this date.
The loom of the weaver may, therefore, be traced back to the most remote ages.
Acting upon this idea we have given a representation of _weaving in pre-historic times_.
The weaving-loom is so simple a matter that the men of the bronze age were enabled to produce it in nearly the same form as that in which it exists in the present day for the manufacture of plain kinds of cloth in various districts of the world where the art is still in a barbaric condition.
The loom being upright, not horizontal as with us, the terra cotta weights just mentioned were used to keep the threads of the warp stretched.
This seems to be the only difference.
But, as we again repeat, the weaver's loom, on the whole, must have differed but very slightly from that of the present day.
Its productions bear testimony to the fact.
Metal weapons and implements were at first obtained by means of exchange.
But very soon the art of manufacturing bronze became prevalent in Switzerland, and foundries were established there.
No doubt can be entertained on this point, as a mould for celts or hatchets has been found at Morges and also a bar of tin at Estavayer.
During this epoch the shape of the pottery became more advanced in character, and ornamentation was the rule and not the exception.
After the indispensable comes the superfluous.
Taste in ornamentation made its appearance and soon developed itself in ceramic objects of an elegant style.
Articles of pottery now assumed more pleasing outlines, and were ornamented with various designs.
Progress in artistic feeling was evidently manifested.
The simplicity and monotony of ornamentation during this epoch is especially remarkable.
Art was then confined to the mere representation of a certain number of lines and geometrical figures.
They were similar to those represented in fig.
206, and were applied to all kinds of objects--weapons, vases, utensils and trinkets.
None of them attempt any delineation of nature; this idea does not seem to have entered into the head of man during the bronze epoch.
In this respect they were inferior to their predecessors, the inhabitants of the caves of Périgord, the contemporaries of the mammoth and the reindeer.
[Illustration: Fig.
206.--Principal Designs for the ornamentation of Pottery during the Bronze Epoch.]
During the period we are now considering, commercial intercourse had assumed an activity of a totally different character from that manifested during the Stone Age.
It became necessary to procure tin, which was indispensable for the manufacture of bronze.
As no tin ore could be found in Switzerland, the inhabitants, doubtless, went to Saxony in order to obtain it.
The traffic must have been carried out by means of barter, as is customary among all infant nations.
Flint, which likewise did not exist in Switzerland, was necessarily procured from the surrounding countries which were more fortunate in this respect.
No country was more favoured on this point than France; commerce must, therefore, have existed between the two countries.
At Concise, in Switzerland, some pieces of white coral were found, and at Meilen, on the banks of the Lake of Zurich, some fragments of amber; from this we may conclude that during the bronze epoch the inhabitants of Switzerland traded with the inhabitants of the shores of the Mediterranean and the Baltic.
Among the other specimens of foreign productions, we must not omit to mention graphite, which was used to surface pottery, amber beads, and even a few glass trinkets suitable for female adornment.
We will now pass on to the system of food adopted by man during the bronze epoch.
Researches made in various lacustrine settlements have furnished us with very circumstantial information upon the system of food customary among the earliest inhabitants of Switzerland.
From them we learn that these men did not live solely upon the products of fishing and hunting, but that they possessed certain ideas of agriculture, and also devoted themselves to the breeding of cattle.
We shall enter into a few details as to this eminently interesting aspect of their history, taking as our guides Professors Heer and Rütimeyer, the first of whom has carefully examined the vegetable remains, and the second the animal relics which have been found in the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.
At Meilen, Moosseedorf, and Wangen, some charred cereals have been found, viz., barley and wheat.
The latter was the most abundant, and, at Wangen in particular, there were several bushels of it, either in ears or in thrashed corn collected in large heaps.
These grains are almost the same shape and size as the wheat of the present time.
Several ears of six-rowed barley (_Hordeum hexastichon_) were found, which differ from our common barley in having smaller grains arranged in six rows.
De Candolle is of opinion that this is the species which was cultivated by the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans.
This corn was preserved in large earthen vessels, as may be gathered from the contents of some of them, still in an entire state.
What preparation did the corn undergo in order to render it fit for human food?
On this subject we have tolerably exact data to go upon.
The grain was bruised by hand, either between two stone discs or mill-stones, or in a mortar by means of a round pestle.
In almost all of the lacustrine villages, some of these mill-stones made of granite or sandstone have been met with, a few of which are as much as 2 feet in diameter.
M. Heer is of opinion that the grain was parched before being pounded, and then placed in vessels and slightly soaked.
In this state it was fit for eating.
At the time of the conquest of the Canary Islands by the Spaniards, it was remarked that the natives prepared their corn in this manner; and in the present day the inhabitants of the same regions still feed on parched grain.
Nevertheless, the earliest inhabitants of western Switzerland also made real bread, or rather wheat-cakes, for leaven was not then known.
Charred fragments of these loaves have been found, the grain of which is badly ground, thus affording us the opportunity of recognising the species of corn of which they are composed.
These fragments are flat, and indicate that the whole cake was of a circular form.
No doubt, after being bruised and wetted, the grain was made into a sort of dough, which was baked between two heated stones--a process we have previously described as having been practised in the Stone Age.
In order to cultivate cereals, it was, of course, necessary for the ground to undergo some preliminary preparation.
It was at least necessary to break it up so as to mellow it, and to make furrows in which to sow the seed.
We are reduced to mere conjecture as to all the details of these operations, for no agricultural implements have been discovered in any of the settlements of man belonging to the bronze epoch.
Perhaps, as M. Heer suggests, they made use of the stem of a tree with a projecting crooked branch, and adapted it so as to perform the functions of the plough.
Wild fruits and berries formed a considerable portion of the food of the earliest lacustrine peoples; and, from certain indications which have been brought to our notice, we have reason to believe that several varieties of trees were the objects of their intelligent culture; in short, that they were cultivated in orchards and gardens.
The settlement of Robenhausen on the Lake of Pfæffikon, has furnished us with the most valuable information on this point.
The lacustrine villages of Wangen (Lake of Constance), and Concise (Lake of Neuchâtel) have also been the scenes of curious discoveries.
In all of these settlements a large number of charred apples have been met with, cut in two, and sometimes four pieces, and evidently stored up for the winter.
These apples are no larger than walnuts, and in many of the Swiss forests a species of apple still exists which appears to be the same sort as those found in the lacustrine settlements.
Pears have been discovered only in the settlement of Wangen; they were cut up and dried just like the apples.
In the mud of the lakes, stones of the wild plum and the bird-cherry, or Sainte-Lucie plum, were found; also the seeds of blackberries and raspberries, the shells of beech-nuts and hazel-nuts, and several species of the water-chestnut, which is now only to be met with at two points of the Swiss Alps.
We must also add that M. Gilliéron collected in the settlement of the Isle of Saint-Pierre, oats, peas, lentils, and acorns, the latter evidently having been intended for the food of swine.
This discovery is an important one, because oats had, hitherto, never been met with anywhere.
We shall complete this list of names by enumerating the other vegetables which have been ascertained to have existed in the lake settlements, the berries and seeds of some of which were used as food, &c. They are the strawberry, the beech, the yew, the dog-rose, which is found in hedges, the white and yellow water-lily, the rush, and the forest and the marsh pine.
There are no traces of the vine, rye, or hemp.
Fig.
207, representing _the cultivation of gardens during the bronze epoch_, is intended to sum up and delineate materially all the ideas we have previously suggested concerning the agricultural and horticultural knowledge possessed by man during the bronze epoch.
A gardener is tilling the ground with a horn pick-axe, a representation of which we have previously given.
Others are gathering fruit from trees which have been planted and cultivated with a view of increasing the stock of food.
[Illustration: Fig 207.--The Cultivation of Gardens during the Bronze Epoch.]
The sheep and oxen which may be noticed in this figure indicate the domestication of these animals and of their having been reared as tame cattle.
The dog, the faithful companion of man, could scarcely have been omitted in this assemblage of the auxiliary or domestic animals of the bronze epoch.
The bones which have been found in the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland have enabled us to reconstruct with some degree of accuracy the _fauna_ of this epoch, and to ascertain what species of animals were then in subjugation to the yoke of man.
Professor Rütimeyer is of opinion that the whole of these bones may be referred to about seventy species of animals--ten of which are fish, three reptiles, twenty birds, and the rest mammiferous animals.
The remains most commonly met with are those of the stag and the ox, the former wild, and the latter domestic.
Next in order comes the pig, remains of which are also very abundant; then follows the roe, the goat, and the sheep, all of which are much less common.
The remains of the fox are met with almost as often as those of the latter species, and in spite of the foetid smell of this animal it certainly was used for food--a fact which is proved by its bones having been split open and notched with knives.
It is, however, very probable that this kind of sustenance was turned to as a last resort only in cases when no other more suitable food could be obtained.
The long bones which have been found in lakes, like those met with in caves and kitchen-middens, have been split in order to extract the marrow.
Just as in the kitchen-middens, the softer parts are always gnawed, which shows us that the dog had been there.
The repugnance which is felt by so many nations for the flesh of the hare is a very curious fact, and shows us how difficult it is to root out certain prejudices.
This repugnance may be traced back as far as pre-historic ages.
Neither the diluvial beds, the caves, the kitchen-middens, nor the lacustrine settlements have, in fact, furnished us with any traces of the hare.
Even in the present day, the Laplanders and Greenlanders banish this animal from their alimental list.
Among the Hottentots the women eat it but not the men.
The Jews, too, look upon it as unclean, and many years have not elapsed since the Bretons would hardly endure to hear it spoken of.
The antipathy which is thus shown by certain modern nations to the flesh of the hare has, therefore, been handed down to them from the primitive ages of mankind.
The researches of Prof. Rütimeyer have led to the conclusion that there existed in Switzerland during the Stone Age six species of domestic animals--the ox, the pig, the goat, the sheep, the dog, and the horse, the latter being very rare.
There were, also, three specimens of the bovine race; the two wild species of the ox genus, namely, the urus and the bison, both very anciently known, had been increased by a third, the domestic ox.
The bones belonging to the Stone Age seem to point to the existence of a larger proportion of wild beasts than of domestic animals; and this is only what might be expected, for the art of domesticating animals was at this epoch still in its infancy, but a commencement had been made, and the practice continued to spread rapidly during the following age.
In fact, agriculture and the breeding of cattle made considerable progress during the bronze epoch.
There were brought into use various new breeds of cattle.
The ox became a substitute for the bison; the sheep was bred as well as the goat; and all these animals were devoted to the purpose of providing food for man.
[Illustration: Fig.
208.--A Feast during the Bronze Epoch.]
We may here pause for a moment and contemplate, with just pride, this marvellous resuscitation of an era long ago buried in the darkness of bygone ages.
By means of the investigations of science, we know that the primitive inhabitants of Switzerland dwelt in wooden villages built on lakes; that they were hunters, fishers, shepherds, and husbandmen; that they cultivated wheat, barley, and oats; that they brought into a state of servitude several species of animals, and devoted to the requirements of agriculture the sheep and the goat; that they were acquainted with the principal rudiments of the baker's art; that they stored up apples, pears, and other fruits or berries for the winter, either for their own use or that of their cattle; that they understood the art of weaving and manufacturing flaxen fabrics; that they twisted up cord and mats of bark; and, lastly, that as a material for the manufacture of their implements and weapons they availed themselves of stone, bronze, animals' bones, and stag's horn.
It is equally certain that they kept up some kind of commercial intercourse with the adjacent countries; this must have been the case, if it were only for the purpose, as before mentioned, of procuring flints, which are not found in Switzerland; also amber and white coral, numerous relics of which have been met with in the settlements of Meilen and Concise.
Though there may still remain many an obscure page in the history of mankind during the bronze epoch, it must, nevertheless, be confessed that, as far as Switzerland is concerned, a bright light has of late years been thrown on that branch of the subject which refers to man's mode of existence in these regions during the bronze epoch.
FOOTNOTE: [36] See 'The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland,' &c. p. 323, by Dr. F. Keller.
Translated and edited by Dr. J. E. Lee.
London, 1866.
CHAPTER VII.
The Art of War during the Bronze Epoch--Swords, Spears, and Daggers--The Bronze Epoch in Scandinavia, in the British Isles, France, Switzerland, and Italy--Did the Man of the Bronze Epoch entertain any religious or superstitious Belief?
The Swiss lakes have furnished us with elements which afford us some knowledge of the state of man's industrial skill during the bronze epoch, and also enable us to form a due estimation of the manners and customs of the people of these remote ages.
But if we wish to become acquainted with all the details which concern the art of war at the same date, we must direct our attention to the north of Europe, that is to say, to the Scandinavian peoples.
Nevertheless, before we touch upon the important pre-historic relics found in Denmark, we must say a few words concerning the traces of the art of war which have been furnished by the investigations made in the Swiss lakes.
The warlike accoutrements of the bronze epoch are, like those of the Stone Age, composed of spear-heads and arrow-heads, poniards and, in addition, swords.
Swords are, however, but rarely met with in the Swiss lakes.
The few which have been found are straight, short, double-edged, and without hilts.
In the Museum of Neuchâtel there is a sword (fig.
209) which was discovered forty years ago at Concise, at a time when no one suspected the existence of any such thing as lacustrine settlements; M. Desor has supplied a sketch of it in his 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
This sword measures 16 inches in length, and has on its surface four grooves which join together on the middle ridge of the blade.
The handle, which is terminated by a double volute, is remarkably small, being only 3 inches in length.
Daggers (fig.
210), too, like the swords, are but rarely found in the Swiss lakes.
From a specimen found in the lake of Bienne, we see that the blade was fixed to the handle by means of a series of rivets arranged in a single line.
This dagger is, like the sword found at Concise, ornamented with grooves symmetrically placed on each side of the projecting ridge which divides the blade into two equal portions.
[Illustration: Fig.
209.--Bronze Sword, in the Museum of Neuchâtel.]
[Illustration: Fig.
210.--Bronze Dagger, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
In the collection of Colonel Schwab, there are two daggers of an extraordinary character, having hilts enriched with silver.
The spear-heads (fig.
211) are not inferior either to the swords or the daggers in the skill and finish of their workmanship.
They are formed of a nearly oval blade, strongly consolidated in the middle by a rounded ridge, which is prolonged so as to form a socket intended to hold a thick wooden handle.
The length of the daggers varies from 4 to 7 inches.
[Illustration: Fig.
211.--Bronze Spear-head, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
The arrow-heads (fig.
212) are, except in their material, identical with those of the preceding age.
They are triangular, with more or less pointed barbs, and provided with a stem, by which they were fastened to the stick.
A few have, however, been found which are made with sockets.
They do not exceed 1 to 2 inches in length.
[Illustration: Fig.
212.--Bronze Arrow-heads, found in a Lacustrine Settlement of Switzerland.]
We shall now pass on to the consideration of the relics found in the tombs of Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland and France; which remains will throw some light on the subject of the weapons and warlike instruments belonging to the bronze epoch.
The Scandinavian States (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) are very rich in instruments belonging to the bronze epoch.
The workmanship of the swords and other weapons of war is much more elaborate here than anywhere else, on account of the tardy introduction of metal into these countries.
These weapons are nearly always adorned with somewhat complicated designs, among which curved lines and spiral scrolls are the most prevalent.
The Danish swords of the bronze epoch (figs.
213, 214) are of quite a peculiar shape.
The hilt is firmly fixed to the blade by means of two or more rivets.
The daggers and poniards only differ from the swords in the smallness of their dimensions.
[Illustration: Fig.
213.--Scandinavian Sword.]
[Illustration: Fig.
214.--Hilt of a Scandinavian Sword.]
Some of the hatchets seem to have been copied from models belonging to the Stone Age; these are probably the most ancient, and their ornamentation is of a very scanty character.
Others are winged or with sockets, and a few have been found perforated with a transverse hole, like those which have long been used by civilised nations.
In this hole a wooden handle was inserted, which was fixed by means of a strap, or merely forcibly driven in.
The rarely-found specimens of this kind are sharply defined in shape and splendidly ornamented.
Figs.
215 and 216, taken from Sir J. Lubbock's work, represent the probable way in which handles were fitted to the various kinds of hatchets used in the North.
[Illustration: Fig.
215.--Mode of fixing the Handle to a Scandinavian Hatchet.]
[Illustration: Fig.
216.--Another mode of fixing the Handle to a Scandinavian Hatchet.]
The blades of the bronze knives found in Scandinavia are, like those of Switzerland, somewhat curved in their shape, but the handles are much more richly ornamented.
Two of these knives have furnished us with the only examples known of any representation of living beings during the bronze epoch.
We may notice that on one of these knives, which is represented in fig.
217, taken from Sir J. Lubbock's work, a swan is roughly carved at the offset of the blade.
[Illustration: Fig.
217.--Danish Bronze Knife, of the Bronze Epoch.]
In another knife, which is represented in fig.
218, taken from the same work, the handle is formed by a human figure, executed with some degree of fidelity.
The figure is in a standing position, and holds in front of it a nearly cylindrical-shaped vessel; the individual is represented as wearing large earrings.
There is every reason to believe that this last-mentioned article belongs to the end of the bronze epoch, or else to a transitionary epoch between this and the following, for the blade is straight, like those of all the knives belonging to the iron age.
[Illustration: Fig.
218.--Danish Bronze Knife of the Bronze Epoch.]
The same thing may, doubtless, be said of several razors (fig.
219) with straight blades, which appear even overloaded with ornaments; among these embellishments is an attempt to represent a sort of vessel.
[Illustration: Fig.
219.--Blade of a Danish Razor of the Bronze Epoch.]
These designs evidently point to some very advanced period in the bronze epoch; and perhaps these objects may belong to the commencement of the iron age.
What, we may ask, was the wearing apparel of man during the period we are describing?
A very important discovery, made in 1861, in a _tumulus_ in Jutland (Denmark), has lately supplied us with the most accurate _data_ respecting the way in which the inhabitants of the north of Europe were clothed during the bronze epoch.
In this _tumulus_ MM.
Worsaae, and Herbst found three wooden coffins, one of which was smaller than the two others, and was no doubt that of a child.
One of the two larger coffins was minutely examined by these _savants_, and measured inside 7 feet in length and 20 inches in width.
It was closed up by means of a movable lid.
By an extremely rare chance the soft parts of the body had been to some extent preserved, and had become converted into a black greasy substance.
The bones were decomposed, and had decayed into a kind of blue powder.
The brain had preserved its normal conformation.
They found it at one end of the coffin (where the head had lain); it was still covered with a woollen cap, about 6 inches high, to which several black hairs were adhering.
Several woollen garments, in which the body had been buried, were also found in different parts of the coffin.
We add a description of these garments.
There was in the first place a coarse cloak (fig.
220) which appeared shaggy in the inside, and was scalloped out round the neck.
This cloak was 3 feet 4 inches long, and wide in proportion.
Next there were two shawls nearly square in shape (fig.
221), ornamented with a long fringe, and measuring 4-1/2 feet in length, and 3-1/2 feet in width.
Afterwards came a shirt (fig.
222), also scalloped out round the neck, and drawn in at the waist by means of a long narrow band.
Lastly, at the feet of the body, two pieces of woollen material were found, which were 14 inches long, by 4 inches wide, and bore the appearance of having been the remains of gaiters.
Close to the latter were also found vestiges of leather, evidently belonging to feet-coverings of some kind.
[Illustration: Fig.
220.--Woollen Cloak of the Bronze Epoch, found in 1861, in a Tomb In Denmark.]
[Illustration: Fig.
221.--Woollen Shawl found in the same Tomb.]
[Illustration: Fig.
222.--Woollen Shirt, taken from the same Tomb.]
The whole body had been wrapped up in the skin of an ox.
The coffin also contained a box, tied up with strips of osier or bark, and in this box was a smaller one, in which were found two woven woollen caps (fig.
223, 224), a comb (fig.
225), and a bronze razor.
[Illustration: Fig.
223.--First Woollen Cap found in the same Tomb.]
[Illustration: Fig.
224.--Second Woollen Cap found in the same Tomb.]
[Illustration: Fig.
225.--Bronze Comb found in the same Tomb.]
We must not forget to mention a bronze sword, placed on the left side of the body, in a wooden sheath; this sword measured about 26 inches in length.
There is no doubt that all these relics were those of a warrior of the bronze epoch; there is the less reason to doubt this, owing to the fact, that the objects taken from the two other coffins most certainly belonged to that period.
These were a sword, a knife, a bodkin, an awl, a pair of tweezers, a double button, and a small bronze bracelet; also a double tin button, a ball of amber and a flint spear-head.
[Illustration: Fig.
226.--Warriors during the Bronze Epoch.]
The shape of the swords and knives shows that this burial-place in Jutland must be referred to the latter part of the bronze epoch--to a time, perhaps, when iron was first used.
Following out the _data_ afforded by these records, and all the discoveries which have been made in other tombs, we have given in fig.
226, a representation of _warriors of the bronze epoch_.
The accoutrements of the horseman of pre-historic ages are composed of a bronze sword, like those found in the tombs in Denmark, and a bronze hatchet and sword-belt.
His horse is decked with round bronze discs, which, in after times, formed among the Romans the chief ornament of this faithful and intrepid auxiliary of man in all his combats.
The horseman's head is bare; for no helmet or metallic head-covering has ever, at least, to our knowledge, been discovered in the tombs of the bronze epoch.
The spear and bronze hatchet are the weapons of the foot-soldiers.
Next to the Scandinavian regions, Great Britain and Ireland occupy an important place in the history of the civilisation of the bronze epoch.
The same type of implements are found in these countries as in Denmark and Switzerland.
Hatchet-moulds (fig.
227) are also found there--a circumstance which proves that the founder's art was known and practised in these countries.
The Dublin Museum contains a beautiful collection of various objects belonging to the bronze epoch.
[Illustration: Fig.
227.--Bronze Hatchet-mould found in Ireland.]
Some of the departments of France have also furnished objects belonging to the same period; but there is nothing peculiar among them which deserves mention.
Did any kind of religious worship exist among the men of the bronze epoch?
Nothing would be more interesting than any discovery bearing on this point; but up to the present time no vestiges of anything in the shape of an idol have been found, nor anything whatever which authorizes us unhesitatingly to answer this question in the affirmative.
The only thing which might prove the existence of any religious feeling, is the discovery, in various lacustrine settlements, of a certain number of crescent-shaped objects, most of them made of very coarse baked earth and some of stone.
The dimensions of these crescents vary considerably; there are some which measure as much as 16 inches from one point to the other.
They are ornamented with perfectly primitive designs, as shown in fig.
228, drawn at the Museum of Saint-Germain from one of the numerous specimens of this class of objects.
[Illustration: Fig.
228.--Stone Crescent found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
Several archæologists consider these crescents to have been religious emblems or talismans which were suspended either outside or inside the habitations.
Dr. Keller is of opinion that they bear some relation to the worship of the moon--an hypothesis which is not at all an impossible one; for all nations who have not attained to a certain degree of moral and intellectual culture adore the heavenly bodies as the sources of light and heat.
M. Carl Vogt, in considering the crescents which have been discovered in such large quantities in the lacustrine habitations, cannot admit that they indicate that any religious belief existed among these ancient nations.
He attributes to these objects a very different kind of use, and, as we shall presently show, rather an odd one.
In the lectures on _pre-historic man_ which were delivered by Prof. Carl Vogt at Antwerp, in 1868, and have been reported by the Belgian journals,[37] when speaking on the subject of the crescents belonging to the bronze epoch, he expresses himself as follows:-"My opinion is that these crescents were used as resting-places for the head during the night.
Among many savage tribes we find the attention paid to the dressing of the hair carried to a high pitch, especially among the men; it was not until a later period that woman also devoted her cares to the culture of her _coiffure_.
Now this care is, by many nations, carried out to a really curious extent.
They inflict the most severe tortures on themselves in order to satisfy their vanity.
Everyone has seen, in the 'Magasin Pittoresque' and other illustrated journals, the strange head-dresses of the Abyssinian soldiers.
They really seem to form a kind of fleece, and it may be noticed that each soldier carries in this hairy construction a large pin.
"Well, all this tends to explain the use of these crescents.
In Abyssinia, as soon as a young girl is married it becomes her duty to devote herself to her husband's head of hair.
This head of hair is made to assume a certain shape, which it has to retain during his whole lifetime.
The labour which this process necessitates lasts for three years.
Each hair is twisted round a stem of straw, and remains so until the straw perishes.
The man's head is thus covered with a whole system of spirals, the top of which is a foot from the surface of his head.
During the whole remainder of his life this _coiffure_ must never be again disturbed.
When asleep, the Abyssinian rests the nape of his neck on a triangle which he carries about everywhere with him.
He has also a long pin, as it would be impossible for him to reach the skin of his head with the end of his finger.
"The same custom exists among the New Zealanders, who also have an apparatus upon which they rest their necks, in order, when asleep, to save their _coiffures_.
They wear an enormous chignon, two feet high and ornamented with ribbons, of which they are very proud.
The only difference between this chignon and certain others which I need not mention is, that the former cannot be removed at will.
This object, thus adorned, rests, during the sleep of its owner, on a sort of framework.
"The Chinese and Japanese sleep, in the same way, on a bedstead bevelled off at the head; and in the Egyptian hieroglyphical drawings we find instruments evidently meant for the same use.
"It is very probable that during the bronze epoch great attention was devoted to the hair, and this is the more probable as in every tomb belonging to this period we find pins from 2 feet to 2-1/2 feet in length, furnished with large knobs, and of the same shape as the pins used by the Abyssinian soldiers; and also, because during the Stone Age, as well as the Bronze Age, a kind of comb is found which is similar to that which is now used by the New Zealanders to scratch, rather than to comb, their heads.
The heads of the pins are often very richly ornamented; they are of the most varied shapes, and are extremely common both in the tombs and also in the lacustrine dwellings.
"We have the less right to be astonished at our ancestors sleeping with their heads resting on such a machine as we have just described, knowing, as we do, that the hussars of Frederick the Great used to spend the whole night in arranging their _coiffures_!"
Thus, while Dr. Keller and many other archæologists ascribe the _crescents_ found in the Swiss lakes to some kind of religious worship, M. Vogt, whose idea is of a much more prosaic character, does not attribute them to any other worship but that of _self_ as represented by the hair!
The reader can take his choice between these two explanations.
We shall only remark, in corroboration of Dr. Keller's opinion, that certain Gallic tribes used for a religious symbol this very crescent which M. Vogt would make out to be a pillow--a stone pillow which, as it seems to us, must have been very hard, even for primitive man.
Various objects found in the dwellings of man belonging to the bronze epoch appear to have been religious symbols.
Such, for instance, are the designs so often met with on swords, vases, &c. These drawings never represent objects in nature; they seem rather to be cabalistic signs or talismans.
Most of them bear some relation to a circle; sometimes they are single circles, and sometimes combinations of circles.
Many authors have had the idea of attributing them to the worship of the sun.
Another sign was still more often used, and it was known even as early as the Stone Age--we speak of the cross.
It is one of the most ancient symbols that ever existed.
M. G. de Mortillet, in a work entitled 'La Croix avant le Christianisme,' has endeavoured to establish the fact, that the cross has always been the symbol of a sect which contended against fetishism.
This much is at least certain, that it is one of the most ancient symbolical signs; for it is found depicted on objects belonging to the Stone Age, and on some of the earliest relics of the Bronze Age.
At the time of the Etruscans the cross was generally prevalent as a sign.
But at a later period Christianity exclusively monopolized this religious symbol.
A third figure is sometimes found on various objects belonging to the bronze epoch; this figure is the triangle.
It is, on the whole, very probable that all these signs which are not connected with any known object, bear some relation to certain religious or superstitious ideas entertained by the men of the bronze epoch; and, as a consequence of this, that their hearts must have been inspired with some degree of religious feeling.
FOOTNOTE: [37] _Indépendance Belge_, November and December, 1868.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mode of Interment and Burial-places of the Bronze Epoch-Characteristics of the Human Race during the same Period.
The question naturally arises--what was the mode of interment, and what was the nature of the burial-places employed by man during the bronze epoch?
In the early part of this period the dead were still buried in those sepulchral chambers which are now called by the name of _dolmens_; Nilsson and Lubbock have drawn somewhat confused and arbitrary distinctions in discussing these burial-places; but it may be positively asserted that towards the conclusion of this period the practice of burning dead bodies was commenced.
In a work, published in 1869, and entitled 'Le Danemark à l'Exposition Universelle,' being a sort of catalogue of the objects which were exhibited in the galleries devoted to the _History of Labour_, in the Exhibition in the Champ de Mars, in 1867, we find several pages which we shall quote, as they seem to recapitulate pretty clearly the ideas which are now current among scientific men concerning the burial-places and funeral customs of the bronze epoch:-"The study which, during the last few years, has been devoted by M. Worsaae to the tombs belonging to the bronze epoch, has thrown much light," says M. Valdemar Schmidt, "on the commencement of the bronze age in Denmark.
It appears that at the first beginning of the bronze epoch the dead were buried in a manner similar to that practised during the stone age, that is to say, the bodies of the defunct were deposited in sepulchral chambers made of stone, and covered by _tumuli_; the only difference is, these chambers are rather small, and generally contain but one skeleton.
But to make up for this, several of these small sepulchral chambers, or rather stone coffins, are sometimes found in the same _tumulus_.
"These chambers present, however, in some respects, great similarities with those of the Stone Age; thus, beds of flint which have been subjected to the action of fire are often found spread over the ground, and on these beds skeletons are met with which appear to have been placed in a contracted position before they were buried, exactly following the practice of the Stone Age.
"After this class of tombs, we have another, in which the sepulchral chamber, though always made of stone, is not covered with a stone slab but with a _wooden roof_.
Elsewhere, skeletons have been found along with bronze weapons deposited in a sort of _wooden framework_, which has in many cases entirely perished except a few minute fragments.
These cases were covered with small stones, which now seem to lie immediately upon the skeleton.
"Lastly, in all the Danish provinces large oak coffins are found, formed of hollowed-out trunks of trees; these also contain human bodies, which seem to have been buried in woollen garments.
"With regard to the funeral rites observed, these tombs do not appear to have differed much.
The bodies were deposited in them with their implements, weapons, and utensils, either of bronze or stone; but, in addition, at the bottom of the tomb, animal skins, generally those of oxen, were often spread.
"Next, a new period succeeded, when the bodies were burned, and the remains collected together.
All the ancient customs were not, however, at once given up.
Thus, as the dead were formerly buried in woollen garments, the _débris_ of the bones were now wrapped in pieces of cloaks made of the same material.
Subsequently, however, this custom also disappeared, and the ashes and remains of bones were simply collected together in urns.
This custom was observed until the bronze epoch, and characterises, so to speak, its second and last period--which was, however, the longest of that age.
"There were, then, in short, two distinct epochs in the bronze age; firstly, that _in which the dead were quite simply interred_, either in small sepulchral chambers or wooden coffins, and, secondly, that _in which the bodies of the dead were incinerated_.
"One of the most remarkable 'finds,' as regards the first period of the bronze epoch, was made in 1861, in the two mounds known by the names of Treenhöi and Kengehöi, and situated near Kongeaa, in Jutland.
In each of these _tumuli_ two people had been buried, both having a double coffin, made of magnificent trunks of oak-trees.
The skeletons had been almost entirely destroyed by the damp which, on the contrary, had preserved the garments.
These individuals seem to have been dressed almost like the Scotch; at least they must have worn a sort of woollen petticoat, and bands by way of trousers, very like those worn by the warriors depicted in the Carlovingian miniatures, and, in addition, a cloak, a cap, and also perhaps a shawl.
With these garments were found some bronze swords in wooden sheaths; also some bronze knives, a comb, some boxes, cups, small wooden coffers, a tin ball, and, lastly, in one of the coffins, a small flint arrow-head.
A fragment of the cloak was to be seen in the Palace of the Champ de Mars (No.
596).
"Another 'find' made a few miles from this _tumulus_, at Höimp, in North Schleswig, has also brought to light skeletons in oak coffins together with bronze implements.
"Discoveries of no less interest have been made in Zealand.
Thus, in 1845, in a _tumulus_ at Höidegaard, near Copenhagen, a tomb belonging to the first period of the bronze epoch was found; it was searched in the presence of some of the principal Danish archæologists.
The tomb was placed at a distance of more than 10 feet below the summit of the _tumulus_, and was built of stones; it was more than 6 feet in length, and its width on the eastern side was about 2 feet, and on the western side 19 inches.
The bottom was lined with a layer of small flint stones, on which was found, in the first place, a skin, doubtless that of an ox, and above it, besides a piece of tissue containing remains of human bones, a bronze sword with a wooden sheath, covered with leather, and in a perfect state of preservation; lastly, a box containing the following articles:--1st, a fragment of an amber bead; 2nd, a piece of reddish stone; 3rd, a small shell, which can be none other than the _Conus mediterraneus_; it is perforated so as to be worn as a pendant for the neck; 4th, a fragment of a flint point, doubtless an amulet; 5th, the tail of a serpent (_Coluber lævis_); 6th, a small cube of pine or fir-wood, and 7th, a bronze knife with a convex blade and ornamented handle.
"According to the investigations of various savants, these bones belong to a man, who, to judge from the objects placed by his side in his tomb, must have been some distinguished personage, and perhaps combined the functions of a warrior and a sorcerer.
The cube of pine-wood leads us to conjecture that that tree had not then completely disappeared, and from this fact we may infer that the period at which the sorcerer in question lived was very remote.
It is, however, possible that this piece of pine-wood, as well as the shell, were introduced from some other country.
The existence of the _Conus mediterraneus_ seems to establish the fact that Denmark had already formed some kind of connection with the Mediterranean.
"_The second period of the bronze epoch_ is characterised by the custom of the cremation of the dead, which generally took place in the following way: the body of the defunct was usually placed, together with his weapons and ornaments, on the funeral pile, which was built on the exact spot which was destined to form the centre of the _tumulus_; the fire was then lighted, and, after the body was consumed, the remains of the bones were collected together in an urn.
The rubbish that resulted was left on the spot, surrounded with stones, and covered with earth till the _tumulus_ was complete.
The urn which contained the ashes was then placed in another part of the _tumulus_.
This course of procedure was not the only one employed; in some cases the weapons and other articles of adornment were not placed upon the funeral-pile, but were afterwards brought and placed round the urn.
"The number of tombs of the bronze epoch which have been discovered in Denmark is very considerable.
There are thousands of _tumuli_, and many of them contain a large number of funeral urns.
A great many of these _tumuli_ have been searched at various times and have produced a number of different bronze articles.
The Museum of Copenhagen possesses no less than 600 swords dating back to the bronze epoch.
"[38] Twenty years ago, however, a very curious discovery was made at Lübeck (Pomerania), for it exhibited, so to speak, in the same tomb, the three modes of interment belonging to the pre-historic epochs of the stone, bronze, and iron ages.
At Waldhausen, near Lübeck, a _tumulus_ was found, which was 13 feet 9 inches in height.
This _tumulus_ was pulled down in horizontal layers, and the following details were successively brought to light.
At the top was a very ancient burial-place, evidently belonging to the iron age; for the skeleton it contained was accompanied by an object made of rusty iron and several earthenware articles.
It was buried in loose earth.
Underneath this, and half way down the _tumulus_, there were some small enclosures composed of uncemented walls, each one containing a sepulchral urn filled with calcined bones, as well as necklaces, hair-pins, and a bronze knife.
Lastly, at the base of the _tumulus_, there was a tomb belonging to the Stone Age.
It was formed of large rough blocks of stone, and contained, in addition to the bones, some coarse specimens of pottery, with flint hatchets.
It is evident that the first inhabitants of the country began by building a tomb on the bare ground, according to the customs of the age, and then covered it up with earth.
During the bronze epoch another burial-place was made on this foundation, and a fresh heap of earth doubled the height of the mound.
Lastly, during the iron age, a dead body was buried in a grave hollowed out on the top of the same mound.
Here, then, we have a clear delineation of the three different modes of interment belonging to the three pre-historic periods.
In short, during the bronze epoch, the dead were generally buried in sepulchral chambers, and sometimes, exceptionally, they were burned.
The custom of funeral feasts still remained in full force.
The pious practice of placing by the side of the dead body the instruments or weapons which the individual had been fond of during his lifetime, was likewise still kept up; and it is, moreover, owing to this circumstance that archæological science is now enabled to collect numerous vestiges of the ancient customs of these remote ages.
But we must call attention to the fact that, at the end of and after this epoch, the hatchets and instruments which were placed in the tombs were often of much smaller dimensions than those employed for every-day use.
They were small and delicately-made hatchets, intended as _votive_ offerings.
Some might, perhaps, conclude from this that the heirs, animated by a feeling of economy, had contented themselves with depositing very diminutive offerings in the tombs of the dead.
The human race was already becoming degenerate, since it curtailed its homage and its offerings to the dead!
In order to bring to a conclusion all the details which concern the bronze epoch, the question will naturally arise, what was the human type at this epoch, and did it differ from that of the preceding age?
Unfortunately, the positive information which is required for the elucidation of this question is entirely wanting; this deficiency is owing to the extreme rarity of human bones, both in the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland, and also in the tombs belonging to that epoch which have been searched in different European countries.
The whole of the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland have furnished no more than some seven skeletons, one of which was found at Meilen, two at Nidau, one at Sutz, one in the settlement of Bienne, and two at Auvernier.
The first, that is the skeleton found at Meilen, near lake Zurich, is the only one which belongs to the Stone Age; the six others are all of the Bronze or Iron Ages.
The skeleton found at Meilen is that of a child; the skull, which is in a tolerable state of preservation, although incomplete, occupies, according to the observations of MM.
His and Rütimeyer, a middle place between the long and short heads.
Figs.
229 and 230, representing this skull, are taken from M. Desor's work, entitled 'Mémoire sur les Palafittes.'
From the mere fact that it is a child's skull, it is almost impossible to make any use of it in ascertaining the characteristic features of the race to which it belongs; for these features are not sufficiently marked at such an early age.
The skull is of a very elongated shape, that is to say, it belongs to the _dolichocephalous_ type.
The upper part of the skull is flattened, and it has an enormous occipital development; but, on the other hand, there is scarcely any forehead.
If these special features might be generally applied, they would not prove much in favour of the intellectual capacity of the Helvetic nation, or of its superiority over the races of anterior ages; it represents, in fact, a very low type of conformation, which, however, harmonises perfectly with the rough manners and cruel practices of the Gallic tribes.
[Illustration: Fig.
229.--Skull found at Meilen, front view.]
[Illustration: Fig.
230.--Skull found at Meilen, profile view.]
At the time of the discovery, this skull was accompanied by various bones belonging to the body and limbs, which show by their extraordinary bulk that their owners were men of very large size.
We have already remarked upon the large size of the men existing in the Stone Age, that is to say, at the time of the first appearance of mankind.
Thus, the human type had changed but little since its first appearance on the globe.
The settlement of Auvernier, in the lake of Neuchâtel has, as we have before said, contributed two skulls.
One belonged to a child about eight years of age, and the other to an adult.
The child's skull differs very slightly from the one found at Meilen.
It is small, elongated, and has a low and narrow forehead.
That of the adult presents the same characteristics, and, in addition, an extraordinary development of the occiput, a feature which is not observable in the former, probably, on account of the youth of the subject.
These two skulls seem, therefore, to show that the population of the lacustrine settlements had not at all changed at the beginning of the bronze epoch.
A discovery made in the neighbourhood of Sion has confirmed these first ideas.
At this spot, in tombs of rough stone, there were found some bodies bent into a contracted position, and accompanied by certain bronze objects.
According to MM.
His and Carl Vogt, the skulls found at Sion agree tolerably well with those discovered at Meilen and Auvernier; and, in addition to this, the same shape is perpetuated down to our own days in German Switzerland, where it strongly predominates, and constitutes what is called the Helvetic type.
The _data_ which have been collected up to the present time are not sufficient to enable us to make any positive assertion respecting the development of the intelligence of man during the bronze epoch.
The few skulls which have been recovered are always in an incomplete state, and do not justify us in forming any exact opinion on this matter.
But when we are considering the degree of intelligence possessed by our ancestors at this period of man's development, there are things which will enlighten us far better than any fragments of bones or any remains of skeletons; these are the works which have been executed by their hands.
The fine arts had already begun to throw out promising germs, industrial skill had become an established fact, agriculture was in full practice, and bronze was made to adapt itself to all the caprices and all the boldest ideas of the imagination.
What more can be necessary to prove that man, at this epoch, was already comparatively far advanced in intellectual culture?
In concluding our account of the bronze epoch, the question naturally arises whether it is possible to form any estimate of the exact space of time embraced by this period of man's history.
We shall endeavour here to give, not the solution of the problem, but merely an idea of the way in which scientific men have entered on the question.
Morlot, the Swiss archæologist and naturalist, who has written a great deal upon the subject of the lacustrine settlements, was the first to endeavour to estimate the duration of the Stone Age, as well as that of the Bronze Epoch, and the following is the way in which he set about it.
In the neighbourhood of Villeneuve there is a cone or hillock formed of gravel and _alluvium_, slowly deposited there by the stream of the Tinière which falls at this spot into the lake of Geneva.
This cone was cut in two, to lay down the railway which runs along the side of the lake.
Its interior structure was thus laid bare, and appeared to be perfectly regular, a proof that it had been gradually formed during a long course of ages.
There were three layers of vegetable earth placed at different depths between the deposits of _alluvium_, each of which double layers had in its turn formed the outer surface of the cone.
The first layer was found at a depth of 3 feet 6 inches from the top, and was 4 to 6 inches thick.
In it were found some relics of the Roman epoch.
The second, situated 5 feet 3 inches lower, measured 6 inches in depth, and was recognised as belonging to the bronze age; it contained a pair of bronze pincers and some fragments of unglazed earthenware.
The lower bed lay at a depth of 18 feet from the top, and varied in thickness from 6 to 7 inches.
It contained some rough earthenware, charcoal, and animal bones, all pointing to the Stone Age, but to the latest times of that period.
After having carefully examined these different beds and ascertained the regular structure of the cone, Morlot fancied that he could calculate approximately the age of each of them.
He took for his base of operations two historical dates; that of the entrance of the Romans into Helvetia, fifty-eight years before Christ, and that of their decisive expulsion towards the end of the fifth century of the Christian era.
By comparing these two dates, he came to the conclusion that the Roman layer was at the most eighteen and at the least thirteen centuries old.
Then remarking that since that epoch the cone had increased 3 feet 6 inches, and always going upon the hypothesis that the increase was the same as in subsequent ages, he came to the conclusion that the bed corresponding with the bronze epoch was at least 2900 and at the most 4200 years old; and that the layer belonging to the Stone Age, forming the entire remainder of the cone, was from 4700 to 10,000 years old.
Another calculation, the conclusions of which agree tolerably well with these, was made by M. Gilliéron, professor at the college of Neuveville.
We have already said that the remains of a pile-work belonging to the Stone Age was discovered near the bridge of Thièle, between the lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel.
It is evident that the valley, the narrowest part of which was occupied by the lacustrine settlement, was formerly almost entirely under water, for below this point it suddenly widens out and retains these proportions as far as the lake of Bienne.
The lake must, therefore, have retired slowly and regularly, as may be ascertained from an examination of the mud deposited by it.
If, therefore, we know its annual coefficient of retreat, that is to say, how much it retired every year, we should be able to estimate with a sufficient degree of approximation the age of the settlement of the bridge of Thièle.
Now there is, not far from the lake, at about 1230 feet from the present shore, an old abbey, that of Saint-Jean, which is known to have been built about the year 1100.
A document of that time mentions that the cloister had the right of fishing in a certain part of the lake; and there is some likelihood that it was built on the edge of the lake; a supposition which naturally presents itself to the mind.
The lake, then, must have retired 1230 feet in 750 years.
This granted, M. Gilliéron easily calculated the time which would be taken for a retreat of 11,072 feet, this number representing the distance from the present shore to the entrance of the defile which contains the settlement of the bridge of Thièle.
He found by this means that the settlement is at least 6750 years old, a figure which confirms those of Morlot.
The preceding calculations assign to the Stone Age in Switzerland an antiquity of 6000 to 7000 years before the Christian era, and to the bronze epoch an antiquity of 4000 years before the same era.
There is still much uncertainty in the figures thus given to satisfy public curiosity; but there is at least one fact which is altogether unquestionable--that these calculations have dealt a fatal blow to recognised chronology.
FOOTNOTE: [38] 'Le Danemark à l'Exposition Universelle de 1867, by Valdemar Schmidt,' vol.
i. pp.
60-64.
Paris, 1868.
II.
THE IRON EPOCH.
CHAPTER I.
Essential Characteristics of the Iron Epoch--Preparation of Iron in Pre-historic Times--Discovery of Silver and Lead--Earthenware made on the Potter's Wheel--Invention of Coined Money.
Without metals, as we have said in one of the preceding chapters, man must have remained for ever in a state of barbarism.
To this we must add, that the civilisation of man has made progress just in proportion to the degree of perfection he has arrived at in the working of the metals and alloys which he has had at his disposal.
The knowledge and use of bronze communicated a strong impulse to nascent civilisation, and was the means of founding the first human communities.
But bronze is far from possessing all the qualities which ought to belong to metals when applied to various industrial purposes.
This alloy is neither hard nor elastic enough to make good tools; and, in addition to this, it is composed of metals which in a natural state are very scarce.
Man requires a metal which is cheap, hard, easy to work, and adapted to all the requirements which are exacted by industrial skill, which is so manifold in its works and wants.
A metal of this sort was at length discovered, and a new era opened for the future of men.
They learned how to extract from its ore iron--the true king of metals, as it may well be called--on account of its inestimable qualities.
From the day when iron was first placed at man's disposal civilisation began to make its longest strides, and as the working of this metal improved, so the dominion of man--his faculties and his intellectual activity--likewise enlarged in the same proportion.
It is, therefore, with good reason that the name of _Iron Epoch_ has been given to the latest period of the development of primitive man, and it is not surprising that the last portion of the iron epoch formed the commencement of historical times.
After this period, in fact, man ceased to live in that half-savage state, the most striking features of which we have endeavoured to portray.
As the use of iron essentially characterises this epoch in the history of mankind, we ought to give an account of the processes of manufacture employed by the primitive metallurgists, that is to say, we should inquire how they proceeded at this epoch to extract iron from its native ore.
The art of metallurgy had made great progress during the bronze epoch.
There were at that time considerable workshops for the preparation of bronze, and small foundries for melting and casting this alloy.
When once formed into weapons, instruments, and tools, bronze objects were fashioned by artisans of various professions.
The moulder's art had already attained to a high degree of perfection, a fact which is proved by the gigantic bronze objects which we have already mentioned, as well as the castings, so many of which have been represented in the preceding pages.
The phenomenon of _tempering_ was well known, that is the principal modifications which are experienced by bronze in its cooling, whether slow or sudden.
It was well known how to vary the proportions of the tin and copper so as to obtain bronze of different degrees of hardness.
All the means of soldering were also familiarly known.
Damascening was introduced in order to diversify the appearance of wrought metallic objects.
The cutting qualities of instruments were increased by forging them and consolidating them by hammering.
They had even gone so far as to discover the utility of the addition of certain mineral salts in the founder's crucible in order to facilitate the fusion of the bronze.
Thus at the end of the bronze epoch the knowledge of metals had attained to a comparatively considerable development.
Hence we may conclude that the substitution of iron for bronze took place without any great difficulty.
Owing to the natural progress and successive improvements made in metallurgic art, the blacksmith made his appearance on the scene and took the place of the bronze-moulder.
What, however, was the process which enabled our earliest metallurgists to extract iron from its native ore?
Native iron, that is metallic iron in a natural state, is eminently rare; except in aërolites it is scarcely ever found.
According to Pallas, the Russian naturalist, certain Siberian tribes have succeeded, with a great amount of labour, in obtaining from the aërolites which have been met with in their country small quantities of iron, which they have made into knives.
The same practice existed among the Laplanders.
Lastly, we are told by Amerigo Vespucci that in the fifteenth century the Indians at the mouth of the La Plata river were in the habit of making arrow-heads and other instruments with iron extracted from aërolites.
[39] But, as we hardly need observe, stones of this kind do not often drop down from the skies, and their employment is of too accidental a character ever to have suggested to men the right mode of the extraction of iron.
It is, therefore, almost certain that the first iron used was extracted from its ore just like copper and tin, that is, by the reduction of its oxide under the influence of heat and charcoal.
In opposition to this explanation, some bring forward as an objection the prodigiously high temperature which is required for the fusion of iron, or, in fact, the almost impossibility of melting iron in the primitive furnaces.
But the fusion of iron was in no way necessary for the extraction of this metal; and if it had been requisite to procure liquid iron, primitive industrial skill would never have succeeded in doing it.
All that was necessary was so to reduce the oxide of iron as to obtain the metal in a spongy state without any fusion.
The hammering of this spongy mass when in a red-hot state soon converted it into a real bar of iron.
If we cast a glance on the metallurgic industry of some of the semi-barbarous nations of ancient times, we shall find, as regards the extraction of iron, a process in use among them which will fully justify the idea we have formed of the way in which iron must have been obtained in primitive times.
Gmelin, the naturalist, during his travels in Tartary, was a witness of the elementary process which was employed by these northern tribes in procuring iron.
There, every one prepares his own iron just as every household might make its own bread.
The furnace for the extraction of iron is placed in the kitchen, and is nothing but a mere cavity, 9 inches cube, which is filled up with iron-ore; the furnace is surmounted by an earthen chimney, and there is a door in front of the furnace for introducing the ore, this door being kept closed during the smelting process.
In an orifice at the side the nozzle of a pair of bellows is inserted, which are blown by one man whilst another introduces the ore and charcoal in successive layers.
The furnace never holds more than 3-1/2 lbs.
of ore for each operation.
When this quantity has been placed in the furnace, in small pieces one after the other, all that is done is keeping up the action of the bellows for some minutes.
Lastly, the door of the furnace is opened, and the ashes and other products of combustion having been drawn out, a small mass of spongy iron is found, which proceeds from the reduction of the oxide of iron by means of the charcoal, without the metal being in a state of fusion, properly so called.
This small lump of iron was cleaned with a piece of wood, and was put on one side to be subsequently welded to others, and hammered several times when in a red-hot state; and by means of several forgings the whole mass was converted into a single bar.
This same process for the extraction of iron from its natural oxide, without fusion, is practised by the negroes of Fouta-Djallon, in Senegal.
After having become acquainted with the elementary process which is practised by the semi-barbarous tribes of the present day, we shall find but little difficulty in understanding all that Morlot, the Swiss naturalist, has said as to the iron-furnaces of pre-historic man, and shall probably agree in his opinions on the subject.
Morlot, in his 'Mémoires sur l'Archéologie de la Suisse,' has described the vestiges of the pre-historic furnaces intended for the preparation of iron, which were found by him in Carinthia (Austria).
According to M. Morlot, the plan adopted for extracting iron from its oxide in pre-historic times was as follows:--On the side of a slope exposed to the wind, a hole was hollowed out.
The bottom of this hole was filled up with a heap of wood, on which was placed a layer of ore.
This layer of ore was covered by a second heap of wood; then, taking advantage of a strong breeze rising, which had to perform the functions of the bellows, the lowest pile of wood was kindled at its base.
The wood by its combustion was converted into charcoal, and this charcoal, under the influence of heat, soon reduced the iron oxide to a metallic state.
When the combustion had come to an end, a few pieces of iron were found among the ashes.
By increasing the size of the apparatus used, far more considerable results were of course obtained.
In Dalecarlia (Sweden), M. Morlot found smelting-houses, so to speak, in which the original hole, of which we have just been speaking, is surrounded with stones so as to form a sort of circular receptacle.
In this rough stone crucible layers of charcoal and iron-ore were placed in succession.
After having burnt for some hours, the heap was searched over and the spongy iron was found mixed with the ashes at the bottom of the furnace.
The slowness of the operation and the inconsiderable metallic result induced them to increase the size of the stone receptacle.
They first gave to it a depth of 7 feet and then of 13 feet, and, at the same time, coated the walls of it with clay.
They thus had at their disposal a kind of vast circular crucible, in which they placed successive layers of iron-ore and wood or charcoal.
In this altogether elementary arrangement no use was made, as it seems, of the bellows.
This amounts to stating that the primitive method of smelting iron was not, as is commonly thought, an adaptation of the _Catalan furnace_.
This latter process, which, even in the present time, is made use of in the Pyrenean smelting works, does not date back further than the times of the Roman empire.
It is based on the continual action of the bellows; whilst in the pre-historic furnaces this instrument, we will again repeat, was never employed.
These primitive furnaces applied to the reduction of iron-ore, traces of which had been recognised by Morlot, the naturalist, in Austria and Sweden, have lately been discovered in considerable numbers in the canton of Berne by M. Quiquerez, a scientific mining engineer.
They consist of cylindrical excavations, of no great depth, dug out on the side of a hill and surmounted by a clay funnel of conical form.
Wood-charcoal was the fuel employed for charging the furnaces, for stores of this combustible are always found lying round the ancient smelting works.
In an extremely curious memoir, which was published in 1866 by the Jura Society of Emulation, under the title of 'Recherches sur les anciennes Forges du Jura Bernois,' M. Quiquerez summed up the results of his protracted and minute investigations.
A few extracts from this valuable work will bring to our knowledge the real construction of the furnaces used by pre-historic man; 400 of these furnaces having been discovered by M. Quiquerez in the district of the Bernese Jura.
We will, however, previously mention that M. Quiquerez had represented, or materialised, as it were, the results of his interesting labours, by constructing a model in miniature of a siderurgical establishment belonging to the earliest iron epoch.
This curious specimen of workmanship showed the clay-furnace placed against the side of a hill, the heaps of charcoal, the scoriæ, the hut used as a dwelling by the workmen, the furnace-implements--in short, all the details which formed the result of the patient researches of the learned Swiss engineer.
M. Quiquerez had prepared this interesting model of the ancient industrial pursuits of man with a view of exhibiting it in the _Exposition Universelle_ of 1867, together with the very substances, productions, and implements which he had found in his explorations in the Jura.
But the commission appointed for selecting objects for admission refused to grant him the modest square yard of area which he required for placing his model.
How ridiculous it seems!
In the immense Champ de Mars in which so many useless and absurd objects perfectly swarmed, one square yard of space was refused for one of the most curious productions which was ever turned out by the skilful hands of any _savant_!
The result of this unintelligent refusal was that M. Quiquerez' model did not make its appearance in the _Exposition Universelle_ in the Champ de Mars, and that it was missing from the curious Gallery of the History of Labour, which called forth so much of the attention of the public.
For our readers, however, it will not be altogether lost.
M. Quiquerez has been good enough to forward to us from Bellerive, where he resides (near Délémont, canton of Basle, Switzerland) a photograph of his curious model of a pre-historic workshop for the preparation of iron.
From this photograph we have designed the annexed plate, representing a _primitive furnace for the extraction of iron_.
[Illustration: Fig.
231.--Primitive Furnace for Smelting Iron.]
This composition reproduces with tolerable accuracy the model in relief constructed by the author.
The furnace is shown; it is nothing but a simple cavity surmounted by a conical chimney-funnel, and placed against the side of a hill.
Steps made of rough stone, placed on each side of the mound, enable the workmen to mount to the summit.
The height of the funnel is about 9 feet.
At the side of the furnace stands the hut for the labourers, constructed of a number of round poles placed side by side; for centuries past huts of this kind have been erected in almost every country.
On the right, in the foreground, we may notice a heap of charcoal intended to be placed in the furnace in order to reduce the ore; on the left, there is the store of ore called in the ironworks the _ore-pen_.
The provision of iron-ore is enclosed between four wooden slabs, forming a quadrangular space.
In the centre are the scoriæ which result from the operations carried on.
A workman is extracting the cake of spongy iron from the ashes of the furnace; another is hammering on the anvil a piece of iron drawn from the furnace in order to forge it into a bar.
Round the furnace various implements are scattered about, such as the anvil, the pincers, the hammer, &c. All the instruments are designed from various specimens found by the author.
After these explanations, we may now give some extracts from M. Quiquerez' work, and we trust our readers will find no difficulty in comprehending the details given by the learned engineer, describing the primitive furnaces for the extraction of iron which he discovered in the Bernese Jura.
M. Quiquerez has remarked two kinds of primitive furnaces for the fabrication of iron, or, rather, two stages of improvement in their construction.
The first sort, that which the author considers as dating back to the most remote antiquity, is not so numerous as the others; the second kind form the largest number of those which he has explored.
"Furnaces of the first kind," says M. Quiquerez, "consisted of nothing but a small cylindrical excavation of no great regularity in shape, with a cup-shaped bottom, hollowed out in the side of a hill so as to give more natural height on one side; the front of the furnace was closed up by fire-proof clay, supported with stones.
This cavity was plastered over with 4 to 6 inches of clay, generally of a whitish colour, which became red after coming in contact with the fire.
These smelting-furnaces were not more than 12 to 18 inches in depth, as seemed to be shown by the upper edges being rounded and more or less scoriated.
The front, which was always more or less broken, had an opening at its base to admit a current of air, and to allow the workmen to deal with the melted material; but this opening seems to show that the piece of metal which had been formed during the operation must have been extracted by breaking in the front.
"The second kind of furnace, which is by far the most numerously found and widely distributed, is, in fact, nothing but an improvement of that which preceded it, the edges of the furnace or crucible being considerably raised in height.
They vary in depth from 7-1/2 to 8 feet, with a diameter of most irregular dimensions, from 18 inches upwards, and a thickness of 12 inches to 7 feet.
They are likewise formed of fire-proof clay, and their average capacity is about 25 gallons.
"The constructor, having dug out in the side of the hill an opening circular, or rather semi-circular, at the base, with a diameter nearly three times as wide as the future furnace, arranged in the centre of this hole a kind of furnace-bed made of plastic clay at bottom, and covered with a layer of fire-proof clay on the top of it.
The bed of the furnace, which lies on the natural and hardly levelled earth, is, generally speaking, not so thick as the side walls, which are formed of sandy or siliceous clay, always fire-proof on the inside, but sometimes of a more plastic nature on the exterior; the empty space left between the walls of the furnace and the solid ground round it was filled up with earth and other material.
In front the furnace was enclosed by a rough wall, sometimes straight and sometimes curving, built, without mortar, of rough limestone, and dressed with earth to fill up the gaps.
In front of the furnace an opening was made in this wall, taking its rise a few inches above the bottom of the furnace, and increasing in size in an outward direction, so as to enable the workmen to see into, and work in, the furnace.
"The work thus commenced was carried up to the requisite height; and when the excavation in the side of the hill was not lofty enough, the dome of the furnace was raised by placing buttresses against the fire-clay, so as to prevent the earth falling in.
When these furnaces were established on almost level ground, as is sometimes the case, they form a truncated cone, with a base varying in size according to the height of the apparatus.
"The furnace was not always built upright; it often deviated from the perpendicular, leaning to one side or the other to an extent as considerable as its own diameter, but no constant rule as to this can be recognised.
The internal shape was just as irregular, changing from circular to oval, without any apparent motive beyond want of care in the workman.
The crucibles or furnaces are sometimes larger at the top than at the bottom, and sometimes these proportions are reversed, but always with extreme irregularity.
We have noticed some which at a point 10 or 12 inches above the crucible were perceptibly contracted on three sides, thus representing the first rudiments of the appearance of our modern furnaces.
But this, perhaps, was nothing but a caprice on the part of the builder.
"The furnace thus being established, the wood was withdrawn which had formed the cone, if, indeed, any had been used, and at the hole made at the base of the crucible a clod of fire-clay some inches in height was placed, so as to form a dam, and to confine in the crucible the molten or soft metal; the scoriæ, being of a lighter nature and floating at the top, made their escape over the top of the dam.
As the latter were not very liquid, their issue was promoted by means of pokers or wooden poles, perhaps damped, with which also the metal was stirred in the crucible.
"In neither of these two kinds of furnaces do we find any trace of bellows, and a more or less strong draught must have been procured through the opening made for the escape of the scoriæ, according to the elevation of the dome of the furnace.
The limestones which have been found in certain furnaces were probably employed with a view of increasing the draught; they doubtless belonged to the upper part of the furnace, where they had been fixed so as to add height to the orifice.
This rudimentary plan must have been likewise used in the earliest crucibles.
The mode of obtaining a draught which we have just pointed out is indicated most plainly by the scorification of the walls of the furnace on the side opposite to the air-passage; this side has evidently experienced a more intense heat, whilst on the other the walls are much less affected by the fire, and in some cases pieces of the mineral still remain in a pasty or semi-molten state, just as they were when the work of the furnace ceased.... "The absence of any machine in the shape of bellows in the ancient metal works of the Jura appears all the more remarkable as these implements were known both to the Greeks and Romans; hence we may at least infer, not only that these nations did not introduce the art of iron-working into the Jura, but that it must have existed at a much earlier period.
It must also be remarked that the openings in the furnaces are not placed in the direction of the winds prevailing in the country--a plan which might have increased the draught--but are made quite at hazard, just as the nature of the spot rendered the construction of the furnace more easy.
"...
In respect to fuel it must be remarked that in all the siderurgical establishments which we have discovered, certain features indicate that wood carbonised in a stack was exclusively used as fuel.
The furnaces are too small for the employment of rough wood; added to this, charcoal stores are placed near the furnaces; and charcoal burnt in a stack is constantly met with all round the sites, in the scoriæ, and all the _débris_.
We must, besides, mention the discovery, at Bellelay, of a charcoal store 8 feet in diameter, situated under a compact bed of peat 20 feet in thickness.
It was established on the solid earth, anterior to the formation of the peat.
Now from this very peat a parcel of coins belonging to the fifteenth century was recovered, over which only 2 feet of peat had grown in a period of 400 years.
There, too, at a depth of 9 feet, were found the scattered bones of a horse, with the foot still shod with those undulating edged shoes with elongated and strongly punched holes, in which were fitted the ends of nails of the shape of a T, the heads of which were conical.
This kind of shoe is found in the Celtic settlements, the villages, habitations, and ironworks, also in the pasturages and forests of the country, but rarely in the Roman camps; in the latter they are always in less number than the wider metallic shoes, which are larger, and furnished with a groove indicating the line in which the nail-holes were punched.
The calculations which have been made from the discovery of the coins of the fifteenth century (A.D. 1478) would give an antiquity of at least twenty to twenty-four centuries to the horse-shoe we have just mentioned, for the animal must have died and been devoured on the then existing surface of the ground, and could not have been buried in the peat, as the bones, instead of lying grouped together, were dispersed in every direction.
These same calculations would carry back the date of the charcoal-store to an era 4000 years ago.
"Owing to the imperfection of the furnaces, the quantity of charcoal used must have been quadruple the present consumption for the same results.
The metal, as it was extracted from the ore, fell down into the bottom of the crucible.
In proportion as the mass of metal increased, a workman, with a poker made of damp green wood, brought out the scoriæ which floated on the top, and stirred the metal so as to fine it.
It is proved that these wooden pokers or poles were made use of in all the furnace-works.
A quantity of morsels of scoriæ is found which, having been in a soft state when extracted, have retained the imprint of the piece of wood, the end of which was evidently charred.
M. Morlot, in his article on the Roman ironworks at Wocheim, in Upper Carniola, has also noticed the existence, in the scoriæ, of frequent traces of pokers, sometimes round and sometimes three-cornered in shape, but all of them must have been made of iron, whilst throughout the whole of the Jura we have never recognised the traces of any but wooden implements of this kind.
"Owing to the imperfection of the furnaces, and especially, the deficiency in the draught caused by the want of bellows, the metal contained in the ore could be but very imperfectly extracted; the scoriæ are therefore still so very rich in iron that, about twenty years ago, the manager of the ironworks at Untervelier tried to use them over again as ore. Accumulations of this dross, measuring from 100 to 200 yards square, may be seen near certain furnaces-a fact which would infer a somewhat considerable production of iron.
The examination of these scoriæ proves that iron was then made by one single operation, and not liquid pigs fit for casting, or to be converted into iron by a second series of operations.
"The iron produced was introduced into commerce in large blocks, shaped like two quadrangular pyramids joined at the base, weighing from 12 to 16 lbs.
One of these pieces was found near a furnace which had been demolished in order to establish a charcoal furnace, in the commune of Untervelier, and another in one of the furnaces of Boécourt.
"All round the furnaces there have been found numerous remains of rough pottery; it is badly baked, and made without the help of the wheel, from clay which is mingled with grains of quartz--the pottery, in fact, which is called Celtic.
Pieces of stag's horn have also been discovered, which must have been used for the handles of tools; also iron hatchets.
One of them has a socket at the end made in a line with the length of the implement; it is an instrument belonging to the most remote period of the iron age.
The others have transversal sockets like our present hatchets.
One of the latter was made of steel so hard that it could not be touched with the file.
With regard to coins, both Gallic and Roman were found, and some of the latter were of as late a date as that of the Constantines.
The persistence in practising the routine of all the most ancient processes may be explained by the monopoly of the iron-working trade being retained in the same families.
We have the less need to be surprised at this, because we may notice that the wood-cutters and charcoal-burners of our own days, when they have to take up their abode in a locality for any length of time, and to carry on their trade there, always make certain arrangements which have doubtless been handed down from the most primitive times.
In order to protect their beds from the damp, they make a kind of shelf of fir-poles which is used as a bedstead.
Some of them have two stories; the under-one intended for the children, and the one above for the parents.
Moss, ferns, and dried grass form the mattress.
Coverlets impossible to describe were made good use of, and some were even made of branches of fir-trees.
These bedsteads take the place both of benches and chairs.
A stone fire-place, roughly arranged in the centre of the hut, fills the double function of warming in winter and cooking the food all the year round.
We may also add, that the fire, which is almost always kept lighted, and the ashes spread over the floor all round, preserve the hut from certain troublesome insects, which lose their lives by jumping imprudently into this unknown trap.
The smoke finds no other issue but through a hole made in the roof.
"[40] Such is the description given by M. Quiquerez of the iron furnaces of a really pre-historic character, those, namely, which are characterised by the absence of bellows.
We think, however, that there must have been holes below the hearth which afforded access to currents of air, and, by being alternately open or closed, served either to increase or diminish the intensity of the draught.
But bellows, properly so called, intended to promote the combustion and chemical reaction between the oxide of iron and the charcoal did not then exist.
The addition of the bellows to iron-furnaces brought an essential improvement to the art of the manufacture of iron.
Another improvement consisted in making, at the bottom of the stone receptacle where the fuel and the ore were burnt together, a door composed of several bricks which could be readily moved.
At the completion of each operation they drew out, through this door, the cake of iron, which could not be so conveniently extracted at the upper part of the furnace, on account of its height.
The hammering, assisted by several heatings, finally cleared the iron, in the usual way, from all extraneous matter, consolidated it, and converted it into the state of bar-iron fit for the blacksmith's use, and for the fabrication of utensils and tools.
These improved primitive furnaces are well-known to German miners under the name of _Stucköfen_ ("fragment-furnaces").
They are modified in different ways in different countries; and according to the arrangement of the furnace, and especially according to the nature of the ferruginous ores, certain methods or manipulations of the iron have been introduced, which are nowadays known under the names of the Swedish, German, Styrian, Carinthian, Corsican, and Catalan methods.
The ancient furnaces for the extraction of iron may be combined under the name of _smelting-forges_ or _bloomeries_.
The invention of siliceous fluxes as applied to the extraction of iron, and facilitating the production of a liquid scoria which could flow out in the form of a stream of fire, put the finishing stroke to the preparation of iron.
The constructors next considerably increased the height of the stone crucible in which the fuel and the ore, now mingled with a siliceous flux, were placed, and the _blast furnace_, that is, the present system of the preparation of iron, soon came into existence.
But, there may be reason to think, neither of these two kinds of furnaces belongs to the primitive ages of mankind which are the object of this work.
In the iron epoch--that we are considering--the furnace without bellows was possibly the only one known; the iron was prepared in very small quantities at a time, and the meagre metallic cake, the result from each operation, had to be picked out from among the ashes drawn from the stone receptacle.
Gold, as we have already said, was known to the men of the bronze epoch.
Silver, on the contrary, did not come into use until the iron epoch.
Another characteristic of the epoch we are now studying is the appearance of pottery made on the potter's wheel, and baked in an improved kind of furnace.
Up to that time, pottery had been moulded by the hand, and merely burnt in the open air.
In the iron epoch, the potter's wheel came into use, and articles of earthenware were manufactured on this wheel, and baked in an unexceptionable way in an oven especially constructed for the purpose.
There is another fact which likewise characterises the iron epoch; this was the appearance of coined money.
The earliest known coins belong to this period; they are made of bronze, and bear a figure or effigy not stamped, but obtained by melting and casting.
The most ancient coins that are known are Greek, and date back to the eighth century before Christ.
These are the coins of Ægina, Athens, and Cyzicum, such as were found many years ago in the duchy of Posen.
In the lacustrine settlement of Neuchâtel, coins of a remote antiquity have also been found.
We here represent in its natural size (fig.
232), taken from M. Desor's work, a bronze coin found in the settlement of La Tène in the lake of Neuchâtel.
But these coins are not more ancient than the Greek specimens that we have before named.
They are shown to be Gallic by the horned horse, which is a Gallic emblem.
[Illustration: Fig.
232.--Bronze Coin, from the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
At Tiefenau, near Berne, coins have been found of a nearly similar character associated with others having on them the effigy of Apollo, and bearing an imprint of _Massilia_ (Marseilles).
As the foundation of this Phocæan colony dates back to the sixth century before Christ, these coins may be said to be among the most ancient which exist.
Glass became known, as we have before stated, in the bronze epoch.
In short, the essential features which distinguish the iron epoch are, iron instruments, and implements combining with those of bronze to replace stone in all the uses for which it was anciently employed--the knowledge of silver and lead, the improvement of pottery, and the introduction of coined money.
With regard to its chronological date we should adopt that of about 2000 years before the Christian era, thus agreeing with the generality of authors--the date of the bronze epoch being fixed about 4000 years before Christ.
After these general considerations, we shall pass on to give some account of the manners and customs of man during the iron epoch, or, at least, during the earlier portion of this period, which ere long became blended with historic ages.
When we have completed our study of man in the earlier period of the iron epoch, we shall have terminated the rapid sketch which we have intended to trace out of primitive man and his labours.
This period commenced, as we have just stated, about 2000 years before Christ, and ultimately merged into the earliest glimmer of historical records.
Our task now is to describe all we know about man at this date of nascent civilisation.
Afterwards, the earliest historians--and among them, Herodotus, the father of history--are the authorities whom we must consult for an account of the actions and exploits of the human race in Europe.
FOOTNOTES: [39] Details as to the relation of the Stone Age to the Bronze and Iron Ages may be found in 'Researches into the Early History of Mankind,' by Edward B. Tylor.
Chap.
VIII., 'Pre-Historic Times,' by Sir J. Lubbock, Chaps.
I. and II.
[40] 'De l'Age du Fer, Recherches sur les anciennes Forges du Jura Bernois,' by A. Quiquerez, Engineer of the Jura Mines.
Porrentruy, 1866; pp.
35-39, 77-80.
Also, 'Matériaux pour l'Histoire positif de l'Homme,' by G. de Mortillet, vol.
ii.
pp.
505-510.
CHAPTER II.
Weapons--Tools, Instruments, Utensils, and Pottery--The Tombs of Hallstadt and the Plateau of La Somma--The Lake-Settlements of Switzerland--Human Sacrifices--Type of Man during the Iron Epoch--Commencement of the Historic Era.
The most valuable traces of the manners and customs of man during the earlier period of the iron epoch have been furnished by the vast burial-ground discovered recently at Hallstadt, near Salzburg in Austria.
M. Ramsauer, Director of the salt-mines of Salzburg, has explored more than 1000 tombs in this locality, and has described them in a work full of interest, a manuscript copy of which we have consulted in the Archæological Museum of Saint-Germain.
As the tombs at Hallstadt belong to the earlier period of the iron epoch, they represent to us the natural transition from the epoch of bronze to that of iron.
In fact, in a great number of objects contained in these tombs--such as daggers, swords and various ornaments--bronze and iron are combined.
One sword, for instance, is formed of a bronze hilt and an iron blade.
This is represented in figures 233, 234, 235 and 236, drawn from the sketches in M. Ramsauer's manuscript work entitled 'Les Tombes de Hallstadt,' in which this combination of the two metals is remarked upon; the sword-hilts being formed of one metal and the blades of another.
[Illustration: Fig.
233.--Sword, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (with a Bronze Hilt and Iron Blade).]
[Illustration: Fig.
234.--Sword, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (with a Bronze Hilt and Iron Blade).]
[Illustration: Fig.
235.--Dagger, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (Bronze Handle and Iron Blade).]
[Illustration: Fig.
236.--Dagger, from the Tombs of Hallstadt (Bronze Handle and Iron Blade).]
By taking a rapid survey of the objects found in the tombs of Hallstadt, we can form a somewhat accurate idea of the first outset of the iron age.
The first point which strikes us in this period, is the utter change which had taken place in the interment of the dead.
During the Stone Age, the dead were placed in small subterranean crypts, that is in _dolmens_ or _tumuli_.
During the Bronze Age it became to a great extent customary for men to burn the dead bodies of their friends.
This custom was destined to become more and more prevalent century after century, and during historic times it became universal among a great many nations.
In fact, in the tombs of Hallstadt, several little earthen vessels containing ashes may be seen.
Sometimes only part of the body was burnt, so that a portion of a skeleton was found in these tombs, and near it the ashes of the parts which the fire had consumed.
The remains found in the tombs of Hallstadt are almost equally divided between these two modes of inhumation.
About half of the tombs contain nothing but ashes; in the other half, corpses are laid extended, according to the custom which was most prevalent in the iron age.
Lastly, as we have just stated, some of them contained skeletons which were partially burnt.
Sometimes it was the head, sometimes the whole bust, or sometimes the lower limbs which were consumed, the ashes being deposited by the side of the intact portions of the skeleton.
Fig.
238, which is designed from one of the illustrations in M. Ramsauer's manuscript work 'Les Tombes de Hallstadt,' in the Museum of Saint-Germain, represents a skeleton, part of which (the chest) has been consumed.
The ashes are contained in small earthen vessels which are seen near the corpse.
[Illustration: Fig.
237.--Funeral Ceremonies during the Iron Epoch.]
[Illustration: Fig.
238.--A Skeleton, portions of which have been burnt, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
From the _data_ which we have acquired as to this custom of burning dead bodies during the iron epoch, we have been able to represent _the funeral ceremonies of the iron epoch_ in the preceding figure.
The corpse is placed on a funeral pile, and the stone door of the tumulus is raised in order to deposit in it the cinerary urn.
The relations of the deceased accompany the procession clothed in their handsomest garments and adorned with the bronze and iron ornaments which were then in vogue.
One of those present may be seen throwing some precious objects into the flames of the funeral pile in honour of the deceased.
The tombs of Hallstadt are the locality in which the largest number of objects, such as weapons, instruments and implements, have been met with, which have tended to throw a light upon the history of the transition from the bronze to the iron epoch.
All these objects are either of bronze or iron; but in the weapons the latter predominates.
Swords, spear-heads, daggers, knives, socketed hatchets and winged hatchets form the catalogue of the sharp instruments.
In the preceding pages (figs.
233, 234, 235 and 236) we have given representations of swords and daggers designed from the specimens in the Museum of Saint-Germain.
In all these weapons the handle is made of bronze and the blade of iron.
Warriors' sword-belts are frequently formed of plates of bronze, and are embellished with a _repoussé_ ornamentation executed by the hammer.
In fig.
239 we give a representation of a necklace with pendants which is most remarkable in its workmanship.
It may be readily seen that art had now attained some degree of maturity.
This necklace was a prelude to the marvellous works of art which were about to be brought to light under the skies of Greece.
[Illustration: Fig.
239.--A Necklace with Pendants, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
The bracelets which have been met with by hundreds, hair pins and bronze fibulæ are all wrought with taste, and are often adorned with very elegant pendants.
In figs.
240 and 241 we show two bracelets, the sketches for which were taken from the designs in the manuscript of the 'Tombes de Hallstadt.'
[Illustration: Fig.
240.--Bracelet, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
[Illustration: Fig.
241.--Bracelet, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
We may add a few amber necklace-beads and some of enamel, and we have then concluded the series of personal ornaments.
In the tombs of Hallstadt, nearly 200 bronze vessels have been discovered, some of which are as much as 36 inches in height.
These bronze vessels were composed of several pieces skilfully riveted but not soldered.
Plates 242 and 243 are reproduced from the same beautiful manuscript.
[Illustration: Fig.
242.--Bronze Vase, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
[Illustration: Fig.
243.--Bronze Vase, from the Tombs of Hallstadt.]
In the tombs of Hallstadt some small glass vessels have also been discovered.
Remains of pottery are very plentiful, and a decided improvement is shown in their workmanship.
Some gold trinkets were also met with in these tombs.
The gold was, doubtless, obtained from the mines of Transylvania.
African ivory abounds in these graves--a fact which indicates commercial intercourse with very distant countries.
This product, as well as the glass, was introduced into Europe by the Phoenicians.
The inhabitants of central Europe obtained ivory from Tyre and Sidon by means of barter.
The ivory objects which were found at Hallstadt consisted of the heads of hair-pins and the pommels of swords.
There were no traces whatever of money, the use of it not being then established in that part of Europe.
The population which lived in the vicinity of the Salzburg mines were in reality rich; for the salt-mines were a source of great wealth to them at a period when the deposits of rock-salt in Poland, being still buried in the depths of the earth, were as yet unknown or inaccessible.
In this way, we may account for the general opulence of these commercial nations, and for the elegance and taste displayed in the objects which have been found in the tombs of Hallstadt.
Guided by these various remains, it is not difficult to reproduce an ideal picture of _the warriors of the iron epoch_, a representation of which we have endeavoured to give in fig.
244.
The different pieces of the ornaments observed on the horseman, on the foot-soldier, and also on the horse, are drawn from specimens exhibited in the Museum of Saint-Germain which were modelled at Hallstadt.
The helmet is in perfect preservation and resembles those which, shortly after, were worn by the Gallic soldiers.
The bosses, also, on the horse's harness, ere long came into use both among the Gauls and also the Romans.
[Illustration: Fig.
244.--Warriors of the Iron Epoch.]
Next to the tombs of Hallstadt, we must mention the tombs discovered on the plateau of La Somma, in Lombardy, which have contributed a valuable addition to the history of the earliest period of the iron epoch.
On this plateau there were discovered certain tombs, composed of rough stones of a rectangular form.
In the interior there were some vases of a shape suited to the purpose, containing ashes.
The material of which they were made was fine clay; they had been wrought by means of the potter's wheel, were ornamented with various designs, and also provided with encircling projections.
On some of them, representations of animals may be seen which indicate a considerable progress in the province of art.
The historic date of these urns is pointed out by _fibulæ_ (clasps for cloaks), iron rings and bracelets, sword-belts partly bronze and partly iron, and small bronze chains.
The tombs of La Somma belong, therefore, to a period of transition between the bronze and iron epochs.
According to M. Mortillet, they date back to the seventh century before Christ.
Under the same head we will class the tombs of Saint-Jean de Belleville, in Savoy.
At this spot several tombs belonging to the commencement of the iron epoch have been explored by MM.
Borel and Costa de Beauregard.
The latter, in a splendid work published in Savoy, has given a detailed description of these tombs.
[41] Some of the skeletons are extended on their backs, others have been consumed, but only partially, like those which we have already mentioned in the tombs of Hallstadt.
Various objects, consisting chiefly of trinkets and ornaments, have been met with in these tombs.
We will mention in particular the _fibulæ_, bracelets and necklaces made of amber, enamelled glass, &c. In figs.
245 and 246 we give a representation of two skeleton arms, which are encircled with several bracelets just as they were found in these tombs.
[Illustration: Figs.
245, 246.--Fore-arm, encircled with Bracelets, found in the Tombs of Belleville (Savoy).]
The lacustrine settlements of Switzerland have contributed a valuable element towards the historic reconstruction of the iron epoch.
In different parts of the lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel there are pile-works which contain iron objects intermingled with the remains of preceding ages.
But there is only one lacustrine settlement in Switzerland which belongs exclusively to the earliest period of the Iron Age--that of La Tène on the Lake of Neuchâtel.
Most of the objects which have been met with in this lacustrine settlement have been recovered from the mud in which they had been so remarkably preserved, being sheltered from any contact with the outer air.
There are, however, many spots in which piles may be seen, where objects of this kind have not been found; but if subsequent researches are attended with any results, we shall be forced to attribute to the settlement of La Tène a considerable degree of importance, for the piles there extend over an area of 37 acres.
The remains of all kinds which have been found in this settlement are evidently of Gallic origin.
It is an easy matter to prove this by comparing the weapons found in this settlement with those which were discovered in the trenches of Alise-Sainte-Reine, the ancient _Alesia_, where, in its last contest against Cæsar, the independence of ancient Gaul came to an end.
M. de Rougemont has called attention to the fact that these weapons correspond very exactly to the description given by Diodorus Siculus of the Gallic weapons.
Switzerland thus seems to have been inhabited in the earliest iron epoch by Gallic tribes, that is to say, by a different race from that which occupied it during the stone and bronze epochs; and it was this race which introduced into Switzerland the use of iron.
Among the objects collected in the lake settlement of La Tène, weapons are the most numerous; they consist of swords and the heads of spears and javelins.
Most of them have been kept from oxidation by the peaty mud which entirely covered them, and they are, consequently, in a state of perfect preservation.
The swords are all straight, of no very great thickness, and perfectly flat.
The blade is from 31 to 35 inches in length, and is terminated by a handle about 6 inches long.
They have neither guards nor crosspieces.
Several of them were still in their sheaths, from which many of them have been drawn out in a state of perfect preservation, and even tolerably sharp.
Fig.
247 represents one of the iron swords from the Swiss lakes, which are depicted in M. Desor's memoir.
[Illustration: Fig.
247.--Iron Sword, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
On another sword, of which we also give a representation (fig.
248), a sort of damascening work extends over almost the whole surface, leaving the edges alone entirely smooth.
[Illustration: Fig.
248.--Sword with Damascened Blade, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
M. de Reffye, the archæologist, accounts for this fact in the following way:--He is of opinion that the body of the blade is made of very hard unyielding iron, whilst the edges are made of small strips of mellower iron which have been subsequently welded and wrought by the hammer.
This mode of manufacture enabled the soldier, when his sword was notched, to repair it by means of hammering.
This was a most valuable resource during an epoch in which armies did not convey stores along with them, and when the soldier's baggage was reduced to very little more than he could personally carry.
Several of these damascened blades have been found in the trenches of Alise.
The sheaths, the existence of which now for the first time comes under our notice, are of great importance on account of the designs with which they are ornamented.
Most of these designs are engraved with a tool, others are executed in _repoussé_ work.
All of them show great originality and peculiar characteristics, which prevent them from being confounded with works of Roman art.
One of these sheaths (fig.
249), which belongs to M. Desor's collection and is depicted in his memoir, represents the "horned horse," the emblem of Gaul, which is sufficient proof of the Gallic origin of the weapons found in the Lake of La Tène.
Below this emblem, there is a kind of granulated surface which bears some resemblance to shagreen.
[Illustration: Fig 249.--Sheath of a Sword, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
This sheath is composed of two very thin plates of wrought iron laid one upon the other, except at the base, where they are united by means of a cleverly-wrought band of iron.
At its upper extremity there is a plate, on one side of which may be seen the designs which we have already described, and on the other a ring, intended to suspend the weapon to the belt.
The lance-heads are very remarkable on account of their extraordinary shape and large size.
They measure as much as 16 inches long, by 2 to 4 inches wide, and are double-edged and twisted into very diversified shapes.
Some are winged, and others are irregularly indented.
Some have perforations in the shape of a half-moon (fig.
250).
The halberd of the middle ages was, very probably, nothing but an improvement on, or a deviation from, these singular blades.
[Illustration: Fig.
250.--Lance-head, found in one of the Swiss Lakes.]
Fragments of wooden staves have been met with which had been fitted into these spear-heads; they are slender, and shod with iron at one end.
The care with which these instruments are wrought proves that they are lance-heads, and not mere darts or javelins intended to be thrown to a distance and consequently lost.
They certainly would not have taken so much pains with the manufacture of a weapon which would be used only once.
It is altogether a different matter with respect to the javelins, a tolerably large number of which have been found in the lacustrine settlements of La Tène.
They are simple socketed heads (fig.
251), terminating in a laurel-leaf shape, about 4 to 5 inches in length.
[Illustration: Fig.
251.--Head of a Javelin, found in the Lacustrine Settlement of La Tène (Neuchâtel).]
It appears from experiments ordered by the Emperor of the French, that these javelins could only have been used as missile weapons, and that they were thrown, not by the hand merely grasping the shaft (which would be impossible to do effectually on account of their light weight), but by means of a cord or thong, which was designated among the Romans by the name of _amentum_.
These experiments have shown that a dart which could be thrown only 65 feet with the hand, might be cast four times that distance by the aid of the _amentum_.
There probably existed among the Gauls certain military corps who practised the use of the _amentum_, that is to say, the management of _thonged javelins_, and threw this javelin in the same way as other warriors threw stones by means of a sling.
This conclusion, which has been drawn by M. Desor, seems to us a very just one.
Javelins of the preceding type are very common in the trenches of Alise.
In this neighbourhood a large number of iron arrows have also been found which have never been met with in the lacustrine settlement of La Tène.
War was not the only purpose for which these javelins were used by the men of the iron epoch.
Hunting, too, was carried on by means of these missile weapons.
The bow and the thonged javelin constituted the hunting weapons of this epoch.
We have depicted this in the accompanying plate, which represents _the chase during the iron epoch_.
[Illustration: Fig.
252.--The Chase during the Iron Epoch.]
Next to the weapons come the implements.
We will, in the first place, mention the hatchets (fig.
253).
They are larger, more solid, and have a wider cutting edge than those used in the bronze epoch; wings were no longer in use, only a square-shaped socket into which was fitted a wooden handle, probably made with an elbow.
[Illustration: Fig.
253.--Square-socketed Iron Hatchet, found in one of the Lakes of Switzerland.]
The sickles (fig.
254) are likewise larger and also more simple than those of the bronze epoch; there are neither designs nor ornaments of any kind on them.
[Illustration: Fig.
254.--Sickle.]
With the pruning-bills or sickles we must class the regular scythes (fig.
255) with stems for handling, two specimens of which have been discovered in the lake settlement of the Tène.
Their length is about 14 inches, that is, about one-third as large as the scythes used by the Swiss harvest-men of the present day.
One important inference is drawn from the existence of these scythes; it is, that at the commencement of the iron epoch men were in the habit of storing up a provision of hay, and must consequently have reared cattle.
[Illustration: Fig.
255.--Scythe, from the Lacustrine Settlements of Switzerland.]
The iron fittings at the ends of the boat-hooks used by the boatmen on the lake are frequently found at La Tène; they terminate in a quadrangular pyramid or in a cone (fig.
256).
Some still contain the end of the wooden pole, which was attached to it by means of a nail.
[Illustration: Fig.
256.--Iron Point of Boat-hook, used by the Swiss Boatmen during the Iron Epoch.]
Next in order to these objects, we must mention the horses' bits and shoes; the first being very simply constructed so as to last for a very long period of time.
They were composed of a short piece of iron chain (fig.
257), which was placed in the horse's mouth, and terminated at each end in a ring to which the reins were attached.
[Illustration: Fig.
257.--Horse's Bit, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
The _fibulæ_ (fig.
258), or clasps for cloaks, are especially calculated to attract attention in the class of ornamental objects; they are very elegant and diversified in their shapes, their dimensions varying from 2-1/2 to 5 inches.
They are all formed of a pin in communication with a twisted spring bent in various ways.
They are provided with a sheath to hold the end of the brooch pin, so as to avoid any danger of pricking.
A large number of them are in an excellent state of preservation, and might well be used at the present day.
[Illustration: Fig.
258.--_Fibula_, or Iron Brooch, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
These brooches, which we have already called attention to when speaking of the tombs of Hallstadt, were also used by the Etruscans and the Romans; their existence in the pre-historic tombs tends to prove that, like the above-named nations, the Swiss and Germans wore the toga or mantle.
These _fibulæ_ have a peculiar character, and it is impossible to confuse them with the Roman _fibulæ_.
They are, however, similar in every way to those which have been found at Alise.
There have also been found in the Swiss lakes, along with the _fibulæ_, a number of rings, the use of which is still problematical.
Some are flat and others chiselled in various ways.
It is thought that some of them must have been used as buckles for soldiers' sword-belts (fig.
259); but there are others which do not afford any countenance to this explanation.
Neither can they be looked on as bracelets; for most of them are too small for any such purpose.
Some show numerous cuts at regular intervals all round their circumference; this fact has given rise to the supposition that they might perhaps have served as a kind of money.
[Illustration: Fig.
259.--Iron Buckle for a Sword-belt, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
In the lake-settlement of La Tène (Lake of Neuchâtel), iron pincers have also been found (fig.
260), which were doubtless used for pulling out hair, and are of very perfect workmanship; also scissors with a spring (fig.
261), the two legs being made in one piece, and some very thin blades (fig.
262), which must have been razors.
[Illustration: Fig.
260.--Iron Pincers, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
[Illustration: Fig.
261.--Iron Spring-Scissors, found in the Lake of Neuchâtel.]
[Illustration: Fig.
262.--Razor.]
The specimens of pottery belonging to this date do not testify to any real progress having been made beyond the workmanship of the bronze epoch; the clay is still badly baked, and of a darkish colour.
It certainly is the case, that along with these remains a quantity of fragments of vessels have been picked up, and even entire vessels, which have been made by the help of the potter's wheel and baked in an oven, and consequently present the red colour usual in modern earthenware.
But archæologists are of opinion that this class of pottery does not date back beyond the Roman epoch; and this opinion would seem to be confirmed by the existence, in the midst of the piles at the settlement of La Tène, of a mass of tiles, evidently of Roman origin.
The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is, that many of the pile-works in the Swiss lakes continued to be occupied when the country was under the Roman rule.
One of the characteristics of the iron epoch is, as we have before stated, the appearance of coin or money.
In 1864, M. Desor recovered from the Lake of La Tène five coins of unquestionable Gallic origin.
They are of bronze, and bear on one side the figure of the horned horse, and on the other a human profile.
In fig.
232, we gave a representation of these curious specimens of coin found by M. Desor in the lacustrine settlements of the Lake of Neuchâtel.
The marks of the mould still existing on each side show that these coins were cast in a series, and that after the casting the coins were separated from one another by means of the file.
Coins of a similar character have been discovered, as we before observed, at Tiefenau, near Berne, with others bearing the effigy of Diana and Apollo, and the imprint of _Massilia_, The latter date from the foundation of Marseilles, and could not, therefore, be anterior to the sixth century before the Christian era; it is probable that those discovered along with them must be referred to nearly the same epoch.
Such are the relics of instruments, tools, weapons, &c., made of iron and recovered from the lacustrine settlement of La Tène, that is, from the Lake of Neuchâtel.
We must add that, near Berne, at a spot which is designated by the name of the "Battle-field of Tiefenau," because it appears to have been the theatre of a great conflict between the Helvetians and the Gauls, a hundred swords and spear-heads have been picked up, similar to those found at La Tène; also fragments of coats of mail, rings, _fibulæ_, the tires of chariot-wheels, horses' bits, and lastly, Gallic and Marseillaise coins in gold, silver, and bronze.
This field of battle appears, therefore, to have been contemporary with the settlement at La Tène.
In addition to these valuable sources of information--La Tène and Tiefenau--Switzerland also possesses _tumuli_ and simple tombs, both constituting records useful to consult in respect to the iron epoch.
But on this point, it must be remarked that it is often difficult, with any degree of security, to connect them with the two preceding sites; and that considerable reserve is recommended in attempting any kind of identification.
Upon the whole, the Iron Age, looking even only to its earliest period, is the date of the beginning of real civilisation among European nations.
Their industrial skill, exercised on the earliest-used materials, such as iron and textile products, furnished all that was required by the usages of life.
Commerce was already in a flourishing state, for it was no longer carried on by the process of barter only.
Money, in the shape of coin, the conventional symbol of wealth, came into use during this epoch, and must have singularly facilitated the operations of trade.
Agriculture, too, had advanced as much as it could at this earliest dawn of civilisation.
The remains of cereals found in the lake-settlements of Switzerland, added to the iron instruments intended to secure the products of the cultivation of the ground, such as the scythes and sickles which we have previously depicted (figs.
254 and 255), are sufficient to show us that agriculture constituted at that time the chief wealth of nations.
The horse, the ass, the dog, the ox, and the pig, had for long time back been devoted to the service of man, either as auxiliaries in his field-labours, or as additions to his resources in the article of food.
Fruit-trees, too, were cultivated in great numbers.
[Illustration: Fig.
263.--Agriculture during the Iron Epoch.]
As a matter of fact, we have no acquaintance with any of the iron and bronze instruments which were used by men of the iron epoch in cultivation of the ground.
Scythes and sickles are the only agricultural implements which have been discovered.
But even these instruments, added to a quantity of remains of the bones of cattle which have been found in the lacustrine and palustrine settlements, are sufficient to prove that the art of cultivating the earth and of extracting produce from its bosom, rendered fertile by practices sanctioned by experience, existed in full vigour among the men who lived during the period immediately preceding historic times.
The plate which accompanies this page is intended to represent in a material form the state of agriculture during the iron epoch.
We may notice the corn-harvest being carried on by means of sickles, like those found in the lacustrine settlements of Switzerland.
A man is engaged in beating out, with a mere stick, the wheatsheaves in order to thrash out the grain.
The grain is then ground in a circular mill, worked by a horizontal handle.
This mill is composed of two stones revolving one above the other, and was the substitute for the rough primitive corn-mill; it subsequently became the mill used by the Romans--the _pistrinum_--at which the slaves were condemned to work.
Indications of an unequivocal character have enabled us to recognise as a fact, that human sacrifices took place among the Helvetians during this period.
It is, however, well known, from the accounts of ancient historians, that this barbarous custom existed among the Gauls and various nations in the north of Europe.
In a _tumulus_ situated near Lausanne, which contained four cinerary urns, there were also found the skeletons of four young females.
Their broken bones testified but too surely to the tortures which had terminated their existence.
The remains of their ornaments lay scattered about in every direction, and everything was calculated to lead to the belief that they had been crushed under the mass of stones which formed the _tumulus_--unhappy victims of a cruel superstition.
Not far from this spot, another _tumulus_ contained twelve skeletons lying in all kinds of unusual postures.
It is but too probable that these were the remains of individuals who had all been immolated together on the altar of some supposed implacable divinity.
What was the character of the type of the human race during the iron epoch?
It must evidently have been that of the present era.
Both the skulls and the bodies of the skeletons found in the tombs of this epoch point to a race of men entirely identical with that of our own days.
We shall not carry on our study of pre-historic mankind to any later date.
We have now arrived at an epoch upon which sufficient light has been thrown by oral tradition combined with historical records.
The task of the historian begins at the point where the naturalist's investigations come to an end.
FOOTNOTE: [41] 'Les Sépultures de Saint-Jean de Belleville,' with lithographed plates.
PRIMITIVE MAN IN AMERICA.
PRIMITIVE MAN IN AMERICA.
The development of mankind has, doubtless, been of much the same character in all parts of the world, so that, in whatever quarter of the world man may come under our consideration, he must have passed through the same phases of progress ere he arrived at his present state.
Everywhere, man must have had his Stone Age, his Bronze Epoch, and his Iron Epoch, succeeding one another in the same order which we have ascertained to have existed in Europe.
In the sketch which we have drawn of primitive man we have devoted our attention almost entirely to Europe; but the cause simply is, that this part of the world has, up to the present day, been the principal subject of special and attentive studies in this respect.
Asia, Africa, and America can scarcely be said to have been explored in reference to the antiquity of our species; but it is probable that the facts which have been brought to light in Europe, would be almost identically reproduced in other parts of the world.
This is a fact which, as regards _dolmens_, has been already verified.
The sepulchral monuments of the Stone Age, which were at first believed to be peculiar to France, and, indeed, to one province of France, namely Brittany, have since been met with in almost every part of the world.
Not only have they been discovered all over Europe, but even the coasts of Africa bring to our notice numerous relics of them; also, through the whole extent of Asia, and even in the interior of India, this same form of sepulchre, bearing witness to a well determined epoch in man's history, have been pointed out and described by recent travellers.
Thus, the information which we possess on these points as regards Europe, may well be generalised and applied to the other quarters of the world--to Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania.
America, however, has been the scene of certain investigations concerning primitive man which have not been without fertile results; we shall, therefore, devote the last few pages of our work to a consideration of the pre-historic remains of America, and to giving an account of the probable conditions of man's existence there, as they have been revealed to us by these relics.
The information which has been made public on these points concerns North America only.
It would be useless to dwell on the stone and bone instruments of the New World; in their shape they differ but little from those of Europe.
They were applied to the same uses, and the only perceptible difference in them is in the substance of which they were made.
We find there hatchets, knives, arrow-heads, &c., but these instruments are not so almost universally made from flint, which is to a considerable extent replaced by obsidian and other hard stones.
In the history of primitive man in North America, we shall have to invent another age of a special character; this is the _Age of Copper_.
In America, the use of copper seems to have preceded the use of bronze; native metallic copper having been largely in use among certain races.
On the shores of Lake Superior there are some very important mines of native copper, which must have been worked by the Indians at a very early date; in fact, the traces of the ancient workings have been distinctly recognised by various travellers.
Mr. Knapp, the agent of the Minnesota Mining Company, was the first to point out these pre-historic mines.
In 1847, his researches having led him into a cavern much frequented by porcupines, he discovered, under an accumulation of heaped-up earth, a vein of native copper, containing a great number of stone hammers.
A short time afterwards, some other excavations 25 to 35 feet in depth, and stretching over an extent of several miles, came under his notice.
The earth dug out had been thrown on each side of the excavations; and mighty forest-trees had taken root and grown there.
In the trunk of a hemlock-tree growing in this "made ground," Mr. Knapp counted 395 rings of growth, and this tree had probably been preceded by other forest-giants no less venerable.
In the trenches themselves, which had been gradually filled up by vegetable _débris_, trees had formerly grown which, after having lived for hundreds of years, had succumbed and decayed; being then replaced by other generations of vegetation, the duration of which had been quite as long.
When, therefore, we consider these workings of the native copper-mines of Lake Superior, we are compelled to ascribe the above-named excavations to a considerable antiquity.
In many of these ancient diggings stone hammers have been found, sometimes in large quantities.
One of the diggings contained some great diorite hatchets which were worked by the aid of a handle, and also large cylindrical masses of the same substance hollowed out to receive a handle.
These sledges, which are too heavy to be lifted by one man alone, were doubtless used for breaking off lumps of copper, and then reducing them to fragments of a size which could easily be carried away.
If we may put faith in Professor Mather, who explored these ancient mines, some of the rocks still bore the mark of the blow they had received from these granite rollers.
The work employed in adapting the native copper was of the most simple character.
The Indians hammered it cold, and, taking into account its malleable character, they were enabled with tolerable facility to give it any shape that they wished.
In America, just as in Europe, a great number of specimens of pre-historic pottery have been collected.
They are, it must be confessed, superior to most of those found in the ancient world.
The material of which they were made is very fine, excepting in the case of the vessels of every-day use, in which the clay is mixed with quartz reduced to powder; the shapes of the vessels are of the purest character, and the utmost care has been devoted to the workmanship.
They do not appear to have been constructed by the aid of the potter's wheel; but Messrs. Squier and Davis, very competent American archæologists, are of opinion that the Indians, in doing this kind of work, made use of a stick held in the middle.
The workman turned this stick round and round inside the mass of clay, which an assistant kept on adding to all round the circumference.
In regard to pottery, the most interesting specimens are the pipes, which we should, indeed, expect to meet with in the native country of the tobacco plant and the classic calumet.
Many of these pipes are carved in the shape of animals, which are very faithfully represented.
These figures are very various in character, including quadrupeds and birds of all kinds.
Indeed, in the state of Ohio seven pipes were found on each of which the manatee was so plainly depicted that it is impossible to mistake the sculptor's intention.
This discovery is a curious one, from the fact that at the present day the manatee is not met with except in localities 300 or 400 leagues distant, as in Florida.
The pre-historic ornaments and trinkets found in North America consist of bracelets, necklaces, earrings, &c. The bracelets are copper rings bent by hammering, so that the two ends meet.
The necklaces are composed of shell beads (of which considerable quantities have been collected) shells, animals' teeth, and small flakes of mica, all perforated by a hole so as to be strung on a thread.
The earrings also are made of the same material.
All these objects--weapons, implements, pottery, and ornaments--have been derived from certain gigantic works which exhibit some similarity, and occasionally even a striking resemblance, to the great earthwork constructions of the Old World.
American archæologists have arranged these works in various classes according to the probable purpose for which they were intended; we shall now dwell for a short time on these divisions.
In the first place, we have the _sepulchral mounds_ or _tumuli_, the numbers of which may be reckoned by tens of thousands.
They vary in height from 6 feet to 80 feet, and are generally of a circular form; being found either separately or in groups.
Most frequently only one skeleton is found in them, either reduced almost to ashes, or--which is more rare--in its ordinary condition, and in a crouching posture.
By the side of the corpse are deposited trinkets, and, in a few cases, weapons.
A practice the very contrary to this now obtains in America; and from this we may conclude that a profound modification of their ideas has taken place among the Indians since the pre-historic epochs.
It is now almost a certain fact that some of the small _tumuli_ are nothing but the remains of mud-huts, especially as they do not contain either ashes or bones.
Others, on the contrary, and some of the largest, contain a quantity of bones; the latter must be allied with the _ossuaries_ or bone-pits, some of which contain the remains of several thousand individuals.
It would be difficult to explain the existence of accumulations of this kind if we did not know from the accounts of ancient authors that the Indians were in the habit of assembling every eight or ten years in some appointed spot to inter all together in one mass the bones of their dead friends, which had been previously exhumed.
This singular ceremony was called "the feast of the dead."
We shall not say much here as to the _sacrificial mounds_, because no very precise agreement has yet been arrived at as to their exact signification.
Their chief characteristics are, that, in the first place, they are nearly always found within certain sacred enclosures of which we shall have more to say further on, and also that they cover a sort of altar placed on the surface of the ground, and made of stone or baked clay.
In the opinion of certain archæologists, this supposed altar is nothing but the site of a former fire-hearth, and the mound itself a habitation converted into a tomb after the death of its proprietor.
It will therefore be best to reserve our judgment as to the existence of the human sacrifices of which these places might have been the scene, until we obtain some more complete knowledge of the matter.
The _Temple-Mounds_ are hillocks in the shape of a truncated pyramid, with paths or steps leading to the summit, and sometimes with terraces at different heights.
They invariably terminate in a platform of varying extent, but sometimes reaching very considerable dimensions.
That of Cahokia, in Illinois, is about 100 feet in height, and at the base is 700 feet long and 500 feet wide.
There is no doubt that these mounds were not exclusively used as temples, and, adopting as our authority several instances taken from Indian history, we may be permitted to think that on this upper terrace they were in the habit of building the dwelling of their chief.
The most curious of these earthworks are, beyond question, those which the American archæologists have designated by the name of _animal-mounds_.
They consist of gigantic bas-reliefs formed on the surface of the ground, and representing men, mammals, birds, reptiles, and even inanimate objects, such as crosses, pipes, &c. They exist in thousands in Wisconsin, being chiefly found between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan, and along the war-path of the Indians.
Their height is never very considerable, and it is but seldom that they reach so much as 6 feet; but their length and breadth is sometimes enormously developed.
Many of these figures are copied very exactly from Nature; but there are, on the other hand, some the meaning of which it is very difficult to discover, because they have been injured by the influence of atmospheric action during a long course of ages.
In Dale county there is an interesting group composed of a man with extended arms, six quadrupeds, a simple _tumulus_, and seven mounds without any artistic pretensions.
The man measured 125 feet long, and nearly 140 feet from the end of one arm to the other.
The quadrupeds are from 100 to 120 feet long.
The representation of lizards and tortoises are frequently recognised in these monstrous figures.
A group of mounds, situate near the village of Pewaukee, included when it was discovered two lizards and seven tortoises.
One of these tortoises measured 470 feet.
At Waukesha there was found a monstrous "turtle" admirably executed, the tail of which stretched over an extent of 250 feet.
On a high hill near Granville, in the state of Ohio, a representation is sculptured of the reptile which is now known under the name of alligator.
Its paws are 40 feet long, and its total length exceeds 250 feet.
In the same state there exists the figure of a vast serpent, the most remarkable work of its kind; its head occupies the summit of a hill, round which the body extends for about 800 feet, forming graceful coils and undulations; the mouth is opened wide, as if the monster was swallowing its prey.
The prey is represented by an oval-shaped mass of earth, part of which lies in the creature's jaws.
This mass of earth is about 160 feet long and 80 feet wide, and its height is about 4 feet.
In some localities excavations are substituted for these raised figures; that is to say, that the delineations of the animals are sunk instead of being in relief-a strange variety in these strange works.
The mind may readily be perplexed when endeavouring to trace out the origin and purpose of works of this kind.
They do not, in a general way, contain any human remains, and consequently could not have been intended to be used as sepulchres.
Up to the present time, therefore, the circumstances which have accompanied the construction of these eminently remarkable pre-historic monuments are veiled in the darkest mystery.
We now have to speak of those enclosures which are divided by American archæologists into the classes of _defensive_ and _sacred_.
This distinction is, however, based on very uncertain data, and it is probable that a large portion of the so-called _sacred_ enclosures were in the first place constructed for a simply _defensive_ purpose.
They were, in general, composed of a wall made of stones, and an internal or external ditch.
They often assumed the form of a parallelogram, and even of a perfect square or circle, from which it has been inferred that the ancient Indians must have possessed an unit of measurement, and some means of determining angles.
These walls sometimes embraced a considerable area, and not unfrequently inside the principal enclosure there were other smaller enclosures, flanked with defensive mounds performing the service of bastions.
In some cases enclosures of different shapes are grouped side by side, either joined by avenues or entirely independent of one another.
The most important of these groups is that at Newark, in the Valley of Scioto; it covers an area of 4 square miles, and is composed of an octagon, a square, and two large circles.
The external wall of one of these circles is even at the present day 50 feet in width at the base, and 13 feet high; there are several doorways in it, near which the height of the wall is increased about 3 feet.
Inside there is a ditch 6 feet in depth, and 13 feet in the vicinity of the doors, its width being about 40 feet.
The whole enclosure is now covered by gigantic trees, perhaps 500 or 600 years old--a fact which points to a considerable antiquity for the date of its construction.
When we reflect on the almost countless multitude, and the magnificent proportions of the monuments we have just described, we are compelled to recognise the fact that the American valleys must at some early date have been much more densely populated than at the time when Europeans first made their way thither.
These peoples must have formed considerable communities, and have attained to a somewhat high state of civilisation--at all events a state very superior to that which is at present the attribute of the Indian tribes.
Tribes which were compelled to seek in hunting their means of every-day existence, could never have succeeded in raising constructions of this kind.
They must therefore necessarily have found other resources in agricultural pursuits.
This inference is moreover confirmed by facts.
In several localities in the United States the ground is covered with small elevations known under the name of _Indian corn-hills_; they take their rise from the fact that the maize, having been planted every year in the same spot, has ultimately, after a long course of time, formed rising grounds.
The traces of ancient corn-patches have also been discovered symmetrically arranged in regular beds and parallel rows.
Can any date be assigned to this period of semi-civilisation which, instead of improving more and more like civilisation in Europe, became suddenly eclipsed, owing to causes which are unknown to us?
This question must be answered in the negative, if we are called upon to fix any settled and definite date.
Nevertheless, the conclusion to which American archæologists have arrived is, that the history of the New World must be divided into four definite periods.
The first period includes the rise of agriculture and industrial skill; the second, the construction of mounds and inclosures; the third, the formation of the "garden beds."
In the last period, the American nation again relapsed into savage life and to the free occupation of the spots which had been devoted to agriculture.
In his work on 'Pre-historic Times' Sir John Lubbock, who has furnished us with most of these details, estimates that this course of events would not necessarily have required a duration of time of more than 3000 years, although he confesses that this figure might be much more considerable.
But Dr. Douler, another _savant_, regards this subject in a very different way.
Near New Orleans he discovered a human skeleton and the remains of a fire, to which, basing his calculations on more or less admissible _data_, he attributes an antiquity of 500 centuries!
Young America would thus be very ancient indeed!
By this instance we may see how much uncertainty surrounds the history of primitive man in America; and it may be readily understood why we have thought it necessary to adhere closely to scientific ideas and to limit ourselves to those facts which are peculiar to Europe.
To apply to the whole world the results which have been verified in Europe is a much surer course of procedure than describing local and imperfectly studied phenomena, which, in their interpretation, lead to differences in the estimate of time, such as that between 3000 and 50,000 years!
CONCLUSION.
Before bringing our work to a close we may be permitted to retrace the path we have trod, and to embrace in one rapid glance the immense space we have traversed.
We have now arrived at a point of time very far removed from that of the dweller in caves, the man who was contemporary with the great bear and the mammoth!
Scarcely, perhaps, have we preserved a reminiscence of those mighty quadrupeds whose broad shadows seem to flit indistinctly across the dim light of the quaternary epoch.
Face to face with these gigantic creatures, which have definitively disappeared from the surface of our globe, there were, as we have seen, beings of a human aspect who, dwelling in caves and hollows of the earth, clothed themselves in the skins of beasts and cleft flakes of stone in order to form their weapons and implements.
We can hardly have failed to feel a certain interest in and sympathy with them, when tracing out the dim vestiges of their progress; for, in spite of their rude appearance, in spite of their coarse customs and their rough mode of life, they were our brethren, our ancestors, and the far-distant precursors of modern civilisation.
We have given due commendation to their efforts and to their progress.
After a protracted use of weapons and implements simply chipped out of the rough flint, we have seen them adopt weapons and instruments of polished stone, that is, objects which had undergone that material preparation which is the germ of the industrial skill of primitive nations.
Aided by these polished-stone instruments, added to those of bone and reindeer's or stag's horn, they did not fear to enter into a conflict--which every day became more and more successful--with all the external forces which menaced them.
As we have seen, they brought under the yoke of servitude various kinds of animals; they made the dog and the horse the companion and the auxiliary of their labour.
The sheep, the ox, and other ruminants were converted into domesticated cattle, capable of insuring a constant supply of food.
After the lapse of ages metals made their appearance!--metals, the most precious acquisition of all, the pledge of the advent of a new era, replete with power and activity, to primitive man.
Instruments made of stone, bone, reindeer or stag's horn, were replaced by those composed of metal.
In all the communities of man civilisation and metals seem to be constant companions.
Though bronze may have served for the forging of swords and spears, it also provides the material for implements of peaceful labour.
Owing to the efforts of continuous toil, owing also to the development of intelligence which is its natural consequence, the empire of man over the world of nature is still increasing, and man's moral improvement follows the same law of progression.
But who shall enumerate the ages which have elapsed whilst these achievements have been realised?
But thy task is not yet terminated!
Onward, and still onward, brave pioneer of progress!
The path is a long one and the goal is not yet attained!
Once thou wert contented with bronze, now thou hast iron--iron, that terrible power, whose function is to mangle and to kill--the cause of so much blood and so many bitter tears; but also the beneficent metal which fertilises and gives life, affording nutriment to the body as well as to the mind.
The Romans applied the name of _ferrum_ to the blade of their swords; but in after times _ferrum_ was also the term for the peaceful ploughshare.
The metal which had brought with it terror, devastation, and death, erelong introduced among nations peace, wealth and happiness.
And now, O man, thy work is nearly done!
The mighty conflicts against nature are consummated, and thy universal empire is for ever sure!
Animals are subject to thy will and even to thy fancies.
At thy command, the obedient earth opens its bosom and unfolds the riches it contains.
Thou hast turned the course of rivers, cleared the mountain sides of the forests which covered them, and cultivated the plains and valleys; by thy culture the earth has become a verdant and fruitful garden.
Thou hast changed the whole aspect of the globe, and mayst well call thyself the lord of creation!
Doubtless the expanding circle of thy peaceful conquests will not stop here, and who can tell how far thy sway may extend?
Onward then!
still onward!
proud and unfettered in thy vigilant and active course towards new and unknown destinies!
But look to it, lest thy pride lead thee to forget thy origin.
However great may be thy moral grandeur, and however complete thy empire over a docile nature, confess and acknowledge every hour the Almighty Power of the great Creator.
Submit thyself before thy Lord and Master, the God of goodness and of love, the Author of thy existence, who has reserved for thee still higher destinies in another life.
Learn to show thyself worthy of the supreme blessing--the happy immortality which awaits thee in a world above, if thou hast merited it by a worship conceived in spirit and in truth, and by the fulfilment of thy duty both towards God and towards thy neighbour!
ALPHABETICAL INDEX TO AUTHORS' NAMES CITED IN THIS VOLUME.
Alberti, 228 Arcelin, 120 Austen (Godwin), 9 Baudot, 178 Bertrand, 187, 197 Bocchi, 82 Bonstetten, 187 Borel, 319 Boucher de Perthes, 8, 9, 16, 17, 18, 45, 82, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166 Boué (Aimé), 6 Bourgeois (Abbé), 3, 16, 17, 73, 149 Boutin, 74 Broca, 114, 181 Brun (V.), 88, 98, 106, 115, 119 Buckland, 6 Busk, 36, 81, 182 Camper, 5 Cazalis de Fondouce, 128 Chantre, 120 Chevalier (Abbé), 147 Christel (de), 7, 74 Christy, 73, 86, 90, 95, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 118 Clément, 225 Cochet (Abbé), 177 Costa de Beauregard, 91, 319 Cuvier, 6, 7 Dampier, 132, 219 Darwin, 132 Davis (Dr. Barnard), 36, 81, 337 Delaunay, 73 Desnoyers, 9, 20, 57 Desor, 175, 217 _note_, 220, 221, 227, 242, 244, 251, 252, 257, 260, 271, 289, 310, 321, 324, 329 Dolomieu, 156, 157 Dumont d'Urville, 219, 225 Dupont (Édouard), 82, 94, 95, 104, 112, 113, 114, 116, 120 Edwards (Milne), 12, 120, 127 Esper, 6 Evans, 11, 12, 51, 131, 149 Falconer, 10, 11, 76 Faudel, 82 Ferry (de), 73, 91, 120 Filhol, 15, 75, 127, 169, 181 Flower, 11 Fontan, 11, 74, 119 Forchhammer, 131 Forel, 176 Foresi (Raffaello), 181 Forgeais, 178, 202 Foulon-Menard, 169 Fournet, 158 Fraas, 104 Franchet, 73 Frere, 6, 12 Fuhlrott, 80 Garrigou, 15, 16, 75, 110, 119, 127, 169, 181 Gastaldi and Moro, 227 Gaudry (Albert), 11 Gervais (Paul), 74, 128 Gilliéron, 267, 292, 293 Gmelin, 299 Gosse, 11, 12 Gratiolet and Alix, 31, 33, 34 Guérin, 72 Hannour and Himelette, 179 Hauzeur, 104 Hébert, 11 Heer, 265 Hernandez, 160 His, 290 Hochstetter, 229 Husson, 72 Huxley, 26, 80 Issel, 91 Jeitteler, 239 Joly, 8 Joly-Leterme, 120 Keller, 135, 175, 216, 220, 225, 227, 280, 282 Kemp, 6 Knapp, 336 Kosterlitz, 228 Lambert (l'Abbé), 3 Lartet, 1, 2, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71, 101, 102, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 118, 120, 180 Lawrence, 31 Leguay, 150, 153, 195, 200 Léveillé, 147 Lewis (Cornewall), 208 Lioy (Paolo), 228 Löhle, 223 Lubbock (Sir John), 97, 131, 189, 190, 195, 200, 219, 230, 275, 342 Lund, 9, 77 Lyell (Sir Charles), 11, 20, 36, 132, 224 Marcel de Serres, 3, 7 Martin, 12 Morlot, 94, 217 _note_, 249, 291, 300, 301 Mortillet, de, 89, 131 _note_, 172, 227, 245, 283, 308 _note_ Mudge, 231 Mylne, 11 Naegeli, 239 Nilsson, 116, 189, 195, 208, 209 Noulet, 10 Osculati, 239 Otz, 226 Owen, 91, 119 Peccadeau de l'Isle, 90, 106, 107, 119 Peigné Delacour, 12 Penguelly, 10 Penguilly l'Haridon, 149 Pereira de Costa, 132 Pigorini, 232, 235, 236, 238 Place, 160 Pommerol, 171 Prestwich, 11, 46, 131 Pruner-Bey, 18, 32, 33, 35, 37, 81, 113, 114, 181 Quatrefages, de, 18, 30, 31, 38 Quiquerez, 301, 302, 303, 308 Rabut, 229 Rames, 15 Ramsauer, 312, 314 Rauchet, 227 Reboux, 12 Reffye, 321 Rigollot, 10, 54 Robert (Eugène), 12, 149 Rochebrune, 157 Rougemont (de), 320 Rütimeyer, 265, 268 Saussure, de, 160 Sauvage and Hamy, 131 Schaaffhausen, 37, 81 Scheuchzer, 5 Schild, 226 Schmerling, 7, 77 Schmidt, 284, 287 _note_ Schwab, 248, 250 Silber, 228 Squier, 337 Steenstrup, 130, 131, 133 Steinhauer, 66 Stopani (l'Abbé), 227 Strobel, 132, 232, 235, 236, 238, 239 Thioly, 226 Tournal, 7 Troyon, 175, 217 _note_, 225, 253 Uhlmann, 134 Vallier, 229 Van Beneden, 112, 113 Vibraye (Marquis de), 11, 73, 94, 98 Vicq-d'Azyr, 31 Vogt, 26, 80, 181, 280, 281, 282 Welker, 32 Wilde (Sir W. R.), 230 Wood, 76 Worsaae, 131, 175, 276 Wyatt, 12 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | * Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
| | Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens | | were changed to the predominant hyphenated form.
| | Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.
| | | | * Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those | | could be verified.
Otherwise the variations were left as they | | were.
| | | | * Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which | | they belonged and numbered in one continuous sequence.
| | The pagination in index entries which referred to these | | footnotes was not changed to match their new locations | | and is therefore incorrect.
| +----------------------------------------------------------------+
Transcriber's Note Most spelling variants are retained.
Punctuation is occasionally corrected, especially in the index and in footnotes, to maintain consistency.
The titles and page references for the five appendices have been added to the table of contents.
The 'oe' ligature is represented as 'oe'.
Italicized letters are delimited with _underscore_ characters.
A Transcriber's Endnote at the end of this text contains more detailed information about corrections made.
ARCHAIC ENGLAND AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY FROM MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS, EARTHWORKS, CUSTOMS, COINS, PLACE-NAMES, AND FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS BY HAROLD BAYLEY AUTHOR OF "THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY," "A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE," "THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM," ETC.
[Illustration] "One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate attesting such a survival and continuance of folk memory as few men of to-day have suspected."
--JOHNSON LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 11 HENRIETTA STREET 1919 TO W. L. GROVES WHO HAS GREATLY AIDED ME CONTENTS CHAP.
PAGE I.
INTRODUCTORY 1 II.
THE MAGIC OF WORDS 34 III.
A TALE OF TROY 78 IV.
ALBION 124 V. GOG AND MAGOG 186 VI.
PUCK 230 VII.
OBERON 309 VIII.
SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE 389 IX.
BRIDE'S BAIRNS 455 X.
HAPPY ENGLAND 522 XI.
THE FAIR MAID 593 XII.
PETER'S ORCHARDS 663 XIII.
ENGLISH EDENS 710 XIV.
DOWN UNDER 764 XV.
CONCLUSIONS 832 APPENDIX 871 Appendix A: Ireland and Phoenicia 871 Appendix B: Perry-Dancers and Perry Stones.
873 Appendix C: British Symbols.
874 Appendix D: Glastonbury.
875 Appendix E: The Druids and Crete.
875 INDEX 877 "Of all the many thousands of earthworks 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 archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology 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."--A.
HADRIAN ALLCROFT.
"It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that we cannot penetrate far back into man's history without appealing to more than one element in that history.
Some day it will be recognised that we must appeal to _all_ elements in that history."--GOMME.
"History bears and requires Authors of all sorts."--CAMDEN.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."--H.
D. THOREAU.
This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain archæological problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the Specialist have proved insoluble.
My fragments of evidence are drawn as occasion warrants from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend, Folklore--in fact from any quarter whence the required piece unmistakably fulfils the missing space.
It is thus a mental medley with all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a mosaic.
Ten years ago I published a study on Mediæval Symbolism, and subsequent investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some curious and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of conventional Thought.
The consensus of opinion upon _A New Light on the Renaissance_,[1] was to the effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a point tenable, yet nevertheless at present they could only be regarded as non-proven.
In 1912[2] I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my earlier propositions, pushing them much further to the point of suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and certain words--such, for example, as _psyche_, which means a butterfly, and _psyche_ the _anima_ or _soul_ which was symbolised or represented by a butterfly.
Of course I knew only too well the tricky character of the ground I was exploring and how open many of my propositions would be to attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which under more competent hands might yield some very interesting and perhaps valuable discoveries.
In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible evidence which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the results--at any rate in many instances--cannot by any possibility be written off as due merely to coincidence or chance.
That they will be adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern criticism is, however, not to be supposed.
Referring to _The Lost Language_, one of my reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly observed: "He must deal as others of his school have done with all the possible readings of the history of the races of men".
[3] To sweeping and magnanimous advice of this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the hapless "Charles Templeton," as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna: "At the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford, set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic.
When I made his acquaintance, some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship.
At his death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired.
'It is so difficult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' he used to say, as I picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered his tables, chairs, and floor.
"[4] But Mr. Templeton's embarrassments were trifling in comparison with mine.
Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants, railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of opportunity as I can snatch from more pressing obligations.
Moreover, Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one subject--History--whereas the scope of my studies compels me to keep on as good terms as may be with the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archæology, Philosophy, Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology.
I mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my work has been done hurriedly and here and there superficially.
With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould into an harmonious and coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one items culled during the past seven years from day to day and noted from hour to hour.
Differing as I do in some respects from the accepted conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further handicap to find myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who was constrained by force of circumstance to build with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.
To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, however, a comfortable reflection that what Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts to-morrow.
[5] Less than a century ago contemporary scholarship knew the age of the earth with such exquisite precision that it pronounced it to a year, declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days.
When the discoveries in Kent's Cavern were laid before the scientific world, the authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs that Man in Britain was contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the bear, and the rhinoceros[6] were received with rudeness and inattention.
Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the gravel-beds at Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and insult, and it was upwards of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded that: "While we have been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the Euphrates, but _in the pleasant valleys of England and France_, along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney.
"[7] The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and archæologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not in Asia, but in Europe.
The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros.
Human implements found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have been assigned to a period prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised to have endured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to 80,000 years ago.
It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited their present districts more or less continuously from the time when they crept back gradually in the wake of the retreating ice.
"Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. Ray Lankester, "tell us something in regard to the derivation and history of existing 'peoples,' but we soon come to a period--a few thousand years back--concerning which both written statement and tradition are dumb.
And yet we know that this part of the world--Europe--was inhabited by an abundant population in those remote times.
We know that for at least 500,000 years human populations occupied portions of this territory, and that various races with distinguishing peculiarities of feature and frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those characteristic of others, came and went in succession in those incredibly remote days in Europe.
We know this from the implements, carvings, and paintings left by these successive populations, and we know it also by the discovery of their bones."
Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for mankind, takes no count of the possibility of an amiable or cultured race in these islands prior to the coming of the Roman legions.
It traces with equanimity the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence from the primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency to the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some of Harold's followers were armed with _stone_ axes.
There has, however, recently been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palæolithic or early neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the modern Londoner.
The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the individual himself might well, in view of all physical evidence, have been a primeval sage rather than a primeval savage.
The high estimation in which the philosophy of prehistoric Briton was regarded abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Cæsar who states: "It is believed that this institution (Druidism) was founded in Britannia, and thence transplanted into Gaul.
Even nowadays those who wish to become more intimately acquainted with the institution generally go to Britannia for instruction's sake."
It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest literature in the oldest language in Europe.
Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their possession of certain ancient and authentic books, but whether or not the traditionary poems which were first committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion.
To those who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilling, the sanest position would appear to be that of Matthew Arnold, who observes in _Celtic Literature_: "There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a _detritus_, as the geologists would say, of something far older; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly reached until this _detritus_, instead of being called recent because it is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to tell its own story.
"[8] The word "founded," as used by Cæsar, implies an antiquity for British institutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such monuments as Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury.
Whether these supposed "appendages to Bronze age burials" were merely sepulchral monuments, or whether they ever possessed any intellectual significance, does not affect the fact that Great Britain, and notably England, is richer in this class of monument than any other part of the world.
[9] Circles being essentially and pre-eminently English it is disappointing to find the most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: "In all matters of archæology it is constantly found that certain questions are better left in abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solution".
[10] Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but nevertheless the present generation now possesses quite sufficient data to enable it to shoulder its own responsibilities and to pass beyond the stereotyped and hackneyed formula "sepulchral monument".
I hold no brief on behalf of the Druids--indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much more modern than the monuments associated with their name--nevertheless the theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch doctors, with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern misapprehension with which I am nowise in sympathy.
Valerius Maximus (_c._ A.D. 20) was much better informed and therefore more cautious in his testimony: "I should be tempted to call these breeches-wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras".
Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been interesting and enterprising people in these islands.
At Avebury, near Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the vastest artificial hill in Europe.
Avebury itself is said to constitute the greatest megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the world are tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain.
On the banks of the Boyne is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on the banks of the Nile, would probably have been pronounced the oldest and most venerable of the pyramids.
In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an Egyptian marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of one single stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days' sailing from Sais.
The Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet broad, by 9 feet deep.
"No other stones are near it.
'Tis all hollowed within or scooped by human art and industry, having a door at the east end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance.
Within, there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow capable to hold two persons.
"[11] Sir John Morris-Jones has noted remarkable identities between the syntax of Welsh and that of early Egyptian: Gerald Massey, in his _Book of the Beginnings_, gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and Egyptian words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer have driven him to conclude: "The people who honoured us with their presence here in Britain some 4000 years ago, had evidently, some way or other, had communicated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and they determined their time of night just in the same way that the Egyptians did".
It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of these islands, including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown script, to hypothetical wanderers from the East.
Nothing could have been more peremptory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated by its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly all the great names of the period.
To-day there is a complete _volte face_ upon this subject, and the latest opinion is that "not a particle of evidence has been adduced in favour of any migration from the East".
[12] When one remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory of Asiatic immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening commentary upon the value of _ex cathedra_ teaching.
Happily it was an Englishman[13] who, seeing through the futility of the Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that the cradle of Aryan civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially _in Europe_.
The assumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing names that the arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy of reply, and for sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world.
Even twenty years after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents, it was alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows: "And so it came to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of the Aryan race in Europe".
The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the focus of archæological interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where recent excavations have revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art.
It is now considered that the civilisation of Hellas was a mere offshoot from that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island of Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores of the Mediterranean.
According to Sir Arthur Evans: "The high early culture, the equal rival of that of Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in the fourth millennium before our era, flourished for some 2000 years, eventually dominating the Ægean and a large part of the Mediterranean basin.
The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan Priest-Kings in their great days, by their ingenious planning, their successful combination of the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works, on however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders."
The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new standpoint whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution of human art and appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher level than had ever previously been suspected.
Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously current ideas upon Art, but they have also condemned to the melting-pot the cardinal article of belief that the alphabet reached us from Phoenicia.
Prof. Flinders Petrie has now clearly demonstrated that even in this respect, "Beside the great historic perspective of the long use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have opened entirely new ground.
These signs are largely found used for writing in Crete, as a geometrical signary; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and its striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an entire reconsideration of the subject.
Thus on all sides--Egyptian, Greek, and Barbarian--material appears which is far older and far more widespread than the Græco-Phoenician world; a fresh study of the whole material is imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen to be quite inadequate."
The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may be connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he describes as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced their language to grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had possessed metrical poems and even laws.
Commenting upon this piece of precious information, Lardner ironically observed that although the Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisation, they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 years with the Mosaic chronology.
He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing in their habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.
[14] This "_except_" is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the Bardic or Druidic alphabet of Britain, and also to the hitherto illegible alphabet of Ancient Crete.
Cæsar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private affairs of life they frequently made use of the Greek alphabet.
That the Celts of Gaul possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and that Britain also practised some method of communication seems a probability.
There are still extant in Scotland inscriptions on stones which are in characters now totally unknown.
In Ireland, letters were cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's tables.
The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after individual trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a certain secret of the twigs which lead to the strong inference that "written" communication was first accomplished by the transmission of tree-sprigs.
The alphabets illustrated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of being representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only in Ireland, but also in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was named after trees[15] were once current.
[Illustration: BRITISH ALPHABET.
FIG.
1.--From _Celtic Researches_ (Davies, E.).]
In _The Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, Dr. Mackenzie inquires: "By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain, between 1500 B.C.
and 1400 B.C.?
Certainly not the Phoenicians.
The sea traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans.
Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no means of knowing.
"[16] [Illustration: CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET, SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND BÆTICA.
FIG.
2.--From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J.
Y.).]
The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the Cretans systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition of the peopling of this island by men of Trojan race are well founded.
According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards: "There were three names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning.
Before it was inhabited its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space; after being inhabited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of Prydain.
And none have any title therein but the nation of the Kymry.
For they first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons.
"[17] In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a few suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes.
But behind the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the traces of an even more primitive and archaic race.
The earliest folk which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls massive and shapely.
Moreover Cretan beliefs and the myths which are based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense antiquity.
[18] The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria, which was flourishing in Art and civilisation at a period when Rome was but a coterie of shepherds' huts.
Here again are found Cyclopean walls and the traces of some most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a period even more remote than the national existence of Etruria.
[19] We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of the island was the herring-bone design of their wall buildings.
In West Cornwall the stone walls or Giants' Hedges are Cyclopean; farther north, in the Boscastle district, herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood of St. Just there are numerous British villages wherein the stone mortars are still standing.
The formula of independent evolution, which has recently been much over-worked, is now waning into disfavour, and it is difficult to believe otherwise than that identity of names, customs, and characteristics imply either borrowing or descent from some common, unknown source.
That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs were maritime arrivals is a reasonable inference from the fact that dolmens and cromlechs were built almost invariably near the sea.
[20] These peculiar and distinctive monuments are found chiefly along the _Western_ coasts of Britain, the _Northern_ coast of Africa, in the isles of the Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and in the remote islands of Asia and Polynesia.
By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building brought alike to the British Isles and to the distant islands of the Pacific?
By what guidance did frail barques compass such terrifying sea space?
How were these adequately victualled for such voyages, and why were the mainlands ever quitted?
How and why were the colossal stones of Stonehenge brought by ship from afar, floated down the broad waters of the prehistoric Avon, and dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare Hill?
Who were the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones and skilfully poised them where they stand to-day?
"To suspend a stupendous mass of abnormous shape in such an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the most trivial force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem unsolved so far as I know by modern engineers.
"[21] Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all record, reclaimed the marshes of the Thames-mouth by an embankment which is intact to-day all round the river coast of Kent and Essex?
Who were the horticulturists who evolved wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses and certain lilies from their unknown wild?
And who were the philosophers who spun a delicate gossamer of fairy-tales over the world, and formulated the cosmic ideas which are in many extraordinary respects common alike to primitive and more advanced peoples?
And why is the symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not only under the ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in the Thames at Battersea, and elsewhere from China to Zimbabwe?
How is it that Ireland, that remote little outpost of Europe, possesses more Celtic MSS.
than all the rest of Celtic Europe put together?
The most rational explanation of these and similar queries is seemingly a consideration of the almost world-wide tradition of a lost island, the home of a scientific world-wandering race.
The legend of submerged Atlantis was related to Solon by an Egyptian priest as being historic fact, and the date of the final catastrophe was definitely set down by Plato from information given to Solon as having been about 9000 B.C.
Solon was neither a fool himself nor the man to suffer fools gladly.
It is admitted by geology that there actually existed a large island in the Atlantic during tertiary times, but this we are told is a pure coincidence and it is impossible to suppose any tradition existing of such an island or land.
Science has very generally denied the credibility of tradition, yet tradition has almost invariably proved truer than contemporary scholarship.
Scholarship denied the possibility of finding Troy, notwithstanding the steady evidence of tradition to the mound at Hissarlik where it was eventually disclosed.
Even when Schliemann had uncovered the lost city the scientists of every European capital ridiculed his pretensions, and it was only gradually that they ungraciously yielded to the irresistible evidence of their physical senses.
Science similarly denied the possibility of buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, yet popular tradition always asserted the existence of Pompeii and Herculaneum; indeed, contemporary science has so consistently scouted the possibility of every advance in discovery that mere airy dismissal is not now sufficient to discredit either the Atlantean, or any other theory.
From China to Peru one finds the persistent tradition of a drowned land, a story which is in itself so preposterous as unlikely to arise without some solid grounds of reality.
Thierry has observed that legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call history.
Sir John Morris Jones would seemingly endorse this proposition, for he has recently contended that tradition is _itself a fact_ not always to be disposed of by the hasty assumption that all men are liars.
[22] The Irish have their own account of the Flood, according to which three ships sailed for Ireland, but two of them foundered on the way.
The Welsh version runs that the first of the perilous mishaps which occurred in Britain was "The outburst of the ocean 'Torriad lin lion,' when a deluge spread over the face of all lands, so that all mankind were drowned with the exception of Duw-van and Duw-ach, the divine man and divine woman, who escaped in a decked ship without sails; and from this pair the island of Prydain was completely re-peopled".
Correlated with this native version is a peculiar and, so far as my information goes, a unique tradition that previous disasters had taken place, causing the destruction of animals and vegetables then existing, of which whole races were irrevocably lost.
This tradition, which is in complete harmony with the discoveries of modern geology, is thus embodied in the thirteenth Triad: "The second perilous mishap was the terror of the torrent-fire, when the earth was cloven down to the abyss, and the majority of living things were destroyed".
It is a singular coincidence that evidence of a prehistoric torrent-fire exists certainly in Ireland, where bog-buried forests have been unearthed exhibiting all the signs of a flowing torrent of molten fire or lava.
According to the author of _Bogs and Ancient Forests_, when the Bog of Allen in Kildare was cut through, oak, fir, yew, and other trees were found buried 20 or 30 feet below the surface, and these trees generally lie prostrated in a horizontal position, and _have the appearance of being burned at the bottom of their trunks and roots_, fire having been found far more powerful in prostrating those forests than cutting them down with an axe; and the great depth at which these trees are found in bogs, shows that they must have lain there for many ages.
[23] No ordinary or casual forest fire is capable of prostrating an oak or fir tree, and the implement which accomplished such terrific devastation must have been something volcanic and torrential in its character.
I am, however, not enamoured of the Atlantean or any other theory.
My purpose is rather to collate facts, and as all theorising ends in an appeal to self-evidence, it is better to allow my material, for much of which I have physically descended into the deeps of the earth, to speak for itself:--we must believe the evidence of our senses rather than arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the phenomena.
[24] Although my concordance of facts is based upon evidence largely visible to the naked eye, in a study of this character there must of necessity be a disquieting percentage of "probablys" and "possiblys".
This is deplorable, but if license be conceded in one direction it cannot be withheld in another.
The extent to which guess-work is still rampant in etymology will be apparent in due course; the extent to which it is allowed license in anthropology may be judged from such reveries as the following: "Did any early members of the human family commit suicide?
Probably they did; the feeble, the dying, the maimed, the weak-headed, the starving, the jealous, would be tired of life; these would throw themselves from heights or into rivers, or stab themselves or cut their throats with large and keen-edged knives of flint.
"[25] Although my own inquiries deal intimately with graves and names and epitaphs, it still seems to me a possibility that the brains which fashioned exquisitely barbed fish-hooks out of flint, and etched vivid works of art upon pebble, may also have been capable of poetic and even magnanimous ideas.
It is quite certain that the artistic sense is superlatively ancient, and it is quite unproven that the lives of these early craftsmen were protracted nightmares.
Although not primarily written with that end, the present work will _inter alia_ raise not a few doubts as to the accuracy of Green's dictum: "What strikes us at once in the new England is that it was the one purely German nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome".
In the opinion of this popular historian the holiest spot in all these islands ought in the eyes of Englishmen to be Ebbsfleet, the site where in Kent the English visitors first landed, yet inconsequently he adds: "A century after their landing the English are still known to their British foes only as 'barbarians,' 'wolves,' 'dogs,' 'whelps from the kennel of barbarism,' 'hateful to God and man'.
Their victories seemed victories for the powers of evil, chastisement of a divine justice for natural sin.
"[26] It is an axiom among anthropologists that race characteristics do not change and that tides of immigration are more or less rapidly absorbed by the aboriginal and resident stock.
Assuredly the characteristics of the German tribes have little changed, and it is extraordinary how from the time of Tacitus they have continued to display from age to age their time-honoured peculiarities.
Invited and welcomed into this country as friends and allies, "in a short time swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so much that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them".
[27] According to Bede the first symptoms of the frightfulness which was to come were demands for larger rations, accompanied by the threat that unless more plentiful supplies were brought them they would break the confederacy and ravage all the island.
Nor were they backward in putting their threats in execution.
Just as the Germans ruined Louvain so the Angles razed Cambridge,[28] and in the words of Layamon "they passed to and fro the country carrying off all they found".
Already in the times of Tacitus famous for their frantic Hymns of Hate, so again we find Layamon recording "they breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the folk of the country".
Indeed Layamon uses far stronger expressions than any of those quoted by Green, and the British chronicler almost habitually refers to the alien intruders as "swine," and "the loathest of all things".
Instead, therefore, of being thrilled into ecstasy by the landing of the Germans at Ebbsfleet, one may more reasonably regard the episode as untoward and discreditable.
It is more satisfactory to contemplate the return in the train of Duke William of Normandy of those numerous Britons who "with sorrowful hearts had fled beyond the seas," and to appreciate that by the Battle of Hastings the temporary ascendancy of Germanic kultur was finally and irrevocably destroyed.
It is observed by Green that the coins which we dig up in our fields are no relics of our English fathers but of a Roman world which our fathers' sword swept utterly away.
This is sufficiently true as regards the Saxon sword, but as some of the native coins in question are now universally assigned to a period 200 to 100 years earlier than the first coming of the Romans, it is obvious that there must have been sufficient civilisation then in the country to require a coinage, and that the native Britons cannot have been the poor and backward barbarians of popular estimation.
A coin is an excessively hard fact, and should be of just as high interest to the historian as a well-formed skull or any other document.
To Englishmen our prehistoric coinage--a national coinage "scarcely if at all inferior to that of contemporary Rome"--[29] ought to possess peculiar and special interest, for it is practically in England alone that early coins have been discovered, and neither Scotland, Wales, nor Ireland can boast of more than very few.
It is, however, an Englishman's peculiarity that possessing perhaps the most interesting history, and some of the most fascinating relics in the world, he is either too modest or too dull to take account of them.
The plate of coins illustrated on page 364, represents certain _sceattae_ which, according to Hawkins, may have been struck during the interval between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxons.
One would at least have thought that such undated minor-monuments would have possessed _per se_ sufficient interest to ensure their careful preservation.
Yet, according to Hawkins, these rude and uncouth pieces are scarce, "because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away as soon as discovered".
[30] It is the considered opinion of certain British numismatists that not only all English but also Gaulish coins are barbarous and degraded imitations of a famous Macedonian original which at one time circulated largely in Marseilles.
This supposititious model is illustrated on page 394, and the reader can form his own opinion as to whether or not the immense range of subjects which figure on our native money could by any possibility have unconsciously evolved from carelessness.
Sir John Evans, by whom this theory was, I believe, first put forward, is himself at times hard-driven to defend it; nevertheless he does not hesitate to maintain: "The degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into a form of regular pattern".
[31] My irregularity carries me to the extent of contending that our native coins, crude and uncouth as some of them may be, are in no case imitations but are native work reflecting erstwhile national ideas.
The weird designs and what-nots which figure on these tokens almost certainly were once animated by meanings of some sort: they thus constitute a prehistoric literature expressed in hieroglyphics for the correct reading of which one must, in the words of Carlyle, consider History with the beginnings of it stretching dimly into the remote time, emerging darkly out of the mysterious eternity, the true epic poem and universal divine scripture.
According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, brought into the field an incredible multitude; that Cæsar was impressed by the density of the inhabitants may be gathered from his words: "The population is immense; homesteads closely resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every turn, and cattle are very numerous".
[32] That the handful of Roman invaders eliminated the customs and traditions of a vast population is no more likely than the supposition that British occupation has eradicated or even greatly interfered with the native faiths of India.
It is generally admitted that the Romans were most tolerant of local sensibilities, and there is no reason to assume that existing British characteristics were either attacked or suppressed.
To assume that some hundreds of years later the advent of a few boat-loads of Anglo-Saxon adventurers wiped out the Romano-British inhabitants and eradicated all customs, manners, and traditions is an obvious fallacy under which the evidence of folklore does not permit us to labour.
The greater probability is that the established culture imposed itself more or less upon the new-comers, more particularly in those remote districts which it was only after hundreds of years that the Saxons, by their conventional policy of peaceful penetration, punctuated by flashes of frightfulness, succeeded in dominating.
Even after the Norman Conquest there are circumstances which point to the probability that the Celtic population was much larger and more powerful than is usually supposed.
Of these the most important is the fact that the signatures to very early charters supply us with names of persons of Celtic race occupying positions of dignity at the courts of Anglo-Saxon kings.
[33] The force of custom and the apparently undying continuance of folk-memory are among the best attested phenomena of folklore.
It was remarked by the elder Disraeli that tradition can neither be made _nor destroyed_, and if this be true in general it is peculiarly true of the stubborn and pig-headed British.
Our churches stand to-day not only on the primeval inconvenient hill-sites, but frequently within the time-honoured earthwork, or beside the fairy-well.
On Palm Sunday the villagers of Avebury still toil to the summit of Silbury Hill, there to consume fig cakes and drink sugared water; and on the same festival the people even to-day march in procession to the prehistoric earthwork on the top of Martinshell Hill.
Our country fairs are generally held near or within a pagan earthwork, and instance after instance might be adduced all pointing to the immortality of custom and the persistent sanctity of pagan sites.
In the sixth century of our era the monk Gildas referred complacently but erroneously to the ancient British faith as being dead.
"I shall not," he says, "enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary.
Nor will I cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour."
Notwithstanding the jeremiads of poor Gildas[34] the folk-faith survived; indeed, as Mr. Johnson says, the heathen belief has been present all the time, and need not greatly astonish us since the most advanced materialist is frequently a victim of trivial superstitions which are scouted by scientific men as baseless and absurd.
The Augustine of Canterbury, who is recorded to have baptised on one day 10,000 persons in the river Swale, recommended with pious ingenuity that the heathen temples should not be destroyed, but converted to the honour of Christ by washing their walls with holy water and substituting holy relics and symbols for the images of the heathen gods.
This is an illuminating sidelight on the methods by which the images of the heathen idols were gradually transformed into the images of Christian saints, and there is little doubt that as the immemorial shrines fell into ruin and were rebuilt and again rebuilt, the sacred images were scrupulously relimned.
Even to-day, after 2000 years of Christian discipline, the clergy dare not in some districts interfere with the time-honoured tenets of their parishioners.
In Normandy and Brittany the priests, against their inclination, are compelled to take part in pagan ceremonials,[35] and in Spain quite recently an archbishop has been nearly killed by his congregation for interdicting old customs.
[36] The earliest British shrines were merely stones, or caves, or holy wells, or sacred trees, or tumuli, preferably on a hill-top or in a wood.
The next type is found in the monastery of St. Bride, which was simply a circular palisade encircling a sacred fire.
This was in all probability similar to the earliest known form of the Egyptian temple, a wicker hut with tall poles forming the sides of the door; in front of this extended an enclosure which had two poles with flags on either side of the entrance.
In the middle of the enclosure or court was a staff bearing the emblem of the God.
Later came stone circles and megalithic monuments in various forms, whence the connection is direct to cathedrals such as Chartres, which is said to be built largely from the remains of the prehistoric megaliths which originally stood there.
There are chapels in Brittany and elsewhere built over pagan monoliths; indeed no new faith can ever do more than superimpose itself upon an older one, and statements about the wise and tender treatment of the old nature worship by the Church are euphemisms for the bald fact that Christianity, finding it impracticable to wean the heathen from their obdurate beliefs, made the best of the situation by decreeing its feasts to coincide with pre-existing festivals.
[Illustration: FIG.
3.--Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers near Plouaret.]
It has long been generally appreciated that the lives of saints are not only for the most part mythical, but that even documentary evidence on that subject is equally suspect.
[37] There is, indeed, no room to doubt that the majority of the ancient saint-stories are Christianised versions of such scraps and traditions of prehistoric mythology as had continued to linger among the folk.
To the best of my belief I am the first folklorist who has endeavoured to treat _The Golden Legend_ in a sympathetic spirit as almost pure mythology.
It is usually assumed that at any rate the Christian Church tactfully decanted the old wine of paganism into new bottles; but Christianity, as will be seen, more often did not trouble to provide even new bottles, and merely altered a stroke here and there on the labels, transforming _San tan_, the _Holy Fire_, into St. Anne, _Sin clair_, the _Holy Light_, into St. Clare, and so forth.
The first written record of Christianity in Britain is approximately A.D. 200, whence it is claimed that the Christian religion must have been introduced very near to, if not in, apostolic times.
In 314 three British bishops, each accompanied by a priest and a deacon, were present at the Council at Arles, and it is commonly maintained by the Anglican Church that only a relatively small part of England owes its conversion to the Roman mission of the monk Augustine in 597.
We have it on the notable authority of St. Augustine that: "That very thing which is now designated the Christian religion _was in existence among the ancients_, nor was it absent even from the commencement of the human race up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after which true religion, _which already existed_, began to be called Christian".
We should undoubtedly possess more specific evidences of the ancient faith but for the edicts of the Church that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be committed to the fire.
It is claimed for St. Patrick that he caused to be destroyed 180--some say 300--volumes relating to the Druidic system.
These, said a complacent commentator, were stuffed with the fables and superstitions of heathen idolatry and unfit to be transmitted to posterity.
Mr. Westropp considers that much of value escaped destruction, for Christianity in Ireland was a tactful, warm-hearted mother, and learned the stories to tell to her children.
This is true to some extent, but in Britain there are extant many bardic laments at the intolerance with which old ideas were eradicated, _e.g._, "Monks congregate like wolves wrangling with their instructors.
They know not when the darkness and the dawn divide, nor what is the course of the wind, or the cause of its agitation; in what place it dies away or on what region it expands."
And implying that although one may be right it does not follow that all others must be wrong the same bard exclaims, "For one hour persecute me not!"
and he pathetically asks: "Is there but _one_ course to the wind, but _one_ to the waters of the sea?
Is there but _one_ spark in the fire of boundless energy?"
In the same strain another bard, in terms not altogether inapplicable to-day, alludes to his opponents as "like little children disagreeing on the beach of the sea".
Although bigotry and materialism have suppressed facts, stifled testimony, misrepresented witnesses, and destroyed or perverted documents, the prehistoric fairy faith was happily too deeply graven thus to be obliterated, and it is only a matter of time and study to reconstruct it.
Most of the suggestions I venture to put forward are sufficiently documented by hard facts, but some are necessarily based upon "hints and equivocal survivals".
[38] At the threshold of an essay of the present character one can hardly do better than appropriate the words of Edmund Spenser:--I do gather a likelihood of truth not certainly affirming anything, but by conferring of times, language, monuments, and such like, I do hunt out a probability of things which I leave to your judgment to believe or refuse.
FOOTNOTES: [1] Dent, 1909.
[2] _The Lost Language of Symbolism_: An inquiry into the origin of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies.
2 vols.
London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).
[3] _Manchester Guardian_, 23rd December, 1912.
[4] _Sonia._ [5] "Topographical comment--I will not say criticism--has been equally inefficient.
A theory is not refuted by saying 'all the great antiquarians are against you,' 'the Psalter of Tara refutes that,' or 'O'Donovan has set the question past all doubt'.
These remarks only prove that we have hardly commenced scientific archæology in this country."
--Westropp, Thos.
J., _Proc.
of Royal Irish Acad._, vol.
xxxiv., C., No.
8, p. 129.
[6] We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint implements in considerable numbers.
You want, of course, to know how the scientific world received these latter discoveries.
They simply scouted them.
They told us that our statements were impossible, and we simply responded with the remark that we had not said that they were possible, only that they were true.--Pengally, W., _Kent's Cavern.
Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man_, p. 12.
[7] Lubbock, J., _Prehistoric Times_.
[8] In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:-"Why, what a wonderful thing is this!
We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony--Strabo's, Cæsar's, Lucan's--that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash's words, 'Wiser than their neighbours'.
Lucan's words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little.
Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:-"'Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains.
And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities.
To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest.
From you we learn that the bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.'"
[9] "Circles form another group of the monuments we are about to treat of....
In France they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are frequent.
In Denmark and Sweden they are both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands that circles attained their greatest development."
--Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 47.
Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes: "Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England.
They do not exist in France or Algeria.
The Scandinavian circles are all very different, so too are the Irish."
--_Ibid._, p. 153.
[10] Stevens, F., _Stonehenge To-day and Yesterday_, 1916, p. 14.
[11] Toland, _History of the Druids_, p. 163.
[12] Schrader, O., _cf._ Taylor, Isaac, _The Origin of the Aryans_, p. 48.
[13] Latham, Dr. R. G. [14] _Spain and Portugal_, vol.
i., p. 16.
[15] Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic.
It contains a number of alphabets.
Two of these consist entirely of trees.
The book is of authority.--Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, 1804, p. 305.
[16] The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King Minos of Crete was "the first person known to us in history as having established a navy.
He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters."
[17] Jones, J. J., _Britannia Antiquissima_, 1866.
[18] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xxix.
[19] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _The Sepulchres of Etruria_, p. 223.
[20] This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough.
See, however, the map of distribution, published by Fergusson, in _Rude Stone Monuments_.
[21] Herbert, A., _Cyclops Britannica_, p. 68.
[22] _Taliesin_, p. 23.
[23] Connellan, A. F. M., p. 337.
[24] Aristotle.
[25] Smith, Worthington, G., _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 53.
[26] _Short History_, p. 15.
[27] Bede.
[28] The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places of habitation.
An instance of this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the time of the Venerable Bede, 673-735.--Windle, B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 14.
[29] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., _England in the Making_, p. 14.
[30] Hawkins, E., _The Silver Coins of England_, p. 17.
[31] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, p. 121.
[32] _Bello Gallico_, Bk.
v., 12, § 3.
[33] Smith, Dr.
Wm., _Lectures on the English Language_, p. 29.
[34] The Americans would describe Gildas as a "Calamity-howler".
[35] Le Braz, A., _The Night of Fires_.
[36] A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes de désordre extraordinaires.
Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement manifesté l'intention de mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu'il considérait comme entachées de paganisme.
Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa d'interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux.
La population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand' messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui.
Comme on craignait que sa personne fût l'objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une porte de derrière.
Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.--_La Dernière Heure_, April, 1914.
[37] There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron saint.
On being told that no materials for such a work existed the _litterateur_ was quite unconcerned, and undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket.
[38] "Ireland being 'the last resort of lost causes,' preserved record of a European 'culture' as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals.
Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology."
--Westropp, Thos.
J., _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol.
xxxiv.
sec.
C, No.
8, p. 128.
CHAPTER II THE MAGIC OF WORDS "As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the later writing.
Again and again has the most ancient speech conformed to the new grammar, until this becomes the merest surface test; it supplies only the latest likeness.
Our mountains and rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue whilst the language of men is remoulded by every passing wave of change.
The language of mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the hills and streams."
--GERALD MASSEY.
It is generally admitted that place-names are more or less impervious to time and conquests.
Instances seemingly without limit might be adduced of towns which have been sacked, destroyed, rebuilt, and rechristened, yet the original names--_and these only_--have survived.
Dr. Taylor has observed that the names of five of the oldest cities of the world--Damascus, Hebron, Gaza, Sidon, and Hamath--are still pronounced in exactly the same manner as was the case thirty, or perhaps forty centuries ago, defying oftentimes the persistent attempts of rulers to substitute some other name.
[39] As another instance of the permanency of place-names, the city of Palmyra is curiously notable.
Though the Greek Palmyra is a title of 2000 years' standing, yet to the native Arab it is new-fangled, and he knows the place not as Palmyra but as Tadmor, its original and infinitely older name.
Five hundred years B.C.
the very ancient city of Mykenæ was destroyed and never rose again to any importance: Mykenæ was fabulously assigned to Perseus, and even to-day the stream which runs at the site is known as the Perseia.
[40] If it be possible for local names thus to live handed down humbly from mouth to mouth for thousands of years, for aught one knows they may have endured for double or treble these periods; there is no seeming limit to their vitality, and they may be said to be as imperishable and as dateless as the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.
History knows nothing of violent and spasmodic jumps; the ideas of one era are impalpably transmitted to the next, and the continuity of custom makes it difficult to believe that the builders of Cyclopean works such as Avebury and Stonehenge, have left no imprint on our place-names, and no memories in our language.
Even to-day the superstitious veneration for cromlechs and holy stones is not defunct, and it is largely due to that ingrained sentiment that more of these prehistoric monuments have not been converted into horse-troughs and pigsties.
If, as now generally admitted, there has been an unbroken and continuous village-occupation, and if, as is also now granted, our sacred places mostly occupy aboriginal and time-honoured sites, it is difficult to conceive that place-names do not preserve some traces of their prehistoric meanings.
In the case of villages dedicated to some saintly man or sweetest of sweet ladies, the connection is almost certainly intact; indeed, in instances the pagan barrows in the churchyard are often actually dedicated to some saint.
[41] That memories of the ancient mythology sometimes hang around our British cromlechs is proved by an instance in North Wales where there still stands a table stone known locally as _Llety-y-filiast_, or _the stone of the greyhound bitch_.
"This name," says Dr. Griffith, "was given in allusion to the British Ceres or Keridwen who was symbolised by the greyhound bitch".
[42] I shall have much to say about Keridwen--"the most generous and beauteous of ladies"--meanwhile it is sufficient here to note that her symbol, the greyhound bitch, is found unmistakably upon our earliest coinage.
[Illustration: BRITISH.
FIG.
4.--From Evans.
FIG.
5.--From Akerman.]
All place-names of any real antiquity are generally composed of various languages, and like compound rocks contain fragments in juxtaposition which belong properly to different ages.
The analysis of these is not difficult, as the final -_hill_, -_ton_, -_ville_, -_ham_, and so forth is usually the comparatively modern work of newcomers.
Frequently the later generations forgot the original meanings of the ancient terms; and thus, for instance, at Brandon Hill in Suffolk there is the curious phenomenon of _Hill Hill Hill_--in three languages, _i.e._, _bran_, _don_, and _hill_.
On this site the flint knappers are still at work, using practically the same rude tool as their primitive woad-painted ancestors.
At Brandon not only has the art of flint-making survived, but anthropologists have noted the persistence of a swarthy and most ancient type--a persistence the more remarkable as Suffolk was supposed to be a district out of which the Britons had been wholly and irretrievably eradicated.
Whether there is anything in the world to parallel the phenomenon of the Brandon flint knappers I do not know, and it may well be questioned.
In the words of Dr. Rice Holmes:--The industry has been carried on since neolithic times, and even then it was ancient: for Brandon was an abode of flint makers in the Old Stone Age.
Not only the pits but even the tools show little change: the picks which the modern workers use are made of iron, but here alone in Britain the old one-sided form is still retained, only the skill of the workers has degenerated: the exquisite evenness of chipping which distinguished the neolithic arrow heads is beyond the power of the most experienced knapper to reproduce.
[43] At Brandon is Broomhill; the words _bran_ and _broom_ will be subsequently shown to be radically the same, and I shall suggest reasons why this term, even possibly in Old Stone times, meant _hill_.
During recent years the study of place-names has been passing through a period of spade-work, and every available document from Doomsday Book to a Rent Roll has been scrupulously raked.
The inquirer now therefore has available a remarkably interesting record of the various forms which our place-names have passed through, and he can eliminate the essential features from the non-essential.
Although the subject has thus considerably been elucidated, the additional information obtained has, however, done nothing to solve the original riddle and in some cases has rendered it more complex.
The new system which is popularly supposed to have eliminated all guesswork has in reality done nothing of the kind.
In place of the older method, which, in the words of Prof. Skeat, "exalted impudent assertions far above positive evidence," it has boldly substituted a new form of guesswork which is just as reckless and in many respects is no less impudent than the old.
The present fashion is to suppose that the river _x_ or the town of _y_ _may_ have been the property of, or founded by, some purely hypothetical Anglo-Saxon.
For example: the river Hagbourne of Berkshire is guessed to have been _Hacca's burn or brook_, which possibly it was, but there is not a scintilla of real evidence one way or the other.
If one is going to postulate "Hacca's" here and there, there is obviously a space waiting for a member of the family on the great main road entitled Akeman Street.
As this ancient thoroughfare traverses Bath we are, however, told that it "received in Saxon times the significant name of Akeman Street from the condition of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it".
[44] One would prefer even a phantom Hacca to this _aching man_, nor does the alternatively suggested _aqua_, water, bring us any nearer a solution.
There sometimes appears to be no bottom to the vacuity of modern guesswork.
It is seriously and not _pour rire_ suggested that Horselydown was where horses could lie down; that Honeybrook was so designated because of its honey-sweet water, and that the name Isle of Dogs was "possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames here".
[45] In what respect do these and kindred definitions, which I shall cite from standard authors of to-day, differ from the "egregious" speculations, the "wild guesses," and the "impudent assertions" of earlier scholars?
There is in Bucks a small town now known as Kimball, anciently as Cunebal.
Tradition associates this site with the British King Cymbeline or Cunobelin, and as the place further contains an eminence known as Belinsbury or Belinus Castle, the authorities can hardly avoid accepting the connection and the etymology.
But for Kimbolton, which stands on a river named the Kym, the authorities--notwithstanding the river Kym--provide the purely supposititious etymology "Town of Cynebald".
There were, doubtless, thousands of Saxons whose name was Cynebald, but why Kimbolton should be assigned to any one of these hypothetical persons instead of to Cymbeline is not in any way apparent.
The river name Kym is sufficient to discredit Cynebald, and the greater probability is that not only the Kym but also all our river and mountain names are pre-Saxon.
It will be seen hereafter that the name Cunobelin or Cymbeline, which the dictionaries define as meaning _splendid sun_, was probably adopted as a dynastic title of British chiefs, and that the effigies of Cymbeline on British coins have no more relation to any particular king than the mounted figure on our modern sovereign has to his Majesty King George V. The prefix _Cym_ or _Cuno_ will subsequently be seen to be the forerunner of the modern _Konig_ or _King_.
Hence like Kimball or Cunebal, Kimbolton on the Kym was probably a seat of a Cymbeline, and the imaginary Saxon Cynebald may be dismissed as a usurper.
Kim_bolton_ used at one time to be known as Kinne_bantum_, whence it is evident that the essential part of the word is Kinne or Kim, and as another instance of the perplexing variations which are sometimes found in place-names the spot now known as Iffley may be cited.
This name occurs at various periods as follows: Gifetelea, Sifetelea, Zyfteleye, Yestley, Iveclay and Iftel.
This is a typical instance of the extraordinary variations which have perplexed the authorities, and is still causing them to cast vainly around for some formula or law of sound-change, which shall account satisfactorily for the problem.
"We are at present," says Prof. Wyld, "quite unable to formulate the laws of the interchange of stress in place-names, or of the effects of these in retaining, modifying, or eliminating syllables.... Until these laws are properly formulated, it cannot be said that we have a scientific account of the development of place-names.
The whole thing is often little better than a conjuring trick.
"[46] No amount of brainwork has conjured any sense from Iffley, and the etymology has been placed on the shelf as "unknown".
I shall venture to suggest that the initial G, S, Z, or Y, of this name, and of many others being adjectival, the radical Ive or Iff, as being the essential, has alone survived.
It will be seen that Iffley was in all probability a lea or meadow dedicated to "The Ivy Girl" or May Queen, and that quite likely it was one of the many sites where, in the language of an old poet-Holly and his Merry men they dawnsin and they sing, _Ivy and her maydons_ they wepen and they wryng.
I shall connote with Ivy and her maidens, not only Mother Eve, but also the clearly fabulous St. Ive.
We shall see that the Lady Godiva of Coventry fame was known as God_gifu_, just as Iffley was once _Gife_telea, and we shall see that St. Ives in Cornwall appears in the registers alternatively as St. Yesses, just as Iffley was alternatively Yestley.
Finally we shall trace the connection between Eve, the Mother of all living, and _Ave_bury, the greatest of all megalithic monuments.
If it be objected that my method is too meticulous, and that it is impossible for mere farmand field-names to possess any prehistoric significance, I may refer for support to the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inventory the ancient monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire.
[47] In the course of this document the Commissioners write as follows:-"The Tithe Schedules, unsatisfactory and disappointing though many of them are, contain such a collection of place-names, principally those of fields, that the Commissioners at the outset of their inquiry determined upon a careful investigation of them.
The undertaking involved in the first place the examination of hundreds of documents, many of them containing several thousands of place-names; secondly, in the case of those names which were noted for further inquiry, the necessity of discovering the position of the field or site upon the tithe map; and, thirdly, the location of the field or site on the modern six-inch ordnance sheet.
This prolonged task called for much patience and care, as well as ingenuity in comparing the boundaries of eighty years ago with those of the present time.
"Of the value of this work there can be no doubt.
We do not venture to express any opinion on the question whether, or to what extent, farm and field names are of service to the English archæologist; but with regard to their importance to the Welsh archæologist there can be no two opinions.
The fact that the Welsh place-names are being rapidly replaced by English names, so that the local lore which is often enshrined in the former is in danger of being lost, was in itself a sufficient reason for the undertaking.
The results have more than justified our decision.
There is hardly a parish, certainly not one of the ancient parishes, of the principality, where the schedule of field names has not yielded some valuable results.
Scores of small but in some cases important antiquities would have passed unrecorded, had it not been for the clue to their presence given by the place-name which was to be found only in the schedule to the Tithe Survey."
In Cornwall almost every parish is named after some saintly apostle, and many of these saints are alleged to have travelled far and wide in the world founding towns and villages.
It is almost a physical impossibility that this was literally true, and it becomes manifestly incredible on consideration of the miracles recorded in the lives of the travellers.
As already suggested the greater probability is that the lives of the saints enshrine almost intact the traditions of pre-Christian divinities.
Of the popular and most familiar St. Patrick, Borlase (W. C.), writes: "Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calporn, we feel not the shadow of a doubt.
But he was not _the only_ Patrick, and as time went on traditions of one other Patrick at least came to be commingled with his own.
We have before us the names of ten other contemporary Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy.
The name appears to be that of a grade or order in the Church rather than a proper name in the usual sense.
Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the 'Book of Armagh' and _the_ Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling Declan 'the Patrick of the Desii,' and Ailbhe 'the Patrick of Munster'.
When Patrick sojourned in a cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks there."
Precisely: and there is little doubt that our London Battersea or Patrixeye was originally an _ea_ or island where the patricks or padres of St. Peter's at Westminster once congregated.
The arguments applied to St. Patrick apply equally to, say, St. Columba, or the Holy Dove, and similarly to St. Colman, a name also meaning _Dove_.
In Ireland alone there are 200 dedications to St. Colman, and evidence will be brought forward that the archetype of all the St. Colmans and all the St. Columbas and all the Patricks was Peter the _Pater_, who was symbolised by _petra_, the stone or rock.
The so-called Ossianic poems of Gaeldom, although of "a remarkably heathenish character," preserve the manners of and opinions of what the authorities describe as "a semi-barbarous people who were endowed with strong imagination, high courage, childlike tenderness, and gentle chivalry for women,"[48] and that the ancients were tinctured through and through with mysticism and imagination, finding tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything, is a fact which can be denied.
When our words were framed and our ancient places, hills, and rivers named, I am persuaded that the world was in its imaginative childhood, and hence that traces of that state of mind may reasonably be anticipated.
It is remarkable that the skulls found in the first or oldest Troy exhibit the most intellectual characteristics,[49] and in many quarters seemingly the remoter the times the purer was the theology whether in Phrygia, Egypt, India, Persia, or Great Britain.
Among the Cretans "religion entered at every turn" of their social system; in Egypt even the very games and dances had a religious significance, and the evidence of folklore testifies to the same effect in Britain.
It was one among the many grievances of the pessimistic Gildas that the British were "slaves to the shadows of things to come," and this usually overlooked aspect of their character must, I think, be recognised in relation to their place-names.
To a large degree the mystical element still persists in Brittany, where even to-day, in the words of Baring-Gould:--At a Pardon one sees and marvels at the wondrous faces of this remarkable people: the pure, sweet, and modest countenances of the girls, and those not less striking of the old folk.
"It is," says Durtal, "the soul which is everything in these people, and their physiognomy is modelled by it.
There are holy brightnesses in their eyes, on their lips, those doors to the borders of which the soul alone can come, from which it looks forth and all but shows itself.
Goodness, kindness, as well as a cloistral spirituality, stream from their faces.
"[50] What is still true of Brittany was once equally true of Britain, and although the individuality of the Gael has now largely been submerged by prosaic Anglo-Saxondom, the poetic temperament of the chivalrous and dreamy Celt was essentially a frame of mind that cared only for the heroic, the romantic, and the beautiful.
The science of etymology as practised to-day is unfortunately blind to this poetic element which was, and to some extent still is, an innate characteristic of "uncivilised" and unsophisticated peoples.
Archbishop Trench, one of the original planners and promoters of _The New English Dictionary_, was not overstating when he wrote: "Let us then acknowledge man a born poet....
Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem.
He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer to go a little deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever."
Nevertheless, current etymology _has_ achieved this inanity, and has so completely dismissed the animate or poetic element from its considerations that one may seek vainly the columns of Skeat and Murray for any hint or suggestion that language and imagination ever had anything in common.
According to modern teaching language is a mere cluster of barbaric yawps: "No mystic bond linked word and thought together; utility and convenience alone joined them".
[51] Words, nevertheless, were originally born not from grammarians but amid the common people, and _pace_ Mr. Clodd they enshrine in many instances the mysticism and the superstitions of the peasantry.
How can one account, for instance, for the Greek word _psyche_, meaning _butterfly_, and also _soul_, except by the knowledge that butterflies were regarded by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised?
According to Grimm, the German name for stork means literally _child-_, or _soul-bringer_; hence the belief that the advent of infants was presided over by this bird.
But why "_hence_"?
and why put the cart before the horse?
If one may judge from innumerable parallels of word-equivocation the legends arose not from the accident of similar words, nor from "misprision of terms," or from any other "disease of language," but the creatures were named _because of_ the attendant legend.
It is common knowledge that in Egypt the animal sacred to a divinity was often designated by the name of that deity; similarly in Europe the bee, a symbol of the goddess _Mylitta_, was called a _mylitta_, and a bull, the symbol of the god _Thor_, was named a _thor_.
We speak to-day of an _Adonis_, because Adonis was a fabulously lovely youth, and parallel examples may be found on almost every hand.
Irish mythology tells of a certain golden-haired hero named Bress, which means _beautiful_, whence we are further told that every beautiful thing in Ireland whether plain, fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man, was compared with him, so that men said of them "That is a Bress".
Elsewhere and herein I have endeavoured to prove that this principle was of worldwide application, and that it is an etymological key which will open the meaning of many words still in common use.
It is a correlative fact that the names of specific deities such as Horus, Hathor, Nina, Bel, etc., developed in course of time into generic terms for any _Lord_ or _God_.
Very much the same principles are at work with us to-day, whence _a_ dreadnought from the prime "Dreadnought," and the etymologer of the future, who tries by strictly scientific methods to unravel the meaning of such words as _mackintosh_, _brougham_, _Sam Browne_, _gladstone_, _boycott_, etc., will find it necessary to investigate the legends attendant on those names rather than practice a formal permutation of vowels and consonants.
By common consent the quintessence of the last fifty years' philological progress is being distilled into Sir James Murray's _New English Dictionary_, and in a conciser form the same data may be found in Prof. Skeat's _Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language_.
Both these indispensable works are high watermarks of English scholarship, and whatever absurdities they contain are shortcomings not of their compilers but of the Teutonic school of philology which they exemplify.
If these two standard dictionaries were able to answer even the elementary questions that are put to them it would be both idle and presumptuous to cavil, but one has only to refer to their pages to realise the ignorance which prevails as to the origin and the meaning of the most simple and everyday words.
It is unfortunately true that "in philology as in all branches of knowledge it is the specialist who most strongly opposes any attempt to widen the field of his knowledge".
[52] Hence, as was only to be expected, one of the reviewers of my _Lost Language of Symbolism_ deemed it quite insufferable that I should throw to the winds the laborious work on the science of phonetics built up by generations of careful research.
But in point of fact I discarded none of the sound work of my predecessors; I only tried to supplement it and fished deeper.
My soundings do not begin until I am well beyond the limits of modern etymology, and they are no more affected by the cross-currents of historic languages than the activities of a deep-water fisherman are interrupted or affected by the tide eddies on the shore.
The defect of official philology is that it offers no explanation for radicals.
It does not, for example, attempt to explain why the word _ap_ was the Sanscrit for water, why _pri_ was the Sanscrit for love, or why _pat_ was the Sanscrit for fly.
It refers the word oak to the Anglo-Saxon _ac_, Dr. Murray merely describing it as "a consonantal stem, ulterior meaning obscure".
Etymology to-day is in fact very much in the situation of an insolvent bank which, unable to satisfy its creditors with cash on demand, blandly endeavours to satisfy them with corresponding cheques of equally uncashable face value.
Words can never properly be interpreted merely by parallel words: originally they must have expressed ideas, and it is these underlying ideas that I am in search of.
My previous work was a pioneer, and in many respects bungling attempt to pick up the threads where at present philology is content to lose them.
Using the same keys as hitherto, I shall attempt to explore further the darkness which is at present the only achieved goal of the much trumpeted Science of Language.
In a moment of noteworthy frankness Prof. Skeat has admitted that "Scientific etymology is usually clumsy and frequently wrong".
Similarly, Prof. Sayce issues the warning: "Comparative philology has suffered as much from its friends as from its opponents; and now that it has at last won its way to general recognition and respect, there is a danger that its popularity may lead to the cessation of sound and honest work, and to an acquiescence in theories which, however plausible, are not yet placed upon a footing of scientific certainty.
It is much easier for the ordinary man to fill in by patient elaboration what has already been sketched for him in outline, than to venture upon a new line of discovery, in which the sole clue must be the combinative powers of his own imagination and comprehensive learning.
And yet, now as much as ever, comparative philology has need at once of bold and wide-reaching conceptions, of cautious verification, and of a mastery of facts.
It is true the science is no longer struggling for mere life, and the time is gone by for proving the possibility of its existence.
But it is still young, scarcely, indeed, out of its nursery; a small portion only of its province has hitherto been investigated, and much that is at present accepted without hesitation will have to be subjected to a searching inquiry, and possibly be found baseless after all.
"[53] The value of any system must be measured by its results, and the fruits of philology as formulated only a year or so ago were unquestionably false.
Where now are the "successes" of the Max Müller school which were advertised in such shrill and penetrating tones?
Sanscrit is deposed from its pride of place, it being now recognised that primitive sounds are preserved more faithfully in Europe than elsewhere.
Who to-day admits there is any basis for the Disease of Language theory, or that all fairy-tales and myths are resolvable into the Sun chasing the Dawn?
[54] What anthropologist accepts the theory of Aryan overland immigration from somewhere in Asia?
The archæologists of the last generation were, in the light of modern findings, quite justified when, contrary to the then stereotyped idea, they maintained that skulls were harder things than consonants.
In short, large sections of the card-castle of German philology have more or less crumbled, and in the cruel words of a modern authority on Crete: "Happily, archæology has emerged from the slough into which the philologists had led her".
For the causes of this fiasco it is unnecessary to seek further than the fundamental fallacy upon which the "Science of Language" has been erected.
According to Max Müller, "etymology is indeed a science in which identity, or even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of no importance whatever.
Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound.
We know words to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white."
To maintain that "_sound etymology has nothing to do with sound_," is tantamount to the contention that language is not sound, which is obviously absurd.
In the saner view of Dr. Latham: "language begins with voice, language ends with voice".
The Germans, Poles, and Russians had no acquaintance with letters until the ninth century, and speech, which certainly existed for unnumbered centuries before either writing or spelling was evolved, must, primarily and essentially, have been a system of pure and simple phonetics, spreading, as a mother teaches her child, syllable by syllable, word upon word, and line upon line.
To rule sound out of language, is, indeed, far more fatal than to purge Hamlet out of _Hamlet_.
One may prove by super-ingenious logic and an elaborate code of cross references that black is white and white black, yet common sense knows all the time that it is not so.
There are, I am aware, certain races who are unable to vocalise certain sounds and accordingly modify them.
The obscure causes governing these phonetic changes must be taken into account, and as far as possible formulated into "laws," but the pages of Skeat and Murray demonstrate beyond refutation two very simple but very certain fundamental, universal facts, to which hitherto wholly insufficient attention has been given.
These elementary and seemingly never-varying facts are: (1) That originally vowel sounds were of no importance whatever, for in the same word they vary to the utmost limits, not only in different areas and in different eras, but contemporaneously in different grades of society; (2) that heavy and light consonants such as _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_, _f_ and _v_, _g_ and _k_, etc., are always interchangeable.
Whether in place-names, words, or proper names, the changes are found _always_ to occur, and they are precisely those variations which common sense would suggest must occur in every case where words travel _viva voce_ and not via script or print.
A man suffering from what Shakespeare would term "a whoreson rheum," says, for instance, _did vor dad_ instead of _tit for tat_, and there is, so far as I can discover, not a single word or a solitary place-name in which a similar variation of thin and thick consonants is not traceable.
The formidable Grimm's Law, any violation of which involves summary and immediate condemnation, is merely a statement of certain phonetic facts which happen invariably--unless they are interfered with by other facts.
The permutations of sound codified by Grimm are as follows:-Greek _p_ Gothic _f_ Old High German _b_(_v_) " _b_ " _p_ " _f_ " _ph_ " _b_ " _p_ " _t_ " _th_ " _d_ " _d_ " _t_ " _z_ " _th_ " _d_ " _t_ " _k_ " (_h_) " _g_(_h_) " _g_ " _k_ " _ch_ " _kh_ " _g_ " _k_ It is said that the causes which brought about the changes formulated in Grimm's Law are "obscure" (they may have been due to nothing more obscure than a prevalence to colds in the head), and that they were probably due to the settlement of Low German conquerors in Central and Southern Germany.
The changes above formulated all fall, however, within the wider theory I am now suggesting, with the exception of _d_ and _t_ becoming in High German _z_.
This particular syllabic change was, I suggest, due to _z_ at one time being synonymous with _d_ or _t_, and not to any inability of certain tribes to vocalise the sound _t_.
Max Müller observes that "at first sight the English word _fir_ does not look very like the Latin word _quercus_, yet it is the same word".
_Fir_ certainly does not look like _quercus_, nor, of course, is it any more the "same word" than _six_ is the same word as _half a dozen_.
There are a thousand ways of proving _six_ to be radically and identically the same as _half a dozen_, and the ingenious system of permutations by which philologists identify _fir_ with _quercus_, and _alphana_ with _equus_,[55] are parallel to some of the methods by which common sense, by cold gradation and well-balanced form, would quite correctly equate _six_ with _half a dozen_.
The term "_word_" I understand not in the loose sense used by Max Müller, but as the dictionary defines it--"an oral or written sign expressing an idea or notion".
Thus I treat John as the same word as _Jane_ or _Jean_, and it is radically the same word as _giant_, old English _jeyantt_, French _geante_, Cornish _geon_.
Jean is also the same word as _chien_, a dog, Irish _choin_; Welsh _chin_ or _cyn_, and all these terms by reason of their radical _an_ are cognate with the Greek _kuon_, a dog, whence _cyn_ical.
The Gaelic for _John_ is _Jain_, the Gaelic for _Jean_ or _Jane_ is _Sine_, with which I equate _shine_, _shone_, and _sheen_, all of which have respect to the _sun_, as also had the Arabic _jinn_, _genii_, and "_Gian Ben Gian_," a title of the fabulous world-ruler of the Golden Age.
Among the Basques _Jaun_ means Lord or Master, and the Basque term for God, _Jainko_, _Jeinko_, or _Jinko_, is believed to have meant "Lord or Master on High".
The Irish Church attributes its origin to disciples of St. _John_--Irish _Shaun_, and one may detect the pre-Christian _Sinjohn_ in the British divinity Shony, and evolving from the primeval _Shen_ at Shenstone near Litchfield.
Here, a little distance from the church, was a well, now called _St.
John's_ Well, after the saint in whose honour the parish church is dedicated.
In all probability the present-day church of St. John was built on the actual site of the original _Shen stone_ or rock; and that John stones were once plentiful in Scotland is probably implied by the common surname Johnstone.
Near the Shannon in Ireland, and in close proximity to the church and village of Shanagolden, is "castle" _Shenet_ or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp's survey, is here reproduced.
As it is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval _jeyantt_ or the Golden _Shine_; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Shannon.
The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted.
We shall see that _Giant_ Christopher was symbolically represented as _chien_ headed, that he was a personification of the _Shine_ or _Sheen_ of the _Sun_, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or _dog-town_.
We have already noted English "_chien_" or _cyn_ coins inscribed _cun_, which is seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology.
[Illustration: FIG.
6.--From _Proc.
of the Royal Irish Acad._, xxxiii., C., No.
2.]
Years ago Bryant maintained that "the fable of the horse certainly arose from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer".
There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school that all mythologies originated from a "disease of language".
Dr. Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder.
It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not _vice versa_.
That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few traces of script or inscriptions have been found.
By symbolism, primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.
[57] Faced by the "curiosity" that the Greek and Latin words for _archaic_, _arch_, _ark_, _arc_, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a mystical interconnection, a writer in _The Open Court_ concludes: "it would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of coincidence".
[58] That the Mysteries--or in other words dramatised mythology--Symbolism, and Etymology, are all closely connected with each other is a certitude beyond question.
The theory, so pertinaciously put forward by Max Müller, was that myths originated from a subsequent misunderstanding of words.
Using the same data as Max Müller, I suggest that words originated from the mysteries and not myths from the words.
In _The Holy Wells of Cornwall_, Mr. T. Quiller Couch observes that Dr. Borlase, learned, diligent, and excellent antiquary as he was, to whom we are all indebted in an iconoclastic age for having copied for us fair things which time had blurred, seems to have had little sympathy with the faiths of the simple, silly, country folk (I use these adjectives in their older meaning), and to have passed them with something like contempt.
At present the oral traditions of a people, their seeming follies even, have become of value as indicating kinship between nations shunted off by circumstances, to use the most modern term, in divergent ways.
Dr. Johnson would not admit _fun_ into his Dictionary as he deemed it a "low word": I turn up my nose at nothing, being convinced that it is to low origins that the great lexicographers will eventually have to stoop.
In truth, the innate strength of the English language, which is becoming more and more the Master Tongue of the world, lies in its homely, trivial, and democratic origin.
[59] This origin, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show, is due largely to symbolism, which is merely another term for metaphor.
We used to be taught that every language was a dictionary of faded metaphor, and such an origin is undoubtedly more true than the current theory of barbaric yawps.
The essence of symbolism is its simplicity.
Who, for instance, does not understand that the Lion is the symbol of High Courage, and the Bull-dog of Tenacity, or holding on?
At the present day the badge of one of His Majesty's warships is the picture of a butting goat, accompanied by the words "Butt in".
This, as the authorities rightly describe it, is "pure symbolism," but to a symbolist the legend "Butt in" is superfluous, as the mere butting goat adequately carries the idea.
As Prof. Petrie has well said: "To understand the position and movement of thought in a primitive age, it must be approached on a far simpler plane than that of our present familiarity with writing.
To reach the working of the childhood of our races we should look to the minds of children.
If the child passes through ancestral changes in its bodily formation, so certainly it passes through such stages in the growth and capacity of its brain.
"[60] I shall push the childish and extremely simple theory of symbolism to its logical conclusions, and shall show, for instance, that the Boar, because it burrowed with its plough-like snout, was the emblem of the ploughman, and that thus, _boar_ and _boer_ are the same word.
Or, to take another instance, I shall show that probably because the cat sits washing herself, and is a model of cleanliness in sanitary respects, the cat who figures on the head of the Magna Mater of Crete was elevated into a symbol of the Immaculate or Pure One, and that the word _cat_, German _kater_, is identical with the name Kate or Caterina which means _purity_.
The Sanscrit word for _cat_ means literally _the cleanser_, whence it is obvious that the cleanly habits of the cat strongly impressed the Aryan imagination.
Whether or not my theories are right, it is undeniable that the etymologies of Skeat and Murray are very often painfully wrong.
The standard explanation, for instance, of the word _haha_, meaning a sunk fence, is that it is from the French ha-ha, "an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle that laughs at one".
This may be so, but it is a far wilder guess than anything to be found in my pages, or that I should ever dare to venture.
In 1913 I suggested in _Notes and Queries_ that the word ha-ha or haw-haw was simply a re-duplication or superlative of the French _haie_, a fence or hedge, old English _haw_.
In the new edition of Skeat I am glad to find this suggestion accepted, and that _ha-ha!_ has been expunged.
It still figures in Dr. Murray.
In his Canons of Etymology, Prof. Skeat observes:--"The history of a nation accounts for the constituent parts of its language.
When an early English word is compared with Hebrew or Coptic, as used to be done in the _old_ editions of Webster's Dictionary, history is set at defiance; and it was a good deed to clear the later editions of all such rubbish".
This is curiously parochial, yet it seems to have been seriously accepted by etymologers.
But what would Science say nowadays to that geologist or anthropologist who committed the foul deed of discarding or suppressing a vast body of facts simply because they clashed with, or "set at defiance," the "historic" assertions of the Pentateuch?
It is true that the history of a nation, _if it were fully known_, must account for the constituent parts of its language, but how much British history do we pretend to know?
To suggest that philology must limit its conclusions by the Roman invasion, or bound its findings by the pages of Mrs. Markham, is ludicrous, yet, nevertheless, these fictitious boundaries are the mediæval and pre-Darwinian limits within which the Science of Language is now coffined.
Prof. Skeat was reluctantly compelled to recognise a Semitic trace in words such as _bad_ and _target_, but was unable to accept the connection owing to the absence of any historic point of contact between Syria and this country prior to the Crusades!
So, too, M. Sebhlani observed numerous close similarities between Arabic and English, but was "unable to press them for lack of a theory as to how they got into English!"
As history must be constructed from facts, and facts must not be peremptorily suppressed simply because at present they clash with the meagre record of historians, I shall have no scruples in noting a word from Timbuctoo if it means precisely what it does in English, and proves reasonably to be a missing piece.
As Gerald Massey thirty or forty years ago very properly observed: "We have to dig and descend mine under mine beneath the surface scratched with such complacent twitterings over their findings by those who have taken absolute possession of this field, and proceeded to fence it in for themselves, and put up a warning against everybody else as trespassers.
We get volume after volume on the 'science of language' which only make us wonder when the 'science' is going to begin.
At present it is an opera that is all overture.
The comparative philologists have not gone deep enough, as yet, to see that there is a stage where likeness may afford guidance, because there was a common origin for the primordial stock of words.
They assume that Grimm's Law goes all the way back.
They cling to their limits, as the old Greek sailors hugged the shore, and continually insist upon imposing these on all other voyagers, by telling terrible tales of the unknown dangers beyond.
"[61] As soon as etymologists appreciate the value of the comparative method it is undeniable that a marked advance will be made in the "Science of Language," but during the last few decades it must be confessed that that science--_pace_ the bombastic language of some of its adherents--has retrogressed rather than moved forward.
Prof. Skeat was admittedly a high authority on early English, and his Dictionary of the English Language is thus almost inevitably conspicuous for its Anglo-Saxon colouring.
Had, however, the influence of the Saxons been as marked and immediate as he assumes, the language of Anglo-Saxondom would have coincided exactly or very closely with the contemporary German.
But, according to Dr. Wm.
Smith, "There is no proof that Anglo-Saxon was ever spoken anywhere but on the soil of Great Britain; for the 'Heliend,' and other remains of old Saxon, are not Anglo-Saxon, and I think it must be regarded, not as a language which the colonists, or any of them, brought with them from the Continent, but as a new speech resulting from the fusion of many separate elements.
It is, therefore indigenous, if not aboriginal, and as exclusively local and national in its character as English itself.
"[62] That modern English contains innumerable traces of pure Celtic words used to be a matter of common acceptance, and in the words of Davies, the stoutest assertor of a pure Anglo-Saxon or Norman descent is convicted by the language of his daily life, of belonging to a race that partakes largely of Celtic blood.
If he calls for his _coat_ (W. _cota_, Germ.
_rock_), or tells of the _basket_ of fish he has caught (W. _basged_, Germ.
_korb_), or the _cart_ he employs on his land (W. _cart_, from _càr_, a dray, or sledge, Germ.
_wagen_), or of the _pranks_ of his youth, or the _prancing_ of his horse (W. _prank_, a trick, _prancio_, to frolic), or declares that he was _happy_ when a _gownsman_ at Oxford (W. _hap_, fortune, chance, Germ.
_glück_, W. _gwn_), or that his servant is _pert_ (W. _pert_, spruce, dapper, insolent); or if, descending to the language of the vulgar, he affirms that such assertions are _balderdash_, and the claim a _sham_ (W. _baldorddus_, idle prating; _siom_, _shom_, a deceit, a sham), he is unconsciously maintaining the truth he would deny.
Like the M. Jourdain of Molière, who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, he has been speaking very good Celtic without any suspicion of the fact.
[63] It is noteworthy that in his determination to ignore the Celtic influence, Prof. Skeat concedes only one among the above-mentioned words to the British--(_gwn_).
The Welsh _hap_ "_must_," he says, be borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon _gehoep_, and the remainder he ascribes to Middle English or to an "origin unknown".
Tyndall has observed that imagination, bounded and conditioned by co-operant reason, is the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.
It is to imagination that words born in the fantastic and romantic childhood of the world were due, and it is only by a certain measure of imagination that philology can hope to unravel them.
The extent to which mythology has impressed place-names may be estimated from the fact that to King Arthur alone at least 600 localities owe their titles.
That Arthur himself has not been transmogrified into a Saxon settler[64] is due no doubt to the still existing "Bed," "Seat," "Stables," etc., with which popular imagination connected the mystic king.
"Geographical names," says Rice Holmes, "testify to the cult of various gods," and he adds: "it is probable that every British town had its eponymous hero.
The deities, however, from whom towns derived their names, were doubtless often worshipped near the site long before the first foundations were laid: the goddess Bibracte was originally the spirit of a spring reverenced by the peasants of the mountain upon which the famous Aeduan town was built".
[65] I shall not lead the reader into the intricacies of British mythology deeper than is requisite for an understanding of the words and place-names under consideration, nor shall I enlarge more than is necessary upon the mystic elements in that vast and little known mythology.
It has been said that the mediæval story-teller is not unlike a peasant building his hut on the site of Ephesus or Halicarnassus with the stones of an older and more majestical architecture.
That Celtic mythology exhibits all the indications of a vast ruin is the opinion not only of Matthew Arnold, but of every competent student of the subject, and it is a matter of discredit that educated Englishmen know so little about it.
Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous identities with tales related by Homer.
Sir Walter Scott, alluding to one of these many instances, expresses his astonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems to argue some connection or communication between these remote highlands of Scotland, and the readers of Homer of former days which one cannot account for.
[66] His explanation that "After all, perhaps, some Churchman, more learned than his brethren, may have transferred the legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of Loch Lomond," is not in accord with any of the probabilities, and it is more likely that both Greek and Highlander drew independently from some common source.
The astonishing antiquity of these tales may be glimpsed by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of a store of older legends from an even more brilliant past.
Somebody once defined symbolism as "silent myth".
To what extent it elucidates primeval custom has yet to be seen, but there is unquestionably an intimate connection between symbolism and burial customs.
Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing the relics of a woman and of a child.
The authorities suggest that the latter _may have been buried alive with its mother_, which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely deny.
But there is just as great a possibility that neither the mother nor the child came to so sinister and miserable an end.
Apart from the pathetic attitude of the two bodies, the skulls are as moral and intellectual as any modern ones, and in face of the simple facts it would be quite justifiable to assume that the mother and the child were not buried alive, nor committed suicide, but died in the odour of sanctity and were reverently interred.
The objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms, which are even now known popularly among the unlettered as fairy loaves, and as there is still a current legend that whoso keeps at home a specimen of the fairy loaf will never lack bread,[67] one is fairly entitled to assume that these "fairy loaves" were placed in the grave in question as symbols of the spiritual food upon which our animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed.
It is well known that material food was frequently deposited in tombs for a similar purpose, but in the case of this Dunstable grave there must have been a spiritual or symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most hopeless savage could have imagined that the soul or fairy body would have relished fossils--still less so if the material bodies had been buried alive.
[Illustration: FIG.
7.--From _Man the Primeval Savage_ (Smith, G.
Worthington).]
I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship, tree-worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts was largely based upon symbolism.
In symbolism alone can one find any rational explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries the debris of which has come down to us degraded into between symbolism and burial customs.
Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing the relics of a woman and of a child.
The authorities superstitious "custom" and it is probable that in symbolism may also be found the origin of totemism.
Is symbol the husk, the dry bone, Of the dead soul of ages agone?
Finger-post of a pilgrimage way Untrodden for many a day?
A derelict shrine in the fane Of an ancient faith, long since profane?
A gew-gaw, once amulet?
A forgotten creed's alphabet?
Or is it....[68] Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and exclusive connection with phallicism which some writers have been pleased to assign it.
On the contrary, it more often flushes from unlikely quarters totally unexpected coveys of blue birds.
Symbolism was undeniably a primitive mode of _thinging_ thought or expressing abstract ideas by things.
As Massey says of mythology: "There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation.
Mythology is the depository of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this--when truly interpreted once more it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth.
"[69] That the ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is unquestionable: to account for the identities of these pagan fables with certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one of the Early Fathers--Tertullian, I believe--that "God was rehearsing Christianity".
In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in neolithic times.
Just as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he ascended the sacred oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was the holy place of Jupiter.
"But," says Rice Holmes, "while every ancient people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy".
[70] The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to study the symbolism which flourished so luxuriously among their predecessors, but, unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-honoured symbols such as the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical and philosophic world is now quite dead.
It still, however, lingers to a limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-coloured radiancy which colours Poetry.
The ancient and the at-one-time generally accepted idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught to the common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread upwards from the vulgar to the learned.
This latter process has usually been the doom of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive its blighting effect.
As a random instance of the modern attitude towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev.
Prof. Skeat, who, commenting upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres".
"These spheres," he adds, "have disappeared and their music with them except in poetry.
"[71] Whether or not our predecessors really heard the choiring of the young-eyed cherubim, or whether the music was merely in their souls is a point immaterial to the present inquiry, which simply concerns itself with the physical remains of that poetic once-upon-a-time temperament which at some period or other was prevalent,[72] and has left its world-wide imprints on river names, such as the Irish "Morning Star".
[73] One would have supposed it quite superfluous at this time of day to have to claim imagination for the anonymous ancients who mapped the whole expanse of heaven into constellations, and wove fairy-tales around the Pleiades and every other group of stars, and it is simply astonishing to find a Doctor of Divinity writing to-day in kultured complacency: "It is to the imagination of us moderns _alone_ that the grandeur of the universe appeals,[74] and it was relatively late in the history of religion--so far as can be reconstructed from the scanty data in our possession that the higher nature cults were developed.
"[75] Is it wonderful that again and again the romantic soul of the Celtic peasantry has risen against the grey dogmas of official Theology, and has expressed itself in terms such as those taken down from the mouth of a Gaelic old woman in 1877: "We would dance there till we were seven times tired.
The people of those times were full of music and dancing stories, and traditions.
The clerics have extinguished these.
May ill befall them!
And what have the clerics put in their place?
Beliefs about creeds and disputations about denominations and churches!
May lateness be their lot!
It is they who have put the cross round the heads and the entanglements round the feet of the people.
The people of the Gaeldom of to-day are anear perishing for lack of the famous feats of their fathers.
The black clerics have suppressed every noble custom among the people of the Gaeldom--precious customs that will never return, no, never again return.
"[76] There are features about the wisdom of the ancients which the theologian neither understands nor tries to understand,[77] and it is like a breath of fresh air to find the Bishop of Oxford maintaining, "We have got to get rid of everything that makes the sound of religion irrational, and which associates it with bygone habits of thought in regard to science and history".
Sir Gilbert Murray has recently expressed the opinion that "it is the scholar's special duty to trim the written signs in our old poetry now enshrined back into living thought and feeling"; but at present far from forwarding this desideratum scholarship not only discountenances imagination, but even eliminates from consideration any spiritual idea of God.
To quote from a modern authority: "Track any God right home and you will find him lurking in a ritual sheath from which he slowly emerges, first as a _dæmon_ or spirit of the year, then as a full-blown divinity....
The May King, the leader of the choral dance, gave birth not only to the first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the God, be he Dionysus or be he Apollo.
"[78] The theory here assumed grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought: Act is the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the idiot-child of Act.
The assumption that the first idea of God evolved from the personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home, but rather an inane confession that the idea of God cannot be traced further backward than the ritual of ancient festivals.
Speaking of that extremely remote epoch when the twilight and mists of morning shed dim-looming shapes and flickering half lights about the path of our scarcely awakened race, _The Athenæum_ a year or two ago remarked: "No wonder that to such purblind eyes men appear as trees, and trees as men--Balder the Beautiful as the mystic oak, and the oak as Balder".
This passage forms part of a congratulation that the work of Sir James Frazer is now complete, and that _The Golden Bough_ "has at length carried us forward into broad daylight".
I have studied the works of Sir James Frazer in the hope of finding therein some insight as to the origin and why of custom, but I have failed to perceive the broad daylight of _The Athenæum's_ satisfaction.
One might lay down _The Golden Bough_ without a suspicion that our purblind ancestors ever had a poetic thought or a high and beautiful ideal, and it is probable that scholarship will eventually arraign Sir James Frazer for this _suggestio falsi_.
In the meanwhile it should hardly be necessary to enter a _caveat_ against the popular idea that we are now "in broad daylight".
The value of _The Golden Bough_ lies largely in the evidence therein adduced of what may be termed universal ritual.
But all ritual must have originated from ideas, and these original ideas do not seem to have entered the horizon of Sir James Frazer's speculations.
What reason does he suppose lurked necessarily behind, say, the sacred fire being kindled from _three_ nests in _three_ trees, or by _nine_ men from _nine_ different kinds of wood?
And why do the unpleasant Ainos scrupulously kill their sacred bear by _nine_ men pressing its head against a pole?
It is now the vogue to resolve every ancient ceremony into a magic charm for producing fire, or food, or rain, or what not, and there is very little doubt that magic, or sacred ceremonies, verily sank, in many instances, to this melancholy level.
But, knowing what history has to tell us of priestcraft, and judging the past from the present, is it not highly likely that the primitive divine who found his tithes and emoluments diminishing from a laxity of faith would spur the public conscience by the threat that _unless_ sacred ceremonies were faithfully and punctually performed the corn would not flourish and the rain would either overflow or would not fall?
[79] It is now the mode to trace all ceremonial to self-interest, principally to the self-interest of fear or food.
But on this arbitrary, stale, and ancient theory[80] how is it possible to account for the almost universal reverence for stone or rock?
Rocks yield neither food, nor firing, nor clothing, nor do they ever inflict injuries: why, then, should the artless savage trouble to gratify or conciliate such innocuous and unprofitable objects?
The same question may be raised in other directions, notably that of the oak tree.
Here the accepted supposition is that the oak was revered because it was struck more frequently by lightning than any other tree, but if this untoward occurrence really proves the oak tree was the favourite of the Fire God surely it was an instance of affection very brilliantly dissembled.
Sir James Frazer has used his _Golden Bough_ as he found it employed by Virgil--as a talisman which led to the gloomy and depressing underworld.
In Celtic myth the Silver Bough played a less sinister part, and figures as a fairy talisman to music and delight.
Whether the appeal of Sir Gilbert Murray meets with any sympathy and response, and whether the written signs in our old poetry will ever be enshrined back into living thought and feeling remains to be seen.
I think they will, and that the better sense of English intellectualism will sooner or later recoil from the present mud-and-dust theories of protoplasm for, as has been well said, "Materialism considered as a system of philosophy never attempts to explain the _Why_?
of things".
Certainly protoplasm has unravelled nothing, nor possibly can.
One of our standard archæologists lamented a few decades ago: "As the Germans have decreed this it is in vain to dispute it, and not worth while to attempt it".
But the German, an indefatigable plodder, is but a second-rate _thinker_, and the time must inevitably come when English scholars will deem it well worth while to unhitch their waggons from Germania.
With characteristic assurance the Teutonic _litterati_ are still prattling of The Fatherland as a "centre" of civilisation, and are pluming themselves upon the "spiritual values" given to mankind by Germany.
Some of us are not conscious of these "spiritual values," but that German scholarship has poison-gassed vast tracts of modern thought is evident enough.
The theories of Mannhardt, elaborated by Sir James Frazer and transmuted by him into the pellucid English of _The Golden Bough_, have admittedly blighted the fair humanities of old religion into a dull catalogue of common things,[81] and no one more eloquently deplores the situation than Sir James Frazer himself.
As he says: "It is indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which as in a strong tower the hopes and aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the storm and stress of life.
Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of the Comparative Method should breach these venerable walls mantled over with ivy and mosses, and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred associations."
When the Comparative Method is applied in a wider and more catholic spirit than hitherto it will then--but not till then--be seen whether the fair humanities are exploded superstitions or are sufficiently alive to blossom in the dust.
It is quite proper to designate _The Golden Bough_ a puppet-play of corn-gods,[82] for the author himself, referring to Balder the Beautiful, writes: "He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears, and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box".
But to me the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin.
Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment.
To the understanding of symbolism sympathy is a useful key.
The words _doll_, _idol_, _ideal_, and _idyll_, which are all one and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea which was one of the ancient names of Crete.
Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but it was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic.
Crete, the Idyllic island, the island of Ideas, was also known as Aeria, and I think it probably was the centre whence was spun the gossamer of aerial and ethereal tales, which have made the Isles of Greece a land of immortal romance.
We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis[83] was in all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital of Crete.
From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and science, came probably the Greek word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_.
But the mystic Gnosis connoted more than is covered by the word _knowledge_: it claimed to be the wisdom of the ancients, and to disclose the ideal value lying behind the letter of all mysteries, myths, and religious ordinances.
I am convinced that the Christian Gnostics, with whom the Tertullian type were in constant conflict, really did know much that they claimed, and that had they not been trampled out of the light of day Europe would never have sunk into the melancholy, well-designated Dark Ages.
Gnostic emblems have been found abundantly in Ireland: the Pythagorean or Gnostic symbol known as the pentagon or Solomon's seal occurs on British coins,[84] and the Bardic literature of Wales is deeply steeped with a Gnostic mysticism for which historians find it difficult to account.
The facts which I shall adduce in the following pages are sufficiently curious to permit the hope that they may lead a few of us to become less self-complacent, and in the words of the author of _Ancient Britain_ relative to aboriginal Britons, "to think more of those primitive ancestors.
In some things we have sunk below their level.
"[85] FOOTNOTES: [39] _Words and Places._ [40] Schliemann, _Mykenæ_.
[41] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_.
[42] _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire._ [43] _Ancient Britain_, p. 70.
[44] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 135.
[45] Johnston, Rev.
James B., _The Place-names of England and Wales_, 1915, p. 321.
The Horse-lie-down theory is enunciated by Sir Walter Besant.
[46] Preface to _The Place-names of Oxfordshire_.
[47] 1915.
[48] _Cf._ Bonwick, J., _Irish Druids_, p. 278.
[49] Virchow, intro.
to Schliemann, _Ilios_ XII.
[50] _Cf._ _Brittany_, p. 28.
[51] Clodd, Ed., _The Story of Primitive Man_, 9, 18.
[52] Sweet, H., _The History of Language_, p. vi.
[53] _The Principles of Comparative Philology._ [54] Even after Troy had been discovered by Schliemann, Max Müller maintained his belief that the Siege of Troy was a Sun and Dawn myth.
[55] _Alphana_ vient d'_equus_, sans doute, Mais il faut avouer aussi Qu'en venant de là jusqu'ici Il a bien changé sur la route.
[56] Westropp, T. J., _Proc.
R. Irish Acad._, xxxiv., C., 8, p. 159.
[57] Dallas, H. A.
[58] Norwood, J. W. [59] Such obvious concoctions of the study as _exsufflicate_, _deracinate_, _incarnadine_, etc., never strike root or survive.
[60] Petrie, W. M. F., _The Formation of the Alphabet_, p. 3.
[61] _A Book of the Beginnings_, 1, p. 136.
[62] _Lectures on the English Language_, 1862, p. 16.
[63] Quoted from _ibid._, p. 30.
[64] The _Edin_ of the prehistoric British _Dun edin_, now Edinburgh, has been calmly misappropriated to a supposed _Edwin_.
[65] _Ancient Britain_, pp.
273, 283.
[66] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft._ [67] Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_, p. 304.
[68] Cloudesley Brereton, in _The Quest_.
[69] _Luniolatry_, p. 2.
[70] _Ancient Britain_, p. 298.
[71] This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who maintained that God could never forgive an actor because Christ said: _No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature_; a statement which the actor impiously falsified by wearing high heeled boots.
Commenting upon _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, _The Expository Times_ very courteously observed: "To the reader of the Bible its worth is more than to all others, for the Bible is full of symbols and we have lost their language.
We are very prosaic.
The writers of the Old Testament and of the New were very imaginative.
Between us there is a gulf fixed of which we are aware only in unquiet moments."
[72] "There must have been a time when a simple instinct for poetry was possessed by all nations as it still is by uncivilised races and children.
Among European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever.
We can name neither a mountain nor a flower."--Prof.
Weekley, _Romance of Words_.
"Who did first name the flowers?
Who first gave them, not their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fanciful, poetic, rustic ones, that run so curiously alike in all the vulgar tongues?
Who first called the lilies of the valley the Madonna's tears?
the wild blue hyacinth, St. Dorothy's flower?
the starry passiflora, the Passion of Christ; who named them all first, in the old days that are forgotten?
All the poets that ever the world has known might have been summoned together for the baptism of the flowers, and have failed to name them half so well as popular tradition has done long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still make all the world akin."--Anon.
[73] "This pretty name (which Fitzgerald, _History of Limerick_, vol.
i., p. 320, calls the River Dawn) arose from a change of Samhair or Samer to Caimher, 'the daybreak,' or 'Morning Star'".--Westropp, T. J., _Proc.
of Royal Irish Acad._, xxxiii., C. 2, p. 13.
[74] The peculiar temperament of "us moderns alone" is, I am afraid, more acutely diagnosed by Prof. Weekley, in _Surnames_, where he observes: "The 'practical man,' when his attention is accidentally directed to the starry sky, appraises that terrific spectacle with a non-committal grunt: but he would receive with a positive snort any suggestion that the history of European civilisation is contained in the names of his friends and acquaintances.
Still, even the practical man, if he were miraculously gifted with the power of interpreting surnames, could hardly negotiate the length of Oxford Street on a motor-bus without occasionally marvelling and frequently chuckling."
[75] Coneybeare, Dr. F. C., _The Historical Christ_, p. 19.
[Italics mine.]
The views of Dr. Coneybeare may be connoted with those of his fellow-cleric, the Rev.
H. C. Christmas: "The astrotheology into which Egyptian fables are ultimately resolved having taken animals as symbols, soon elevated those symbols in the minds of the people at large into real divinities.
The signs of the zodiac were worshipped, and the constellations not in that important circle did not go without adoration.
Various stars became noted as rising or setting at particular seasons, and serving as marks of time; while the physical circumstances of the animal creation gave an easy means of naming the stars and constellations, and thus connected natural history with the symbolical theology of the times....
In their [the Egyptians'] view the earth was but 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."
--_Universal Mythology_, 1838, p. 19.
[76] Quoted from Wentz, W. D. Y., _The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_.
[77] "The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that have been preserved by the petrifying past must be wellnigh invincible when a man like Prof. Jowett could say, as if with the voice of superstition in its dotage: '_To us the preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we date all things; beyond which we neither desire, nor are able, to inquire_.'"
--Massey, G., _The Logic of the Lord_, 1897.
[78] Harrison, Miss Jane, _Ancient Art and Ritual_, pp.
192-3.
[79] A bogey of the present Bishop of London is not "no crops" but "no foreign monarchs".
_The Daily Chronicle_ of 13th May, 1914, reports his Lordship as saying: "If the British Empire was not to be disgraced by the heart of London becoming pagan, _his fund must be kept going_."
[Italics mine.]
"Once religion went, everything else went; it would be good-bye to the visits of foreign monarchs to London, because Londoners would have disgraced the Empire and themselves before the whole world."
[80] The "celebrated but infamous" Petronius, surnamed Arbiter, philosophised in the first century to the following up-to-date effect:-Fear made the first divinities on earth The sweeping flames of heaven; the ruined tower, Scathed by its stroke.
The softly setting sun, The slow declining of the silver moon, And its recovered beauty.
Hence the signs Known through the world, and the swift changing year, Circling divided in its varied months.
Hence rose the error.
Empty folly bade The wearied husbandman to Ceres bring The first fair honours of his harvest fields To gird the brow of Bacchus with the palm, And taught how Pales, 'mid the shepherd bands, Stood and rejoiced, how Neptune in the flood Plunged deep, and ruled the ever-roaring tide; How Vallas reigned o'er earth's stupendous caves Mightily.
He who vowed and he who reaped With eager contest, made their gods themselves.
[81] The intelligible forms of ancient poets The fair humanities of old religion The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain Or forest or slow stream, or pebbly spring Our chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished They live no longer in the faith of reason.
--COLERIDGE.
[82] There is, of course, no novelty in these ideas, which are merely a recrudescence and restatement of the notions to which Plutarch thus alludes:-"We shall also get our hands on the dull crowd, who take pleasure in associating the ideas about these gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout....
They should take very good heed, and be apprehensive lest unwittingly they write off the sacred mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams and sowings and ploughings and passions of earth and changes of seasons."
[83] "The Gnostic movement began long before the Christian era (what its original historical impulse was we do not know), and only one aspect of it, and that from a strictly limited point of view, has been treated by ecclesiastical historians."
--Lamplugh, Rev.
F., _The Gnosis of the Light_, 1918, p. 10.
[84] Holmes, Rice, _Ancient Britain_, p. 295.
[85] _Ibid._, p. 373.
CHAPTER III A TALE OF TROY Upon the Syrian sea the people live, Who style themselves Phoenicians, These were the first great founders of the world-Founders of cities and of mighty states-Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned To each his first department; they bestowed Of land a portion and of sea a lot, And sent each wandering tribe far off to share A different soil and climate.
Hence arose The great diversity, so plainly seen, 'Mid nations widely severed.
--DYONYSIUS of Susiana, A.D. 300.
It is a modern axiom that the ancient belief expressed in the above extract has no foundation in fact, and that the Phoenicians, however far-spread may have been their commercial enterprise, never extended their voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
It is conceded that it would be easy to demonstrate in Britain the elaborate machinery of sun-worship, if only it could be shown that there were at any time intimate and direct relations between Britain and Phoenicia.
The historical evidence, such as it is, of this once-supposed connection, having been weighed and found wanting, the present teaching is thus expressed: "But what of the Phoenicians, and where do they come in?
It is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can ill afford to part with any fragment of its diminished archæological patrimony; but it must be said without reserve or qualification: the Phoenicians do not come in at all.
"[86] But before bidding a final and irrevocable adieu to Tyre and Tarshish, one is entitled to inquire whence and how Phoenician or Hebrew words and place-names reached this country, particularly on the western coasts.
The cold-shouldering of Oriental words has not extinguished their existence, and although these changelings may no longer find an honoured home in our Dictionaries, the terms themselves have survived the ignominy of their expulsion and are as virile to-day as hitherto.
The English language, based upon an older stratum of speech and perpetually assimilating new shades of sense, has descended in direct ancestry from the Welsh or Kymbric, and Kymbric, still spoken to-day, has come down to us in verbal continuity from immemorial ages prior to the Roman invasion.
It was at one time supposed that of the Celtic sister-tongues the Irish or Gaelic was the more ancient, but according to the latest opinion, "In the vocabularies of the two languages where strict phonetic tests of origin can be applied it is found that the borrowing is mainly on the side of the Irish".
[87] The identities between Welsh and Hebrew are so close and pressing that from time to time claims have been put forward that the old Welsh actually _was_ Hebrew.
"It would be difficult," said Margoliouth, "to adduce a single article or form of construction in the Hebrew Grammar, but the same is to be found in Welsh, and there are many whole sentences in both languages exactly the same in the very words".
[88] Entire sentences of archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish language, and there are "several thousand words of Hebrew origin" in the Erse or Gaelic.
According to Vallencey, "the language of the early inhabitants of Ireland was a compound of Hebrew and Phoenician,"[89] and this statement would appear to be substantiated by the curious fact that in 1827 the Bible Societies presented Hebrew Bibles to the native Irish in preference to those printed in English, as it was found that the Irish peasants understood Hebrew more readily than English.
[90] Is it conceivable that these identities of tongue are due to chance, or that the terms in point permeated imperceptibly overland to the farthest outposts of the Hebrides?
It is a traditional belief that the district now known as Cornwall had at some period commercial relations with an overseas people, referred to indifferently as "Jews," "Saracens," or "Finicians".
That certain of the western tin mines were farmed by Jews within the historic period is a fact attested by Charters granted by English kings, notably by King John; yet there is a tradition among Cornish tinners that the "Saracens," a term still broadly applied to any foreigner, were not allowed to advance farther than the coast lest they should discover the districts whence the tin was brought.
The entire absence of any finds of Phoenician coins is an inference that this tradition is well founded, for it is hardly credible that had the "Finicians" penetrated far inland or settled to any extent in the country, some of their familiar coins would not have come to light.
The casual or even systematic visits of mere merchants will not account for integral deep-seated identities.
The Greeks had a powerful settlement at Marseilles centuries before Cæsar's time, yet the vicinity of these Greek traders, although it may have exercised some social influences upon arts and habits, did not effect any permanent impression on the language, religion, or character of the Gaulish nation.
One is thus impelled to the conclusion that the resemblances between British and Phoenician are deeper seated than hitherto has been supposed, and that it may have been due to both peoples having descended from, or borrowed from, some common source.
The Phoenicians, though so great and enterprising a people, have left no literature; and it is thus impossible to compare their legends and traditions with our own.
With Crete the same difficulty exists, as at present her script is indecipherable, and no one knows positively the name of a single deity of her Pantheon.
There is no historic record of any intercourse between the British and the Greeks, but both Irish and British traditions specify the Ægean as the district whence their first settlers arrived.
Tyndal, the earliest translator of the Greek Testament into English, asserts that "The Greek agreeth more with the English than the Latin, and the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin".
Happily Greece possesses a literature, and one may thus compare the legends of Greece with those of our own country.
An Hellenic author of the first century is thus rendered by Sir John Rhys:[91] "Demetrius further said that of the islands round Britain many lie scattered about uninhabited, of which some are named after deities and heroes.
He told us also that being sent by the Emperor with the object of reconnoitring and inspecting, he went to the island which lay nearest to those uninhabited, and found it occupied by few inhabitants who were, however, sacrosanct and inviolable in the eyes of the Britons....
There is there, they said, an island in which Cronus is imprisoned with Briareus, keeping guard over him as he sleeps, for as they put it--sleep is the bond forged for Cronus.
They add that around him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants.
"[92] It is remarkable that Greek mythology was thus familiar to the supposedly blue-painted savages of Britain.
Nor is the instance solitary, for at Bradford a Septennial festival used to be held in honour of Jason and the Golden Fleece,[93] and at Achill in Ireland there is a custom which seemingly connects Achill and Achilles.
Pausanias tells the tale of young Achilles attired in female garb and living among maidens, and to this day the peasantry of Achill Island on the north-west coast of Ireland dresses its boys as girls for the supposed purpose of deceiving a boy-seeking devil.
[94] Are these and other coincidences which will be adduced due to chance, to independent working of the primitive mind, or to intercourse with a maritime people who were not restricted by the Pillars of Hercules?
The exit of the Phoenicians has created a dilemma which impels Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie to inquire: "By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain between 1500 B.C.
and 1400 B.C.?
Certainly not the Phoenicians.
The sea-traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans.
Whether or not their merchants visited England we have no means of knowing.
"[95] There are, however, sure and certain sources of information if one looks into the indelible evidence of fairy-tales, monuments, language, traditions, and place-names.
Ammianus Marcellinus records that it was a traditional belief among the Gauls that "a few Trojans fleeing from the Greeks and dispersed occupied these places then uninhabited".
[96] The similar tradition pervading early British literature we shall consider in due course and detail.
This legend runs broadly that Bru or Brutus, after sailing for thirty days and thirty nights, landed at Totnes, whence after slaying the giant Gogmagog and his followers he marched to Troynovant or New Troy now named London.
It was generally believed that this supposed fiction was a fabrication by Geoffrey of Monmouth, but it was subsequently discovered in the historical poems of Tyssilia, a Welsh Bard.
According to a poem attributed to Taliesin, the semi-mythical "Chief of the Bards of the West," whose reputation Sir J. Morris Jones has recently so brilliantly resuscitated,[97] "A numerous race, fierce, they are said to have been, were thy original colonists Britain first of Isles.
Natives of a country in Asia, and the city of Gafiz.
Said to have been a skilful people, but the district is unknown which was mother to these children, warlike adventurers on the sea.
Clad in their long dress who could equal them?
Their skill is celebrated, they were the dread of Europe."
According to the Welsh Triads the first-comer to these islands was not Bru, but a mysterious and mighty Hu: "The first of the three chieftains who established the colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original settlers.
They came over the hazy sea from the summer country, which is called Deffrobani; that is where Constantinople now stands.
"[98] Although, as will subsequently be seen, Hu and Bru were seemingly one and the same, it is not to be supposed that Britain can have been populated from one solitary shipload of adventurers; argosy after argosy must have reached these shores.
The name Albion suggests Albania, and in due course I shall connect not only Giant Alban, but also the Lady Albion and the fairy Prince Albion with Albania, Albany, and "Saint" Alban.
The Albanian Greek is still characterised by hardihood, activity, bodily strength, and simplicity of living; and there is unquestionably some connection between the highlanders of Albania and the highlanders of Albany who, up to a few hundred years ago, used to rush into battle with the war-cry of "Albani!
Albani!"
By the present-day Turk the Albanians are termed Arnaouts.
[99] Whether this name has any connection with _argonauts_ is immaterial, as the historic existence of argonauts and argosies is a matter of fact, not fancy.
A typical example of the primitive argosies is recorded in the British Chronicles where the arrival of Hengist and Horsa is described.
Layamon's _Brut_ attributes to Hengist the following statement:-"Our race is of a fertile stock, more quick and abounding than any other you may know, or whereof you have heard speak.
Our folk are marvellously fruitful, and the tale of the children is beyond measure.
Women and men are more in number than the sand, for the greater sorrow of those amongst us who are here.
When our people are so many that the land may not sustain nor suffice them, then the princes who rule the realm assemble before them all the young men of the age of fifteen and upwards, for such is our use and custom.
From out of these they choose the most valiant and the most strong, and, casting lots, send them forth from the country, so that they may travel into divers lands, seeking fiefs and houses of their own.
Go out they must, since the earth cannot contain them; for the children come more thickly than the beasts which pasture in the fields.
Because of the lot that fell upon us we have bidden farewell to our homes, and putting our trust in Mercury, the god has led us to your realm."
In all probability this is a typical and true picture of the perennial argosies which periodically and persistently fared forth from Northern Europe and the Mediterranean into the Unknown.
The Saxons came here peaceably; they were amicably received, and it would be quite wrong to imagine the early immigrations as invasions involving any abrupt breach in place-names, customs, and traditions.
Of the Greeks, Prof.
Bury says: "They did not sweep down in a great invading host, but crept in, tribe by tribe, seeking not political conquest but new lands and homesteads".
At the time of Cæsar the tribe occupying the neighbourhood of modern London were known as the Trinovantes,[100] and as these people can hardly be supposed to have adopted their title for the purpose of flattering a poetic fiction in far Wales, the name Trinovant lends some support to the Bardic tradition that London was once termed Troy Novant or New Troy.
Argonauts of a later day christened their new-found land New York, and this unchangingly characteristic tendency of the emigrant no doubt accounts for the perplexing existence of several cities each named "Troy".
That many shiploads of young argonauts from one or another Troy reached the coasts of Cornwall is implied by the fact that in Cornwall _tre's_ were seemingly so numerous that _tre_ became the generic term for home or homestead.
It is proverbial that by _tre_, _pol_, and _pen_, one may know the Cornish men.
[Illustration: FIG.
8.--Welsh Shepherd's "Troy Town."
From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E.
O.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
9.--Cretan maze-coins and British mazes at Winchester, Alkborough, and Saffron Walden.
From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E.
O.).
[_To face p. 87._] Borlase, in his glossary of Cornish words, gives both _tre_ and _dre_ as meaning dwelling; the Welsh for Troy is Droia, the Greek was Troie, and this invariable interchange of _t_ and _d_ is again apparent in _derry_, the Irish equivalent for the Cornish _tre_.
The standard definition of _true_ is _firm_ or _certain_; whence it may appear that the primeval "Troys" were, so to speak, the permanent addresses of the wandering families and tribes.
These _Troys_ or _trues_ were maybe caves--whence _trou_, the French for hole or cave; maybe the foot of a big tree, preferably the sacred oak-tree, which was alike sacred in Albion and Albania.
_Tree_ is the same word as _true_, and _dru_, the Sanscrit for tree, is the same word as _dero_ or _derry_, the Irish for oak tree, as in London_derry_, Kil_dare_, etc.
The Druids have been generally supposed to have derived their title of _Druid_ from the _drus_ or oak tree under which they worshipped, but it is far more probable that the tree was named after the Druids, and that _druid_ (the accusative and dative of _drui_, a magician or sorcerer), is radically the Persian _duru_, meaning _a good holy man_, the Arabic _deri_, meaning _a wise man_.
[101] But apart from the generic term _tre_ or _dre_ there are numerous "Troy Towns" and "Draytons" in Britain.
Part of Rochester is called Troy Town, which may be equated with the _Duro-_ of _Duro_brevis the ancient name of Rochester.
There is a river Dray in Thanet and the ancient name for Canterbury was _Duro_vern.
Seemingly all over Britain the term Troy Town was applied to the turf-cut mazes of the downs and village greens, and the hopscotch of the London urchin is said to be the Troy game of the Welsh child.
In London, _tempus_ Edward II., a military ride and tournament used to be performed by the young men of the royal household on every Sunday during Lent.
[102] This also so-called Troy game had obviously some relation to the ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil:-In equal bands the triple troops divide, Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low, Charge at the call.
Now back again they ride, Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro, In armed similitude of martial show, Circling and intercircling.
Now in flight They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe, Level their lances to the charge, now plight The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite.
E'en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old Between blind walls its secret hid from view, With wildering ways and many a winding fold, Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true, Roamed unreturning, cheated of the clue; Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign Fighting, or flying, and the game renew; So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane, Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya's main.
These feats Ascanius to his people showed, When girdling Alba Longa; there with joy The ancient Latins in the pastime rode, Wherein the princely Dardan, as a boy, Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ.
To Alban children from their sires it came, And mighty Rome took up the "game of Troy," And called the players "Trojans," and the name Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.
[103] In Welsh _tru_ means a twisting or turning, and this root is at the base of _tourney_ and _tournament_.
One might account for the courtly jousts of the English Court by the erudition and enterprise of scholars and courtiers, but when we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate Welsh shepherd and a Troy game being played by the uneducated peasant, the question naturally arises, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
In the Scilly Islands there is a Troy Town picked out in stones which the natives scrupulously restore and maintain: in the words of Miss Courtney, "All intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I have even heard nurses say to children, when they were surrounded by a litter of toys, that they looked as if they were in Troy Town".
[104] In the _Æneid_ Virgil observes that "Tyrians and Trojans shall I treat as one".
Apart from Tyrians and Trojans the term Tyrrheni or Tyrseni was applied to the Etrurians--a people the mystery of whose origin is one of the unsolved riddles of archæology.
It was Etruria that produced not only Dante, but also a galaxy of great men such as no other part of Europe has presented.
In Etruria woman was honoured as nowhere else in Europe except, perhaps, in Crete and among the Kelts; and in Etruria--as in Crete--religion was veiled under an "impenetrable cloud of mysticism and symbolism".
It is supposed that Etruria derived much from the prehistoric Greeks who dwelt in Albania and worshipped Father Zeus in the sacred derrys or oak-groves of Dodona.
The Etrurians and Greeks were unquestionably of close kindred, and it would seem from their town of Albano and their river Albanus that the Etrurians similarly venerated St. Alban or Prince Albion.
The capital of Etruria was Tarchon, so named after the Etruscan Zeus, there known as Tarchon.
In the Introduction to _The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, Dennis points out that for ages the Etruscans were lords of the sea, rivalling the Phoenicians in enterprise; founding colonies in the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea "even on the coast of Spain where Tarragona (in whose name we recognise that of Tarchon) appears to have been one of their settlements--a tradition confirmed by its ancient fortifications.
Nay, the Etruscans would fain have colonised the far 'islands of the blest' in the Atlantic Ocean, probably Madeira or one of the Canaries, had not the Carthaginians opposed them."
The title _Madeira_, which is radically _deira_, might imply an origin from either Tyre or Troy, and if place-names have any significance it seems probable the Etrurians reached even our remote Albion.
One may recognise Targon as at Tarragona in Pentargon, the sonorous, resounding title of a mighty pen or headland near Tintagel, and it is not unlikely Tarchon or Tarquin survives in giant Tarquin who is popularly associated with Cumberland and the North of England.
In Arthurian legend it is seemingly this same Tarquin that figures as Sir Tarquin, a false knight who was the enemy of the Round Table and a sworn foe to Lancelot: "They hurtled together like two wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their shields and swords, that sometimes they fell both over their noses.
Thus they fought still two hours and more and never would have rest.
"[105] It will become increasingly evident as we proceed that _tur_ or _true_ served frequently as an adjective, meaning firm, constant, _dur_able, and _eter_nal, and that it is thus used in the name _Tar_chon, _Tra_jan, or _Tro_jan.
One may thus modernise Tarchon into the Eternal John, Jean, or Giant, and it is seemingly this same giant that figured as the John, Joan, or Old Joan of Cornish festivals.
In the civic functions at Salisbury and elsewhere, the elementary giant figures simply as "Giant".
Although the Cornish for _giant_ was _geon_, the authorities--I think wrongly--translate Inisidgeon, an islet in the Scillies, as having meant _inis_ or island of _St.
John_.
Near Pentargon is the Castle of King Arthur, which, before being known as Tintagel, was named Dunechein or the _dun_ of _chein_.
At Durovern (now Canterbury) is a large tumulus known as the _Dane John_, and on the heights behind St. Just in Cornwall is _Chun_ Castle.
[106] This is a noble specimen of Cyclopean architecture, and appears to be parallel in style of building with the Cyclopean architecture of Etruria.
Similarly, in the Dune Chein neighbourhood may be seen Cyclopean and "herring-bone" walls, which seemingly do not differ from those of Crete and Etruria.
At Winchelsea in Sussex are the foundations and the doorway of an ancient building known as "Trojans or Jews' Hall," but of the history of these ruins nothing whatever is known.
There is, however, little if any doubt that Trojan or Tarchon was an alternative title of the Etrurian Jonn, Jupiter, or Jou, and that to the Cretan Jou the Greeks added their _piter_ or father, making thereby Jupiter or Father Jou.
Jou was the title of a kingly dynasty in Crete, but the custom of royal dynasties taking their title from the All Father likened to the Sun is so constant as almost to constitute a rule.
The word _Jew_, when pronounced _yew_, will be considered subsequently; it may here be pointed out that _Jay_, _Gee_, and _Joy_ are common surnames, query, once tribal names in Britain.
Near Penzance is Marazion or Market Jew, and it may be suggested that the traditional Cornish "Jews" were pre-Phoenician followers of the Cretan Jou.
With Market-Jew one may connote Margate, which, as will be shown later, was probably in its origin--like Marazion or Mara San--a port of _mer_, or _mère_, the generic terms for _sea_ and _mother_.
It is a well-recognised fact that Brittany, Cornwall, and Wales spoke more or less the same tongue, and according to Cæsar in his time there was little or no difference between the languages of Gaul and Britain.
As will also be seen later it is probable that the words _mer_ and _mère_, and the names Maria and Marie, are radically _rhi_, the Celtic for _lady_ or _princess_; that _Rhea_, the Mother-Goddess of Crete, is simply _rhia_, the Gælic and the Welsh for _queen_, and that Maria meant primarily Mother Queen, or Mother Lady.
The early forms of Marazion figure as _Marhasyon_, _Marhasion_, etc.
Among the Basques of Spain _jaun_ meant lord or master; in British _chun_ or _cun_ meant _mighty chief_,[107] whence it is probable that the name Tarchon meant _Eternal Chief_ or _Eternal Lord_, and this anonymity would accord with the custom which most anciently prevailed at Dodona.
"In early times," says Herodotus, "the Pelasgi, as I know by information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds and prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names and appellations for them, since they had never heard of any.
They called them gods (_theoi_) because they had disposed and arranged all things in such a beautiful order.
"[108] The eternal Chon or Jonn of Etruria may be recognised Latinised in Janus, the most ancient deity of Rome or _Jan_icula, and we may perhaps find him not only in John of Cornwall but among the innumerable Jones of Wales.
The Ionians or Greeks of Ionia worshipped _Ione_, the Holy Dove, whence they are said to have derived their title.
In Greek, _ione_, in Hebrew, _juneh_, means a _dove_, and the Scotch island of Iona is indelibly permeated with stories and traditions of St. Columba or Columbkille, the Little Dove of the Church.
The dove was the immemorial symbol of Rhea, and it is highly probable that it was originally connected with the place-name Reculver, of which the root is unknown, but "has been influenced by Old English _culfre_, _culver_, a culver dove or wood pigeon".
[109] In Cornwall there is a St. Columb Major and St. Columb Minor, where the dedication is to a virgin of this name, and on the coast of Thanet the shoal now called Columbine, considered in conjunction with the neighbouring place-names Roas Bank and Rayham, may be assumed to be connected with Rhea's sacred Columbine or Little Dove.
A neighbouring spit is marked Cheney Spit, and close at hand are Cheyney Rocks.
There is thus some probability that Great Cheyne Court, Little Cheyne Court, Old Cheyne Court, New Cheyne Court, and the Kentish surname Joynson have all relation to the mysterious ruin "Trojans or Jews Hall".
[Illustration: FIG.
10.--From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]
[Illustration: FIG.
11.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_ (Dennis, G.).]
Fig.
11 shows the Goddess of Etruria holding her symbolic _columba_, in Fig.
10, the same emblem worshipped in Assyria is being carried with pomp and circumstance, and Fig.
12 shows the columba, _tur_tle, or _tor_tora, being similarly honoured in Western Europe.
"Throughout the Ægean," says Prof. Burrows, "we see traces of the Minoan Empire, in one of the most permanent of all traditions the survival of a place-name; the word Minoa, wherever it occurs, must mark a fortress or trading station of the Great King as surely as the Alexandrias, or Antiochs, or Cæsareas of later days.
"[110] [Illustration: FIG.
12.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
If a modern place-name be valid evidence in the Mediterranean, the place-name Minnis Bay between Margate and Reculver has presumably a similar weight, particularly as a few miles further round the coast is a so-called Minnis Rock.
Here is an ancient hermitage consisting of a three-mouthed cave measuring precisely 9 feet deep.
King Minos of Crete held his kingship on a tenure of nine years, and the number nine is peculiarly identified with the idea of _Troy_, _true_, or permanent.
In Hebrew, truth and nine are represented by one and the same term, because nine is so extraordinarily true or constant to itself, that 9 × 9 = 81 = 9, 9 × 2 = 18 = 9, and so from nine times one to nine times nine.
In Crete there were no temples, but worship was conducted around small caves situated in the side of hills.
This is precisely the position of Minnis Rock which is situated in a valley running up from Hastings to St. Helens.
"It is," says the local guide-book, "one of the few rock cells in the country, and though almost choked with earth and rubbish is still worth inspection.
The three square-headed openings were the entrances to the separate chambers of the cave, which went back 9 feet into the rock.
It is surmised that the Hermitage was used as a chapel or oratory, dedicated probably to St. Mary, or some other saint beloved of those who go down to the sea in ships.
Many such chapels existed in olden times within sight and sound of the waves, and passing vessels lowered their topsails to them in reverence.
Torquay, Broadstairs, Dover, Reculver, Whitby, and other places in England had similar oratories.
"[111] The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians believed in a Hierarchy of Nine Great Gods.
Minos of Crete was not merely one of a line of mighty sea-kings, but Greek mythology asserts that Minos was the son of Zeus, _i.e._, Jonn or Tarchon.
In a subsequent chapter we shall consider him at length, but meanwhile it may be noted that it is not unlikely that the whole of Eastern Kent was known as Minster, Minosterre, or Minos Terra.
There are several Minsters in Sheppey, and another Minster together with a Mansion near Margate.
The generic terms _minster_ and _monastery_ may be assigned to the ministers of Minos originally congregating in cells or _trous_ or in groves under and around the oaks or other similarly sacred trees.
Troy, or as Homer terms it, "sacred Troy," was pre-eminently a city of _towers_, _tourelles_, _turrets_, or _tors_, and in the West of England _tor_, as in Torquay, Torbay, etc., is ubiquitous.
Tory Island, off the coast of Ireland, is said to have derived its title from the numerous torrs upon it.
The same word is prevalent throughout Britain, but there are no torrs at Sindry Island in Essex nor at _Tre_port in the English Channel.
In the Semitic languages _tzur_, meaning rock, is generally supposed to be the root of Tyre, and in the Near East tor is a generic term for mountain chain.
Speaking of princely Tyre, Ezekiel says, "Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs".
[112] Tarshish is usually considered to have been the western coast of the Mediterranean afterwards called Gaul, in later times Spain and France, and undoubtedly the men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, toured, trekked, travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and wide.
Etrurian vases have been disinterred in Tartary and also, it is said, from tumuli in Norway, yet as Mrs. Hamilton Gray observes: "We believe that they were never made in those countries, and that the Tartars and Norwegians never worshipped, and possibly never even knew the names of the gods and heroes thereon represented".
[113] These vases more often than not depicted incidents of Trojan legend, and of that famous Troy whose exploits in the words of Virgil "fired the world".
The Tyrians conceived their chief god Hercules or Harokel as a bagman or merchant, and in Phoenician the word _harokel_ meant merchant.
Our own term _merchant_[114] is etymologically akin to Mercury, the god of merchants, and as _mere_ among other meanings meant pure or true, it is not unlikely that _merchant_ was once the intellectual equivalent to Tarchon or True John.
In the West of England the adjective "jonnock" still means true, straightforward, generous, unselfish, and companionable.
[115] The adjective _chein_ still used by Jews means very much the same as _jonnock_, with, however, the additional sense of the French _chic_.
Jack is the diminutive endearing form of John, and the Etruscan Joun is said to have been the Hebrew _Jack_ or _Iou_.
[116] Joun or his consort Jana was in all probability the divinity of the Etruscan river Chiana, and Giant or Giantess Albion the divinity of the neighbouring river Albinia.
Close to Market Jew or Marazion is a village called Chyandour, where is a well named Gulfwell, meaning, we are told, the "Hebrew brook".
It is still a matter of dispute whether the Jews shipped their tin from _Market_ Jew or overland from Thanet (_?
Margate_[117]).
From the word _tariff_, a Spanish and Arabian term connected with Tarifa, the southernmost town in Spain, it would seem that the dour and daring traders who carried on their traffic with Market Jew and Margate toured with a _tarifa_ or price-list.
Doubtless the tariff charges were commensurate with the risks involved, for only too frequently, as is stated in the Psalms, "the ships of Tarshish were broken with an east wind".
To _try_ a boat means to-day to bring her head to the gale, and in Somersetshire small ships are still entitled _trows_, a word evidently akin to _trough_.
[Illustration: FIG.
13] The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules the Great Merchant in a kilt, and this seemingly was a _tar_tan or French _tiretaine_.
Speaking of certain figures unearthed at Tarchon, Dennis remarks: "The drapery of the couches is particularly worthy of notice, being marked with stripes of different colours crossing each other as in the Highland plaid; and those who are learned in tartanology might possibly pronounce which of the Macs has the strongest claim to an Etruscan origin".
[118] Fig.
13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley's _Symbolism of the East and West_, is taken from a fragment of pottery found in what is believed to be a pre-Etruscan cemetery at Bologna in Italy.
It might be a portrait of Hendry or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with a target, and trekking off with two terriers.
_Terre_, or _terra firma_, the earth, is the same as _true_, meaning firm or constant.
According to Skeat the present form of the verb _tarry_ is due to _tarien_, _terien_, "to irritate, provoke, worry, vex; hence to hinder, delay".
Having "tarried" an order there was, it may be, still further "tarrying" on presentation of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the author of _The Odyssey_ had been personally "tarried" for he refers feelingly to-A shrewd Phoenician, in all fraud adept, Hungry, and who had num'rous harm'd before, By whom I also was cajoled, and lured T' attend him to Phoenicia, where his house And his possessions lay; there I abode A year complete his inmate; but (the days And months accomplish'd of the rolling year And the new seasons ent'ring on their course) To Lybia then, on board his bark, by wiles He won me with him, partner of the freight Profess'd, but destin'd secretly to sale, That he might profit largely by my price.
Not unsuspicious, yet constrain'd to go, With this man I embark'd.
The hero of _The Odyssey_ was, self-confessedly, no tyro, but was himself "in artifice well framed and in imposture various".
Admittedly he "utter'd prompt not truth, but figments to truth opposite, for guile in him stood never at a pause".
[119] Obviously he was a sailor to the bone, and when he says, "I boast me sprung from ancestry renowned in spacious Crete," with the additional statement that at one time he was an Admiral of Crete, it is possible we are in face of a fragment of genuine autobiography.
Doubtless, as our traditions state, the first adventurers on the sea who reached these shores were oft-times _terrors_ and "the dread of Europe".
To the Tyrrhenes may probably be assigned the generic term _tyrranos_ which, however, meant primarily not a tyrant as now understood, but an autocrat or lord.
"Clad in their long dress who could equal them?"
wondered a British Bard, and it may be that the long robes figured herewith are the very moulds of form which created such a powerful impression among our predecessors.
The word _attire_ points to the possibility that at one time Tyre set the fashions for the latest _tire_, and like modern Paris fired the contemporary world of dress.
In connection with the word _dress_, which is radically _dre_, it is noticeable that the Britons were conspicuously dressy men; indeed, Sir John Rhys, discussing the term Briton, Breton, or Brython, seriously maintains that "the only Celtic words which can be of the same origin are the Welsh vocables _brethyn_, 'cloth and its congeners,' in which case the Britons may have styled themselves 'cloth-clad,' in contradistinction to the skin-wearing neolithic nation that preceded them".
[Illustration: FIG.
14.--From _The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_ (Dennis, G.).]
We know from Homer that the Trojans had a pretty taste in tweeds, and that their waistcoats in particular were subjects of favourable remark:-The enter'd each a bath, and by the hands Of maidens laved, and oil'd, and cloath'd again With shaggy mantles, and _resplendent vests_, Sat both enthroned at Menelaus' side.
Time does not alter the radical characteristics of any race, and the outstanding qualities of the Britons--the traditional "remnant of Droia," are still very much to-day what they were in the time of Diodorus the Sicilian.
"They are," said he, "of much sincerity and integrity far from the craft and knavery of men among us.
"[120] So great was the Trojan reputation for law and order that the Greeks who owed their code of laws to Crete paid Minos the supreme compliment of making him the Lord Chief Justice of the World of Shades.
It will probably prove that the _droits_, laws, rights, or dues of "Dieu et mon Droit" are traceable to those of Troy, as also perhaps the _Triads_ or triple axioms of the Drui or Druids.
To put a man on trial was originally perhaps to _try_ or test him at the sacred _tree_: the triadic form of ancient maxims had doubtless some relation to the Persian Trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and these three virtues were symbolised by the trefoil or shamrock.
The Hebrew for law is _tora_ or _thorah_, the Hill of _Tara_ in Ireland (middle-Irish, Temair), is popularly associated with the trefoil symbol of the _Tri_nity (Welsh, _Dri_ndod); that _three_, _trois_, or _drei_ was associated by the game of Troy is obvious from Virgil's reference to the "_triple_ groups dividing," and that the trefoil was venerated in Crete would appear from Mr. Mackenzie's statement: "Of special interest, too, is a clover-leaf ornament--an anticipation of the Irish devotion to the shamrock".
[121] The primitive _trysts_ were probably at the old Trysting Trees; _trust_ means reliability and credit and _truce_ means peace.
Among rude nations the men who carried with them Peace, Law, and Order must naturally have been deemed supermen or gods, hence perhaps why in Scandinavia _Tyr_ meant _god_.
Our Thursday is from Thor--a divinity who was sometimes assigned _three_ eyes--and our Tuesday from Tyr, who was supposed to be the Scandinavian Joupiter.
The plural form of Tyr meant "glorious ones," and according to _The Edda_, not only were the Danes and Scandinavians wanderers from Troy or Tyrkland, but Asgard itself--the Scandinavian Paradise--preserved the old usages and customs brought from Troy.
[122] Homer by sidelights indicates that the Trojans were nice in their domestic arrangements, took fastidious care of their attire, and were confirmed lovers of fresh air.
Thus Telemachus-Open'd his broad chamber-valves, and sat On his couch-side: then putting off his vest Of softest texture, placed it in the hands Of the attendant dame discrete, who first Folding it with exactest care, beside His bed suspended it, and, going forth, Drew by its silver ring the portal close, And fasten'd it with bolt and brace secure.
There lay Telemachus, on finest wool Reposed, contemplating all night his course Prescribed by Pallas to the Pylian shore.
[123] The word "Trojan" was used in Shakespeare's time to mean a boon companion, a jonnock _tyro_, or a plucky fellow, and it is worthy of note that the trusty lads of Homer's time passed, as does the Briton of to-day, their liquor scrupulously from left to right:-So spake Jove's daughter; they obedient heard.
The heralds, then, pour'd water on their hands, And the attendant youths, filling the cups, Served them from left to right.
[124] One of the most remarkable marvels of Cretan archæology is the up-to-date drainage system, and that the Tyrrhenians were equally particular is recorded apparently for all time by the Titanic evidence of the still-standing Cloaca Maxima or great main drain of Rome.
The word Troy carries inevitable memories of Helen whose beauty was such utter perfection that "the Helen of one's Troy" has become a phrase.
The name Helen is philologically allied to Helios the Sun, and is generally interpreted to mean _torch_, _shiner_, or _giver of light_.
The Greeks called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen their eponymous divine leader.
Oriental nations termed the Hellenes, Iones, and there is little doubt that Helen and Ione were originally synonymous.
In Etruria was the city of Hellana, and we shall meet St. Helen in Great Britain, from Helenium, the old name for Land's End, to Great St. Helen's and Little St. Helen's in London.
St. Helen, the lone daughter of Old King Cole, the merry old soul, figures in Wales and Cumberland as Elen the Leader of Hosts, whose memory is preserved not only in Elaine the Lily Maid, but also in connection with ancient roadways such as Elen's Road, and Elen's Causeway.
These, suggests Squire, "seem to show that the paths on which armies marched were ascribed or dedicated to her".
[125] Helen's name was seemingly bestowed not only on our rivers, such as the Elen, Alone, or Alne and Allan Water, but it likewise seems to have become the generic term _lan_ meaning _holy enclosure_, entering into innumerable place-names--London[126] among others--which will be discussed in course.
The character in which Helen was esteemed may be judged from the Welsh adjective _alain_, which means "exceeding fair, lovely, bright".
Not only in Wales but also in Ireland _Allen_ seems to have been synonymous with beauty, whence the authorities translate the place-name Derryallen to mean _oakwood beautiful_.
In Arthurian romance Elaine or Elen figures as the sister of Sir Tirre,[127] as the builder of the highest fortress in Arvon, and as sitting _lone_ or _alone_ in a sea-girt castle on a throne of ruddy gold.
It is said that so transcendent was her beauty that it would be no more easy to look into her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays were most irresistible.
It would thus seem that Howel, said to be Elen's brother, may be equated with _hoel_, the Celtic for _Sun_, and that Elen herself, like Diana, was the glorious twin-sister of Helios or Apollo.
The principal relics of St. Helena are possessed by the city of _Treves_, and at _Therapne_ in Greece there was a special sanctuary of Helena the divinely fair daughter of Zeus and a swan.
"Troy weight," so called, originated, it is supposed, from the droits or standards of a famous fair held at Troyes in France.
From time immemorial Crete seems to have been associated with the symbol of the cross.
This pre-Christian Cross of Crete was the equi-limbed Cross of St. John (Irish Shane) which form is also the Red Cross of St. George.
In earlier times this cross was termed the Jack--a familiar form of "the John"--and it was also entitled "the Christopher".
In India the cave temple of Madura, where Kristna[128]-worship is predominant, is cruciform, and the svastika or solar cross, a variant of John's Cross, is in one of its Indian forms known as the _Jaina_ cross and the talisman of the _Jaina_ kings.
"It must never be forgotten," said a prince of the Anglican Church preaching recently at St. Paul's, "that the cross was primarily an instrument of torture."
Among a certain school, who in Apostolic phrase deem themselves of all men most miserable, this conception is firmly fixed and seemingly it ever has been.
It was Calvinistic doctrine that all pain and suffering came from the All Father, and that all pleasure and joy originated from the Evil One.
Thus to Christianity the Latin Cross has been the symbol of misery and the concrete conception of Christian Ideal is the agonised Face of the Old Masters.
This dismal verity was exemplified afresh by the melancholy poster which was recently scattered broadcast over England by the National Mission engineered by the Bishop of London.
Even the Mexican cross, consisting of four hearts _vis a vis_ (Fig.
D)--a form which occurs sometimes in Europe--has been daubed with imaginary gore, and with reference to this inoffensive emblem the author of _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_ complacently writes: "The lady to whom I have just alluded considers (and I think with great propriety) that the circle of crosses formed by groups of four hearts represents hearts sacrificed to the gods; the dot on each signifying blood".
[2] [Illustration: A.
EARLY CELTIC ISLE OF MAN AND IRELAND EARLY CELTIC BRITTANY CALLERNISH, HEBRIDES, restored (380 feet in length.)
B. ETRURIA B. C. CRETE D. MEXICO E. MEXICO FIG.
15.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_ (Brock, M.).]
But we shall meet with these same dots on prehistoric British cross-coins as also on the "spindle whorls" of the most ancient Troy, and it will be seen that, apart from the word _svastika_ which intrinsically means _it is well_, the svastika or pre-Christian cross was an emblem not of Melancholia but Joy.
The English word _joy_ and the French word _jeu_ have, I think, been derived from _Jou_, just as jovial is traceable from Jove, and _joc_und to Jock or Jack.
Pagans were the children of Joy and worshipped with a joyful noise before the Lord, and with sacred _jeux_ or games.
The word _cross_ is in all probability the same as _charis_ which means _charity_, and akin to _chrestos_ which means good.
Cres, the son of Jou, after whom the Cretans were termed Eteocretes, is an elementary form of Christopher, and the burning cross with which the legends state Christopher was tortured by being branded on the brow was more probably the Christofer or Jack--the Fiery Cross, with which irresistible talisman the clansmen of Albany were summoned together.
Similarly the solar wheel of Katherine or The Pure One was supposed by the mediæval monks--whose minds were permanently bent on melancholia and torture--to have been some frightful implement of knives and spikes by which Kate or Kitt, the Pure Maiden, was torn into pieces.
It will be seen in due course that almost every single "torture" sign of the supposed martyrs was in reality the pre-Christian emblem of some pagan divinity whence the saintly legends were ignorantly and mistakenly evolved.
When the Saxon monks came into power, in the manner characteristic of their race, they "tarried" the old British monasteries and sacred mounds, bringing to light many curious and extraordinary things.
At St. Albans they overthrew and filled up all the subterranean crypts of the ancient city as well as certain labyrinthine passages which extended even under the bed of the river.
The most world-famous labyrinth was that at Gnossus which has not yet been uncovered, but every Etrurian place of any import had its accompanying catacombs, and in the chapter on "Dene holes" we shall direct attention to corresponding labyrinths which remain intact in England even to-day.
When pillaging at St. Albans the Saxons found not only anchors, oars, and parts of ships, imputing that St. Albans was once a port, but they also uncovered the foundations of "a vast palace".
"Here," says Wright,[129] "they found a hollow in the wall like a cupboard in which were a number of books and rolls, which were written in ancient characters and language that could only be read by one learned monk named Unwona.
He declared that they were written in the ancient British language, that they contained 'the invocations and rites of the idolatrous citizens of Waertamceaster,' with the exception of one which contained the authentic life of St.
Albans."
And as the Abbot before mentioned "diligently turned up the earth" where the ruins of Verulamium appeared, he found many other interesting things--pots and amphoras elegantly formed of pottery turned on the lathe, glass vessels, ruins of temples, altars overturned, idols, and various kinds of coins.
Many of the jewels and idols then uncovered remained long in the possession of the Abbey, and are scheduled in the Ecclesiastical inventories together with a memorandum of the human weaknesses against which each object was supposed to possess a talismanic value.
Thus Pegasus or Bellerophon is noted as food for warriors, giving them boldness and swiftness in flight; Andromeda as affording power of conciliating love between man and woman; Hercules slaying a lion, as a singular defence to combatants.
The figure of Mercury on a gem rendered the possessor wise and persuasive; a dog and a lion on the same stone was a sovereign remedy against dropsy and the pestilence; and so on and so forth.
"I am convinced," says Wright, "that a large portion of the reliques of saints shown in the Middle Ages, were taken from the barrows or graves of the early population of the countries in which they were shown.
It was well understood that those mounds were of a sepulchral character, and there were probably few of them which had not a legend attached.
When the earlier Christian missionaries and the later monks of Western Europe wished to consecrate a site their imagination easily converted the tenant of the lonely mound into a primitive saint--the tumulus was ransacked and the bones were found--and the monastery or even a cathedral was erected over the site which had been consecrated by the mystics rites of an earlier age.
"[130] After purification by a special form of exorcism the pagan pictures were accepted into Christian service, the designs being construed into Christian doctrines far from the purpose of the things themselves.
[Illustration: FIG.
16.--"Kaadman."
From _Essays on Archæological Subjects_ (Wright, T.).]
Among the monkish loot at St. Albans was an ancient cameo herewith reproduced.
This particular jewel was supposed to be of great efficacy and was entitled _Kaadman_; "perhaps," suggests Wright, "another mode of spelling _cadmeus_ or _cameus_".
But in view of the fact that Alban means _all good_, it was more probably the picture of a sacred figure which the natives recognised as the original Kaadman, _i.e., Guidman_ or the Good Man.
[131] The jewels found at St. Albans being unquestionably Gnostic it is quite within the bounds of probability that the Kaadman seal was an "idol" of what the Gnostics entitled Adam Caedmon or Adam Kadman.
According to C. W. King the Adam Kadman or Primitive Man of Gnosticism, was the generative and conceptive principle of life and heat, Who manifested Himself in ten emanations or types of all creation.
[132] In Irish _cad_ means _holy_; _good_ and _cad_ are the same word, whence Kaadman and the surnames Cadman and Goodman were probably once one.
The word Albon or Albion means as it stands _all good_, or _all well_, and the river Beane, like the river Boyne--over whom presided the beneficent goddess Boanna--means _bien_, good, or _bene_ well.
The Herefordshire Beane was alternatively known as the river _Beneficia_, a name which to the modern etymologer working on standard lines confessedly "yields a curious conundrum".
[133] The Anglo-Saxon Abbot of St. Albans after having assured himself that the idolatrous books before-mentioned proved that the pagan British worshipped Phoebus, and Mercury consigned them to the flames with the same self-complacency as the Monk Patrick burnt 180--some say 300--MSS.
relative to the Irish Druids.
These being deemed "unfit to be transmitted to posterity," posterity is proportionately the poorer.
Phoebus was the British Heol, Howel, or the Sun, and Mercury, was, as Cæsar said, the Hercules of Britain.
The snake-encircled club of Kaadman is the equivalent to the caduceus or snake-twined rod of Mercury; the human image in the hand of Kaadman implies with some probability that "Kaadman" was the All Father or the Maker of Mankind.
We shall see subsequently that the Maker of All was personified as Michael or Mickle, and that St. Mickle and All Angels or All Saints stood for the Great Muckle leading the Mickle--"many a mickel makes a muckle".
St. Michael is the patron saint of Gorhambury, a suburb of St. Albans, and in Christian Art St. Michæl is almost invariably represented with the scales and other attributes of Anubis, the Mercury of Egypt.
Both Anubis of Egypt and Mercury of Rome were connected with the dog, and Anubis was generally represented with the head of a dog or jackal.
In _The Gnostics and their Remains_, King illustrates on plate F a dog or jackal-headed man which is subscribed with the name MICHAH, and it is probable the word _make_ is closely associated with Micah or Mike.
[Illustration: ANUBIS.
FIG.
17.]
[Illustration: FIG.
18.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
Eastern tradition states that St. Christopher, or St.
Kit, was a Canaanitish giant, 12 feet in stature, having the head of a dog.
The kilted figure represented in the Gnostic cameo here illustrated, is seemingly that same Kitman, or Kaadman, Bandog, or Good Dog, and _chien_, the French for dog, Irish _chuyn_, may be equated with _geon_, _geant_, or _giant_.
The worship of the _chien_ was carried in the Near East to such a pitch that a great city named Cynopolis or Dog-Town existed in its honour.
The priests of Cynopolis, who maintained a golden image of their divine _kuon_ or _chien_, termed themselves Kuons, and these _kuons_ or dog-ministers were, according to some authorities, the original Cohen family.
A beautiful relievo of Adonis and his dog has been unearthed at Albano in Etruria; Fig.
13 is accompanied by bandogs(?
); Albania in Asia Minor is mentioned by Maundeville as abounding in fierce dogs, and in Albion, where we still retain memories of the Dog Days, it will be shown to be probable that sacred dogs were maintained near London at the mysteriously named Isle of Dogs.
Until the past fifty years the traditions of this island at Barking were so uncanny that the site remained inviolate and unbuilt over.
Whence, I think, it may originally have been a _kennel_ or _Cynopolis_, where the _kuons_ of the Cantians or Candians were religiously maintained.
[134] We shall deal more fully with the cult and symbolism of the dog in a future chapter entitled "The Hound of Heaven".
Not only in England, but also in Ireland, place-names having reference to the dog are so persistent that Sir J. Rhys surmised the dog was originally a totem in that country.
In connection with _chuyn_, the Irish for dog, it may be noted that one of the titles of St. Patrick--whence all Irishmen are known as Paddies--was Taljean or Talchon, and moreover that Crete was alternatively known to the ancients as Telchinea.
In Cornish and in Welsh _tal_ meant high; in old English it meant valiant, whence Shakespeare says, "Thou'rt a _tall_ fellow"; in the Mediterranean the Maltese _twil_; Arabic _twil_ meant _tall_ and hence we may conclude that the present predominant meaning of our _tall_ was once far spread, Talchon meaning either _tall geon_ or _tall chein_, _i.e._, dog-headed giant Christopher.
The outer inscription around Fig.
18 is described as "altogether barbarous and obscure," but as far as can be deciphered the remaining words--"a corruption of Hebrew and Greek--signify 'the sun or star has shone'".
[135] I have already suggested a connection between _John_, _geon_, _chien_, _shine_, _shone_, _sheen_, and _sun_.
It is probable that not only the literature of the saints but also many of the national traditions of our own and other lands arose from the misinterpretation of the symbolic signs and figures which preceded writing.
The "diabolical idols" of Britain, as Gildas admitted, far exceeded those in Egypt; similarly in Crete, the fantastic hieroglyphics not yet read or understood far out-Egypted Egypt.
The Christian Fathers fell foul with Gnostic philosophers for the supposed insult of representing Christ on the Cross with the head of an ass; but it is quite likely that the Gnostic intention--the ass being the symbol of meekness--was to portray Christ's meekness, and that no insult was intended.
A notable instance of the way in which ignorant and facetious aliens misconstrued the meaning of national or tribal emblems has been preserved in the dialogue of a globe-trotting Greek who lived in the second century of the present era.
The incident, as self-recorded by the chatty but unintelligent Greek, is Englished by Sir John Rhys as follows: "The Celts call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god.
With them he is an extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life: in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles.
But although he is of this description he is, nevertheless, attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in his right hand; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out: in these respects he is quite Heracles.
It struck me, then, that the Celts took such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harrassed most of the western peoples.
I have not, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties, they never try to run away, though they could easily do it: nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led.
Quite the reverse: they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him who leads them pressing on one and all, and slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed: in fact, they look like men who would be grieved should they be set free.
But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords, since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those whom he is leading.
Now I stood a long time looking at these things, and wondered, perplexed and indignant.
But a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek--a man who was quite a philosopher, I take it, in local matters--said to me, 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very much troubled about it.
We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes.
Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged; for your poets are no doubt right when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us than youth.
And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with one voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom; for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it.
So if this old man Heracles, by the power of speech, draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue.
Nor is there any injury done him by this latter being pierced; for I remember, said he, learning while among you some comic iambics, to the effect that all chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip.
In a word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion.
His weapons, I take it, are his utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind; and you too say that words have wings.'
Thus far the Celt.
"[136] The moral of this incident may be applied to the svastika cross, an ubiquitous symbol or trade-mark which Andrew Lang surmised might after all have merely been "a bit of natural ornament".
The sign of the cross will be more fully considered subsequently, but meanwhile one may regard the svastika as the trade-mark of Troy.
The Cornish for _cross_ was _treus_, and among the ancients the cross was the symbol of truce.
[137] The Sanscrit name _svastika_ is composed of _su_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, or propitious, and _asti_ (Greek _esto_), meaning _being_.
It was universally the symbol of the Good Being or St. Albion, or St. All Well; it retains its meaning in its name, and was the counterpart to the Dove which symbolisms Innocence, Peace, Simplicity, and Goodwill.
There is no doubt that the two emblems were the insignia of the prehistoric Giants, Titans, or followers of the Good Sun or Shine, or Sunshine, men who trekked from one or several centres, to India, Tartary, China, and Japan.
Moreover, these trekkers whom we shall trace in America and Polynesia, were seafaring and not overland folk, otherwise we should not find the Cyclopean buildings with their concomitant symbols in Africa, Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the Pacific.
The svastika in its simpler form is the cross of St. Andrew, Scotch Hender or Hendrie.
In British the epithet _hen_ meant _old_ or _ancient_, so that the cross of _Hen drie_ is verbally the cross of old or ancient Drew, Droia, or Troy.
This is also historically true, for the svastika has been found under the ruins of the ten or dozen Troys which occupy the immemorial site near Smyrna.
Our legends state that Bru or Brut, after tarrying awhile at Alba in Etruria, travelled by sea into Gaul, where he founded the city of Tours.
Thence after sundry bickers with the Gauls he passed onward into Britain which acquired its name from Brute, its first Duke or Leader.
We shall connote Britannia, whose first official portraits are here given, with the Cretan Goddess Britomart, which meant in Greek "sweet maiden".
One of these Britannia figures has her finger to her lips, or head, in seemingly the same attitude as the consort of the Giant Dog, and the interpretation is probably identical with that placed by Dr. Walsh upon that gnostic jewel.
"Among the Egyptians," he says, "it was deemed impossible to worship the deity in a manner worthy by words, adopting the sentiments of Plato--that it was difficult to find the nature of the Maker and Father of the Universe, or to convey an idea of him to the people by a verbal description--and they imagined therefore the deity Harpocrates who presided over silence and was always represented as inculcating it by holding his finger on his lips".
We know from Cæsar that secrecy was a predominant feature of the Drui or Druidic system, and for this custom the reasons are thus given in a Bardic triad: "The Three necessary but reluctant duties of the bards of the Isle of Britain: Secrecy, for the sake of peace and the public good; invective lamentation demanded by justice; and the unsheathing of the sword against the lawless and the predatory".
Britain is in Welsh Prydain, and, according to some Welsh scholars, the root of Prydain is discovered in the epithet _pryd_, which signifies _precious_, _dear_, _fair_, or _beautiful_.
This, assumed Thomas, "was at a very early date accepted as a surname in the British royal family of the island".
[138] I think this Welsh scholar was right and that not only Britomart the "sweet maiden," but also St. Bride, "the Mary of the Gael," were the archetypes of Britannia; St. Bride is alternatively St. Brighit, whence, in all probability, the adjective _bright_.
At Brightlingsea in Essex is a Sindry or _Sin derry_ island(?
); in the West of England many villages have a so-called 'sentry field,' and undoubtedly these were originally the saintuaries, centres, and sanctuaries of the districts.
To take sentry meant originally to seek refuge, and the primary meaning of _terrible_ was _sacred_.
Thus we find even in mediæval times, Westminster alluded to by monkish writers as a _locus terribilis_ or sacred place.
The moots or courts at Brightlingsea were known as Brodhulls, whence it would appear that the Moothill or Toothill of elsewhere was known occasionally as a Brod or Brutus Hill.
Some of the Britannias on page 120 have the aspect of young men rather than maidens, and there is no doubt that Brut was regarded as androginous or indeterminately as youth or maiden.
We shall trace him or her at Broadstairs, a corruption of Bridestow, at Bradwell, at Bradport, at Bridlington, and in very many more directions.
From Pryd come probably the words _pride_, _prude_, and _proud_, and in the opinion of our neighbours these qualities are among our national defects.
Claiming a proud descent we are admittedly a _dour_ people, and our neighbours deem us _triste_, yet, nevertheless trustworthy, and inclined to truce.
[Illustration: FIG.
19.--From _An Essay on Medals_ (Pinkerton, J.).]
On the shield of one of the first Britannias is a bull's head, whence it may be assumed the bull was anciently as nowadays associated with John Bull.
At British festivals our predecessors used to antic in the guise of a bull, and the bull-headed actor was entitled "The Broad".
The bull was intimately connected with Crete; Britomart was the Lady of All Creatures, and seemingly the _brutes_ in general were named either after her or Brut.
The British word for bull was _tarw_, the Spanish is _toro_; in Etruria we find the City of Turin or Torino using as its cognisance a rampant bull; and I have little doubt that the fabulous Minotaur was a physical brute actually maintained in the terrible recesses of some yet-to-be-discovered labyrinth.
The subterranean mausoleums of the Sacred Bulls of Egypt are among the greatest of the great monuments of that country; the bull-fights of Spain were almost without doubt the direct descendants of sacred festivals, wherein the slaying of the Mithraic Bull was dramatically presented, but in Crete itself the bull-fights seem to have been amicable gymnastic games wherein the most marvellous feats of agility were displayed.
Illustrations of these graceful and intrepid performances are still extant on Cretan frieze and vase, the colours being as fresh to-day as when laid on 3000 years ago.
In Britain the national sport seems to have been bull-baiting, and the dogs associated with that pastime presumably were bull-dogs.
Doggedness is one of the ingrained qualities of our race; of recent years the bull-dog has been promoted into symbolic evidence of our tenacity and doggedness.
Our mariners are sea-_dogs_, and the modern bards vouch us to be in general boys of the bull-dog breed.
The mascot bull-dogs in the shops at this moment serve the same end as the mascot emblems and mysterious hieroglyphics of the ancients, and the Egyptian who carried a scarabæus or an Eye of Horus, acted without doubt from the same simple, homely impulse as drives the modern Englishman to hang up the picture of a repulsive animal subscribed, "What we have we'll hold".
The prehistoric dog or jackal symbolised not tenacity or courage, but the maker of tracks, for the well-authenticated reason that dogs were considered the best guides to practicable courses in the wilderness.
Bull-headed men and dog-headed men are represented constantly in Cretan Art, and these in all likelihood symbolised the primeval bull-dogs who trekked into so many of the wild and trackless places of the world.
The Welsh have a saying, "Tra Mor, Tra Brython," which means, "as long as there is sea so long will there be Britons".
Centuries ago, Diodorus of Sicily mentioned the Kelts as "having an immemorial taste for foreign expeditions and adventurous wars, and he goes on to describe them as 'irritable, prompt to fight, in other respects simple and guileless,' thus, according with Strabo, who sums up the Celtic temperament as being simple and spontaneous, willingly taking in hand the cause of the oppressed".
[139] Diodorus also mentions the Kelts as clothed sometimes "in tissues of variegated colours," which calls to mind the tartans of the Alban McAlpines, Ians, Jocks, Sanders, Hendries, and others of that ilk.
The dictionaries define the name Andrew as meaning _a man_, whence _androgynous_ and _anthropology_; in Cornish _antrou_ meant _lord_ or _master_, and these early McAndrews were doubtless masterly, tyrannical, dour, derring-doers, inconceivably daring in der-doing.
To _try_ means make an effort, and we speak proverbially of "working like a Trojan".
The corollary is that tired feeling which must have sorely tried the tyros or young recruits.
After daring and trying and tiring, these dour men eventually turned _adre_, which is Cornish for _homeward_.
Whether their hearts were turned Troy-ward in the _Ægean_ or to some small unsung British _tre_ or Troynovant, who can tell?
"I am now in Jerusalem where Christ was born," wrote a modern argonaut to his mother, but, he added, "I wish I were in Wigan where I was born."
FOOTNOTES: [86] Taylor, Rev.
T., _The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall_, p. 27.
[87] Morris-Jones, Sir J., _Y.
Cymmrodor_, xxvii., p. 240.
[88] Margoliouth, M., _The Jews in Great Britain_, p. 33.
[89] As bearing upon this statement I reprint in the Appendix to the present volume a very remarkable extract from _Britain and the Gael_ (Wm.
Beal), 1860.
[90] Wilkes, Anna, _Ireland: Ur of the Chaldees_, p. 6.
[91] Introduction to Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ (Everyman's Library).
[92] Plutarch, _De Defectu Oraculorum_, xvii.
[93] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 70.
[94] Clodd, E., _Tom Tit Tot_, p. 131.
[95] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 326.
[96] _Cf._ Poste, B., _Britannic Researches_, p. 220.
[97] _Y Cymmrodor_, xxviii.
[98] Triad 4.
[99] "The notion that the Albanian is a mere mixture of Greek and Turkish has long been superseded by the conviction that though mixed it is essentially a separate language.
The doctrine also that it is of recent introduction into Europe has been similarly abandoned.
There is every reason for believing that as Thunmann suggested, it was, at dawn of history, spoken in the countries where it is spoken at the present moment."
--Latham, R. G., _Varieties of Man_, p. 552.
[100] Rhys, J., _Celtic Britain_.
[101] The same root may be behind _deruish_ or _dervish_.
[102] Gordon, E. O., _Prehistoric London_, p. 127.
[103] Virgil, _Æneid_, 79, 80, 81.
[104] _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 119.
[105] Malory, viii.
[106] I question the current supposition that this is a corruption of _chy an woon_ or "house on the hill".
[107] Beal, W., _Britain and the Gael_, p. 22.
[108] Herodotus, 11, 52.
[109] Johnston, J.
B., _Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 413.
[110] Burrows, R. M., _The Discoveries in Crete_, p. 11.
[111] _Hastings_ (Ward Lock & Co.), p. 63.
[112] xxvii.
12.
[113] _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 9.
[114] From _mercari_, to trade (Skeat).
[115] _Jonnock_ is probably cognate with _yankee_, which was in old times used in the New England States as an adjective meaning "excellent," "first-class".
Thus, a "yankee" horse would be a first-class horse, just as we talk of English beef and other things English, meaning that they are the best.
Another explanation of _yankee_ is that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, near Massachusetts Bay, in 1620, they were met on the shore by native Indians who called them "Yangees"--meaning "white man"--and the term was finally completed into "Yankees".
[116] Taylor, Rev.
R., _Diegesis_, p. 158.
[117] The remarkable serpentine, shell-mosaiked shrine, known as Margate Grotto, is discussed in chap.
xiii.
[118] i., 367.
[119] _Odyssey_, Book IV.
[120] _Cf._ Smith, G., _Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 65.
[121] _Myths of Crete and Prehistoric Europe_, p. 239.
[122] Rydberg, V., _Teutonic Mythology_, pp.
22-36.
[123] _Odyssey_, Book I.
[124] _Ibid._, Book III.
[125] _The Myth of Br.
Islands_, p. 324.
[126] The current idea that London was _Llyn din_, the _Lake town_, has been knocked on the head since it has been "proved that the lake which was described so picturesquely by J. R. Green did not exist".
_Cf._ Rice Holmes, _Ancient Britain_, p. 704.
[127] Lon_dres_, the Gaulish form of London, implies that the radical was _Lon_--and perhaps further, that London was a _holy enclosure dun or derry_ where _luna_, the moon, was worshipped.
There is a persistent tradition that St. Paul's, standing on the summit of Ludgate Hill or dun, occupies the site of a more ancient shrine dedicated to Diana, _i.e._, Luna.
[128] This name will subsequently be traced to Cres, the son of Jupiter, to whom the Cretans assigned their origin.
[129] Wright, T., _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, vol.
i., p. 273.
[130] Wright, T., _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, vol.
i., p. 283.
[131] In Albany the memory of "the gudeman" lingered until late, and according to Scott: "In many parishes of Scotland there was suffered to exist a certain portion of land, called _the gudeman's croft_, which was never ploughed or cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the _Temenos_ of a pagan temple.
Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that 'the goodman's croft' was set apart for some evil being; in fact, that it was the portion of the arch-fiend himself, whom our ancestors distinguished by a name which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of despair.
This was so general a custom that the Church published an ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage.
"This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the seventeenth century; but there must still be many alive who, in childhood, have been taught to look with wonder on knolls and patches of ground left uncultivated, because, whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary spirits were supposed to testify their displeasure by storm and thunder," _Demonology and Witchcraft._ [132] These Sources of Life or vessels of Almighty Power were described as Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire.
_Cf._ King, C. W., _The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 34.
[133] Johnston, Rev.
J.
B., _Place-names of England and Wales_.
[134] "The origin of the name is quite unknown to history....
Possibly because so many dogs were drowned in the Thames here."
--Johnston, Rev.
J.
B., _Place-names of England_, p. 321.
[135] Walsh, R., _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_, p. 58.
[136] Rhys, Sir J., _Celtic Heathendom_, pp.
14-16.
[137] British children still cross their forefingers as a sign of _treus_, _pax_, or _fainits_.
[138] _Britannia Antiquissima_, p. 4.
[139] _Cf._ Thomas, J. J., _Britannia Antiquissima_, pp.
84, 85.
CHAPTER IV ALBION "The Anglo-Saxons, down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule, as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two, the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter sword, Easter fire, and Easter dance could not be separated.
As faithfully were perpetuated the name and, in many cases, the observances of midsummer.
New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely as well as accidentally to have been made to fall on heathen holidays.
Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down; and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site: sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church; and cases occur in which idol-images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg Cathedral where lie Sclavic-heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes."--GRIMM.
Our Chronicles state that when Brute and his companions reached these shores, "at that time the name of the island was Albion".
According to tradition Alba, Albion, or Alban, whence the place-name Albion, was a fairy giant, but this, in the eyes of current scholarship, is a fallacy, and _alba_ is merely an adjective meaning _white_, whence wherever met with it is so translated.
But because there happens to be a relatively small tract of white cliffs in the neighbourhood of Dover, it is a barren stretch of imagination to suppose that all Britain thence derived its prehistoric title, and in any case the question--why did _alba_ mean white?--would remain unanswered.
The Highlanders of Scotland still speak of their country as Albany or Alban; the national cry of Scotland was evidently at one time "Albani," and even as late as 1138, "the army of the Scots with one voice vociferated their native distinction, and the shout of Albani!
Albani!
ascended even to the heavens".
[140] Not only by the Romans but likewise by the Greeks, Britain was known as Albion, and one may therefore conjecture that the white-cliff theory is an unsound fancy.
Strabo alludes to a certain district generally supposed to be Land's End, under the name "Kalbion,"[141] a word manifestly having some radical relation to "Albion".
By an application of the comparative method to place-names and proper-names, I arrived several years ago at the seemingly only logical conclusion that in many directions _ak_ and its variants meant _great_ or _mighty_.
On every hand there is presumptive evidence of this fact, and I have since found that Bryant and also Faber, working by wholly independent methods, reached a very similar conclusion.
My _modus operandi_, with many of its results, having been already published,[142] it is unnecessary here to restate them, and I shall confine myself to new and corroborative evidence.
In addition to _great_ or _mighty_ it is clear that the radical in question meant _high_.
The German trisagion of _hoch!
hoch!
hoch!_ is still equivalent to the English _high!
high!
high!_ the Swedish for _high_ is _hog_, the Dutch is _oog_, and in Welsh or British _high_ is _uch_.
It is presumably a trace of the gutteral _ch_ that remains in our modern spelling of _high_ with a _gh_ now mute, but the primordial Welsh _uch_ has also become the English _ok_, as in Devonshire where _Ok_ment Hill is said to be the Anglicised form of _uch mynydd_, the Welsh or British for _high_ hill.
I shall, thus, in this volume treat the syllable _'k_ or _'g_ as carrying the predominant and apparently more British meaning of _high_.
That the sounds 'g and 'k were invariably commutable may be inferred from innumerable place-names such as _Og_bourne St. Andrew, alternatively printed _Oke_bourne, and that the same mutability applies to words in general might be instanced from any random page of Dr. Murray's _New English Dictionary_.
We may thus assume that "Kalbion," meant Great Albion or High Albion, and it remains to analyse Alba or Albion.
B and P being interchangeable, the _ba_ of _Alba_ is the same word as _pa_, which, according to Max Müller, meant primarily _feeder_; _papa_ is in Turkish _baba_, and in Mexico also _ba_ meant the same as our infantile _pa_, _i.e._, feeder or father.
In _paab_, the British for _pope_, one _p_ has become _b_ the other has remained constant.
The inevitable interchange of _p_ and _b_ is conspicuously evident in the place-name--Battersea, alternatively known as Patrickseye, and on that little _ea_, _eye_, or _eyot_ in the Thames at one time, probably, clustered the padres or paters who ministered to the church of St. Peter--the architypal Pater--whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey.
It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by duplications, such as _pretty pretty_, and in the childhood[143] of the world this habit was seemingly universal.
Thus _pa_, the Aryan root meaning primarily _feeder_, has been duplicated into _papa_, which is the same word as _pope_, defined as indicating the father of a church.
In A.D. 600 the British Hierarchy protested against the claims of the "paab" of Rome to be considered "the Father of Fathers,"[144] and there is little doubt that Pope is literally _pa-pa_ or _Father Father_.
In Stow's time there existed in London a so-called "Papey"--"a proper house," wherein sometime was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and St. John.
This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145] "for in some language priests are called papes".
In the Hebrides the place-names Papa Stour, Papa Westray, and so forth are officially recognised as the seats of prehistoric padres, patricks, or papas.
Skeat imagines that the words _pap_ meaning food, and _pap_ meaning teat or breast, are alike "of infantine origin due to the repetition of _pa pa_ in calling for food".
They may be so, but to understand the childhood of the world one must stoop to infantile levels.
In Celtic _alp_ or _ailpe_ meant _high_, and also _rock_.
Among the ancients rock was a generally recognised symbol of the undecaying immutable High Father, and in seemingly every tongue will be found puns such as _pierre_ and _pere_, Peter the pater, and Petra the Rock.
The papacy of Peter is founded traditionally upon St. Petra, the Rock of Ages, "Upon this Rock will I found my Church," and the St. Rock of this country, whose festival was celebrated upon Rock Monday, was assumedly a survival of pagan pre-Christian symbolism.
[Illustration: FIG.
20.--From _Analysis of Ancient Mythology_ (Bryant, J.).]
In the group of coins here illustrated it will be noticed that the _Mater Deorum_ is conventionally throned upon a rock.
"Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord my Rock," wrote the Psalmist, and the inhabitants of Albion probably once harmonised in their ideas with the Kafirs of India, who still say of the stones they worship, "This stands for God, but we know not his shape."
In Cornwall, within living memory, the Druidic stones were believed in some mysterious way to be sacred to existence, and the materialistic theory which attributes all primitive worship to fear or self-interest, will find it hard to account satisfactorily for stone worship.
Cold, impassive stone, neither feeds, nor warms, nor clothes, yet, as Toland says: "'Tis certain that all nations meant by these stones without statues the eternal stability and power of the Deity, and that He could not be represented by any similitude, nor under any figure whatsoever".
[Illustration: FIG.
21.--Christ and His Apostles, under the form of Lambs or of Sheep.
(Latin sculpture; first centuries of the Church.)
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
It is asserted by one of the classical authors that stones were considered superior in two respects, first in being not subject to death, and second in not being harmful.
That _Albion_ was harmless and beneficent is implied by the adjectives _bien_, _bonny_, _benevolent_, _bounteous_, and _benignant_.
That St. Alban was similarly conceived is implied by the statement that this Lord's son of the City of Verulam was "a well disposed and seemly young man," who "always loved to do hospitality _granting meat and drink_ wherever necessary".
That St. Alban was not only _Alpa_, the All Feeder, but that he was also _Alpe_, the High One and the Rock whence gushed a "living water," is clear from the statement: "Then at the last they came to the hill where this holy Alban should finish and end his life, in which place lay a great multitude of people nigh dead for heat of the sun, and for thirst.
And then anon the wind blew afresh, cool, and also at the feet of this holy man Alban sprang up a fair well whereof all the people marvelled to see the cold water spring up in the hot sandy ground, and so high on the top of an hill, which water flowed all about and in large streams running down the hill.
And then the people ran to the water and drank so that they were well refreshed, and then by the merits of St. Alban their thirst was clean quenched.
But yet for all the great goodness that was showed they thirsted strongly for the blood of this holy man.
"[146] From this and other miraculous incidents in the life of St. Alban it would appear that the original compilers had in front of them some cartoons, cameos, or symbolic pictures of "The Kaadman," which had probably been recovered from the ruins of the ancient city.
The authenticity of St. Alban's "life" is further implied by the frequency with which allusions are made to the blazing heat of the sun, a sunshine so great, so conspicuous, that it burnt and scalded the feet of the sightseers.
The Latin for yellow, which is the colour of the golden sun, is _galbinus_, a word which like Kalbion resolves into _'g albinus_, the high or mighty Albanus.
From _galbinus_ the French authorities derive their word _jaune_, but _jaune_ is simply _Joan_, _Jeanne_, _shine_, _shone_, or _sheen_.
In Hebrew _Albanah_ or _Lebanah_ properly signifies the moon, and _albon_ means _strength_ and _power_, but more radically these terms may be connoted with our English surname Alibone and understood as either _holy good_, _wholly good_, or _all good_.
Yellow is not only the colour of the golden sun, but it is similarly that of the moon, and at the festivals of the _yellow_ Lights of Heaven our ancestors most assuredly _halloe'd_, _yelled_, _yawled_, and _yowled_.
The Cornish for the sun is _houl_, the Breton is _heol_, the Welsh is _hayl_, and until recently in English churches the congregation used at Yule Tide to _hail_ the day with shouts or _yells_ of Yole, Yole, Yole!
or Ule, Ule, Ule!
The festival of Yule is a reunion, a coming together in amity of the All, and as in Welsh _y_ meant _the_, the words _whole_, and _Yule_ were perhaps originally _ye all_ or _the all_.
An _alloy_ is a mixture or medley, anything _allowed_ is according to _law_, and _hallow_ is the same word as _holy_.
The word Alban is pronounced Olbun, and in Welsh _Ol_, meant not only _all_, but also the Supreme Being.
The Dictionaries translate the Semitic _El_ as having meant _God_ or _Power_, and it is so rendered when found amid names such as Beth_el_, Uri_el_, _El_eazar,[147] etc.
But among the Semitic races the deity El was subdivided into a number of Baalim or secondary divinities emanating from El, and it would thus seem that although the Phoenicians may have forgotten the fact, _El_ meant among them what _All_ does amongst us.
According to Anderson, El was primarily Israel's God and only later did He come to be regarded as the God of the Universe--"Rising in dignity as the national idea was enlarged, El became more just and righteous, more and more superior to all the other gods, till at last He was defined to be the Supreme Ruler of Nature, the One and only Lord".
[148] The motto of Cornwall is "One and All," and among the Celtic races there is still current a monotheistic folk-song which is supposed to be the relic of a Druidic ritual or catechism.
This opens with the question in chorus, "What is your one O"?
to which the answer is returned:-One is _all alone_, And ever doth remain so.
There figures in the Celtic memory a Saint Allen or St. Elwyn, and this "saint" may be modernised into St. "Alone" or St. "_All one_": his third variant Elian is equivalent to Holy Ane or Holy One.
[149] The Greek philosophers entertained a maxim that Jove, Pluto, Phoebus, Bacchus, all were one and they accepted as a formula the phrase "All is one".
In India Brahma was entitled "The Eternal All" and in the _Bhagavad Gita_ the Soul of the world is thus adored:-O infinite Lord of Gods!
the world's abode, Thou undivided art, o'er all supreme, Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire, The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds.
The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat.
From Thee the All has sprung, O Boundless Form!
Varuna, Vazu, Agni, Yama thou, The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.
The infinite in power, of boundless force, The All thou dost embrace; the "Thou art All".
Near Stonehenge there is a tumulus known nowadays as El barrow, and Salisbury Plain itself was once named Ellendune or Ellen Down.
The Greeks or Hellenes claimed to be descendants of the Dodonian Ellan or Hellan, a personage whom they esteemed as the "Father of the First-born Woman".
Ellan or Hellan was alternatively entitled Hellas, and in Greek the word _allos_ meant "the one".
Tradition said that the Temple of Ellan at Dodona--a shrine which antedated the Greek race, and was erected by unknown predecessors--was founded by a Dove, one of two birds which flew from Thebes in Egypt.
The super-sacred tree at Dodona, as in Persia and elsewhere, was the oak, and the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the oak was poetically regarded as the voice of the All-Father.
The Hebrew for an oak tree is _allon_, _elon_, or _allah_, and Allah is the name under which many millions of our fellow-men worship The Alone.
To this day the oak tree is sacred among the folk of Palestine,[150] particularly one ancient specimen on the site of old Beyrut or Berut--a place-name which, as we shall see, may be connoted with Brut.
[Illustration: FIG.
22.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).
Diana, the Moon, with a circular nimbus.
(Roman sculpture.)
Mercury with a circular nimbus.
(Roman sculpture.)
Apollo as the Sun, adorned with the nimbus, and crowned with seven rays.
(Roman sculpture.)
Sun, with rays issuing from the face, and a wheel-like nimbus on the head.
(Etruscan sculpture.)]
B being invariably interchangeable with P, the Ban of Alban is the same as the Greek Pan.
[151] From Pan comes the adjective _pan_ meaning _all_, _universal_, so that Alban may perhaps be equated with Holy Pan.
_Hale_ also means healthy, and the circular _halo_ symbolising the glorious sun was used by the pagans long before it was adopted by Christianity.
By the Cabalists--who were indistinguishable from the Gnostics--Ell was understood to mean "the Most Luminous," Il "the Omnipotent," Elo "the Sovereign, the Excelsus," and Eloi "the Illuminator, the Most Effulgent".
Among the Greeks _ele_ meant refulgent, and Helios was a title of Apollo or the Sun.
[Illustration: FIG.
23.--The statue of Diana of the Ephesians worshipped at Massilia.
From _Stonehenge_ (Barclay, E.).]
The Peruvians named their Bona Dea Mama Allpa, whom they represented, like Ephesian Diana, as having numerous breasts, and they regarded Mama Allpa as the dispenser of all human nourishment.
In Egypt _pa_ meant _ancestor_, _beginning_, _origin_, and the Peruvian many-breasted Mama Allpa seemingly meant just as it does in English, _i.e._, mother, _All pa_ or _All-feeder_.
It is important to note that the British Albion was not always considered as a male, but on occasions as the "Lady Albine".
[152] The Sabeans worshipped the many-breasted Artemis under the name Almaquah, which is radically _alma_, and the Greeks used the word _alma_ as an adjective meaning _nourishing_.
The river Almo near Rome was seemingly named after the All Mother, for in this stream the Romans used ceremoniously to bathe and purify the statue of Ma, the World Mother, whose consort was known as Pappas.
Pappas is the Greek equivalent to Papa, and Ma or Mama meaning _mother_ is so used practically all the world over.
Skeat is contemptuous towards _mama_, describing it as "a mere repetition of _ma_ an infantile syllable; many other languages have something like it".
Not only all over Asia Minor but also in Burmah and Hindustan _ma_ meant mother; in China _mother_ is _mi_ or _mu_, and in South America as in Chaldea and all over Europe _mama_ meant mother; Mammal is of course traceable to the same root, and it is evident that even were _ma_ merely an infantile syllable it obviously carried far more than a contemptible or negligible meaning.
[Illustration: MA.
FIG.
24.--The Egyptian Ma or "Truth".]
In Europe, Alma and Ilma are proper names which are defined as having meant either Celtic _all good_, Latin _kindly_, or Jewish _maiden_.
In Finnish mythology the Creatrix of the Universe, or Virgin Daughter of the Air is named Ilmatar, which is evidently the _All Mater_ or _All Mother_.
Alma was no doubt the almoner of aliment, and her symbol was the _almond_.
In Scotland where there is a river Almond, _ben_ means mountain or head, and _ben_ varies almost invariably into _pen_, from the Apennines to the Pennine Range.
It is said that Pan was worshipped in South America, and that his name was commemorated in the place-name Mayapan.
Among the Mandan Indians, _pan_ meant _head_, and also _pertaining to that which is above_; in China, _pan_ meant mountain or hill, and in Phoenician, _pennah_ had the same meaning.
As, however, I have dealt somewhat fully elsewhere with Pan the President of the Mountains, I shall for the sake of brevity translate his name into _universal_ or _good_.
In England we have the curious surname Pennefather;[153] in Cornwall, Pender is very common, and it is proverbial that _Pen_ is one of the three affixes by which one may know Cornishmen.
As Pan was pre-eminently the divinity of woods and forests, Panshanger or Pan's Wood in Hertfordshire may perhaps be connected with him, and the river Beane of Hertfordshire may be equated with the kindred British river-names, Ben, Bann, Bane, Bain, Banon, Bana, Bandon, Banney, Banac, and Bannockburn.
Bannock or Panak the _Great Pan_ is probably responsible for the English river name Penk, and the name Pankhurst necessarily implies a hurst or wood of Pank.
Penkhull was seemingly once Penkhill, and it is evident that Pan or Pank, the God of the Universe, may be recognised in Panku, the benevolent Chinese World Father, for the account of this Deity is as follows: "Panku was the _first_, being placed upon the earth at a period when sea, land, and sky were all jumbled up together.
Panku was a giant, and worked with a mallet and chisel for eighteen thousand years in an effort to make the earth more shapely.
As he toiled and struggled so he grew in strength and stature, until he was able to push the heavens back and to put the sea into its proper place.
Then he rounded the earth and made it more habitable, and then he died.
But Panku was greater in death than he was in life, for his head became the surface of the earth; his sinews, the mountains; his voice, the thunder, his breath, the wind, the mist, and the clouds; one eye was converted into the sun; the other the moon; and the beads of perspiration on his forehead were crystallised into the scintillating stars."
The name Panku is radically the same as Punch, and there is no doubt that Mr. Punch of to-day represented, according to immemorial wont, with a hunch, hill, or mountain on his back, has descended from the sacred farce or drama.
Punch and Punchinello, or Pierre and Pierrot are the father and the son of the ancient holy-days or holidays.
At _Ban_croft, in the neighbourhood of St. Albans, the festivities of May-day included "_first_" a personage with "a large artificial hump on his back,"[154] and we may recognise the Kaadman of St. Albans in the Cadi of Welsh pageantry.
In Wales all the arrangements of May-day were made by the so-called Cadi, who was always the most active person in the company and sustained the joint rôle of marshal, orator, buffoon, and money collector.
The whole party being assembled they marched in pairs headed by the Cadi, who was gaudily bedecked with gauds and wore a bisexual, half-male, half-female costume.
With gaud and gaudy, which are the same words as _good_ and _cadi_, may be connoted _gaudeo_ the Latin for _I rejoice_.
Punch is always represented with an ample _paunch_, and this conspicuous characteristic of bonhomie is similarly a feature of Chinese and Japanese bonifaces or Bounty Gods.
The skirt worn by the androgynous British Cadi may be connoted with the kilt in which the Etrurians figured their Hercules, and that in Etruria the All Father was occasionally depicted like Punch, is clear from the following passage from _The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_: "Hercules and Minerva were the most generally honoured of the Etruscan divinities, the one representing the most valuable qualities of a man's body and the other of his soul.
They were the excellencies of flesh and spirit, and according to Etruscan mythology they were man and wife.
Minerva has usually a very fine face with that straight line of feature which we call Grecian, but which, from the sepulchral paintings and the votive offerings, would appear also to have been native.
Hercules has a prominent and peaky chin, and something altogether remarkably sharp in his features, which, from the evidence of vases and scarabæi together, would appear to have been the conventional form of depicting a warrior.
It is probably given to signify vigilance and energy.
A friend of mine used to call it, not inaptly, 'the ratcatcher style'.
Neptune bears the trident, Jove the thunderbolt or sceptre, and these attributes are sometimes appended to the most grotesque figures when the Etruscans have been representing either some Greek fable, or some native version of the same story.
This may be seen on one vase where Jove is entering a window, accompanied by Mercury, to visit Alcmena.
Jove has just taken his foot off the ladder, and in my ignorance I looked at the clumsy but extraordinary vase, thinking that the figures represented Punch; and though I give the learned and received version of the story, I am at this moment not convinced that I was wrong, for I do not believe the professor who pointed it out to me, notwithstanding all his learning, extensive and profound as it was, knew that Punch was an Etruscan amusement.
Supposing it, however, to have been Punch, which I think was my own very just discovery, the piece acted was certainly Giove and Alcmena."
It is very obvious that the term _holy_ has changed considerably in its meaning.
To the ancients "holidays" were joy-days, pandemoniums, and the pre-eminent emblem of joviality was the holly tree.
The reason for the symbolic eminence of the holy tree was its evergreen horned leaves which caused it to be dedicated to Saturn the horned All Father, now degraded into Old Nick.
But "Old Nick" is simply St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and the name Claus is Nicholas minus the adjective _'n_ or _ancient_.
Janus, the Latinised form of Joun, was essentially the God of _gen_iality and _jov_iality, otherwise Father Christmas and he is the same as Saturn, whose golden era was commemorated by the Saturnalia.
The Hebrew name for the planet Saturn was Chiun, and this Chiun or Joun (?)
was seemingly the same as the Gian Ben Gian, or Divine Being, who according to Arabian tradition ruled over the whole world during the legendary Golden Age.
On the first of January, a month which takes its name from Janus as being the "God of the Beginning," all quarrelling and disturbances were shunned, mutual good-wishes were exchanged, and people gave sweets to one another as an omen that the New Year might bring nothing but what was sweet and pleasant in its train.
This "execrable practice," a "mere relique of paganism and idolatry," was, like the decorative use of holly, sternly opposed by the mediæval Church.
In 1632 Prynne wrote: "The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare's Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which had been used on it: prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare's Day) as holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans' feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils" [and an enormous quantity of other authorities which it is useless to quote], "have positively prohibited the solemnisation of New Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New Yeare's Gifts, under an anathema and excommunication."
There is little doubt that the "Saint" Concord--an alleged subdeacon in a desert--who figures in the Roman Martyrology on January 1st, was invented to account for the Holy Concord to which that day was dedicated.
Janus of January 1st, who was ranked by the Latins even above Jupiter, was termed "The _good_ Creator," the "Oldest of the Gods," the "Beginning of all Things," and the "God of Gods".
From him sprang all rivers, wells, and streams, and his name is radically the same as Oceanus.
Before the earth was known to be a ball, Oceanus, the Father of all the river-gods and water-nymphs, was conceived to be a river flowing perpetually round the flat circle of the world, and out of, and into this river the sun and stars were thought to rise and set.
Our word _ocean_ is assumed to be from the Greek form _okeanus_, and the official surmise as to the origin of the word is--"perhaps from _okis_--swift".
But what "swiftness" there is about the unperturbable and mighty sea, I am at a loss to recognise.
In the Highlands the islanders of St. Kilda used to pour out libations to a sea-god, known as Shony, and in this British Shony we have probably the truer origin of _ocean_.
[Illustration: FIG.
25.--Personification of River.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The ancients generally supposed the All Good as wandering abroad and peering unobserved into the thoughts and actions of his children.
This proclivity was a conspicuous characteristic of Jupiter, and also of the Scandinavian All Father, one of whose titles was Gangrad, or "The Wanderer".
The verb to _gad_, and the expression "_gadding about_," may have arisen from this wandering proclivity of the gods or gads, and the word _jaunt_, a synonym for "gadding" (of unknown etymology), points to the probability that the rambling tendencies of "Gangrad" and other gods were similarly assigned by the British to their _Giant_, "_jeyantt_," or Good _John_.
_Jaunty_ or _janty_ means full of fire or life, and the words _gentle_, _genial_, and _generous_ are implications of the original good Giant's attributes.
[Illustration: FIG.
26.--Figure of Time with Three Faces.
From a French Miniature of the XIV.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
27.--The Three Divine Faces with two eyes and one single body.
From a French Miniature of the XVI.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The coins of King Janus of Sicily bore on their obverse the figure of god Janus; on the reverse a dove, and it is evident that the dove was as much a symbol of Father Janus as it was of Mother Jane or Mother Juno.
Christianity still recognises the dove or pigeon as the symbol of the Holy Ghost, and it is probable that the word _pigeon_ may be attributed to the fact that the pigeon was invariably associated with _pi_, or _pa geon_.
[155] [Illustration: FIG.
28.--BRAHMA.--From _A Dictionary of Non-classical Mythology_ (Edwardes & Spence).]
Janus, "the one by whom all things were introduced into life," was figured as two-faced, or time past, and time to come, and Janus was the "I was," the "I am," and the "I shall be".
[156] As the "God of the Beginning," Janus is clearly connected with the word _genesis_; Juno was the goddess who presided over childbirth, and to their names may be traced the words _generate_, _genus_, _genital_, and the like.
Just as _Jan_uary is the first or opening month of the year, so _June_,[157] French _Juin_, was the first or opening month of the ancient calendar.
It was fabled that Janus daily threw open the gate of day whence _janua_ was the Latin for a gate, and _janitor_ means a keeper of the gate.
All men were supposed to be under the safeguard of Janus, and all women under that of Juno, whence the guardian spirit of a man was termed his _genius_ and that of a woman her _juno_.
The words _genius_ and _genie_ are evidently cognate with the Arabian _jinn_, meaning a spirit.
In Ireland the fairies or "good people" are known as the "gentry"; as the giver of all increase Juno may be responsible for the word _generous_, and Janus the Beginning or Leader is presumably allied to _General_.
Occasionally the two faces of Janus were represented as respectively old and young, a symbol obviously of time past and present, time and _change_, the ancient of days and the _junior_ or _jeun_.
In Irish _sen_ meant _senile_.
It is taught by the mothers of Europe that at Yule-Tide the Senile All Bounty wanders around bestowing gifts, and St. Nicholas, or Father Christmas, is in some respects the same as the Wandering Jew of mediæval tradition.
The earliest mention of the Everlasting Jew occurs in the chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans,[158] and is probably a faint memory of the original St. Alban or All Bounty.
It was said that this mysterious Wanderer "had a little child on his arm," and was an eye-witness of the crucifixion of Christ.
Varied mythical appearances of the Everlasting Jew are recorded, and his name is variously stated as Joseph, and as Elijah.
Joseph is radically _Jo_, Elijah is _Holy Jah_, whence it may follow, that "Jew" should be spelled "Jou," and that the Wandering or Everlasting Jew may be equated with the Sunshine or the Heavenly Joy.
[Illustration: FIG.
29.--The Three Divine Heads within a single triangle.
From an Italian Wood Engraving of the XV.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In France the sudden roar of the wind at night is attributed to the passing of the Everlasting Jew.
In Switzerland he is associated with the mighty Matterhorn, in Arabia he is represented as an aged man with a bald head, and I strongly suspect that the Elisha story of "Go up, thou bald head" arose from the misinterpretation of a picture of the Ancient of Days surrounded by a happy crowd of laughing youngsters.
In this respect it would have accorded with the representation of the Divine bald-head of the Celts, leading a joyful chain of smiling captives.
In England the Wandering Jew was reputed never to eat but merely to drink water which came from a rock.
Some accounts specify his clothing sometimes as a "purple shag-gown," with the added information, "his stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey deponent knoweth not, his beard and head were white and he had a white stick in his hand.
The day was rainy from morning to night, but he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes".
[159] This tradition is evidently a conception of the white and immaculate Old Alban, in the usual contradistinction to the _young_ or _le jeun_, and we still speak of an honest or jonnock person as "a white man".
By the Etrurians it was believed that the soul preserved after death the likeness of the body it had left and that this elfin or spritely body composed of shining elastic air was clothed in airy white.
[160] There figures in _The Golden Legend_ an Italian St. Albine, whose name, says Voragine, "is as much as to say primo; as he was white and thus this holy saint was all white by purity of clean living".
The tale goes on that this St. Albine had two wives, also two nurses which did nourish him.
While lying in his cradle he was carried away by a she-wolf and borne into the fields where happily he was espied by a pair of passing maidens.
One of these twain exclaimed "Would to God I had milk to foster thee withal," and these words thus said her paps immediately rose and grew up filled with milk.
Semblably said and prayed the second maid, and anon she had milk as her fellow had and so they two nourished the holy child Albine.
[Illustration: FIGS.
30 to 38.--From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
It has been suggested that the Wandering Jew is a personification "of that race which wanders _Cain_-like over the earth with the brand of a brother's blood upon it"; by others the story is connected particularly with the gipsies.
The Romany word for moon is _choon_, the Cornish for _full moon_ is _cann_, and it is a curious thing that the Etrurian Dante entitles the Man in the Moon, Cain:-Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine On either hemisphere touching the wave Beneath the towers of Seville.
Yesternight The moon was round.
[161] Christian symbology frequently associates the Virgin Mary with the new moon, and in Fig.
39 a remarkable representation of the Trinity is situated there.
[Illustration: FIG.
39.--The Holy Ghost, as a child of eight or ten years old, in the arms of the Father.
French Miniature of the XVI.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In the illustrations overleaf of mediæval papermarks, some of which depict the Man in the Moon in his conventional low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, there is a conspicuous portrayal of the two breasts, doubtless representative of the milk and honey flowing in the mystic Land of _Can_aan.
This paradise was reconnoitred by Joshua accompanied by Caleb, whose name means _dog_, and it will be remembered that dog-headed St. Christopher was said to be a Canaanitish giant.
Irishmen assign the name Connaught to a beneficent King Conn, during whose fabulously happy reign all crops yielded ninefold, and the furrows of Ireland flowed with "the pure lacteal produce of the dairy".
Conn of Connaught is expressly defined as "good as well as great,"[162] and the Hibernian "pure lacteal produce of the dairy" may be connoted with the Canaanitish "milk".
We shall trace King Conn of Connaught at Caen or Kenwood, near St. John's Wood, London, and also at Kilburn, a burn or stream alternatively known as the _Cune_burn.
This rivulet comes first within the ken of history in the time of Henry I., when a hermit named Godwyn--query _Good One_?--had his kil or cell upon its banks.
King Conn of Connaught reigned in glory with "Good Queen Eda," a Breaton princess who was equally beloved and esteemed.
This Eda is seemingly the Lady of Mount Ida in Candia, and her name may perhaps be traced in Maida Vale and Maida Hill.
Pa Eda or Father Ida is apparently memorised at the adjacent Paddington which the authorities derive from Paedaington, or _the town of the children of Paeda_.
Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon or _cann_, may be connoted with Cain the Man in the Moon, and we shall ultimately associate her with Candia the alternative title of Crete, and with Caindea, an Irish divinity, whose name in Gaelic means _the gentle goddess_.
Near _Con_iston in Cumberland is Yew Barrow, a rugged, cragged, pyramidal height which like the river Yeo, rising from Seven Sisters Springs, was probably associated with Jou or Yew.
The culminating peak known as "The Old Man" of Coniston is suggestive of the Elfin tradition:-High on the hill-top the Old King sits He is now so old and grey, he's nigh lost his wits.
The Egyptians figured Ra, the Ancient of Days, as at times so senile that he dribbled at the mouth.
The traditional attributes of Cain, the Man in the Moon, or Cann, the full moon, are a dog, a lanthorn, and a bush of thorn.
The dog is the _kuon_ or _chien_ of St.
Kit, the Kaadman or the Good Man, and the lanthorn is probably Jack-a-lantern or Will-o-the-wisp, known of old as Kit-with-a-canstick or Kitty-with-a-candlestick.
The thorn bush was sacred to the Elves for reasons which will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.
It is sufficient here to note that the equivalent of the sacred hawthorn of Britain is known in the East as the Alvah or Elluf.
[163] The Irish title of the letter _a_ or _haw_ is _alif_, as also is the Arabian: the Greek _alpha_ is either _alpa_ or _alfa_.
The Welsh Archbard Taliesin makes the mystic statement:-Of the ruddy vine, Planted on sunny days, And on new-moon nights; And the white wine.
The wheat rich in grain And red flowing wine Christ's pure body make, Son of Alpha.
The same poet claims, "I was in the Ark with Noah and Alpha," whence it would seem that Alpha was Mother Eve or the Mother of All Living.
Alfa the Elf King and his followers the elves were deemed to be ever-living, and the words _love_, _life_, and _alive_ are all one and the same.
That Spenser appreciated this identity between _Elfe_ and _life_ is apparent in the passage:-Prometheus did create A man of many parts from beasts derived, That man so made he called Elfe to wit, Quick the first author of all Elfin kind, Who wandering through the world with wearie feet Did in the gardens of Adonis find A goodly creature whom he deemed in mind To be no earthly wight, but either sprite Or angel, the author of all woman-kind.
[164] _Quick_ as in "quick and dead" meant living, whence "Elfe, to wit Quick," was clearly understood by Spenser as life.
It meant further, all _vie_ or all _feu_, for the ancients identified life and fire, and they further identified the _fays_ or elves with _feux_ or fires.
The place-name Fife is, I suspect, connected with _vif_ or _vive_, and it is noteworthy that in Fifeshire to this day a circular patch of white snow which habitually lingers in a certain hill cup is termed poetically "the Lady Alva's web".
Whether this Lady Alva was supposed to haunt Glen Alva--a name now associated with a more material spirit--I do not know.
The dictionaries define "Alfred" as meaning "Elf in council," and Allflatt or Elfleet as "elf purity".
The big Alfe was no doubt symbolised by the celebrated Alphian Rock in Yorkshire, and the little Alf was almost certainly worshipped in his coty or stone cradle at Alvescott near Witney.
That this site was another Kit's Coty or "Cradle of Tudno," as at Llandudno, is implied by the earlier forms Elephescote (1216) and Alfays (1274).
The Fays and the Elves are one and the same as the Jinns, the Genii, or "the Gentry".
There used to be an "Alphey" within Cripplegate on the site of the present Church of St. Alphage in London.
It was believed that the Elf King inhabited the linden tree, and the elder was similarly associated with him.
Linden is the same word as London, and the name elder resolves into the _dre_ or _der_ or abode of El: in Scandinavia the elves were known as the Elles, whence probably Ellesmere--the Elves pool--and similar place-names.
We shall subsequently consider a humble Hallicondane or _Ellie King dun_ still standing in Ramsgate.
There was also a famous Elve dun or Elve-haunt at _Elbo_ton, a hill in Yorkshire, where according to local legend:-From Burnsall's Tower the midnight hour Had toll'd and its echo was still, And the Elphin bard from faerie land Was upon _Elbo_ton Hill.
In the neighbourhood of this _ton_ or _dun_ of Elbo there are persistent traditions of a spectral hound or bandog.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the London Aldermanbury--the barrow or court of Alderman--is a church dedicated to St. Alban, and in this same district stood the parish church of St. Alphage.
There figures in the Church Calendar a "St. Alphage the Bald," and also a St. Alphage or Elphege, known alternatively as Anlaf.
The word Anlaf resolves into _Ancient Alif_, and it may be thus surmised that "Alphage the Bald" was the Alif, Aleph, or Alpha aged.
As has already been seen the Celts represented their Hercules as bald-headed.
St. Alban's, Holborn, is situated in Baldwin's Gardens where also is a Baldwin's Place.
Probably it was the same Bald One--_alias_ Father Time--that originated the Baldwin Street in the neighbourhood of St. Alphage and St. Alban, Aldermanbury.
St. Anlaf may be connoted with the St. Olave whose church neighbours those of St. Alphage, and St. Alban.
By the Church of St. Alban used to run Love Lane, and _Anlaf_ may thus perhaps be rendered Ancient Love, or Ancient Life, or Ancient Elf.
The _Olive_ branch is a universally understood emblem of love, in which connection there is an apparition recorded of St. John the Almoner.
"He saw on a time in a vision a much fair maid, which had on her head a crown of olive, and when he saw her he was greatly abashed and demanded her what she was."
She answered, "I am Mercy; which brought from Heaven the Son of God; if thou wilt wed me thou shalt fare the better".
Then he, understanding that the olive betokened Mercy, began that same day to be merciful.
A short distance from Aldermanbury is Bunhill Row, on the site of Bunhill fields where used to be kept the hounds or bandogs of the Corporation of London.
The name Bunhill implies an ancient tumulus or barrow sacred to the same Bun or Ban as the neighbouring St. Albans.
The "Coleman" which pervades this district of London, as in Coleman Street, Colemanchurch, Colemanhawe, Colemannes, implies that a colony of St. Colmans or "Doves" settled there and founded the surrounding shrines.
In Ireland, Kil as in Kilpatrick, Kilbride, meant cell or shrine, whence it may be deduced that the river Cuneburn or Kilburn was a sacred stream on the banks of which many Godwyns had their cells.
In this neighbourhood the place-names Hollybush Vale, Hollybush Tavern, imply the existence of a very celebrated Holly Tree.
The illustration herewith represents the Twelfth Night Holly Festival in Westmorland, which terminated gloriously at an inn:-To every branch a torch they tie To every torch a light apply, At each new light send forth huzzahs Till all the tree is in a blaze; Then bear it flaming through the town, With minstrelsy and rockets thrown.
[165] [Illustration: FIG.
40.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
At the Westmorland festival the holly tree was always carried by the biggest man, and in all probability this was a similar custom in the Cuneburn or Kilburn district, terminating at the Hollybush Tavern.
Scandinavian legend tells of a potent enchantress who had dwelt for 300 years on the Island of Kunnan (Canaan?)
happy in the exquisite innocence of her youth.
Mighty heroes sued for the love of this fairest of giant maidens, and the sea around Kunnan is said to be still cumbered with the fragments of rock which her Cyclopean admirers flung jealously at one another.
Ere, however, she was married "the detestable Odin" came into the country and drove all from the island.
Refuging elsewhere the Lady of Kunnan and her consort dwelt awhile undisturbed until such time as a gigantic Oluf "came from Britain".
This Oluf (they called him the Holy) making the sign of the cross with his hands drove ashore in a gigantic ship crying with a loud voice: "Stand there as a stone till the last day," and in the same instant the unhappy husband became a mass of rock.
The tale continues that on Yule Eve only could the Lord of Kunnan and other petrified giants receive back their life for the space of seven hours.
[166] Now Janus _alias_ Saturn had on his coins the figure of a ship's prow; he was sometimes delineated pointing to a rock whence issued a profusion of water; seven days were set apart for his rites in December; and the seven days of the week were no doubt connected with his title of Septimanus.
In Britain the consort of the Magna Mater Keridwen ( = _Perpetual Love_) or Ked was entitled Tegid, and like Janus and St. Peter Tegid was entitled the Door-keeper.
In Celtic _te_ meant _good_, whence Tegid might reasonably be understood as either _Good God_ or _The Good_.
Tegid also meant, according to Davies, _serene baldness_, an interpretation which has been ridiculed, but one which nevertheless is in all probability correct for every ancient term bore many meanings, and because one is right it does not necessarily follow that every other one is wrong.
Tegid and Ked were the parents of an untoward child, whose name Avagddu is translated as having meant _utter darkness_, but as Davies observes "mythological genealogy is mere allegory, and the father and the son are frequently the same person under different points of view.
Thus this character in his abject state may be referred to as the patriarch himself during his confinement in the internal gloom of the Ark, where he was surrounded with _utter darkness_; a circumstance which was commemorated in all the mysteries of the gentile world.... And as our complex Mythology identified the character of the patriarch with the sun, so Avagddu may also have been viewed as a type of that luminary in his veil of darkness and gloom.
This gloom was afterwards changed into _light_ and _cheerfulness_, and thus the son of Keridwen may be recognised in his illuminated state under the title of Elphin, and _Rhuvawn Bevyr_ which implies _bursting forth with radiance_, and seems to be an epithet of the helio-arkite god."
Davies continues: "Avagddu thus considered as a type of the helio-arkite god in his afflicted and renovated state has a striking coincidence of character with Eros the blind god of the Greeks".
[167] The Cain or "Man in the Moon," represented herewith, has the heart of love, or Eros, figured on his headgear, and he is carrying the pipes of Pan, or of the Elphin Bard of Fairyland.
It was common knowledge to our predecessors, that Titania--"Our radiant Queen"--hated sluts and sluttery and when Mrs.
Page concocted her fairy plot against Falstaff she enjoined-Then let them all encircle him about And Fairy-like to pinch the unclean Knight, And ask him why that hour of fairy revel In their so sacred paths he dares to tread.
[Illustration: FIG.
41.--From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
42.--British.
From _A New Description of England and Wales_ (Anon., 1724).]
The White May or Hawthorn which was so dear to the Elves was probably the symbol of that chastity and cleanliness which was proverbially an Elphin attribute.
It is, for instance, said of Sir Thopas, when questing for the Fairy Queen, that-... he was chaste and no lechour And sweet as is the bramble flower, That beareth the red hip.
On reaching the domain of Queen Elf, Sir Thopas is encountered by a "great giaunt" Sire Oliphaunt, who informs him-Here the Queen of Fairie With harpe and pipe and symphonie Dwelleth in this place.
Sire Oliphaunt may be connoted with the Elephant which occurs on our ancient coinage, and is also found carved on many prehistoric stones in Scotland, notably in the cave of St. Rule at St. Andrews.
The Kate Kennedy still commemorated at St. Andrews we shall subsequently connote with Conneda and with Caindea.
The Elephant which sleeps while standing was regarded as the emblem of the benevolent sentinel, or watchman, and as the symbol of giant strength, meekness, and ingenuity.
According to the poet Donne:-Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant The onely harmelesse great thing; the giant Of beasts; who thought none bad, to make him wise But to be just and thankful, loth t' offend (Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend) Himself he up-props, on himself relies And foe to none.
[Illustration: FIG.
43.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
The Elephant or Oliphant (Greek _elephas_, "origin unknown") is the hugest and the first of beasts, and in India it symbolises the vanquisher of obstacles, the leader or the opener of the way.
Ganesa, the elephant-headed Hindu god is invariably invoked at the beginning of any enterprise, and the name Ganesa is practically the same as _genesis_ the origin or beginning.
"Praise to Thee, O Ganesa," wrote a prehistoric hymnist, "Thou art manifestly the Truth, Thou art undoubtedly the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, the Supreme Brahma, the Eternal Spirit."
One of the reasons for the symbolic eminence of the Elephant seems to have been the animal's habit of spouting water.
It is still said of the Man in the Moon that he is a giant who at the time of the flow stands in a stooping posture because he is then taking up water which he pours out on the earth and thereby causes high tide; but at the time of the ebb he stands erect and rests from his labour when the water can subside again.
[168] The moon goddess of the Muysca Indians of Bogota is named Chin (akin to Cain, _cann_, and Ganesa?
), and in her insensate spleen Chin was supposed at one period to have flooded the entire world.
In Mexico one of the best represented gods is Chac the rain-god, who is the possessor of an elongated nose not unlike the proboscis of a tapir, which, of course, is the spout whence comes the rain which he blows over the earth.
[169] The Hebrew Jah, _i.e._, Jon or Joy or Jack, is hailed as the long-nosed, and Taylor in his _Diegesis_[170] gives the following as a correct rendering of the original Psalm: "Sing ye to the Gods!
Chant ye his name!
Exalt him who rideth in the heavens by his name Jack, and leap for Joy before his face!
For the Lord hath a long nose and his mercy endureth for ever!"
It is quite beyond the possibilities of independent evolution or of coincidence that the divinity with a long nose or trunk, should have been known as _Chac_ alike in Mexico and Asia Minor.
The spouting characteristic of the whale rendered it a marine equivalent to the elephant.
_Whale_ is the same word as _whole_, and _leviathan_ is radically the _lev_ of _elephant_.
According to British mythology, Keridwen or Ked was a leviathian or whale, whence, as from the Ark, emerged all life.
Not only is the Man in the Moon or the Wandering Jew peculiarly identified with St. Albans in Britain, but he reappears at the Arabian city of Elvan.
This name is cognate with _elephant_ in the same way as alpha is correlate to alpa or alba: Ayliffe and Alvey are common English surnames.
In Kensington the memory of Kenna, a fairy princess who was beloved by Albion a fairy prince, lingered until recently, and this tradition is seemingly commemorated in the neighbourhood at Albion Gate, St. Alban's Road, and elsewhere.
In St. Alban's Road, Kensington, one may still find the family name Oliff which, like Ayliffe and Iliffe, is the same as alif, aleph, or alpha, the letter "a" the first or the beginning.
Panku, the great giant of the universe, is entitled by the Chinese the _first_ of Beings or the Beginning, and it is claimed by the Christian Church that St. Alban was the _first_ of British martyrs.
Eastward of Kensington Gardens is St. Alban's Place and also Albany, generally, but incorrectly termed "The Albany".
The neighbouring Old Bond Street and New Bond Street owe their nomenclature to a ground landlord whose name Bond is radically connected with Albany.
The original Bond family were in all probability followers of "Bond," and the curiously named Newbons, followers of the Little Bond or New Sun.
In the Isle of Wight there are, half a mile apart, the hamlets of Great Pann and Little Pann which, considered in conjunction with _Bon_church, were probably once sacred to Old Pan and Little Pan.
According to Prof. Weekley the name Lovibond, Loveband, or Levibond, "seems to mean 'the dear bond'".
[171] Who or what "the dear bond" was is not explained, but we may connote the kindred surnames Goodbon, Goodbun, and Goodband.
By 24th December, the shortest day in the year, the Old Sun had sunk seemingly to his death, and at Yuletide it was believed that the rejuvenate New Sun, the Baby Sun, the Welsh _Mabon_, or _Baby Boy_, was born anew either from the sea or from a cave or womb of the earth.
The arms of the Isle of Man, anciently known as Eubonia, are the three-legged solar wheel of the Wandering Joy.
_Eu_ of Eubonia is seemingly the Greek _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious, and the rolling _wheel_ of Eubonia was like the svastika, a symbol of the Gentle Bounty running his beneficent and never-ending course.
St. Andrew, with his limbs extended to the four quarters, was, I think, once the same symbol,[172] and it is probable that the story of Ixion bound to a burning wheel and rolling everlastingly through space was a perversion of the same original.
Ixion is phonetically _Ik zion_, _i.e._, the Mighty Sun or Mighty Sein or Bosom.
It was frankly admitted by the Greeks that their language was largely derived from barbarians or foreigners, and the same admission was made in relation to their theology.
[173] The circle of the Sun or solar wheel, otherwise the wheel of Good _law_, is found frequently engraved on prehistoric stones and coins.
In Gaul, statues of a divinity bearing a wheel upon his shoulder have been found, and solar wheels figure persistently in Celtic archæology.
It has been supposed, says Dr. Holmes, that they are symbolical of Sun worship, and that the God with the wheel was the God of the Sun.
It is further probable that the wheel on the shoulder corresponded to the child on the shoulder of St.
Kit, and I am at a loss to understand how any thinker can have ever propounded such a proposition as to require Dr. Holmes' comment, "the supposition that the wheels were money is no longer admitted by competent antiquaries".
[174] Sir James Frazer instances cases of how the so-called "Fire of Heaven" used sometimes to be made by igniting a cart wheel smeared with pitch, fastened on a pole 12 feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel.
This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame ascended the people uttered a set form of words with eyes and arms directed heavenwards.
In Norway to this day men turn cart wheels round the bonfires of St. John, and doubtless at some time the London urchin--still a notorious adept at cart-wheeling--once exercised the same pious orgy.
On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires were lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the Elves were at their very liveliest.
_Eléve_ in French means up _aloft_, and _eléve_ means frequently transported with excitement.
Shakespeare refers to elves as ouphes, which is the same word as _oaf_ and was formerly spelt aulf.
Near Wye in Kent there is a sign-post pointing to Aluph, but this little village figures on the Ordnance map as Aulph.
The ouphes of Shakespeare are equipped "with rounds of waxen tapers on their heads," and with Jack o' lanthorn may be connoted Hob-and-his-lanthorn.
In Worcestershire Hob has his fuller title, and is alternatively known as Hobredy:[175] with the further form Hobany may be correlated Eubonia, and with Hobredy, St. Bride, the _Bona dea_ of the Hebrides.
It is probable that "Hobany" is responsible for the curious Kentish place name Ebony, and that the Wandering Dame Abonde, Habonde, or Abundia of French faërie, was Hobany's consort.
The worship of La Dame Abonde, the star-crowned Queen of Fées, is particularly associated with St. John's Day, and there is little doubt that in certain aspects she was _cann_, or the full moon:-The moon, full-orbed, into the well looks down, Her face is mirrored in the waters clear, And fées are gathering in the beech shade brown, From missions far and near.
And there erect and tall, Abonde the Queen, Brow-girt with golden circlet, that doth bear A small bright scintillating star between Her braids of dusky hair.
[176] The Bretons believe in the existence of certain elves termed _Sand Yan y Tad_ (_St.
John and Father_) who carry lights at their finger ends, which spin round and round like wheels, and, according to Arab tradition, the Jinn or Jan (Jinnee _m._, Jinniyeh, _f.
sing._) are formed of "smokeless fire".
[177] That the ancient British, like the Peruvians, deemed themselves children of the Fire or Sun is implied among other testimony from a Druidic folk-tale (collected by a writer in 1795), wherein a young prince, divested of his corporeal envelope, has his senses refined and is borne aloft into the air.
"Towards the disc of the Sun the young prince approaches at first with awful dread, but presently with inconceivable rapture and delight.
This glorious body (the Sun) consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in an ocean of bliss.
It is the abode of the blessed--of the sages--of the friends of mankind.
The happy souls when thrice purified in the sun ascend to a succession of still higher spheres from whence they can no more descend to traverse the circles of those globes and stars which float in a less pure atmosphere.
"[178] At New Grange in Ireland, and elsewhere on prehistoric rock tombs, there may be seen carvings of a ship or solar barque frequently in juxtaposition to a solar disc, and the similarity of these designs to the solar ship of Egypt has frequently been remarked.
The Egyptian believed that after death his soul would be allowed to enter the land of the Sun, and that in the company of the Gods he would then sail into the source of immortal Light: hence he placed model boats in the tombs, sometimes in pairs which were entitled Truth and Righteousness, and prayed: "Come to the Earth, draw nigh, O boat of Ra, make the boat to travel, O Mariners of Heaven".
It is no doubt this same Holy Pair of Virtues that suckled the Child Albine, and that are represented as two streams of nourishment in the emblem herewith.
[Illustration: FIG.
44.--From the title-page of a seventeenth-century publication of a Cambridge printer.]
That the British were enthusiastic astronomers is testified by Cæsar, who states that the Druids held a great many discourses about the stars and their motion,[179] about the size of the world and various countries, about the nature of things, about the power and might of the immortal gods, and that they instructed the youths in these subjects.
It is equally certain that the British reverenced Sun and Fire not merely materially but as emblems of the Something behind Matter.
"Think not," said a tenth-century Persian, "that our fathers were adorers of fire; for that element was only an exalted object on the lustre of which they fixed their eyes.
They humbled themselves before God, and if thy understanding be ever so little exerted thou must acknowledge thy dependence on the Being supremely pure."
Among the sacred traditions of the Hindus which are assigned by competent scholars to 2400 B.C.
occurs what is known as the holiest verse of the Vedas.
This reads: "Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun the Deity who illumines all, from whom all proceed, are renovated, and to whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our intellects aright in our progress towards His holy Seat".
It is quite permissible to cite this Hindu evidence as Hindus and Celts were alike branches of the same Aryan family, and between Druids and Brahmins there has, apart from etymology,[180] been traced the same affinity as existed between the Druids and the Magi.
The primeval symbolism of Fire as Love and Light as Intellect is stamped indelibly on language, yet like most things which are ever seen it is now never seen.
We say "I see" instead of "I understand"; we speak of throwing light on a subject or of warm affection, yet in entire forgetfulness of the old ideas underlying such phraseology.
When Christianity came westward it was compelled to take over almost intact most of the customs of aboriginal paganry, notably the Cult of Fire.
The sacred fire of St. Bridget was kept going at Kildare until the thirteenth century when it was suppressed by the Archbishop of Dublin.
It was, however, relighted and maintained by the nineteen nuns of St. Bridget--the direct descendants of nineteen prehistoric nuns or Druidesses--until the time of the Reformation, when it was finally extinguished.
In old Irish MSS.
Brigit--who was represented Madonna-like, with a child in her arms--is entitled "The Presiding Care".
The name of her father, Dagda Mor, is said by Celtic scholars to mean "The Great Good Fire"; the dandelion is called "St. Bride's Forerunner," and in Gaelic its name is "Little Flame of God".
We have it on the authority of Shakespeare that "Fairies use flowers for their charactery," whence probably the pink with its pinked or ray-like petals was a flower of Pan on High.
_Dianthus_, the Greek for pink, means "divine" or "day flower," and like the daisy or Day's Eye the Pansy was in all probability deemed to be Pan's eye.
Among the list of Elphin names with which, complained Reginald Scott, "our mothers' maids have so frayed us,"[181] he includes "Pans" and the "_First_ Fairy" in Lyly's _The Maid's Metamorphosis_, introduces himself by the remark, "My name is Penny".
To this primary elf may perhaps be assigned the plant name Pennyroyal, and his haunts may be assumed at various Pennyfields, Pandowns, and Bunhills.
Some authorities maintain that Bonfire is a corruption of Bonefire, or fire of bones.
But bones will not burn, and the "Blessing Fire," Bonfire, Good Fire, or Beltane is still worshipped in Brittany under the Celtic name of _Tan Tad_ or _Fire Father_.
In Brittany there exists to this day a worship of the Druidic Fire Father, which in its elaborate ritual preserves seemingly the exact spirit and ceremony of prehistoric fire-worship.
In Provence the grandfather sets the Christmas log alight, the youngest child pours wine over it, then amid shouts of joy the log is put upon the fire-dogs and its first flame is awaited with reverence.
This instance is the more memorable by reason of the prayer which has survived in connection with the ceremony and has been thus quoted in _Notes and Queries_: "Mix the brightness of thy flames with that of our hearts, and maintain among us peace and good health.
Warm with thy fire the feet of orphans and of sick old men.
Guard the house of the poor, and do not destroy the hopes of the peasant or the seaman's boat."
The instances of Bonfire or Beltane customs collected by the author of _The Golden Bough_ clearly evince their original sanctity.
In Greece women jumped over the all-purifying flames crying, "I leave my sins behind me," and notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of Christianity to persuade our forefathers that all who worship fire "shall go in misery to sore punishment," the cult of Fire still continues in out-of-the-way parts even now.
To this day children in Ireland are passed through the fire by being caught up and whisked over it, my authority for which statement observing: "We have here apparently an exact repetition of the worship described in the Old Testament and an explanation of it, for there the idolatrous Israelites are described as passing their sons and their daughters through the fire.
This the writer always thought was some purifying cruel observance, but it seems that it could be done without in any way hurting the children.
"[182] Not only the ritual of fire, but also its ethics have largely survived, notably in Ireland, where it was customary to ask for fire from a priest's house.
But if the priest refused, as he usually did, in order to discountenance superstition, then the fire was asked from the happiest man, _i.e._, the best living person in the parish.
When lighting a candle it was customary in England to say "May the Lord send us the Light of Heaven," and when putting it out, "May the Lord renew for us the Light of Heaven".
Originally the Persians worshipped the sacred fire only upon hill-tops, a custom for which Bryant acidly assigns the following reason: "The people who prosecuted this method of worship enjoyed a soothing infatuation which flattered the gloom of superstition.
The eminences to which they retired were lonely and silent and seemed to be happily circumstanced for contemplation and prayer.
They who frequented them were raised above the lower world and fancied that they were brought into the vicinity of the powers of the air and of the Deity, who resided in the higher regions."
The Druids, like the Persians, worshipped upon hill-tops or the highest ground, doubtless because they regarded these as symbols of the Most High, and there is really nothing in the custom flattering either to gloom or superstition:-Mountains are altars rais'd to God by hands Omnipotent, and man must worship there.
On their aspiring summits _glad_ he stands And near to Heaven.
If our ancestors were unable to find a convenient highland, they made an artificial mound, and such was the sacred centre or sanctuary of all tribal activities.
The celebrated McAlpine laws of Scotland were promulgated from the Mote of Urr, which remarkable construction will be illustrated in a later chapter.
Not only in Homeric Greece, but universally, Kings and Chiefs were once treated and esteemed as Sun-gods.
"Think not," said a Maori chief to a missionary, "that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth.
I come from the Heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I shall return to them".
[183] The notion of Imperial divinity is not yet dead; it was flourishing in England to Stuart times, and though the spirit may now have fled, its traces still remain in our regal ceremonial.
In the Indian Code known as the Laws of Manu, the superstition is thus enunciated: "Because a King has been formed of particles of those Lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre, and like the Sun he burns eyes and hearts; nor can anybody on earth even gaze at him.
Through his power he is Fire and Wind, he the Sun and Moon, he the Lord of Justice, he Kubera, he Varuna, he Great Indra.
Even an infant King must not be despised that he is mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.
"[184] It is obvious that the British carried this conception of the innate divinity of man much farther than merely to the personalities of kings.
The word _soul_, Dutch _ziel_, is probably the French word _ciel_; to work with _zeal_ is to throw one's _soul_ into it.
That the Celts, like the Chinese or Celestials, equated the _soul_ with the _ciel_ or the Celestial, believing, as expressed by Taliesin, the famous British Bard, that "my original country is the region of the summer stars," is unquestionable.
Max Müller supposed that the word _soul_ was derived from the Greek root _seio_, to shake.
"It meant," he says, "the storm-tossed waters in contradistinction to stagnant or running water.
The soul being called _saivala_ (Gothic), we see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep."
Whatever the Teutonic nations may have fancied about their souls is irrelevant to the Druidic teaching, which was something quite different.
In A.D. 45, a Roman author stated that the Druids (who did not flourish in Germany) taught many things privately, but that _one_ of their precepts had become public, to wit, that man should act bravely in war, that souls are immortal, and that there is another life after death.
There is additional testimony to the effect that the Druids of the Isle of Man, or Eubonia, "raised their minds to the most sublime inquiries, and despising human and worldly affairs strongly pressed upon their disciples the immortality of the soul".
"Before all things," confirmed Cæsar, "they (the Druids) are desirous to inspire a belief that men's souls do not perish."
That they successfully inspired this cardinal doctrine is proved by the fact that among the Celts it was not uncommon to lend money on the understanding that it should be repaid in the next world.
It is further recorded that the Britons had such an utter disregard of death that they sang cheerily when marching into battle, and in the words of an astonished Roman, _Mortem pro joco habent_--"They turn death into a joke".
It was the belief of the Celt that immediately at death man assumed a spiritual replica of his earthly body and passed into what was termed the Land of the Living, the White Land, or the Great Strand, or The Great Land, and many other titles.
An Elphin Land, where there was neither death nor old age, nor any breach of law, where he heard the noble and melodious music of the gods, travelled from realm to realm, drank from crystal cups, and entertained himself with his beloved.
In this Fairyland of happy souls he supposed the virtuous and brave to roam among fields covered with sweet flowers, and amid groves laden with delicious fruits.
Here some, as their taste inclined, wandered in happy groups, some reclined in pleasant bowers, while others exercised themselves with hunting, wrestling, running races, martial feats, and other manly exercises.
No one grew old in this Abode, nor did the inhabitants feel tedious of enjoyment or know how the centuries passed away.
In this spiritual Land of Immortal Youth "wherein is delight of every goodness," and "where only truth is known," there was believed to be "neither age, nor decay; nor gloom, nor sadness, nor envy, nor jealousy, nor hatred, nor haughtiness"; in short, the Fairyland or Paradise of the Britons coincided exactly with the celestial garden of the Persians wherein, it is said, there was "no impotent, no lunatic, no poverty, no lying, no meanness, no jealousy, no decayed tooth, no leprous to be confined," nor any of the brands wherewith evil stamps the bodies of mortals.
To this day the unsophisticated Celts of Britain and Brittany believe in this doctrine of a heavenly hereafter, and the conception of an all-surrounding "Good People" and elemental spirits is still vividly alive.
In England fairies were known as Mawmets, meaning "little mothers," and in Wales as _y mamau_, which means "the mothers".
They were also known as "mothers' blessings".
To the early Christian preachers the "gentry" and the "good people" were the troops of Satan continually to be combated and exorcised, but it was a hard task to dispel the exquisite images of the fairy-paradise, substituting in lieu of it the monkish purgatory.
There is a tale extant of how St. Patrick once upon a time tried to convince Oisin that the hero Fingal was roasting in hell.
"If," cried out the old Fenian, "the children of Morni and the many tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal out of hell or the habitation should be our own."
Not only did the British believe that their friends were in Elysium, but they likewise supposed themselves to be under the personal and immediate guardianship of the "gentry".
The Rev.
S. Baring-Gould refers to the beautiful legends which centre around this belief as too often, alas, but apples of Sodom, fair cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of heathenism.
After lamenting the heresy--"too often current among the lower orders and dissenters"--that the souls of the departed become angels, he goes on to explain: "In Judaic and Christian doctrine the angel creation is distinct from that of human beings, and a Jew or a Catholic would as little dream of confusing the distinct conception of angel and soul as of believing in metempsychosis.
But not so dissenting religion.
According to Druidic dogma the souls of the dead were guardians of the living, a belief shared with the Ancient Indians, etc.
Thus the hymn, 'I want to be an Angel,' so popular in dissenting schools, is founded on a venerable Aryan myth and therefore of exceeding interest, but Christian it is not.
"[185] Lucan, the Roman poet, alluding to the Druids observed-If dying mortals doom they sing aright, No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night No parting souls to grisly Pluto go Nor seek the dreary silent shades below, But forth they fly immortal to their kind And other bodies in new worlds they find.
[Illustration: FIG.
45.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The symbolism of the butterfly is crystallised in the word _psyche_, which in Greek meant not only _butterfly_ but also _soul_, and to this day butterflies in some districts of Great Britain are considered to be souls, though this may have arisen not from an ethereal imagination, but from the ancient doctrine of metemphsychosis which the Druids seemingly held.
It was certainly believed that souls, like serpents, shed their old coverings and assumed newer and more lovely forms, that all things changed, but that nothing perished.
In Cornwall moths, regarded by some as souls, by others as fairies, are known as pisgies or piskies.
The connection between the Cornish words _pisgie_ or _piskie_ and the Greek _psyche_ has been commented upon as being "curious but surely casual".
Grimm has recorded that in old German, the caterpillar was named Alba, and that the Alp often takes the form of a butterfly.
[186] Referring to Ossian, Dr. Waddell states: "He recognised the Deity, if he could be said to recognise him at all, as an omnipresent vital essence everywhere diffused in the world, or centred for a lifetime in heroes.
He himself, his kindred, his forefathers, and the human race at large were dependent solely on the atmosphere, their souls were identified with the air, heaven was their natural home, earth their temporary residence."
But, though certainly upholders of what would nowadays be termed complacently "the Larger Hope," it was certainly not supposed that evil was capable of admittance to the Land of Virtues: on the contrary, the Celts believed firmly in the existence of an underworld which their poets termed "the cruel prison of the earth," "the abode of death," "the loveless land," etc.
According to the Bardic Triads there were "Three things that make a man equal to an angel; the love of every good; the love of exercising charity; and the love of pleasing God".
It was further inculcated that "In creation there is no evil which is not a greater good than an evil: the things called rewards or punishments are so secured by eternal ordinances, that they are not consequences, but properties of our acts and habits."
It was not imagined as it is to-day that "the awful wrath of God" could be assuaged by the sacrifice of an innocent man, or that-Believe in Christ, who died for thee, And sure as He hath died, Thy debt is paid, thy soul is free, And thou art justified.
[187] It is still the doctrine of the Christian Church that infants dying unbaptised are doomed to hell, but to the British this barbaric dogma evidently never appealed.
In the fifth century the peace of the Church was vastly disturbed by the insidious heresy called Pelasgian, and it is a matter of some distinction to these islands that "Pelasgus," whose correct name was Morgan, was British-born.
Morgan or Pelasgus, seconded by Coelestius, an Irish Scot, wilfully but gracelessly maintained that Adam's sin affected only himself, not his posterity; that children at their birth are as pure and innocent as Adam was at his creation, and that the Grace of God is not necessary to enable men to do their duty, to overcome temptations, or even to attain perfection, but that they may do all this by the freedom of their own wills.
A Council of 214 Bishops, held at Carthage, formally condemned these pestilent and insidious doctrines which, according to a commentator, "strike at the root of genuine piety".
There is no known etymology for the words _God_ and _good_, and some years ago it was a matter of divided opinion whether or not they were radically the same.
In Danish the two terms are identical, and there is very little doubt that the one is an adjective derived from the other.
Max Müller, however, sums up the contrary opinion as follows: "God was most likely an old heathen name of the Deity and for such a name the supposed etymological meaning of _good_ would be far too modern, too abstract, too Christian".
One might ignore this marvellous complacency were it not for the fact that it still expresses the opinion of a considerable majority.
To refute the presumption that Christianity alone is capable of abstract thought, or of conceiving God as good, one need only turn to any primitive philosophy.
It is, however, needless to look further afield than pagan Albion.
Strabo alludes to the Druidic teaching as "moral science," and no phrase better defines the pith and dignity of certain British Triads.
It was daringly maintained that God cannot be matter, therefore everything not matter was God: that:-In every person there is a soul, In every soul there is intelligence: In every intelligence there is thought, In every thought there is either good or evil: In every evil there is death: In every good there is life, In every life there is God.
[188] The Bards of Britain, who claimed to maintain the "sciences" of piety, wisdom, and courtesy, taught that--the three principal properties of the Hidden God were "Power, knowledge, and love": that the three purposes of God in his works were "to consume the evil; to enliven the dead; and to cause joy from doing good": that the three ways in which God worked were "experience, wisdom, and mercy".
It will be observed that all these axioms are in three clauses, and it was claimed by the Welsh Bards of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries that they possessed many similar Triads or threefold precepts which had been handed down by memory and tradition from immemorial times.
[189] It is generally accepted by competent scholars that the Welsh Triads, particularly the poems attributed to "Taliesin," undoubtedly contain a great deal of pagan and pre-Christian doctrine, but to what extent this material has been garbled and alloyed is, of course, a matter of uncertainty and dispute.
In some instances external and internal evidence testify alike to their authenticity.
For example, Diogenes Laertius, who died in A.D. 222, stated: "The Druids philosophise sententiously and obscurely--to worship the Gods, to do no evil, to exercise courage".
This precise and comprehensive summary of the whole duty of man is to be found among the Bardic Triads, where it has been translated to read: "The three First Principles of Wisdom: obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of mankind, and bravery in sustaining all the accidents of life".
In _Celtic Heathendom_ Sir John Rhys prints the following noble and majestic prayer, of which four MSS.
variants are in existence:-Grant, O God, Thy protection; And in Thy protection, strength, And in strength, understanding; And in understanding, knowledge, And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice; And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it, And in that love, the love of all existences; And in that love of all existences, the love of God.
God and all goodness.
Some have supposed that Druidism learned its secrets from the Persian Magi, others that the Magi learnt from Druidism.
Pliny, speaking of the vanities of _Magiism_ or _Magic_, recorded that "Britain celebrates them to-day with such ceremonies it might seem possible that she taught Magic to the Persians".
In Persian philosophy the trinity of Goodness was Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word, and in Britain these Three Graces were symbolised by the three Golden Berries of the Mistletoe or Golden Bough.
They figure alternatively as Three Golden Balls or Apples growing on a crystal tree.
The Mistletoe--sacred alike in Persia and in Britain--was worshipped as the All-Heal, and it was termed the Ethereal Plant, because alone among the vegetable creation it springs etherially in mid-air, and not from earth.
Among the adventures of Prince Conneda of Connaught--the young and lovely son of Great and Good King Conn and Queen Eda--was a certain quest involving the most strenuous seeking.
Aided by a Druid, the youthful Conneda carried with him a small bottle of extracted All-Heal, and was led forward by a magic ball, which rolled ever in advance.
The story (or rather allegory, for it is obviously such) tells us that the Three Golden Apples were plucked from the Crystal Tree in the midst of the pleasure garden, and deposited by Conneda in his bosom.
On returning home Conneda planted the Three Golden Apples in his garden, and instantly a great tree bearing similar fruit sprang up.
This tree caused all the district to produce an exuberance of crops and fruits, so that the neighbourhood became as fertile and plentiful as the dominion of the Firbolgs, in consequence of the extraordinary powers possessed by the Golden Fruit.
[190] The trefoil or shamrock (figured constantly in Crete) was another symbol of the Three in One, and I have little doubt that at Tara there once existed a picture of St. Patrick holding this almost world-wide emblem.
Tara is the same word as _tri_ or _three_ and in Faërie this number is similarly sacred.
The Irish used to march in battle in threes, the Celtic _mairae_ or fairy mothers were generally figured in groups of three, and the gown of the Fairy Queen is said to have been-Of pansy, pink, and primrose leaves, Most curiously laid on in _threaves_.
[191] The word shamrock in Persian is _shamrakh_, and three to four thousand years ago a Persian poet hymned: "We worship the pure, the Lord of purity.
We worship the universe of the true spirit, visible, invisible, and all that sustains the welfare of the good creation.
We praise all good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds, which are and will be, and keep pure all that is good.
Thou true and happy Being!
we strive to think, to speak, to do only what, of all actions, may promote the two lives, the body and the mind.
We beseech the spirit of earth, by means of these best works (agriculture) to grant us beautiful and fertile fields, for believer and unbeliever, for rich and poor.
We worship the Wise One who formed and furthered the spirit of the earth.
We worship Him with our bodies and souls.
We worship Him as being united with the spirits of pure men and women.
We worship the promotion of all good, all that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything that is good."
The alleged author of this invocation to the God of Goodness and Beauty lived certainly as early as 1200 B.C., some think 2000 B.C.
: the hymn itself was collected into its present canon during the fourth century of this era, but, like the British Triads and all other Bardic lore, it is supposed to have been long orally preserved.
It is perfectly legitimate to compare the literature of Ancient Persia with that of Britain, for the religious systems of the two countries were admittedly almost identical; and until recently Persia was the most generally accepted cradle of the Aryans.
It is impossible to suppose that the earliest compilers and transcribers of the British Triads had access to the MSS.
of the hymn just quoted; yet while Persian tradition records, "We worship the promotion of all good, all that is very beautiful, shining, immortal, bright, everything that is good," the British Bards seemingly worshipped the promotion of all good, in fact the Three Ultimate Objects of Bardism are on record as being "to reform morals and customs; to secure peace and _praise everything that is good and excellent_".
British literature, British folklore, and British custom, all alike refute Max Müller's preposterous supposition that the equation _God = Good_ is "far too modern, too abstract, too Christian," and there is manifestly some evidence in favour of the probability that Giant Albion was worshipped as the _Holy Good_ and the _All Good_.
There is no known tribe of savages that is destitute of some code of ethics, and it is seemingly a world-wide paradox that spiritual wisdom and low civilisation can, and often do, exist concurrently.
Side by side with the childish notions of modern savages, one finds, not infrequently, what Andrew Lang termed, "astonishing metaphysical hymns about the first stirrings of light in darkness, of becoming, of being, which remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus".
[192] The sacred Books of Christendom emanated from one of the crudest and least cultivated of all the subject races of the Roman Empire.
It is self-evident that the Hebrews were a predatory and semi-savage tribe who conceived their Divinity as vengeful, cursing, swearing, vomiting, his fury coming up into his face, and his nostrils smoking; nevertheless, as in the Psalms and elsewhere, are some of the noblest and most lofty conceptions of Holiness and Beauty.
As a remarkable instance of this seeming universal paradox, one may refer to Micah, a Hebrew, whose work first appeared in writing about 300 B.C.
There is in Micah some of the best philosophy ever penned, yet the status of the tribe among whom he lived and to whom he addressed himself, was barbarous and brutal.
Of this, an example is found in Chapter III, where the prophet writes: "And I said, Hear I pray you, O heads of Jacob and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgement?
who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin off them, and their flesh from off their bones; who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron".
As a parallel to this cannibalism it is thus quite conceivable that while some of the MacAlpines were lauding Albani, others were larding their weaker brethren for the laird's table: but the whole trend of Alban custom and Alban literature renders the supposition unlikely.
There is extant a British Triad inculcating the three maxims for good health as "cheerfulness, temperance, and early rising".
There is another enunciating the three cares that should occupy the mind of every man as: "To worship God, to avoid injuring any one, and to act justly towards every living thing".
The latter of these is curiously reminiscent of Micah's Triadic utterance: "He hath showed thee O man what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with God".
FOOTNOTES: [140] Toland, _History of the Druids_, p. 428.
[141] _Cf._ Poste, B., _Britannic Researches_, p. 110.
[142] _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, 1912.
[143] The earliest example of Irish Bardism is to the following effect:-I invoke thee Erin Brilliant Brilliant sea, Fertile Fertile Hill, Wavy Wavy Wood Flowing Flowing stream, Fishy Fishy Lake, etc.
[144] Haslam, W., _Perran Zabuloe_, p. 8.
[145] _Survey of London_, Ev.
Lib., p. 132.
[146] _Golden Legend_, III, 248.
[147] Skeat postulates a mute vowel by deriving _lazar_ or leper from _Eleazer_--_He whom God assists_.
[148] _Extinct Civilisations of the East_, p. 104.
[149] I have a chapter of evidence in MSS.
supporting this suggestion.
[150] Frazer, Sir J. G., _Folklore in the Old Testament_, iii., 45.
[151] Bulfinch put the horse before the cart when he wrote: "As the name of the god signifies _all_, Pan came to be considered a symbol of the universe and personification of nature."
[152] Wavrin, John de, _Chronicles_.
[153] This name is supposed to have meant a miser or father of pennies.
The _penny_ is said to have been so named from the _pen_ or _head_ figured upon it.
[154] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, i., col. 566.
[155] The _New English Dictionary_ notes the following "forms" of "pigeon," _pejon_, _pejoun_, _pegion_, _pegyon_, _pigin_, _pigen_, _pigion_, _pygon_.
The supposed connection between pigeon and _pipio_, "I chirp," is surely remote, for young pigeons do not "chirp".
[156] Mrs. Hamilton Gray in _The Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, writes: "I was particularly struck with one large carved group, which bore a greater resemblance to a Hindoo representation of a trinity than anything not Indian I have ever seen.
Did we not know the thing to be impossible, I should be tempted on the strength of this sculptured stone to assert that Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu must at some former period have found adorers in Etruria.
Three monstrous faces, growing together, one full face in the middle and a profile on each side" (p. 309).
[157] The official etymology of _June_ is "probably from root of Latin _juvenis_, _junior_," but where is the sense in this?
[158] Baring-Gould, S., _Curious Myths_, p. 5.
[159] _Curious Myths_, p. 23.
[160] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, pp.
187, 189.
[161] _Hell._, c. xx.
[162] Yeats, W. B., _Fairy and Folk-tales of the Irish Peasantry_, p. 306.
[163] "Theta," _The Thorn Tree, being a History of Thorn Worship_.
London, 1863, p. 127.
[164] _Faërie Queene_, Book XI., c.
ix., st. 70-71.
[165] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, 111., col. 27.
[166] Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 138.
[167] Davies, E., _Myth of Brit.
Druids_, pp.
203, 204.
[168] Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths_, p. 194.
[169] Spence, Lewis, _Myths of Mexico and Peru_, p. 170.
[170] P. 159.
[171] _Surnames_, p. 230.
[172] The ecclesiastical _raison d'être_ for St. Andrew's situation is stated as having been "_to the end that his pain should endure the longer_".
[173] "Diogenes Lærtius, in the proem of his philosophical history, reckons the Druids among the chief authors of the barbarous theology and philosophy, long anterior to the Greeks, their disciples: and Phurnutus, in his treatise of the Nature of the Gods, says most expressly that among the many and various fables which the antient Greecs had about the Gods, some were derived from the Mages, the Africans, and Phrygians, and others from other nations: for which he cites Homer as a witness, nor is there anything that bears a greater witness to itself."
--Toland, _History of Druids_.
London, 1814, p. 106.
[174] _Ancient Britain_, p. 284.
[175] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 818.
[176] Anon., _The Fairy Family_, 1857.
[177] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, pp.
25, 441.
[178] Quoted from Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, p. 560.
[179] Livy mentions that during the Macedonian War a Gaulish soldier foretold an eclipse of the moon to the Roman Army (Liber XLIV., c.
xxxvii.).
[180] "A few years ago it would have been deemed the height of absurdity to imagine that the English and the Hindus were originally one people, speaking the same language, and clearly distinguished from other families of mankind; and yet comparative philology has established this fact by evidence as clear and irresistible as that the earth revolves round the sun."
--Smith, Dr.
Wm., _Lectures on the English Language_, p. 2.
[181] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 290.
[182] Canon ffrench, _Prehistoric Faith in Ireland_, p. 80.
[183] _Cf._ Frazer, Sir J. G., _Psyche's Task_, pp.
7, 14.
[184] _Cf._ _Ibid._ [185] _Curious Myths_, p. 557.
[186] _Cf._ Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 298.
[187] There is a certain section of Christianity that still revels in hymns such as the following:-"His nostrils breathe out fiery streams, He's a consuming fire, His jealous eyes His wrath inflame And raise His vengeance higher."
[188] This and the several subsequent quotations from Bardic "Philosophy" are taken from the collection published in 1862, by the Welsh MSS.
Society, under the title _Barddas_.
Whatever may be the precise date of these axioms the ideas they express well repay careful consideration.
[189] According to Cæsar the Druidic philosophy was transmitted orally for the purpose of strengthening the memory.
The disciples of Pythagoras followed a similar precept, hence when the majority of them were destroyed in a fire the axioms of Pythagoras were largely lost.
That the traditional tales of Ireland were maintained in their verbal integrity for untold years is implied by Mr. Yeats' statement: "In the Parochial Survey of Ireland it is recorded how the story-tellers used to gather together of an evening, and if any had a different version from the others, they would all recite theirs and vote, and the man who had varied would have to abide by their verdict.
In this way stories have been handed down with such accuracy, that the long tale of Dierdre was, in the earlier decades of this century, told almost word for word, as in the very ancient MSS.
in the Royal Dublin Society.
In one case only it varied, and then the MSS.
was obviously wrong--a passage had been forgotten by the copyist.
But this accuracy is rather in the folk and bardic tales than in the fairy legends, for these vary widely, being usually adapted to some neighbouring village or local fairy-seeing celebrity."
--Yeats, W. B., _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_, p. 11.
[190] _Cf._ Yeats, W.B., _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_, p. 318.
[191] Keightley, T., _Fairy Mythology_, p. 346.
[192] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, 1.
186.
CHAPTER V GOG AND MAGOG "Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, And bent on marriages the young men vie To till new settlements, while I to each Due law dispense and dwelling place supply, When from a tainted quarter of the sky Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, And a foul pestilence creeps down from high."
--VIRGIL, _The Æneid._ The British Chronicles relate that when Brute and his companions reached these shores the island was then uninhabited, save only for a few giants.
Seemingly these natives did not oppose the Trojan landing, for the story runs that "Nought gave Corineus (Brute's second-in-command) greater pleasure than to wrestle with the giants of whom there was a greater plenty in Cornwall than elsewhere".
On a certain day, however, the existing relations ceased, owing to an obnoxious native named Goemagog, who, accompanied by a score of companions, interrupted a sacred function which the Trojans were holding.
From the recommendations of the pious Æneas, it would seem that the Trojans had suffered similarly in other directions:-When thy vessels, ranged upon her shore, Rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light The votive altars, and the gods adore, Veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight, And shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight, Lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine, Break in, and mar the omen and the rite.
This pious use keep sacred, thou and thine, The sons of sons unborn, and all the Trojan line.
[193] The graceless Goemagog and his ruffianly crew did passing cruel slaughter on the British, howbeit at the last the Britons, rallying from all quarters, prevailed against them and slew all save only Goemagog.
Him, Brute had ordered to be kept alive as he was minded to see a wrestling bout betwixt him and Corineus, "who was beyond measure keen to match himself against such a monster".
Corineus, all agog and o'erjoyed at the sporting prospect, girded himself for the encounter, and flinging away his arms challenged Goemagog to a bout at wrestling.
After "making the very air quake with their breathless gaspings," the match ended by Goemagog being lifted bodily into the air, carried to the edge of the cliff, and heaved over.
[194] One cannot read Homer without realising that this alleged incident was in closest accord with the habits and probabilities of the time.
Alike among the Greeks and the Trojans wrestling was as popular and soul-absorbing a pastime as it is to-day, or was until yesterday, among Cornishmen:-Tired out we seek the little town, and run The sterns ashore and anchor in the bay, Saved beyond hope and glad the land is won, And lustral rites, with blazing altars, pay To Jove, and make the shores of Actium gay With Ilian games, as, like our sires, we strip And oil our sinews for the wrestler's play, Proud, thus escaping from the foeman's grip, Past all the Argive towns, through swarming Greeks, to slip.
[195] The untoward Goemagog was probably one of an elementary big-boned tribe whose divinities were Gog and Magog, and there are distinct traces, at any rate, of Magog in Ireland.
According to De Jubainville, "the various races that have successively inhabited Ireland trace themselves back to common ancestors descended from Magog or Gomer, son of Japhet, so that the Irish genealogy traditions are in perfect harmony with those of the Bible".
[196] The figures of Gog and Magog used until recently to be cut into the slope of Plymouth Hoe: in Cambridgeshire, are the Gogmagog hills; at the extremity of Land's End are two rocks known respectively as Gog and Magog, and there is an unfavourable allusion to the same twain in _Revelation_.
[197] Gog and Magog are the "protectors" of London, and at civic festivals their images used with pomp and circumstance to be paraded through the City.
In some parts of Europe the civic giants were represented as being _eight_ in number, and the Christian Clergy inherited with their office the incongruous duty of keeping them in good order.
One of these ceremonials is described by an eye-witness writing in 1809, who tells us that in Valencia no procession of however little importance took place, without being preceded by eight statues of giants of a prodigious height.
"Four of them represented the four quarters of the world, and the other four their husbands.
Their heads were made of paste-board, and of an enormous size, frizzled and dressed in the fashion.
Men, covered with drapery falling on the ground, carried them at the head of the procession, making them dance, jump, bow, turn, and twist about.
The people paid more attention to these gesticulations than to the religious ceremony which followed them.
The existence of the giants was deemed of sufficient importance to require attention as to the means of perpetuating them; consequently there was a considerable foundation in Valencia for their support.
They had a house belonging to them where they were deposited.
Two benefices were particularly founded in honour of them; and it was the duty of the Ecclesiastics who possessed these benefices to take care of them and of their ornaments, particular revenues being assigned for the expense of their toilettes.
"[198] Four pairs of elemental gods were similarly worshipped in Egypt, each pair male and female, and these _eight_ primeval Beings were known as the Ogdoad or Octet.
In Scotland, the Earth Goddess who is said to have existed "from the long eternity of the world," is sometimes described as being the chief of _eight_ "big old women," at other times as "a great big old wife," and with this untoward Hag we may equate the English "Awd Goggie" who was supposed to guard orchards.
The London figures of Gog and Magog--constructed of wicker work--had movable eyes which, to the great joy of the populace, were caused to roll or _goggle_ as the images were perambulated.
Skeat thinks the word _gog_ is "of imitative origin," but it is more likely that _goggle_ was originally Gog _oeuil_ or Gog Eye.
The Irish and Gaelic for Goggle-eyed is _gogshuileach_, which the authorities refer to _gog_, "to move slightly" and _suil_, "an eye".
At Gigglewick or Giggles-fort in Yorkshire (anciently _Deira_), there is a celebrated well of which the famed peculiarity is its eightfold flow, and it was of this Giggle Well that Drayton wrote in _Polyolbion_:-At Giggleswick where I a fountain can you show, That _eight_ times a day is said to ebb and flow.
In Cornwall at St. Isseys there used to be a sacred fountain known as St. Giggy's Well, and as every stream and fount was the supposed home of jinns or genii it is possible that "_Saint_ Giggy" may be equated with _igigi_, a word meaning in Babylonian mythology "_the spirits of Heaven_".
Jinn or Genie may also be connoted with a well near Launceston known as Joan's Pitcher, the pitcher or vase whence the living waters were poured being a constantly recurring emblem of Mother Nature.
It will be noticed in Fig.
25, p. 142, and in Fig.
256, p. 428.
The French have an expression _a gogo_ ("origin unknown") which means at one's ease, or in clover; in old French _gogue_ ("origin unknown") meant pleasantry or fun, and _goguenard_ a funmaker, or a jester.
All these and kindred terms are probably correlate to the jovial Gogmagog carnivals and festivals.
In London the house of Gog and Magog is the Guildhall in Aldermanbury: if born within the sound of the bells of the neighbouring St. Mary-le-Bow a Londoner is entitled to be termed a _cockney_; Cockayne is an old and romantic term for London, and it would therefore seem likely that among the cluster of detached _duns_ which have now coalesced into London, the followers of Gog and Magog had a powerful and perhaps aboriginal footing.
Around Londonderry in Ireland are the memories of a giant Gig na Gog, and at Launceston in Cornwall there used to be held a so-called Giglot Fair.
At this _a gogo_ festival every wench was at liberty to bestow the eye of favour, _ogle_, or look _gougou_, on any swain she fancied: whence obviously the whole village was agog, or full of eagerness, and much ogling, giggling, goggling, and gougounarderie.
In Cornwall _googou_ means a cave, den, souterrain, or "giants holt," and there are several reasons to suppose that the Gogmagogei or gougouites were troglodytes.
"Son of Man," said Ezekiel, "set thy face against Gog the Land of Magog," and to judge from similar references, it would seem that the followers of Gogmagog were ill-favoured and unloved.
Sir John Maundeville (1322) mentions in his Travels, that in the Land of Cathay towards Bucharia, and Upper India, the Jews of ten lineages "who are called Gog and Magog" were penned up in some mountains called Uber.
This name Uber we shall show is probably the same as _obr_, whence the Generic term _Hebrew_, and it is said by Maundeville that between those mountains of Uber were enclosed twenty-two kings, with their people, that dwelt between the mountains of Scythia.
[199] Josephus mentions that the Scythians were called Magogoei by the Greeks: by some authorities the Scythians are equated with the Scotti or Scots.
There are still living in Cornwall the presumed descendants of what have been termed the "bedrock" race, and these people still exhibit in their physiognomies the traces of Oriental or Mongoloid blood.
The early passage tombs of Japan are, according to Borlase, (W. C.), literally counterparts in plan and construction of those giant-graves or passage-tombs which are prevalent in Cornwall, and, speaking of the inhabitants of Cornwall and Wales, Dr. Beddoe says: "I think some reason can be shown for suspecting the existence of traces of some Mongoloid race in the modern population of Wales and the West of England.
The most notable indication is the oblique or Chinese eye.
I have noted thirty-four persons with oblique eyes.
Their heads include a wide range of relative breadth.
In other points the type stands out distinctly.
The cheek bones are almost always broad: the brows oblique, in the same direction as the eyes; the chin as a rule narrow and angular; the nose often concave and flat, seldom arched; and the mouth rather inclined to be prominent....
The iris is usually hazel or brown, and the hair straight, dark-brown, black, or reddish."
"It is," he adds, "especially in Cornwall that this type is common."
Our British Giants, Gog, Magog, Termagol, and the rest of the terrible tribe, sprang, according to Scottish myth, from the _thirty-three_ daughters of Diocletian, a King of Syria, or Tyria.
These _thirty-three_ primeval women drifted in a ship to Britain, then uninhabited, where they lived in solitude, until an order of demons becoming enamoured of them, took them to wife and begot a race of giants.
Anthropology and tradition thus alike refer the Magogoei to Syria, or Phoenicia, and there would seem to be numerous indications that between these people and the ethereal, romantic, and artistic Cretans there existed a racial, integral, antipathy.
The Gogonians may be connoted with the troglodyte Ciconians, or Cyclops, to whom Homer so frequently and unfavourably alludes, and the one-eyed Polyphemus of Homer is obviously one and the same with Balor, the one-eyed giant of Tory Isle in Ireland.
This Balor or Conann the Great, as he is sometimes termed, was cock-eyed, one terrible eye facing front, the other situated in the back of his head facing to the rear.
To this day the fateful eye of Balor is the Evil Eye in Ireland, whence anyone is liable to be o'erwished.
Ordinarily the dreadful optic was close shut, but at times his followers raised the eyelid with an iron hook, whereupon the glance of Baler's eye blasted everything and everybody upon whom it fell.
On one occasion the fateful eye of Balor is said to have overflowed with water, causing a disastrous flood; whence, perhaps, why a watery eye is termed a "Balory" or "_Bleary_ eye".
That Balor was Gog may be inferred from Belerium or Bolerium, being the name applied by Ptolemy to the Land's End district where still stand the rocks called Gog and Magog.
That Balor was Polyphemus, the Cyclopean Ciconian, is probable from the fact that he was blinded by a spear driven into his ill-omened eyeball, precisely as Polyphemus was blinded by a blazing stake from Ulysses.
Did the unlettered peasantry of Tory Isle derive this tale from Homer, or did Homer get the story from Ogygia, a supposedly ancient name for Erin?
Not only is there an identity between the myth of Balor and Polyphemus, but, further--to quote D'arbois de Jubainville--"As fortune strangely has it the Irish name _Balor_ has preserved its identity with _Belleros_, whom the poems of Homer and Hesiod and many other Greek writers have handed down to us in the compound _Bellero-phontes_, 'slayer of Belleros'".
[200] The author of _The Odyssey_ describes the Ciconians as a race endued with superior powers, but as troubling their neighbours with frequent wrongs:-... o'er the Deep proceeding sad, we reach'd The land at length, where, giant-sized and free From all constraint of law, the Cyclops dwell They, trusting to the Gods, plant not, or plough .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
No councils they convene, no laws contrive But in deep caverns dwell, found on the heads Of lofty mountains.
Apparently some of these same lawless and predatory troglodytes were at one time dwelling in Wales, for a few miles further north of Aberystwith we find the place-name Goginan there applied to what is described as "a locality with extensive lead-mines".
The Welsh for cave is _ogof_, or _gogof_, and in Cornish not only _gougou_, but also _ugo_, or _hugo_ meant the same: thus _og_ and _gog_ would seem to have been synonymous, a conclusion confirmed in many other directions, such as _goggle_ and _ogle_.
In Hebrew, _og_ meant gigantic, mighty, or long-necked, which evidently is the same word as the British _uch_, German _hoch_, meaning _high_; whence, there is every probability that _Og_, or _Gog_, meant primarily _High-High_, or the _Most High_, and Magog, _Mother Most High_.
Okehampton, on the river Okement in Devonshire, held, like Launceston, a giglet fair, whence it is probable that Kigbear, the curious name of a hamlet in Okehampton, took its title from the same _Kig_ as was responsible for _giglet_.
There are numerous allusions in the classics to a Cyclopean rocking-stone known as the Gigonian Rock, but the site of this famous oracle is not known.
Joshua refers to the coast of Og, King of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants, and that this obnoxious ruler was a troglodyte is manifest from his subterranean capital at Edrei, which is in existence to this day, and will be described later.
That at one time Og was a god of the ocean may be deduced from the Rabbinic tradition that he walked by the side of the ark during the flood, and the waters came up only to his knees.
From the measurements of Og's famous bedstead it has been calculated that Og himself "was about _nine_ feet high".
[201] In Hebrew _og_ is also understood to mean _he who goes in a circle_, which is suggestive of the Sun or Eye of Heaven.
That the sun was the mighty, all-seeing _ogler_ or _goggler_ of the universe is a commonplace among the poets, whence Homer, alluding to the Artist of the World, observes: "His spy the Sun had told him all".
To the jocund Sun, which on Easter Day in particular was supposed to dance, may be referred the joyful _gigues_, or _jigs_ of our ancestors.
Gig also meant a boy's top, and to the same source may be assigned whirli_gig_.
Shec is the Irish form of Jack, and _gigans_ or _gigantic_ are both radically Jack or Jock.
In English, Jack means many things, from a big fresh-water fish to a jack pudding, and from Jack-in-Green to Jack-a-lanthorn: Skeat defines it, _inter alia_, as a saucy fellow, and in this sense it is the same as a young cock.
Among the characteristics of Mercury--the Celtic Ogmius, or Hercules--were versatility, fascination, trickery, and cunning: sometimes he is described as "a mischievous young thief," whence, perhaps, the old word _cog_, which meant cheating, or trickery.
The names Badcock, Adcock, Pocock, Bocock, Meacock, and Maycock, as also Cook and Cox, are all familiar ones in London or Cockayne.
As Prof. Weekley observes, "many explanations have been given to the suffix _cock_, but I cannot say that any of them have convinced me.
Both Cock and Cocking are found as early personal names.
"[202] In London or Cockaigne, coachmen used to swear, "By Gog and Magog,"[203] and it may prove that "By _Gosh_" is like the surnames Goodge and Gooch, an inflection of Gog.
Cogs are the teeth or rays upon a wheel, and that cog meant sun or fire is implied by the word _cook_, _i.e._, baked or fried.
_Coch_ is Welsh for _red_, _kakk_ was the Mayan for fire; in the same language _kin_ meant _sun_ and _oc_ meant head, and among the Peruvians _Mama Cocha_ was the title of the Mother of all Mankind.
As _coke_ is cooked coal, one might better refer that term to _cook_, than, as officially at present, to _colk_, the core of an apple.
It is difficult to appreciate any marked resemblance between coke and the core of an apple.
The authorities connote Cockayne with _cookery_, and there is undoubtedly a connection, but the faerie Cockayne was more probably the Land of All Highest Ayne.
The German for cock is _hahn_, and the cock with his jagged scarlet crest was pre-eminently the symbol of the good Shine.
Chanticleer, the herald of the dawning sun, was the cognisance of Gaul, and East and West he symbolised the conqueror of darkness:-Aurora's harbinger--who Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
The Cockayne of London, France, Spain and Portugal was a degraded equivalent to the Irish Tir nan Og, which means the Land of the Young, and the word Cockayne is probably cognate with Yokhanan, the Hebrew form of John, meaning literally, "God is gracious".
According to Wright, "the ancient Greeks had their Cockaigne.
Athenæus has preserved some passages from lost poets of the best age of Grecian literature, where the burlesque on the golden age and earthly paradise of their mythology bears so striking a resemblance to our descriptions of Cockaigne, that we might almost think, did we not know it to be impossible, that in the one case whole lines had been translated from the other.
"[204] The probability is, that the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally preserved by the bards of the two peoples.
In Irish mythology, it is said of Anu, the Great Mother, that well she used to cherish the circle of the Gods; in England Ked or Kerid was "the Great Cherisher," and her symbol as being _perpetual love_ was, with great propriety, that ideal mother, the hen.
The word _hen_, according to Skeat, is from the "Anglo-Saxon _hana_, a cock," literally "a singer from his crowing".
But a crowing _hen_ is notoriously a freak and an abomination.
In Lancashire there is a place called Ainsworth or Cockey: in Yorkshire there is a river Cock, and near Biggleswade is a place named Cockayne Hatley: the surname Cockayne is attributed to a village in Durham named Coken.
In Northumberland is a river Cocket or Coquet, and in this district in the parish of St. John Lee is Cocklaw.
Cockshott is an eminence in Cumberland and Cocks Tor--whereon are stone circles and stone rows--is a commanding height in Devon.
In Worcestershire is Cokehill, and it is not improbable that Great and Little Coggeshall in Essex, as also the Oxfordshire place-name Coggo, Cogges, or Coggs, are all referable to Gog.
In Northamptonshire is a place known as _Cogenhoe_ or _Cooknoe_, and in seemingly all directions Cook, Cock, and Gog will be found to be synonymous.
The place-name Cocknage is officially interpreted as having meant "hatch, half-door, or wicket gate of the cock," but this is not very convincing, for no cock is likely to have had sufficient prestige to name a place.
The Cornish place-name Cogynos, is interpreted as "cuckoo in the moor," but cuckoos are sylvan rather than moorland birds: the word _cuckoo_, nevertheless, may imply that this bird was connected with Gog, for the Welsh for cuckoo is _cog_, and in Scotland the cuckoo is known as a _gauk_ or _gowk_.
These terms, as also the Cornish _guckaw_, may be decayed forms of the Latin _cuculus_, Greek _kokkuz_, or there are equal chances that they are more primitive.
In Cornwall, on 28th April, there used to be held a so-called Cuckoo Feast.
[205] There is an English river Cocker: a _cocker_ was a prize fighter, and it is possible that the expression, "not according to cocker," may contain an allusion older than popularly supposed.
There are rivers named _Ock_, both in Berks and Devon, and at Derby there is an Ockbrook: there is an Ogwell in Devon, a river Ogmore in Glamorganshire, and a river Ogwen in Carnarvon.
In Wiltshire is an Ogbourne or river Og, and on the Wiltshire Avon there is a prehistoric British camp called Ogbury.
This edifice may be described as _gigantic_ for it covers an area of 62 acres, is upwards of a mile in circuit, and has a rampart 30 to 33 feet high.
[206] The number 33 occurred in connection with the original British giants, said to be 33 in number, and we shall meet with 30 or 33 frequently hereafter.
_Ogre_ (of unknown origin), meaning a giant, may be connoted with the Iberian _ogro_, and with _haugr_ the Icelandic word for hill, with which etymologers connect the adjective _huge_: the old Gaulish for a hill was _hoge_ or _hogue_,[207] and the probability would seem to be that Og and _huge_ were originally the same term.
There is a huge earthwork at Uig in Scotland, the walls of which, like those at Ogbury in Wiltshire, measure 30 feet in height.
The surname Hogg does not necessarily imply a swinish personality: more probably the original Hoggs were like the Haigs, followers of the Hagman, who was commemorated in Scotland during the Hogmanay festivities.
In Turkey _aga_ means _lord_ or _chief officer_, and in Greece _hagia_ means holy, whence the festival of Hogmanay has been assumed to be a corruption of the Greek words _hagia mene_, in _holy month_.
If this were so it would be interesting to know how these Greek terms reached Scotland, but, as a matter of fact, Hogmanay does not last a month: at the outside it was a fête of three weeks, and more particularly three nights.
_Three weeks_ before the day whereon was borne the Lorde of Grace, And on the Thursdaye boyes and girls do runne in every place, And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps, And crie, the Advent of the Lord not borne as yet perhaps, And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell, A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well: Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee, For these three nightes are alwayes thought unfortunate to bee; Wherein they are affrayde of sprites and cankred witches spight, And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.
[208] During Hogmanay it was customary for youths to go in procession from house to house singing chants of heroic origin:-As we used to do in old King Henry's day, Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
The King Henry here mentioned is probably not one of the Tudors, but the more primitive Nick or Old Harry, and the percipient divine who thundered against the popular festival: "Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies?
It is _the Devil be in the house_!
That's the meaning of its _Hebrew original_," had undoubtedly good grounds for his denunciation.
But the still more original meaning of Hagman was in all probability the _uchman_, or high man, or giant man.
According to Hellenic mythology Hercules was the son of Jove and Alcmena: the name Alcmena is apparently the feminine form of _All_ or _Holy Acmen_--whence indirectly the word _acumen_ or "sharp mind"--the two forms _mena_ and _man_ seemingly figure in Scotch custom as _Hogmanay_, and as the _Hagman_ of "Sing Hagman heigh!
"[209] One of the great Roman roads of Britain is known as Akeman Street, and as it happens that this prehistoric highway passes Bath it has been gravely suggested that it derived its title from the gouty, aching men who limped along to Bath to take the waters.
But as _man_ is the same word as _main_ the word Akeman Street resolves more reasonably into _High Main_ Street, which is precisely what it was.
In some parts of England fairy-rings are known as Hag-tracks, whence seemingly fairies were sometimes known as hags: at Lough Crew in Ireland, there is a cabalistically-decorated stone throne known as "the Hag's Chair".
In Mid-Wales _ague_ is known as _y wrach_, which means the hag or the old hag; the notion being that _ague_ (and all _aches_?)
were smitings of the ugly old Hag, or "awd Goggie".
Various indications seem to point to the conclusion that the aboriginal "bedrock" Og or Gog was a Tyrian or Turanian Deity, and that in the eyes of the Hellenes and Trojans anything to do with Og was _ug_ly, _i.e._, Ug-like and _ug_some.
In the county of Fife the last night of the dying year used to be known as Singin-e'en, a designation which is connected with the carols sung on that occasion.
But _Singin_ may, and in all probability did, mean Sinjohn, for the Celtic _Geon_ or _giant_ was Ogmius the Mighty Muse, and _chant_ing was attributed to this world-enchanter.
As already seen he was pictured leading the children of men tongue-tied by his eloquence, and it is not improbable that Ogmius is equivalent to Mighty Muse, for _muse_ in Greek is _mousa_.
According to Assyrian mythology the God of wondrous and enchanting Wisdom rose daily from the sea and was named Oannes--obviously a Hellenised form of John or Yan.
Among the Aryan nations _an_ meant mind, and this term is clearly responsible for _inane_ or without _ane_.
The dictionaries attribute _inane_ to a "root unknown," but the same root is at the base of _anima_, the soul, whence _animate_ or living.
Oannes, who was evidently the Great Acumen or Almighty Mind is said to have emerged daily from the ocean in order to instruct mankind, and he may be connoted with the Hebridian sea-god Shony.
In the image of the benevolent Oannes reproduced overleaf it will be noted he is crowned with the cross of Allbein or All Well.
In Brittany there are legends of a sea-maid of enchanting song, and wondrous acumen named Mary Morgan, and this _incantatrice_ corresponds to Morgan le fay or Morgiana.
The Welsh for Mary is Fair, and the fairies of Celtic countries were known as the Mairies,[210] whence "Mary Morgan" was no doubt "Fairy Morgan".
In Celtic _mor_ or _mawr_ also meant big, whence Morgan may be equated with _big gan_ and Morgiana with either Big Jane or Fairy Giana.
This fairy Big _gyne_ or Big _woman_ was known alternatively in the East as _Merjan Banou_ and in Italy as Fata or Maga.
It is authoritatively assumed that the word _cogitate_ is from _co_ "together" and _agere_ "to drive," but "driving together" is not cogitation.
The root _cog_ which occurs in _cogent_, _cogitate_, _cognisance_, and _cognition_ is more probably an implication that Gog like Oannes was deemed to be the Lord of the Deep wisdom: Gog, in fact, stands to Oannes or Yan in the same relation as Jack stands to John: the one is seemingly a synonym for the other.
[Illustration: FIGS.
46 and 47.--From _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_ (Baring-Gould).]
The word _magic_ implies a connection with Maga or Magog: in Greek _mega_ means great, and the combined idea of great and wise is extended into _magus_, _magister_, and _magician_.
The Latin _magnus_ and _magna_ are respectively Mag Unus and Mag Una: Mogounus was one of the titles applied to St. Patrick, and it was also a sobriquet of the Celtic Sun God.
[211] One of the stories of the Wandering Jew represents him as benevolently assisting a weaver named _Kokot_ to discover treasure, and in an Icelandic legend of the same Wanderer he is entitled Magus.
On Magus being interrogated as to his name he replied that he was called "Vidforull," which looks curiously like "Feed for all," or "Food for all".
The story relates that Magus possessed the marvellous capability of periodically casting his skin, and of becoming on each occasion younger than before.
The first time he accomplished this magic feat he was 330 years old--a significant age--and in face of an astonished audience he gave a repetition of the wonderful performance.
Baring his head and stroking himself all over the body, he rolled together the skin he was in and lay down before a staff or post muttering to himself: "Away with age, that I may have my desire".
After lying awhile motionless he suddenly worked himself head foremost into the post, which thereupon closed over him and became again solid.
Soon, however, the bemazed onlookers heard a great noise in the post, which began gradually to bulge at one end, and after a few convulsive movements the feet of Magus appeared, followed in due course by the rest of his body.
After this bewildering feat Magus lay for awhile as though dead, but when the beholders were least expecting it he sprang suddenly up, rolled the skin from off his head, saluted the King, and behold "they saw that he was no other than a beardless youth and fair faced".
[212] This magic change is not only suggestive of the two-faced Janus, but also of Aeon, one of the British titles 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 passage 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 assigned 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 entitled "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.
_Feckless_ 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 Titans, is identified with an outstanding rock, which is recorded as measuring 18 feet in height, and 15 feet in circumference.
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 circumstances took a sudden change for the worse.
[Illustration: 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 illustrated 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 Mighell'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 pass 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 Cumberland.
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 Goddess 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 ass, in Cockney parlance, is a _moke_; Christ was said to ride upon an ass as symbolic of his meekness, and as already noted Christ by the Gnostics was represented as ass-headed.
The worship of the Golden Ass persisted in Europe until a comparatively late period; a _jenny_ is a female moke, a jackass 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 associated 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 assigned 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 associated with a chad fish, entitled "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 Cockaigne 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 associating 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 title 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 Janus, 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 constitution.
_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 Gods,[225] and that the number eleven was associated with Long Meg of Westmorland, would appear from the fact that her circle measured "about 1100 feet in circumference".
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 sanctity may be gathered from the bardic lines-The age of Jesus, the fair and energetic Hu In God's Truth was eleven hundred.
[227] The more usually assumed 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 assigned 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 associated 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 assembled 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 circumstances 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 multitude".
[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 Japan 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 Goddess 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 Japon 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 Japan.
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 associated 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_ associates 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 assigned by Christianity to God the Father.
[Illustration: FIG.
49.--The Trinity in One Single God, holding the Balances and the Compasses.
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 associated 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 assume that her celebrated see-saw was the eternal merging and emerging of the Sun and Moon.
The Cornish pinnacle associated with Maggie Figgy of St. Levan may be connoted with a monolith overlooking Loch Leven and entitled, "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 entitled Gode,[237] whence we may connote Margot, Marghet, or Marget with Big Good, or Big God.
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.
According to Sir John Rhys, Elen the Fair of Britain figures like St. Ursula as the leader of the heavenly virgins; St. Levan's cell is shown at Bodellen in St. Levan, and as in Cornwall _bod_--as in Bodmin--meant _abode of_, one may resolve Bodellen into the _abode of Ellen_, and equate Ellen or Helen with Long Meg or St. Michael.
We may recognise St. Kayne in the Kendale-Lonsdale district of North Britain, where also in the neighbourhood of the rivers Ken or Can, and Lone or Lune is a maiden way and an Elen's Causeway.
[238] On the river Can is a famous waterfall at Levens, and in the same neighbourhood a seat of the ancient Machel family.
In 1724 there existed at Winander Mere "the carcass of an ancient city,"[239] and it is not improbable that the _ander_ of Winander is related to the divine Thorgut, whose effigy from a coin is reproduced in a later chapter (Fig 422, p. 675).
Kendal or Candale has always been famous for its British "cottons and coarse cloaths".
In Etruria and elsewhere good genii were represented as winged elves--old plural _elven_--and the word _mouche_ implies that not only butterflies and moths, but also all winged flies were deemed to be the children of Michael or Michelet.
According to Payne Knight, "The common Fly, being in its first stage of existence a principal agent in dissolving and dissipating all putrescent bodies, was adopted as an emblem of the Deity".
[240] Thus it would seem that not only the _mouches_, but likewise the _maggots_ were deemed to be among Maggie's millions, fighting like the Hosts of Michael against filth, decay, and death.
The connection between flies or mouches, and the elves or elven, seems to have been appreciated in the past, for _The Golden Legend_ likens the lost souls of Heaven, _i.e._, the elven of popular opinion, to flies: "By the divine dispensation they descend oft unto us in earth, as like it hath been shewn to some holy men.
They fly about us as flies, they be innumerable, and like flies they fill the air without number.
"[241] Even to-day it is supposed that the spirits of holy wells appear occasionally in the form of flies, and there is little doubt that Beelzebub, the "Lord of flies," _alias_ Lucifer, whose name literally means "Light Bringer," was once innocuous and beautiful.
In Cornwall flies seem to have been known as "Mother Margarets" (a fact of which I was unaware when equating _mouche_ with Michelet or Meg), for according to Miss Courtney, "Three hundred fathoms below the ground at Cook's Kitchen Mine, near Cambourne, swarms of flies may be heard buzzing, called by the men for some unknown reason 'Mother Margarets'".
[242] Whether these subterranean "Mother Margarets" are peculiar to Cook's Kitchen Mine, and whether Cook has any relation to Gog and to the Cocinians who in deep caverns dwelt, I am unable to trace.
That St. Michael was Lord of the Muckle and the Mickle, is supported in the statement that "he was prince of the synagogue of the Jews".
[243] The word _synagogue_ is understood to have meant--a bringing together, a congregation; but this was evidently a secondary sense, due, perhaps, to the fact that the earliest synagogues were not held beneath a roof, but were congregations in sacred plains or hill-sides.
It may reasonably be assumed that synagogues were prayer meetings in honour primarily of San Agog, St. Michael, or the Leader and Bringer together of all souls.
By the Greeks the sobriquet Megale was applied to Juno the pomegranate--holding Mother of Millions, and the bird pre-eminently sacred to Juno was the Goose.
The cackling of Juno's or Megale's sacred geese saved the Capitol, and the Goose of Michaelmas Day is seemingly that same sacred bird.
In Scotland St. Michael's Day was associated with the payment of so-called cane geese, the word _cane_ or _kain_ here being supposed to be the Gaelic _cean_, which meant _head_, and its original sense, a duty paid by a tenant to his landlord in kind.
The word _due_ is the same as _dieu_, and the association of St. Keyne with Michael renders it probable that the cane goose was primarily a _dieu_ offering or an offering to the Head King Cun, or Chun.
Etymology would suggest that the cane goose was preferably a _gan_der.
Even in the time of the Romans, the Goose was sacred in Britain, and East and West it seems to have been an emblem of the Unseen Origin.
In India, Brahma, the Breath of Life, was represented riding on a goose, and by the Egyptians the Sun was supposed to be a Golden Egg laid by the primeval Goose.
The little yellow egg or _goose_berry was seemingly--judged by its otherwise inexplicable name--likened to the Golden Egg laid by Old Mother Goose.
Among the symbols elsewhere dealt with were some representative of a goose from whose mouth a curious flame-like emission was emerging.
I am still of the opinion that this was intended to depict the Fire or Breath of Life, and that the hissing habits of the Swan and Goose caused those birds to be elevated into the eminence as symbols of the Breath.
The word _goose_ or _geese_ is radically _ghost_, which literally means spirit or breath; it is also the same as _cause_ with which may be connoted _chaos_.
According to Irish mythology that which existed at the beginning was Chaos, the Father of Darkness or Night, subsequently came the Earth who produced the mountains, and the sea, and the sky.
[244] [Illustration: Fig.
50.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In this emblem here reproduced Chaos or Abyssus is figured as the youthful apex of a primeval peak; at the base are geese, and the creatures midway are evidently seals.
The _seal_ is the silliest of gentle creatures, and being amphibious was probably the symbol of _Celi_, the Concealed One, whose name occurs so frequently in British Mythology.
To _seal_ one's eyelids means to close them, and the blind old man named Lieven, who sat in the porch of St. Maurice's for eleven years, may be connoted with Homer the blind and wandering old Bard, who dwelt upon the rocky islet of Chios, query _chaos_?
Among the Latins _Amor_ or Love was the oldest of the gods, being the child of Nox or Chaos: Love--"this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid"[245]--is proverbially blind, and the words Amor, Amour, are probably not only Homer, but likewise St. Omer.
The British (Welsh) form of Homer is Omyr: the authorship of Homer has always been a matter of perplexity, and the personality of the blind old bard of Chios will doubtless remain an enigma until such time as the individuality of "Old Moore," "Aunt Judy," and other pseudonyms is unravelled.
It has always been the custom of story-tellers to attribute their legends to a fabulous origin, and the most famous collection of fairy-tales ever produced was published in France under the title _Contes de la Mere Oie_--"The Tales of Mother Goose".
Goose is radically the same word as _gas_, a term which was coined by a Belgian chemist in 1644 from the Greek _chaos_: the Irish for swan is _geis_, and all the geese tribe are gassy birds which gasp.
In a subsequent chapter we shall analyse _goose_ into _ag'oos_, the Mighty _Ooze_, whence the ancients scientifically supposed all life to have originated, and shall equate _ooze_ with _hoes_, the Welsh word for _life_, and with _Ouse_ or _Oise_, a generic British river name.
In _huss_, the German for _goose_, we may recognise the _oose_ without its adjectival '_g_'.
With the Blind Old Bard of Chios may be connoted the Cornish longstone known as "The Old Man,"[246] or "The Fiddler," also a second longstone known as "The Blind Fiddler".
[247] In _because_ or _by cause_ we pronounce _cause_ "_koz_," and in Slav fairy-tales as elsewhere there is frequent mention of an Enchanter entitled _Kostey_, whose strength and vitality lay in a monstrous egg.
The name _Kostey_ may be connoted with _Cystennyns_,[248] an old Cornish and Welsh form of Constantine: at the village of Constantine in Cornwall there is what Borlase describes as a vast egg-like stone placed on the points of two natural rocks, and pointing due North and South.
This Tolmen or Meantol--"an egg-shaped block of granite _thirty-three_ feet long, and _eighteen_ feet broad, supposed by some antiquaries to be Druidical, is here on a barren hill 690 feet high".
[249] The Greek for egg is _oon_, and our _egg_ may be connoted not only with _Echo_--the supposed voice of Ech?--but also with _egg_, meaning to urge on, to instigate, to vitalise, or render agog.
The acorn is an egg within a cup, and the Danish form of _oak_ is _eeg_ or _eg_: the oak tree was pre-eminently the symbol of the Most High, and the German _eiche_ may be connoted with _uch_ the British for high.
The Druids paid a reverential homage to the oak, worshipping under its form the god Teut or Teutates: this latter word is understood to have meant "the god of the people,"[250] and the term _teut_ is apparently the French _tout_, meaning _all_ or the total.
The reason suggested by Sir James Frazer for oak-worship is the fact that the Monarch of the Forest was struck more frequently by lightning than any meaner tree, and that therefore it was deemed to be the favoured one of the Fire god.
But to rive one's best beloved with a thunderbolt is a more peculiar and even better dissembled token of affection than the celebrated kicking-down-stairs.
According to the author of _The Language and Sentiment of Flowers_[251] the oak was consecrated to Jupiter because it had sheltered him at his birth on Mount Lycaeus; hence it was regarded as the emblem of hospitality, and to give an oak branch was equivalent to "You are welcome".
That the oak tree was originally a Food provider or _Feed for all_ is implied by the words addressed to the Queen of Heaven by Apuleus in _The Golden Ass_: "Thou who didst banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and pointing out a better food, dost, etc."
It has already been suggested that _derry_ or _dru_, an oak or tree, was equivalent to _tre_, an abode or Troy, and there is perhaps a connection between this root and _tere_binth, the Tyrian term for an oak tree.
That the oak was regarded as the symbol of hospitality is exceedingly probable, and one of the earliest references to the tree is the story of Abraham's hospitable entertainment given underneath the Oak of Mamre.
The same idea is recurrent in the legend of Philemon and Baucis, which relates that on the mountains of Phrygia there once dwelt an aged, poor, but loving couple.
One night Jupiter and Mercury, garbed in the disguise of two mysterious strangers who had sought in vain for hospitality elsewhere, craved the shelter of this Darby and Joan.
[252] With alacrity it was granted, and such was the awe inspired by the majestic Elder that Baucis desired to sacrifice a goose which they possessed.
But the bird escaped, and fluttering to the feet of the disguised gods Jupiter protected it, and bade their aged hosts to spare it.
On leaving, the Wanderer asked what boon he could confer, and what gift worthy of the gods they would demand.
"Let us not be divided by death, O Jupiter," was the reply: whereupon the Wandering One conjured their mean cottage into a noble palace wherein they dwelt happily for many years.
The story concludes that Baucis merged gradually into a linden tree, and Philemon into an oak, which two trees henceforward intertwined their branches at the door of Jupiter's Temple.
The name Philemon is seemingly _philo_, which means _love of_, and _mon_, man or men, and at the time this fairy-tale was concocted _Love of Man_, or hospitality, would appear to have been the motif of the allegorist.
We British pre-eminently boast our ships and our men as being Hearts of Oak: the Druids used to summon their assemblies by the sending of an oak-branch, and at the national games of Etruria the diadem called _Etrusca Corona_, a garland of oak leaves with jewelled acorns, was held over the head of the victor.
[253] There is little doubt that Honor Oak, Gospel Oak, Sevenoaks, etc., derived their titles from oaks once sacred to the _Uch_ or High, the _Allon_ or Alone, who was alternatively the Seven Kings or the Three Kings.
"It is strange," says Squire, "to find Gael and Briton combining to voice almost in the same words this doctrine of the mystical Celts, who while still in a state of semi-barbarism saw with some of the greatest of ancient and modern philosophers the One in the Many, and a single Essence in all the manifold forms of life.
"[254] FOOTNOTES: [193] Virgil, _The Æneid_, Bk.
III., c. liii.
[194] _Cf._ Geoffrey's _Histories of the Kings of Britain_ (Everyman's Library), p. 202.
[195] Virgil, _The Æneid_, Bk.
III., 37.
[196] _Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 50.
[197] xx.
8.
[198] Wood, E. J.
_Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 54.
[199] Chap.
xxvi.
[200] _The Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 116.
[201] Wood, E.J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 5.
[202] _The Romance of Names_, p. 65.
[203] Hone, W., _Ancient Mysteries_, p. 264.
[204] Wright, T., _Patrick's Purgatory_, p. 56.
[205] Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 28.
[206] Bartholomew, J. G., _A Survey Gazetteer of the British Islands_, I.
612.
[207] The duplication _cock_, as in _haycock_, also meant a hill.
[208] Quoted from Brand's _Antiquities_, p. 42.
[209] _Cf._ Urlin, Miss Ethel, _Festivals, Holydays, and Saint Days_, p. 2.
[210] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_.
[211] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_, p. 40.
[212] _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, pp.
637-40.
[213] "Morien" _Light of Britannia_, p. 262.
[214] The phallic symbolism of the serpent has been over-stressed so obtrusively by other writers, that it is unnecessary here to enlarge upon that aspect of the subject.
[215] Baldwin, J. D., _Prehistoric Nations_, p. 240.
[216] Sophocles, _Ajax_, 694-700.
[217] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Remains of the Prehistoric Age in Britain_, p. 198.
[218] _The Golden Legend_, V. 182-3.
[219] The ancient name "hoar rock," or white rock in the wood, may have referred to the white god probably once there worshipped, for actually there are no white rocks at St. Michael's, or anywhere else in Cornwall.
[220] _The Golden Legend_ records an apparition of St. Michael at a town named Tumba.
[221] Wood, E. J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 91.
[222] _Cf._ Friend, Rev.
Hilderic, _Flowers and Folklore_, II., p. 455.
[223] "Morien," _Light of Brittania_, p. 27.
[224] Anon, _A New Description of England and Wales_ (1724), p. 121.
[225] Dennis, G., _Cities and Centuries of Etruria_, p. 31.
[226] Munro, R., _Prehistoric Britain_, p. 223.
[227] _Barddas_, p. 222.
[228] Kains-Jackson, _Our Ancient Monuments_, p. 112.
Fergusson states "about 330 feet".
[229] Vol.
vi., p. 64.
[230] Vol.
vi., p. 66.
[231] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Etruria_.
[232] Vol., iii., p. 73.
[233] _Golden Legend_, vol.
v., p. 184.
[234] Simpkins, J. E., _Fife_, p. 4; _County Folklore_, vol.
vii.
[235] Simpkins, J. E., _Kinross-shire_, p. 377.
[236] _Ibid._, p. 241.
[237] _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, p. 336.
[238] I am unable to lay my hand on the reference for this Elen's Causeway in Westmoreland.
[239] Anon., _A New Description of England_, 1724, p. 318.
[240] _Symbolical Language_, p. 37.
[241] _Golden Legend_, vol.
v., p. 189.
[242] _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 131.
[243] _Golden Legend_, vol.
v., p. 181.
[244] Jubainville, D'arbois de, _Irish Mythological Cycle_, p. 140.
[245] Shakespeare, _Love's Labour's Lost_, iii., 1.
[246] Ossian, the hero poet of Gaeldom, is represented as old, blind, and solitary.
[247] _Cf._ Windle, Sir B.C.A., _Remains of the Prehistoric Age_, pp.
197-8.
[248] Salmon, A.L., _Cornwall_, p. 88.
[249] Wilson, J.M., _The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales_, i., p. 484.
[250] Anwyl, E., _Celtic Religion_, p. 39.
[251] "L.V.," London (undated).
[252] I do not think this proverbially loving couple were exclusively Scotch.
The _darbies_, _i.e._, handcuffs or clutches of the law may be connoted with Gascoigne's line (1576): "To bind such babes in _father Darbie's_ bands".
"_Old Joan_" figures as one of the characters in the festivities of Plough Monday, and in Cornwall any very ancient woman was denominated "_Aunt Jenny_".
[253] Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 131.
[254] _The Mythology of the British Islands_, p. 125.
CHAPTER VI.
PUCK.
"Do you imagine that Robin Goodfellow--a mere name to you--conveys anything like the meaning to your mind that it did to those for whom the name represented a still living belief, and who had the stories about him at their fingers' ends?
Or let me ask you, Why did the fairies dance on moonlight nights?
or, Have you ever thought why it is that in English literature, and in English literature alone, the fairy realm finds a place in the highest works of imagination?"
--F. S. HARTLAND.
In British Faërie there figures prominently a certain "Man in the Oak": according to Keightley, Puck, _alias_ Robin Goodfellow, was known as this "Man in the Oak," and he considers that the word _pixy_ "is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive _sy_ being added to Puck like Bet_sy_, Nan_cy_, Dix_ie_".
[255] It is probable that this adjectival _si_ recurring in _sw_eet, _so_oth, _su_ave, _sw_an, etc., may be equated with the Sanscrit _su_, which, as in _sw_astika, is a synonym for the Greek _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious.
When used as an affix, this "endearing diminutive" yields _spook_, which was seemingly once "dear little Pook," or "soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Puck".
In Wales the fairies were known as "Mothers' Blessings," and although spook now carries a sinister sense, there is no more reason to suppose that "dear little Pook" was primarily malignant than to suggest that the Holy _Ghost_ was--in the modern sense--essentially _ghastly_.
Skeat suggests that _ghost_ (of uncertain origin) "is perhaps allied to Icelandic _geisa_, to rage like fire, and to Gothic _us-gais-yan_, to terrify".
Some may be aghast at this suggestion, others, who cannot conceive the Supreme Sprite except as a raging and consuming fury, will commend it.
In the preceding chapter I suggested that the elementary derivation of ghost was _'goes_, the Great Life or Essence, and as _te_ in Celtic meant good, it may be permissible to modernise _ghoste_, also _Kostey_ of the egg, into _great life good_.
That there was a good and a bad Puck is to be inferred from the West of England belief in Bucca Gwidden, the white or good spirit, and Bucca Dhu, the black, malevolent one.
[256] Puck, like Dan Cupid, figures in popular estimation as a _pawky_ little pickle; in Brittany the dolmens are known as _poukelays_ or Puck stones, and the particular haunts of Puck were heaths and desert places.
The place-name Picktree suggests one of Puck's sacred oaks; Pickthorne was presumably one of Puck's hawthorns, and the various Pickwells, Pickhills, Pickmeres, etc., were once, in all probability, _spook_-haunted.
The highest point at Peckham, near London, is Honor Oak or One Tree Hill, and Peckhams or Puckhomes are plentiful in the South of England.
One of them was inferentially near Ockham, at Great and Little Bookham, where the common or forest consists practically solely of the three pre-eminently fairy-trees--oak, hawthorne, and holly.
The summit of the Buckland Hills, above Mickleham, is the celebrated, box-planted Boxhill, and at its foot runs Pixham or Pixholme Lane.
On the height, nearly opposite Pixham Lane, the Ordnance Map marks Pigdon, but the roadway from Bookham to Boxhill is known, not as Pigdon Hill, but Bagden Hill.
In all probability the terms Pigdon and Bagden are the original British forms of the more modern Pixham and Bok's Hill.
In the North of England Puck seems more generally Peg, whence the fairy of the river Ribble was known as Peg O'Nell, and the nymph of the Tees, as Peg Powler.
[257] Peg--a synonym for Margaret--is generally interpreted as having meant pearl.
The word _puck_ or _peg_, which varies in different parts of the country into pug, pouke, pwcca, poake, pucke, puckle, and phooka, becomes elsewhere bucca, bug, bogie, bogle, boggart, buggaboo, and bugbear.
According to all accounts the Pucks, like the Buccas, were divided into two classes, "good and bad," and it was only the clergy who maintained that "one and the same malignant fiend meddled in both".
As Scott rightly observes: "Before leaving the subject of fairy superstition in England we may remark that it was of a more playful and gentle, less wild and necromantic character, than that received among the sister people.
The amusements of the southern fairies were light and sportive; their resentments were satisfied with pinching or scratching the objects of their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their nicety was extreme concerning any coarseness or negligence which could offend their delicacy; and I cannot discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations of some scrupulous divines, that they were vassals to or in close alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason to believe was the case with their North British sisterhood.
"[258] The elemental Bog is the Slavonic term for God,[259] and when the early translators of the Bible rendered "terror by night" as "bugs by night" they probably had spooks or bogies in their mind.
In Etruria as in Egypt the bug or maybug was revered as the symbol of the Creator Bog, because the Egyptian beetle has a curious habit of creating small pellets or balls of mud.
In Welsh _bogel_ means the _navel_, also _centre of a wheel_, and hence Margaret or Peggy may be equated with the nave or peg of the white-rayed Marguerite or _Day's Eye_.
[260] It must constantly be borne in mind that the ancients never stereotyped their Ideal, hence there was invariably a vagueness about the form and features of prehistoric Joy, and Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid as a "senior-junior, giant-dwarf," may be equally applied to every Elf and Pixy.
It is unquestionable that in England as in Scandinavia and Germany "giants and dwarfs were originally identical phenomenon".
[261] In the words of an Orphic Hymn "Jove is both male and an immortal maid": Venus was sometimes represented with a beard, and as the Supreme Parent was indiscriminately regarded as either male or female, or as both combined, an occasional contradiction of form is not to be unexpected.
The authorities attribute the contrariety of sex which is sometimes assigned to the Cornish saints as being due to carelessness on the part of transcribers, but in this case the monks may be exonerated, as the greater probability is that they faithfully transmitted the pagan legends.
The Moon, which, speaking generally, was essentially a symbol of the Mother, was among some races, _e.g._, the Teutons and the Egyptians, regarded as masculine.
In Italy at certain festivals the men dressed in women's garments, worshipped the Moon as Lunus, and the women dressed like men, as Luna.
In Wales the Cadi, as we have seen, was dressed partially as a woman, partially as a man, and in all probability the cassock of the modern priest is a survival of the ambiguous duality of Kate or Good.
In Irish the adjective _mo_--derived seemingly from Mo or Ma, the Great Mother--meant _greatest_, and was thus used irrespective of sex.
The French word _lune_, like _moon_ and _choon_, is radically _une_, the initial consonants being merely adjectival, and is just as sexless as our _one_, Scotch _ane_.
In Germany _hunne_ means _giant_, and the term "Hun," meant radically anyone formidable or gigantic.
The Cornish for _full moon_ is _cann_, which is a slightly decayed form of _ak ann_ or _great one_, and this word _can_, or _khan_, meaning prince, ruler, _king_ or great one, is traceable in numerous parts of the world.
_Can_ or _chan_ was Egyptian for _lord_ or _prince; can_ was a title of the kings of ancient Mexico; _khan_ is still used to-day by the kings of Tartary and Burmah and by the governors of provinces in Persia, Afghanistan, and other countries of Central Asia.
In China _kong_ means _king_, and in modern England _king_ is a slightly decayed form of the Teutonic _konig_ or _kinig_.
The ancient British word for _mighty chief_ was _chun_ or _cun_, and we meet with this infinitely older word than _king_ as a participle of royal titles such as _Cun_obelinus, _Cun_oval, _Cun_omor and the like.
The same affix was used in a similar sense by the Greeks, whence Apollo was styled _Cun_ades and also _Cun_nins.
The Cornish for _prince_ was _kyn_, and this term, as also the Irish _cun_, meaning _chief_, is evidently far more primitive than the modern _king_, which seems to have returned to us through Saxon channels.
Prof. Skeat expresses his opinion that the term _king_ meant "literally a man of good birth," and he identifies it with the old High German _chunig_.
Other authorities equate it with the Sanscrit _janaka_, meaning _father_, whence it is maintained that the original meaning of the word was "father of a tribe".
Similarly the word _queen_ is derived by our dictionaries from the Greek _gyne_, a woman, or the Sanscrit _jani_, "all from root _gan_, to produce, from which are _genus_, _kin_, _king_, etc."
The word _chen_ in Cornish meant _cause_, and there is no doubt a connection between this term and _kyn_, the Cornish for _prince_; the connection, however, is principally in the second syllable, and I see no reason to doubt my previous conclusions formulated elsewhere, that _kyn_ or _king_ originally meant _great one_, or _high one_, whereas _chun_, _jani_, _gyne_, etc., meant _aged_ one.
One of the first kings of the Isle of Man was Hacon or Hakon, a name which the dictionaries define as having meant _high kin_.
In this etymology _ha_ is evidently equated with _high_ and _con_ or _kon_ with _kin_, but it is equally likely that Hakon or Haakon meant originally _uch on_ the _high one_.
In Cornish the adjective _ughan_ or _aughan_ meant _supreme_: the Icelandic for queen is _kona_, and there is no more radical distinction between _king_ and the disyllabic _kween_, than there is between the Christian names _Ion_, _Ian_, and the monosyllabic _Han_.
_Janaka_, the Sanscrit for _father_, is seemingly allied to the English adjective _jannock_ or _jonnack_, which may be equated more or less with _canny_.
_Un_canny means something unwholesome, unpleasant, disagreeable; in Cornish _cun_ meant _sweet_ or affable, and we still speak of sweets as _candies_.
[Illustration: FIG.
51.--From _The Sepulchres of Etruria_ (Gray, Mrs.
Hamilton).]
In Gaelic _cenn_ or _ken_ meant _head_, the highest peak in the Himalayas is Mount Kun; one of the supreme summits of Africa is Mount Kenia, and in _Genesis_ (14-19) the Hebrew word _Konah_ is translated into English as "the Most High God".
Of this Supreme Sprite the _cone_ or pyramid was a symbol, and the reverence in which this form was held at Albano in Etruria may be estimated from the monument here depicted.
[262] In times gone by khans, _cuns_, or kings were not only deemed to be moral and intellectual gods, but in some localities bigness of person was cultivated.
The Maoris of New Zealand, whose tattooings are identical in certain respects with the complicated spirals found on megaliths in Brittany and Ireland, and who in all their wide wanderings have carried with them a totemic dove, used to believe bigness to be a royal essence.
"Every means were used to acquire this dignity; a large person was thought to be of the highest importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its good appearance.
"[263] The British adjective _big_ is of unknown origin and has no Anglo-Saxon equivalent.
In Norway _bugge_ means a strong man, but in Germany _bigge_ denoted a little child--as also a pig.
The site of Troy--the famous Troy--is marked on modern maps _Bigha_, the Basque for _eye_ is _beguia_; _bega_ is Celtic for _life_.
A fabulous St. Bega is the patron-saint of Cumberland; there is a Baggy Point near Barnstaple, and a Bigbury near Totnes--the alleged landing place of the Trojans.
Close to Canterbury are some highlands also known as Bigbury, and it is probable that all these sites were named after _beguia_, the _Big Eye_, or _Buggaboo_, the _Big Father_.
At Canterbury paleolithic implements have been found which supply proof of human occupation at a time when the British Islands formed part of the Continent, and, according to a scholarly but anonymous chronology exhibited in a Canterbury Hotel, "Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages show continuous occupation during the whole prehistoric period.
The configuration of the city boundaries and the still existing traces of the ancient road in connection with the stronghold at Bigbury indicate that a populous community was settled on the site of the present Canterbury at least as early as the Iron Age."
The branching antlers of the _buck_ were regarded as the rays of the uprising sun or _Big Eye_, and a sacred procession, headed by the antlers of a buck raised upon a pole, was continued by the clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral as late as the seventeenth century.
[264] A scandalised observer of this ceremony in 1726 describes "the whole company blowing hunters' horns in a sort of hideous manner, and with this rude pomp they go up to the High Altar and offer it there.
You would think them all the mad votaries of Diana!"
On this occasion, evidently in accordance with immemorial wont, the Dean and Chapter wore special vestments, the one embroidered with bucks, the other with does.
The buck was seemingly associated with Puck, for it was popularly supposed that a spectre appeared periodically in Herne's Oak at Windsor headed with the horns of a buck.
So too was Father Christmas or St. Nicholas represented as riding Diana-like in a chariot drawn by bucks.
The Greek for buck or stag is _elaphos_, which is radically _elaf_, and it is a singular coincidence that among the Cretan paleolithic folk in the Fourth Glacial Period "Certain signs carved on a fragment of reindeer horn are specially interesting from the primitive anticipation that they present of the Phoenician letter _alef_".
[265] Peg or Peggy is the same word as _pig_, and it is generally supposed that the pig was regarded as an incarnation of the "Man in the Oak," _i.e._, Puck or Buck, because the _bacco_ or _bacon_ lived on acorns.
There is little doubt that the Saint Baccho of the Church Calendar is connected with the worship of the earlier Bacchus, for the date of St. Baccho's festival coincides with the vintage festival of Bacchus.
The symbolism of the pig or bacco will be discussed in a subsequent chapter, meanwhile one may here note that _hog_ is the same as _oak_, and _swine_ is identical with _swan_.
So also _Meg_ is connected with _muc_ or _moch_ which were the Celtic terms for _hog_.
Among the appellations of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis,[266] or Hog Island and Moccus, or the pig, was one of the Celtic sobriquets for Mercury.
The Druids termed themselves "_Swine of Mon_,"[267] the Phoenician priests were also self-styled _Swine_, and there is a Welsh poem in which the bard's opening advice to his disciples is--"Give ear little pigs".
The pig figures so frequently upon Gaulish coins that M. de la Saussaye supposed it with great reason to have been a national symbol.
That the hog was also a venerated British emblem is evident from the coins here illustrated, and that CUNO was the Spook King is obvious from Figs.
52 and 57, where the features face fore and aft like those of Janus.
The word Cunobeline, Cunbelin, or Cymbeline, described by the dictionaries as a Cornish name meaning "lord of the Sun," is composed seemingly of _King Belin_.
Belin, a title of the Sun God, is found also in Gaul, notably on the coinage of the Belindi: Belin is featured as in Fig.
58, and that the sacred Horse of Belin was associated with the _ded_ pillar is evident from Fig.
59.
[Illustration: FIGS.
52 to 57.--British.
From _Ancient Coins_ (Akerman, J.
Y.).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
58 to 59.--Gaulish.
From _ibid_.]
Commenting upon Fig.
52 a numismatist has observed: "This seems made for two young women's faces," but whether Cunobelin's wives, sisters, or children, he knows not.
In Britain doubtless there were many kings who assumed the title of Cunobelin, just as in Egypt there were many Pharoahs; but it is no more rational to suppose that the designs on ancient coins are the portraits of historic kings, their wives, their sisters, their cousins, or their aunts, than it would be for an archæologist to imagine that the dragon incident on our modern sovereigns was an episode in the career of his present Majesty King George.
We shall subsequently connect George, whose name means _ploughman_, with the Blue or Celestial Boar, which, because it ploughed with its snout along the earth, was termed _boar, i.e., boer_ or farmer.
With _bacco_ or _bacon_ may be connoted _boukolos_, the Greek for cowherd, whence _bucolic_.
The cattle of Apollo, or the Sun, are a familiar feature of Greek mythology.
[Illustration: FIG.
60.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
The female bacon, which _inter alia_ was the symbol of fecundity, was credited with a mystic thirty teats.
The sow figures prominently in British mythology as an emblem of Ked, and was seemingly venerated as a symbol of the Universal Feeder.
The little pig in Fig.
60, a coin of the Santones, whose capital is marked by the modern town of Saintes, is associated with a fleur-de-lis, the emblem of purity.
The word _lily_ is _all holy_; the porker was associated with the notoriously pure St. Antony as well as with Ked or Kate, the immaculate Magna Mater, and although beyond these indications I have no evidence for the suggestion, I strongly suspect that the scavenging habits of the _moch_ caused it, like the fly or _mouche_, to be reverenced as a symbol of Ked, Cadi, Katy, or Katerina, whose name means the Pure one or the All Pure.
The connection between _hog_ and _cock_ is apparent in the French _coche_ or _cochon_ (origin unknown).
_Cochon_ is allied to _cigne_, the French for swan, Latin, _cygnus_, Greek, _kuknos_; the voice of the goose or swan is said to be its _cackle_, and the Egyptians gave to their All Father Goose a sobriquet which the authorities translate into "The Great Cackler".
[Illustration: FIG.
61.--Swan with Two Necks.
(Bank's Collection, 1785).
From _The History of Signboards_ (Larwood & Hotten).]
Among the meanings assigned to the Hebrew _og_ is "long necked," and it is not improbable that the mysterious Inn sign of the "Swan with two necks" was originally an emblem of Mother and Father Goose.
In Fig.
61 the _geis_ or swan is facing fore and aft, like Cuno, which is radically the same _Great Uno_ as Juno or Megale, to whom the goose was sacred.
_Geyser_, a gush or spring, is the same word as _geeser_, and there was a famous swan with two necks at Goswell Road, where the word Goswell implies an erstwhile well of Gos, Goose, or the Gush.
[268] A Wayz_goose_ is a jovial holiday or festival, _gust_ or _gusto_ means enjoyment, and the Greengoose Fair, which used to be held at Stratford, may be connoted with the "Goose-Intentos," a festival which was customarily held on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Pentecost, the time when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of "cloven tongues," resolves into _Universal Good Ghost_.
The Santones, whose emblem was the Pig and Fleur-de-lis, were neighbours of the Pictones.
Our British Picts, the first British tribe known by name to history, are generally supposed to have derived their title because they de_pict_ed pictures on their bodies.
In West Cornwall there are rude stone huts known locally as Picts' Houses, but whether these are attributed to the Picts or the Pixies it is difficult to say.
In Scotland the "Pechs" were obviously elves, for they are supposed to have been short, wee men with long arms, and such huge feet that on rainy days they stood upside down and used their feet as umbrellas.
That the Picts' Houses of Cornwall were attributed to the Pechs is probable from the Scottish belief, "Oh, ay, they were great builders the Pechs; they built a' the auld castles in the country.
They stood a' in a row from the quarry to the building stance, and elka ane handed forward the stanes to his neighbour till the hale was bigget."
That the pig and the bogie were intimately associated is evidenced by a Welsh saying quoted by Sir John Rhys:-A cutty black sow on every style Spinning and carding each November eve.
In Ireland Pooka was essentially a November spirit, and elsewhere November was pre-eminently the time of All Hallows or All Angels.
_Hallow_ is the same word as _elle_ the Scandinavian for _elf_ or _fairy_, and at Michaelmas or Hallowe'en, pixies, spooks, and bogies were notoriously all-abroad:-On November eve A Bogie on every stile.
The time of All Hallows, or Michaelmas used to be known as Hoketide, a festival which in England was more particularly held upon St. Blaze's Day; and at that cheerless period the people used to light bonfires or make blazes for the purpose of "lighting souls out of Purgatory".
In Wales a huge fire was lighted by each household and into the ashes of this _bon_fire, this _alban_ or _elphin_ fire,[269] every member of the family threw a _white_ or "Alban," or an _elphin_ stone, kneeling in prayer around the dying fire.
[270] In the Isle of Man Hallowtide was known as Hollantide,[271] which again permits the equation of St. Hellen or Elen and her train with Long Meg and her daughters.
On the occasion of the Hallow or Ellie-time saffron or yellow cakes, said to be emblematical of the fires of purgatory, used to be eaten.
To run _amok_ in the East means a _fiery fury_--the words are the same; and that _bake_ (or _beeak_ as in Yorkshire dialect) meant fire is obvious from the synonymous _cook_.
_Coch_ is Welsh for red, and the flaming red poppy or corn_cock_le, French--_coquelicot_, was no doubt the symbol of the solar poppy, pope, or pap.
The Irish for pap or breast is _cich_, and in Welsh _cycho_ means a hive, or anything of concave or hivelike shape.
Possibly here we have the origin of _quick_ in its sense of living or alive.
One of the features of Michaelmas in Scotland was the concoction and cooking of a giant _cake_, bun, or bannock.
According to Martin this was "enormously large, and compounded of different ingredients.
This cake belonged to the Archangel, and had its name from him.
Every one in each family, whether strangers or domestics, had his portion of this kind of shew-bread, and had of course some tithe to the friendship and protection of Michael.
"[272] In Hertfordshire during a corresponding period of "joy, plenty, and universal benevolence," the young men assembled in the fields choosing a very active leader who then led them a Puck-like chase through bush and through briar, for the sake of diversion selecting a route through ponds, ditches, and places of difficult passage.
[273] The term _Ganging_ Day applied to this festival may be connoted with the Singin 'een of the Scotch Hogmanay, and with the leader of St. Micah's rout may be connoted _demagog_.
This word, meaning popular leader, is attributed to _demos_, people, and _agogos_, leading, but more seemingly it is _Dame Gog_ or _Good Mother Gog_.
In Durham is a Pickburn or Pigburn; _beck_ is a generic term for a small stream; in Devon is a river Becky, and in Monmouthshire a river Beeg.
In Kent is Bekesbourne, and Pegwell Bay near St. Margarets in Kent, may be connoted with Backwell or Bachwell in Somerset.
In Herefordshire is a British earthwork, known as Bach Camp, and on Bucton Moor in Northumberland there are two earth circles.
In Devonshire is Buckland-Egg, or Egg-Buckland, and with the various Boxmoors, Boxgroves, Boxdales, and Boxleys may be connoted the Box river which passes Keynton and crosses Akeman Street.
A Christmas _box_ is a boon or a gift, a box or receptacle is the same word as _pyx_; and that the evergreen undying box-tree was esteemed sacred, is evident from the words of Isaiah: "I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine tree, and the box tree together".
[274] [Illustration: FIGS.
62 to 64.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
_Bacon_, radically _bac_, in neighbouring tongues varies into _baco_, _bakke_, _bak_, and _bache_.
Bacon is a family name immortally associated with St. Albans, and it is probable that Trebiggan--a vast man with arms so long that he could take men out of the ships passing by Land's End, and place them on the Long Ships--was the Eternal Biggan or Beginning.
In British Romance there figures a mystic Lady Tryamour, whose name is obviously _Tri_ or _Three Love_, and it is probable that Giant Trebiggan was the pagan Trinity, or Triton, whose emblem was the three-spiked trident.
Triton _alias_ Neptune was the reputed Father of Giant Albion, and the shell-haired deity represented on Figs.
62 to 64 is probably Albon, for the inscription in Iberian characters reads BLBAN.
In the East Bel was a generic term meaning _lord_: in the West it seemingly meant, just as it does to-day, _fine_ or _beautiful_.
The city of BLBAN or _beautiful Ban_ is now Bilbao, and the three fish on this coin are analogous to the trident, and to numberless other emblems of the Triune.
The radiating fan of the cockle shell connects it with the Corn-cockle as the Dawn, standing jocund on the misty mountain tops, is related to the flaming midday Sun.
All _conchas_, particularly the _echinea_ or "St. Cuthbert's Bead," were symbols of St. Katherine or Cuddy, and in Art St. Jacques or St. Jack was always represented with a shell.
_Coquille_, the French for shell, is the same word as _goggle_, and in England the _cockle_ was popularly connected with a strange custom known as Hot Cockles or Cockle Bread.
Full particulars of this practice are given by Hazlitt, who observes: "I entertain a conviction that with respect to these hot cockles, and likewise to leap-candle, we are merely on the threshhold of the enquiry ... the question stands at present much as if one had picked up by accident the husk of some lost substance....
Speaking conjecturally, but with certain sidelights to encourage, this seems a case of the insensible degradation of rite into custom.
"[275] Shells are one of the most common deposits in prehistoric graves, and at Boston in Lincolnshire stone coffins have been found completely filled with cockle-shells.
There would thus seem to be some connection between Ickanhoe, the ancient name for Boston, a town of the Iceni, situated on the Ichenield Way, and the _echinea_ or _concha_.
As the cockle was particularly the symbol of Birth, the presence of these shells in coffins may be attributed to a hope of New Birth and a belief that Death was the _yoni_ or Gate of Life.
The word _inimical_ implies _un-amicable_, or unfriendly, whence Michael was seemingly the Friend of Man.
_Maculate_ means spotted, and the coins here illustrated, believed to have been minted at St. Albans, obviously feature no physical King but rather the Kaadman or Good Man of St. Albans in his dual aspect of age and youth.
The starry, spotted, or maculate effigy is apparently an attempt to depict the astral or spiritual King, for it was an ancient idea that the spirit-body and the spirit-world were made of a so-called stellar-matter--a notion which has recently been revived by the Theosophists who speak of the astral body and the astral plane.
Our modern _breath_, old English _breeth_, is evidently the Welsh _brith_ which means spotted, and it is to this root that Sir John Rhys attributes the term Brython or Britain, finding in it a reference to that painting or tattooing of the body which distinguished the Picts.
[276] The word _tattoo_, Maori _tatau_, is the Celtic _tata_ meaning father, and the implication seems to follow that the custom of _tattooing_ arose from picking, dotting, or maculating the tribal totem or caste-mark.
[Illustration: FIGS.
65 and 66.--British.
From Akerman.]
In the Old English representation here illustrated either St. Peter or God the Father is conspicuously tattooed or spotted; Pan was always assigned a _pan_ther's skin, or spotted cloak.
A _speck_ is a minute spot, and among the ancients a speck or dot within a circle was the symbol of the central Spook or Spectre.
This, like all other emblems, was understood in a personal and a cosmic sense, the little speck and circle representing the soul surrounded by its round of influence and duties; the Cosmic speck, the Supreme Spirit, and the circle the entire Universe.
In many instances the dot and ring seems to have stood for the pupil in the iris of the eye.
In addition it is evident that [circled dot] was an emblem of the Breast, and hieroglyphed the speck in the centre of the zone or sein, for the Greek letter _theta_ written--[circled dot] is identical with _teta, teat, tada, dot_ or _dad_.
The dotted effigy on the coins supposedly minted at St. Albans may be connoted with the curious fact that in Welsh the word _alban_ meant _a primary point_.
[277] [Illustration: Fig.
67.--Christ's Ascent from Hell.
From _Ancient Mysteries_ (Hone, W.).]
_Speck_ is the root of _speculum_, a mirror, and it might be suggested by the materialist that the first reflection in a metal mirror was assumed to be a spook.
The mirror is an attribute of nearly every ancient Deity, and the British Druids seem to have had some system of flashing the sunlight on to the crowd by means of what was termed by the Bards, the Speculum of the Pervading Glance.
_Specula_ means a watch-tower, and _spectrum_ means vision.
_Speech, speak_, and _spoke_, point to the probability that speech was deemed to be the voice of the indwelling spook or spectre, which etymology is at any rate preferable to the official surmise "all, perhaps, from Teutonic base _sprek_--to make a noise".
[Illustration: Fig.
68.--The Mirror of Thoth.
From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner, C.T.)]
[Illustration: FIG.
69.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
70 to 72.--British.
From _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).]
[Illustration: FIG.
73.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner, C.
T.).]
The Egyptian hieroglyph here illustrated depicts the speculum of Thoth, a deity whom the Phoenicians rendered Taut, and to whom they attributed the invention of the alphabet and all other arts.
The whole land of Egypt was known among other designations as "the land of the Eye," and by the Egyptians as also by the Etrurians, the symbolic blue Eye of Horus was carried constantly as an amulet against bad luck.
Fig.
69 is an Egyptian die-stamp, and Figs.
70 to 72 are British coins of which the intricate symbolism will be considered in due course.
The arms of Fig.
73 are extended into the act of benediction, and _utat_, the Egyptian word for this symbol, resolves into the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Tat.
That the _utat_ or eye was familiar in Europe is evidenced by the Kio coin here illustrated.
[Illustration: FIG.
74.--From _Numismatique Ancienne_ (Barthelemy, J.
B.
A.
A.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
75.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray).]
_Spica_, which is also the same word as spook, meant ear of corn; the wheatear is proverbially the Staff of Life, and _loaf_, old English _loof_, is the same word as _life_.
Not infrequently the _Bona Dea_ was represented holding a loaf in her extended hand, and the same idea was doubtless expressed by the two breasts upon a dish with which St. Agatha, whose name means _Good_, is represented.
Christianity accounts for this curious emblem by a legend that St. Agatha was tortured by having her breasts cut off, and it is quite possible that this nasty tale is correctly translated; the original tyrant or torturer being probably Winter, or the reaper Death, which cuts short the fruit fulness of Spring.
In the Tartar emblem herewith the Phrygian-capped Deity is holding, like St. Agatha, the symbol of the teat or feeder, or _fodder_.
[278] [Illustration: FIGS.
76 and 77.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
The wheatear or spica, or _buck_-wheat was a frequent emblem on our British coins, and to account for this it has been suggested that the British did a considerable export trade in corn; but unfortunately for this theory the _spica_ figures frequently upon the coins of Spain and Gaul.
As a symbol the buckwheat typified plenty, but in addition to the wheatear proper there appear kindred objects which have been surmised to be, perhaps, fishbones, perhaps fern-leaves.
There is no doubt that these mysterious objects are variants of the so-called "_ded_" amulet, which in Egypt was the symbol of the backbone of the God of Life.
This amulet, of which the hieroglyph has been rendered variously as _ded_, _didu_, _tet_, and _tat_, has an ancestry of amazing antiquity, and according to Mackenzie, "in Paleolithic times, at least 20,000 years ago, the spine of the fish was laid on the corpse when it was entombed, just as the 'ded,' amulet, which was the symbol of the backbone of Osiris, was laid on the neck of the Egyptian mummy".
[279] Frequently this "ded" emblem took the form of a column or pillar, which symbolised the eternal support and stability of the universe.
On the summit of Fig.
85 is a bug, _cock_roach, or _cock_chafer: in Etruria as in Egypt the bug amulet or _scarabeus_ was as popular as the Eye of Horus.
[Illustration: FIGS.
78 to 84.--British.
Nos.
1 to 8 from _Ancient British Coins_ (Evans, J.).
No.
4 from _A New Description of England and Wales_ (Anon., 1724).
No.
5 from _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).]
[Illustration: FIG.
85.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner, C.
T.).]
In Fig.
68 the spectral Eye was supported by Thoth, whose name varies into Thot, Taut, and numerous intermediate forms, which equate it with _ded_ or _dad_: similarly it will be found that practically every place-name constituted from Tot or Tat varies into Dot or Dad, _e.g._, Llan_dud_no, where is found the cradle of St. _Tud_no.
Sometimes the Egyptians represented two or more pillars termed _deddu_, and this word is traceable in Trinidad, an island which, on account of its three great peaks, was named after _trinidad_, the Spanish for trinity.
But _trinidad_ is evidently a very old Iberian word, for its British form was _drindod_, as in the place-name Llandrindod or "Holy Enclosure of the Trinity".
The three great mounts on Trinidad, and the three famous medicinal springs at Llandrindod Wells render it probable that the site of Llan_drindod_ was originally a pagan dedication to the _trine teat_, or _triune dad_.
Amid numerous hut circles at Llandudno is a rocking stone known as Cryd-Tudno, or the Cradle of Tudno.
Who was the St. Tudno of Llandudno whose cradle or cot, like Kit's Coty in Kent, has been thus preserved in folk-memory?
The few facts related of him are manifestly fabulous, but the name itself seemingly preserves one of the numerous sites where the Almighty Child of Christmas Day was worshipped, and the _no_ of _Tudno_ may be connoted with _new_, Greek, _neo_, Danish, _ny_, allied to Sanscrit, _no_, hence _new_, "that which is now".
At Llanamlleck in Wales there is a cromlech known as St. Illtyd's House, near which is a rude upright stone known as Maen-Illtyd, or Illtyd-stone.
We may connote this _Ill_tyd with _All_-tyd or All Father, in which respect Illtyd corresponds with the Scandinavian _Ilmatar_, _Almatar_, or All Mother.
It is told of Saint Illtyd that he befriended a hunted stag, and that like Semele, the wife of Jove, his wife was stricken with blindness for daring to approach too near him.
The association of Illtyd with a stag is peculiarly significant in view of the fact that at Llandudno, leading to the cot or cradle of St. Tudno, are the remains of an avenue of standing stones called by a name which signifies "the High Road of the Deer".
The branching antlers of the deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising or _new_ sun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the supposition that the Cradle of Tudno was the shrine of the new or Rising Tud, and in all probability the High Road of the Deer was once the scene of some very curious ceremonies.
Many of our old churches even to-day contain in their lofts antlers which formed part of the wardrobe of the ancient mummers or guise dancers.
[Illustration: FIG.
86.--From _Numismatique Ancienne_.]
In the Ephesian coin herewith Diana--the _divine Ana_--the many-breasted Alma Mater, is depicted in the form of a pillar-palm tree between two stags.
Among the golden treasures found by Schliemann at Mykenæ, were ornaments representing two stags on the top of a date palm tree with three fronds.
[280] The _date_ palm may be connoted with the _ded_ pillar, and the triple-fronded date of Mykenæ with the trindod or drindod of Britain.
[Illustration: Assyrian Ornament.
(Nimroud.)]
[Illustration: Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.]
[Illustration: Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.]
[Illustration: Sacred Tree (N.W.
Palace, Nimroud).]
[Illustration: Ornament on the Robe of King.]
[Illustration: FIG.
87.--From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]
The honeysuckle, termed conventionally a palmette, is classically represented as either seven or nine-lobed, and this symbol of the Dayspring or of Wisdom was common alike both East and West.
The palm branch is merely another form of the fern or fish-bone, and the word palm is radically _alma_, the all nourisher.
The palm leaf appears on one of the stones at New Grange, but as Fergusson remarks, "how a knowledge of this Eastern plant reached New Grange is by no means clear".
[281] The _feather_ was a further emblem of the same spiritual _father_, _feeder_, or _fodder_, and in Egypt Ma or Truth was represented with a single-feather headdress (_ante_, p. 136).
From the mistletoe to the fern, a sprig of any kind was regarded as the spright, spirit, or spurt of new life or new _Thought_ (_Thaut?_), and the forms of this young sprig are innumerable.
The gist, ghost, or essence of the Maypole was that it should be a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron Walden the children on Mayday sing:-A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands; It is a sprout that is well budded out, The work of our Lord's hands.
[Illustration: FIG.
88.--From _Irish Antiquities Pagan and Christian_ (Wakeman).]
_Teat_ may be equated with the Gaulish _tout_, the whole or All, and it is probable that the Pelasgian shrine of Dodona was dedicated to that _All One_ or _Father One_.
It is noteworthy that the sway of the pre-Grecian Pelasgians extended over the whole of the Ionian coast "beginning from Mykale":[282] this Mykale (_Megale or Michael?_) district is now Albania, and its capital is Janina, _query_ Queen Ina?
It is probable that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington who is reputed to have loved Albion, was can_na_, the _New King_ or _New Queen_.
On the river Canna in Wales is Llan_gan_ or Llanganna: Llan_gan_ on the river Taff is dedicated to St. Canna, and Llan_gain_ to St. Synin.
All these dedications are seemingly survivals of _King_, _Queen_, or _Saint_, Ina, Una, Une, ain or one.
In Cornwall there are several St. Euny's Wells: near Evesham is Honeybourne, and in Sussex is a Honey Child.
Upon Honeychurch the authorities comment, "The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of _Huna_".
Quite likely, but not, I think, a Saxon settler.
The ancients supposed that the world was shaped like a bun, and they imagined it as supported by the tet or pillar of the Almighty.
It is therefore possible that the Toadstool or Mushroom derived its name not because toads never sit upon it, but because it was held to be a perfect emblem of the earth.
In some districts the Mushroom is named "Pooka's foot,"[283] and as the earth is proverbially God's footstool, the Toad-stool was held seemingly to be the stool of earth supported on the _ded_, or pillar of Titan.
The Fairy Titania, who probably once held sway in Tottenham Court Road, may be connoted with the French _teton_, a teat; _tetine_, an udder; _teter_, to milk; and _tetin_, a nipple.
[Illustration: FIG.
89.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
90.--The Spirit of Youth.
From a French Miniature of the fourteenth century.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
It is probable that "The Five Wells" at Taddington, "the Five Kings at Doddington," where also is "the Duddo Stone," likewise Dod Law at Doddington; Dowdeswell, Dudsbury, and the Cornish Dodman, are all referable originally to the fairy Titan or the celestial Daddy.
[Illustration: FIG.
91.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In accordance with universal wont this Titan or Almighty, "this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid," was conceived as anon a tiny toddling tot or Tom-tit-tot, anon as Old Tithonus, the doddering dotard: the Swedish for _death_ or _dead_ is _dod_; the German is _tod_.
_Tod_ is an English term for a fox, and Thot was the fox or _jackal_-headed maker-of-tracts or guide: thought is invariably the guide to every action, and Divine Thought is the final bar to which the human soul comes up for judgment.
It has already been seen that in Europe the holder of the sword and scales was Michael, and there is reason to suppose that the Dog-headed titanic Christopher, who is said to have ferried travellers _pick-a-back_ across a river, was at one time an exquisite conception of Great Puck or Father Death carrying his children over the mystic river.
By the _pagans_--the unsophisticated villagers among whom Pucca mostly survived--Death was conceived as not invariably or necessarily frightful, but sometimes as a lovely youth.
In Fig.
91 Death is Amor or Young Love, and in Fig.
90 an angel occupies the place of Giant Christopher: the words _death_ and _dead_ are identical with _dad_ and _tod_.
[Illustration: FIG.
92.--Figure of Christ, beardless.
Roman Sculpture of the IV.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
93.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
94.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The Christian emblems herewith represent Christ supported by the Father or Mother upon a veil or scarf, which is probably intended for the rainbow or spectrum: the pagan Europa was represented, _vide_ Fig.
93, holding a similar emblem.
According to mythology, Iris or the Rainbow was like Thot or Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, and the symbolists delighted to blend into their hieroglyphs that same elusive ambiguity as separates Iris from Eros and the blend of colours in the spectrum.
In the ninth century a learned monk expressed the opinion that only two words of the old Iberian language had then survived: one of these was _fern_, meaning _anything good_, and with it we may connote the Fern Islands among which stands the Megstone.
Ferns, the ancient capital of Leinster, attributes its foundation to a St. Mogue, and St. Mogue's Well is still existing in the precincts of Ferns Abbey.
The equation of Long Meg and her Daughters with Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins is supported by the tradition that the original name of St. Ursula's husband was Holofernes,[284] seemingly Holy Ferns or Holy Phoroneus.
What is described as "the highest term in Grecian history" was the ancestral Inachus, the father of a certain Phoroneus.
The fabulous Inachus[285]--probably the Gaelic divinity Oengus[286]--is the _Ancient Mighty Life_, and Phoroneus is radically fern or frond.
There figures in Irish mythology "a very ancient deity" whose name, judging from inscriptions, was Feron or Vorenn, and it is noteworthy that Oengus is associated particularly with New Grange, where the fern palm leaf emblem has been preserved.
The Dutch for _fern_ is _varen_, and the root of all these terms is _fer_ or _ver_: the Latin _ferre_ is the root of _fertile_, etc., and in connection with the Welsh _ver_, which means essence, may be noted _ver_ the Spring and _vert_, green, whence _verdant, verdure, vernal,_ and _infernal_(?).
Among the ferns whose spine-like fishbone fronds seemingly caused them to be accepted as emblems of the fertile Dayspring or the permeating Spirit of all Life, the _osmunda_ was particularly associated with the Saints and Gods: in the Tyrol it is still placed over doors for Good Luck, and one species of Osmunda (_Crispa_) is in Norway called St. Olaf's Beard.
This is termed by Gerarde the Herb Christopher, and the Latin _crispa_ somewhat connects it with Christopher.
The name Osmund is Teutonic for _divine protector_, but more radically Osmunda was _oes munda_, or the _Life of the World_.
In Devonshire the Pennyroyal is also known as _organ_, _organy_, _organie_, or _origane_, all of which are radically the same as _origin_.
[Illustration: FIGS.
95 to 102.--British.
Nos.
[ ] to [ ] from Akerman.
Nos.
[ ] to [ ] from Evans.]
[Illustration: FIG.
103.--Green Man (Roxburghe Ballads, circa 1650).--From _The History of Signboards_ (Larwood & Hotten).]
The British coins inscribed Ver are believed to have emanated from Verulam or St. Albans, but the same VER, VIR, or kindred legend is found upon the coins of Iberia and Gaul.
It is not improbable that Verulam was at one time the chief city in Albion, but the place which now claims to be the mother city is Canterbury or Duro_vern_.
The ancient name of Canterbury is supposed to have been bestowed upon it by the Romans, and to have denoted _evergreen_; but Canterbury is not physically more evergreen than every other spot in verdant England: Canterbury is, however, permeated with relics, memories, and traditions of St. George; and St. George is still addressed in Palestine as the "evergreen green one".
Green was the symbol of rejuvenescence and immortality, and "the Green Man" of our English Inn Signs, as also the Jack-in-Green who used to figure along with Maid Marian and the Hobby Horse in the festivities of May Day, was representative of the May King or the Lord of Life.
The colour green, according to the Ecclesiastical authorities, still signifies "hope, plenty, mirth, youth, and prosperity": as the colour of living vegetation, it was adopted as a symbol of life, and Angels and Saints, _particularly St. John_, are represented clad in green.
In Gaul the Green Man was evidently conceived as Ver Galant, and the two cups, one inverted, in all probability implied Life and Death.
According to Christian Legend, St. George was tortured by being forced to drink two cups, whereof the one was prepared to make him mad, the other to kill him by poison.
The prosperity of an emblem lies entirely in the Eye, and it is probable that all the alleged dolours to which George was subjected are nothing more than the morbid misconceptions of men whose minds dwelt normally on things most miserable and conceived little higher.
Thus seemingly the light-shod Mercury was degraded into George's alleged torture of being "made to run in red hot shoes": the heavy pillars laid upon him suggest that he was once depicted bearing up the pillars of the world: the wheel covered with razors and knives to which he was attached imply the solar wheel of Kate or Catarina: the posts to which he was fastened by the feet and hands were seemingly a variant of the _deddu_, and the sledge hammers with which he was beaten were, like many other of the excruciating torments of the "saint," merely and inoffensively the emblems of the Heavenly Hercules or Invictus.
[Illustration: FIG.
104.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
105.--Ver Galant (Rue Henri, Lyons, 1759).
From _The History of Signboards_.]
[Illustration: FIG.
106.--Green Man and Still (Harleian Collection, 1630).
_Ibid._] Maid Marion, who was not infrequently associated with St. George, is radically _Maid Big Ion_, or _Fairy Ion_, and that St. George was also a marine saint is obvious from the various Channels which still bear his name.
The ensign of the Navy is the red cross on a white ground, known originally as the Christofer or Jack, and in Fig.
106 the Green Man is represented with the scales of a Merman, or Blue John.
The Italian for blue is _vera_; _vera_ means _true_; "true blue" is proverbial; and that Old George was Trajan, Tarchon, Tarragone, or _Dragon_ is obvious from the dragon-slaying incident.
Little George has already been identified by Baring-Gould with Tammuz, the Adonis, or Beauty, who is identified with the Sun:[287] "Thou shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Horæ, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating thyself to Olympus, giving ripeness to the fruits".
[288] [Illustration: FIG.
107.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
The St. George of Diospolis, the City of Light, who by the early Christians was hailed as "the Mighty Man," the "Star of the Morning," and the "Sun of Truth," figures in Cornwall, particularly at Helston, where there is still danced the so-called _Furry_ dance: Helston, moreover, claims to show the great granite stone which was intended to cover the mouth of the Nether Regions, but St. Michael met Satan carrying it and made him drop it.
It is unnecessary to labour the obvious identity between Saints George and Michael: "George," meaning _husbandman_, _i.e._, the Almighty in a bucolic aspect, is merely another title for the archangel, but more radically it may be traced to _geo_ (as in _ge_ology, _ge_ography, _ge_ometry) and _urge_, _i.e._, _earth urge_.
It is physically true that farmers urge the earth to yield her increase, and until quite recently, relics of the festival of the sacred plough survived in Britain.
Within living memory farmers in Cornwall turned the first sod to the formula "In the name of God let us begin":[289] in China, where the Emperor himself turns the first sod, much of the ancient ceremonies still survive.
The legend of St. George and the dragon has had its local habitation fixed in many districts notably in Berkshire at the vale of the White Horse.
The famous George of Cappadocia is first heard of as "a purveyor of provisions for the Army of Constantinople," and he was subsequently associated with a certain Dracontius (_i.e._, _dragon_), "Master of the Mint".
The same legend is assigned at Lambton in England not to George but to "_John_ that slew ye worm": in Turkey St. George is known as Oros, which is obviously Horus or Eros, the Lord of the Horæ or hours, and the English dragon-slayer Conyers of _Sockburn_ is presumably King Yers, whose burn or brook was presumably named after Shock or Jock.
In some parts of England a bogey dog is known under the title of "Old Shock," and in connection with Conyers and John that slew ye worm may be noted near Conway the famous Llandudno headlands, Great and Little _Orme_ or _Worm_.
The St. George of Scandinavia is named Gest: that Gest was the great _Gust_ or Mighty Wind is probable, and it is more likely that Windsor, a world-famous seat of St. George, meant, not as is assumed _winding shore_, but _wind sire_.
That St. George was the Ruler of the gusts or winds is implied by the fact that among the Finns, anyone brawling on St. George's Day was in danger of suffering from storms and tempests.
The murmuring of the wind in the oak groves of Dodona was held to be the voice of Zeus, and the will of the All Father was there further deduced by means of a three-chained whip hanging over a metal basin from the hand of the statue of a boy.
From the movements of these chains, agitated by the wind and blown by the gusts till they tinkled against the bowl, the will of the _Ghost_ was guessed, and the word _guess_ seemingly implies that guessing was regarded as the operation of the good or bad _geis_ within.
In Windsor Great Forest stood the famous Oak or Picktree, where Puck, _alias_ Herne the Hunter, appeared occasionally in the form of an antlered Buck.
The supposition that St. George was the great _Gush_ or _geyser_ is strengthened by the fact that near the Cornish Padstow, Petrock-Stowe, or the stowe of the Great Pater, there is a well called St. George's Well.
This well is described as a "mere spring which gushes from a rock," and the legend states that the water gushed forth immediately St. George had trodden on the spot and has ne'er since ceased to flow.
The Italian for blue--the colour of the deep water and of the high Heavens--is also _turchino_, and on 23rd April (French _Avril_), blue coats used to be worn in England in honour of the national saint whose red cross on a white ground has immemorially been our Naval Ensign.
[290] St. George figured particularly in the Furry or Flora dance at Helston, and the month of _Avril_, a period when the earth is opening up its treasures, seemingly derives its name from Ver or Vera, the "daughter deare" of Flora.
On 23rd April "the riding of the George" was a principal solemnity in certain parts of England: on St. George's Day a White Horse used to stand harnessed at the end of St. George's Chapel in St. Martin's Church, Strand, and the Duncannon Street, which now runs along the south side of this church, argues the erstwhile existence either here or somewhere of a dun or down of cannon.
A cannon is a gun, and our Dragoon guards are supposed to have derived their title from the dragons or fire-arms with which they were armed.
The inference is that the first inventors of the gun, cannon, or dragon, entertained the pleasing fancy that their weapon was the fire-spouting worm.
[291] The dragon was the emblem of the _Cyn_bro or Kymry: associated with the red cross of St. George it is the cognisance of London, and a fearsome dragon stands to-day at the boundary of the city on the site of Temple Bar.
In the reign of Elizabeth an injunction was issued that "there shall be neither George nor Margaret," an implication that Margaret was once the recognised Consort of St. George, and the expression "riding of the George," points to the probability that the White Horse, even if riderless, was known as "the George".
The White Horse of Kent with its legend INVICTA implies--unless Heraldry is weak in its grammar--not a horse but a mare: George was Invictus or the Unconquerable, and, as will be seen, there are good reasons to suppose that the White Horse and White Mare were indigenous to Britain long before the times of the Saxon Hengist and Horsa.
It is now generally accepted that Hengist, which meant _horse_, and Horsa, which meant _mare_, were mythical characters.
With the coming of the Saxons no doubt the worship of the White Horse revived for it was an emblem of Hanover, and in Hanover cream-coloured horses were reserved for the use of royalty alone.
With the notorious Hanoverian Georges may be connoted the fact that opposite St. George's Island at Looe (Cornwall) is a strand or market-place named Hannafore: at Hinover in Sussex a white horse was carved into the hillside.
[Illustration: FIG.
108.--From _The Scouring of the White Horse_ (Hughes, T.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
109.--British.
From _A New Description of England_ (1724).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
110 to 113.--British No.
110 from Camden.
No.
112 from Akerman.
No.
113 from Evans.]
[Illustration: FIG.
114.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
115 and 116.--British.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
117.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
118.--British.
From Evans.]
[Illustration: FIG.
119.--British.
From Akerman.]
The White Horse--which subsequently became the Hobby Horse, or the Hob's Horse, of our popular revels--has been carved upon certain downs in England and Scotland for untold centuries.
That these animals were designedly white is implied by an example on the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeenshire: here the subsoil is black and the required white has been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar stones.
[292] It will be noticed that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird, and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs.
110 to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig.
111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg.
The designer of Fig.
109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan's head, and also a sprig or branch.
The word BODUOC may or may not have a relation to Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni--whose territories are marked by the Ichnield Way of to-day--but in any case _Boudig_ in Welsh meant victory or Victorina, whence the "very peculiar horse" on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric Invicta.
The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras was similarly worshipped under the guise of a white horse, and Mithras was similarly "Invictus".
The winged genius surmounting the horse on Fig.
114, a coin of the Tarragona, Tarchon, or _dragon_ district--is described as "Victory flying," and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse or Invictus was far spread.
At Edgehill there used to be a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the neighbouring Red Horse Farm was held on the condition that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annually _on Palm Sunday_: the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in conjunction with the horse on our British coinage.
[Illustration: FIG.
120.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
121.]
The story of St. George treading on the Padstow Rock, and the subsequent gush of water, is immediately suggestive of the Pegasus legend.
Pegasus, the winged steed of the Muses, which, with a stroke of its hoof, caused a fountain to gush forth, is supposed to have been thus named because he made his first appearance near the _sources_--Greek _pegai_--of Oceanus.
It is obvious, however, from the coins of Britain, Spain, and Gaul, that Pegasus--occasionally astral-winged and hawk-headed--was very much at home in these regions, and it is not improbable that _pegasus_ was originally the Celtic _Peg Esus_.
The god Esus of Western Europe--one of whose portraits is here given--was not only King Death, but he is identified by De Jubainville with Cuchulainn, the Achilles or Young Sun God of Ireland.
[293] Esus, the counterpart of Isis, was probably the divinity worshipped at Uzes in Gaul, a coin of which town, representing a seven-rayed sprig springing from a brute, is here reproduced, and that King Esus or King Osis was the Lord of profound speculation, is somewhat implied by _gnosis_, the Greek word for knowledge.
Tacitus mentions that the neighing of the sacred white horse of the Druids was regarded as oracular; the voice of a horse is termed its neigh, from which it would seem horses were regarded as super-intelligent animals which _knew_.
[294] The inscription CUN or CUNO which occurs so frequently on the horse coins of Western Europe is seemingly akin to _ken_, the root of _know_, _knew_, _canny_, and _cunning_.
In India the elephant _Ganesa_--seemingly a feminine form of _Genesis_ and _Gnosis_--was deemed to be the Lord of all knowledge.
In connection with Pegasus may be noted Buk_ephalus_, the famed steed of Alexander.
The Inscriptions EPPILLUS and EPPI[295] occur on the Kentish coins, Figs.
122 and 123; _hipha_ or _hippa_ was the Phoenician for a mare; in Scotland the nightmare is known as _ephi_altus; a _hippo_drome is a horse course, whence, perhaps, Bukephalus may be translated Big Eppilus.
The little elf or elve under a bent sprig is presumably Bog or Puck, and in connection with the _Eagle_-headed Pegasus of Fig.
164 may be noted the Puckstone by the megalithic _Aggle_ Stone at Pur_beck_, where is a St. Alban's Head.
[296] [Illustration: FIGS.
122 and 123.--British.
From Akerman.]
Whether or not Pegasus was Big Esus or Peg or Puck Esus is immaterial, but it is quite beyond controversy that the animals now under consideration are Elphin Steeds and that they are not the "deplorable abortions" which numismatists imagine.
The recognised authorities are utterly contemptuous towards our coinage, to which they apply terms such as "very rude," "an attempt to represent a horse," "barbarous imitation," and so forth; but I am persuaded that the craftsmen who fabricated these archaic coins were quite competent to draw straightforward objects had such been their intent.
Akerman is seriously indignant at the indefiniteness of the object which resembles a fishbone and "has been called a fern leaf," and he sums up his feelings by opining that this uncouth representation may be as much the result of incompetent workmanship as of successive fruitless attempts at imitation.
[297] [Illustration: FIGS.
124 to 127.--Iberian.
From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
128 and 129.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
130.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
Incompetent comprehension would condemn Figs.
124 to 129, particularly the draughtsmanship of the head: it is hardly credible, yet, says Akerman, the small winged elf in these coins "apparently escaped the observation of M. de Saulcy".
They emanated from the Tarragonian town of Ana or Ona, and are somewhat suggestive of the mythic tale that Minerva sprang from the head of Jove: the horses on the Gaulish coin illustrated in Fig.
130, which is attributed either to Verdun or Vermandois, are inscribed VERO IOVE and that Jou was the White Horse is, to some extent, implied by our elementary words _Gee_ and _Geho_.
According to Hazlitt "the exclamation Geho!
Geho!
which carmen use to their horses is not peculiar to this country, as I have heard it used in France":[298] it is probable that the Jehu who drove furiously was a memory of the solar charioteer; it is further probable that the story of Io, the divinely fair daughter of Inachus, who was said to have been pursued over the world by a malignant gadfly, originated in the lumpish imagination of some one who had in front of him just such elfin emblems as the pixy horse now under consideration.
That in reality the gadfly was a good _mouche_ is implied by the term gad: the inscription KIO on Fig.
74 (p. 253) reads Great Io or Great Eye, and in connection with the remarkable optic of the White Horse at Uffington may be connoted the place-name Horse Eye near _Bex_hill.
The curious place-name Beckjay in Shropshire is suggestive of Big Jew or Joy: the blue-crested monarch of the woods we call a jay (Spanish, _gayo_, "of doubtful origin") was probably the bird of Jay or Joy--just as _picus_ or the crested woodpecker was admittedly Jupiter's bird--and the Jaye's Park in Surrey, which is in the immediate neighbourhood of Godstone, Gadbrooke, and Kitlands, was seemingly associated at some period with Good Jay or Joy.
We speak ironically to-day of our "Jehus," and the word _hack_ still survives: in Chaucer's time English carters encouraged their horses with the exclamation Heck!
[299] the Irish for _horse_ was _ech_, and the inscription beneath the effigy on Fig.
131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Akerman, EKK.
That the _hack_ was connected in idea with the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my possession, the eye or centre of which is represented by an oak corn or _ac_orn.
In the North of England the elves seem to have been known as _hags_, for fairy rings are there known as _hag_ tracks.
The word _hackney_ is identical with Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Cæsar's reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the Ikeni: whence it is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, were worshippers of Invicta, the Great Hackney, the _Ceni Magna_ or Hackney Magna.
The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted with the Scotch kelpie, which is radically _ek Elpi_ or _Elfi_: the kelpie or water horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly spook, just as Alpa in Scandinavia is a ghoul and _Ephialtes_ in Albany or Scotland is a nightmare: but there must almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for the Greeks held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, and Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the European side of the Pillars of Hercules.
From the surnames Killbye and Gilbey one may perhaps deduce a tribe who were followers of _'K Alpe_ the _Great All Feeder_: that the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil coin of Fig.
133.
[Illustration: FIG.
131.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
132.--British.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
133.--Channel Islands.
From Barthelemy.]
The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as Godolphin--whence the family name Godolphin--implies, like Robin Goodfellow, _Good Elphin_.
With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the Celtic Goddess Epona, "the tutelar deity of horses and probably originally a horse totem".
To Epona may safely be assigned the word _pony_; Irish _poni_; Scotch _powney_, all of which the authorities connect with _pullus_, the Latin for _foal_: it is quite true there is a _p_ in both.
We have already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and _opine_, for according to Plato the horse signified "reason and _opinion_ coursing about through natural things".
[300] British horses used to be known familiarly as Joan, and the term _jennet_ presumably meant _Little Joan_: the Italian for a _hackney_ is _chinea_.
At Hackney, which now forms part of London, there is an Abney Park which was once, it may be, associated with Hobany or Epona: the main street of Hackney or Haconey (which originally contained the Manor of Hoxton) is Mare Street; and this _mare_ was seemingly the Ken_mure_ whose traces are perpetuated in Kenmure Road, Hackney.
At the corner of Seven Sisters Road is the church of St. Olave, and the neighbouring Alvington Street suggests that this Kingsland Road district was once a town or down of Alvin the Elphin King.
Godolphin Hill in Cornwall was alternatively known as Godolcan, and there is every reason to suppose that Elphin was the good old king, the good all-king, and the good holy king.
Hackney was seemingly once one of the many congregating "Londons," and we may recognise Elen or Ollan in London Fields, London Lane, Lyne Grove, Olinda (or Good Olin) Road, Londesborough Road, Ellingfort (or Strong Ellin) Road, Lenthall (or Tall Elen) Road.
In Linscott Street there stood probably at one time a Cot, Cromlech, or "Kit's Coty," and at the neighbouring Dalston[301] was very possibly a Tallstone, equivalent to the Cornish _tal carn_ or _high rock_.
The adjective _long_ or _lanky_ is probably of Hellenic origin, and the giants or long men sometimes carved in hill-sides (as at Cerne Abbas) were like all Longstones once perhaps representations of Helen.
[Illustration: FIG.
134.--"Metal ornaments found on horse trappings (North Lincolnshire, 1907).
Nos.
1-8 represent forms of the crescent amulet; Nos.
8-11, the horseshoe.
No.
12 is a well-known mystic symbol.
No.
15 shows the cross potencée, and No.
16 the cross patée: these seem to denote Christian influence.
Nos.
13 and 14 indicate the decay of folk memory concerning amulets, though _the heart pattern was originally talismanic_.
Nos.
7 and 8 form bridle 'plumes,' No.
6 is a hook for a bearing-rein; the remainder are either forehead medallions or breeching decorations.
The patterns 1-4, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 16, are fairly common in London."
From _Folk Memory_ (Johnson, W.). ]
[Illustration: FIG.
135.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
136.--British.
From Evans.]
The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground known as Hackney Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay Park and Mildmay Grove suggest a grove or sanctuary of the Mild May or Mary.
That Pegasus was known familiarly in this district is implied by the White Horse Inn on Hackney Marshes and by its neighbour "The Flying Horse": Hackney neighbours Homerton, and that the national Hackney or _mare_ was Homer or Amour is obvious from Fig.
135, where a heart, the universal emblem of _amour_, is represented at its Hub, navel, or bogel.
According to Sir John Evans the "principal characteristic" of Fig.
136 is "the heart-shaped figure between the forelegs of the horse, the meaning of which I am at a loss to discover":[302] but any yokel could have told Sir John the meaning of the heart or hearts which are still carved into tree trunks, and were rarely anything else than the emblems of Amor.
The observant Londoner will not fail to notice particularly on May Day--the Mary or Mother Day--when our Cockney horses parade in much of their immemorial finery and pomp--that golden hearts, stringed in long sequences over the harness, are conspicuous among the half-moons, stars, and other prehistoric emblems of the Bona dea or pre-Christian Mary.
Hackney includes the churches of St. Mary, St. Michael, and St. Jude: Jude is the same word as _good_, and the St. Jude of Scripture who was surnamed Thadee, and was said to be the son of Alpheus, is apparently Good Tadi or Daddy, _alias_ St. Alban the All Good, the Kaadman.
St. Jude is also St. Chad, and there was a celebrated Chadwell[303] at the end of the Marylebone Road now known as St. Pancras or King's Cross: at King's Cross there is a locality still known as Alpha Place.
At Hackney is a Gayhurst Road, which may imply an erstwhile hurst or wood of Gay or Jay, and "at the south end of Springfield Road there is a curious and interesting little hamlet lying on the water's edge.
The streets are very steep, and some of them extremely narrow--mere passages like the wynds in Edinburgh.
"[304] This little hamlet is "encircled" by Mount Pleasant Lane, whence one may assume that the eminence itself was known at some time or other as Mount Pleasant.
The "Mount Pleasant" at Hackney may be connoted with the more famous "Mount Pleasant" at Dun Ainy, Knock Ainy, or the Hill of Aine in Limerick.
The "_pleasant_ hills" of Ireland were defined as "_ceremonial_ hills," and it was particularly on the night of All Hallows that the immemorial ceremonies were there observed.
To this day Aine or Ana, a beautiful and gracious water-spirit, "the best-natured of women," is reverenced at Knockainy, and the legend persists that "Aine promised to save bloodshed if the hill were given to her till the end of the world".
[305] That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hackoney was similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an inference to which the facts seem clearly to point.
It would also be permissible to interpret Hackney as Oaken Island, in which light it may be connoted with Glastonbury, the word _glaston_ being generally supposed to be _glasten_, the British for oak.
Glastonbury, the celebrated Avalon, Apple Island, Apollo Island, or Isle of Rest, was a world-famous "Mount Pleasant," and on its most elevated height there stands St. Michael's Tower.
Glastonbury itself,[306] "its two streets forming a perfect cross," is almost engirdled by a little river named the _Brue_.
The French town _Bray_ is in the so-called Santerre or Holy-land district: the remains of a megalithic _santerre_, _saintuarie_ or sanctuary are still standing at Abury or Aubury in Wiltshire, and we may equate this place-name with _abri_, a generic term in French, "origin unknown," for _sanctuary_ or refuge.
Near Bray, Santerre, is Auber's Ridge, which may be connoted with Aubrey Walk, the highest spot in Kensington, and it would seem that _Abury's_, _abris_, or "Mount Pleasants" were once plentiful in the bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships which have now merged into the Greater London: Ebury Square in the South-West may mark one, and Highbury in the North, with its neighbouring "Mount Pleasant," another.
The immortal Mount Pleasant of the Muses was named Helicon, and from here sprang the celebrated fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene.
At Holywell in Wales there is a village called Halkin lying at the foot of a hill named Helygen: there is a Heligan Hill in Cornwall, and a river Olcan in Hereford: there is an Alconbury in Hunts, and an Elkington (Domesday Alchinton) at Louth.
An Elk is a gigantic buck whose radiating antlers are so fern-like that a genus has appropriately been designated the Elk fern.
Ilkley in Yorkshire is thought to be the Olicana of Ptolemy, and there is standing to-day at Ramsgate a Holy Cone or Helicon modernised into "Hallicondane".
The _dane_ here probably implies a _dun_ or hill-fort, and the _Hallicon_ itself consists of a peak crossed by four roads.
[307] This Ramsgate Hallicondane, which stands by Allington Park, may have been a _dun_ of the Elle or Elf King: in France Hellequin is associated with Columbine, and the little figure labelled CUIN (_infra_, p. 397 Fig.
336), may be identified with this virgin.
The Alcantara district to which this Cuin coin has been attributed was, it may safely be assumed, a _tara_, _tre_, or _troy_ of Alcan.
On the top of Tory Hill in Kilkenny, _i.e._, _Kenny's Church_, stood a pagan altar: the more famous Tara or Temair is associated primarily with a "son of Ollcain"; it is said next to have passed into the possession of a certain Cain, and to have been known as _Druim Cain_ or "Cain's Ridge".
[308] Halcyon days mean blissful, pleasant, radiant, ideal, days, and of the Holy King or All King the blue jewelled King-fisher or Halcyon seems to have been a symbol.
Whether there be any connection between Elgin and the Irish Hooligans, or whether these trace their origin to the "son of Ollcain," I do not know.
From the colossal Kinia and Acongagua down to the humblest _peg_, every _peak_ seems to have been similarly named.
The pimple is a diminutive hill or _pock_, and the _pykes_ of Cumberland are the _peaks_ of Derbyshire.
At the summit of the Peak District stands Buxton, claiming to be the highest market-town in England: around Buxton, formerly written "Bawkestanes," still stand cromlechs and other Poukelays or Buk stones: Backhouse is a surname in the Buxton district, and the original Backhouses may well have worshipped either Bacchus, _i.e._, St. Baccho, or the gentle Baucis who merged into a Linden tree.
[Illustration: FIG.
137.--Ancient Pagan Altar on Tory Hill.
From _Sketches of Irish History_ (Anon., 1844).]
Near Buxton are the sources of the river Wye, and by Wye in Kent, near Kennington, we find Olantigh Park, St. Alban's Court, Mount Pleasant, Little London, and Trey Town: by the church at Wye are two inns, named respectively "The Old Flying Horse," and "The New Flying Horse"; Wye races are still held upon an egg-shaped course, and close to Kennington Oval--which I am unable to trace beyond its earlier condition of a market-garden--stands a celebrated "White Horse Inn".
At Kennington by Wye a roadside inn sign is "The Golden Ball," which once presumably implied the Sun or Sol, for in the immediate neighbourhood is Soles Court.
[Illustration: FIG.
138.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
The horse was a constantly recurring emblem in the coins of Hispania, and the object on the Iberian coin here illustrated is defined by Akerman as "an apex": the appearance of this symbol, seemingly a spike or peg posed upon a teathill, on an Iberian or Aubreyan coin is evidence of its sanctity in West Europe.
Theologians of the Dark Ages have been ridiculed for debating the number of angels that could stand upon a pin-point, but it is more than probable that the question was a subject of discussion long before their time: the Chinese believe that "at the beginning of Creation the chaos floated as a fish skims along the surface of a river; from whence arose something like a _thorn_ or _pickle_, which, being capable of motion and variation, became a soul or spirit".
[309] The fairy sanctity of the thorn bush would therefore seem to have arisen from its _spikes_, and the abundance of these emblems would naturally elevate it into the house or abode of _spooks_: the burning bush, in which form the Almighty is said to have appeared before Moses, was, according to Rabbinical tradition, a thorn bush: the Elluf and the Alvah trees--the _aleph_ or the _alpha_ trees?--are described as large thorned species of Acacia; and the spiky acacia, Greek _Akakia_, is related to _akis_, a point or thorn.
One of the attributes of the Man-in-the-Moon is a Thorn Bush, whence Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Moonshine, "This thorn bush is my thorn bush; and this dog my dog".
The Man-in-the-Moon being identified with _Cain_, it becomes interesting to note that the surname Kennett is accepted as a Norman diminutive of _chien_, a dog.
[310] On p. 149--a mediæval papermark--the Wanderer is surmounted by a bush; a bush is a little tree, and the word _bush_ (of unknown origin) is a variant of Bogie--also of _bougie_, the French for candle: bushes and briars were the acknowledged haunts of Bogie, _alias_ Hobany or Hob-with-a-canstick or bougie.
_Bouche_ used to be an English word meaning meat and drink, whence Stow, referring to the English archers, says they had _bouch_ of court (to wit, meat and drink) and great wages of sixpence by the day.
[311] In Rome and elsewhere a suspended bush was the sign of an inn, whence the expression "Good wine needs no bush": the _bouche_ or mouth is where meat and drink goes in, similarly _mouth_ may be connoted with the British _meath_, meaning nourishment.
_Peck_ is also an old word for provender, and we still speak of feeling peckish.
[312] The word _bucket_--allied to Anglo-Saxon _buc_, meaning a pitcher--implies that this variety of large can or mug was used for peck purposes: the illustration herewith, representing the decoration on a bronze bucket found at Lake Maggiore, consists of speck-centred circles, and dotted, spectral, or maculate geese, bucks, and horses.
[Illustration: FIG.
139.--Bronze from bucket, Sesto Calendo, Lake Maggiore.
From the British Museum's _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_.]
It is unnecessary to dilate on the great importance played in civic life by inns: numberless place-names are directly traceable to inn-signs; and the brewing of church ales, considered in conjunction with facts which will be noted in a subsequent chapter, make it almost certain that churches once dispensed food and drink and that _inn_ was originally an earlier name for church.
Among the inscriptions of the catacombs is one which the authorities believe marks the sepulchre of a brewer: but these pictographs are without exception emblems, and it is more likely that the design in question (Fig.
140) stands for "that Brewer,"[313] the Lord of the Vineyard, or the Vinedresser.
The Green Man with his Still implies a brewer; the distilling of Benedictine is still an ecclesiastical occupation, and the word _brew_ suggests that brewing was once the peculiar privilege of the _pères_ or priests who brewed the sacred ales.
The word _keg_ is the same as the familiar Black _Jack_, and under _jug_ Skeat writes: "Drinking vessels of all kinds were formerly called _jocks_, _jills_, and _jugs_, all of which represent Christian names.
Jug and Judge were usual as pet female names, and equivalent to Jenny or Joan."
[Illustration: FIG.
140.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The Hackney inn known as "The Flying Horse" may possibly owe its foundation and sign to the Templars, who possessed property in Hackney: the Templars' badge of Pegasus still persists in the Temple at Whitefriars, and the circular churches of the Templars had certainly some symbolic connection with Sun or Golden Ball.
At Jerusalem, the ideal city which was always deemed to be the hub, bogel, or navel of the world, there are some extraordinary rock-hewn water tanks, known as the stables of King Solomon: Jerusalem was known as Hierosolyma or Holy Solyma, and that Solyma, Salem, or Peace was associated in Europe with the horse is clear from the coin of the Gaulish tribe known as the Solmariaca (Fig.
141).
The animal here represented is treading under foot a dragon or scorpion, and the Solmariaca, whose city is now Soulosse, were seemingly followers of Solmariak, the Sol Mary, or Fairy.
The aim of the _Free_masons is the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon or Wisdom, and it is quite evident that the front view of a temple on Fig.
142 is not the representation of a material building such as the Houses of Parliament now depicted on our modern paper-money.
The centre of Fig.
142 is a four-specked cross, the centre-piece of Fig.
143 is the six-breasted Virgin, and Fig.
144 is a very elaborated pantheon, hierarchy, or habitation of All Hallows: the inscription reads BASILICA ULPIA, _i.e._, _The Church_ Ulpia.
[Illustration: FIG.
141.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
142.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
143.--From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIG.
144.--From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIG.
145.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
Abdera, now Adra, is a Spanish town on the shores of the Mediterranean, founded, according to Strabo, by the Tyrians, and the name thus seems to connote a _tre_ of _Ab_ or Hob.
I have elsewhere endeavoured to prove that King Solomon, the Mighty Controller of the Jinns, was the Eye of Heaven or the Sun, and this emblem appears in the triangle or delta of Fig.
145: the corresponding inscription on Fig.
145 are Phoenician characters, reading THE SUN,[314] and the curious fish-pillars are almost certainly a variant of the _deddu_.
In Ireland a Salmon of Wisdom enters largely into Folklore: the word _salmon_ is Solomon or Wisdom, as also is _solemn_: in Latin _solemn_ is _solennis_, upon which Skeat comments: "Annual, occurring yearly, like a religious rite, religious, solemn, Latin _sollus_, entire, complete: _annus_, a year.
Hence _solemn_--returning at the end of a complete year.
The old Latin _sollus_ is cognate with Welsh _holl_, whole, entire."
The cognomen Solomon occurs several times in the lists of British Kings, and one may see it figuring to-day on Cornish shop-fronts in the form of variants such as Sleeman, Slyman, etc.
Solomon may be resolved into the Sol man, the Seul man, the Silly[315] (innocent) man, or the Sly man, the Cunning man, or Magus.
The "Sea horse" to the right, illustrated by Akerman on Plate XX, No.
8, is a coin of the Gaulish Magusa, and bears the inscription Magus which, as will be remembered, was a title of the Wandering Jew.
Maundrell, the English traveller, describing his journey in the seventeenth century to Jerusalem, has recorded that, "Our quarters, this first night, we took up at the Honeykhan, a place of but indifferent accommodation, about one hour and a half west of Aleppo".
He goes on to say: "It must here be noted that, in travelling this country, a man does not meet with a market-town and inns every night, as in England.
The best reception you can find here is either under your own tent, if the season permit, or else in certain public lodgments, founded in charity for the use of travellers.
These are called by the Turks _khani_; and are seated sometimes in the towns and villages, sometimes at convenient distances upon the open road.
They are built in fashion of a cloister, encompassing a court of 30 or 40 yards square, more or less, according to the measure of the founder's ability or charity.
At these places all comers are free to take shelter, paying only a small fee to the khan-keeper (khanji), and very often without that acknowledgment; but one must expect nothing here but bare walls.
As for other accommodations of meat, drink, bed, fire, provender, with these it must be every one's care to furnish himself.
"[316] The main roads of Britain were once seemingly furnished with similar shelters which were known as Coldharbours, and the Coldharbour Lanes of Peckham and elsewhere mark the sites of such refuges.
The Eastern khans, "built in fashion of a cloister," find their parallel in the enclosed form of all primitive shelters, and the words _close_ and _cloister_ are radically _eccles_, _eglos_, or _eglise_.
Whence the authorities suppose Beccles in Silly Suffolk to be a corruption of _beau eglise_ or Beautiful Church: but to whom was this "beautiful church" first reared and dedicated, and by what name did the inhabitants of Beccles know their village?
The surname Clowes, which may be connoted with Santa Claus, is still prevalent at Beccles, a town which belonged anciently to _Bury_ Abbey.
The patron saint of English inns, travellers, and cross-roads, was the Canaanitish Christopher, and the earliest block prints representing Kit were "evidently made for pasting against the walls in inns, and other places frequented by travellers and pilgrims.
"[317] Kit's intercession was thought efficacious against all dangers, either by fire, flood, or earthquake, hence his picture was sometimes painted in colossal size and occupied the whole height of the building whether church or inn.
The red cross of St. John of Jerusalem was the _Christopher_; travellers carried images of Cuddy as charms, and the equation of St. John with Canaanitish Christopher will account for Christopher's Houses being entitled Inns,[318] or Johns, or Khans.
Under the travellers' images of Christopher used to be printed the inscription, "Whosoever sees the image of St. Christopher shall that day not feel any sickness," or alternatively, "The day that you see St. Christopher's face, that day shall you not die an evil death".
The emblem on page 262, was, I think, wrongly guessed by Didron as "the spirit of youth": it is more probably a variant of Christopher, or the Spirit of Love, helping the palmer or pilgrim of life.
[Illustration: FIGS.
146 and 147.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
Fig.
146, a coin of the Turones, whose ancient capital is now Tours, consists of a specky or spectral horse accompanied by an urn: this urn was the symbol of the Virgin, and the reader will be familiar with a well-known modern picture in which La Source is ambiguously represented as a maiden standing with a pitcher at a spring.
_Yver_ is Norse for a _warm bubbling spring_, and on the coins of Vergingetorix we find the pitcher and the horse: the word _virgin_ is equivalent to _Spring Queen_, and as _ceto_ figures largely in British mythology as the ark, box, or womb of Ked, it is probable that Virgingetorix may be interpreted King Virgin Keto.
In Gaul _rex_ meant King or Queen, but this word is less radical than the Spanish _rey_, French _roi_, British _rhi_: according to Sir John Rhys, "the old Irish _ri_, genitive _rig_, king, and _rigan_ queen would be somewhat analogous, although the Welsh _rhian_, the equivalent of the Irish _rigan_, differs in being mostly a poetic term for a lady who need not be royal".
[319] The name Maria, which in Spain is bestowed indiscriminately upon men and women, would therefore seem to be _Mother Queen_, and _Rhea_, the Great Mother of Candia, might be interpreted as _the Princess_ or _the Queen_.
[Illustration: FIG.
148.--Egyptian.]
[Illustration: FIG.
149.--Etrurian.
From _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_ (Dennis, G.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
150.--British.
From _A New Description of England and Wales_ (Anon, 1724).]
Among inscriptions to the Gaulish Apollo the most common are those in which he is entitled Albiorix and Toutiorix: these are understood by the authorities as having meant respectively "King of the World," and "King of the People".
With the Cornish Well known as Joan's Pitcher may be connoted the variety of large bottle called a _demijohn_: according to Skeat this curious term is from the French _damejeanne_, Spanish _damajuana_--"Much disputed but _not_ of Eastern origin.
The French form is right as it stands though often much perverted.
From French _dame_ (Spanish _dama_), lady; and Jeanne (Spanish Juana), Joan, Jane."
In our word _pitcher_ the _t_ has been wrongly inserted, the French _picher_ is the German _becher_, Greek _bikos_, and all these terms including _beaker_ are radically Peggy, Puck or Big.
Pitchers are one of the commonest sepulchral offerings, and we are told that the Iberian bronze-working brachycephalic invaders of Britain introduced the type of sepulchral ceramic known as the beaker or drinking cup: "This vessel," says Dr. Munro, "was almost invariably deposited beside the body, and supposed to have contained food for the soul of the departed on its way to the other world.
"[320] The German form of Peggy or Margaret is Gretchen, which resolves into Great _Chun_ or Great _Mighty Chief_: Margot and Marghet may be rendered _Big God_ or _Fairy God_ or _Mother Good_.
That the pitcher, demijohn, or jug was regarded in some connection with the Big Mother or Great Queen is obvious from the examples illustrated, and the apparition of this emblem on the coins of Tours may be connoted with the female-breasted jugs which were described by Schliemann as "very frequent" in the ruins of Troy.
Similar objects were found at Mykenæ in connection with which Schliemann observes: "With regard to this vase with the female breasts similar vases were found on the islands of Thera (Santorin) and Therassia in the ruins of the prehistoric cities which, as before stated, were covered by an eruption of that great central volcano which is believed by competent geologists to have sunk and disappeared about 1700 to 1800 B.C.".
[321] It is peculiarly noticeable that the dame Jeanne or jug is thus associated in particular with Troy, Etruria, Therassia, Thera (Santorin), the Turones, and Tours.
The centre stone of megalithic circles constituted the speck or dot within the circle of the feeder or pap, and not infrequently one finds a Longstone termed either The Fiddler or The Piper.
The incident of the Pied Piper is said to have occurred at Hamelyn on June 26th, 1284, during the feast of St. John and St. Paul.
The street known as Bungen Strasse through which the Piper went followed by the enraptured children is still sacred to the extent that bridal and other processions are compelled to cease their music as they traverse it: Bungen of Bungen Street may thus seemingly be equated with _bon John_ or St. John on whose feast day the miracle is said to have happened.
The Hamelyn Piper who-... blew three notes, such sweet Soft notes as never yet musician's cunning Gave to the enraptured air, may be connoted with Pan or _Father An_, and the mountain now called Koppenberg, into which the Hamelyn children were allured, was obviously Arcadia or the happy land of Pan: the _berg_ of Koppenberg is no doubt relatively modern, and the original name, Koppen, resolves into _cop_, _kopje_, or _hill-top of Pan_.
The Land of the Pied Piper was manifestly _Himmel_, which is the German for _heaven_, and it may also be the source of the place-name Hamelyn.
He led us, he said, to a joyous land Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new.
The story of the Piper and the children is found also in Abyssinia, and likewise among the Minussinchen Tartars: the word Minnusinchen looks very like small _Sinchen_ or beloved Sinchen, and with this _Sinchen_ or _bungen_ may be connoted the Tartar _panshen_ or pope, and also Gian Ben Gian, the Arabian name for the All Ruler of the Golden Age.
That Cupid was known among the Tartars is somewhat implied by the divinity illustrated on p. 699.
The Tartar story makes the mysterious Piper a foal which courses round the world, and with our _pony_ may be connoted _tarpon_, the Tartar word for the wild horse of the Asiatic steppes.
_Cano_ is the Latin for _I sing_, and on Figs.
152 and 153 the Great Enchantress or Incantatrice is represented with the Pipes of Pan: among the wonders in the land of Hamelyn's Piper were horses with eagles' wings and these, together with the celestial foal and other elphin marvels, are to be found depicted on the tokens of prehistoric Albion.
The tale of the Pied Piper may be connoted with the emblem of Ogmius leading his tongue-tied willing captives, and in Fig.
158 the mighty Muse is playing in human form upon his lute.
In Fig.
160 the story of St. Michael or St. George is being played by a Pegasus, and in Fig.
158 CUNO is represented as a radiant elf.
The arrow on Fig.
163 connects the exquisitely executed little figure with Cupid, Eros, or Amor--the oldest of the Gods--and probably this particular cherub was known as Puck, for his coin was issued in the Channel Islands by a people who inscribed their tokens _Pooc_tika, _Buc_ato, _Pix_til, and _Pich_til, _i.e._, _Pich tall_ or _chief_(?).
[Illustration: FIGS.
151 to 158.--British.
No.
151 from Whitaker's _Manchester_.
No.
152 from Evans.
Nos.
153 to 157 from Akerman.
No.
158 from _A New Description of England and Wales_.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
159 to 163.--Channel Islands.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
164 to 167.--British.
From Akerman.]
It is not improbable that this young sprig was known as the Little Leaf Man, for in Thuringia as soon as the trees began to bud out, the children used to assemble on a Sunday and dress one of their playmates with shoots and sprigs: he was covered so thoroughly as to be rendered blind, whereupon two of his companions, taking him by the hand lest he should stumble, led him dancing and singing from home to home.
Amor, like Homer, was reputed blind, and the what-nots on Fig.
167 may possibly be _leaves_, the symbols of the _living, loving Elf_, or _Life_--"this senior-junior, giant-dwarf Dan Cupid".
It was practically a universal pagan custom to celebrate the return of Spring by carrying away and destroying a rude idol of the old Dad or Death:-Now carry we Death out of the village, The new Summer into the village, Welcome, dear Summer, Green little corn.
[Illustration: FIG.
168.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
In other parts of Bohemia--and the curious reader will find several Bohemias on the Ordnance maps of England--the song varies; it is not Summer that comes back but Life:-We have carried away Death, And brought back Life.
[322] At the feast of the Ascension in Transylvania, the image of Death is clothed gaudily in the dress of a girl: having wound throughout the village supported by two girls the image is stripped of its finery and flung into the river; the dress, however, is assumed by one of the girls and the procession returns singing a hymn.
"Thus," says Miss Harrison, "it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated Death."
In other words, like the May Queen she symbolised the Virgin or Fairy Queen--Vera or Una, the Spirit, Sprout, or Spirit of the Universe, the Fair Ovary of Everything who is represented on the summit of the Christmas Tree: in Latin _virgo_ means not only a virgin but also a sprig or sprout.
FOOTNOTES: [255] _Fairy Mythology_, p. 298.
[256] Courtney, Miss, _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 129.
[257] Hope, R. C., _Sacred Wells_.
[258] _Demonology and Witchcraft_.
[259] At the time of writing the Servians say they are putting their trust in "Bog and Britannia".
[260] This is an official etymology.
It is the one and only poetic idea admitted into Skeat's Dictionary.
[261] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 159.
[262] Pliny relates Varro's description as follows: "King Porsenna was buried beneath the city of Clusium, in a place where he left a monument of himself in rectangular stone.
Each side was 300 feet long and 50 feet high, and within the basement he made an inextricable labyrinth, into which if anyone ventured without a clue, there he must remain, for he never could find the way out again.
Above this base stood five pyramids, one in the centre and four at the angles, each of them 75 feet in circumference at the base, and 150 feet high, tapering to the top so as to be covered by a cupola of bronze.
From this there hung by chains a peal of bells, which, when agitated by the wind, sounded to a great distance.
Above this cupola rose four other pyramids, each 100 feet high, and above these again, another story of five pyramids, which towered to a height so marvellous and improbable, that Varro hesitates to affirm their altitude."
And in this he was wise, for he had already said more upon the subject than was credible.
However, any one who has seen the tomb of Aruns, the son of Porsenna, near the gate of Albano, will be struck with the similarity of style, which, comparing small things with great, existed between the monuments of father and son.
Those who have never been in Italy may like to know that this tomb of Aruns is said to have been built by Porsenna, for the young Prince who fell there in battle with the Latins, and with the Greeks from Cuma, and it is certainly the work of Etruscan masons.
Five pyramids rise from a base of 55 sq.
feet, and the centre one contains a small chamber, in which was found, about fifty years since, an urn full of ashes.--Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, _Sepulchres of Etruria_, p. 450.
[263] Taylor, R., _Te Ika A Maui_, or _New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, p. 352.
[264] _Cf._ Stow, _London_.
[265] Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted in _Crete of Pre-hellenic Europe_, p. 32.
[266] Bonwick _Irish Druids and Old Irish Religion_, p. 230.
[267] Anwyl, E. [268] It is not unlikely that the Goss and Cass families of to-day are the descendants of the British tribe referred to by the Romans as the Cassi.
[269] The Welsh for alban or alpin is elphin.
[270] Urlin, Miss Ethel M., _Festivals, Holy Days, and Saints' Days_, p. 192.
[271] _Ibid._, p. 196.
[272] _Cf._ Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, vol.
i., col. 1340.
[273] _Cf._ Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, vol.
i., col. 1340.
[274] xli.
19.
[275] _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 332.
[276] _Celtic Britain_, p. 211.
Sir John frequently changed his mind.
[277] _Barddas_, p. 416.
[278] The Phrygian Cap was symbolic.
[279] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. xxxii.
[280] _Mykenæ_, p. 179.
[281] _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 207.
[282] Baldwin, J. G., _Prehistoric Nations_, p. 162.
[283] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 317.
[284] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 608.
[285] Rhys, Sir J., _Celtic Britain_, p. 271.
[286] The Celtic Angus is translated _excellent virtue_.
[287] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, Rev.
S., _Curious Myths_, pp.
266-316.
[288] _Orphic Hymn_, lv., 5, 10, and 11.
[289] Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 136.
[290] From prehistoric times this ensign seems to have been known as "the Jack," and the immutability of the fabulous element was evidenced anew during the present year when on 23rd April the Admiral on shore wirelessed to the Zeebrugge raiding force: "England and St. George".
To this was returned the reply: "We'll give a twist to the dragon's tail".
[291] Since writing I find this surmise to be well founded.
At the present moment there is a Persian cannon (A.D. 1547) captured at Bagdad, now on exhibition in London.
It bears an inscription to the effect:-"'Succour is from God, and victory is at hand.'
The Commander of Victory and Help, the Shah, Desiring to blot out all trace of the Turks, Ordered Dglev to make this gun.
Wherever it goes it burns up lives, It spits forth flames like a dragon.
It sets the world of the Turks on fire."
[292] Wise, T. A., _History of Paganism in Caledonia_, p. 114.
[293] _Irish Mytho.
Cycle_, p. 229.
[294] The Norwegian for _neigh_ is _kn_eggya, the Danish, _gn_egge.
[295] There is no evidence to support the supposition that Eppillus may have been an English king.
[296] An omniscient _eagle_ was associated with _Achill_ (Ireland).
[297] _Ancient Coins of the Romans Relating to Britain_, p. 197.
[298] _Faiths and Folklore_, vol.
i., p. 329.
[299] _Faiths and Folklore_, vol.
i., p. 329.
[300] Madeley, E., _The Science of Correspondence_, p. 194.
[301] Dalston in Cumberland is assumed to have been a town in the dale or _dale's town_.
But surely "towns" were never thus anonymous?
[302] P. 299.
[303] Compare also Shadwell in East London, "said to be St. Chad's Well".
[304] Mitton, G. E., _Hackney_, p. 11.
[305] _Cf._ Westropp, T. J., _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, vol.
xxxiv., Sec.
C., Nos.
3 and 4.
[306] Walters, J. Cuming, _The Lost Land of King Arthur_, p. 219.
[307] One of these has been slightly diverted by the exigencies of the railway station.
[308] Macalister, R. A. S., _Temair Breg: A Study of the Remains and Traditions of Tara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, sec.
C., Nos.
10 and 11, p. 284.
[309] Picard, _Ceremonies of Idolatrous People_, vol.
iv., p. 291.
[310] Weekley, E., _Romance of Names_, p. 224.
[311] _Survey of London_ (Everyman's Library), p. 416.
[312] The Peck family may have been inn-keepers or dealers in peck or fodder, but more probably, like the Bucks and the Boggs, they may trace their descent much farther.
[313] See _infra_, p. 689.
[314] Akerman, J. Y., _Ancient Coins_, p. 17.
[315] There is a river Slee or Slea in Lincolnshire.
[316] _Travels in the East_ (Bohn's Library), p. 384.
[317] Larwood & Hotten, _The History of Signboards_, p. 285.
[318] It is simply futile to refer the word _inn_ to "within, indoors" (see Skeat).
[319] _Celtic Britain_, p. 66.
It is therefore feasible that Wrens Park, by Mildmay Park, Hackney, was primarily _reines_ Park.
[320] _Prehistoric Britain_, p. 247.
[321] _Mykenæ_, p. 293.
[322] _Ancient Art and Ritual_, pp.
70 and 71.
CHAPTER VII OBERON "O queen, whom Jove hath willed To found this new-born city, here to reign, And stubborn tribes with justice to refrain, We, Troy's poor fugitives, implore thy grace, Storm-tost and wandering over every main,-Forbid the flames our vessels to deface, Mark our afflicted plight, and spare a pious race.
"We come not hither with the sword to rend Your Libyan homes, and shoreward drive the prey.
Nay, no such violence our thoughts intend."
--VIRGIL, _Æneid_, I., lxix., 57.
The old Welsh poets commemorate what they term Three National Pillars of the Island of Britain, to wit: "First--Hu, the vast of size, first brought the nation of the Cymry to the Isle of Britain; and from the summer land called Deffrobani they came (namely, the place where Constantinople now is), and through Mor Tawch, the placid or pacific sea, they came up to the Isle of Britain and Armorica, where they remained.
Second--Prydain, son of Aedd the Great, first erected a government and a kingdom over Ynys Prydain, and previous to that time there was but little gentleness and ordinance, save a superiority of oppression.
Third--Dyfnwal Moelmud--and he was the first that made a discrimination of mutual rights and statute law, and customs, and privileges of land and nation, and on account of these things were they called the three pillars of the Cymry.
"[323] The Kymbri of Cambria claim themselves to be of the same race as the Kimmeroi, from whom the Crimea takes its name, also that Cumberland is likewise a land of the Cumbers.
The authorities now usually explain the term Kymbri as meaning _fellow countrymen_, and when occurring in place-names such as Kemper, Quimper, Comber, Kember, Cymner, etc., it is invariably expounded to mean _confluence_: the word would thus seem to have had imposed upon it precisely the same meaning as _synagogue_, _i.e._, a coming together or congregation, and it remains to inquire why this was so.
The _Kym_bri were also known as _Cyn_bro, and the interchangeability of _kym_ and _kin_ is seemingly universal: the _Khan_ of Tartary was synonymously the _Cham_ of Tartary; our _Cam_bridge is still academically _Can_tabrigia, a _com_pact is a _con_tract, and the identity between _cum_ and _con_ might be demonstrated by innumerable instances.
This being so, it is highly likely that the Kymbri were followers of _King Bri_, otherwise King Aubrey, of the Iberii or Iberian race.
In Celtic _aber_ or _ebyr_--as at _Aber_deen, _Aber_ystwith, etc.--meant a place of confluence of streams, burns, or brooks; and _aber_ seems thus to have been synonymous with _cam_ber.
Ireland, or _Iber_nia, as it figures in old maps, now _Hiber_nia, traces its title to a certain Heber, and until the time of Henry VII., when the custom was prohibited, the Hibernians used to rush into battle with perfervid cries of _Aber!_[324] It is a recognised peculiarity of the Gaelic language to stress the first of any two syllables, whereas in Welsh the accent falls invariably upon the second: given therefore one and the same word "Aubrey," a Welshman should theoretically pronounce it 'Brey, and an Irishman Aubr'; that is precisely what seems to have happened, whence there is a probability that the Heber and "St. Ibar" of Hibernia and the Bri of Cambria are references to one and the same immigrants.
Having "cambred" Heber with Bri, or Bru, and finding them both assigned traditionally to the Ægean, it is permissible to read the preliminary vowels of Heber or Huber, as the Greek _eu_, and to assume that Aubrey was the soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Brey.
_Bri_tain is the Welsh _Pry_dain, Hu was pronounced He, and it is thus not improbable that _Pry_ was originally _Pere He_, or Father Hu, and that the traditions of Hu and Bru referred originally to the same race.
_Hyper_, the Greek for _upper_, is radically the same word as Iupiter or _Iu pere_, and if it be true that the French _pere_ is a phonetically decayed form of _pater_, then again, 'Pry or 'Bru may be regarded as a corrosion of Iupiter.
Hu the Mighty, the National Pillar or ded, who has survived as the "I'll be _He_" of children's games, was indubitably the Jupiter of Great Britain, and he was probably the "Hooper" of Hooper's Blind, or Blind Man's Buff.
According to the Triads, Hu obtained his dominion over Britain not by war or bloodshed, but by justice and peace: he instructed his people in the art of agriculture; divided them into federated tribes as a first step towards civil government, and laid the foundations of literature and history by the institution of Bardism.
[325] In Celtic, _barra_ meant a Court of Justice, in which sense it has survived in London, at Loth_bury_ and Alderman_bury_.
The pious Trojans claimed "the stubborn tribes with justice to refrain," and it is possible that _barri_ the Cornish for _divide_ or separate also owes its origin to Bri or _pere He_, who was the first to divide them into federated tribes.
Among the Iberians _berri_ meant a _city_, and this word is no doubt akin to our _borough_.
In Hibernia, the Land of Heber, Aubrey or Oberon, it is said that every parish has its green and thorn, where the little people are believed to hold their merry meetings, and to dance in frolic rounds.
[326] A _pari_sh, Greek _paroika_, is an orderly division, and as often as not the civic centre was a fairy stone: according to Sir Laurence Gomme, who made a special study of the primitive communities, when and where a village was established a stone was ceremoniously set up, and to this _pierre_ the headman of the village made an offering once a year.
[327] Situated in Fore Street, Totnes, there stands to-day the so-called Brutus Stone, from which the Mayor of Totnes still reads official proclamations.
At Brightlingsea we have noted the existence of a _Broad_moot: there is a _Brad_stone in Devon, a Bradeston in Norfolk, and elsewhere these Brude or Brutus stones were evidently known as _pre_ stones.
The innumerable "Prestons" of this country were originally, I am convinced, not as is supposed "Priests Towns," but _Pre Stones i.e._, Perry or Fairy Stones.
King James in his book on _Demonology_ spells fairy--Phairy; in Kent the cirrhus cloudlets of a summer day are termed the "Perry Dancers," and the _phairies_ of Britain probably differed but slightly, if at all, from the _per_ii or _per_is of _Per_sia.
[328] Among the Greeks every town and village had its so-called "Luck," or protecting Goddess who specially controlled its fortunes, and by Pindar this Presiding Care is entitled _pherepolis_, _i.e._, the peri or phairy of the city.
The various Purleys and Purtons of England are assigned by the authorities to _peru_ a pear, and supposed to have been pear-tree meadows or pear-tree hills, but I question whether pear-growing was ever the national industry that the persistent prevalence of _peru_ in place-names would thus imply.
Around the _pre-stones_ of each village our forerunners indubitably used to _pray_, and in the memoirs of a certain St. Sampson we have an interesting account of an interrupted Pray-meeting--"Now it came to pass, on a certain day as he journeyed through a certain district which they call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg), he heard, on his left hand to be exact, men worshipping (at) a certain shrine, after the custom of the Bacchantes, by means of a play in honour of an image.
Thereupon he beckoned to his brothers that they should stand still and be silent while he himself, quietly descending from his chariot to the ground, and standing upon his feet and observing those who worshipped the idol, saw in front of them, resting on the summit of a certain hill an abominable image.
On this hill I myself have been, and have adored, and with my hand have traced the sign of the cross which St. Sampson, with his own hand, carved by means of an iron instrument on a _standing stone_.
When St. Sampson saw it (the image), selecting two only of the brothers to be with him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief, Guedianus, standing at their head, and gently admonished them that they ought not to forsake the one God who created all things and worship an idol.
And when they pleaded as an excuse that it was not wrong to keep the festival of their progenitors in a play, some being furious, some mocking, but some being of saner mind strongly urging him to go away, straightway the power of God was made clearly manifest.
For a certain boy driving horses at full speed fell from a swift horse to the ground, and twisting his head under him as he fell headlong, remained, just as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse."
The "corpse" was seemingly but a severe stun, for an hour or so later, St. Sampson by the power of prayer successfully restored the patient to life, in view of which miracle Guedianus and all his tribe prostrated themselves at St. Sampson's feet, and "utterly destroyed the idol".
[329] The idol here mentioned if not itself a standing stone, was admittedly associated with one, and happily many of these Aubrey or Bryanstones are still standing.
One of the most celebrated antiquities of Cornwall is the so-named _men scryfa_ or "inscribed rock," and the inscription running from top to bottom reads--RIALOBRAN CUNOVAL FIL.
[Illustration: FIG.
169--From _Symbolism of the East and West_.
(Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray.)]
As history knows nothing of any "Rialobran, son of Cunoval," one may suggest that Rialobran was the _Ryall_ or _Royal Obran_, _Obreon_ or _Oberon_, the _bren_ or Prince of Phairyland who figures so largely in the Romance of mediæval Europe.
The Rialobran stone of Cornwall may be connoted with the ceremonial _perron du roy_ still standing in the Channel Islands, and with the numerous _Browny_ stones of Scotland.
In Cornwall the phairy _brownies_ seem to have been as familiar as in Scotland[330]: in the Hebrides--and as the Saint of this neighbourhood is St. Bride, the word Hebrides may perhaps be rendered _eu Bride_--every family of any importance once possessed a most obliging household Browny.
Martin, writing in the eighteenth century, says: "A spirit by the country people called Browny was frequently seen in all the most considerable families in these Isles and North of Scotland in the shape of a tall man, but within these twenty or thirty years past he is seen but rarely."
As the cromlechs of Brittany are termed _poukelays_ or "puck stones," it is possible that the _dolmens_ or _tolmens_ of there and elsewhere were associated with the fairy _tall man_.
Still speaking of the Hebrides Martin goes on to say: "Below the chapels there is a flat thin stone called Brownie's stone, upon which the ancient inhabitants offered a cow's milk every Sunday, but this custom is now quite abolished".
The official interpretation of dolmen is _daul_ or _table stone_, but it is quite likely that the word _tolmen_ is capable of more than one correct explanation.
The Cornish Rialobran was in all probability originally the same as the local St. Perran or St. Piran, whose sanctuary was marked by the parish of Lan_bron_ or Lam_borne_.
There is a Cornish circle known as Perran Round and the celebrated Saint who figures as, Perran, Piran, Bron, and Borne,[331] is probably the same as Perun the Slav Jupiter.
From a stone held in the hand of Perun's image the sacred fire used annually to be struck and endeavours have been made to equate this Western Jupiter with the Indian Varuna.
That there was a large Perran family is obvious from the statement that "till within the last fifty years the registers of the parish from the earliest period bear the Christian name of 'Perran,' which was transmitted from father to son; but now the custom has ceased".
[332] Thus possibly St. Perran was not only the original of the modern Perrin family, but also of the far larger Byrons and Brownes.
Further inquiry will probably permit the equation of Rialobran or St. Bron or Borne with St. Bruno, and as Oberon figures in the traditions of Kensington it is possible that the Bryanstone Square in that district, into which leads Brawn Street, marks the site of another Brownie or Rialobran stone.
This Bryanstone district was the home of the Byron family, and the surname Brinsmead implies the existence here or elsewhere a Brin's mead or meadow.
The Brownies are occasionally known as "knockers," whence the "knocking stone" which still stands in Brahan Wood, Dingwall, might no doubt be rightly entitled a Brahan, Bryan, or Brownie Stone.
[333] Legend at Kensington--in which neighbourhood is not only Bryanstone Square but also on the summit of Campden Hill an Aubrey Walk--relates that Kenna, the fairy princess of Kensington Gardens, was beloved by Albion the Son of Oberon; hence we may probably relate young Kenna with Morgana the Fay, or _big Gana_, the alleged Mother of Oberon.
[334] Mediæval tales represent the radiant Oberon not only as splendid, as a meteor, and as a raiser of storms, but likewise as the childlike God of Love and beauteous as an angel newly born.
At once the storm is fled; serenely mild Heav'n smiles around, bright rays the sky adorn While beauteous as an angel newly born Beams in the roseate day spring, glow'd _the child_ A lily stalk his graceful limbs, sustain'd Round his smooth neck an ivory horn was chain'd Yet lovely as he was on all around Strange horror stole, for stern the fairy frown'd.
[335] It is not unlikely that the Princess Kenna was Ken _new_ or the Crescent Moon, and the consociation at Kensington of Kenna with Oberon, permits not only the connotation of Oberon with his Fay mother Morgana, but also permits the supposition that Cuneval, the parent of Rialobran, was either _Cune strong_ or _valiant_.
It is obvious that the most valiant and most valorous would inevitably become rulers, whence perhaps why in Celtic _bren_ became a generic term for _prince_: the words _bren_ and _prince_ are radically the same, and stand in the same relation to one another as St. Bron to his variant St. Piran.
Oberon or Obreon, the leader of the Brownies, Elves, or Alpes, may I think be further traced in Cornwall at Carn Galva, for this Carn of Galva, _Mighty_ Elf or Alva, was, it is said, once the seat of a benignant giant named Holi_burn_.
The existence of Alva or Ellie-stones is implied by the fairly common surnames Alvastone, Allistone, and Ellistone, and it is probable that Livingstone was originally the same name as Elphinstone.
From the Aubry, Obrean, Peron stones, or Brownlows were probably promulgated the celebrated _Brehon_ laws:[336] as is well known the primitive Prince or Baron sat or stood in the centre of his _barrow_, _burra_, or _bury_, and ranged around him each at his particular stone stood the subordinate _peers_, _brehons_ (lawyers), and _barons_ of the realm.
A _peer_ means an equal, and it is therefore quite likely that the _Pre_stons of Britain mark circles where the village peers held their parish or parochial meetings.
With the English Preston the Rev.
J.
B. Johnston connotes Presteign, and he adds: "In Welsh Presteign is Llanandras, or Church of St.
Andrews".
[337] This illuminating fact enables us to connect the Perry stones with the cross of St. Andrew or _Ancient Troy_, and as Troy was an offshoot of Khandia we may reasonably accept Crete as the starting-point of Aubrey's worldwide tours.
That Candia was the home of the gentle magna mater is implied by the ubiquitous dove: in Hibernia the name Caindea is translated as being Gaelic for _gentle goddess_, and we shall later connect this lady with "Kate Kennedy," whose festival is still commemorated at St. Andrews.
To the East of Cape Khondhro in Crete, and directly opposite the town of Candia or Herakleion, lies the islet of Dhia: in Celtic _dia_, _dieu_, or _duw_ meant God,[338] and as in Celtic _Hugh_ meant _mind_, we may translate _dieu_ as having primarily implied _good Hu_, the good Mind or _Brain_.
In a personal sense the Brain is the Lord of Wits, whence perhaps why _Obreon_--as Keightley spells Oberon--was said to be the Emperor of Fairyland, attended by a court and special courtiers, among whom are mentioned _Perri_wiggen, _Perri_winkle, and Puck.
At the south-eastern extremity of Dhia is a colossal spike, peak, or _pier_, entitled Cape Apiri, and we may connote Apiri with the Iberian town named Ipareo.
The coinage of Ipareo pourtrays "a sphinx walking to the left," at other times it depicted the Trinacria or walking legs of Sicily and the Isle of Man.
The Three Legs of Sicily were represented with the face of Apollo, as the hub or _bogel_, and the ancient name of Sicily was _Hyper_eia.
On the Feast Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sicilians or Hypereians hold what they still term the "Festival of the _Bara_".
An immense machine of about 50 feet high is constructed, designing to represent heaven; and in the midst is placed a young female personating the Virgin, with an image of Jesus on her right hand; round the Virgin twelve little children turn vertically, representing so many seraphim, and below them twelve more children turn horizontally, as cherubim; lower down in the machine a sun turns vertically, with a child at the extremity of each of the four principal radii of his circle, who ascend and descend with his rotation, yet always in an erect posture; and still lower, reaching within about 7 feet of the ground, are placed twelve boys who turn horizontally without intermission around the principal figure, designing thereby to exhibit the twelve apostles, who were collected from all corners of the earth, to be present at the decease of the Virgin, and witness her miraculous assumption.
This huge machine is drawn about the principal streets by sturdy monks, and it is regarded as a particular favour to any family to admit their children in this divine exhibition, although the poor infants themselves do not seem long to enjoy the honours they receive as seraphim, cherubim, and apostles; the constant twirling they receive in the air making some of them fall asleep, many of them sick, and others more grievously ill.[339] Not only this Hypereian Feast but the machine itself is termed the _Bara_, whence it is evident that, like St. Michael, _Aubrey_ or Aber the Confluence, was regarded as the Camber, Synagogue, Yule or Holy Whole, and the fact that the Sicilian Bara is held upon the day of St. Alipius indicates some intimate connection with St. Alf or Alpi.
The Walking Sphinx of the Iparean coins is identified by M. Lenormant as the Phoenician deity Aion, and according to Akerman the type was doubtless chosen in compliment to Albinus, who was born at Hadrumetum, a town not far from Carthage.
[340] What was the precise connection between this Aion and Albinus I am unaware.
Among the coins of Iberia some bear the inscriptions ILIBERI, ILIBEREKEN, and ILIBERINEKEN, which accord with Pliny's reference to the Iliberi or Liberini.
Liber was the Latin title of the God of Plenty, whence _liberal_, _liberty_, _labour_, etc., and seemingly the _Elibers_ or Liberins deified these virtues as attributes of the Holy Aubrey or the Holy Brain-King.
[Illustration: FIG.
170.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
Directly opposite Albania, the country of the _Epirotes_--known anciently as _Epirus_--is _Cantabria_ at the heel of Italy, and we meet again with the Cantabares in Iberia where they occupied Cantabria which comprised Alava.
It may be noted in passing that in Epirus the olive was a supersacred tree: according to Miss Harrison--some of whose words I have italicised--this Moria, or Fate Tree, was the _very life_ of Athens; the _life_ of the _olive_ which fed her and lighted her was the _very life_ of the city.
When the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it seemed that all was over.
But next day it put forth a new shoot and the people knew that the city's life still _lived_.
Sophocles sang of the glory of the wondrous _life-tree_ of Athens:-The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, Sea-grey, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old; He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-grey eyes behold.
From _Epirus_ one is attracted to the river _Iberus_ or _Ebro_ which is bounded by the _Pyrenees_, and had the town of _Hibera_ towards its mouth.
Of the Iberian people in general Dr. Lardner states: "They are represented as tenacious of freedom, but those who inhabited the coasts were probably still more so of gain".
I am at a loss to know why this offensive suggestion is gratuitously put forward, as the Iberians are said to have been remarkably slender and active and to have held corpulency in much abhorrence.
[341] Of the Spanish Cantabres we are told that the consciousness of their strength gave them an air of calm dignity and a decision in their purposes not found in any other people of the Peninsula.
"Their loud wailings at funerals, and many other of their customs strongly resemble those of the Irish.
"[342] _Pere_ and _parent_ are radically the same word, and that the Iberians reverenced their _peres_ is obvious from the fact that _parricides_ were conducted beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and there slain; their very bones being considered too polluted to repose in their native soil.
[343] Lardner refers to the unbending resolution, persevering energy, and native grandeur of the Cantabrians, but he contemptuously rejects Strabo's "precious information" that some of the Spanish tribes had for 6000 years possessed writing, metrical poems, and even laws.
In view of the superior number of Druidical remains which are found in certain parts of Spain it is not improbable that the Barduti of Iberia corresponded with the Bards or Boreadæ of Britain.
There are many references in the classics to certain so-called Hyperboreans, in particular the oft-quoted passage from Diodorus of Sicily or Hypereia: "Hecataeus and some other ancient writers report that there is an island about the bigness of Sicily, situated in the ocean, opposite to the northern coast of Celtica (Gaul), inhabited by a people called Hyperboreans, because they are 'beyond the north wind'.
The climate is excellent, and the soil is fertile, yielding double crops.
The inhabitants are great worshippers of Apollo, to whom they sing many, many hymns.
To this god they have consecrated a large territory, in the midst of which they have a magnificent round temple, replenished with the richest offerings.
Their very city is dedicated to him, and is full of musicians and players on various instruments, who every day celebrate his benefits and perfections."
Claims to being the original Hyperborea have been put in by scholars from time to time on behalf of Stonehenge, the Hebrides, Hibernia, Scythia, Tartary, and Muscovy, "stretching quite to Scandinavia or Sweden and Norway": the locality is still unsettled and will probably remain so, for there is some reason to suppose that the Hyperboreans were a sect or order akin perhaps to the Albigenses, Cathari, Bridge Builders, Comacine Masters, Templars, and other Gnostic organizations of the Dark Ages.
The chief Primary Bard of the West was entitled Taliesin, which Welsh scholars translate into _Radiant Brow_: the _brow_ is the seat of the _brain_, and the two words stand to each other in the same relation as Aubrey to Auberon.
Commenting upon the Elphin _bairn_, illustrated in Fig.
162, Akerman observes that it is supposed to illustrate the Gaulish myth of the Druid Abaris to whom Apollo is said to have given an arrow on which he travelled magically through the air.
It is an historic fact that a physical Abaris visited Athens where he created a most favourable impression; it is likewise a fact that Irish literature possesses the account of a person called Abhras, which perfectly agrees with the description of the Hyperborean Abaris of Diodorus and Himerius.
The classic Abaris went to Greece to whip up subscriptions for a temple: the Irish Abhras is said to have gone to distant parts in quest of knowledge, returning by way of Scotland where he remained seven years and founded a new system of religion.
In Irish Abar means "God the first Cause," and as in Ireland _cad_ (which is our _good_) meant _holy_, the magic word Abracadabra may be reasonably resolved into _Abra, Good Abra_.
As already mentioned the Irish cried _Aber!_ when rushing into battle, and the word was no doubt used likewise at peaceful feasts and festivals.
The inference would thus seem that the title of Abaris was assumed by the chief Druid or High Priest who personified during his tenure of office the archetypal Abaris.
It is well known that the priest or king enacted in his own person the mysteries of the faith; and it is not improbable that chief Guedianus, whose sacred play was so rudely disturbed by St. Sampson, was personifying at the time the _Good Janus_ or Genius.
If my suggestion that Taliesin or _Radiant Brow_ was a generic title assumed by every Primary-Chief-Bard in Britain for the time being be correct, it is likely that the same principle applied elsewhere than in Wales.
The first bard mentioned in Ireland was Amergin, which resolves into _Love King_, and may thus be equated with Homer the blind old man of Chios.
The supposedly staid and gloomy Etrurians attributed all their laws and wisdom to an elphin child who was unexpectedly thrown up from the soil by a plough.
As the Etrurian name for Cupid was Epeur, in all probability the aged child on Fig.
171 represents this elphin high-brow, and with _Epeur_ may be connoted the Etrurian _Per_ugia--probably the same word as Phrygia.
The local saint of Peru_gia_, the _land of Peru_ (_?_) was known as Good John of Perugia: in Hibernia St. Ibar is mentioned as being "like John the Baptist".
[344] [Illustration: FIG.
171.--From Barthelemy.]
It was the custom in Etruria to represent _good genii_ as birds: birds sporting amid foliage are even to-day accepted and understood as symbolic of good genii in Paradise, and birds or _brids_, as we used to spell them, are of course Nature's little singing men, _i.e._, _bards_ or _boreadæ_.
A percipient observer of the Pictish inscriptions found in Scotland has recently pointed out that, "With the exception of the eagle which conveys a special meaning, shown in many early Scottish stones, the image of a bird is a sign of good omen.
Winged creatures, indeed, almost always stand for angelic and spiritual things, whether in pagan or Christian times.
The bird symbol involved the conception of ethereality or spirituality.
The bird _motif_ occurs in the decoration of metallic objects in the British Islands during the early centuries in this era.
I have found in Wigtownshire the image of a bird in bronze.
It belongs to a time early in this era.
It occurs within the pentacle symbol engraved on a pebble from the Broch of Burrian, Orkney.
Birds are shown within the pedestal of a cross at Farr.
Birds with a similar symbolism are found on the Shandwick stone, and on a stone at St. Vigeans.
They are of frequent occurrence in foliageous work, often with the three-berried branch or with the three-lobed leaf, as at Closeburn.
The pagan conception, absorbed into the early Christian ideas, was that the bird represented the disembodied spirit which was reputed to voyage here and there with a lightning celerity, like the flash of a swallow on the wing.
"[345] The Bards of Britain attributed the foundation of their order to Hu the First Pillar of the Island, and to unravel the personality of the early Bards will no doubt prove as impracticable as the disclosure of Homer, Amergin, Old Moore, and Old Parr.
No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat, Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.
As St. Bride, whose name may be connoted with _brid_ or _bird_, was the goddess of eloquence and poetry, the Welsh term Prydain is no doubt cognate with _prydu_ the Welsh for "to compose poetry".
Probably _prate_, mediæval _praten_, meant originally to _preach_ in a fervid, voluble, and sententious manner, but in any case it is impossible to agree with Skeat that _prate_ was "of imitative origin".
Imitative of what--a _parrot_?
The _hyper_ of Hyperborean is our word _upper_; _over_, German _uber_, means _aloft_, which is radically _alof_, and _exuberant_ and _exhuberance_ resolve into, _from or out of Auberon_: the _bryony_ is a creeper of notoriously exuberant growth, in Greek _bruein_ means to teem or grow luxuriantly.
[Illustration: FIG.
172.--From Barthelemy.]
With the river Ebro may be connoted the South Spanish town of Ebora or Epora which is within a few miles of Andura.
The coins of this city are inscribed EPORA, AIPORA, and IIPORA, and the "bare bearded head to the right within a laurel garland" may here no doubt be identified with Hyperion, the father of Helios the Sun.
In Homer, Helios himself is alluded to as Hyperion, which is the same name as our Auberon: the coins of the Tarragonensian town of Pria, which has been sometimes confused with Baria, in the south of Spain, figure a bull and are inscribed Prianen.
There are in existence certain coins figuring an ear of corn, a pellet, a crescent, the head of Hercules, and a club, inscribed ABRA: the site of this city is unknown, but is believed to have been near Cadiz.
On the banks of the Tagus there was a city named Libora and its coins pourtrayed a horse: in the opinion of Akerman the unbridled horse was the symbol of _liberty_, and it is quite likely that among other interpretations this was one, for it is beyond question that symbolism was never fettered into one solitary and stereotyped form.
The ancient Libora is now known as Talavera la Reyna which may seemingly be modernised into _Tall Vera, the Queen_.
The Tarraconensian town of Barea--whose emblem was the thistle--is now known as Vera: the old Portuguese Ebora is now Evora, _uber_ is the German for _over_; Varvara is the Cretan form of Barbara, and it is quite obvious that in various directions Vera and Bera with their derivatives were synonymous terms.
It would seem that Aubrey or Avery toured with his cross into _Helvetia_, planting it particularly at _Ginevra_, now Geneva, and there for the moment we may leave him amid the _Alpine_ Oberland at Berne.
The ancient town of Berne memorises in its museum a famed St. Bernard dog named "Barry," which saved the lives of forty travellers: this "Barry" associated with Oberthal may be connoted with "Perro," a shepherd's dog in Wales, whose curious name Borrow was surprised to find corresponded with _perro_, the generic term for _dog_ in Spain.
[346] _Berne_ still maintains its erstwhile sacred Bruin or _bears_ in their bear-pit, but the Gaulish Eburs or Iburii seemingly reverenced not Bruin but the _boar_, _vide_ the EBUR coin here illustrated.
The capital of the ancient Eburii is now Evreux, and they seem, no doubt for some excellent reason, to have been confused with the Cenomani, a people seemingly akin to our British Cenomagni, Iceni, or Cantii.
Fig.
174, bearing the inscription EBURO, is a coin of the Eburones who inhabited the neighbourhood of Liége.
It is a noteworthy fact that the people of Liége are admittedly conspicuous as the most courteous and charming of all Belgians.
Their coins were inscribed EBUR, EBURO, and sometimes COM--a curious and unexplained legend which occurs frequently upon the tokens of Britain.
The Celtiberian town of Cunbaria is now known as La Maria, the Kimmeroi were synonymously the Kymbri, and it is not improbable that these dual terms have survived in the _compère_ and _commère_ of modern France.
The _pères_ or priests of France, like the parsons, priests, and presbyters of Britain, assign to infants at Baptism a God-Father and a God-Mother, which the French term respectively _parrain_ and _marrain_.
_Compère_ and _commère_ figure not only in the Church but also in the Theatre, and it is more than likely that the _commère_ and _compère_ of the modern Revue are the direct descendants of the patriarchal _Abaris_, _Abhras_, _Priest_, and _Presbyter_ of prehistoric times.
[Illustration: FIGS.
173 and 174.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
On the Sierra de _Elvira_ near Granada used to stand Ilibiris whose coins are inscribed ILIBERI, ILBRS, ILIBERRIS, LIBER, ILBERNEN, ILBRNAKN, ILBREKN, and these legends may be connoted with the famous Irish Leprechaun, Lobaircin, or Lubarkin who figures less prominently in England as the Lubrican or Lubberkin.
Sometimes the Irish knock off the _holy_ and refer simply to "_a little prechaun_," but the more usual form is Lubarkin:[347] this most remarkable of the fairy tribe in Ireland is supposed to be peculiar to that island, but one would probably have once met with him at Brecon, or Brychain at Brecknock, at Brechin in Forfarshire, at Birchington in Kent, at Barking near London, and in many more directions.
In connection with Iberia in the West there occur references to a giant Bergyon, who may be connoted with Burchun of the Asiatic Buratys.
The religion of these Buratys was, said Bell, downright paganism of the grossest kind: he adds the information, "they talk, indeed, of an Almighty and Good Being who created all things, whom they call Burchun; but seem bewildered in obscure and fabulous notions concerning His nature and government".
[348] Inquiries may prove that these Burchun-worshipping Buratys were of the Asiatic Iberian race which Strabo supposed were descendants of the Western Iberi.
[349] In addition to Barking near London (Domesday _Berchinges_) there is a Birchin Lane, and buried away in obscurity, opposite the Old Bailey in London, there is standing to-day a small open court entitled Prujean Square.
In connection with this may be connoted the tradition that the origin of the societies of the inns of court is to be found in the law schools existing in the city: the first of these legal institutions entitled Johnstone's Inn,[350] was situated in Newgate; and the vulgarity of the name Johnstone raises a suspicion that Johnstones were as plentiful in Scotland as Prestons in England, both alike being Aubry or Bryanstones, where the Brehon laws were enunciated and administered.
Whether the present Prujean Square marks the site of the original Johnstone, whence Johnstone's Inn, is a matter which may possibly be settled by future inquiry, but the word Prujean, which is _père John_, renders it extremely likely that the original Johnstone of Johnstone's Inn, Newgate, was alternatively _père_ Johnstone.
If this were so, Prujean Square marks the primary Law Court of the Old Bailey, and at some remote period the officers of the Law merely stepped across the road into more commodious premises.
The Governors of Gray's Inn, another most ancient Law School, are entitled "the Ancients"; _equity_ is radically the same word as _equus_, a horse; and the Mayors, or Mares, of Britain and Brittany seemingly represented the mare-headed Demeter or Good Mother.
_Juge_ is _geegee_, our judges still wear _horse_-hair wigs of office, and the figure on the British coin here illustrated looks singularly like a _brehon_ or _barrister_ who has been called to the Bar.
[Illustration: FIG.
175.--British.
From Akerman.]
It is common knowledge that the primitive _Bar_ was a _barrow_, from the summit of which the Druid, King, or Abaris administered justice, and around which presumably were ranged each at his stone the prehistoric barristers or _abaristers_?
Even until the eighteenth century the lawyers were assigned each a pillar in St. Paul's Church, and at their respective pillars the Men of Law administered advice.
On the summit of Prestonbury Rings in Devonshire evidently once stood a phairie stone, and the name of Prestonpans in Scotland suggests that Prestons were not unknown in Albany.
The laws of Greece were admittedly derived from Crete, and such was the reputation of King Minos that the mythologists made him the Judge of the Under-world.
Lycurgus, the Cretan, would not permit his Code to be committed to writing, deeming it more permanent if engraved upon the brain: the Brehon laws of Ireland were enunciated in rhymed triplets termed Celestial Judgments, and the most ancient Law Codes of all nations are assigned without exception to Bards and a divine origin.
Not only were laws enunciated from barrows, but the dead were buried in a barrow, and the knees of the deceased were tucked up under his chin so that the body assumed the position of an unborn child: in Welsh _bru_ meant the belly or matrix, in Cornish _bry_ meant breast, and the notion seems to have been that the body of the deceased was restored as it were into Abraham's bosom whence it had sprung.
[351] It is a remarkable fact that neither in the Greek nor Latin language is there any equivalent to the word _barrow_, whence it would seem, judging also from the immense number of round and oval barrows found in Britain, that these islands were pre-eminently the home of the barrow, and that the barrow was essentially a British institution.
Connected with _barrow_ is the civic _borough_, also the _berg_ or hill: in Cornish _bre_, _bar_, or _per_ meant hill,[352] and _bar_ meant top or summit; _birua_ is the Basque for head, and in Gaelic _barra_ meant supposedly _mount of the circle_.
[353] In Cornish _bron_ meant breast or pap, and one of the most popular heroines of Welsh Romance is the beautiful Bronwen or Branwen, a name which the authorities translate as meaning _Bosom White_.
In old English _bosom_ was written _bosen_, and as _en_ was our ancient plural, as in brethr_en_, childr_en_, etc., it is probable that not only did _bosen_ mean the bosses but that _bron_ or breast was originally _bru en_, _bre en_ or _bar en_, _i.e._, the tops or hills.
This symbol of the Great Mother was represented frequently by two hills--from the Paps of Anu down to twin barrows, and it was also represented mathematically by two circles.
In Celtic _bryn_ meant hillock or hill, in Cornish _bern_ meant a hayrick, and that the _mows_ or hayricks were made in the form of _bron_, the breast, may be implied from ancient Inn Signs of the Barley Mow.
_Bara_ was Cornish for _bread_; in the same language _barn_ meant to judge, _barner_ a judge, and there is good reason to suppose that the tithe barns connected with Monasteries and Churches served originally not merely as store-houses, but as Courts of Justice, theatres, and centres of religion.
In Cornish _bronter_ meant priest, _priest_ is the same word as _breast_, and the notion of _par_sons being pastors, feeders, or fathers is commemorated in the words themselves.
In Cornish _brein_ or _brenn_ meant royal and supreme; the sacred centre stone of King's County in Ireland was situated at Birr, and _birua_ has already been noted as being the Basque for _head_.
The probability of these words being connected is strengthened by Keightley's observation: "There must by the way some time or other have been an intimate connection between Spain and England, so many of our familiar words seem to have a Spanish origin".
[354] [Illustration: FIG.
176.--From _A Guide to Avebury_ (Cox, R.
Hippesley).]
In addition to the famous earthwork at _Abury_ in Wilts there is a less familiar one at _Eubury_ in Gloucestershire: at Redbourne in Herts is a "camp" known as "_Aubrey's_" or "_Aubury_," whence it would seem that _abri_, the generic term for a shelter or refuge, might also have originated in Britain.
[355] The colossal _abri_ at Abury, or Aubrey, consisted of two circles within a greater one, and at the head of the avenue facing due east it will be noticed that Aubrey, the seventeenth-century antiquary, records twin barrows situated on what is now _Over_ton Hill.
[Illustration: FIG.
177.--Avebury "restored".]
Lying in the sea a mile or so off the Cornish town of St. Just are a _pair_ of conical _ber_gs or _pyr_amids known as the Brisons, and opposite these is a little bay named Priest's Cove.
There is no known etymology for Brisons, but it has been suggested that these remarkable burgs were once used as prisons: probably they were, for the stocks were frequently placed at the church door, and without doubt the ancient holy places served on necessity as prisons as well as Courts of St. Just.
In the vicarage garden at St. Just was found a small bronze bull, and as the Phoenicians have been washed out of reckoning we may assign this idol either to the Britons who, until recently wassailed under the guise of a bull termed "the Broad,"[356] or to the Bronze-age Cretans, among whom the Bull or Minotaur was sacred.
Perhaps instead of "Cretans" it would be more just to say Hellenes, for the headland opposite the Brisons was known originally as Cape Helenus, and there are the ruins of St. Hellen's Chapel still upon it.
Hellen, the mythical ancestor from whom the Hellenes attributed their national descent, may possibly be recognised not only as the Long Man or Lanky Man of country superstition but also in Parth_olon_ or Barth_olon_, the alleged son of Terah (Troy?
), who is said to have landed with an expedition at Imber Scene in Ireland within 300 years after the Flood.
Partholon, _Father Good Holon_ (?)
or _Pure Good Holon_ (?)
is said to have had three sons "whose names having been conferred on localities where they are still extant their memories have been thus perpetuated so that they seem still to live among us".
This passage, quoted from Silvester Giraldus,[357] who was surnamed Cambrensis because he was a Welshman, permits the assumption that a similar practice prevailed also elsewhere, and if in the time of Giraldus (1146) place-names had survived since the Flood, there is no reason to suppose that they have since ceased to exist.
Hellen was the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who correspond to the Noah and Alpha of our British mythology: after floating for nine days during the Flood the world was said to have been re-peopled by these twain, _two-one_, giant or _joint_ pair, who created men by casting stones over their shoulders.
In the Christian emblem here illustrated the divine Père or Parent, is being assisted by an angel, _peri_, or phairy, and it is possible that the Prestons of Britain were at one time Pyrrha stones.
As the syllable _zance_ of Penzance is always understood as _san_, holy, possibly the two Brisons may be translated into _Pair Holy_: with the Greek Pyrrha-Flood story may be connoted Peirun the name of the Chinese Noah.
[Illustration: FIG.
178.--An Angel assisting the Creator.
Italian Miniature of the XIII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The church of St. Just was originally known as Lafroodha, which is understood to have meant _laf_ church and _rhooda_,[358] "a corruption of the Saxon word rood or cross".
Rhooda is, however, much older than Saxon, _rhoda_ is the Greek for rose, and the Rhodian Greeks used the rose as their national symbol.
The immediate surroundings of the Dane John at Durovernum are known to this day as Rodau's Town, and we shall consider Rhoda at greater length in subsequent chapters.
In the church of Roodha or St. Just there is standing a so-called "Silus stone" which was discovered in 1834, during alterations to the chancel: this object has carved upon it SILUS HIC JACET, the Greek letters [Greek: Ch.R.
], and a crosier, whence it has been surmised that Silus was a priest or pastor.
Mr. J. Harris Stone inquires: "Who was Silus?
No one has yet discovered," and he adds: "It is a reasonable conjecture that he was one of those early British bishops who preached the Gospel before the mission of Augustine."
[Illustration: FIG.
179.--Iberian coin of Rhoda, now Rosas.
From Akerman.]
I agree that he was British, but I am inclined to place him still farther back, and to assign his name at any rate to the Selli, under which title the priests of Epirus were known.
The Selli were pre-eminently the custodians at Dodona, whence Homer's reference:-Great King, Dodona's Lord, Pelasgian Jove, Who dwell'st on high, and rul'st with sov'reign sway, Dodona's wintry heights; where dwell around Thy Sellian priests, men of unwashen feet, That on the bare ground sleep.
The Spartan courage and simplicity of the British papas is sufficiently exemplified by their voyages to Iceland and to the storm-tossed islands of the Hebrides, where they have left names such as Papa Stour, Papa Westray, etc.
One may assume that the _selli_ of Dodona--as probably also the _salii_ or augurs of Etruria--lived originally in _cells_ either single or in clusters which became the foundations of later monasteries: Silus may thus be connoted with _solus_, and the word _celibate_ suggests that the _selli_ led _soli_tary lives.
Close to Perry Court, in Kent, is Selgrove, and the numerous Selstons, Seldens, Selsdens, Selwoods, and Selhursts, were in all probability hills, woods, denes, and groves where the Selli congregated, and celebrated the benefits and perfections of the Solus or Alone.
Near Birmingham is Selly Oak, which may be connoted with _allon_, the Hebrew for oak, and with the fact that the oak groves of the _selli_ at Dodona were universally renowned.
The Scilly Islands and Selsea or Sels Island in Hampshire may be connoted with Selby or Selebi, the abode of the _selli_ (_?_), in Yorkshire, now Selby Abbey.
In Devonshire is _Zeal_ Monachorum, and judging by what was accomplished we may define the _selli_ as _zeal_ous and celestial-minded souls.
In Welsh _celli_ means a _grove_; in Latin _sylva_ means a _wood_; it is notorious that the Druids worshipped in groves, and it is not unlikely that Silbury Hill was particularly the selli's hill or barrow.
On the other hand the pervasiveness of _Bury_ at Abury as exemplified in the immediately adjacent _Bar_bury Castle, _Bore_ham Downs, _Brad_enstoke, _Over_ton Hill, and Oli_vers_ Castle, makes it likely that the _Sil_ of Silbury may have been the Sol of Solway and Salisbury Crags.
In Ireland our soft _cell_ is _kil_, whence Kilkenny, Kilbride, and upwards of 1400 place-names, all meaning _cell of_, or _holy to_ so and so.
The enormous prevalence of this hard _kil_ in Ireland renders it probable that the word carried the same meaning in many other directions, notably at Cal_abria_ in Etruria: the wandering priests of Asia Minor and the near East were known as Calanders, a word probably equivalent to Santander, and as has been seen every Welsh Preston was a Llanandras or church of Andrew.
[Illustration: FIG.
180.--From _The Celtic Druids_ (Higgens, G.).]
At Haverfordwest there is a place named Berea, upon which the Rev.
J.
B. Johnston comments: "Welsh Non-conformists love to name their chapels and villages around them so": among the Hebrew Pharisees there existed a mystic _haburah_ or _fellowship_;[359] and the Welsh word _Berea_, probably connected with _abri_, meaning a sanctuary, is associated by Mr. Johnston with the passage in Acts xvii., _i.e._: "And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and _Silas_ by night into Berea".
That Paul preached from an _abri_, or Mount Pleasant, is implied by the statement that he stood in the midst of Mars Hill, whence he admonished his listeners against their altars to the Unknown God.
It was traditionally believed that St. Paul preached not only to the people of Cornwall, but also to Londoners from Parliament Hill, where a prehistoric stone still stands.
That Hellen was once a familiar name at Abury is implied by _Lans_down, _Lyn_ham, and perhaps Calne or _uch alne_ the _Great Alone_.
Both the river Colne in Lancashire and the village of Calne near Abury are attributed as possibly to _calon_, the Welsh for heart or centre: the word _centre_ is radically San Troy, as also is _saintuary_ or _sanctuary_.
Stukeley speaks particularly of Overton Hill as being the sanctuary, but the entire district was traditionally sacrosanct, and it was popularly supposed that reptiles died on entering the precincts: of the Hyperboreans, Diodorus expressly records they had consecrated a large territory.
The village of Abury was occasionally spelled Avereberie, at other times Albury, and with this latter form may be connoted Alberich,[360] the German equivalent to Auberon.
Chilperic, a variant of Alberich, is stated by Camden to be due to a German custom of prefacing certain names with _ch_ or _k_, a contracted form of _king_: I was unaware of this fact when first formulating my theory that an initial _K_ meant _great_.
It is considered that Alberich meant _Elf rich_, and the official supposition is that the French Alberon, or Auberon, was made in Germany: according to Keightley, the German Albs or Elves have fallen from the popular creed, but in most of the traditions respecting them we recognise benevolence as one of the principal traits of their character.
[361] Alberich may, as is generally supposed, have meant Albe_rich_, or _Albe wealthy_, but _brich_, _brick_, _brook_, etc., are fundamental terms and are radically _ber uch_.
Brightlingsea--of which there are 193 variants of spelling--is pronounced by the natives Bricklesea, and there are innumerable British Brockleas, Brixtons, Brixhams, Brockhursts, etc.
Among the many unsolved problems of archæology are the Hebridean _brochs_, which are hollow towers of dry built masonry formed like truncated cones.
These erections, peculiar to Scotland, are found mainly in the Hebrides, and there is a surprising uniformity in their design and construction.
Among the most notable brochs are those situated at Burray, Borrowston, Burrafirth, Burraness, Birstane, Burgar, Brindister, Birsay and in _Ber_wickshire, at Cockburnlaw, and the remarkable recurrence of _Bur_, or _Burra_, in these place-names is obviously due to something more than chance.
At _Brook_land Church in Kent--within a few miles of Camber Castle--a triplex conical belfrey or _berg_ of wooden construction is standing, not on the tower, but on the ground in the immediate neighbourhood of the sacred edifice.
The amazing cone-tomb illustrated on page 237 is that of Lars Porsenna, which means Lord Porsenna, and the bergs or conical pair of _Brison_ rocks lying off Priest's Cove at St. Just may be connoted not only with the word parson but with Parsons and Porsenna.
Malory, in _Morte d'Arthur_, mentions an eminent Dame Brisen, adding that: "This Brisen was one of the greatest enchantresses that was at that time in the world living.
"[362] [Illustration: FIGS.
181 and 182.--From _Notes on the Structure of the Brochs_ (Anderson, J.).
Proceedings of the Scotch Society of Antiquaries.]
[Illustration: FIG.
183.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray).]
There is a famous broch at Burrian in the Orkneys; near St. Just are the parishes of St. Buryan and St. Veryan, both of which are identified with an ancient Eglosberrie, _i.e._, the _eglise_, close, or cloister of Berrie.
A berry is a diminutive egg, and in some parts of the country gooseberries are known as deberries.
[363] _De berry_ seemingly means _good_ or _divine_ berry, and the _pick_ly character of the gooseberry bush no doubt added to the sanctity: from the word goosegog _gog_ was seemingly once a term equivalent to _berry_; a goose is often termed a _barn_acle, and the phantom dog--sometimes a bear--entitled the _bargeist_ or _barguest_ was no doubt a popular degradation of the Hound of Heaven.
Two hounds in leash are known as a _brache_, which is the same word as brace, meaning pair: in connection with the supposition that the Brisons were originally prisons may be noted that barnacles were primarily a pair of curbs or handcuffs.
[Illustration: FIG.
184.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner C.
T.).]
From the typical ground plan of two brochs here given it will be seen that their form was that of a wheel, and it is possible that the flanged spokes of these essential _abris_ were based upon the svastika notion of a rolling, running trinacria such as that of Hyperea and of the Isle of Man.
Brochs are in some directions known as _peels_, and at Peel Castle, in the Isle of Man, legend points to a grave 30 yards long as being that of Eubonia's first king: a curious tradition, says Squire, credits him with three legs, and it is these limbs arranged like the spokes of a wheel that appear on the arms of the Island.
[364] In connection with the giant's grave at Peel may be connoted the legend in Rome that St. Paul was there beheaded "at the Three Fountains".
The exact spot is there shown where the milk spouted from his apostolic arteries, and where moreover his head, after it had done preaching, took three jumps to the honour of the Holy Trinity, and at each spot on which it jumped there instantly sprang up a spring of living water which retains to this day a plain and distinct taste of milk.
[365] This story of three jumps is paralleled in Leicester by a legend of Giant Bell who took three mighty leaps and is said to be buried at Belgrave:[366] Bell is the same word as Paul and Peel.
[Illustration: FIG.
185.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
186.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
The Lord of the Isle of Man is said to have swept swift as the spring wind over land and sea upon a horse named Splendid Mane: the Mahommedans tell of a milk-white steed named _Al Borak_, each of whose strides were equal to the furthest range of human vision: in Chaucer's time English carmen addressed their steeds as _brok_, and in Arabic _el boraka_ means _the blessing_.
_Broch_ is the same word as _brooch_, and upon ancient brooches a _brok_, as in Fig.
187, was sometimes represented: the magnificent ancestral brooches of the Highland families will be found on investigation frequently to be replete with ancient symbolism, the centre jewel representing the All-seeing Eye.
_Broch_ or _broca_ means a pin or spike, and _prick_ means dot or speck: _prick_, like _brok_, also meant horse, and every one is familiar with the gallant knight who "pricks," _i.e._, rides on horseback o'er the plain.
_Prick_ and _brok_ thus obviously stand in the same relation to each other as Chil_peric_ and Al_beric_.
[Illustration: FIG.
187.--From the British Museum's _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_.]
The phairy first king of the Isle of Man was regarded as the special patron of sea-faring men, by whom he was invoked as "Lord of Headlands," and in this connection Berry Head at Brixham, Barras Head at Tintagel, and Barham or Barenham Down in Kent are interesting.
The southern coast of Wales is sprinkled liberally with _Bru_ place-names from St. Bride's Bay wherein is Ramsey Island, known anciently as _ynis y Bru_, the Isle of Bru, to Burry river and Barry Isle next Sulli Isle (the _selli_ isle?).
Aubrey or Auberon may be said almost to pervade the West and South of England: at Barnstaple or Barn Market we meet with High Bray, river Bray, Bratton, Burnham, Braunton, _Berryn_arbor, the Brendon Hills, Paracombe and _Baggy_ Point; in the Totnes neighbourhood are _Big_bury, Burr Island, Beer Head, Berry Head, Branscombe, Branshill, and Prawle Point, which last may be connoted with the rivers Barle, Bark, and Brue.
It is perhaps noteworthy that the three spots associated until the historic period with flint-knapping[367] are _Beer_ Head in Devon, _Pur_fleet near Barking, and _Bran_don in Suffolk.
Totnes being the traditional landing-place of Bru it is interesting to find in that immediate district two Prestons, a Pruston, Barton, Bourton or Borton, Brookhill, Bructon, Brixham, Prescott, Parmount, Berry Pomeroy, Prestonberry and Preston Castle or Shandy's Hill.
[368] Ebrington suggests an _ington_ or town of the children of Ebr; Alvington may be similarly connected with Alph, and Ilbert and Brent seemingly imply the _Holy Ber_ or _Bren_.
The True Street by Totnes may be connoted with the adjacent Dreyton, and Bosomzeal Cross in all probability once bore in the centre, or bogel, the boss which customarily forms the eye of Celtic crosses.
Hu being the first of the three deddu, tatu, or pillars, the term Totnes probably as in Shoeburyness meant Tot_nose_, and the adjacent Dodbrooke, Doddiscombleigh, and Daddy's Hole may all be connoted with the Celtic _tad_, _dad_, or _daddy_.
With the Doddi of Doddiscombleigh or _Doddy's Valley Meadow_, may be connoted the gigantic and commanding Cornish headland known as Dodman.
The Hollicombe by Preston was presumably the holy Coombe, and Halwell, at one time a Holy Well: in this neighbourhood of Kent's Cavern and Kent's Copse are Kingston and Okenbury; at Kingston-on-Thames is Canbury Park, and it is extremely likely that the true etymology of Kingston is not _King's Town_ but _King Stone_, _i.e._, a synonymous term for Preston and the same word as Johnstone.
If as now suggested Bru was _père Hu_ we may recognise Hu at Hoodown which, at Totnes, where it occurs, evidently does _not_ mean a low-lying spit of land but, as at Plymouth Hoe or Haw, implied a hill.
In view of the preceding group of local names it is difficult to assume that some imaginative Mayor of Totnes started the custom of issuing his proclamations from the so-called Brutus Stone in Fore Street merely to flatter an obscure Welsh poet who had vain-gloriously uttered the tradition that the British were the remnants of Droia: it is far more probable that the Mayor and corporation of Totnes had never heard of Taliesin, and that they stolidly followed an immemorial wont.
With the church of St. Just or Roodha, and with the Rodau of Rodau's Town neighbouring the Danejohn at Canterbury or Durovernum, we shall subsequently connote Rutland or Rutaland and the neighbouring Leicester, anciently known as Ratæ.
The highest peak in Leicestershire is Bardon Hill, followed, in order of altitude, by "Old John" in Bradgate Park, Bredon, and Barrow Hill.
Adjacent to Ticehurst in Sussex--a hurst which is locally attributed to a fairy named Tice--may be found the curious place-names Threeleo Cross and Bewl Bri.
These names are the more remarkable being found in the proximity of Priestland, Parson's Green, Barham, and Heart's Delight.
Under the circumstances I think Threeleo Cross must have been a tri holy or three-legged cross, and that Huggins Hall, which marks the highest ground of the district, was Huge or High King's Hall: in close proximity are Queen's Street, Maydeacon House, Grovehurst, and Great Old Hay.
[Illustration: FIG.
188.--From _A Guide to Avebury_ (Cox, R.
Hippesley).]
With _Bredon_ in Leicestershire, a district where the tradition of a three-jumping giant, as has been seen, prevailed, may be connoted the prehistoric camp, or _abri_, of Bradenstoke, and that Abury itself was regarded as a vast _trinacria_ is probable from the fact that in the words of a quite impartial archæologist: "The _triangle_ of downs surrounding Avebury may be considered the hub of England and from it radiates the great lines of hills like the spokes of a wheel, the Coltswolds to the north, the Mendips to the west, the Dorsetshire Hills to the south west, Salisbury Plain to the south, the continuation of the North and South Downs to the east, and the high chalk ridge of the Berkshire Downs north-east to the Chilterns.
"[369] In this quotation I have ventured to italicise the word _triangle_ which idea again is recurrent in the passage: "The Downs round Avebury are the meeting-place of three main watersheds of the country and are the centre from which the great lines of hills radiate north-east, and west through the Kingdom.
Here at the junction of the hills we find the largest prehistoric temple in the world with Silbury, the largest artificial earth mound in Europe, close by.
"[370] [Illustration: FIG.
189.--British.
From Evans.]
The assertion by Stukeley that Avebury described the form of a circle traversed by serpentine stone avenues has been ridiculed by less well-informed archæologists, largely on the ground that no similar erection existed elsewhere in the world.
But on the British coin here illustrated a cognate form is issuing from the eagle's beak, and in Fig.
190 (a Danish emblem of the Bronze Age), the Great Worm or Dragon, which typified the Infinite, is supporting a wheel to which the designer has successfully imparted the idea of movement.
[Illustration: FIG.
190.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray).]
Five miles N.-E. of Abury there stands on the summit of a commanding hill the natural great fortress known as Barbury Castle, surrounded by the remains of numerous banks and ditches.
The name Barbara--a duplication of Bar--is in its Cretan form Varvary, and it was seemingly the Iberian or Ivernian equivalent of "Very God of Very God," otherwise Father of Fathers, or Abracadabra.
In Britain, and particularly in Ireland, children still play a game entitled, The Town of Barbarie, which is thus described: "Some boys line up in a row, one of whom is called the prince.
Two others get out on the road and join hands and represent the town of Barbarie.
One of the boys from the row then comes up to the pair, walks around them and asks-Will you surrender, will you surrender The town of Barbarie?
They answer-We won't surrender, we won't surrender, The town of Barbarie.
Being unsuccessful, he goes back to the prince and tells him that they won't surrender.
The prince then says-Take one of my good soldiers.
This is done, and the whole row of boys are brought up one after the other till the town is taken by their parting the joined hands of the pair who represent the town of Barbarie.
"[371] [Illustration: FIG.
191.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_ (Brock, M.).]
It will be remarked that Barbarie is represented by a _pair_, which is suggestive of the Dioscuri or Heavenly Twins, and on referring to the life of St. Barbara we find her recorded as the daughter of Dioscorus, and as having been born at Heliopolis, or the city of the sun.
The Dioscuri--those far-famed heroes Castor and Pollux--were said to have been born out of an egg laid by Leda the Swan: elsewhere the Dioscuri were known as the Cabiri, a term which is radically _abiri_.
It is probable that St. Barbara was once represented with the emblems of the two Dioscuri or Cabiri, for one of her "tortures" is said to have been that she should be hanged between two forked trees.
These two trees were doubtless two sprigs such as shown in Fig.
191 or two flowering pillars between which the Virgin was extended Andrew-wise in benediction.
The next torture recorded of St. Barbara was the scorching of her sides with burning lamps, from which we may deduce that the Virgin was once depicted with two great lights on either side.
Next, St. Barbara's oppressors made her strongly to be beaten, "and hurted her head with a mallet": the Slav deity Peroon was always depicted with a mallet, and the hammer or axe was practically a universal symbol of _Power_.
As already noted, Peroon, the God with a mallet, has been equated by some scholars with Varuna of India; in Etruria the God of Death was generally represented with a great hammer, and the mallet with which St. Barbara was "hurted" may be further equated with the celebrated Hammer of Thor.
The gigantic hammer cut into the hillside at Tours, and associated in popular estimation with Charles Martel, in view of the name Tours is far more likely to have been the hammer of Thor, who, as we have seen, was assigned to Troy.
We are told that St. Barbara's father imprisoned his daughter within a high and strong _tour_, _tor_, or _tower_, that no man should see her because of her great beauty: this incident is common alike to fairy-tale--notably at Tory Island--and hagiology, and one meets persistently with the peerless princess imprisoned in a peel, broch, or tower.
In Fig.
192 is represented a so-called Trinity of Evil, but in all probability this is a faithful reproduction of the Iberian Aber or Aubrey, _i.e._, the trindod seated upon his symbolic _tor_, _tower_, or _broch_.
The strokes at the toes, like the more accentuated lines from the fingers of Fig.
193, denoted the streaming light, and when we read that one of the exquisite tortures inflicted upon St. George was the thrusting of poisoned thorns into his finger-nails it is a reasonable conclusion that St. George was likewise represented with rayed fingers.
The feast of St. Ibar in Hibernia is held upon 23rd April or _Aperil_, which is also St. George's Day.
[Illustration: FIG.
192.--The Trinity of Evil.
From a French Miniature of the XIII.
Cent.
FIG.
193.--God the Father Wearing a Lozenge-Shaped Nimbus.
Miniature of the XIV.
Cent.
Italian Manuscript in the Bibliotheque Royale.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
St. Barbara, we are told, was marvellously carried on a stone into a high mountain, on which _two_ shepherds kept their sheep, "the which saw her fly"; and it is apparent in all directions that Barbara was peculiarly identified with the Two-One Twain or Pair.
Barbara is popularly contracted into Babs or Bab, and the little Barbara or Babette may probably be identified with the Babchild of Kent.
The coin here illustrated was unearthed at the village of Babchild, known also as Bacchild, and its centre evidently represents the world _pap_, Pope, _paab_, or _baba_: in Christian Art the All Father is represented as a Pope, and as twin Popes, and likewise as a two-faced Person.
[Illustration: FIG.
194.--British.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
195.--God the Father, the Creator, as an Old Man and a Pope.
From a French stained glass window of the XVI.
cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
There is little doubt that the pre-Christian Pope was sometimes represented as a mother and child, and it was probably the discovery of one of these images or pictures that started the horrible scandal of Pope Joan or Papesse Jeanne.
It is said that this accomplished but unhappy lady occupied the papal-chair for a period of two years five months under the title of John the _Eighth_, but having publicly become the mother of a little son her life ended in infamy and ill odour.
To commemorate this shocking and incredible event a monument representing the Papess with her baby was, we are told, erected on the actual spot which was accordingly declared accursed to all ages: but as the incident thus memorised occurred as long ago as the ninth century, it is more probable that the statue was the source of the story and not _vice versa_.
According to some accounts Joan was baptised Hagnes which is the feminine form of Hagon or Acon: others said her name was Margaret, and that she was the daughter of an English missionary who had left England to preach to the Saxons.
At the time of the Reformation Germany seized with avidity upon the scandal as being useful for propaganda purposes, and with that delicacy of touch for which the Lutherans were distinguished, embroidered the tale with characteristic embellishments.
According to Baring-Gould the stout Germans, not relishing the notion of Joan being a daughter of the Fatherland, palmed her off on England, but "I have little doubt myself," he adds, "that Pope Joan is an impersonification of the great whore of Babylon seated on the Seven Hills":[372] on the contrary, I think she was more probably a personification of the Consort of St. Peter the Rock, and the Keeper of the Keys of Heaven's Gate.
Among Joan's sobriquets was Jutt, which is believed to have been "a nickname surely!
": more seemingly Jutt was a Latinised form of Kud, Ked, Kate, or Chad, and Engelheim, or _Angel Home_, the alleged birth-place of Jutt, was either entirely mystical, or perhaps Anglesea, if not Engel Land.
[Illustration: FIG.
196.--The Divine Persons Distinct.
A French Miniature of the XVI.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
197.--The Three Divine Persons Fused One into the Other.
From a Spanish Miniature of the XIII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
198.--From _An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
199.--From _The Gnostics and their Remains_ (King, C.
W.).]
The father of Jutt's child was said to have been Satan himself, who, on the occasion of the birth, was seen and heard fluttering overhead, crowing and chanting in an unmusical voice:-Papa pater patrum, Papissae pandito partum Et tibi tunc eadem de corpore quando recedam.
This description would seem to have been derived from some ancient picture in which the Papa was represented either as a fluttering or chanting cock, or as cockheaded.
Such representations were common among the Gnostics, and the legend, _papa-pater-patrum_, Father, Father of Fathers, is curiously suggestive of Barbara or Varvary: in the Gnostic emblem here reproduced is the counterpart to the cock-headed deity, and the reverse is obviously Vera, Una, or the naked Truth.
Gretchen, the German for Margaret, being _Great Jane_, will account for Pope Joan, and Gerberta, another of her names is radically Berta: Bertha, or Peratha, among the Germans is equated with Perchta, and translated "Bright One," or the "Shining One": the same roots are found in St. Cuth_bert_, or _Cudbright_ as he becomes in Kirkcudbrightshire.
The child of Papesse Jeanne, Gerberta, Hagnes or Jutt was deemed to be Antichrist: according to other accounts the mother of the feared and anticipated Antichrist was a very aged woman, of race unknown, called Fort Juda.
Fort Juda was probably _Strong Judy_, Judy, the wife of Punch, being evidently a form of the very aged wife of Pan, the goat-headed symbol of Gott.
[373] As Peter was the Janitor of the Gate, so Kate or Ked was similarly connected with the _Gate_ which is the same word as Gott or Goat: the Gnostic _God_ here represented is a seven-goat solar wheel.
The horns and head of the goat still figure in representations of Old Nick, and there is no doubt that the horns of the crescent moon, under the form of Io, the heifer, were particularly worshipped at Byzantium: this City of the Golden Horn, now known as Constantinople, to which it will be remembered the British Chronicles assign our origin, was founded by a colony of Greeks from Megara, and in Scandinavia it is still known as Megalopolis, or the City of Michael; its ancient name Byzantium will probably prove to have been connected with _byzan_ or _bosen_, the bosses or paps, and Pera, the Christian district which borders the Bosphorus, may be connoted with Epeur.
Fig.
200, reproduced from a Byzantine bronze pound weight, is supposed to represent "two military saints," but it more probably portrays the celestial pair, Micah and Maggie.
Their bucklers are designed in the form of marguerites or marigolds; the A under the right hand figure is Alpha, whence we may perhaps equate this saint with Alpha, the consort of Noah.
The spear-head under the other Invictus is the "Broad" arrow of Britain, and the meaning of this spear-head or arrow of Broad will be subsequently considered.
It will be noticed that the stars which form the background are the triple dots, and the five-fruited tree is in all probability the Tree of Alpha, Aleph, or _Life_.
Why _five_ was identified with _vif_ or _vive_, _i.e._, life, I am unable to surmise, but that it was thus connected will become apparent as we proceed.
[Illustration: FIG.
200.--From the British Museum's _Guide to Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities_.]
[Illustration: FIG.
201.--British.
From _The Silver Coins of England_ (Hawkins, E.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
202.--Bronze Reliquary Cross, XII.
Cent.
(No.
559).
From the British Museum's _Guide to Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities_.]
[Illustration: FIG.
203.--From _A Collection of 500 Facsimiles of the Watermarks used by Early Papermakers_ (1840).]
The Arabic form of Constantinople is Kustantiniya, which compares curiously with Kystennyns, one of the old variants of the Cornish village named Constantine.
There is a markedly Byzantine style about the group of British coins here reproduced, and Nos.
45 and 46 manifestly illustrate the Dioscuri, Twins, or Cabiri.
The Greek word for _brothers_ or twins is _adelphi_, and as according to Bryant the Semitic _ad_ or _ada_ meant first we may translate _adelphi_ into First Elphi or First Fay-ther.
The head of No.
49, which is obviously an heraldic or symbolic figure, consists of the three circles, intricate symbolism underlies the Byzantine reliquary cross here illustrated, and the same fantastic system is behind the Gnostic paper-mark represented on Fig.
203.
In this it will be noted the eyes are represented by what are seemingly two feathers: the feather was a symbol of the Father, and will be noted in the Alephant emblem illustrated on page 160.
[Illustration: FIG.
204.--The Trinity, in Combat with Behemoth and Leviathan.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In Fig.
204 the Celestial Invictus is depicted as a Trinity; three feathers are the emblem of the British Prince of Wales, and there is evidently some recondite meaning in the legend that St. Barbara insisted upon her father making three windows in a certain building on the grounds that "_three_ windows lighten all the world and all creatures".
Upon Dioscorus inquiring of his daughter why she had upset his arrangements for two windows, Barbara's reply is reported to have been: "These three fenestras or windows betoken clearly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the which be three persons and One Very God".
The word _person_ is radically the same as _appear_ and _appearance_, and the portrayal of the Supreme Power as One, Two, or Three seems evidently to have been merely a matter of inclination: Queen Vera or Virtue may be regarded as One or as the Three Graces or Virtues.
The mythic mother of St. David is said to have been Gwen of the Three Paps, and this St. Gwen Tierbron, or Queen of the Three Breasts, may be equated with the Lady Triamour, and with the patron of Llandrindod or St. _triune dad_ Wells.
On the horse ornament illustrated _ante_ (No.
14, Fig.
134, p. 286), three hearts are represented: on Fig.
205 three circles, together with a palm branch,[374] associated with the national horse.
[Illustration: FIG.
205.--British.
From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIG.
206.--Decoration on British chalk drum.
From _A Guide to Antiquities of Bronze Age_ (B.M.).]
The emblems on page 499 depict two flying wheels, and likewise Three-in-One: near St. Just in Cornwall used to be three interlaced stone circles, and the phenomenon of three circles is noticeable elsewhere; there is little doubt, says Westropp, that in the three rings of Dunainy on the Knockainy Hill the triad of gods, Eogabal, Feri, and Aine, were supposed to dwell.
[375] [Illustration: FIG.
207.--Temple at Abury.
From _The Celtic Druids_ (Higgens, G.).]
Avebury consists of two circles within one, and that "Avereberie" was regarded as the great periphery may be concluded from the name _Avereberie_ which is equivalent to periphery, Varvary, or Barbara.
The bird emblem existing at _Farr_ is suggestive that the county of Forfar was once inhabited by worshippers of Varvara, Barbara, the Fair of Fairs, or Fire of Fires.
Having set his labourers to work, the legend continues that Barbara's father departed thence and went into a far country, where he long sojourned: the Greeks used the word _barbaroi_ to mean not ruffians but those who lived or came from _abroad_; the same sense is born by the Hebrew word _obr_, and it is to this root that anthropologists assign the name _Hebrew_ which they interpret as meaning men who came from _abroad_.
[Illustration: FIG.
208.--From _The Celtic Druids_ (Higgens, G.).]
It is noteworthy that, according to Herodotus, the messengers of the Hyperboreans who came from abroad, _i.e._, _barbaroi_, were entitled by the Delians, "_Perpherees_" and held in great honour:[376] the inverted commas are original, whence it would seem that _perpheree_ was a local pronunciation of _hyperboreæ_.
The general impression is that the Hebrew, or _Ebrea_ as the Italians spell it, derived his title from _Abra_ham whose name means Father of a Multitude.
At _Hebron_ Abraham, the son of Terah, entertained three Elves or Angels: "He saw three and worshipped one":[377] at Hebron Abram bought a piece of land from a merchant named Ephron,[378] and I cannot believe that Ephron really meant, as we are told, _of a calf_; it is more probable that he derived his title from Hebron where Ephron was evidently a landowner.
Tacitus records a tradition that the Hebrews were originally "natives of the Isle of Crete,"[379] and my suggestion that the Jews were the Jous gains somewhat from the fact that York--a notorious seat of ancient Jewry--was originally known as Eboracum or Eboracon.
Our chroniclers state that York was founded by a King Ebrauc, the Archbishop of York signs himself to-day "Ebor," and the river Eure used at one time to be known as the Ebor: the Spanish river Ebro was sometimes referred to as the Iber.
[380] [Illustration: FIG.
209.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
An interesting example of the Cabiri or Adelphi once existed at the Kentish village of Biddenden where the embossed seven-spiked ladies here illustrated, known as the Biddenden Maids, used to be impressed on cakes which were distributed in the village church on Easter Sunday.
This custom was connected with a charity consisting of "twenty acres of land called the Bread and Cheese Land lying in _five_ pieces given by persons unknown, the rent to be distributed among the poor of this parish".
The name of the two maidens is stated to have been Preston, and that this was alternatively a name for Biddenden is somewhat confirmed by an adjacent Broadstone, Fairbourne, and Bardinlea.
Whether it is permissible here to read Bardinlea as Bard's meadow I do not know, but considered in connection with the local charity from five pieces of land it is curious to find that according to the laws of Dyvnwal Moelmud, the different functionaries of the Bardic Gorsedd had a right each to _five_ acres of land in virtue of their office, were entitled to maintenance wherever they went, had freedom from taxes, no person was to wear a naked weapon in their presence, and their word was always paramount.
[381] In view of this ordinance it almost looks as though the charitable five acres at Biddenden were the survival of some such privileged survival.
As Biddy is a familiar form of Bridget or Bride, Biddenden may be understood as the dun or den of the Biddys, and the modern sense of our adjective _bad_ is, it is to be feared, an implication either that the followers of the Biddy's fell from grace, or that at any rate newer comers deemed them to have done so.
The German for _both_ is _beide_, but that _both_ the _Bid_denden maidens were bad is unlikely: the brace of chickabiddies[382] illustrated overleaf may perhaps have fallen a little short of the designer's ideals, yet they were undoubtedly deemed fit and good, otherwise they would not have survived.
That their admirers, while seeing Both or Twain, worshipped Ane is obviously possible from the popular "Heathen chant" here quoted from Miss Eckenstein's _Comparative Study of Nursery Rhymes_:-1.
We will a' gae sing, boys, Where will we begin, boys?
We'll begin the way we should, And we'll begin at ane, boys.
O, what will be our ane, boys?
O, what will be our ane, boys?
--My only ane she walks alane, And evermair has dune, boys.
2.
Now we will a' gae sing, boys; Where will we begin, boys?
We'll begin where we left aff, And we'll begin at twa, boys.
What will be our twa, boys?
--Twa's the lily and the rose That shine baith red and green, boys, My only ane she walks alane, And evermair has dune, boys.
In the near neighbourhood of Biddenden are Peckham, Buckman's Green, Buckhill, and Buggles, or Boglesden: the two bogles now under consideration were possibly responsible for the neighbouring Duesden, _i.e._ the Dieu's den or the Two's den.
According to Skeat the word _bad_, mediæval _badde_, is formed from the Anglo-Saxon _baeddel_, meaning an hermaphrodite; all ancient deities seem to have been regarded as hermaphrodites, and it is impossible to tell from the Britannia, Bride, or Biddy figures on p. 120 whether Bru or Brut was a man or a maid.
Apollo was occasionally represented in a skirt; Venus was sometimes represented with a beard; the beard on the obverse of No.
46, on p. 364, is highly accentuated, and that this feature was a peculiarity of Cumbrian belief is to be inferred from the life of Saint Uncumber.
St. Uncumber, or _Old Queen Ber_, was one of the seven daughters born at a birth to the King of Portugal, and the story runs that her father wanting her to marry the prince of Sicily, she grew whiskers, "which so enraged him that he had her crucified".
[383] One may infer that the fabricator of this pious story concocted it from some picture of a bearded virgin extended like Andrew on the Solar wheel: close to Biddenden is Old Surrender, perhaps originally a den or shrine of Old _Sire_ Ander.
[384] At Broadstone, by Biddenden, we find Judge House, and doubtless the village _juge_ once administered justice at that broad stone.
In Kent the paps are known colloquially as _bubs_ or _bubbies_: by Biddenden is a Pope's Hall, and a Bubhurst or Bubwood, which further permit the equation of the Preston Maids with Babs, Babby, or Barbara.
St. Barbara was not only born at Heliopolis, but her tomb is described by Maundeville as being at Babylon, by which he means not Babylon in Chaldea, but Heliopolis in Egypt.
In _The Welsh People_ Sir J. Morris Jones establishes many remarkable relationships between the language of Wales and the Hamitic language of early Egypt; in 1881 Gerald Massey published a list of upwards of 3000 similarities between British and Egyptian words[385]; and _In Malta and the Mediterranean Race_, Mr. R. N. Bradley prints the following extraordinary statement from Col. W. G. MacPherson of the Army Medical Service: "When I was in Morocco City, in 1896, I met a Gaelic-speaking missionary doctor who had come out there and went into the Sus country (Trans-atlas), where 'Shluh' is the language spoken, just as it is the language of the Berber tribes in the Cis-atlas country.
He told me that the words seemed familiar to him, and, after listening to the natives speaking among themselves, found they were speaking a Gaelic dialect, much of which he could follow.
This confirmed my own observation regarding the names of the Berber tribes I myself had come across, namely, the Bini M'Tir, the Bini M'Touga, and the Bini M'Ghil.
The 'Bini' is simply the Arabic for 'Children of,' and is tacked on by the Arabs to the 'M' of the Berbers, which means 'sons of' and is exactly the same as the Irish 'M,' or Gaelic 'Mac'.
Hence the M'Tir, M'Touga, and M'Ghil, become in our country MacTiers, the MacDougalls, and the MacGills.
I prepared a paper on this subject which was read by my friend Dr. George Mackay of Edinburgh, at the Pan-Celtic Congress there in 1907, I think, or it may have been 1908.
It caused a leading article to be written in the _Scotsman_, I believe, but otherwise it does not appear to have received much attention."
As it is an axiom of modern etymology to ignore any statements which cannot be squared with historical documents it is hardly a matter of surprise that Col. MacPherson's statements have hitherto received no consideration.
But apart from the fact that certain Berber tribes still speak Gaelic, the Berbers are a highly interesting people: they extend all over the North of Africa, and the country between Upper Egypt and Abyssinia is known as Barbara or Barba.
The word _Africa_ was also written _Aparica_, and the Berbers, apart from founding the Old Kingdom of _Bornou_ and the city of Timbuctoo, had an important seat at _Berryan_.
They had in the past magnificent and stately temples, used the Arabic alphabet, and the Touriacks--the purest, proudest, most numerous, and most lordly family of the Berbers--have an alphabet of their own for which they claim great antiquity: they have also a considerable native literature.
[386] The Touriack alphabet is almost identical with that used by the Tyrians in later times, and the name Touriack is thus probably connected with Tyre and Troy.
In 1821, a traveller described the Touriacks as "the finest race of men I ever saw--tall, straight, and handsome, with a certain air of independence and pride that is very imposing.
They are generally white, that is to say, comparatively so, the dark brown of their complexion being occasioned only by the heat of the climate.
Their arms and bodies, where constantly covered, are as white as those of many Europeans.
"[387] To Britons the Berbers should be peculiarly interesting, as anthropologists have already declared that the primitive Scotch race were formed from "the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa": Laing and Huxley further affirm that among these Scotch aborigines they recognise the existence of men "of a very superior character".
[388] It will probably prove that the "St. Barbe" of Gaul--a name connected with the megalithic monuments at Carnac--originated from Barba, or Berber influences: with this Gaulish St. Barbe may be connoted the fact that the pastors of the heretical Albigenses, whose headquarters were at the town of Albi, were for some unknown reason entitled _barbes_.
A traveller in 1845 describes the Berbers or Touriacks as very white, always clothed, and wearing pantaloons like Europeans.
The word _pantaloon_ comes from Venice where the patron saint is St. Pantaleone, but the British for pantaloons is _breeks_ or _breeches_.
It was a distinction of the British to wear breeks: Sir John Rhys attributes the word Briton to "cloth and its congeners," and when, _circa_ 500 B.C., the celebrated Abaris visited Athens his hosts were evidently impressed by his attire: "He came, not clad in skins like a Scythian, but with a bow in his hand, a quiver hanging on his shoulders, a plaid wrapped about his body, a gilded belt encircling his loins, and trousers reaching from the waist down to the soles of his feet.
He was easy in his address; affable and pleasant in his conversation; active in his despatch, and secret in his management of great affairs; quick in judging of present accuracies; and ready to take his part in any sudden emergency; provident withal in guarding against futurity; diligent in the quest of wisdom; fond of friendship; trusting very little to fortune, yet having the entire confidence of others, and trusted with everything for his prudence.
He spoke Greek with fluency, and whenever he moved his tongue you would imagine him to be some one out of the midst of the academy or very Lyceum.
"[389] I have suggested that Abaris or Abharas was a generic term for Druid or Chief Druid, and it is likely that the celebrated Arabian philosopher Averrhoes, who was born in Spain A.D. 1126, was entitled Averroes (his real name seems to have been Ibn Roshd) in respect of his famous philosophy: it is noteworthy that the Berbers were known alternatively as Barabbras.
[390] In No.
41, on p. 364, two small brethren are like Romulus and Remus sucking nourishment from a wolf.
This animal is the supposed ancestor of all the dog-tribe: the word _wolf_ is _eu olf_, and the term _bitch_, applied to all females of the wolf tribe, is radically _pige_, _peggy_, or _Puck_.
The Bitch-nourished Brethren are radically _bre_, for the _-ther_ of _brother_ is the same adjective as occurs in fa_ther_, mo_ther_, and sis_ter_.
Taliesin, the mystic title of the Welsh Chief Druid of the West, is translated as having meant _radiant brow_: the brow is the covering of the brain, and in No.
2, on p. 120, Britannia is pointing to her brow.
In No.
3 of the same plate she is represented in the remarkable and unusual attitude of gazing up to Heaven: it will be remembered that, according to Cæsar, Britain was the cradle of the Druidic Philosophy, and that those wishing to perfect themselves in the system visited this country; that the Britons prided themselves on their brains is possibly the true inference to be drawn from the two curious coins now under consideration.
The President of Celtic poetry and bardic music is said to have been a being of gigantic height named Bran: it is to Bran the Blessed that tradition assigns the introduction of the Cross into Britain, and when Bran died his head is stated to have been deposited under the White Tower of London, where it acted as a talisman against foreign aggression.
One of the disastrous blunders alleged against King Arthur was the declaration that he disdained to hold the realm of England, except in virtue of his own prowess,[391] and Romance affirms that he disinterred the magic head of the Blessed Bran, thereby bringing untold woes upon the land.
As a parallel to this story may be connoted the historic fact that when the Romans in 390 B.C.
inquired the name of the barbaric general who had led the Celts victoriously against them, the Celtic officer replied by giving the name of the God to whom he attributed the success of his arms, and whom he figured to himself as seated invisible in a chariot, a javelin in his hand, while he guided the victorious host over the bodies of its enemies.
[392] Now the name of this invisible chief under whom the Gaulish conquerors of Rome and Delphi claimed to fight, was Brennos, whom De Jubainville equates with Brian, the First of the Three divine Sons of Dana, or Brigit, the _Bona Dea_ of Britain.
The highest town in France, and the principal arsenal and depot of the French Alps is entitled Briancon, and as this place was known to the Romans as Brigantium, we may connote Briancon with King Brian.
Brigan may probably be equated with the fabulous Bregon of Hibernia, with Bergion of Iberia, and with St. Brychan of Wales, who is said to have been the parent of fifty sons and daughters, "all saints".
The Hibernian super-King, entitled Brian Boru, had his seat at Tara, and from him may be said to have descended all the O'Briens, the Brownes, and the Byrons.
The name Burgoyne is assigned to Burgundy, and it is probable that inquiry would prove a close connection between the Burgundii and giant Burgion of Iberia.
In the Triads the Welsh prince Brychan is designated as sprung from one of the three holy families of Prydain: through Breconshire, or Brecknock, runs the river Bran; and that Awbrey was a family name in Brecon is implied by the existence in the priory church of St. John, or Holyrood, of tombs to the Awbreys.
[Illustration: FIG.
210.--Idols of the Bona Dea found at Troy.
From _Ilios_ (Schliemann).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
211 to 213.--From British "chalk drums," illustrated in British Museum's _Guide to Antiquities of Bronze Age_.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
214 to 219.--Mediæval Papermarks from _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
220.--From _History of Paganism in Caledonia_ (Wise, T.
A.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
221.--The Creator, under the Form of Jesus Christ.
Italian Miniature of the close of the XII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
When the head of the beneficent and blessed Bran was deposited at London it is said to have rested there for a long time with the eyes looking towards France.
One of the most remarkable and mysterious of the Pictish symbols, found alike in Picardy and Pictland generally, is the so-called butterfly design of which three typical examples are here illustrated.
What it seems to represent is _Browen_ or the _Brows_, but it is also an excellent bird, butterfly, or _papillon_: or as we speak familiarly of using our brains, and as the grey matter of the brain actually consists of two divisions, which scientists entitle the _cerebrum_ and the _cerebellum_, the two-browed butterfly might not illogically be designated the brains.
Both Canon Greenwell and Sir Arthur Evans have drawn attention to similar representations of the human face on early objects from Troy and the Ægean; the same symbol is found on sculptured menhirs of the Marne and Gard valleys in France, while clay vessels with this ornament, belonging to the early age of metal, have been found in Spain.
The "butterfly" is seen on gold roundels from the earliest (shaft) graves at Mycenæ, and as Sir Hercules Read has rightly said, "everything points to the transmission of that influence to the British Isles by way of Spain".
[393] [Illustration: FIG.
222.--The Trinity in One God, Supporting the World.
Fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, XIV.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The Scandinavians assigned three eyes to Thor, and Thor, as has been seen, was attributed by them to Troy.
On the stone illustrated on p. 381, now built into the church at Dingwall--a name which means _court hill_--three circles are on one side and two upon the other: some of the Trojan idols are three-eyed and some are "butterflies".
Is it possible that this Elphin little face, or _papillon_, was the precursor of the modern cherub or Amoretto, and that it was the Puck of the Iberian Picts, who conceived their Babchild or Bacchild as peeping, _pry_ing, touting, and _peer_ing perpetually upon mankind?
The ancients imagined that every worthy soul became a star, whence it is possible that the small blue flower we call a periwinkle was, like the daisy, a symbol of the fairy, phairy, or peri _peri_scope.
In Devonshire the speedwell (_Veronica +chamædrys_) is known as Angels' Eyes; in Wales it is entitled the Eye of Christ:[394] the word _periwinkle_ may be connoted with the phairies Periwinkle, and Perriwiggen, who figure in the court of Oberon.
In the magnificent emblem here illustrated the Pillar of the Universe, "to Whom all thoughts and desires are known, from Whom no secrets are hid," is supporting a great universe zoned round and round by Eyes, Cherubs, or Amoretti, and the earth within is represented by a cone or berg.
In Fig.
221 the Creator is depicted as animating nine choirs of Amoretti by means of three rays or _breaths_, and as will be shown subsequently the creation of the world by means of three rays or beams of light from heaven was an elemental feature of British philosophy.
The periwinkle, known in some districts as the cockle, may, I think, be regarded as a prehistoric symbol of the world-without-end query:-Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.
The term cockle was applied not only to the periwinkle and the poppy, but likewise to the burdock, whose prickly _burrs_ are obviously a very perfect emblem of the Central Pyre, Fire, Burn, or Brand.
In Italy the barberry, or berberis, is known as the Holy Thorn, as it is supposed that from this bush of _pricks_ and prickles was woven Christ's crown of thorns.
As a home of the spooks the _brakes_ or _bracken_ rivalled the hawthorn,[395] and it was generally believed that by eating fern or bracken seed one became invisible.
Witches were supposed to detest bracken, because it bears on its root the character C, the initial of the holy name Christ, "which may be plainly seen on cutting the root horizontally".
Commenting on this belief the author of _Flowers and Folklore_ remarks: "A friend suggests, however, that the letter intended is not the English C, but the Greek X (Chi), the initial letter of the word _Christos_ which really resembles the marks on the root of the bracken.
"[396] In Cornish _broch_ denoted the yew tree, the sanctity of which is implied by the frequency with which a brace or pair of yews are found in churchyards.
The yew is probably the longest living of all trees, accredited instances occurring of its antiquity to the extent of 1400 years, and at Fortingal in _Perth_shire there is a famous yew tree which has been estimated to be 3000 years of age.
This is deemed to be the most venerable specimen of living European vegetation, but at _Bra_bourne, in Kent, used to be a superannuated yew which claimed precedence in point of age even over that of Perthshire.
A third claimant (2000 years) is that at Hensor (the _ancient sire_?)
in Buckinghamshire, and a fourth exists at Buckland near Dover.
[397] The _yew_ (Irish _eo_), named in all probability after Io, or Hu the Jupiter,[398] or Ancient Sire of Britain, is found growing profusely in company with the box on the white chalky brow of Boxhill overlooking Juniper Hall.
The foot of this slope around which creeps the placid little river Mole is now entitled _Bur_ford Bridge, but before the first bridge was here built, the site was seemingly known as Bur ford.
The neighbouring Dorking, through which runs the Pipbrook, is equivalent to Tor King, Tarchon, or Troy King, and there is a likelihood that the Perseus who redeemed Andromeda, the _Ancient Troy Maid_, was a member of the same family.
In the Iberian coin herewith inscribed Ho, which is ascribed to Ilipa or Ilipala, one may perhaps trace Hu, _i.e._, _Hugh_ the _mind_ or _brain_ in transit to these islands.
[Illustration: FIG.
223.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
To the yews on Boxhill one may legitimately apply the lines which Sir William Watson penned at the neighbouring Newlands or the lands of the self-renewing Ancient Yew:-Old Emperor Yew, fantastic sire, Girt with thy guard of dotard Kings, What ages hast thou seen retire Into the dusk of alien things?
From Newlands Corner where the yews--the self-seeded descendants of immemorial ancestors--are thickly dotted, is a prospect unsurpassed in England.
The beech trees which are also a feature in the neighbourhood of Boxhill irresistibly turn one's mind to the immortal beeches at _Burn_ham in Bucks.
Bucks supposedly derives its name from the patronymic Bucca or Bucco, and this district was thus presumably a seat of the Bucca, Pukka, or Puck King, _alias_ Auberon, to whom at Burnham the _beech_ or _boc_ would appear to have been peculiarly dedicated.
There is a Burnham near Brightlingsea; a Burnby near Pocklington, a Burnham on the river Brue, a Burn in Brayton parish, Yorks; a river Burn or Brun in Lancashire, a river Burry in Glamorganshire, and in Norfolk a Burnham-Ulph.
In Brancaster Bay are what are termed "Burnham Grounds"; hereabouts are Burnham Westgate, Burnham Deepdale, Burnham Overy, etc., and the local fishermen maintain "there are three other Burnhams under Brancaster Bay".
[399] Doubtless the sea has claimed large tracts of Oberon's empire, but from Brean Down, Brown Willy, and Perran Round in the West to the famous Birrenswerk in Annandale, and the equally famous Bran Ditch in Cambridgeshire, the name of the Tall Man is ubiquitous.
Among the innumerable Brandons or Branhills, Brandon Hill in Suffolk, where the flint knappers have continued their chipping uninterruptedly since old Neolithic times, may claim an honourable pre-eminence.
FOOTNOTES: [323] _Cf._ Thomas, J. J., _Brit.
Antiquissima_, p. 29.
[324] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, i., 502.
[325] Squire, C., _Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland_, p. 52.
[326] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 338.
[327] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 143.
[328] Among the many Prestons I have enquired into is one with which I am conversant near Faversham.
Here the Manor House is known as Perry Court; similarly there is a Perry Court at a second Preston situated a few miles distant.
In the neighbourhood are Perry woods.
There is a modern "Purston" at Pontefract, which figured in Domesday under the form "Prestun".
[329] Taylor, Rev.
T., _Celtic Christianity of Cornwall_, p. 33.
[330] Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 123.
[331] Haslam, Wm., _Perranzabuloe_.
[332] _Ibid._, p. 60.
[333] "Mr. W. Mackenzie, Procurator Fiscal of Cromarty, writes me from Dingwall (10th September, 1917), as follows: 'We are not without some traces and traditions of phallic worship here.
There is a stone in the _Brahan_ Wood which is said to be a "knocking stone".
Barren women sat in close contact upon it for the purpose of becoming fertile.
It serves the purpose of the mandrake in the East.
I have seen the stone.
It lies in the Brahan Wood about three miles from Dingwall.'"
--Frazer, Sir J. G., quoted from _Folklore_, 1918, p. 219.
[334] Guerber, H. A., _Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages_, p. 219.
[335] Guerber, H. A., _Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages_, p. 221.
[336] "The Brehon laws are the most archaic system of law and jurisprudence of Western Europe.
This was the code of the ancient Gaels, or Keltic-speaking Irish, which existed in an unwritten form long before it was brought into harmony with Christian sentiments....
It is impossible to study these laws and the manners and customs of the early Irish, together with their land tenure, and to compare them with the laws of Manu, and with the light thrown on the Aryans of India by the Sanskrit writings without coming to the conclusion that they had a common origin."
--Macnamara, N. C., _Origin and Character of the British People_, p. 94.
[337] _Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 406.
[338] Of the Teutonic _Tiw_, Dr. Taylor observes: "This word was used as the name of the Deity by all the Aryan nations.
The Sanskrit _deva_, the Greek _theos_, the Latin _deus_, the Lithuanian _dewas_, the Erse _dia_, and the Welsh _dew_ are all identical in meaning.
The etymology of the word seems to point to the corruption of a pure monotheistic faith."
In Chaldaic and in Hebrew _di_ meant the Omnipotent, in Irish _de_ meant _goddess_, and in Cornish _da_ or _ta_ meant _good_.
From the elementary form _de_, _di_, or _da_, one traces ramifications such as the Celtic _dia_ or _duw_ meaning a _god_.
In Sanskrit Dya was the bright heavenly deity who may be equated with the Teutonic _Tiu_, whence our Tuesday, and with the Sanskrit Dyaus, which is equivalent to the Greek Zeus.
The same radical _d_' is the base of _dies_, and of _dieu_; of _div_ the Armenian for _day_; of _div_ the Sanskrit for _shine_; of _Diva_ the Sanskrit for _day_.
Our ancestors used to believe that the river Deva or Dee sprang from two sources, and that after a very short course its waters passed entire and unmixed through a large lake carrying out the same quantity of water that it brought in.
The word "Dee" seems widely and almost universally to have meant _good_ or _divine_, and it may no doubt be equated with the "Saint Day" who figures so prominently in place-names, and the Christian Calendar.
[339] Hone, W., _Everyday Book_, i., 1118.
[340] _Ancient Coins_, p. 3.
[341] Lardner, D., _History of Spain and Portugal_, vol.
i, p. 18.
[342] _Ibid._, p. 13.
[343] _Ibid._, p. 6.
[344] Macalister, R. A. S., _Proc.
Roy.
Ir.
Acad._, xxxiv., C., 10-11.
[345] Mann, L. M., _Archaic Sculpturings_, p. 34.
[346] _Wild Wales_ (Everyman's Library), p. 258.
[347] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 523.
[348] Bell's _Travels_, i., 248.
[349] _Cf._ Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, i., 61.
[350] Bellot, H. H. L., _The Temple_, p. 12.
[351] That there is nothing far-fetched in this possibility is proved by a Vedic Hymn _circa_ 2500 B.C.
: "Enter, O lifeless one, the mother earth, the widespread earth, soft as a maiden in her arms rest free from sin.
Let now the earth gently close around you even as a mother gently wraps her infant child in soft robes.
Let now the fathers keep safe thy resting-place, and let Yama, the first mortal who passed the portals of Death, prepare thee for a new abiding place."
[352] Near Land's End is _Bar_tinny or _Per_tinny, which is understood to have meant _Hill of the Fire_.
[353] At Bradfield is a British camp on _Bar_ley Hill.
Notable earthwork _abris_ exist at _Bray_ford, _Bor_ingdon Camp, "Old _Barrow_," _Parra_combe, and _Pre_stonbury in Devonshire: at _Buri_ton, and _Bury_ Hill in Hampshire: at _Bree_don Hill, _Burrough_-on-the-hill, and _Bury_ Camp in Leicestershire: at _Borough_ Hill in Northamptonshire: at _Burrow_ Wood, _Bury_ Ditches, _Bury_ Walls, and Caer_bre_ in Shropshire: at Carn Brea in Cornwall: at _Bourton_, and _Bury_ Castle, in Somerset: at _Bar_moor in Warwickshire: at _Bar_bury, _Bury_ Camp, and _Bury_ Hill in Wiltshire: at _Berrow_ in Worcestershire.
Earthworks are also to be found on _Brow_ downs, _Bray_ downs, _Bray_ woods, and _Bury_ woods in various directions.
[354] F. M., p. 464.
[355] "Camps of indubitably British date, Saxon, and Norman entrenchments, to say nothing of minor matters such as dykes and mounds and so-called amphitheatres, all are accredited to a people who very probably had nothing at all to do with many of them."
--Allcroft, A. Hadrian, _Earthwork of England_, p. 289.
[356] The Bull's head will have been noted on the buckler of Britannia, _ante_, p. 120.
[357] Bohn's Library, p. 114.
[358] Stone, J. Harris, _England's Riviera_.
[359] Abelson, J., _Jewish Mysticism_, p. 31.
[360] The authorities equate the names Alberic and Avery.
[361] F. M., p. 206.
[362] Book xl., chap.
i.
[363] Friend, Rev.
H., _Flowers and Folklore_, ii., 474.
[364] _Myths of Ancient Britain_, p. 18.
[365] Taylor, Rev.
R., _Diegesis_, p. 271.
[366] Wood, E. J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 44.
[367] Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 185.
[368] _Cf._ Shandwick or Shandfort _ante_, p. 327, also Shanid, p. 55.
[369] Cox, R. Hippesley, _A Guide to Avebury_, p. 55.
[370] _Ibid._ [371] _Folklore_, XXIX., i., p. 182.
[372] _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages._ [373] Jupiter is said to have been suckled by a goat.
[374] The Sanscrit for _palm_ is _toddy_--whence the drink of that name.
[375] _Proc.
of Royal Irish Acad._, xxxiv., C., 3, 4.
[376] Book IV., 33.
[377] Maundeville, in his Travels, mentions that near Hebron, "a sacerdotal city, that is a sanctuary on the Mount of Mamre, is an oak tree which the Saracens call _dirpe_, which is of Abraham's time, and people called it the dry tree.
They say that it has been there since the beginning of the world, and that it was once green and bore leaves, till the time that our Lord died on the cross, and then it died, and so did all the trees that were then in the world."
--_Travels in the East_, p. 162.
[378] _Gen._ xxiii.
[379] _History_, v., 2.
[380] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, i., 54.
[381] _Barddas_, p. xxx.
[382] _Vide_ inscription _Chuck_hurst?
[383] Dawson, L. H., _A Book of the Saints_, p. 221.
[384] Skeat considers that _Sirrah_ is "a contemptuous extension of _sire_, perhaps by addition of _ah!_ or _ha!_ (so Minsheu); Old French _sire_, Provencial _sira_".
[385] _A Book of the Beginnings._ [386] "The Berbers, their language, and their books ought to be fully explored and studied.
Archæology and linguistic science have lavished enthusiastic and toilsome study on subjects much less worthy of attention, for these Berbers present the remains of a great civilisation, much older than Rome or Hellas, and of one of the most important peoples of antiquity.
Here are 'ruins' more promising, and, in certain respects, more important, than the buried ruins of Nineveh; but they have failed to get proper attention, partly because a false chronology has made it impossible to see their meaning and comprehend their importance.
The Berbers represent ancient communities whose importance was beginning to decline before Rome appeared, and which were probably contemporary with ancient Chaldea and the old monarchy of Egypt."
--Baldwin, J. D., _Prehistoric Nations_, p. 340.
[387] _Ibid._, p. 342.
[388] Laing, S., and Huxley, T. H., _The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, pp.
70, 71.
[389] Quoted from Higgens, G., _Celtic Druids_.
[390] Latham, R. G., _The Varieties of Man_, p. 500.
[391] "Thy prowess I allow, yet this remember is the gift of Heaven."--Homer.
[392] De Jubainville, _Irish Myth.
Cycle_, p. 84.
[393] _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_ (B. M.).
[394] Wright, E. M., _Rustic Speech and Folklore_, p. 334.
[395] Rev.
Hilderic Friend.
This gentleman adds: "Interesting as the study proves, we shall none of us regret that the English nation is daily becoming more and more intelligent and enlightened, and is leaving such follies to the heathen and the past" (vol.
ii., 568).
[396] As bracken is the plural of brake, fern was once presumably the plural of _pher_.
[397] See Johnson, W., _Byways in British Archæology_, 375-7.
[398] Since writing I find that Didron, in vol.
ii.
of _Christian Iconography_, p. 180, illustrates a drawing of Jupiter upon which he comments, "a crown of yew leaves surrounds his head".
[399] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, i., 12.
CHAPTER VIII SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE "Where one might look to find a legitimate national pride in the monuments of our forefathers there seems to be a perverse conspiracy to give the credit to anyone rather than to the Briton, and preferably to the Roman interloper.
If any evidence at all be asked for, the chance finding of a coin or two, or of a handful of shivered pottery, is deemed enough.
Such evidence is emphatically not enough."--A.
HADRIAN ALLCROFT.
The owld White Harse wants zettin to rights, And the Squire hev promised good cheer, Zo we'll gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape, And a'll last for many a year.
--Berkshire Ballad.
According to Gaelic mythology Brigit was the daughter of the supreme head of the Irish gods of Day, Life, and Light--whose name Dagda Mor, the authorities translate into _Great Good Fire_.
Some accounts state there were three Brigits, but these three, like the three Gweneveres or Ginevras who were sometimes assigned to King Arthur, are evidently three aspects of the one and only Queen Vera, Queen Ever, or Queen Fair.
Brigit's husband was the celebrated Bress, after whom we are told every fair and beautiful thing in Ireland was entitled a "bress".
Brigit and Bress were the parents of three gods entitled Brian, Iuchar, and Uar, and it looks as though these three were equivalent to the Persian trinity of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word.
The term _word_ is derived by Skeat from a root _wer_, meaning to speak, whence _Uar_ was seemingly _werde_ or _Good Word_.
_Brian_, I have already connoted with _brain_, whence Good Brian was probably equivalent to Good Thought, and Iuchar, the third of Bride's brats, looks curiously like _eu coeur_, _eu cor_, or _eu cardia_, _i.e._, soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious _heart_, otherwise Kind Action or Good Deed.
[Illustration: FIGS.
224 to 231.--British.
From Evans.]
These three mythic sons constitute the gods of Irish Literature and Art, and are said to have had in common an only son entitled Ecne,[400] whose name, according to De Jubainville, meant "knowledge or poetry".
[401] The legend CUNO which appears so frequently in British coins in connection with Pegasus--the steed of the Muses--or the Hackney, varies into ECEN, _vide_ the examples herewith, and the palm branch or fern leaf constituting the mane points to the probability that the animal portrayed corresponds to "Splendid Mane," the magic steed of three-legged Mona.
Mona was a headquarters of the British Druids by whom white horses were ceremoniously maintained.
Speaking of the peculiar credulity of the German tribes Tacitus observes: "For this purpose a number of milk-white steeds unprophaned by mortal labour are constantly maintained at the public expense and placed to pasture in the religious groves.
When occasion requires they are harnessed to a sacred chariot and the priest, accompanied by the king or chief of the state, attends to watch the motions and the neighing of the horses.
No other mode of augury is received with such implicit faith by the people, the nobility, and the priesthood.
The horses upon these solemn occasions are supposed to be the organs of the gods.
"[402] The horse is said to be exceptionally intelligent,[403] whence presumably why it was elevated into an emblem of Knowing, Kenning, Cunning, and ultimately of the Gnosis.
That the Gnostics so regarded it is sufficiently evident apart from the collection of symbolic horses dealt with elsewhere.
[404] The old French for _hackney_ was _haquenee_, the old Spanish was _hacanea_, the Italian is _chinea_, a contracted form of _acchinea_: jennet or Little Joan is connected with the Spanish _ginete_ which has been connoted with _Zenata_, the name of a tribe of Barbary celebrated for its cavalry.
[Illustration: FIG.
232.]
[Illustration: FIG.
233.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_ (Brock, M.).]
That Jeanette was worshipped in Italy _sub rosa_, would appear from the emblem here illustrated, which is taken from the title page of a work published in 1601.
[405] The Hackney, the New-moon (Kenna?)
and the Staff or Branch are emblems, which, as already seen, occur persistently on British coins, and the legend PHILOS IPPON IN DIES CRESCIT reading: "Love of the Horse; in time it will increase," obviously applied to some philosophy, and not a material taste for stud farms and the turf.
In 1857, during some excavations in Rome in the palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill, an inscription which is described as a "curious scratch on the wall" was brought to light.
This so-called _graffito blasfemo_ has been held to be a vile caricature of the crucifixion, some authorities supposing the head to be that of a wild ass, others that of a jackal: beneath is an ill-spelt legend in Greek characters to the effect: "ALEXAMENOS WORSHIPS HIS GOD," and on the right is a meanly attired figure seemingly engaged in worship.
[406] I am unable to recognise either a jackal or a wild ass in the figure in dispute, which seems in greater likelihood to represent a not ill-executed horse's head.
Nor seemingly is the creature crucified, but on the contrary it is supporting the letter "T," or Tau, an emblem which was so peculiarly sacred among the Druids that they even topped and trained their sacred oak until it had acquired this holy form.
[407] The Tau was the sign mentioned by Ezekiel as being branded upon the foreheads of the Elect, and this "curious scratch" of poor Alexamenos attributed to the very early part of the third century was not, in my humble opinion, the work of some illiterate slave or soldier attached to the palace of the Cæsars, ridiculing the religion of a companion, but more probably the pious work of a Gnostic lover of philosophy: that the Roman church was honeycombed with Gnostic heresies is well known.
The word _philosophy_ is _philo sophy_ or the love of wisdom, but _sophi_, or wisdom, is radically _ophi_, or _opi_, _i.e._, the Phoenician _hipha_, Greek _hippa_, a mare: the name Philip is always understood as _phil ip_ or "love of the horse," and the _hobby_ horse of British festivals was almost certainly the _hippa_ or the _hippo_.
[Illustration: FIG.
234.--Macedonian.
From _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).]
Of the 486 varieties of British coins illustrated by Sir John Evans no less than 360 represent a horse in one form or another, whence it is obvious that the hobby horse was once a national emblem of the highest import.
In the opinion of this foremost authority all Gaulish and all British coins are contemptible copies of a wondrous Macedonian stater, which circulated at Marseilles, whence the design permeated Gaul and Britain in the form of rude and clownish imitations: this supposed model, the very mark and acme of all other craftsmen, is here illustrated, and the reader can form his own opinion upon its artistic merits.
"It appears to me," says Sir John Evans, "that in most cases the adjuncts found upon the numerous degraded imitations of this type are merely the result of the engraver's laziness or incompetence, where they are not attributable to his ignorance of what the objects he was copying were originally designed to represent.
And although I am willing to recognise a mythological and national element in this adaptation of the Macedonian stater which forms the prototype of the greater part of the ancient British series, it is but rarely that this element can be traced with certainty upon its numerous subsequent modifications.
"[408] The supposed modifications attributed to the laziness or incompetence of British craftsmen are, however, so astonishing and so ably executed that I am convinced the present theory of feeble imitation is ill-founded.
The horses of Philippus are comparatively stiff and wooden by the side of the work of Celtic craftsmen who, _when that was their intention_, animated their creations with amazing verve and _elan_.
Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, who regards our early coins as "deplorable abortions," laments that one remarkable feature in the whole group of numismatic monuments of British and Celtic extraction is the spirit of servile imitation which it breathes, as well as the absence of that religious sentiment which confers a character on the Greek and Roman coinages.
[409] How this writer defines religious sentiment I am unaware, but in any case it is difficult to square his assertion with Akerman's reference to "the great variety of crosses and other totally uninteresting objects" found on the _post_-Roman coinage.
[410] We have already noted certain exquisitely modelled coins of Gaul and there are many more yet to be considered.
Dr. Jewitt concedes that the imitations were not always servile "having occasionally additional features as drapery, a torque round the neck, a bandlet or what not," but this writer obsequiously follows Sir John Evans in the opinion that the stater of Philip was "seized on by the barbarians who came in contact with Greek civilisation as an object of imitation.
In Gaul this was especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said to consist of imitations more or less rude and degenerate of the Macedonian Philippus.
"[411] [Illustration: FIG.
235.--Cambre Castle, from Redruth.
From _Excursions in the County of Cornwall_ (Stockdale, F. W.
L.).]
In 1769 a hoard of 371 gold British coins was discovered on the Cornish hill known as Carn Bre, near Cambourne, in view of which (and many other archæological finds) Borlase entertained the notion that Carn Bre was a prehistoric sanctuary.
This conclusion is seemingly supported by the near neighbourhood of the town Redruth which is believed to have meant--_rhe druth_, or "the swift-flowing stream of the Druids".
It is generally supposed that primitive coins were struck by priests within their sacred precincts,[412] and the extraordinary large collection found upon Carn Bre seems a strong implication that at some period coins were there minted.
We find seemingly the Bre of Carn Bre, doubtless the Gaulish _abri_ or sanctuary, recurrent in Ireland, where at Bri Leith it was believed that Angus Mac Oge, the ever-young and lovely son of Dagda Mor, had his _brugh_ or _bri_, which meant _fairy palace_.
The Cornish Cambourne, which the authorities suppose to have been _Cam bron_, and to have meant _crooked hill_, was more probably like Carn Bre the seat or _abri_ of King Auberon, "Saint" Bron, or King Aubrey.
[Illustration: FIG.
236.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
237.--British.
From Evans.]
[Illustration: FIG.
238.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, I.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
239.--Greek.
From Barthelemy.]
The generic term _coin_ is imagined to be derived from _cuneum_, the Latin accusative of _cuneus_, a wedge, "perhaps," adds Skeat, "allied to cone".
It is, however, almost an invariable rule to designate coins by the design found upon their face, whence "angel," "florin," "rose," "crown," "kreuzer" (cross), and so forth.
The British penny is supposed to have derived its title from the head--Celtic _pen_--stamped upon it:[413] the Italian _ducat_ was so denominated because it bore the image of a _duke_, whose coins were officially known as _ducati_, or "coins of the duchy"; and as not only the legend _cuin_, _cuno_, etc., appears upon early coinage, but also an image of an angel which we have endeavoured to show was regarded as the _Cun_ or _Queen_, it seems likely that the word _coin_ (Gaelic _cuinn_) is as old as the CUIN legend, and may have had no immediate relation either with _cunneus_ or _cone_.
Nevertheless, the Queen of Heaven was occasionally depicted on coins in the form of a _cone_, as on the token here illustrated: on the coins of Cyprus Venus was represented under the symbolism of a cone-shaped stone.
[414] The ancient minters not only customarily portrayed the features of their _pherepolis_ or Fairy of the City, but they occasionally rendered her identity fool-proof by inscribing her name at full length as in the ARETHUSA coin here illustrated: some of our seventh-century money bears the legend LUX--an allusion to the Light of the World; in the East coins were practically religious manifestos and bore inscriptions such as GOD IS ONE; GOD IS THE ETERNAL; THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD ALONE; MAY THE MOST HIGH PERPETUATE HIS KINGDOM; and among the coins of Byzantium is an impression of the Virgin bearing the legend O LADY DO THOU KEEP IN SAFETY.
[415] The early coinage of _Genoa_ represented a gate or _janua_; the Roman coin of Janus was known as the _As_, an implication that Janus, the first and most venerable of the Roman pantheon, was radically _genus_ or King As: in the same way it is customary among us to speak colloquially of "George," or more ceremoniously of "King George," and in all probability the full and formal title of the Roman _As_ was the Janus.
On these coins there figured the _prow_ or forefront of a ship, and the same _prow_ will be noticed on the tokens of Britannia (_ante_, p. 120).
It is remarkable that even 500 years after the coins of Janus had been out of circulation the youth of Rome used to toss money to the exclamation "Heads or Ships"--a very early instance of the _pari mutuel_!
In connection with archaic coins it is curious that one cannot get away from John or Ion.
The first people to strike coins are believed to have been either the Ionians or the Lydians, both of whom inhabited the locality of ancient Troy:[416] as early as the middle of the seventh century B.C., the Ægean island of Ægina, then a great centre of commerce, minted money, but the annalists of China go far further in their claim that as far back as 1091 B.C., a coinage was instituted by _Cheng_, the second King of Chou.
[417] The generic term _token_ is radically _Ken_, _shekel_ is seemingly allied to Sheik, the Moorish or Berberian for a chief, and with _daric_, the Persian coin, one may connote not only Touriack but ultimately Troy or Droia.
Our _guinea_ was so named after gold from Guinea; Guinea presumably was under Touriack or Berber influences, and we shall consider in a subsequent chapter Ogane, a mighty potentate of northern Africa whose toe, like that of Janus, the visitor most reverently kissed.
[Illustration: FIGS.
240 and 241.--Archaic Carvings.]
The Hackney of our early coinage thus not only appears pre-eminently upon it, but the very terms _coin_, _token_, _chink_, and _jingle_,[418] are permeated with the same root, _i.e._, Ecna, Ægina, or Jeanne.
[Illustration: FIGS.
242 and 243.--Archaic Carvings.]
That the worship of the Hackney stretches backward into the remotest depths of antiquity is implied by the carvings of prehistoric horse-heads found notably in the _trous_ or cave shelters of Derbyshire and Dordogne.
The discoveries at Torquay in Kent's Cavern, in Kent's Copse, (or Kent's Hole as it is named in ancient maps), included bone, or horn pins, awls, barbed harpoons, and a neatly formed needle _precisely similar_ to analogous objects found in the rock shelters of Dordogne.
[419] Many representations of horses and horse-heads have been found among the coloured inscriptions at Font de Gaune--the Fount of _Gaune_, and likewise at _Combar_elles: the Combar is here seemingly King Bar, and Bruniquel, another famous site of horse remains, is in all probability connected with the _broncho_.
Perigord, the site of ancient Petrocorii, is radically _peri_, and Petro_cor_ii, the Father or Rock Heart, may be connoted with Iu_char_, the brother of Bryan and the father of Ecna, or _philosophy_.
In England horse-teeth in association with a flint celt have been found at Wiggonholt in Sussex: the term _holt_ is applied in Cornwall to Pictish souterrains, and it is probable that Wiggonholt was once a holt or hole of _eu_ Igon: Ægeon was an alternative title of Briareus of the Hundred Hands, and as already shown Briareus was localised by Greek writers upon a British islet (_ante_, p. 82).
The white horse constituted the arms of Brunswick or Burn's Wick; horses were carved upon the ancient font at _Burn_sall in Yorkshire, and that the _broncho_ was esteemed in Britain by the flint knappers is implied by the etching of a horse's head found upon a polished horse rib in a cave at _Cress_well Crags in Derbyshire.
_Ceres_ or Demeter was represented as a mare, _cres_ is the root of _cresco_--I grow, and among the white horses carved upon the chalk downs of England, one at Bratton was marked by an exaggerated "crescentic tail".
Bratton, or Bra-ton?
Hill, whereon this curious brute was carved, may be connoted with Bradon, and Bratton may also be compared with _prad_, a word which in horsey circles means a horse, whence _prad cove_, a dealer in horses: with the white horse at Bratton may be connoted the horse carved upon the downs at _Pre_ston near Weymouth.
For a mass of miscellaneous and interesting horse-lore the curious reader may refer to Mr. Walter Johnson's _Byways in British Archæology_: the opinion of this painstaking and reliable writer is that the famed white horse of Bratton, like its fellow at Uffington, although usually believed to commemorate victories over the Danes are more probably to be referred to the Late Bronze, or Early Iron Age.
It has already been noted that artificially white horses were inscribed at times on Scotch hills, but these earth-monuments are unrecorded either in Ireland or on the Continent.
On the higher part of Dartmoor there is a bare patch on the granite plateau in form resembling a horse, but whether the clearing is artificial is uncertain: the probabilities are, however, in favour of design for the site is known as White Horse Hill.
[420] The White Horse of Berkshire--the shire of the horse, Al Borak, or the _brok_?--is situated at Uffington, a name which the authorities decode into town or village of Uffa: I do not think this imaginary "Uffa" was primarily a Saxon settler, and it is more probable that Uffa was _hipha_, the Tyrian title of the Great Mother whose name also meant _mare_, whence the Hellenic _hippa_.
The authorities would like to read Avebury, a form of Abury or Avereberie, as _burg of Aeffa_, but near Avebury there is a white horse cut upon the slope of a down, and the adjacent place-name Uffcot suggests that here also was an _hipha_-cot, or cromlech.
The ride of Lady Godiva nude upon a white horse was, as we shall see later, probably the survival of an ancient festival representative of _Good Hipha_, the St. Ive, or St. Eve, who figures here and there in Britain, otherwise Eve, the Mother of All Living.
There used to be traces at Stonehenge of a currus or horse-course, and all the evidence is strongly in favour of the supposition that the horse has been with us in these islands for an exceedingly long time.
When defending their shores against the Roman invaders the British cavalry drove their horses into the sea attacking their enemies while in the water, and one of the facts most impressive to Cæsar was the skill with which our ancestors handled their steeds.
Speaking of the British charioteers he says: "First they advance through all parts of their Army, and throw their javelins, and having wound themselves in among the troops of horse, they alight and fight on foot; the charioteers retiring a little with their chariots, but posting themselves in such a manner, that if they see their masters pressed, they may be able to bring them off; by this means the Britons have the agility of horse, and the firmness of foot, and by daily exercise have attained to such skill and management, that in a declivity they can govern the horses, though at full speed, check and turn them short about, run forward upon the pole, stand firm upon the yoke, and then withdraw themselves nimbly into their chariots.
"[421] According to Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, two-wheeled chariots are delineated on Gnossian seals, among which is found a four-wheeled chariot having the front wheels armed with spikes:[422] the Britons are traditionally supposed to have attached scythes to their wheels, and Homer's description of a chariot fight might well have expressed the sensations of the British Jehu:-his flying steeds His chariot bore, o'er bodies of the slain And broken bucklers trampling; all beneath Was splash'd with blood the axle, and the rails Around the car, as from the horses' feet And from the felloes of the wheels were thrown The bloody gouts; and onward still he pressed, Panting for added triumphs; deeply dyed With gore and carnage his unconquer'd hands.
[423] [Illustration: FIG.
244.--From _A Guide to the Antiquities of Bronze Age_ (B.M.).]
_Biga_, the Greek for chariot, is seemingly _buggy_, the name of a vehicle which was once very fashionable with us: the term, now practically extinct in this country, is still used largely in America, whither like much other supposedly American slang, it was no doubt carried by the pilgrim fathers.
[424] To account satisfactorily for _buggy_ one must assume that the earliest _bigas_ were used ceremoniously in sacred festivals to Big Eye or the Sun: that this was a prevalent custom is proved by the Scandinavian model representing the Solar Chariot here illustrated.
Among the cave-offerings of Crete the model biga was very frequent, and no doubt it had some such mental connection with the constellation King Charles's Wain, as still exists in Breton folklore.
In what was known as King's barrow in Yorkshire, the skeleton of an old man was uncovered accompanied by chariot wheels, the skeletons of two small horses, and the skulls of two pigs: similar sepulchres have been found in great number in the Cambrai--Peronne--Bray district of France.
Not only do we here find the term Santerre applied to an extensive plain, but the exquisite bronze plaques, discs, and flagons recovered from the tombs "appear to be of Greek workmanship".
In the words of Dr. Pycraft (written in August, 1918): "The Marne is rich in such relics--though, happily, they need no little skill in finding, for they date back to prehistoric times ranging from the days of the Stone Age to the dawn of history.
The retreat of this foul-minded brood [the German Army] towards the Vesle will probably mean the doom of the celebrated Menhirs, or standing stones, of the Marne Valley.
These date back to about 6000 B.C., and are remarkable for the fact that they bear curiously sculptured designs, of which the most striking is a conventionalised representation of the human face.
[425] This, and the general character of the ornamentation, bears a close likeness to that found on early objects from Hissarlik and the Greek islands....
These megalithic monuments mark the appearance in Europe of a new race, bringing with them new customs--and, what is still more important, the use of metal.
"[426] Among the finds at Troy, Schliemann recovered some curious two-holed whorls or wheels, in the eyes of which are representations of a horse: he also discovered certain small carved horse-heads.
[427] That the horse was of good omen among the Trojans is implied by the description of the building of Æneas's new colony, for of this new-born _tre_ we read-A grove stood in the city, rich in shade, Where storm-tost Tyrians, past the perilous brine, Dug from the ground by royal Juno's aid A war-steed's head, to far-off days a sign That wealth and prowess should adorn the line.
[428] Such was the auspiciousness of this find that the Trojans forthwith erected an altar to Juno, _i.e._, Cuno?
At the home of the Mother Goddess in Gnossus there has been discovered a seal impression which is described as a noble horse of enormous size being transported on a one-masted boat driven by Minoan oarsmen, seated beneath an awning:[429] it has been assumed by one authority after another that this seal-stone represented and commemorated the introduction into Crete of the thorough-bred horse, but more probably it was the same sacred horse as is traditionally associated with the fall of Troy.
There is some reason to think that this supposedly fabulous episode may have had some historic basis: historians are aware that the Druids were accustomed to make vast wicker frames, sometimes in the form of a bull, and according to Roman writers these huge constructions filled either with criminals or with sacrificial victims were then burnt.
Two enormous white horses constructed from wood and paper formed part of a recent procession in connection with the obsequies of the late Emperor of Korea, and it is quite possible that the wily Greeks strategically constructed a colossal horse by means of which they introduced a picked team of heroes in the Trojan sanctuary.
According to Virgil-Broken by war, long baffled by the force Of fate, as fortune and their hopes decline, The Danaan leaders build a monstrous horse, Huge as a hill, by Pallas' craft divine, And cleft fir-timbers in the ribs entwine.
They feign it vowed for their return, so goes The tale, and deep within the sides of pine And caverns of the womb by stealth enclose Armed men, a chosen band, drawn as the lots dispose.
[430] That this elaborate form of the wicker-cage was introduced into Troy upon some religious pretext would appear almost certain from the inquiry of the aged Priam-but mark, and tell me now, What means this monster, for what use designed?
Some warlike engine?
_or religious vow_?
Who planned the steed, and why?
Come, quick, the truth avow.
[431] The Trojans were guileless enough to "through the gates the monstrous horse convey," and even to lodge it in the citadel fatuously ignoring the recommendation of Capys ... to tumble in the rolling tide, The doubtful gift, for treachery designed, Or burn with fire, or pierce the hollow side.
Unless there had been some highly superstitious feeling attaching to the votive horse, one cannot conceive why the sound advice of Capys was not immediately put into practice.
Although both Greeks and Trojans were accomplished charioteers, riding on horseback was, we are told, so rare and curious an exhibition in ancient Greece that only one single reference is found in the poems of Homer.
According to Gladstone, equestrian exercise was "the half-foreign accomplishment of the Kentauroi," who were fabulously half-man and half-horse: similarly, in most ancient Ireland there are no riders on horseback, and the warriors fight invariably from chariots.
[432] On the other hand, in Etruria there are found representations of what might be a modern race meeting, and the effect of these pictures upon the early investigators of Etrurian tombs seems to have been most surprising.
In the words of Mrs. Hamilton Gray: "The famous races of Britain seemed there to find their type.
The racers, the race-stand, the riders with their various colours, the judges, the spectators, and the prizes were all before us.
We were unbelieving like most of our countrymen.... Our understandings and imaginations were alike perplexed.
"[433] The verb to _canter_ is supposed to be derived from the pace at which pilgrims proceeded to _Canter_bury.
But pilgrims either footed it or else ambled leisurely along on their palfreys, and the connection between canter and Cantuar is seemingly much deeper than supposed.
At _Kintyre_ in Scotland the patron saint is St. _Cheiran_, who may be connoted with _Chiron_, the wise and good _Kentaur_ chief; and this connection of Chiron-Kentaur, Cheiran-Kintyre is the more curious, inasmuch as both an Irish MS. and Ptolemy refer independently by different terms to the Mull of Kintyre, as "the height of the _horse_".
[434] [Illustration: FIG.
245.--From _The Heroes_ (Kingsley, C.).]
The illustration herewith is an early Victorian conception of Chiron, the wise and kindly Kentaur King, and CANTORIX, an inscription found on the spectral steeds of Fig.
146, might seemingly without outrage be interpreted as _Canto rex_, or _Song King_: in Welsh _canto_, a song or _chant_, was _gan_, and the title _tataguen_ meant "the father of the muse";[435] according to mythology the walls of Troy were built by Oceanus to the music of Apollo's lyre.
It would appear probable that Kent, the county of Invicta, the White Horse, was pre-eminently a horse-breeding county, as it remains to this day: part of Cantuarburig is known as Hackington, and in view of the Iceni hackney-coins there is little doubt that horse-breeding was extensively practised wherever the equine Eceni, Cantii, and Cenomagni were established.
It is noteworthy that the Icknield Way was known alternatively as Hackington Way, Hackney Way, Acknil Way, and Hikenilde Street.
[436] It is a curious fact that practically the first scratchings of a horse represent the animal as bridled, whence the authorities assume that horses were kept semi-domesticated in a compound for purposes of food: immense collections of horse bones have been discovered, whence it seems probable that horses were either sacrificed in hecatombs or were eaten in large quantities; but the Tartars kept horses mainly for the mare's milk.
Pliny mentions a horse-eating tribe, in Northern Spain, entitled the Concanni, with which Iberians may be connoted the Congangi of Cumberland, whose headquarters were supposedly Kendal: the western point of Carnarvonshire is named by Ptolemy Gangani, and the same geographer mentions another Gangani in the West of Hibernia.
The Hibernian Ganganoi, situated in the neighbourhood of the Shannon, worshipped a Sengann whose name is supposed to mean _Old Gann_: we have illustrated the earthwork wheel cross of Shanid (_ante_ p. 55), and have suggested the equation of Sen Gann with Sinjohn.
In all probability the fairy known in Ireland as Gancanagh, who appears in lonesome valleys and makes love to milkmaids, is a survival of the Gangani's All Father.
The name Konken occurs among the kingly chronology of Archaic Britain; the most ancient inscribed stone in Wales is a sepulchral stone of a certain Cingen: the Saxon name Cunegonde is translated as having meant _royal lady_.
The French _cancan_, an exuberant dance which is associated with Paris, the city of the Parisii, may be a survival from the times of the Celtiberian Concanni: Paris was the Adonis of the Hellenes, or Children of Hellas, and it is not unlikely that the lament _helas!_ or _alas!_ was the cry wailed by the women on the annual waning of the Solar Power.
At Helstone in Cornwall--supposed to be named from _hellas_, a marsh--there is still danced an annual Furry dance of which the feature is a long linked chain similar to that of the French farandole: if _faran_, like _fern_, be the plural of _far_, it follows that the _furry_ and the _faran_dole were alike festivals of the Great Fire, Phare, Fairy, Phairy, or Peri; the Parisii who settled in the Bridlington district are by some scholars assigned to Friesland.
Persia, the home of the peris, is still known locally as Farsistan, whence the name Farsees or Parsees is now used to mean fire worshippers: the Indian Parsees seem chiefly to be settled in the district of India, which originally formed part of the ancient Indian Konkan kingdom, and the probabilities are that the Konkani of the East, like the Cancanii of the West, were worshippers of the Khan Khan, or King of Kings.
In the most ancient literature of India entire hymns are addressed to the Solar Horse, and the estimation in which the White Horse was held in Persia may be judged from the annual salutation ceremony thus described by Williamson in _The Great Law_: "The procession to salute the God formed long before the rising of the sun.
The High Priest was followed by a long train of Magi, in spotless white robes chanting hymns and carrying the sacred fire on silver censers.
Then came 365 youths in scarlet, to represent the days of the year, and the colour of fire.
These were followed by the chariot of the sun, empty, decorated with garlands, and drawn by superb white horses, harnessed with pure gold.
Then came a white horse of magnificent size, his forehead blazing with gems, in honour of Mithras.
Close behind him rode the king, in a chariot of ivory inlaid with gold, followed by his royal kindred, in embroidered garments and a long train of nobles, riding on camels richly caparisoned.
This gorgeous retinue, facing the East, slowly ascended Mount Orontes.
Arrived at the summit, the high priest assumed his tiara, wreathed with myrtle, and hailed the first rays of the rising sun with incense and with prayer.
The other Magi gradually joined him in singing hymns to Ormuzd, the source of all blessings, by whom the radiant Mithra had been sent to gladden the earth, and preserve the principle of life.
Finally, they all joined in the one universal chorus of praise, while king, princes, and nobles prostrated themselves before the orb of day."
There is every likelihood that this festival was celebrated on a humbler scale at many a British "Hallicondane," and as the glory of the horse or courser is its speed--"swift is the sun in its course"--we may also be sure that no pains were spared to secure a worthy representative of the Supreme Ecna, Ekeni, or Hackney.
In Egypt the whole land was ransacked in order to discover the precise and particular Bull, which by its special markings was qualified to play Apis, and when this precious beast was found there were national rejoicings.
Reasoning by analogy it is probable that not only did each British horse-centre have its local races, but that there was in addition what might be called a Grand National either at Stonehenge or at one or another of the tribal centres.
In such case the winners would become the sacred steeds, which, as we know, were maintained by the Druids in the sanctuaries, and from whose neighing or knowing auguries were drawn.
Such was the value placed in Persia upon the augury of a horse's neigh, that on one memorable occasion the rights of two claimants to the throne were decided by the fact that the horse of the favoured one neighed first.
[437] It is probable that the primitive horse-races of the Britons were elemental Joy-days, Hey-days, and Holy-days, similar to the time-honoured Scouring and Cleansing of the White Horse of Berkshire or Barrukshire.
On the occasion of this festival in 1780, _The Reading Mercury_ informed its readers that: "Besides the customary diversions of horse-racing, foot-races, etc., many uncommon rural diversions and feats of activity were exhibited to a greater number of spectators than ever assembled on any former occasion.
Upwards of 30,000 persons were present, and amongst them most of the nobility and gentry of this and the neighbouring counties, and the whole was concluded without any material accident."
[Illustration: FIG.
246.
From _The Scouring of the White Horse_ (Hughes, T.).]
Below the head of the White Horse, which at festival time was thoroughly scoured and restored to its pristine whiteness, is a huge scoop in the downs forming a natural amphitheatre, and at the base of this so-called "manger" are the clear traces of artificial banks or tiers.
In 1825 the games were held at Seven Barrows, distant _two miles_ in a south-easterly direction from the White Horse itself.
These Seven Barrows are imagined to be the burial places of seven chieftains slain at the battle of Ashdown, and adjacent mounds supposedly contain the corpses of the rank and file.
But the starting-post of Lewes race-course, which is also _two miles_ in extent, is shown in the Ordnance map as being likewise situated at a group of seven tumuli, and as the winning-post at Lewes is at the base of Offham Hill the fact of starting at Seven Barrows, racing for two miles, and finishing respectively at Offham and Uffington is too conspicuous to be coincidence.
Referring to the Stonehenge track Stukeley writes: "This course which is two miles long," and he adds casually, "there is an obscure barrow or two round which they returned".
At Uffington are the remains of a cromlech known as Wayland's Smithy, Wayland, here as elsewhere, being an invisible, benevolent fairy blacksmith[438]: on Offham Hill, Lewes, stands an inn entitled the "Blacksmith's Arms," and below it Wallands Park.
The sub-district of Lewes, where the De Vere family seem to have been very prominent, contains the parishes of St. John, South_over_, and Berwick: opposite the Castle Hill is Brack Mount, also a district called The Brooks; running past All Saints Church is Brooman's Lane, and the "rape" of Lewes contains the hundreds of Barcomb and Preston.
The principal church in Lewes is that of St. Michael, which is known curiously as St. Michaels in _Foro_, and it stands, in all probability like the Brutus Stone, in _Fore_ Street, Totnes, in what was the centre or _forum_ of the original settlement.
The name Lewes is thought to be _lowes_, which means barrows or toothills, and this derivation is no doubt correct, for within the precincts of Lewes Castle, which dominates the town, are still standing two artificial mounds nearly 800 feet apart from centre to centre.
These two barrows, known locally as the Twin Mounds of Lewes, may be connoted with the _duas tumbas_ or two tumps, elsewhere associated with St. Michael: at their base lies Lansdowne Place, and at another Elan's Town, or Wick, _i.e._, Alnwick on the river Aln or Alone, near Berwick, we find a remarkable custom closely associated with so-called Twinlaw or Tounlow cairns.
This festival is thus described by Hope: "On St. Mark's Day the houses of the new freemen are distinguished by a holly-tree planted before each door, as the signal for their friends to assemble and make merry with them.
About eight o'clock the candidates for the franchise, being mounted on horseback and armed with swords, assemble in the market-place, where they are joined by the chamberlain and bailiff of the Duke of Northumberland, attended by two men armed with halberds.
The young freemen arranged in order, with music playing before them and accompanied by a numerous cavalcade, march to the west-end of the town, where they deliver their swords.
They then proceed under the guidance of the moorgrieves through a part of their extensive domain, till they reach the ceremonial well.
The sons of the oldest freemen have the honour of taking the first leap.
On the signal being given they pass through the bog, each being allowed to use the method and pace which to him shall seem best, some running, some going slow, and some attempting to jump over suspected places, but all in their turns tumbling and wallowing like porpoises at sea, to the great amusement of the populace, who usually assemble in vast numbers.
After this aquatic excursion, they remount their horses and proceed to perambulate the remainder of their large common, of which they are to become free by their achievement.
In passing the open part of the common the young freemen are obliged to alight at intervals, and place a stone on a cairn as a mark of their boundary, till they come near a high hill called the _Twinlaw_ or Tounlaw Cairns, when they set off at full speed, and contest the honour of arriving first on the hill, where the names of the freemen of Alnwick are called over.
When arrived about _two miles_ from the town they generally arrange themselves in order, and, to prove their equestrian abilities, set off with great speed and spirit over bogs, ditches, rocks, and rugged declivities till they arrive at _Rottenrow Tower_ on the confines of the town, the foremost claiming the honour of what is termed 'winning the boundaries,' and of being entitled to the temporary triumphs of the day.
"[439] The occurrence of this horsey festival on St. _Mark's_ Day may be connoted with the fact that in Welsh and Cornish _march_, in Gaelic _marc_, meant _horse_: obviously _marc_ is allied to the modern _mare_.
There is a Rottenrow at Lewes, and Rottenrow Tower on the confines of Alnwick is suggestive of the more famous Rotten Row in London.
It would seem that this site was also the bourne or goal of steeplechases similar to those at Alnwick, for upwards of a mile westward there was once a street called Michael's Grove, of which the site is now occupied by Ovington Square.
This "Ovington" may be connoted not only with Offham Hill and Uffington of the White Horse, but also with Oving in Bucks, where is an earthwork also a spring known as "the Horse Spring," traditionally associated with Horsa.
[440] Ovington Square at Kensington seems also to have been designated Brompton Grove, and as _Bronde_sbury, a few miles northward, was known alternatively as _Bromesbury_, and _Bromfield_, in Shropshire, as _Brunefield_, we may safely regard the _Brom_ which appears here, and in numerous Bromptons, Bromsgroves, Bromsberrows, Bromleas, also Brimham Rocks, as being the same word as _Bron_.
The Latin name for broom--_planta genista_--apart from other evidence in my notebooks is an implication that the golden broom was deemed a symbol of Genista, the Good Genus or Janus: and as Janus of January, and _planta genista_, was the _first_, the word _prime_ may be connoted with _broom_.
On 1st January, _i.e._, the first day of the first month, it was customary in England to make a globe of blackthorn, a plant which is the first to come into flower: we have already connoted the thorn or spica with the Prime Cause, and with the prime letter of the alphabet A, or Aleph, whence in all probability _bramble_ may be equated also with _broom_ and _prime_.
Mitton, in _Kensington_, observes that before being Brompton Grove this part of the district had been known as Flounders Field,[441] but why tradition does not say.
Flounders Field is on the verge of, if not within, the district known as Kensington Gore, and those topographers who have assigned _gore_ to the old English term meaning _mud_ are probably correct.
From Kensington Gore, or Flounders Field, we may assume that the freemen of Kensington once wallowed their way as at Alnwick to Rottenrow, and the plight of these sportsmen must have been the more pitiable inasmuch as, at any rate at Alnwick, the freemen were by custom compelled to wear white robes.
In this connection it may be noted that at the triennial road-surveying ceremony known in Guernsey as the _Chevauchee_ or Cavalcade of St. Michael (last held in 1837), a white wand was carried and the regimental band of the local militia was robed in long white smocks.
"This very unmilitary costume," says a writer in _Folklore_, "must, I think, have been traditionally associated with the Chevauchee as it is quite unlike all the uniforms of that date worn by our local militia; it may have been a survival of some ancient, perhaps rustic, possibly priestly band of minstrels and musicians.
"[442] Whether our Whit or White Monday parade of carthorses has any claim to antiquity I am unaware, but it is noteworthy that the Scouring of the Uffington White Horse was celebrated on Whit Monday with great joyous festivity.
The Cavalcade of St. Michael, in which all the nobility and gentry took part, was ordained to be held on the Monday of Mid May and was evidently a most imposing ritual.
It seems to have culminated at the Perron du Roy (illustrated on p. 315), which was once the boundary stone of the Royal Fief: at this spot stood once an upright stone known as _La Rogue des Fees_, and a repast to the revellers was here served in a circular grass hollow where according to tradition the fays used to dance.
During the procession the lance-bearer carried a wand eleven and a quarter feet long, the number of Vavasseurs was eleven, and it is possible that the eleven pools in Kensington, which were subsequently merged into the present Serpentine,[443] were originally constructed or adapted to this Elphin number in order to make a ceremonial course for the freemen floundering from Flounders Field to Rottenrow.
Kensington in days gone by was pre-eminently a district of springs and wells; the whole of south-west London was more or less a swamp or "holland," and the early Briton, whose prehistoric canoe was found some years ago at Kew, might if he had wished have wallowed the whole way from Turnham Green, _via_ Brook Green, Parson's Green, Baron's Court, Walham and Fulham to Tyburn.
If it be true that Boudicca were able to put 4000 war chariots into the field there must at that time have been numerous stud farms, and the low-lying pastures of the larger Kent, which once contained London, were ideal for the purpose.
The Haymarket is said to have derived its name from the huge amount of hay required by the mews of Charing Cross; a mile or so westward is Hay Hill; old maps indicate enormous mews in the Haymarket district, and there are indications that some of the present great mews and stables of south-western London are the relics of ancient parks or compounds.
According to Homer-By Dardanus, of cloud-compelling Jove Begotten, was Dardania peopled first, Ere sacred Ilium, populous city of men, Was founded on the plain; as yet they dwelt On spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs.
To Dardanus was Erichthonius born, Great King, the wealthiest of the sons of men; For him were pastur'd in the marshy mead, Rejoicing with their foals, three thousand mares; Them Boreas, in the pasture where they fed, Beheld, enamour'd; and amid the herd In likeness of a coal-black steed appear'd; Twelve foals, by him conceiving, they produc'd.
These, o'er the teeming corn-fields as they flew, Skimm'd o'er the standing ears, nor broke the haulm; And o'er wide Ocean's bosom as they flew, Skimm'd o'er the topmost spray of th' hoary sea.
[444] Boreas, whom we may connote with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, or Bride, is here represented as _wallowing_, a term which Skeat derives from the Anglo-Saxon _wealwian_, to roll round: he adds, "see voluble," but in view of the world-wide rites of immersion or baptism it is more seemly to connect _wallow_ with _hallow_.
Mr. Weller, Senr., preferred to spell his name with a "V": there is no doubt that Weller and Veller were synonymous terms, and therefore that Fulham, in which is now Walham Green, was originally a home of Wal or Ful, perhaps the same as Wayland or Voland, the Blacksmith of Wayland's Smithy and of Walland Park.
[445] It is supposed that Fulham was the swampy home of _fowlen_, or water _fowls_, but it is an equally reasonable conjecture that it was likewise a tract of marshy meads whereon the _foalen_ or foals were pastured.
As already noted the Tartar version of the Pied Piper represents the Chanteur or Kentaur as a _foal_, coursing perpetually round the world.
The coins of the Gaulish Volcae exhibit a _wheel_ or _veel_ with the inscription VOL, others in conjunction with a coursing horse are inscribed VOOL, and we find the head of a remarkable maned horse on the coins of the Gaulish Felikovesi.
As _felix_ means happy, one may connote the hobby horse with _happi_ness, or one's _hobby_, and it is not improbable that both Felixstowe and Folkestone were settlements of the adjacent Felikovesi, whose coins portray the Hobby's head or Foal.
[Illustration: FIGS.
247 to 253.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
254 and 255.--Gaulish.
From Barthelemy.]
At Land's End, opposite the titanic headland known as Pardenick, or Pradenic, is Cairn Voel which is also known locally as "The Diamond Horse":[446] there is likewise a headland called The Horse, near Kynance Cove, and a stupendous cliff-saddle at Zennor,[447] named the Horse's Back.
It would thus seem that the mythology of the Voel extended to the far West, and it is not improbable that Tegid Voel, the Consort of Keridwen the Mare, _alias_ Cendwen, meant _inter alia_ the Good Foal.
Prof. Macalister has recently hooked up from the deep waters of Irish mythology a deity whose name Fal he connotes with a Teutonic Phol.
This Fal, a supposedly non-Aryan, neolithic (?)
"pastoral horse-divinity," belonging to an older stratum of belief than the divine beings among the Tuatha De Danann, Prof. Macalister associates with the famous stone of Fal at Tara, and he remarks: "He looks like a Centaur, but is in parentage and disposition totally different from the orthodox Centaurs.
He is, in fact, just the sort of being that would develop out of an ancient hippanthropic deity who had originally no connection with Centaurs, but who found himself among a people that had evolved the conception of the normal type of those disagreeable creatures.
"[448] In Cornwall is a river Fal; a _well_ is a spring, the _whale_ or elephant of the sea was venerated because like the elephant it gushed out a fountain of water from its head.
The Wilton crescent, opposite one of the ancient conduits by Rotten Row, Kensington, may well have meant _Well town_, for the whole of this district was notoriously a place of wells: not only do we find Wilton Crescent, but in the immediate neighbourhood of Ovington Square and Flounders Field is _Walton_ Street and Hooper's Court.
Sennen Cove at Land's End was associated with a mysterious sea-spirit known as the Hooper, and we shall meet again with Hooper, or Jupiter, the Hidden one in "Hooper's Hide," an alternative title for the game of Blind Man's Buff.
The authorities derive _avon_, or _aune_, the Celtic for a gently flowing river, from _ap_, the Sanscrit for water, but it is more likely that there is a closer connection with Eve, or Eva--Welsh Efa--whose name is the Hebrew for life or enlivening, whence Avon would resolve most aptly into the _enlivening one_.
Not only are rivers actually the enlivening ones, but the ancients philosophically assigned the origin of all life to water or ooze.
According to Persian, or Parthian philosophy--and Parthia may be connoted in passing with Porthia, an old name for the Cornish St. Ives, for St. Ive was said to be a Persian bishop--the Prime appointed six pure and beneficent Archangels to supervise respectively Fire, Metals, Agriculture, Verdure, the Brutes, and Water.
With respect to the last the injunction given was: "I confide to thee, O Zoroaster!
the water that flows; that which is stagnant; the water of rivers; that which comes from afar and from the mountains; the water from rain and from springs.
Instruct men that it is water which gives strength to all living things.
It makes all verdant.
Let it not be polluted with anything dead or impure, that your victuals, boiled in pure water, may be healthy.
Execute thus the words of God.
"[449] Etymology points to the probability that water in every form, even the stagnant _fen_--the same word as _Aven_, _font_, and _fount_--was once similarly sacred in Britain, whence it may follow that even although Fulham and Walham were foul, vile, evil, and filthy,[450] the root _fal_ still meant originally the _enlivening all_.
The word _pollute_ (to be connoted with _pool_, Phol, or Fal) is traced by Skeat to _polluere_, which means not necessarily foul, but merely to _flow over_.
The _willow_ tree (Welsh _helygen_), which grows essentially by the water-side, may be connoted with _wallow_.
Of Candian or Cretan god-names only two are tentatively known, to wit--Velchanos and Apheia: Apheia may be connoted with Hephaestus, the Greek title of Vulcan or Vulcanus, and the connection between Hephaestus and Velchanos is clearly indicated by the inscribed figure of Velchanos which appears upon the coins of the Candian town of Phaestus.
That the _falcon_ was an emblem of the Volcae is obvious from the bird on Fig.
248, and the older forms of the English place-name Folkestone, _i.e._, Folcanstan, Folcstane, Fulchestan supposed to mean "stone of a man Folca," more probably imply a _Folk Stone_, or Falcon Stone, or Vulcan Stone.
The Saxon gentleman named Folca is in all probability pure imagination.
The more British title of Wayland or Voland, the Vulcan or Blacksmith of Uffington, and doubtless also of the Blacksmith of Walland's Park, Offham, is Govannon.
One may trace Govan, the British Hammersmith, from St. Govans at Fairfield near Glasgow, or from St. Govan's Head in South Wales, to St. Govan's Well, opposite De Vere Gardens in Kensington.
In Welsh _govan_ was a generic term for _smith_; one of the triune aspects of St. Bride was that of a metal worker, and it is reasonable to equate the Lady Godiva of _Coven_try, with Coventina or Coven of the Tyne, whose images from Coventina's Well in Northumberland are here reproduced.
As will be seen she figures as Una or the One holding an olive branch, and as Three holding a phial or vial, a fire, and a what-not too obscure for specification.
"The founding of the Temple of Coventina," says Clayton, "must be ascribed to the Roman officers of the Batavian Cohort, who had left a country where the sun shines every day and where in pagan times springs and running waters were objects of adoration.
"[451] But is there really no other possible alternative?
Mr. Hope describes the goddess represented in Fig.
256 as floating on the leaf of a water-lily; the legend of the patron saint of St. Ives in Cornwall is to the effect that this maiden came floating over the waves upon a leaf, and it thus seems likely that Coventry, the home of Lady Godiva, derived its name from being the _tre_, _tree_, or _trou_ of Coven, or St. Govan.
[Illustration: FIG.
256.--From _The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England_ (Hope, R.
C.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
257.--From _The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England_ (Hope, R.
C.).]
In his account of a great and triumphant jousting held in London on May Day, 1540, on which occasion all the horses were trapped in _white_ velvet, Stow several times alludes to an Ivy Bridge by St. Martin's in the Fields, and this Ivy Bridge must have been closely adjacent to what is now Coventry Street and Cranbrook Street.
_Crene_ is Greek for _brook_,[452] the Hippocrene or the _horse brook_ was the fountain struck by the hoof of the divine Pegasus: _Cran_brook Street is a continuation of Coventry Street, and I rather suspect that the neighbouring Covent Garden is not, as popularly supposed, a corruption of Convent Garden, but was from time immemorial a grove or garden of Good Coven.
The Maiden Lane here situated probably derived its title from a sign or tablet of the Maiden similar to the Coventina pictures, and it is not improbable that Coven or Goodiva once reigned from Covent Garden _via_ Coventry Street to St. Govan's Well in Kensington.
Near Ripon is an earthwork _abri_ known seemingly as Givendale,[453] and on Hambleton Hill in this neighbourhood used to be a White Horse carved on the down side.
[454] The primal Coventrys were not improbably a tribal oak or other sacred _tree_, such as the Braintree in Essex near Bradwell,[455] and the Pick_tree_ previously noted.
At Coveney, in Cambridgeshire--query, _Coven ea_ or Coven's island?--bronze bucklers have been found which in design "bear a close resemblance to the ribbon pattern seen on several Mycenæan works of art, and the inference is that even as far north as Britain, the Mycenæan civilisation found its way, the intermediaries being possibly Phoenician traders".
[456] But the Phoenicians having now been evicted from the court it is manifestly needful to find some other explanation.
Coveney is not many miles from St. Ives, Huntingdon, named supposedly after Ivo, a Persian bishop, who wandered through Europe in the seventh century.
Possibly this same episcopal Persian founded Effingham near Bookham and Boxhill, for at the foot of the Buckland Hills is Givon's Grove, once forming part of a Manor named Pachevesham.
On the downs above is Epsom, which certainly for some centuries has been _Ep's home_,[457] and the Pacheve of Pachevesham was possibly the same _Big Hipha_: there is second Evesham in the same neighbourhood.
Speaking of the British inscription EPPILOS, Sir John Rhys observes that it is very probably a derivation from _epo_, a horse; and of the town of _Ep_eiacon, now _Eb_chester, the same authority states: "The name seems to signify a place for horses or cavalry".
[458] Near Pachevesham, below Epsom, is an old inn named "The Running Mare".
[Illustration: FIG.
258.--British.
From _A New Description of England and Wales_ (Anon, 1724).]
In connection with Givon, or Govan, or Coven, it is interesting to note that the word used by Tacitus to denote a British chariot is _covinus_.
Local tradition claims that the scythes of Boudiccas _coveni_ were made at Birmingham, and there may be truth in this for the _bir_ of Birmingham is the radical of _faber_, feu_ber_, or _fire father_, and likewise of _Lefebre_, the French equivalent of Smith.
That Birmingham was an erstwhile home of the followers of the Fire Father, the Prime, or Forge of Life, is deducible not only from the popular "Brum" or "Brummagem," but from the various forms recorded of the name.
[459] The variant Brymecham may be modernised into Prime King; the neighbouring Bromsgrove is equivalent to Auberon's Grove; Bromieham was no doubt a home of the Brownies, and the authorities are sufficiently right in deriving from this name "Home of the sons of _Beorn_".
Bragg is a common surname in Birmingham: Perkunas or _Peroon_, the Slav Pater or Jupiter, was always represented with a hammer.
In Fig.
175 _ante_, p. 332, the British Fire Father, or Hammersmith, was labouring at what is assumed to be a helmet or a burnie, and Fig.
258 is evidently a variant of the same subject.
In the _Red Book of Hergest_ there occurs a line--"With Math the ancient, with Gofannon," from which one might gather that Math and Gofannon were one.
In any case the word _smith_ is apparently _se mith_, _se meath_, or _Se Math_, and the Smeath's Ridge at Avebury was probably named after the heavenly Smith or _Gofan_.
According to Rice Holmes the bronze image of a god with a hammer has been found in England, but where or when is not stated: it is, however, generally believed that this Celtic Hammer Smith was a representation of the Dis Pater,[460] to whom the Celts attributed their origin.
The London place-name Hammersmith appears in Domesday Book as Hermoderwode: in Old High German _har_ or _herr_ meant _high_, whence I suggest that Hermoderwode has not undergone any unaccountable phonetic change into Hammersmith, but was then surviving German for _Her moder_ or _High Mother_ Wood.
From Broadway Hammersmith to Shepherd's Bush runs "The Grove," and that originally this grove had cells of the Selli in it is somewhat implied by the name Silgrave, still applied to a side-street leading into The Grove.
"Brewster Gardens," "Bradmore House," "British Grove," and Broadway all alike point similarly to Hammersmith being a pre-Saxon British settlement.
Bradmore was the Manor house at Hammersmith, and the existence of lewes, leys, or barrows on this Brad moor is implied by the modern Leysfield Road.
The lewes at Folkestone were in all probability situated on the commanding Leas, and as the local pronunciation of Lewis in the Hebrides is "the Lews" there likewise were probably two or more lowes or laws whence the laws were proclaimed and administered.
Bradmore is suggestive of St. Bride, the heavenly Hammersmith who was popularly associated with a falcon, and the great Hammersmith or Vulcan may be connoted with the Golden _Falcon_, whose memory has seemingly been preserved in Hammersmith at Goldhawk Road.
When Giraldus Cambrensis visited the shrine of the glorious Brigit at Kildare he was told the tale of a marvellous lone hawk or falcon popularly known as "Brigit's Bird".
This beauteous tame falcon is reported to have existed for many centuries, and customarily to have perched on the summit of the Round Tower of Kildare.
[461] Doubtless this story was the parallel of a fairy-tale current at Pharsipee in Armenia.
"There," says Maundeville, "is found a sparrow-hawk upon a fair perch, and a fair lady of fairie, who keeps it; and whoever will watch that sparrow-hawk seven days and seven nights, and, as some men say, three days and three nights, without company and without sleep, that fair lady shall give him, when he hath done, the first wish that he will wish of earthly things; and that hath been proved oftentimes.
"[462] Goldhawk Road at Hammersmith is supposedly an ancient Roman Road, and in 1884 the remains of a causeway were uncovered.
Both _road_ and _route_ are the same word as the British _rhod_, and Latin _rota_ meaning a wheel, and it is likely that the term roadway meant primarily a route along which _rotæ_ or wheels might travel: as _rotten_ would be the ancient plural of _rot_, Rottenrow may thus simply have meant a roadway for wheeled traffic.
According to Borlase the British fighting chariot was a _rhod_, the rout of this traffic presumably caused _ruts_ upon the route, whence it is quite likely that Rotten Row was a rutty and foul thoroughfare.
The ordinary supposition that this title is a corruption of _route du roi_ may possibly have some justification, for immediately opposite is Kingston House, and at one time Rotten Row was known as the King's Road: originally the world of fashion used to canter round a circular drive or ring of trees, some of which are still carefully preserved on the high ground near the present Tea House, and thus it might reasonably follow that Rotten Row was a corrupted form of _rotunda_ row.
Opposite to Rotten Row are Rutland Gate and Rutland House, where lived the Dukes of Rutland, anciently written Roteland.
Rutlandshire neighbours Leicester, a town known to the Romans under the name of Ratae; Leicestershire is watered by the river Welland, and in Stukeley's time there existed in a meadow near Ratae "two great banks called _Raw_dikes, which speculators look on as unaccountable".
[463] That Leicester or Ratae paid very high reverence to the horse may be inferred from the fact that here the annual Riding of the George was one of the principal solemnities of the town, and one which the inhabitants were bound legally to attend.
In addition to the Rottenrows at Kensington and Lewes there is a Rottenrow in Bucks, and a Rottenrow near Reading, all of which, together with Rottenrow Tower near Alnwick, must be considered in combination.
Redon figures as a kingly name among the British chronologies, and as horses are associated so intimately with the various Rotten Rows, the name Redon may be connoted with Ruadan, a Celtic "saint" who is said to have presented King Dermot with thirty sea-green horses which rose from the sea at his bidding.
Sea horses are a conspicuous feature on the coins of the Redones who dwelt in Gaul and commanded the mouth of the Loire.
[464] The horse was certainly at home at Canterbury where Rodau's Town is in immediate proximity to what is now called Riding Gate.
There is a river Roden at Wroxeter, a river Roding in Essex; Yorkshire is divided into three divisions called Ridings, and in East Riding, in the churchyard of the village of Rudstone, there stands a celebrated monolith which is peculiar inasmuch as its depth underground was said to equal its height above.
[465] There is another Rudstone near Reading Street, Kent, and the Givon's Grove near Epsom is either in or immediately adjacent to a district known as Wrydelands.
To _ride_ was once presumably to play the rôle of the Kentaur Queen, whether _equine_ as represented in the Coventry Festival or as riding in a triumphal _biga_, _rhod_, _wain_ or _wagon_.
That such riding was once a special privilege is obvious from the statement of Tacitus: "She claimed a right to be conveyed in her carriage to the Capitol; a right by ancient usage allowed only to the sacerdotal order, the vestal virgins, and the statues of the gods".
[466] That the Lady of Coventry was the Coun or Queen is possibly implied by the _Coun_don within the borough of modern Coventry which also embraces a Foleshill,[467] and Radford.
The coins of the Gaulish Rotomagi, whose headquarters were the Rouen district, depict the horse not merely cantering but galloping apace, whence obviously the Rotomagi were an equine or Ecuina people.
With their coins inscribed Ratumacos may be compared the coinage of the Batavian Magusæ which depicts "a sea horse to the right," and is inscribed MAGUS.
[468] Magus, as we have seen, was a title of the Wandering Geho, Jehu, or Jew, and he may here be connoted with the "Splendid Mane" which figures under the name Magu, particularly in Slav fairy-tale:-Magu, Horse with Golden Mane, I want your help yet once again, Walk not the earth but fly through space As lightnings flash and thunders roll, Swift as the arrow from the bow Come quick, yet so that none may know.
[469] [Illustration: FIGS.
259 and 260.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
The French _roue_ meaning a wheel, and _rue_, a roadway, are probably not decayed forms of the Latin _rota_ but _ruder_, more _rudimentary_, and more _radical_: like the Candian Rhea, the Egyptian Ra or Re, and our _ray_, they are probably the Irish _rhi_, the Spanish _rey_, and the French _roi_.
There is a river Rea in Shropshire and a second river Rea upon which stands _Bir_mingham: that this Rea was connected with the Candian Rhea is possible from the existence at Birmingham of a Canwell, or Canewell.
Near Cambourne, or Cam_bre_, is the _rhe druth_ (Redruth) which the authorities decode into stream of the Druids.
Running through the village of _Ber_riew in Wales, is a rivulet named the Rhiw, and rising on _Bar_don Hill, Leicestershire, is "the bright and clear little river Sence".
As the word _mens_, or _mind_, is usually assigned to Minerva, Rhea was possibly the origin of _reason_, or St. Rhea, and to _Rhi Vera_ may be assigned _river_ and _revere_; a _reverie_ is a _brown_ study.
According to Persian philosophy the soul of man was fivefold in its essence, one-fifth being "the Roun, or Rouan, the principle of practical judgment, imagination, volition":[470] another fifth, "the Okho or principle of conscience," seemingly corresponds to what western philosophers termed the _Ego_ or _I myself_.
In the neighbourhood of Brough in Westmorland is an ancient cross within an ancient camp, known as Rey Cross, and that Leicester or Ratae--which stands upon the antique _Via Devana_ or Divine Way--was intimately related with the Holy Rood is obvious from the modern Red Cross Street and High Cross Street.
The ruddy _Rood_ was no doubt radically the rolling four-spoked wheel, felloe, felly, periphery, or brim, and although perhaps Reading denoted as is officially supposed, "Town of the Children of Reada," the name Read, Reid, Rea, Wray, Ray, etc., did not only mean ruddy or red-haired.
I question whether Ripon really owes its title as supposed to _ripa_, the Latin for bank of a stream.
The town hall of Reading is situated at Valpy Street in Forbury Gardens on what is known as The Forbury, seemingly the _Fire Barrow_ or prehistoric Forum, and doubtless a holy fire once burned ruddily at Rednal or Wredinhal near Bromsgrove.
In Welsh _rhedyn_ means _fern_, whence the authorities translate Reddanick in Cornwall into the ferny place: the connection, however, is probably as remote and imaginary as that between Redesdale and reeds.
The place-name Rothwell, anciently Rodewelle, is no doubt with reason assumed to be "well of the rood or cross".
Ruth means _pity_, and the ruddy cross of St. John, now (almost) universally sacrosanct to Pity, was, I think, probably the original Holy Rood.
The knights of St. John possessed at Barrow in Leicester or Ratae a site now known as Rothley Temple, and as _th_, _t_, and _d_, are universally interchangeable it is likely that this Rothley was once _Roth lea_ or Rood Lea.
Similarly Redruth, in view of the neighbouring Carn Bre, was probably not "Stream of the Druids," but an _abri_ of the Red Rood.
The sacred rod or pole known generally as the Maypole was almost invariably surmounted by one or more _rotæ_, or wheels, and the name "Radipole rood" at Fulham (nearly opposite Epple St.) renders it likely that the Maypole was once known alternatively as the Rood Pole.
From the Maypoles flew frequently the ruddy cross of Christopher or George.
In British mythology there figures a goddess of great loveliness named Arianrod, which means in Welsh the "Silver Wheel": the Persians held that their Jupiter was the whole circuit of heaven, and Arianrhod, or "Silver Wheel," was undoubtedly the starry _welkin_, the Wheel Queen, or the Vulcan of Good Law.
With Wayland Smith may be connoted the river Welland of Rutland and Rataeland.
Silver, a white metal,[471] was probably named after Sil Vera, the Princess of the Silvery Moon and Silvery Stars.
Silver Street is a common name for _old_ roads in the south of England:[472] Aubrey Walk in Kensington, is at the summit of a Silver Street, and the prime Aubrey de Vere of this neighbourhood was, I suspect, the same ghost as originally walked Auber's Ridge in Picardy, and the famous French _Chemin des Dames_.
France is the land of the Franks,[473] and near Frankton in Shropshire at Ellesmere, _i.e._, the Elle, Fairy, or Holy mere, are the remains of a so-called Ladies Walk.
This extraordinary _Chemin des Dames_, the relic evidently of some old-time ceremony, is described as a paved causeway running far into the mere, with which more than forty years ago old swimmers were well acquainted.
It could be traced by bathers until they got out of their depth.
How much farther it might run they of course knew not.
Its existence seems to have been almost forgotten until, in 1879, some divers searching for the body of a drowned man came upon it on the bottom of the mere, and this led to old inhabitants mentioning their knowledge of it.
[474] England abounds in Silverhills, Silverhowes, Silverleys, Silvertowns, Silverdales, and Perryvales.
By Silverdale at Sydenham is Jews Walk, and on Branch Hill at Hampstead is a fine prospect known as Judges Walk: here is Holly Bush Hill and Holly Mound, and opposite is Mount Vernon, to be connoted with Dur_overnon_, the ancient name of Canterbury or Rodau's Town.
Jews Walk, and the Grove at Upper Sydenham, are adjacent to Peak Hill, which, in all probability, was once upon a time Puck's Hill, and the wooded heights of Sydenham were in all likelihood a caer _sidi_, or seat of fairyland.
My chair is prepared in Caer Sidi The disease of old age afflicts none who is there.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
About its peaks are the streams of ocean And above it is a fruitful fountain.
Sir John Morris-Jones points out that _sidi_ is the Welsh equivalent of the Irish _sid_, "fairyland"[475] and he connects the word with _seat_.
In view of this it is possible that St. Sidwell at Exeter was like the River Sid at Sidmouth, a _caer sidi_, or seat of the _shee_.
Sydenham, like the Phoenician Sidon, is probably connected with Poseidon, or Father Sidon, and Rhode the son of Poseidon may be connoted with Rhadamanthus, the supposed twin brother of Minos.
Near Canterbury is Rhodesminnis, or Rhode Common,[476] and on this common Justice was doubtless once administered by the representatives of Rhadamanthus, who was praised by all men for his wisdom, piety, and equity.
It is said that Rhode was driven to Crete by Minos, and was banished to an Asiatic island where he made his memory immortal by the wisdom of his laws: Rhode, whose name is _rhoda_, the rose or Eros, is further said to have instructed Hercules in virtue and wisdom, and according to Homer he dwells not in the underworld but in the Elysian Fields.
[Illustration: A. POSTERN GATE.
B. DECUMAN GATE.
C. TOWER.
D. CIRCULAR TOWER.
E. & F. TOWERS.
G. SITE OF RETURN WALL.
H. SITE OF TOWER.
I.
SURFACE OF SUBTERRANEAN BUILDING.
FIG.
261.--From _A Short Account of the Records of Richborough_ (W.
D.).]
A rose coin of Rhoda was reproduced _ante_, page 339; the _rhoda_ or rose, like the _rood_, is a universal symbol of love, and with Rodau's Town, Canterbury, or Durovernon, which is permeated with the rose of St. George, or _Oros_, _i.e._, _rose_, may be connoted the neighbouring _Rutu_piae, now Richborough.
From the ground-plan of this impressive ruin it will be seen to be unlike anything else in Europe, inasmuch as it originally consisted of a quadrangle surrounding a massive rood or cross imposed upon a titanic foundation.
[477] With Rutupiae, of which the _Rutu_ may be connoted with the _rood_ within its precincts, Mr. Roach Smith, in his _Antiquities of Richborough_, connotes the Gaulish people known as the Ruteni.
The same authority quotes Malebranche as writing "all that part of the coast which lies between Calais and Dunkirk our seamen now call Ruthen," whence it is exceedingly likely that the Reading Street near Broadstairs, and the Rottingdean near Brighton were originally inhabited by children of Reada or Rota.
Apparently "Rotuna" was in some way identified in Italy with Britain, or _natione Britto_, for according to Thomas an inscription was discovered at Rome, near Santa Maria _Rotuna_, bearing in strange alphabetical characters NATIONE BRITTO, somewhat analogous at first sight to Hebrew, Greek, or Phoenician letters.
[478] From the plan it will be seen that the northern arm of the Rutupian rood points directly to the high road, and Rutupiæ itself constitutes the root or radical of the great main route leading directly through Rodau's Town, and Rochester to London Stone.
The arms of Rochester or _Duro_brivum--where, as will be remembered, is a Troy Town--are St. Andrew on his _roue_ Or _rota_.
[Illustration: FIG.
262.--Arms of Rochester.]
The name _Durobrivæ_ was also applied by the Romans to the Icenian town of Caistor, where it is locally proverbial that, Caister was a city when Norwich was none, And Norwich was built of Caistor stone.
There is a second Caistor which the Romans termed Venta Icenorum: the neighbouring modern Ancaster, the Romans entitled Causeimei.
It is always taken for granted that the numerous _chesters_, _casters_, _cesters_ of this country are the survivors of some Roman _castra_ or fort.
Were this actually the case it is difficult to understand why the Romans called Chester _Deva_, Ancaster _Causeimei_, Caistor _Durobrivæ_, and Rochester _Durobrivum_: in any case the word _castra_ has to be accounted for, and I think it will be found to be traceable to some prehistoric Judgment Tree, Cause Tree, Case Tree, or Juge Tree.
No one knows exactly how "Zeus" was pronounced, but in any case it cannot have been rigid, and in all probability the vocalisation varied from _juice_ to _sus_, and from _juge_ to _jack_ and _cock_.
[479] The rider of a race-horse is called a _jockey_, and the child in the nursery is taught to Ride a _cock_ horse to Banbury Cross To see a white lady ride on a white horse.
An English CAC horse is illustrated on page 453, and the White Lady of Banbury who careered to the music of her bells was very certainly the Fairy Queen whom Thomas the Rhymer describes as follows: "Her Steed was of the highest beauty and spirit, and at his mane hung thirty silver bells and nine, which made music to the wind as she paced along.
Her saddle was of ivory, laid over with goldsmiths' work: her stirrups, her dress, all corresponded with her extreme beauty and the magnificence of her array.
The fair huntress had her bow in hand, and her arrows at her belt.
She led three greyhounds in a leash, and three hounds of scent followed her closely."
This description might have been written of Diana, in which connection it may be noted that at Doncaster (British Cair Daun), the hobby horse used to figure as "the Queen's Pony".
Epona, the Celtic horse-goddess, may be equated with the Chanteur or Centaur illustrated on so many of our "degraded" British coins, and Banstead Downs, upon which Ep's Home stands, may be associated with _Epona_, and with the shaggy little _ponies_[480] which ranged in _Epping_ Forest.
Banstead, by Epsom (in Domesday Benestede), is supposed to have meant "bean-place or store": at Banwell in Somerset, supposed to have meant "pool of the bones," there is an earthwork cross which seemingly associates this Banwell with Banbury Cross, and ultimately to the cross of Alban.
The bells on the fingers and bells on the White Lady's toes may be connoted with the silver bell of the value of 3s.
4d., which in 1571 was the prize awarded at Chester--a town of the Cangians or Cangi--to the horse "which with speede of runninge then should run before all others".
[481] [Illustration: FIG.
263.--Banwell Cross.
From _Earthwork of England_ (A. Hadrian Allcroft).]
With this Chester Meeting may be noted Goodwood near Chichester.
Chichester is in Sussex, and was anciently the seat of the Regni, a people whose name implies they were followers of _re gni_ or Regina, but the authorities imagine that Chichester, the county town of Sussex, owes its name to a Saxon Cissa, who also bestowed his patronymic on Cissbury Ring, the famous oval entrenchment near Broadwater.
At Cissbury Ring, the largest and finest on the South Downs, great numbers of Neolithic relics have been found, and the name may be connoted with Chisbury Camp near Avebury.
Near Stockport is Geecross, supposedly so named from "an ancient cross erected here by the Gee family".
Presumably that Geecross was the _chi_ cross or the Greek _chi_: the British name for Chichester was Caer _Kei_,[482] which means the fortress of Kei, but at more modern Chichester the famous Market Cross was probably a jack, for the four main streets of Chichester still stand in the form of the jack or red rood.
The curious surname Juxon is intimately connected with Chichester; there is an inscription at Goodwood relating to a British ruler named Cogidumnus[483]--apparently _Cogi dominus_ or _Cogi Lord_--whence it seems probable that Chichester or Chichestra (1297) was as it is to-day an _assize_ or _juges_ tree, or even possibly a jockey's _tre_.
The adjacent Goodwood being equivalent to _Jude wood_, it is worthy of notice that Prof. Weekley connotes the name Judson with Juxon.
His words are: "The administration of justice occupied a horde of officials from the Justice down to the Catchpole.
[484] The official title _Judge_ is rarely found, and this surname is usually from the female name Judge, which like Jug was used for Judith and later for Jane.
"Janette, Judge, Jennie; a woman's name (Cotgrave).
The names Judson and Juxon sometimes belong to these.
"[485] The word _Chester_ is probably the same as the neighbouring place-name _Goo_strey-_cum_-Barnshaw in _Che_shire, and the Barn shaw or Barn hill here connected with Goostrey may be connoted with Loch Goosey near Barhill in Ayrshire.
Chi or Jou, who may be equated with the mysterious but important St. Chei of Cornwall, was probably also once seated at Chee Dale in Derbyshire, at Chew Magna, and Chewton, as well as at the already mentioned Jews Walk and Judges Walk near London.
In Devonshire is a river Shobrook which is authoritatively explained as Old English for "brook of _Sceocca_, _i.e._, the devil, Satan!
_cf._ Shuckburgh": on referring we find Shuckburgh meant--"Nook and castle of the Devil, _i.e._, Scucca, Satan, a Demon, Evil Spirit; _cf._ Shugborough".
I have not pursued any inquiries at Shugborough, but it is quite likely that the Saxons regarded the British Shug or Shuck with disfavour: there is little doubt he was closely related to "Old Shock," the phantom-dog, and the equally unpopular "Jack up the Orchard".
In some parts of England Royal Oak Day is known as Shick Shack Day,[486] and in Surrey children play a game of giant's stride, known as Merritot or Shuggy Shaw.
[487] Merrie Tot was probably once Merrie Tod or Tad, and Shuggy Shaw may reasonably be modernised as Shaggy Jew or Shaggy Joy.
It will be remembered that the Wandering Jew, _alias_ Elijah, wore a shag gown (_ante_, p. 148): this shagginess no doubt typified the radiating beams of the Sun-god, and it may be connoted with the shaggy raiment and long hair of John the Baptist.
As shaggy Pan, "the President of the Mountains," almost certainly gave his name to _pen_, meaning a hill, it may be surmised that _shaw_, meaning a wooded hill, is allied to Shuggy Shaw.
The surname Bagshaw implies a place-name which originated from Bog or Bogie Shaw: but Bagshawes Cavern at Bradwell, near Buxton,[488] is suggestive of a cave or Canhole[489] attributed to Big Shaw, and the neighbouring _Tide_swell is agreeably reminiscent of Merrie _Tot_ or Shuggy Shaw.
In connection with _jeu_, a game, may be connoted _gewgaw_, in Mediæval English _giuegoue_: the pronunciation of this word, according to Skeat, is uncertain, and the origin unknown; he adds, "one sense of _gewgaw_ is a Jew's Harp; _cf._ Burgundian _gawe_, a Jew's Harp".
Virgil, in his description of a Trojan _jeu_ or _show_, observes-This contest o'er, the good Æneas sought, A grassy plain, with waving forests crowned And sloping hills--fit theatre for sport, Where in the middle of the vale was found A circus.
Hither comes he, ringed around With thousands, here, amidst them, throned on high In rustic state, he seats him on a mound, And all who in the footrace list to vie, With proffered gifts invites, and tempts their souls to try.
[490] It will be noted that the _juge_ or showman seats himself amid shaws, upon a toothill or barrow, and doubtless just such eager crowds as collected round Æneas gathered in the ancient hippodrome which once occupied the surroundings of St. John's Church by Aubrey Walk, Kensington.
"St John's Church," says Mitton, "stands on a hill, once a grassy mound within the hippodrome enclosure, which is marked in a contemporary map 'Hill for pedestrians,' apparently a sort of natural grand-stand.
"[491] A large tract of this district was formerly covered by a race-course known as the hippodrome.
"It stretched," continues Mitton, "northward in a great ellipse, and then trended north-west and ended up roughly where is now the Triangle at the west-end of St. Quintin Avenue.
It was used for both flat-racing and steeplechasing, and the steeplechase course was more than 2 miles in length.
The place was very popular being within easy reach of London, but the ground was never very good for the purpose as it was marshy.
"[492] That the grassy mound or natural grand-stand of St. John was once sacred to the divine Ecne, Chinea, or Hackney, and that this King John or King Han was symbolised by an Invictus or prancing courser is implied from the lines of a Bardic poet: "Lo, he is brought from the firm enclosure with his light-coloured bounding steeds--even the sovereign ON, the ancient, the generous Feeder".
[493] We have seen that in Ireland Sengann meant Old Gann, and that "Saint" John of Kensington was originally Sinjohn, Holy John, or Elgin, seems to be somewhat further implied from the neighbouring Elgin Crescent, Elgin Avenue, and Howley Street.
The Fulham place almost immediately adjacent, considered in conjunction with Fowell Street, suggests that here, as at the more western Fulham, was a home of Foals or wild Fowl, or perhaps of Fal, the Irish Centaur-god.
The sovereign On, the ancient Courser "of the blushing purple and the potent number," was mighty _Hu_, whose name New, or _Ancient Yew_, is, I think, perpetuated at Newbury--where _Hew_son is still a family name--at Newington Padox (said to be for _paddocks_) in Warsickshire, at Newington near Wye, in Kent, and possibly at other _New_markets or tons, which are intimately associated with horse-racing.
With the river Noe in Derbyshire may be connoted Noe, the British form of Noah: The Newburns in Scotland and Northumberland can hardly have been so named because they were novel or new rivers, and in view of the fact that British mythology combined Noah's ark (Welsh _arch_) with a mare, it may be questioned whether the place-name Newark (originally Newarcha), really meant as at present supposed _New Work_.
[494] It may be that the Trojan horse story was purely mythological, and had originally relation to the supposition that mankind all emerged from the body of the Solar Horse.
The Kensington Hippodrome was eventually closed down on account of the noise and disorders which arose there, and one may safely assume there was always a certain amount of _rude_ness and _rowd_iness among the _rout_ at all hippodromes.
Had Herr Cissa, the imaginary Saxon to whom the authorities so generously ascribe Cissbury Ring, Chichester, and many other places, been present on some prehistoric Whit Monday, doubtless like any other personage of importance he would have arrived at Kensington seated in a _reidi_--the equivalent of the British _rhod_.
And if further, in accordance with Teutonic wont, Cissa had sneered at the shaggy little _keffils_[495] of the British, certainly some keen Icenian[496] would have pointed out that not only was the _keffil_ or _cafall_ a horse of very distinguished antiquity, but that the word _cafall_ reminded him agreeably of the Gaulish _cheval_ and the Iberian _cabal_, both very chivalrous or cavalryous old words suggestive of _valiant_, _valid_, and strong Che or Jou.
Hereupon some young Cockney would inevitably have uttered the current British byword-For acuteness and valour the Greeks For excessive pride the Romans _For dulness the creeping Saxons_.
[497] Unless human nature is very changeable Herr Cissa would then have delivered himself somewhat as follows: "It is really coming to this, that we Germans, the people to whose exquisite Kultur the nations of Europe and of America, too, owe the fact that they no longer consist of hordes of ape-like savages roaming their primordial forests, are about to allow ourselves to be dictated to.
"[498] Irritated by the allusion to ape-like savages one may surmise that a jockey of Chichestra inquired whether Herr Cissa claimed the river Cuckmere and also Cuckooor _Houn_dean-Bottom, the field in which Lewes racecourse stands?
He might also have insinuated that the White Horse cut in the downs below _Hinover_[499] in the Cuckmere valley was there long before the inhabitants of _Hanover_ adopted it as a totem, and that the Juxons were just as much entitled to the sign of the Horse as the Saxons of Saxony, or Sachsen.
To this Herr Cissa would have replied that the White Horse at Uffington was a "deplorable abortion," and that its barbaric design was "a slander on the Saxon standard".
Hereupon a yokel from Cuckhamsley Hill, near Zizeter, sometimes known as Cirencester, probably inquired with a chuckle whether Herr Cissa claimed every Jugestree, Tree of Justice, Esus Tree, Assize or Assembly Tree in the British Islands?
He pertinently added that in Cirencester, or Churncester, they were in the habit of celebrating at Harvest Home the festival of the Kernababy, or Maiden, which he always understood represented the Corn baby, elsewhere known as the Ivy Girl, or "Sweet Sis".
This youth had a notion that Sweet Sis, or the Lady of the Corn[500] was somehow connected with his native Cirencester, or Zizeter, and he produced a token or coin upon which the well coiffured head of a _chic_ little maiden or fairy queen was portrayed.
[501] [Illustration: FIG.
264.--British.
From Evans.]
An Icenian charioteer, who explained that his people alternatively termed themselves the _Jugan_tes,[502] also produced a medal which he said had been awarded him at Caistor, pointing out that the spike of Corn was the sign of the Kernababy, that the legend under the hackney read CAC, and that he rather thought the white horse of the Cuckmere valley and also the one by Cuckhamsley were representations of the same Cock Horse.
[503] He added that he had driven straight from Goggeshall in his gig--a kind of _coach_ similar to that in which the living image of his All Highest used of old time to be ceremoniously paraded.
Herr Cissa hereupon maintained that it was impossible for anyone to drive straight anywhere in a gig, for it was an accepted axiom of the science of language that the word gig, "probably of imitative origin," meant "to take a wrong direction, to rove at random".
[504] At this juncture a venerable _columba_ from St. Columbs, Nottinghill, intervened and produced an authentic Life of the Great St. Columba, wherein is recorded an incident concerning the holy man's journey in a gig without its linch pins.
"On that day," he quoted, "there was a great strain on it over long stretches of road," nevertheless "the car in which he was comfortably seated moved forward without mishap on a straight course.
"[505] [Illustration: FIG.
265.--Sculptured Stone, Meigle, Perthshire.
From _The Life of St. Columba_ (Huyshe, W.).]
In view of this feat, and of an illustration of the type of vehicle in which the journey was supposedly accomplished, it was generally accepted that Herr Cissa's definition of _gig_ was fantastic, whereupon the Saxon, protesting, "You do not care one iota for our gigantic works of Kultur and Science, for our social organisation, for our Genius!"
asserted the dignity of his _gig_ definition by whipping up his horses, taking a wrong direction, and roving at random from the enclosure.
FOOTNOTES: [400] With Ecne may be connoted _ech_, the Irish for _horse_.
[401] _Irish Myth.
Cycle_, p. 82.
[402] _Germania_, x.
[403] "The senses of the horse are acute though many animals excel it in this respect, but its faculties of observation and memory are both very highly developed.
A place once visited or a road once traversed seems never to be forgotten, and many are the cases in which men have owed life and safety to these faculties in their beasts of burden.
Even when untrained it is very intelligent: horses left out in winter will scrape away the snow to get at the vegetation beneath it, which cattle are never observed to do."
--Chambers's _Encyclopædia_, v., 792.
[404] Bayley, H., _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, vol.
ii.
_Cf._ chapter, "The White Horse".
[405] _Nauticaa Mediterranea_, Rome, 1601.
[406] Brock, M., _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_, p. 64.
[407] "The oak, tallest and fairest of the wood, was the symbol of Jupiter.
The manner in which the principal tree in the grove was consecrated and ordained to be the symbol of Jupiter was as follows: The Druids, with the general consent of the whole order, and all the neighbourhood pitched upon the most beautiful tree, cut off all its side branches and then joined two of them to the highest part of the trunk, so that they extended themselves on either side like the arms of a man, making in the whole the shape of a cross.
Above the insertions of these branches and below, they inscribed in the bark of the tree the word Thau, by which they meant God.
On the right arm was inscribed Hesus, on the left Belenus, and on the middle of the trunk Tharamus."
--Quoted by Borlase in _Cornwall_ from "the learned Schedius".
[408] _Ancient British Coins_, p. 49.
[409] _The Coin Collector_, p. 159.
[410] _Numismatic Manual_, p. 225.
[411] Jewitt, L., _English Coins and Tokens_, p. 4.
[412] Head, Barclay, V., _A Guide to the Coins of the Ancients_, p. 1 (B. M.).
[413] Akerman, J. Y., _Numismatic Manual_, p. 228.
[414] Akerman, J. Y., _Numismatic Manual_, p. 10.
[415] The earliest "Lady" of Byzantium was the fabulous daughter of Io, _Cf._ Schliemann, _Mykene_.
[416] Macdonald, G., _The Evolution of Coinage_, p. 5.
[417] Macdonald, G., _The Evolution of Coinage_, p. 9.
[418] According to Skeat _jingle_, "a frequentative verb from the base _jink_," is allied to _chink_, and _chink_ is "an imitative word".
[419] Munro, Dr.
Robt., _Prehistoric Britain_, p. 45.
The italics are mine.
[420] Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 321.
[421] _Bella Gallico_, Bk.
IV.
[422] _Crete, the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 72.
[423] _Iliad_, XX., 570-80.
[424] "It's you English who don't know your own language, otherwise you would realise that most of what you call 'Yankeeisms' are merely good old English which you have thrown away."--J.
Russell Lowell.
[425] As illustrated _ante_, p. 381.
[426] _Illustrated London News_, 10th August, 1918.
[427] _Cf._ _Troy_, p. 353; _Ilios_, 619.
[428] Il., lix.
[429] Hawes, C. H. and H. B., _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 44.
[430] _Æneid_, Book II., 111.
[431] _Ibid._, 20.
[432] Johnson, W., _Byways_, 419.
[433] _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 10.
[434] Johnston, Rev.
W. B., _Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 2.
[435] Morris-Jones, Sir J., _Taliesin_, p. 32.
[436] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, ii., 218-27.
[437] Fraser, J.
B., _Persia_.
[438] There is an Uffington in Lincoln on the river Welland.
[439] _Holy Wells_, p. 102.
[440] Allcroft, A. Hadrian, _Earthwork of England_, p. 136.
[441] P. 16.
[442] Carey, Miss E. F., _Folklore_, xxv., No.
4, p. 417.
[443] Mitton, C. F., _Kensington_, p. 58.
[444] _Iliad_, XX., 246, 262.
[445] The first lessee of the Manor at Kensington, now known as Holland Park, was a certain Robert Horseman.
Holland House being built in a swamp, or _holland_, may owe its title to that fact or to its having been erected by a Dutchman.
The Bog of _Allen_ in Ireland is authoritatively equated with _holland_.
[446] This information was given me verbally by Miss Mary George of Sennen Cove.
[447] Zennor is understood to have meant _Holy Land_.
[448] _Proc.
of Roy.
Ir.
Acad._, xxxiv., C., 10-11, p. 376.
[449] Fraser, J.B., _Persia_, p. 132.
[450] According to Johnston, Felixstowe was the church of St. Felix of Walton, sometimes said to be _stow_ of Felix, first bishop of East Anglia.
"But this does not agree with the form in 1318 Filthstowe which might be 'filth place,' place full of dirt or foulness.
This is not likely" (p. 259).
[451] _Cf._ _Holy Wells._ [452] The numerous British Cranbrooks and Cranbournes are assumed to have been the haunts of cranes.
[453] Allcroft, A. Hadrian, _Earthwork of England_, p. 462.
[454] Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 321.
[455] Domesday Branchtrea, later Branktry.
"This must be 'tree of _Branc_,' the same name as in Branksome (Bournemouth), Branxton (Coldstream), and Branxholm (Hawick)."
--Johnston, J.
B., _Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 165.
[456] _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_ (Brit.
Museum), p. 35.
[457] _Ep_ in old Breton meant _horse_; _cf.
Origines Celticæ_, i., 373, 380, 381.
[458] _Celtic Britain_, p. 229.
[459] 1158 Brimigham; 1166 Bremingeham; 1255 Burmingeham; 1413 Brymecham; 1538 Bromieham.
[460] _Ancient Britain_, p. 282.
[461] _Historical Works_ (Bohn's Library), p. 98.
[462] _Travels in the East_ (Bohn's Library), p. 202.
[463] _Avebury and Stonehenge_, p. 43.
[464] _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, p. 29.
[465] Higgens, G., _Celtic Druids_, p. lxxiv.
[466] _Annals_, Bk.
xii, xii.
[467] In 1200 Folkeshull.
Of Flixton in Lancashire the authorities suggest, "perhaps a town of the flitch".
Of Flokton in Yorkshire, "Town of an unrecorded Flocca".
I suspect Flokton was really a Folk Dun or Folks Hill.
[468] Akerman, p. 166.
[469] _Slav Tales_, p. 182.
[470] Fraser, J.
B., _Persia_, p. 134.
[471] The word _silver_ is imagined to be derived from _Salube_, a town on the Black Sea.
[472] Johnston, J.
B., _Place-names_, p. 445.
[473] The Frankish chroniclers assigned the origin of the Franks to Troy.
The word _Frank_ is radically feran or veran.
[474] Hope, R. C., _Holy Wells_, p. 137.
[475] _Taliesin_, p. 238.
[476] _Minnis_, said to be a Kentish word for _common_, is seemingly the latter portion of _communis_.
[477] "Within the area towards the north-east corner is a solid rectangular platform of masonry, 145 feet by 104 feet, and 5 feet in thickness.
In the centre there is a structure of concrete in the form of a cross, 87 feet in length, 7 feet 6 inches wide, which points to the north.
The transverse arm, 47 feet long and 22 feet wide, points to the gateway in the west wall.
The platform rests upon a mass of masonry reaching downward about 30 feet from the surface, it measures 124 feet north to south and 80 feet east to west.
At each corner there are holes 5 to 6 inches square, penetrating through the platform.
A subterranean passage, 5 feet high, 3 feet wide, has been excavated under the overhanging platform, around the foundation beneath, which may be entered by visitors.
"The efforts that have been made to pierce the masonry have failed in ascertaining whether there are chambers inside.
No satisfactory explanation of its origin and purpose has yet been discovered.
It may have formed the foundation of a 'pharos'.
The late C. R. Smith, whose opinion on the subject is of especial value, and also later authorities, have thought that this remarkable structure enclosed receptacles either for the storage of water, or for the deposit of treasure awaiting shipment."
--_A Short Account of the Records of Richborough_ (W. D.).
[478] _Britannia Antiquissima_, p. 5.
[479] This on the face of it looks far-fetched, but the intermediate forms may easily be traced, and the suggestion is really more rational than the current claim that _fir_ and _quercus_ are the "same word".
[480] Statues of Epona represent her seated "between foals".
_Ancient Britain_, p. 279.
[481] A small bell swinging in a circle may often be seen to-day as a "flyer" ornament on the heads of London carthorses.
[482] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, ii., p. 159.
[483] Tacitus in _Agricola_ gives Cogidumnus an excellent reference to the following effect: "Certain districts were assigned to Cogidumnus, a king who reigned over part of the country.
He lived within our own memory, preserving always his faith unviolated, and exhibiting a striking proof of that refined policy, with which it has ever been the practice of Rome to make even kings accomplices in the servitude of mankind."
[484] This functionary is said to have acquired his title by distraining on, or catching the people's pullets.
[485] _The Romance of Names_, p. 184.
[486] Hazlitt, W. C., _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 543.
[487] _Ibid._, ii., 408.
[488] At _Bick_ley (Kent) is _Shaw_field Park.
[489] The neighbouring "Canholes" will be considered in a later chapter.
[490] _Æneid_, Bk.
V., 39.
[491] _Kensington_, p. 89.
[492] _Ibid._, p. 89.
[493] Davies, E., _Mytho.
of Ancient Druids_, p. 528.
[494] The oldest church in Ireland (the Oratory of Gallerus) is described as exactly like an upturned boat, and the _nave_ or _ship_ of every modern sanctuary perpetuates both in form and name the ancient notion of Noah's Ark, or the Ark of Safety.
The ruins of Newark Priory, near Woking, are situated in a marshy mead amid seven branches of the river Wey which even now at times turn the site into a swamp.
There is a Newark in Leicestershire and a Newark in St. John's Parish, Peterborough; here the land is flat and mostly arable.
At Newark, in Notts, the situation was seemingly once just such a wilderness of waters as surrounded Newark Priory, in Send Parish, Woking.
The ship of Isis, symbolizing the fecund Ark of Nature, figured prominently in popular custom, and the subject demands a chapter at the very least.
[495] _Keffil_ meaning _horse_ is still used in Worcestershire, and Herefordshire.
"This is a pure Welsh word nor need one feel much surprised at finding it in use in counties where the Saxon and the Brython must have had many dealings in horse flesh.
But what is significant is the manner in which it is used, for it is employed only for horses of the poorest type, or as a word of abuse from one person to another as when one says--'you great keffil,' meaning you clumsy idiot."
--Windle, B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 209.
[496] "The Icenians took up arms, a brave and warlike people."
--Tacitus, _Annals_.
[497] Windle, B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 210.
[498] Quoted in _The Daily Express_, 9th October, 1918, from _Der Rheinisch Westfalische Zeitung_.
[499] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 326.
[500] The Cornish for _corn_ was _izik_.
[501] _Cf._ Fig.
358, p. 596.
[502] Evans, Sir J., _Ancient British Coins_, p. 404.
[503] "Under any circumstances the legend CAC on the reverse would have still to be explained."
--_Ibid._, p. 353.
[504] Skeat, p. 212.
[505] Huyshe, W., _Adamnan's Life of St. Columba_, p. 173.
CHAPTER IX BRIDE'S BAIRNS "But, I do not know how it comes to pass, it is the unhappy fashion of our age to derive everything curious and valuable, whether the works of art or nature, from foreign countries: as if Providence had denied us both the genius and materials of art, and sent us everything that was precious, comfortable, and convenient, at second-hand only, and, as it were, by accident, from charity of our neighbours."
--BORLASE (1754).
Homer relates that the gods watched the progress of the siege of Troy from the far-celebrated Mount Ida in Asia Minor: there is another equally famous Mount Ida in Crete, at the foot of which lived a people known as the Idaei.
With Homer's allusion to "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," where wandered-... in the marshy mead Rejoicing with their foals three thousand mares, may be connoted his reference to "Hyde's fertile vale,"[506] and there is little doubt that spring-abounding Idas and Hyde Parks were once as plentiful as Prestons, Silverdales, and Kingstons.
The name Ida is translated by the dictionaries as meaning _perfect happiness_, and Ada as _rich gift_: we have already seen that the ideal pair of Ireland were Great King Conn and Good Queen Eda, and that it was during the reign of these royal twain that Ibernia, "flowed with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy".
[507] Hyde Park, now containing Rotten Row at Kensington, occupies the site of what figured in Domesday Book as the Manor of Hyde: the immediately adjacent Audley Streets render it possible that the locality was once known as Aud lea, or meadow, whence subsequent inhabitants derived their surname.
Hyde Park is partly in Paddington, a name which the authorities decode into "town of the children of Paeda".
This Paeda is supposed to have been a King of Mercia, but he would hardly have been so prolific as to have peopled a town, and, considered in conjunction with the neighbouring Praed or _pere Aed_ street, it is more likely that Paeda was Father Eda, the consort of Maida or Mother Eda, after whom the adjacent Maida Vale and Maida Hill seemingly took their title.
By passing up Maida Vale one may traverse St. John's Wood, Brondesbury or Brimsbury, Kensal Green, Cuneburn, and eventually attain the commanding heights of Caen, or Ken wood, from whence may be surveyed not only "Hyde's fertile vale," situated on "spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs," but a comprehensive sweep of greater London.
According to Tacitus "some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete,"[508] and he continues: "There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name".
Modern editors of Tacitus regard this statement as no doubt the invention of some Greek etymologer, but with reference to the Idaei they speak of this old Cretan race as "being regarded as a kind of mysterious half-supernatural beings to whom mankind were indebted for the discovery of iron and the art of working it".
[509] There is evidence of a similar idealism having once existed among the Britons and the Jews in the second Epistle of Monk Gildas to the following effect: "The Britons, contrary to all the world and hostile to Roman customs, not only in the mass but also in the tonsure, are with the Jews slaves to the shadows of things to come rather than to the truth".
[510] By "truth" Gildas here of course means his own particular "doxy," and the salient point of his testimony is the assertion that practically alone in the world the British and the Jews were dreamy, immaterial, superstitious idealists.
That the Idaeians of Crete, Candia, or Idaea were singularly pure or candid may be judged from the testimony of Sir Arthur Evans: "Religion entered at every turn, and it was, perhaps, owing to the religious control of art that among all the Minoan representations--now to be numbered by thousands--no single example of indecency has come to light".
[511] Referring to British candour, Procopius affirms: "So highly rated is chastity among these barbarians that if even the bare mention of marriage occurs without its completion the maiden seems to lose her fair fame".
[512] This alleged purity of the British Maid is substantiated by the words _prude_ and _proud_, both of which like _pretty_, _purity_, and _pride_, are radically pure Ide.
Skeat defines _prude_ as a woman of affected modesty, and adds "see _prowess_"; but prudery has little connection with prowess, and is it really necessary to assume that primitive prudery was "affected"?
The Jewish JAH is translated by scholars as "pure Being"; the passionate adoration of purity is expressed in the prehistoric hymn quoted _ante_ page 183, Hu the Mighty was pre-eminently pure, and it is thus likely that the ancient Pere, Jupiter, or Aubrey meant originally the _Pure_.
We have seen that Jupiter, the divine _Power_, was conceived indifferently as either a man or an immortal maid: a maid is a virgin, and the words _maid_ or _mayde_, like Maida, is radically "Mother Ida".
According to Skeat _maid_ is related to Anglo-Saxon _magu_, a son or kinsman; and one may thus perhaps account for _brother_, _bruder_, or _frater_, as meaning originally the produce or progeny of the same _pere_--but not necessarily the same _pair_.
To St. Bride may be assigned not only the terms _bride_ and bridegroom, or brideman; but likewise _breed_ and _brood_.
Skeat connects the latter with the German _bruhen_ to scald, but a good mother does not scald her brood, and as St. Bride was known anciently as "The Presiding Care"; even although _bairn_ is the same word as _burn_, we may assume that St. Bride did not burn her _brat_.
There is a Bridewell and a church of St. Bride in London, but to the modern Londoner this "greatest woman of the Celtic Church" is practically unknown.
In Hibernia and the Hebrides, however, St. Bride yet lives, and in the words of a modern writer is "more real than the great names of history.
They, pale shadows moving in an unreal world, have gone, but she abides.
With each revolving year she flits across the Machar, and her tiny flowers burn golden among the short, green, turfy grass at her coming.
Her herald, the Gillebrighde, the servant of Bride, calls its own name and hers among the shores, a message that the sea, the treasury of Mary, will soon yield its abundance to the fisher, haven-bound by the cold and stormy waters of winter.
He sees St. Bride, the Foster Mother, but his keen vision penetrates a vista far beyond the ages when Imperial Rome held sway and, in that immemorial past, beholds her still.
In the uncharted regions of the Celtic imagination, she abides unchanging, her eyes starlit, her raiment woven of fire and dew; her aureole the rainbow.
To him she is older than the world of men, yet eternally young.
She is beauty and purity and love, and time for her has no meaning.
She is a ministering spirit, a flame of fire.
It is she who touches with her finger the brow of the poet and breathes into his heart the inspiration of his song.
She is born with the dawn, and passes into new loveliness when the sun sets in the wave.
The night winds sing her lullaby, and little children hear the music of her voice and look into her answering eyes.
Who and what, then, is St. Bride?
She is Bridget of Kildare, but she is more.
She is the daughter of Dagda, the goddess of the Brigantes; but she is more.
She is the maid of Bethlehem, the tender Foster Mother; but she is more even than that.
She is of the race of the immortals.
She is the spirit and the genius of the Celtic people.
"[513] St. Bride was known occasionally as St. Fraid, and Brigit, or Brigid, an alternative title of the Fair Ide, may be modernised into _Pure Good_.
With her white wand Brigit was said to breathe life into the mouth of dead Winter, impelling him to open his eyes to the tears, the smiles, the sighs, and the laughter of Spring, whence to Brid, or Bryth of the Brythons, may be assigned the word _breathe_; and as Bride was represented by a sheaf of grain carried joyously from door to door, doubtless in her name we have the origin of _bread_.
The name Bradbury implies that many barrows were dedicated to Brad; running into the river Rye of Kent is a river Brede, and as the young goddess of Crete was known to the Hellenes as Britomart, which means _sweet maiden_, we may equate Britomart with Britannia.
At the village of Brede in Kent the seat now known as Brede Place is also known as the Giant's House, whence in all probability St. Bride was the maiden Giant, Gennet, or Jeanette.
In the province of Janina in Albania is the town of Berat, and the foundation of either this Berat or else the Beyrout of Canaan was ascribed by the Greek mythologists to a maiden named Berith or Beroë.
Hail Beroë, fairest offering of the Nereids!
Beroë all hail!
thou root of life, thou boast Of Kings, thou nurse of cities with the world Coeval; hail thou ever-favoured seat of Hermes ... With Tethys and Oceanus coeval.
But later poets feign that lovely Beroë Derived her birth from Venus and Adonis Soon as the infant saw the light with joy Old Ocean straight received her in his arms.
And e'en the brute creation shared the pleasure.
...
In succeeding years A sacred town derived its mystic name From that fair child whose birth coeval was With the vast globe; but rich Ausonia's sons The city call Berytus.
[514] The same poet repeatedly maintains that the age of the city of Beroë was equal to that of the world, and that it could boast an antiquity much greater than that of Tarsus, Thebes, or Sardis.
The reference to Beroë or Berith as the ever-favoured seat of Hermes implies the customary equation of Britannia = Athene = Wisdom.
The prehistoric car illustrated in the preceding chapter is reproduced from a stone in Perthshire or Perithshire, and in a description written in 1569 this stone was then designated the Thane Stone.
[515] That this was an Athene stone is somewhat implied by the further details, "it had a cross at the head of it and a goddess next that in a cart, and two horses drawing her and horsemen under that, and footmen and dogs".
The Thanes of Scotland were probably the official representatives of Athene, or Wisdom, or Justice, and the dogs of the Thane Stone may be connoted with the Hounds of Diana or Britomart, and the greyhounds of the English Fairy Queen.
Athene is presumably the same as Ethne, the reputed mother of St. Columba, and also as Ieithon, the Keltic goddess of speech or _prat_ing, after whom Anwyl considers the river Ieithon in Radnorshire was named.
This Welsh river-name may be connoted with the river Ythan in Scotland, and the legend IDA, found upon the reverse of some of the Ikenian coins of England, may be connoted with the place-name Odestone, or Odstone, implying seemingly a stone of Od, or Odin.
At Oddendale in Westmorland are the remains of a Druidic circle and traces of old British settlements: with the Thanestone may be connoted the carved example illustrated _ante_, page 381, from Dingwall, and also the decorated "Stone of the Fruitful Fairy," which exists in Ireland.
[516] The authorities think it possible that the river Idle--a tributary of the Trent--derived its name from being empty, vain, or useless; but it is more probable that this small stream was christened by the Idaeans, and that the resident Nymph or Fruitful Fairy was the idyll, or the idol, whom they idealised.
It is not without significance that the starting point of the races at Uffington was Idles Bush: "As many as a dozen or more horses ran, and they started from Idle's Bush which wur a vine owld tharnin-tree in thay days--a very nice bush.
They started from Idle's Bush as I tell 'ee sir, and raced up to the Rudge-way.
"[517] Doubtless there were also many other "Idles Bush's," perhaps at some time one in every Ideian town or neighbourhood: there is seemingly one notable survival at Ilstrye or _Ideles_tree, now Elstree near St. Albans.
That the Idaean ideal was Athene is implied by the adjective _ethnic_.
The word _ethic_ which means, "relating to morals," is connected by Skeat with _sitte_, the German for custom: there is, however, no seeming connection between German custom and the Idyllic.
[518] The early followers of Britomart are universally described as an industrious and peaceful people who made their conquests in arts and commerce: to them not only was ascribed the discovery of iron and the working of it, but the Cretan treatment of bronze proves that the Idaeans were consummate bronzesmiths.
In Crete, according to Sir Arthur Evans, "new and refined crafts were developed, some of them like inlaid metal-work unsurpassed in any age or country".
That the Britons were expert blacksmiths is evident not merely from their chariot wheels, but also from the superb examples of bronze art-craft, found notably in the Thames.
For the sum of one shilling the reader may obtain _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, published by the British Museum, in which invaluable volume two wonderful examples of prehistoric ironmongery are illustrated in colour.
One of these, a bronze shield discovered at Battersea, is rightly described by Romilly Allen, as "about the most beautiful surviving piece of late Celtic metal-work".
The Celts, as this same authority observes, had already become expert workers in metal before the close of the Bronze Age; they could make beautiful hollow castings for the chapes of their sword sheaths; they could beat out bronze into thin plates and rivet them together sufficiently well to form water-tight cauldrons; they could ornament their circular bronze shields and golden diadems with repoussé patterns, consisting of corrugations and rows of raised bosses; and they were not unacquainted with the art of engraving on metal.
[519] Not only were the Britons expert in ordinary metal-work but they are believed to have _invented_ the art of enamelled-inlay.
Writing in the third century of the present era, an oft-quoted Greek observed: "They say that the barbarians who live in Ocean pour colours on heated bronze and that they adhere, become as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them".
It is admitted that nowhere was greater success attained by this art of the early Iron Age than in Britain, and as Sir Hercules Read rightly maintains: "There are solid reasons for supposing this particular style to have been confined to this country".
[520] The art of enamelling was of course practised elsewhere, particularly at Bibracte in Gaul, long before the Roman Conquest, but in the opinion of Dr. Anderson, the Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art compared with the British examples: the home of the art was Britain, and the style of the patterns, as well as the associations in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrate with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous development before it came in contact with the Roman culture.
[521] The evidence of the bronze spear-head points to the same remarkable conclusions as the evidence of enamelled bronze, and in the opinion of the latest and best authorities, from its first inception throughout the whole progress of its evolution the spear-head of the United Kingdom has a character of its own, one quite different from those found elsewhere.
In no part of the world did the spear-head attain such perfection of form and fabric as it did in these islands, and the old-fashioned notion that bronze weapons were imported from abroad is now hopelessly discredited.
"Why, then," ask the authors of _The Origin, Evolution, and Classification of the Bronze Spear-Head_,[522] "may not a bronze culture have had its birth in our country where it ultimately attained a development scarcely equalled, certainly not surpassed, by that in any other part of the world?"
One of the distinctions of the British spear-head is a certain variety of tang, of which the only parallel has been found in one of the early settlements at Troy.
Forms also, somewhat similar, have been discovered in the Islands of the Ægean sea, and in the Terramara deposits of Northern Italy, but it is the considered opinion of Canon Greenwell and Parker Brewis, that whatever may be the true explanation of the history of the general development of a bronze culture in Great Britain and Ireland, "there can be no doubt whatever that the spear-head in its origin, progress, and final consummation was an indigenous product of those two countries, and was manufactured within their limits apart from any controlling influence from outside".
[523] The magnificent bronze shield and _bric a brac_ found in London were thus presumably made there, and it is not improbable that the principal smitheries were situated either at Smithfield in the East, or Smithfield in the West in the ward of Farringdon or Farendone.
Stow in his _London_ uses the word _fereno_ to denote an ironmonger, in old French _feron_ meant a smith, and wherever the ancient ferenos or smiths were settled probably became known as _Farindones_ or _fereno towns_.
Stow mentions several eminent goldsmiths named Farendone; from _feron_, the authorities derive the surname Fearon, which may be seen over a shop-front near Farringdon Street to-day.
Modern Farringdon Street leads from Smithfield or Smithy field[524] to Blackfriars, and it may be suggested that the original Black Friars were literally freres or brethren, who forged with industrious ferocity at their fires and furnaces.
Without impropriety the early fearons might have adopted as their motto _Semper virens_: smiting in smithies is smutty work, and all these terms are no doubt interrelated, but not, I think, in the sense which Skeat supposes them, _viz._: "Smite, _to fling_.
The original sense was to smear or rub over.
'To rub over,' seems to have been a sarcastic expression for 'to beat'; we find _well anoynted_--well beaten."
The word _bronze_ was derived, it is said, from Brundusinum or Brindisi, a town which was famous for its bronze workers.
Brindisi is almost opposite Berat in Epirus; the smith or _faber_ is proverbially _burly_, _i.e._, _bur_ like or _brawny_, and it is curious that the terms _brass_, _brasier_, _burnish_, _bronze_, etc., should all similarly point to Bru or Brut.
With St. Bride or St. Brigit, who in one of her three aspects was represented as a smith, may be connoted _bright_, and with Bress, the Consort of Brigit, may be connoted _brass_.
And as Bride was alternatively known as Fraid, doubtless to this form of the name may be assigned _fer_, _fire_, _fry_, _frizzle_, _furnace_, _forge_, _fierce_, _ferocious_, and _force_.
That the island of Bru or Barri in South Wales was a reputed home of the burly _faber_, _feuber_, or Fire Father, is to be inferred from the statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, that "in a rock near the entrance of the island there is a small cavity to which if the ear is applied a noise is heard like that of smiths at work, the blowing of the bellows, strokes of the hammers, grinding of tools and roaring of furnaces".
[525] It is supposed that Barri island owes its name to a certain St. Baroc, the remains of whose chapel once stood there: that St. Baroc was Al Borak, the White Horse or _brok_, upon whom every good Mussalman hopes eventually to ride, is implied by the story that St. Baroc borrowed a friend's horse and rode miraculously across the sea from Pembrokeshire to Ireland.
On the coast between Pembroke and Tenby is Manor_beer_, known anciently as Maenor Pyrr, that is, says Giraldus, "the mansion of Pyrrus, who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus".
But the editor of Giraldus considers that a much more natural and congenial conjecture may be made in supposing Maenor Pyrr to be derived from _Maenor_ a _Manor_, and Pyrr, the plural of Por, a lord.
I have already suggested a possible connection between the numerous _pre_ stones and Pyrrha, the first lady who created mankind out of stones.
Near Fore Street, in the ward of Farringdon by Smithfield, will be found Whitecross Street, Redcross Street, and Cowcross Street: the last of these three cross streets by which was "Jews Garden," may be connoted with the Geecross of elsewhere.
The district is mentioned by Stow as famous for its coachbuilders, and there is no more reason to assume that the word _coach_ (French _coche_) was derived from Kocsi, a town in Hungary, than to suppose that the first coach was a cockney production and came from Chick Lane or from Cock Lane, both of which neighbour the Cowcross district in Smithfield.
The supposition that the _gig_ or _coach_ (the words are radically the same) was primarily a vehicle used in the festivals to Gog the _High High_, or _Mighty Mighty_, is strengthened by the testimony of the solar chariot illustrated _ante_, page 405.
Not only were the British famed from the dawn of history[526] for their car-driving but from the evidence of sepulchral chariots and sepulchral harness the authorities are of opinion that the fighting car was long retained by the Kelts, "and its presence in the Yorkshire graves seems to show that it persisted in Britain longer than elsewhere".
[527] Somewhere in the Smithfield district originally existed what Stow mentions as Radwell, and this well of the Redcross, or Ruddy rood, may be connoted with the Rood Lane a mile or so more eastward.
Between Rood Lane and Red Cross Street is Lothbury: the suffix _bury_ (as in Lothbury, and Aldermanbury) is held by Stow, and also by Camden, to mean a Court of Justice, and this definition accords precisely with the theory that the barrow was originally the seat of Justice.
At Lothbury the noise or _bruit_ made by the burly fabers was so vexatious that Stow seriously defines the place-name _Loth_bury as indicating a _loath_some locality.
[528] The supposition that Cowcross Street, Jews Garden, and the Redcross or Ruddy rood site were primarily in the occupation of men of Troy or Droia may possibly be strengthened by the fact that here was a _Tre_mill brook, and the seat of a Sir Drew Drury.
The parish church of Blackfriars is St. Andrews, there is another St. Andrews within a bow-shot of Smithfield, and that the "drews" were a skilled family is obvious from the fact that the name Drew is defined as Teutonic _skilful_.
Both Scandinavians and Germans possess the Trojan tradition; the All Father of Scandinavia was named _Borr_, Thor, the Hammer God, was assigned to Troy, and in Teutonic mythology there figure two celestial Smith-brethren named Sindre and Brok.
The cradle of the Cretan Zeus is assigned sometimes not to Mount Ida but to the neighbouring Mount Juktas which is described as an extraordinary "cone".
When the Cretan script is deciphered it will probably transpire that Mount Juktas was associated with Juk, Jock, or Jack, and the name may be connected with _jokul_, the generic term in Scandinavia for a snow-covered or white-crowned height.
Jack is seemingly the same word as the Hebrew Isaac, which is defined as meaning _laughter_; Jack may thus probably be equated with _joke_ and _jokul_ with _chuckle_, all of which symptoms are the offspring of _joy_ or _gaiety_.
To _kyg_, an obsolete adjective meaning _lively_--and thus evidently a variant of _agog_--are assigned by our authorities the surnames Keach, Ketch, Kedge, and Gedge.
In connection with _kyg_ Prof. Weekley quotes the line-_Kygge_ or joly, _jocundus_.
Among the gewgaws found in the sacred shrines of Juktas are numerous bijou gigs, or coaches, all no doubt once very _juju_, or sacred.
To appreciate the outlook of the "half-supernatural" Idaeans one may find a partial key in the words of Aratus: "Let us begin with _Zeus_, let us always call upon and laud his name; all the network of interwending roads and all the busy markets of mankind are full of _Zeus_, and all the paths and fair havens of the sea, and everwhere our hope is in _Zeus_ for we are also his children".
[529] Stow mentions the firmly-rooted tradition that the Cathedral of St. Paul stands upon the site of an ancient shrine to Jupiter.
It may be merely coincidence that close to St. Paul's once stood an Ypres Hall:[530] in the immediate vicinity of Old St. Paul's used also to exist a so-called Pardon Churchyard, perhaps an implication that Ludgate Hill was once known as _Par dun_ or _Par Hill_.
That "Pardon" was equivalent to "Pradon" is evident from the fact that modern Dumbarton was originally _Dun Brettan_, or the Briton's Fort.
The slope leading from the Southern side of St. Paul's or Pardon Churchyard, is still named Peter's Hill, and in view of the Jupiter tradition it is not altogether unlikely that Peter's Hill was originally _eu Peter's_ Hill, synonymously _Pere dun_.
The surname Pardon may still be found in this Godliman Street neighbourhood, where in Stow's time stood not only Burley House, but likewise Blacksmiths Hall.
A funeral _pyre_ is a fire; a _phare_ is a lighthouse, and the intense purity of Bride's fire, phare, or pyre is implied by the fact that it was not suffered to be blown by human breath but by bellows only.
From time immemorial the Fire of Bride was tended by nineteen holy maids, each of whom had the care of the Fire for one night in turn: on the twentieth night the nineteenth maid, having piled wood upon the fire, said: "Brigit, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you".
The tale ends that ever on the twentieth morning the fire had been miraculously preserved.
[531] The patron saint of engineers is Barbara or Varvara, the sacred pyre of Bride was maintained within a circle or periphery of stakes and brushwood, and close at hand were certain very beautiful meadows called St. Bridget's pastures, in which no plough was ever suffered to turn a furrow.
The words _mead_ and _meadow_ are the same as _maid_ and _maida_, whence it seems to follow that all meadows were dedicated to Bride, the pretty Lady of the Kine.
Homer's "fertile vale of Hyde," and the Londoner's Hyde Park, were alike probably idealised and sacred meadows corresponding to the Irish Mag-Ithe or Plains of Ith; it is not unlikely that all _heaths_ were dedicated to _Ith_.
To the Scandinavian Ith or Ida Plains we find an ancient poet thus referring: "I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ... the Anses meet on Ida Plain, they talk of the mighty earth serpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of the unknown God".
After foretelling a time when "All sorrows shall be healed and Balder shall come back," the poet continues: "Then shall Hoeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the _Twin Brethren_ shall inhabit the wide world of the winds".
[532] [Illustration: FIG.
266.--Etruscan Bucket, Offida, Picenum.
From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_, p.
17.]
In Fig.
266--an Etrurian bucket--two diminutive Twin Brethren are being held by the _Bona Dea_--a winged Ange or Anse--who is surmounted by the symbolic cockle or coquille.
The fact that this bucket was found at Offida renders it possible that the mother here represented was known to the craftsman who portrayed her as _Offi divine_, otherwise Hipha, Eve, or Good Iva.
It will be noticed that the child on the right is white, that on the left black, and I have elsewhere drawn attention to many other emblems in which two A's, Alphas, Alifs, or Elves were similarly portrayed, the one as white, the other as black.
[533] The intention of the artist seems to have been to express the current philosophy of a Prime or Supreme supervising both good and evil, light and dark, or day and night.
Pliny says that British women used to attend certain religious festivals with their nude bodies painted black like Ethiopians, and there is probably some close connection between this obscure function, and the fact that Diana of the Ephesians, the many-breasted All-mother of Life, was portrayed at times as white, at times as black.
There must be a further connection between this black and white _Bona Dea_, and the fact that in the Lady Godiva processions near Coventry, which took place at the opening of the Great May Fair festival, there were two Godivas, one of whom was the natural colour but the other was dyed black.
[534] The _Bona Dea_ of Egypt, like the figure on the Etrurian bucket, was represented holding in her arms two children, one white and one black; and the two circles at Avebury, lying within the larger Avereberie or periphery, were probably representative of Day and Night circled by all-embracing and eternal Time.
The Twin Brethren or Gemini are most popularly known as Castor and Pollux, and the propitious figures of these heavenly Twins were carved frequently upon the _prows_ of ancient ships.
The phosphorescent stars or Will-o-the-wisps, which during storms sometimes light upon the masts of ships, used to be known as St. Elmo's Fires: St. Elmo is obviously St. Alma or St. All Mother, and the St. Helen with whom she is identified is seemingly St. Alone.
It was believed that two stars were propitious, but that a solitary one boded bad luck; according to Pliny a single St. Elmo's fire was called Helen, "but the two they call Castor and Pollux, and invoke them as gods".
[Illustration: FIG.
267.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C. W.)] The appearance of the will-o-the-wisps, Castor and Pollux, was held to be an argument that the tempest was caused by "a sulphurous spirit rarefying and violently moving the clouds, for the cause of the fire is a sulphurous and bituminous matter driven downwards by the impetuous motion of the air and kindled by much agitation".
I quote this passage as justifying the suggestion that _sulphur_--the yellow and fiery--is radically _phur_, and that _brimstone_, or _brenstoon_, as Wyclif has it, may be the stone of Brim or Bren, which burns.
The identification of Castor and Pollux with stars or _asters_, enables us to equate Castor as the White god or Day god, for _dextra_, the Latin for right, is _de castra_, _i.e._, _good great astra_.
The white child in Fig.
266 is that on the _right_ hand of the _Bona Dea_: that Pollux was the dark, _sinister_, _sinistra_, or left-hand power, is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Celtic Pwll was the Pluto or deity of the underworld.
Possibly the Latin _castra_, meaning a fort, originated from the idea that Castor was the heroic Invictus who has developed into St. Michael and St. George.
The _sin_ of _sinister_ may possibly be the Gaelic _sen_, meaning senile, and the implication follows that the dark twin was the old in contradistinction to the new god.
The French for nightmare is _cauche_mar, the French for left is _gauche_, and it is the left-hand mairy, or fairy, in Fig.
266 which is the shady one.
Not only does _gauche_ mean _left_, but it also implies awkward, uncanny, and inept, whence it is to be feared that the Gooches, the Goodges, and their affiliated tribes were originally "Blackfriars," and followers of the Black God.
I have already suggested that the Gogs were unpopular among the Greeks, and the intensity of their feeling is seemingly reflected by the Greek adjective _kakos_[535] (the English _gagga_?
), which means evil, dirty, or unpleasant.
Castor and Pollux, or the Fires of St. Helen, were known along the shores of the Mediterranean as St. Telmo's Fires, the word Telmo being seemingly _t Elmo_ or Good Alma.
By the Italians they are known as the Fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas; Peter here corresponding probably to the _auburn_ Aubrey, and Nicholas to "Old Nick".
It was fabled that Castor and Pollux were alike immortal, that like day and night they periodically died, but that whenever one of the brothers expired the other was restored to life, thus sharing immortality between them.
"There was," says Duncan, "an allusion to this tradition in the Roman horse-races, where a single rider galloped round the course mounted on one horse while he held another by the rein.
"[536] This ceremony becomes more interesting when we find that the cauchemar, the nightmare, or the blackmare used in England to be known as the "ephialtes".
[537] That this ill-omened _hipha_, or hobby, was ill-boding Helena, seems somewhat to be confirmed by the custom in Cumberland of allotting to servants the years' allowance for horse-meat on St. Helen's, Eline's, or Elyn's day.
[538] It is believed that horse meat is now taboo in Britain, because the eating of horse was so persistently denounced by Christianity as a heathen rite.
[Illustration: FIG.
268.--British Altar.
By kind permission of the authorities of the British Museum.
[_To face page 479._] I have shown elsewhere some of the innumerable forms under which the fires of Elmo, or the heavenly Twain, were represented.
In England it is evident that a pair of horses served as one form of expression, for among the treasures at the British Museum is an article which is thus described: "Bronze plate representing an altar decorated with blue, green, and red sunk enamels, and evidently unfinished, hence native work of the fourth or fifth century.
Found in the river Thames, 1847".
The principal decoration of this bijou altar--significantly 7 inches high--is two winged steeds supporting a demijohn, vase, or phial, the handles of which, in the form of [SS], are detached from the vase, but are emerging flame-like from the supporters' heads.
The fact of these steeds appearing upon an "altar" is evidence of their sacred character, and one finds apparently the same two beasts delineated on a bucket, _vide_ Fig.
270.
This so termed "barbaric production," discovered in an Aylesford gravel pit belonging to a gentleman curiously named Wagon, is attributed to the first century B.C., and has been compared unfavourably with the Etruscan bucket reproduced on page 474.
The authorities of the British Museum comment upon it as follows: "The effect of barbaric imitation during two or three centuries may be appreciated by comparing the Etruscan _cista_ of the _fourth century_, with the Aylesford bucket of the _first century_ B.C.
The first thing to be noticed is the absence from the latter of the heavy solid castings that form the feet and handle-attachments of the classical specimen.
Such work was beyond the range of the British artificer, who was never successful with the human or animal form, but there is an evident desire to reproduce the salient features of the prototype.
The solid uppermost band of the Etruscan specimen is represented by a thin embossed strip at Aylesford, while the classical motives are woefully caricatured.
Minor analogies are noticed later, but the degradation of the ornament may fitly be dwelt on here as showing the limitations, and at the same time the originality of the native craftsman."
[Illustration: FIG.
269.--Bronze-mounted bucket, Aylesford.
From _A Guide to Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (B.M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
270.--Embossed frieze of bucket, Aylesford.
From _A Guide to Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (B.M.).]
I confess myself unable either to appreciate or dwell upon the alleged degradation of this design, or the woeful inadequacy of the craftmanship.
The bold execution of the spirals proves that the British artist--had such been his intent--could without difficulty have delineated a copybook horse: what, however, he was seemingly aiming at was a facsimile of the heraldic and symbolic beasts which our coins prove were the cherished insignia of the country, and these "deplorable abortions" I am persuaded were no more barbarous or unsuccessful than the grotesque lions and other fantastics which figure in the Royal Arms to-day.
In all probability the Aylesford bucket was made in the neighbourhood where it was found, for at Aylesford used to stand a celebrated "White Horse Stone".
The attendant local legend--that anyone who rode a beast of this description was killed on or about the spot[539]--is seemingly a folk-memory of the time when the severe penalty for riding a white mare was death.
[540] The place-name Aylesbury is derived by the authorities from _bury_, a fortified place of, and _Aegil_, the Sun-archer of Teutonic mythology: the head-dress of the face constituting the hinge of the Aylesford bucket consists of two circles which correspond in idea with the two children in the arms of the Etruscan hinge.
That the bucket was originally a sacerdotal and sacred vessel is implied not only by the word but by the ancient custom thus recorded: "First on a pillar was placed a perch on the sharp prickled back whereof stood this idol ... in his left hand he held up a wheel, and in his right he carried a pail of water wherein were flowers and fruits".
[541] I have elsewhere reproduced several emblems of Jupiter and Athene each seated on a "sharp prickled back," _i.e._, a _broccus_, saw, or zigzag, symbolic of the shaggy solar rays.
[Illustration: FIGS.
271 to 273.--British.
From Akerman.]
There is nothing decadent or seriously wrong with the drawing of the steeds delineated in Figs.
271 and 272, although the "what-not" proceeding from the mouth of the Geho is somewhat perplexing.
This is seemingly a ribbon or a chain, and like the perfect chain surrounding our SOLIDO coins, and the chain which will be noted upon the Trojan spindle whorl illustrated on page 583, was probably intended to portray what the ancients termed Jupiter's Chain: "All things," says Marcus Aurelius, "are connected together by a sacred chain, and there is not one link in it which is not allied with the whole chain, for all things have been so blended together as to form a perfect whole, on which the symmetry of the universe depends.
There is but one world, and it comprehends everything; one God endued with ubiquity; one eternal matter; and one law, which is the Reason common to all intelligent creatures."
[Illustration: FIGS.
274 to 276.--British.
From Evans, and from Barthelemy.]
A chain of pearls is proceeding from the mouth of the little figure which appears on some of the Channel Island coins, _vide_ the DRUCCA example herewith: students of fairy-tale are familiar with the story of a Maid out of whose mouth, whenso'er she opened it fell jewels, and that this fairy Maid was Reason is implied by the present day compliment in the East, "Allah!
you are a wise man, you spit pearls."
The DRUCCA coin is officially described as a "female figure standing to the left, her right hand holding a serpent (?)"
and it is quite likely that the serpent or symbol of Wisdom was intended by the artist.
There is no question about the serpents in the Tyrian coin here illustrated, where on either side of the Maiden they are represented with almost precisely the same [SS] form as the [SS] proceeding from the mouths of the two steeds on the British "altar".
In the latter case the centre is a vase or demijohn, in the former the centre is a Maid or Virgin.
Without a doubt this BER virgin is Beroë or Berith, the _pherepolis_ of Beyrout: in Fig.
278 the two serpents are associated with a phare, fire, or pyre; from the mouth of the British "Jupiters," illustrated in Figs.
274 and 275, the same two serpentine flames or S's are emerging.
The word BER, as has been seen, is equivalent to Vir, and in all probability the word _virgin_ originally carried the same meaning as _burgeon_.
That old Lydgate, the monk of _Bery_, knew all about Vera and how she made the buds to burgeon is obvious from his lines:-Mightie Flora Goddesse of fresh flowers Which clothed hath the soyle in lustie greene, Made buds spring with her sweet showers By influence of the sunne-shine To doe pleasaunce of intent full cleane, Unto the States which now sit here Hath _Vere_ down sent her own daughter deare.
[Illustration: FIGS.
277 and 278.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C.
W.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
279.--Bas Relievo on the Portal of the Temple of Montmorillon in France.
From _Antiquities of Cornwall_ (Borlase).]
It is evident that Vere is here the equivalent of Proserpine, the Maid who was condemned to spend one-half her time in Hades, and that "Verray" was occasionally noxious is implied by the old sense attributed to this word of _nightmare_, _e.g._, Chaucer:-Lord Jesus Christ and Seynte Benedykte Bless this house from every wikked wight Fro nyghte's _verray_, etc.
Some authorities connoted this word _verray_ with Werra, a Sclavonic deity, and the connection is probably well founded: the Cornish Furry dance was also termed the Flora dance.
[Illustration: FIG.
280.--The Church as a Dove with Six Wings.
A Franco-German Miniature of the XI.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The name Proserpine is seemingly akin to Pure Serpent--the same Serpent, perhaps, whose form is represented _in extenso_ at Avebury: the _Bona Dea_ of Crete was figured holding serpents and the nude figure on the left of Fig.
279 has been ingeniously, and, I think, rightly interpreted by Borlase as Truth, or Vera.
It was doubtless some such similar emblem as originated the ridiculous story that St. Christine of Tyre was "tortured" by having live serpents placed at her breasts: "The two asps hung at her breasts and did her no harm, and the two adders wound them about her neck and licked up her sweat.
"[542] Not only is this suffering Christine assigned to Tyre (in Italy), but she is said to have been enclosed in a certain _tower_ and to have been set upon a burning _tour_ or wheel.
Christine is the feminine of Christ, and that Christ was identified with _Sophia_ or Wisdom is obvious from the design herewith.
[Illustration: FIG.
281.--Jesus Christ as Saint Sophia.
Miniature of Lyons, XII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The Sicilian coins of Janus depicted Columba or the Dove, and the same symbol of the Cretan, Epheia, Britomart, Athene, or Rhea figures in the hand of the Elf on page 627, and on the reverse of other British coins illustrated on the same page.
The Dove is the acknowledged symbol of the Holy Ghost, yet the symbolists depicted even the immaculate Dove as duplex: the six wings of the parti-coloured Columba have in all probability an ultimate connection with the six beneficent world-supervisors of the Persian philosophy.
[Illustration: FIG.
282.--The Holy Ghost, as a Child, Floating on the Waters.
From a Miniature of the XIV.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In the Christian emblem below, the Holy Ghost is represented as a Child floating on the Waters of Chaos between the circles of Day and Night, and that the Supreme was the Parent alike of both Good and Evil is expressed in the verse: "I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil.
I, the Lord, do all these things."
The preceding sentence runs: "There is none beside me.
I am the Lord and there is none else.
"[543] That this idea was prevalent among the Druids of the west is strongly to be inferred from an ancient chant still current among the Bretons, which begins-Beautiful child of the Druid, answer me right well.
What would'st thou that I should sing?
Sing to me the series of number one, that I may learn it this very day.
There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone.
The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.
[544] The _Magna Mater_ of Fig.
266 might thus appropriately have been known as Fate, Destiny, Necessity, or Fortune.
_Fortuna_ is radically _for_, and with the Fortunes or fates may be connoted the English fairies known as Portunes.
The Portunes are said to be peculiar to England, and are known by the French as Neptunes: the English Portunes are represented as diminutive little people who, "if anything is to be carried into the house, or any laborious work to be done, lend a hand and finish it sooner than any man could".
[545] A jocular and amiable little people who loved to warm themselves at the fire.
[Illustration: FIG.
283.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
Among the heathen chants of the Spanish peasantry is one in which the number One stands for the wheel of Fortune, and the number six "for the loves you hold".
These six loves may be connoted with the six pinions of the Dove illustrated on page 486, and that Janus of the Dove was regarded as the Chaos, Ghost, or Cause is obvious from the words which are put into his mouth by Ovid: "The ancients called me Chaos (for I am the original substance).
Observe, how I can unfold the deeds of past times.
This lucid air, and the three other bodies which remain, fire, water, and earth, formed one heap.
[546] As soon as this mass was liberated from the strife of its own discordant association, it sought new abodes.
Fire flew upwards: air occupied the next position, and earth and water, forming the land and sea, filled the middle space.
Then I, who was a globe, and formless, assumed a countenance and limbs worthy of a god.
Even now, as a slight indication of my primitive appearance, my front and back are the same."
In the mouth of Fig.
283 is the wheel of the four quarters, and variants of this wheel-cross form the design of a very large percentage of English coins: I here use the word English in preference to British as "there was no native coinage either in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland": in England alone have prehistoric British coins been found,[547] and in England alone apparently were they coined.
Somewhat the same conclusions are indicated by the wheel-cross which is peculiar to Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man: neither in Scotland or Ireland does the circular form exist.
[548] [Illustration: FIG.
284.--Cretan Seal.]
[Illustration: FIG.
285.--British.
From _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).]
[Illustration: FIG.
286.--British.
From Evans.]
Among the seals of Crete there has been found one figuring a ship and two half-moons: it has been supposed that this token signified that the devotee had ventured on a two months' voyage and signalised the successful exploit by the fabrication of an _ex voto_; but if the subject in question actually represents a material vessel one may question whether the mariner could successfully have negotiated even a two hours' trip.
The pair of crescents which figure so frequently on the wheel-cross coins of Britain probably implied the twin lily-white maids of Druidic folk-song, and the superstitions in connection with this symbol of the two _sickles_--the word is essentially the same as _cycle_, Greek _kuklos_--seem in Anglesea or Mona even to linger yet.
[549] Among sepulchral offerings found in a prehistoric barrow near Bridlington or Burlington, were "two pieces of flint chipped into the form of crescents,"[550] and it is possible that Ida the Flame bearer, whose name is popularly connected with _flame bearer_ or Flamborough Head, was not the Anglian chieftain, but the divine Ida, Head, or Flame to whom all Forelands and Headlands were dedicated.
With Bridlington or Burlington may be connoted the fact that this town of the children of Brid is situated in the Deira district, which was occupied by the Parisii: this name is by some authorities believed to be only a corruption of that of the Frisii, originally settlers from the opposite coast of Friesland.
The Etruscan name for Juno was Cupra, which may be connoted with Cabira, one of the titles of Venus, also with Cabura, the name of a fountain in Mesopotamia wherein Juno was said to bathe himself.
The mysterious deities known as the Cabiri are described as "mystic divinities (?
Phoenician origin) worshipped in various parts of the ancient world.
The meaning of their name, their character, and nature are quite uncertain".
[551] Faber, in his _Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri_, states that the Cabiri were the same as the Abiri:[552] in Hebrew _Cabirim_ means the Mighty Ones, and there is seemingly little doubt that Cabiri was originally _great abiri_.
In Candia or Talchinea, the Cabiri were worshipped as the Telchines, and as _chin_ or _khan_ meant in Asia Minor Priest as well as King, and as the offices of Priest and King were anciently affiliated, the term _talchin_ (which as we have seen was applied to St. Patrick) meant seemingly _tall_ or _chief King-Priest_.
The custom of Priest-Kings adopting the style and titles of their divinities renders it probable that the historical Telchins worshipped an archetypal Talchin.
The original Telchins are described by Diodorus, as first inhabiting Rhodes, and the Colossus of Rhodes was probably an image of the divine _Tall King_ or _Chief King_.
It is related that Rhea entrusted the infant Neptune to the care of the Telchines who were children of the sea, and that the child sea-god was reared by them in conjunction with Caphira or Cabira, the daughter of Oceanus.
As Faber observes: "Caphira is evidently a mere variation of Cabira," and he translates Cabira as _Great Goddess_: in view of the evidence already adduced one might likewise translate it Great _Power_, Great _Pyre_, or Great _Phairy_.
The Cabiri are often equated with the Dioscuri or Great _Pair_, and these Twain were not infrequently expressed symbolically by Twin circles.
[Illustration: FIG.
287.--Mykenian.
FIG.
288.--Cretan.
FIG.
289.--Scotch.
From _Myths of Crete and Prehellenic Europe_ (Mackenzie, D.
A.).]
The emblem of the double disc, "barnacle," or "spectacle ornament" is found most frequently in Scotland where it is attributed to the Picts: sometimes the discs are undecorated, others are elaborated by a zigzag or zed, which apparently signified the Central and sustaining _Power_, Fire, or Force.
Figs.
287 and 288 from Crete represent the discs transfixed by a _broca_ or spike and the winged ange or angel with a wand--the magic rod or wand which invariably denoted Power--may be designated King Eros.
In Scotland the central _brocco_, _i.e._, skewer, shoot, or stalk is found sprouting into what one might term _broccoli_, and in Fig.
291 the dotted eyes, wheels, or paps are elaborated into sevens which possibly may have symbolised the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Notable examples of this disc ornament occur at Doo Cave in Fife, and as the Scotch refer to a Dovecote as "Doocot," it may be suggested that Doo Cave was a Dove Cave sacred to the _deux_, or _duo_, or Dieu.
Other well-known specimens are found on a so-called "Brodie" stone and on the Inchbrayock stone in Forfarshire.
Forfar, I have already suggested, was a land of St. Varvary: Overkirkhope, where the symbol also occurs, was presumably the hope or hill of Over, or _uber_, Church, and Ferriby,[553] in Lincolnshire, where the emblem is again found, was in all probability a _by_ or abode of Ferri.
The name Cupar may be connoted with Cupra--the Juno of Etruria--and Inchbrayock is radically Bray or Brock.
[Illustration: FIGS.
290 to 292.--Scotch.
From _Archaic Sculpturings_ (Mann, L.
M.).]
Sometimes the discs--which might be termed _Brick a Brack_ or, Bride's Bairns--are centred by what looks like a tree (French _arbre_) or, in comparison with Fig.
295, from the catacombs, might be an anchor: it has no doubt rightly been assumed that this and similar carvings symbolised the Tree of Life with Adam and Eve on either hand.
According to a recent writer: "The symbol group of a man and woman on either side of a tree with a serpent at times introduced is of pre-Christian origin.
The figures narrowly considered as Adam and Eve and broadly as the human family are accompanied by the Tree which stands for Knowledge, and the serpent which represents Wisdom.
This old world-wide symbol seems to crop up in Pictland twisted and changed in a curious fashion.
"[554] One of these fantastic forms is, I think, the feathered elphin or _antennaed_ solar face of Fig.
293.
[Illustration: FIGS.
293 and 294.--From _Archaic Sculpturings_ (Mann, L.
M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
295.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
Among the ancients the word _Eva_, not only denoted _life_, but it also meant _serpent_: the jumbled traditions of the Hebrews associated Eve and the Serpent unfavourably, but according to an early sect of Gnostic Christians known as the Ophites, _i.e._, _Evites_, or "Serpentites," the Serpent of Genesis was a personification of the Good principle, who instructed Eve in all the learning of the world which has descended to us.
There is frequent mention in the Old Testament of a people called the Hivites or Hevites, so called because, like the Christian Ophites, they were worshippers of the serpent.
We meet again with Eff the serpent in F the fifth letter of the alphabet: this letter, according to Dr. Isaac Taylor, was formed originally like a horned or sacred serpent, and the two strokes of our F are the surviving traces of the two horns.
[555] [Illustration: FIG.
296.--From _A Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology_ (Edwardes and Spence).]
The term Hivites is sometimes interpreted to mean Midlanders, which seems reasonable as they lived in the middle of Canaan.
In connection with these serpent-worshipping Midlanders or Hivites it is significant that not only is the English Avebury described as being "situated in the very centre or heart of our country,"[556] but that it is geographically the very nave or bogel of the surrounding neighbourhood.
[Illustration: FIG.
297.--British.
From Akerman.]
Eva is in all probability the source of the word _ivy_, German _epheu_, for the evergreen ivy is notoriously a long-lived plant, and even by the early Christian Church[557] Ivy was accepted as the emblem of life and immortality.
As immortality was the primary dogma of the Druids, hence perhaps why they and their co-worshippers decked themselves with wreaths of this undying and seemingly immortal plant.
[558] The figure of the Græco-Egyptian "Jupiter," known as Serapis, appears (supported by the Twins) surrounded by an ivy wreath, and that the ancient Jews ivy-decked themselves like the British on festival occasions is evident from the words of Tacitus: "Their priests it is true made use of fifes and cymbals: they were crowned with wreaths of ivy, and a vine wrought in gold was seen in their temple".
[559] The leaf on the British VIRI coin here illustrated has been held to be a vine "which does not appear to have been borrowed from any Roman coin," but, continues Sir John Evans, "whether this was an original type to signify the fertility of the soil in respect of vines or adapted from some other source it is hard to say".
[560] If the device be a Vine leaf it probably symbolised the True Vine; if a fig leaf it undoubtedly was the sign of Maggie Figgy, the Mother of Millions, and the Ovary of Everything: the Sunday before Easter used to be known as Fig Sunday, and on this occasion figs were eaten in large quantities.
[Illustration: FIG.
298.--Thrones.--Fiery Two-winged Wheels.
From Didron.]
[Illustration: FIG.
299.--The Trinity under the Form of Three Circles.
From a French Miniature of the close of the XIII.
Cent.
From Didron.]
[Illustration: FIG.
300.--French MS., XIII.
Cent.
From Didron.]
From Aubrey's plan of the Overton circle constituting the head of the serpent at Avebury, it will be seen that the neck was carefully modelled, and that a pair of barrows appeared at the mouth (see _ante_, page 335).
This head of the Eve or serpent was a stone circle distant about a mile from the larger peripheries, and the whole design covered upwards of two miles of country.
As already noted the serpent was the symbol of immortality and rejuvenescence, because it periodically sloughed its skin and reappeared in one more beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG.
301.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C.
W.).
[561]] That the two and the three circles were taken over intact by Christianity is evident from the emblems illustrated on p. 499, and that the French possessed the tradition of Good Eva or the Good Serpent is manifest from Fig.
300.
The Iberian inscription around Fig.
301--a French example--has not been deciphered, but it is sufficiently evident that the emblem represents the Iberian Jupiter with Juno and the Tree of Life.
[Illustration: FIG.
302.--God the Father, without a Nimbus and Beardless, Condemning Adam to Till the Ground and Eve to Spin the Wool.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The Jews or Judeans of to-day are known indifferently as either Jews or Hebrews, and it would seem that Jou was "Hebrew," or, as the Italians write the word, Ebrea: the French for Jew is _juif_, evidently the same title as Jove or Jehovah.
In Fig.
302, Jehovah is rather surprisingly represented as a _puer_ or boy: as already mentioned, the Eros of Etruria was named Epeur, and it is possible that the London church of St. Peter le Poor--which stood in Brode Street next Pawlet or Little Paul House--was originally a shrine of Jupiter the _puer_, or Jupiter the Boy.
[562] In the design now under consideration the Family consists of three--the Almighty and Adam and Eve--but frequently the holy group consists of five, the additional two probably being Cain and Abel, Cain who slew his brother Abel, being obviously Night or Evil.
In the emblems here illustrated which are defined by Briquet as "cars"; four cycles are supported by a broca or spike, constituting the mystic five.
In Jewish mysticism the Chariot of Jehovah, or Yahve, was regarded as "a kind of mystic way leading up to the final-goal of the soul".
[563] [Illustration: FIGS.
303 to 306.--Mediæval Paper Marks.
From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
The number of the Cabiri was indeterminate, and there is a probability that the sacerdotal Solar Chariot of the Cabiri, whether four or two-wheeled, originated the term cabriolet, whence our modern cab.
I have elsewhere reproduced two pillars bearing the legend CAB, and we might assume that the two-wheeled vehicle illustrated, _ante_, page 454, represented a cab were it not for the official etymology of _cabriolet_.
This term, we are told, is from _cabriole_, a caper, leap of a goat, "from its supposed lightness".
[564] I have never observed a cab either skipping like a ram, or capering like a goat; and in the days before springs the alleged skittishness of the cab must have been even less marked.
In any case the particular vehicle illustrated _ante_, page 454, cannot with propriety be termed "a caperer," for it is reproduced by the editor of Adamnan's _Life of Columba_, as being no doubt the type of car in which the Saint, even without his lynch pins, successfully drove a sedate and undeviating course.
The goat or _caper_ was a familiar emblem of _Jupiter_, and our words _kid_ and _goat_ are doubtless the German _gott_: the horns and the hoofs of the Solar goat--see _ante_, page 361--are perpetuated in the current notions of "Old Nick," and in many parts of Europe Saints Nicholas and Michael are equated;[565] hence there is very little doubt that these two once occupied the position of the two Cabiri, Nick or _Nixy_ being _nox_ or night, and Michael--Light or Day.
The Gaulish coin here illustrated is described by Akerman, as "Two goats (?)
on their hind legs face to face; the whole within a beaded circle": on the reverse is a hog, and some other animal represented with a _broccus_, or saw on its back.
As this is a coin of the people inhabiting Agedincum Senonum (now Sens), the revolving twain are probably _gedin_--either _goats_, _kids_, or _gods_, and the baroque animal with the _broccus_ on its back may be identified with a _boar_.
There is not much evidence in this coin, which was found at _Brettenham_, Norfolk, of "degradation" from the Macedonian stater illustrated _ante_, page 394, nevertheless, Sir John Evans sturdily maintains: "the degeneration of the head of Apollo into two boars and a wheel, impossible as it may at first appear, is in fact but a comparatively easy transition when once the head has been reduced into a form of regular pattern".
[566] [Illustration: FIG.
307.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
The Meigle in Perthshire, where the two-wheeled barrow or barouche was inscribed on the Thane stone, may be equated with St. Michael, and upon another stone at the same Meigle there occurs a carving which is defined as a group of four men placed in svastika form, one hand of each man holding the foot of the other.
The author of _Archaic Sculpturings_ describes this attitude as indicating the unbreakable character of the association of each figure with its neighbours, and expresses the opinion: "This elaborate variant of the symbol seems to symbolise aptly the four quarters of the earth, each quarter being represented by a man.
The four quarters make a complete circle, and therefore all humanity, through love and affinity, should join from the four parts and form one inseparable bond of brotherhood.
"[567] [Illustration: FIG.
308.--British.
From Evans.]
The wheel of _For_tune was sometimes represented by _four_ kings, one on each quadrant, and this emblem was used not only as an inn-sign, but also in churches, notably in Norfolk--the land of the Ikeni.
The authors of _A History of Signboards_ cite continental examples surviving at Sienna, and in San Zeno at Verona.
The wheels of San Zeno, Sienna, or Verona may be connoted with the Sceatta wheel-coin figured in No.
39 of page 364 _ante_, and with the seemingly revolving seals on the coin here illustrated.
[568] The Sceatta four beasts connected by astral spokes are probably intended to denote seals, the phoca or seal having, as we have seen (_ante_, page 224), been associated with Chaos or Cause.
In all probability the _phoca_ was a token of the Phocean Greeks who founded Marseilles: the phoca was pre-eminently associated with _Pro_teus, and in the _Faroe_ Islands they have a curious idea that seals are the soldiers of _Pharaoh_ who was drowned in the sea.
Pharaoh, or _Peraa_, as the Egyptian wrote it, was doubtless the representative Priest-King of Phra, the Egyptian Sun-god, and the drowning of Pharaoh in the Red Sea was probably once a phairy-tale based on the blood-red demise of a summer sun sinking beneath the watery horizon.
On Midsummer Day in England children used to chant-Barnaby Bright, Barnaby Bright, The longest day and the shortest night, whence it would appear that Barnaby was the _auburn_[569] divinity who was further connected with the burnie bee, lady bird, or "Heaven's little chicken".
The rhyme-Burnie bee, Burnie bee, fly away home Your house is on fire, your children will burn, is supposed by Mannhardt to have been a charm intended to speed the sun across the dangers of sunset, in other words, the house on fire, or welkin of the West.
The name Barnabas or Barnaby is defined as meaning _son of the master_ or _son of comfort_; Bernher is explained as _lord of many children_, and hence it would seem that St. Barnaby may be modernised into Bairnsfather.
In this connection the British Bryanstones may be connoted with the Irish Bernesbeg and with "The Stone of the Fruitful Fairy".
Bertram is defined by the authorities as meaning _fair and pure_, and Ferdy or Ferdinand, the Spanish equivalent of this name, may be connoted with the English Faraday.
[Illustration: FIG.
309.--Jehovah, as the God of Battles.
Italian Miniature, close of the XII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
310.--Emblem of the Deity.
_Nineveh_ (Layard).]
The surname Barry, with which presumably may be equated variants such as Berry and Bray, is translated as being Celtic for _good marksman_: the Cretans were famed archers, and the archery of the English yeomen was in its time perhaps not less famous.
If Barry meant _good marksman_, it is to be inferred that the archetypal Barry was Jou, Jupiter, or Jehovah as here represented, and as there is no known etymology for _yeoman_, it may be that the original _yeomen_ were like the Barrys, "good marksmen".
The Greeks portrayed Apollo, and the Tyrians Adad, as a Sovereign Archer, and as the lord of an unerring bow.
The name Adad is seemingly ad-ad, a duplication of Ad probably once meaning _Head Head_, or _Haut Haut_,[570] and the Celtic _dad_ or _tad_ is presumably a corroded form of Adad.
The famous archer Robin Hood, now generally accepted as a myth survival, will be considered later; meanwhile it may here be noted that the authorities derive the surnames Taddy, Addy, Adkin, Aitkin, etc., from _Adam_.
One may connote Adkin or Little Ad with Hudkin, a Dutch and German elf akin to Robin Goodfellow: "Hudkin is a very familiar devil, who will do nobody hurt, except he receive injury; but he cannot abide that, nor yet be mocked.
He talketh with men friendly, sometimes visibly, sometimes invisibly.
There go as many tales upon this Hudkin in some parts of Germany as there did in England on Robin Goodfellow.
"[571] To this Hud the Leicestershire place-name Odestone or Odstone near Twycross--_query_ Two or Twa cross--may be due.
I have suggested that the word _bosom_ or _bosen_, was originally the plural of _boss_, whence it is probable that the name Barnebas meant the Bairn, Boss, or teat.
The word _bosse_ was also used to denote a fountain or gush, and the Boss Alley, which is still standing near St. Paul's, may mark either the site of a spring, or more probably of what was known as St. Paul's Stump.
As late as 1714 the porters of Billingsgate used to invite the passer-by to _buss_ or kiss Paul's Stump; if he complied they gave him a name, and he was compelled to choose a godfather: if he refused to conform to the custom he was lifted up and bumped heavily against the stump.
This must have been the relic of an extremely ancient formality, and it is not unlikely that the Church of Boston in Norfolk covers the site of a similar stump: Boston, originally _Icken_hoe, a haw or hill of Icken, is situated in what was once the territory of the Ikeni, and its church tower to this day is known as "Boston Stump".
At Boskenna (_bos_ or abode of _ikenna_?)
in the parish of St. Buryan, Cornwall, is a stone circle, and a cromlech "thought to have been the seat of an arch Druid".
The chief street of Boston is named Burgate, there is a Burgate at Canterbury near which are Bossenden Woods, and Bysing Wood.
In the West of England the numerous _bos-_ prefixes generally mean _abode_: one of the earliest abodes was the beehive hut, which was essentially a boss.
At Porlock (Somerset) is Bossington Beacon; there is a Bossington near Broughton, and a Bosley at Prestbury, Cheshire.
In the immediate proximity of Bosse Alley, London, Stow mentions a Brickels Lane, and there still remains a Brick Hill, Brooks Wharf, and Broken Wharf.
It is not improbable that the river Walbrook which did _not_ run around the _walls_ of London but passed immediately through the heart of the city was named after Brook or Alberick, or Oberon: in any case the generic terms _burn_, _brook_, and _bourne_ (Gothic _brunna_, a spring or well), have to be accounted for, and we may seemingly watch them forming at the English river Brue, and at least two English bournes, burns, or brooks known as Barrow.
We have already considered the pair of military saints famous at Byzantium or St. Michael's Town: in the neighbourhood of Macclesfield, Cheshire, is a Bosley: the Bosmere district in Cumberland includes a Mickfield, in view of which it becomes interesting to note, near Old Jewry, in London, the parish church of St. Michael, called St. Michael at Bassings hall.
With Michael at Bassings hall may be connoted St. Michael of Guernsey, an island once divided into two great fiefs, of which one was the property of Anchetil Vicomte du _Bessin_.
The bussing of St. Paul's Stump or the Bosse of Billingsgate had evidently its parallel in the Fief du Bessin, for Miss Carey in her account of the Chevauchee of St. Michael observes that, "the one traditional dance connected with all our old festivals and merry-makings has always been the one known as _A mon beau Laurier_, where the dancers join hands and whirl round, curtsey, and kiss a central object".
[572] We may reasonably assume that John Barton, who is mentioned by Stow as a great benefactor to the church of St. Michael, was either John Briton, or John of some particular Barton, possibly of the neighbouring Pardon Churchyard.
The adjacent Bosse Alley is next _Huggen_ Lane, wherein is the Church of All Hallows, and running past the church of St. Michael at Bassings hall is another _Hugan_ Lane.
_Gyne_, as in gynæcology, is Greek for _woman_, whence the _gyne_ or _queen_ of the Ikenian _Icken_hoe or Boston Stump, may have meant simply woman, maiden, _queen_, or "a flaunting extravagant _quean_".
Somewhat east from the Sun tavern,[573] on the north side of this Michael's church, is Mayden Lane, "now so called," says Stow, "but of old time Ingene Lane, or Ing Lane": "down lower," he continues, "is Silver Street (I think of Silversmiths dwelling there)".
It has been seen that Silver Streets are ubiquitous in England, and as this Silver Street is in the immediate proximity of Adle Street and Ladle Lane, there is some presumption that Silver was here the Leda, or Lady, or Ideal, by whom it was said that Jupiter in the form of a swan became the Parent of the Heavenly twins or Fairbairns.
We have considered the sign of the Swan with two necks as found near Goswell Road, and the neighbouring _Goose_ Lane, Wind_goose_ Lane, Pente_cost_ Lane, and _Chis_well Street are all in this connection interesting.
I have already suggested that Angus, Aengus, or Oengus, the pre-Celtic divinity of New Grange, meant _ancient goose_: Oengus was alternatively known as Sen-gann or Old Gann, connected with whom were two young Ganns who were described sometimes as the sons of Old Gann, sometimes as his father.
In the opinion of Prof. Macalister Oengus, _alias_ Dagda mor, the Great Good Fire, _alias_ Sengann, "was not originally _son_ of the two youths, but _father_ of the two youths, and he thus falls into line with other storm gods as the parent of Dioscuri.
"[574] There is little doubt that Aengus, the _ancient goose_, the Father of St. Bride, was Sengann the Old Gander, and in connection with St. Michael's goose it is noteworthy that Sinann, the Goddess of the Shannon, was alternatively entitled Macha.
Mr. Westropp informs[575] us that Sengann was the god of the Ganganoi who inhabited Connaught, hence no doubt he was the same as Great King Conn, and Sinann was the same as Good Queen Eda.
At the north end of London Bridge stands Old Swan Pier, upon the site of which was once Ebgate, an ancient water-gate.
"In place of this gate," says Stow, "is now a narrow passage to the Thames called Ebgate Lane, but more commonly the Old Swan."
_Eb_gate may be connoted with the neighbouring Abchurch Lane, where still stands what Stow termed "the parish church of St. Marie _Ab_church, _Ape_church, or _Up_church, as I have read it," and this same root seemingly occurs in the Upwell of St. Olave _Up_well distant only a few hundred yards.
This spot accurately marks the _hub_ of ancient London, and there is here still standing the once-famous London stone: "some have imagined," says Stow, "the same to be set up by one John, or Thomas Londonstone, dwelling there against, but more likely it is that such men have taken name of the stone than the stone of them".
There is little doubt that London stone, where oaths were sworn and proclamations posted, was the Perry stone of the men who made the six main roads or tribal tracks which centred there, of which great wheel _Ab_church formed seemingly the _hob_ or _hub_.
Abchurch was in all probability originally a church of Hob, and it may aptly be described as one of the many primitive _abbeys_: there is an Ibstone at Wallingford, which the modern authorities--like the "John Londonstone" theorists of Stow's time--urge, was probably Ipa's stone: there is an Ipsley at Redditch, assumed to be either _aspentree meadow_ or perhaps _Aeppas mead_.
Ipstones at Cheadle, we are told, "may be from a man as above"; of Hipswell in Yorkshire Mr. Johnston concludes, "there is no name at all likely here, so this must be well at the hipple or little heap".
But as Hipswell figures in Leland as _Ipres_well, is there any absolute _must_ about the "hipple," and is it not possible that Ipres or Hipswell may have been dedicated to the same _hipha_ or _hip_, the Prime Parent of our Hip!
Hip!
Hip!
who was alternatively the Ypre of Ypres Hall and Upwell by Abchurch?
At Halifax there is a _Hipper_holme which appeared in Domesday as _Huperun_, and here the authorities are really and seriously nonplussed.
"It seems hard to explain Huper or Hipper.
There is nothing like it in _Onom_, unless it be Hygebeort or Hubert; but it may be a dissimilated form of _hipple_, _hupple_, and mean 'at the little heaps'.
"[576] Let us quit these imaginary "little heaps" and consider the position at the Halifax Hipperholme, or Huperun.
The church here occupied the site of an ancient hermitage said to have been dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the Father of hermits, and to have possessed as a sacred relic the alleged true face of St. John: my authority continues that this attracted great numbers of pilgrims who "approached by four ways, which afterwards formed the main town thoroughfares concentrating at the parish church; and it is supposed to have given rise to the name Halifax, either in the sense of _Holy Face_ with reference to the face of St. John, or in the sense of _Holy ways_ with reference to the four roads, the word _fax_ being Old Norman French for _highways_".
[577] More recent authorities have compared the word with Carfax at Oxford, which is said to mean Holy fork, or Holy road, converging as in a fork.
The roads at Carfax constitute a four-limbed cross; Oxenford used to be considered "the admeasured centre of the whole island";[578] it was alternatively known as Rhydychain, whence I do not think that Rhydychain meant a ford for oxen, but more probably either _Rood King_, or _Ruddy King_.
[Illustration: FIG.
311.--From _The Cross: Heathen and Christian_ (Brock, M.).]
In 1190 Halifax was referred to as Haliflex, upon which the Rev.
J.
B. Johnston comments: "the _l_ seems to be a scribe's error, and _flex_ must be _feax_.
Holy flax would make no sense.
In Domesday it seems to be called Feslei, can the _fes_ be _feax_ too?"
In view of the cruciform streets of Chichester, of our cruciform rood or rota coins, and of the four rivers supposed by all authorities to flow to the four quarters out of Paradise, is it not possible that four-quartered Haliflex was a fay's lea or meadow, whose founders built their "abbey"[579] in the true-face form of the _Holy Flux_ or Fount, the _ain_ or flow of living water?
Four _ains_ or eyes are clearly exhibited on the emblems here illustrated, which show the four-quartered sacramental buns or brioches, whence the modern Good Friday bun has descended.
[Illustration: FIG.
312.--Roman roads.
From _A New Description of England and Wales_ (Anon.
1724).]
It was a prevalent notion among our earliest historians that "In such estimation was Britain held by its inhabitants, that they made in it four roads from end to end, which were placed under the King's protection to the intent that no one should dare to make an attack upon his enemy on these roads".
[580] These four great roads, dating from the time of King Belinus, and supposedly running from sea to sea, were probably mythical, but in view of the sanctity of public highways and the King's Peace which was enforced thereon, it is not improbable that numerous "Holloways"--now supposed to mean hollow or sunk ways--were originally and actually _holy ways_.
The Punjaub is so named because it is watered not by four but by five rivers, and that five streams possessed a mystic significance in British mythology is evident from the story of Cormac's voyage to the Land of Paradise or Promise.
[581] "Palaces of bronze and houses of white silver, thatched with white bird's wings are there.
Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water.
"[582] It has been recently pointed out that the Celtic conception of Paradise "offers the closest parallel to the Chinese," whence it is significant to find that in the Chinese "Abyss of Assembly" there were supposed to lie five fairy islands of entrancing beauty, which were inhabited by spirit-like beings termed _shên jên_.
[583] I have in my possession a Chinese temple-ornament consisting of a blue porcelain broccus of five rays or peaks, which, like the five fundamental cones of the Etruscan tomb (_ante_, p. 237), in all probability represent the five bergs or islands of the blessed.
The inner circle of Stonehenge consisted of five upstanding trilithons of which the stones came--by popular repute--from Ireland.
Among the Irish divinities mentioned by Mr. Westropp is not only the gracious Aine who was worshipped by five Firbolg tribes, but also an old god who kindled five streams of magic fire from which his sons--the fathers of the Delbna tribes--all sprang.
[584] It will be remembered that the Avebury district is the boss, gush, or spring of five rivers, and Avebury or Abury was almost without doubt another "abbey" or _bri_ of Ab on similar lines to the six-spoked _hub_, _hob_, or _boss_ of Abchurch, Londonstone.
It is difficult to believe that the six roads meeting at Abchurch arranged themselves so symmetrically by chance, and it is still more difficult to attribute them to the Roman Legions.
As Mr. Johnson has pointed out there is a current supposition, seemingly well based, that some of the supposedly Roman roads represent older trackways, straightened and adapted for rougher usage.
[585] That London stone at Abchurch was the hub, navel or _bogel_ of the Cantian British roads may be further implied by the immediately adjacent _Buckle_sbury, now corrupted into Bucklersbury.
Parts of the Ichnield Way--notably at Broadway--are known as Buckle Street, the term _buckle_ here being seemingly used in the sense of Bogle or Bogie.
It is always the custom of a later race to attribute any great work of unknown origin to Bogle or the Devil, _e.g._, the Devil's Dyke, and innumerable other instances.
_Ichnos_ in Greek means _track_, _ichneia_ a _tracking_; whence the immemorial British track known as the _Ichnield_ Way may reasonably be connoted with the ancient Via _Egnatio_ near Berat in Albania.
That Albion, like Albania, possessed very serviceable ways before the advent of any Romans is clear from Cæsar's _Commentaries_.
After mentioning the British rearguard--"about 4000 charioteers only being left"--Cæsar continues: "and when our cavalry for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely scattered themselves among the fields, he (Cassivelaunus) used to send out charioteers from the woods by _all the well-known roads_ and paths, and to the great danger of our horse engage with them, and this source of fear hindered them from straggling very extensively".
[586] It has been seen that the Welsh tracks by which the armies marched to battle were known as Elen's Ways, whence possibly six such Elen's Ways concentrated in the heart of London, which I have already suggested was an Elen's dun.
In French forests radiating pathways, known as _etoiles_ or stars, were frequent, and served the most utilitarian purpose of guiding hunters to a central Hub or trysting-place.
One of the marvels which impress explorers in Crete is the excellence of the ancient Candian roads.
According to Tacitus the British, under Boudicca, chiefly Cantii, Cangians, and Ikeni, "brought into the field an incredible multitude".
[587] The density of the British population in ancient times is indicated by the extent of prehistoric reliques, whereas the Roman invaders were never numerically more than a negligible fraction.
It is now admitted by historians that Roman civilisation did not succeed in striking the same deep roots in British soil as it did into the nationality of Gaul or Spain.
"For one thing, the numbers both of Roman veterans and of Romanised Britons remained comparatively small; for another, beyond the Severn and beyond the Humber lay the multitudes of the un-Romanised tribes, held down only by the terror of the Roman arms, and always ready to rise and overwhelm the alien culture.
"[588] Commenting upon the Icknield Way, Dr.
Guest remarks the lack upon its course of any Roman relics, a want, however, which, as he says, is amply compensated for by the many objects, mostly of British antiquity, which crowd upon us as we journey westward--by the tumuli and "camps" which show themselves on right and left--by the six gigantic earthworks which in the intervals of eighty miles were raised at widely different periods to bar progress along this now deserted thoroughfare.
[589] In a similar strain Mr. Johnson writes of the Pilgrim's Way in Surrey: "To my thinking, the strongest argument for the prehistoric way lies in the plea expressed by the grim old earthworks and silent barrows which stud its course, and by the numerous relics dug up here and there, relics of which we may rest assured not one-half has been put on record.
"[590] Tacitus pictures a Briton as reasoning to himself "compute the number of men born in freedom and the Roman invaders are but a handfull".
[591] Is it in these circumstances likely that the Roman handful troubled to construct six great arteries or main roads centring to London stone?
The Romans ran military roads from castra to castra, but in Roman eyes London was merely "a place not dignified with the name of a colony, but the chief residence of merchants and the great mart of trade and commerce".
[592] Holloway Road, in London, implies, I think, at least one _Holy Way_, and there seems to me a probability that London stone was a primitive Jupiterstone, yprestone, preston, pray stone, or phairy stone, similar to the holy centre-stone of sacred Athens: "Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are treading and incense streams: in sacred Athens come to the holy centre-stone".
FOOTNOTES: [506] _Iliad_, Bk.
XX., 434.
[507] A King Cunedda figures in Welsh literature as the first native ruler of Wales, and tradition makes Cunedda a son of the daughter of Coel, probably the St. Helen who was the daughter of Old King Cole, and who figures as the London Great St. Helen and Little St. Helen: possibly, also, as the ancient London goddess Nehallenia = New Helen, Nelly = Ellen.
[508] _History_, Bk.
V. [509] Church, A. J. and Brodribb, W. J., _The History of Tacitus_, 1873, p. 229.
[510] Quoted in _Celtic Britain_, Rhys, Sir J., p. 74.
[511] Address to British Association.
[512] Quoted in _The Veil of Isis_, Reade, W. W., p. 47.
[513] Wilkie, James, _Saint Bride, the Greatest Woman of the Celtic Church_.
[514] Nonnus, quoted from _A Dissertation on The Mysteries of the Cabiri_, Faber, G. S., vol.
ii., p. 313.
[515] Huyshe, W., _The Life of St. Columba_, p. 247.
[516] Canon ffrench, _Prehistoric Faith and Worship_, p. 56.
[517] Hughes, T., _The Scouring of the White Horse_, p. 111.
[518] Apart from recent experiences and the records of the Saxon invaders of this country, one may connote the candid maxims of the Frederick upon whom the German nation has thought proper to confer the sobriquet of "Great," _e.g._:-"It was the genius of successive rulers of our race to be guided only by self-interest, ambition, and the instinct of self-preservation."
"When Prussia shall have made her fortune, she will be able to give herself the air of good-faith and of constancy which is only suitable for great States or small Sovereigns."
"As for war, it is a profession in which the smallest scruple would spoil everything."
"Nothing exercises a greater tyranny over the spirit and heart than religion.... Do we wish to make a treaty with a Power?
If we only remember that we are Christians all is lost, we shall always be duped."
"Do not blush at making alliances with the sole object of reaping advantage for yourself.
Do not commit the vulgar fault of not abandoning them when you believe it to be to your advantage to do so; and, above all, ever follow this maxim that to despoil your neighbours is to take from them the means of doing you harm."
In the eyes of the stupid and unappreciative Britons the Saxons were "swine," and the "loathest of all things," _vide_ Layamon's _Brut_, _e.g._: "Lo!
where here before us the heathen hounds, who slew our ancestors with their wicked crafts; and they are to us in land _loathest of all things_.
Now march we to them, and starkly lay on them, and avenge worthily our kindred, and our realm, and avenge the mickle shame by which they have disgraced us, that they over the waves should have come to Dartmouth.
And all they are forsworn, and all they shall be destroyed; they shall be all put to death, with the Lord's assistance!
March we now forward, fast together"--(Everyman's Library, p. 195).
"The Saxons set out across the water, until their sails were lost to sight.
I know not what was their hope, nor the name of him who put it in their mind, but they turned their boats, and passed through the channel between England and Normandy.
With sail and oar they came to the land of Devon, casting anchor in the haven of Totnes.
The heathen breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the folk of the country.
They poured forth from their ships, and scattered themselves abroad amongst the people, searching out arms and raiment, firing homesteads and slaying Christian men.
They passed to and fro about the country, carrying off all they found beneath their hands.
Not only did they rob the hind of his weapon, but they slew him on his hearth with his own knife.
Thus throughout Somerset and a great part of Dorset, these pirates spoiled and ravaged at their pleasure, finding none to hinder them at their task"--(_Ibid._, p. 47).
[519] Allen J. Romilly, _Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times_, p. 130.
[520] _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, p. 89.
[521] Quoted by J. Romilly Allen, in _Celtic Art_, p. 138.
[522] Rev.
Wm.
Greenwell and Parker Brewis, _Archæologia_, vol.
lxi., pp.
439, 472 (1909).
[523] Rev.
Wm.
Greenwell and Parker Brewis, _Archæologia_, vol.
lxi., p. 4.
[524] The standard supposition that Smithfield is a corruption of _smooth field_ may or may not be well founded.
[525] Bohn's ed., p. 382.
[526] The psychology of Homer's description of the Vulcan menage is curiously suggestive of a modern visit to the village blacksmith:-"Him swelt'ring at his forge she found, intent On forming twenty tripods, which should stand The wall surrounding of his well-built house, The silver-footed Queen approach'd the house, Charis, the skilful artist's wedded wife, Beheld her coming, and advanc'd to meet; And, as her hand she clasp'd, address'd her thus: 'Say, Thetis of the flowing robe, belov'd And honour'd, whence this visit to our house, An unaccustom'd guest?
but come thou in, That I may welcome thee with honour due.'
Thus, as she spoke, the goddess led her in, And on a seat with silver studs adorn'd, Fair, richly wrought, a footstool at her feet, She bade her sit; then thus to Vulcan call'd; 'Haste hither, Vulcan; Thetis asks thine aid.'
Whom answer'd thus the skill'd artificer: 'An honour'd and a venerated guest Our house contains; who sav'd me once from woe, Then thou the hospitable rites perform, While I my bellows and my tools lay by.'
He said, and from the anvil rear'd upright His massive strength; and as he limp'd along, His tott'ring knees were bow'd beneath his weight.
The bellows from the fire he next withdrew, And in a silver casket plac'd his tools; Then with a sponge his brows and lusty arms He wip'd, and sturdy neck and hairy chest.
He donn'd his robe, and took his weighty staff; Then through the door with halting step he pass'd; ... with halting gait, Pass'd to a gorgeous chair by Thetis' side, And, as her hand he clasp'd, address'd her thus: 'Say Thetis, of the flowing robe, belov'd And honour'd, whence this visit to our house, An unaccustom'd guest?
say what thy will, And, if within my pow'r esteem it done.'"
_Iliad_, Bk.
XVIII., p. 420-80.
[527] British Museum, _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_, p. 54.
[528] "Antiquities to be noted therein are: First the street of Lothberie, Lathberie, or Loadberie (for by all these names have I read it), took the name (as it seemeth) of berie, or court of old time there kept, but by whom is grown out of memory.
This street is possessed for the most part by founders, that cast candlesticks, chafing-dishes, spice mortars, and such like copper or laton works and do afterward turn them with the foot, and not with the wheel, to make them smooth and bright with turning and scrating (as some do term it), making a loathsome noise to the by-passers that have not been used to the like, and therefore by them disdainfully called Lothberie."
--_London_ (Ev.
Lib.
), p. 248.
[529] _Phenomena_, p. xvii.
[530] Stow, _London_, p. 221.
[531] _Giraldus Cambrensis_, p. 97.
[532] _Cf._ Rhys, Sir J., _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 613.
[533] _Cf._ _A New Light on the Renaissance_ and _The Lost Language of Symbolism_.
[534] Windle, B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 116.
[535] Cacus figures in mythology as a huge giant, the son of Vulcan, and the stealer of Hercules' oxen.
[536] Duncan, T., _The Religions of Profane Antiquity_, p. 59.
[537] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faith and Folklore_, vol.
i., p. 210.
[538] A trace of the old sacrificial eating?
[539] Gomme, L., _Folklore as an Historic Science_, p. 43.
[540] See Johnson, W., _Byways of British Archæology_.
"Among the Saxons only a high priest might lawfully ride a mare," p. 436.
[541] Faber, G. S., _The Mysteries of the Cabiri_, i., 220.
[542] _Golden Legend_, iv., 96.
[543] Is.
xlv.
7.
[544] Quoted from Eckenstein, Miss Lena, _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 153.
[545] Keightley, _Fairy Mythology_, p. 285.
[546] The "one heap" of chaos was illustrated _ante_, p. 224.
[547] Allen F. Romilly, _Celtic Art_, p. 78.
[548] _Ibid._, p. 188.
[549] The following letter appeared in _Folklore_ of June 29, 1918:-"Twenty-five years ago an old man in one of the parishes of Anglesey invariably bore or rather wore a sickle over his neck--in the fields, and on the road, wherever he went.
He was rather reticent as to the reason why he wore it, but he clearly gave his questioner to understand that it was a protection against evil spirits.
This custom is known in Welsh as '_gwisgo'r gorthrwm_,' which literally means 'wearing the oppression'.
_Gorthrwm_ = _gor_, an intensifying affix = _super_, and _trwm_ = heavy, so that the phrase perhaps would be more correctly rendered 'wearing the overweight'.
It is not easy to see the connection between the practice and the idea either of overweight or oppression; still, that was the phrase in common use.
"For a similar reason, that is, protection from evil spirits during the hours of the night, it was and is a custom to place two scythes archwise over the entrance-side of the wainscot bed found in many of the older cottages of Anglesey.
It is difficult to find evidence of the existence of this practice to-day as the old people no doubt feel that it is contrary to their prevailing religious belief and will not confess their faith in the efficacy of a 'pagan' rite which they are yet loth to abandon.
"R. GWYNEDON DAVIES."
[550] Wright T., _Essays on Arch.
Subjects_, i., 26.
[551] Smith, W., _A Smaller Classical Dictionary_.
[552] Vol.
i., p. 210.
[553] Domesday Ferebi, "probably dwelling of the _comrade_ or partner".
Do the authorities mean _friend_?
[554] Mann, L., _Archaic Sculpturings_, p. 30.
[555] _Cf._ _The Alphabet_, i., 12.
[556] Lord Avebury.
Preface to _A Guide to Avebury_, p. 5.
[557] Durandus, _Rationale_.
[558] "Ruddy was the sea-beach and the circular revolution was performed by the attendance of the white bands in graceful extravagance when the assembled trains were assembled in dancing and singing in cadence with garlands and ivy branches on the brow."
--_Cf._ Davies, E. _Mythology of British Druids_.
[559] _History_, V., 5.
[560] _Ancient British Coins_, p. 178.
[561] "Copied by Higgins, _Anacalypsis_, on the authority of Dubois, who states (vol.
iii., p. 88), that it was found on a stone in a church in France, where it had been kept religiously for six hundred years.
Dubois regards it as wholly astrological, and as having no reference to the story told in Genesis."
[562] It is quite improbable that there was any foundation for Stow's surmise that the epithet Poor was applied to the parish of St. Peter in Brode Street, "for a difference from others of that name, sometimes peradventure a poor parish".
It is, however, possible that the church was dedicated to Peter the Hermit, _i.e._, the poor Peter.
[563] _Cf._ Abelson, J., _Jewish Mysticism_, p. 34.
[564] _Cf._ also Brachet A., _Ety.
Dictionary of French Language_: "A two-wheeled carriage which being light _leaps_ up".
Had our authorities been considering _phaeton_, this definition might have passed muster.
Although Skeat connects _phaeton_ with the Solar Charioteer he nevertheless connotes _phantom_.
Why?
[565] Blackie, C., _Place-names_, p. 137.
[566] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, p. 121.
[567] P. 28.
[568] It is a miracle that this and the other coins illustrated on page 364 did not go into the dustbin.
The official estimate of their value and interest is expressed in the following reference from Hawkin's _Silver Coins of England_, p. 17:-"After the final departure of the Romans, about the year 450, the history of the coinage is involved in much obscurity; the coins of that people would of course continue in circulation long after the people themselves had quitted the shores, and it is not improbable that the rude and uncouth pieces, which are imitations of their money, and _are scarce because they are rejected from all cabinets and thrown away as soon as discovered_, may have been struck during the interval between the Romans and Saxons."
The italics are mine, and comment would be inadequate.
Happily, in despite of "the practised numismatist," Time, which antiquates and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.
[569] Auburn hair is golden-red--hence I am able to recognise only a remote comparison with _alburnum_, the white sap wood or inner bark of trees.
[570] "We also find Adad numbered among the gods whom the Syrians worshipped; nevertheless we find but little concerning him, and that little obscure and unsatisfactory, either in ancient or modern writers.
Macrobius says, "The Assyrians, or rather the Syrians, give the name Adad to the god whom they worship, as _the highest_ or greatest," and adds that the signification of this name is the One or the Only.
This writer also gives us clearly to understand that the Syrians adored the sun under this name; at least, the surname Adad, which was given to the sun by the natives of Heliopolis, makes them appear as one and the same."
--Christmas, H.
Rev., _Universal Mythology_, p. 119.
[571] _Discourse concerning Devils_, annexed to _The Discovery of Witchcraft_, Reginald Scot, i., chap.
xxi.
[572] _Folklore_, XXV., 4, p. 426.
[573] "The Sun and Moon have been considered as signs of pagan origin, typifying Apollo and Diana," _History of Signboards_, p. 496.
[574] _Proc.
of Royal Irish Acad._, xxxiv., c. 10-11, pp.
318, 320.
[575] _Ibid._, c. 8, p. 159.
[576] Johnston, Rev.
J.
B., _The Place-names of England and Wales_, p. 304.
[577] Wilson, J. M., _Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales_, i., 839.
[578] Herbert, A., _Cyclops Christianus_, p. 93.
[579] In Ireland an "abbey" is a cell or hermitage.
[580] _Cf._ Guest, Dr., _Origines Celticæ_, ii., 223.
[581] The name Cormac is defined as meaning _son of a chariot_.
Is it to be assumed that the followers of Great Cormac understood a physical road car?
[582] Wentz., W. Y. E., _The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_, p. 341.
[583] "The inhabitants are called _shên jên_, spirit-like beings, a term hardly synonymous with _hsien_, though the description of them is consistent with the recognised characteristics of _hsien_.
The passage runs as follows: 'Far away on the Isle of Ku-shê there dwell spirit-like beings whose flesh is [smooth] as ice and [white] as snow, and whose demeanour is as gentle and unassertive as that of a young girl.
They eat not of the Five Grains, but live on air and dew.
They ride upon the clouds with flying dragons for their teams, and roam beyond the Four Seas.
The _shên_ influences that pervade that isle preserve all creatures from petty maladies and mortal ills, and ensure abundant crops every year.'"
--Yetts, Major W. Perceval, _Folklore_, XXX., i., p. 89.
[584] _Proc.
Roy.
Irish Acad._, xxxiv., c. 8, p. 135.
[585] _Folk Memory_, p. 339.
[586] _De B. Gallico_, v., 19.
[587] Annals, xxxiv.
[588] Hearnshaw, F. J. C., _England in the Making_, p. 22.
[589] _Origines Celticæ_, ii., 240.
[590] _Folk Memory_, p. 349.
[591] _Agricola_, xv.
[592] Tacitus, _Annals_, xxxiii.
CHAPTER X HAPPY ENGLAND "In the old time every Wood and Grove, Field and Meadow, Hill and Cave, Sea and River, was tenanted by tribes and communities of the great Fairy Family, and at least one of its members was a resident in every House and Homestead where the kindly virtues of charity and hospitality were practised and cherished.
This was the faith of our forefathers--a graceful, trustful faith, peopling the whole earth with beings whose mission was to watch over and protect all helpless and innocent things, to encourage the good, to comfort the forlorn, to punish the wicked, and to thwart and subdue the overbearing."
--ANON, _The Fairy Family_, 1857.
"It is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all."--W.
B. YEATS.
It is generally supposed that the site of London has been in continuous occupation since that remote period when the flint-knappers chipped their implements at Gray's Inn, and the pile-dwelling communities, whose traces have been found in the neighbourhood of London Stone, drove their first stakes into the surrounding marshes.
Not only are there in London the material evidences of antediluvian occupation, but "the fact remains that in the city of London there are more survivals from past history than can be found within the compass of any other British city, or of any other area in Britain.
"[593] Sir Laurence Gomme assigns some importance to the place-name "Britaine Street"--now "Little Britain"--where, according to Stow, the Earls of Britain were lodged, but it is probable that in _Up_well, _Eb_gate, _Ab_church, _Ape_church or _Up_church, we may identify relics of an infinitely greater antiquity.
When Cæsar paid his flying visit to these islands he learned at the mouth of the Thames that what he terms an _oppidum_ or stronghold of the British was not far distant, and that a considerable number of men and cattle were there assembled.
As it has been maintained that London was the stronghold here referred to, the term _oppidum_ may possibly have been a British word, Cæsar's testimony being: "_The Britons apply_ the name of _oppidum_ to any woodland spot difficult to access, and fortified with a rampart and trench to which they are in the habit of resorting in order to escape a hostile raid".
[594] That the _dum_ of _oppidum_ was equivalent to _dun_ is manifest from the place-name Dumbarton, which was originally Dunbrettan.
In view of the natural situation of St. Alban's there is a growing opinion among archæologists that London, and not St. Alban's, was the stronghold which stood the shock of Roman conquest when Cæsar took the _oppidum_ of Cassivellaunus.
The inscriptions EP, EPPI, and IPPI figure frequently on British coins, and there were probably local hobby stones, hobby towns, and _oppi duns_ in the tribal centre of every settlement of hobby-horse worshippers.
In Durham is Hoppyland Park, near Bridgewater is Hopstone, near Yarmouth is Hopton, and Hopwells; and Hopwood's, Happy Valley's, Hope Dale's, Hope Point's, Hopgreen's, Hippesley's and Apsley's may be found in numerous directions.
It is noteworthy that none of these terms can have had any relation to the hop plant, for the word _hops_ is not recorded until the fifteenth century; nor, speaking generally, have they any direct connection with _hope_, meaning "the point of the low land mounting the hill whence the top can be seen".
[595] The word _hope_, meaning expectation, is in Danish _haab_, in German _hoffe_: Hopwood, near Hopton, is at Alvechurch (Elf Church?
), apart from which straw one would be justified in the assumption that Hop, Hob, or Hoph, where it occurs in place-names, had originally reference to Hob-with-a-canstick, _alias_ Hop-o'-my-Thumb.
The Hebrew expression for the witch of Endor, consulted by King Saul, is _ob_ or _oub_, but in Deuteronomy xviii.
11, the term _oph_ is used to denote a familiar spirit.
[596] As we find a reference in Shakespeare to "urchins, _ouphes_, and fairies," the English ouphes would seem to have been one of the orders of the Elphin realm: the authorities equate it with _alph_ or _alp_, and the word has probably survived in the decadence of Kipling's "muddied _oaf_".
Offa, the proper name, is translated by the dictionaries as meaning _mild_, _gentle_: it is further remarkable that the root _oph_, _op_, or _ob_, is very usually associated with things diminutive and small.
In Welsh _of_ or _ov_ means "atoms, first principles";[597] in French _oeuf_, in Latin _ova_, means an egg; the little egg-like berry of the hawthorn is termed a _hip_; to _ebb_ is to diminish, and in S.W.
Wiltshire is "a _small_ river," named the Ebbe.
Hob, with his flickering candlestick, or the homely Hob crouching on the hob, seems rarely to have been thought of otherwise than as the child Elf, such as that superscribed EP upon the British coin here illustrated: yet to the _ub_iquitous Hob may no doubt be assigned _up_, which means aloft or overhead, and _hoop_, the symbol of the Sun or Eye of Heaven.
[Illustration: FIG.
313.--British.
From Akerman.]
Within and all around the _oppida_ the military and sacerdotal hubbub was undoubtedly at times uproarious, and the vociferation used on these occasions may account for the word _hubbub_,[598] a term which according to Skeat was "imitative".
This authority adds to his conjecture: "formerly also _whoobub_, a confused noise.
Hubbub was confused with _hoop-hoop_, re-duplication of _hoop_ and _whoobub_ with _whoop-hoop_."
But even had our ancestors mingled _hip!
hip!_ in their muddled minds even then the confusion would have been excusable.
_Ope_, when occurring in proper-names such as Panope or Europe, is usually translated Eye--thus, Panope as _Universal Eye_, and Europa as _Broad Eye_.
The small red eye-like or optical berries of the hawthorn are termed _hips_ or haws, and it is probable that once upon a time the hips were deemed the elphin eyes of Hob, the Ubiquitous or Everywhere.
In India the favourite bead in rosaries is the seed named _rudraksha_, which means "the Eye of the god Rudra or S'iva": Rudra, or the _ruddy one_, is the Hub or centre of the Hindoo pantheon, and S'iva, his more familiar name (now understood to mean "kindly, gracious, or propitious") is more radically "dear little Iva or Ipha".
In India millions of S'eva stones are still worshipped, and the _rudraksha_ seeds or Eyes of S'iva are generally cut with eleven facets,[599] evidently symbolising the eleven Beings which are said to have sprung from the dual personalities--male and female--of the Creative Principle.
_Epine_, the French for thorn, is ultimately akin to Hobany, and _hip_ may evidently be equated with the friendly Hob.
According to Bryant Hip or Hipha was a title of the Phoenician Prime Parent, and it is probable that our _Hip!
Hip!
Hip!_--the parallel of the Alban _Albani!
Albani!_--long antedated the _Hurrah!_ The Hobdays and the Abdys of Albion may be connoted with _Good Hob_, and that this Robin Goodfellow or benevolent elf was the personification of shrewdness and cunning is implied by _apt_ and in_ept_, and that happy little Hob was considered to be pretty is implied by _hübsch_, the Teutonic for _pretty_: the word _pretty_ is essentially _British_, and the piratical habits of the early British are brought home to them by the word _pirate_.
We shall, however, subsequently see that _pirates_ originally meant "attempters" or men who _tried_.
The surname Hepburn argues the existence at some time of a Hep bourne or brook; in Northumberland is Hepborne or Haybourne, which the authorities suppose meant "burn, brook, with the hips, the fruit of the wild rose": but hips must always have been as ubiquitous and plentiful as sparrows.
In Yorkshire is Hepworth, anciently written Heppeword, and this is confidently interpreted as meaning _Farm of Heppo_: in view, however, of our hobby-horse festivals, it is equally probable that in the Hepbourne the Kelpie, the water horse, or _hippa_ was believed to lurk, and one may question the historic reality of farmer Heppo.
The hobby horse was principally associated with the festivals of May-Day, but it also figured at Yule Tide.
On Christmas Eve either a wooden horse head or a horse's skull was decked with ribbons and carried from door to door on the summit of a pole supported by a man cloaked with a sheet: this figure was known as "Old Hob":[600] in Welsh _hap_ means fortune--either good or bad.
Apparently the last recorded instance of the Hobby-Horse dance occurred at Abbot's Bromley, on which occasion a man carrying the image of a horse between his legs, and armed with a bow and arrow (the emblems of Barry the Sovereign Archer), played the part of Hobby: with him were six companions wearing reindeer heads (the emblems of the Dayspring) who danced the hey and other ancient dances.
Tollett supposes the famous hobby horse to be the King of the May "though he now appears as a juggler and a buffoon with a crimson foot-cloth fretted with gold, the golden bit, the purple bridle, and studded with gold, the man's purple mantle with a golden border which is latticed with purple, his golden crown, purple cap with a red feather, and with a golden knop".
[601] [Illustration: FIGS.
314 to 317.--British.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
318.--British.
From Camden.]
[Illustration: FIG.
319.--Head Dress of the King (N.W.
Palace Nimroud).
From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]
A _knop_ or _knob_ means a boss, protuberance, or rosebud--originally, of course, a wild rosebud which precedes the hip--and it is probably the same word as the CUNOB which occurs so frequently in British coins.
In Fig.
314 CUNOB occurs alone, and I am not sure that Figs.
315 and 318 should not be read ELINI CUNOB.
The knob figured not only on our Hobby Horse, but also as a symbol on the head-dress of Tyrian kings, and there is very little doubt that the charming small figure on the obverse of CUNOB ELINI is intended for King Ob, or Ep.
There is a Knap Hill at Avebury, a Knapton in Yorkshire, and a Knapwell in Suffolk: Knebworth in Herts was Chenepenorde in Domesday, and the imaginary farmer Cnapa or Cnebba, to whom these place-names are assigned, may be equated with the afore-mentioned farmer Heppo of Hepworth.
Knaves Castle (Lichfield), now a small mound--a _heap_?--is ascribed to "_cnafa_, a boy or servant, later a knave, a rogue": Cupid is a notorious little rogue, nevertheless, proverbially Love makes the world go round, and constitutes its nave, navel, hub, or boss: with _snob_ Skeat connotes _snopp_, meaning a boy or anything _stumpy_.
In course of time like _boss_, Dutch _baas_, _knob_ seems to have been applied generally to mean a lord or master, and the Londoner who takes an agreeable interest in the "nobs"[602](and occasional _snobs_) riding in Hyde Park is possibly following an ancestral custom dating from the time when the Ring was originally constructed.
Apsley House, now standing at the east end of Rotten Row, occupies the site of the park ranger's lodge, the Ranger was a highly important personage, and it is not improbable that the site of Apsley House was once known as Ap's lea or meadow.
The immediately adjacent Stanhope Gate and Stanhope Street, or Stanhope in Durham, may mark the site of a stone hippa or horse similar to the famous stone horse in Brittany upon which--I believe to this day--women superstitiously seat themselves with the same purpose as they sit upon the Brahan stone in Ireland: Bryanstone Square in London is not more than a mile from Stanhope Street and Apsley House.
[Illustration: FIG.
320.--La Venus de Quinipily, near Baud Morbihan, Brittany.
From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray).]
The Breton statue of Quinipily may be deemed a portrait of _holy Queen Ip_, and Gwennap, near Redruth, where is a famous amphitheatre, was probably a Queen Hip lea or seat of the same Queen's worship.
Gwen Ap was presumably the same as Queen Aph or Godiva, the Lady of the White Horse, and Godrevy on the opposite side of St. Ives Bay may be equated with _Good rhi Evy_, or Good Queen Evie.
A few miles from Liskeard there is a village named St. Ive, which the natives pronounce _St.
Eve_: the more western, better-known Saint Ive's, is mentioned in a document of 1546 as "Seynt Iysse," and what apparently is this same dedication reappears at a place four miles west of Wadebridge termed St. Issey.
"Whose name is it," inquires W. C. Borlase, "that the parish of St. Issey bears?"
He suggests somewhat wildly that it may be the same as Elidius, corrupted to Liddy, Ide, or Idgy, endeavouring to prove that this Elidius is the same as the great Welsh Teilo.
It would be simpler and more reasonable to assume that St. Issey is a trifling corruption of "Eseye," which was one of the titles of the old British Mother of Life.
The goddess Esseye--alternatively and better known as Keridwen--is described by Owen in his _Cambrian Biography_ as "a female personage, in the mythology of the Britons considered as _the first of womankind_, having nearly the same attributes with Venus, in whom are personified the generative powers".
With Eseye and with St. Issey, _alias_ St. Ive, may be connoted the deserted town of Hesy in Judea: on the mound now known as Tell el Hesy, or the hill town of Hesy, the remains of at least eight super-imposed prehistoric cities have been excavated, and among the discoveries on this site was a limestone lampstand subscribed on the base APHEBAL.
[603] The winged maiden found at the same time is essentially Cretan, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that on this _Aphe_ fragment of pottery from Hesy we have a contemporary portrait of the Candian Aphaia or Britomart, _alias_ Hesy, or St. Issy, or St. Ive: the British Eseye was alternatively known as Cendwen.
[Illustration: FIG.
321.--From _A Mound of Many Cities_ (Bliss, J.
B.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
322.--From _A Mound of Many Cities_ (Bliss, J.
B.).]
The British built their _oppida_ not infrequently in the form of an eye or optic, and also of an oeuf, ova, or egg.
The perfect symmetry of these designs point conclusively to the probability that the earthworks were not mere strongholds scratched together anyhow for mere defence: the British burial places or barrows were similarly either circular or oval, and that the Scotch dun illustrated in Fig.
324 was British, is implied not only by its name Boreland-Mote, but by its existence at a place named Parton, this word, like the Barton of Dumbarton, no doubt signifying Dun Brettan or Briton.
[Illustration: FIG.
323.--From _The Motes of Kirkcudbrightshire_ (Coles, F. R.).
(Soc.
Antiq.
Scot.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
324.--From _The Motes of Kirkcudbrightshire_ (Coles, F. R.).
(Soc.
Antiq.
Scot.)]
[Illustration: FIG.
325.--"Spindle-whorls" from Troy.
From _Prehistoric London_ (Gordon, E.
O.).
[_To face page 534._] Egypt was known as "The Land of the Eye":[604] the amulet of the All-seeing Eye was perhaps even more popular in Egypt than in Etruria, and the mysterious and unaccountable objects called "spindle whorls," which occur so profusely in British tombs, and which also have been found in countless numbers underneath Troy, were probably Eye amulets, rudely representative of the human iris.
The Trojan examples here illustrated are conspicuously decorated with the British _Broad_ Arrow, which is said to have been the symbol of the Awen or Holy Spirit.
In their accounts of the traditional symbols, speech, letters, and signs of Britain, according to their preservation by means of memory, voice, and usages of the Chair and Gorsedd, the Welsh Bards asserted that the three strokes of the Broad Arrow or bardic hieroglyph for God originated from three diverging rays of light seen descending towards the earth.
Out of these three strokes were constituted all the letters of the bardic alphabet, the three strokes / | \ reading in these characters respectively 0 1 0, and thus spelling the mystic OHIO or YEW; hence it would seem that this never-to-be-pronounced Name[605] was a faerie conception originating in the mind of some primitive poet philosophising from a cloud-encumbered sunrise or sunset.
According to tradition there were five ages of letters: "The first was the age of the three letters, which above all represented the Name of God, and which were a sign of Goodness and Truth, and Understanding and Equity, of whatsoever kind they might be".
[606] On these rays, it is said, were inscribed every kind and variety of Science and Knowledge, and on His return to Heaven the Almighty Architect is described as-Followed with acclamation, and the sound Symphonious of ten thousand harps that tun'd Angelic harmonies.
The philosophers of Egypt believed that the universe was created by the pronunciation of the divine name; similarly the British bards taught that: "The universe is matter as ordered and systematised by the intelligence of God.
It was created by God's pronouncing His own name--at the sound of which light and the heavens sprang into existence.
The name of God is itself a creative power.
What in itself that name is, is known to God only.
All music or natural melody is a faint and broken echo of the creative name.
"[607] Everywhere and in everything the Druids recognised this celestial Trinity: not only did their Hierarchy consist of three orders, _i.e._, Druids, Bards, and Seers, each group being again subdivided into three, but also, as we have seen, they uttered their Triads or aphorisms in triple form.
There is little doubt that the same idea animated the Persian philosophy of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word, and Micah's triple exordium: "Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly".
The bards say distinctly: "The three mystic letters signify the three attributes of God, namely, Love, Knowledge, and Truth, and it is out of these three that justice springs, and without one of the three there can be no justice".
[608] This is a simpler philosophy than the incomprehensibilities of the Athanasian Creed,[609] and it was seemingly drilled with such living and abiding force into the minds of the Folk, that even to-day the Druidic Litanies or Chants of the Creed still persist.
Throughout Italy and Sicily the Chant of the Creed is known as The Twelve Words of Verita or Truth, and it is generally put into the mouth of the popular Saint Nicholas of _Bari_.
[610] The Sicilian or Hyperean festival of the Bara has already been noted _ante_, p. 320.
The British chant quoted _ante_, page 373, continues: "What will be our three boys"?
"What will be our four"?
five?
six?
and onwards up to twelve, but always the refrain is-My only ain she walks alane And ever mair has dune, boys.
[Illustration: FIG.
326.--St.
John.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
327.--Christ, with a Nimbus of Three Clusters of Rays.
Miniature of the XVI.
Cent.
MS. of the Bib.
Royale.
_Ibid._] In Irish mythology we are told that the Triad similarly "infected everything," hence Trinities such as Oendia (the one god), Caindea (the gentle god), and Trendia (the mighty god): other accounts specify the three children of the Boyne goddess, as Tear Bringer, Smile Bringer, and Sleep Bringer: the word _sleep_ is in all probability a corruption of _sil Eep_.
Among the Trojan "spindle whorls" some are decorated with four awens, corresponding seemingly to the Four Kings of the Wheel of Fortune; others with three groups constituting a total of nine strokes.
As each ray represented a form of Truth, the number nine--which as already noted is invariably true to itself--was essentially the symbol of Truth, and that this idea was absorbed by Christianity is obvious from representations such as Figs.
326 and 327.
[Illustration: FIG.
328.--"Cross" at Sancreed (Cornwall).
From _The Cornish Riviera_ (Stone, J. Harris).
[_To face page 538._ ] [Illustration: FIG.
329.--Caerbrân Castle in Sancred.
From _Antiquities of Cornwall_ (Borlase).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
330 and 331.--British.
From Evans.]
At Sancreed in Cornwall--supposedly a dedication to the holy Creed--there is a remarkable "cross" which is actually a holed stone on a shank:[611] and in the same parish is a "castle" which was once evidently a very perfect Eye.
In the Scilly Islands, lying within a stone circle, is what might be a millstone with a square hole in its centre: this Borlase ranks among the holed stones of Cornwall, and that it was a symbol of the Great Eye is a reasonable inference from the name Salla Key where it is still lying.
We have seen the symbolic Eye on the KIO coin illustrated _ante_, page 253; the word _eye_ pronounced frequently _oy_ and _ee_, is the same as the _hey_ of _Heydays_ and the Shepherds' Dance or _Hey_, hence in all probability Salla Key or Salakee Downs[612] were originally sacred to the festivals of _Sala Kee_, _i.e._, silly, innocent, or happy, '_Kee_ or _Great Eye_.
The old plural of _eye_ was _eyen_ or _een_, and it is not unlikely that the primeval Ian, John, or Sinjohn, was worshipped as the joint Sun and Moon, or Eyes of Day and Night.
On the hobby-horse coins here illustrated, the body consists of two curiously conspicuous circles or _eyen_, possibly representing the _awen_.
My only _ane_ she walks alane And ever mair has dune, boys.
On Salla Key Downs is Inisidgen Hill, which takes its name from an opposite island: in old MSS.
this appears as _Enys au geon_, which the authorities assume meant "Island of St. John".
_Geon_, however, was the Cornish for _giant_; on Salla Key Downs is "Giant's Castle," and close at hand is the Giant's Chair: this is a solid stone worked into the form of an arm-chair: "It looks like a work of art rather than nature, and, according to tradition, it was here the Arch Druid was wont to sit and watch the rising Sun".
[613] The neighbouring island of Great Ganilly was thus in all probability sacred to _Geon_, the Great King, or Queen Holy.
The Saints' days, heydays, and holidays of our predecessors seem to have been so numerous that the wonder is that there was ever any time to work: apparently from such evidence as the Bean-setting dance, even the ancient sowing was accomplished to the measure of a song, and the festivities in connection with old Harvest Homes are too multifarious and familiar to need comment.
The attitude of the clergy towards these ancient festivals seems to have been uniform and consistent.
These teach that dancing is a Jezebel, And barley-break the ready way to hell; The morrice-idols, Whitsun-ales, can be But profane relics of a jubilee.
[614] One of the greatest difficulties of the English Church was to suppress the dancing which the populace--supported by immemorial custom--insisted upon maintaining, even within the churches and the churchyards.
Even to-day English churches possess reindeer heads and other paraphernalia of archaic feasts, and in Paris, as recently as the seventeenth century, the clergy and singing boys might have been seen dancing at Easter in the churches.
[615] In Cornwall on the road from Temple to Bradford Bridge is a stone circle known as The Trippet Stones, and doubtless many churches occupy the sites of similar places where from time immemorial the Folk tripped it jubilantly on jubilees: custom notoriously dies hard.
In the Eastern counties of England the two principal reapers were known as the Harvest Lord and Lady, who presided over the Hoppings, and other festivities of the season.
Sometimes the Harvest Lady was known as the Hop Queen,[616] and this important potentate may be connoted with the harvest doll which, in Kent particularly, was termed the Ivy Girl.
As Prof. Weekley connotes the surname Hoppe with Hobbs, Hobson, and Hopkins, we may infer from the name _Hopkin_son, there must once have been a Hop King as well as a Hop Queen, and the rôle of this English Hopkin was probably similar to that enacted by other Jack-in-Greens, King-of-the-Years, or Spirit-of-the-Years.
The pomp and circumstance of the parallel of the Hopkin ceremony in Greece may be judged from the following particulars: "They wreathe," says Plato, "a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers.
On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend smaller ones.
Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked with saffron.
By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they actually compare Apollo.
The globe beneath this is the moon; the smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in number.
The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole.
The Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light shoes.
There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns.
"[617] With this Greek festival of the Laurel-Bearer may be connoted the "one traditional dance connected with all our old festivals and merry makings" in Guernsey, and known as _A mon beau Laurier_.
In this ceremony the dancers join hands, whirl round, curtsey, and kiss a central object, in later days either a man or a woman, but, in the opinion of Miss Carey, "perhaps originally either a sacred stone or a primeval altar".
[618] Adulation of this character is calculated to create _snobs_, the word as we have seen being fundamentally connected with _stump_.
I have already suggested a connection between the salutation _A mon beau Laurier_ and the kissing or bussing of Paul's stump at Billingsgate, which is situated almost immediately next Ebgate.
On Mount Hube, in Jersey, have been found the remains of a supposed Druidic temple, and doubtless Mount _Hube_, like Apechurch or Abechurch, was a primitive Hopeton, _oppidum_, or Abbey.
[Illustration: FIG.
332.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
333.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
The Hoop is a frequent inn sign generally associated with some additional symbol such as is implied in the familiar old signs, Swan-on-the-Hoop, Cock-on-the-Hoop, Crown-on-the-Hoop, Angel-on-the-Hoop, Falcon-on-the Hoop, and Bunch-of-Grapes-on-the-Hoop.
[619] That the hoop or circle was a sacred form need not be laboured, for the majority of our megalithic monuments are circular, and there is no doubt that these rude circles are not simply and solely "adjuncts of stone age burials," but were the primitive temples of the Hoop Lady or Fairy Queen.
It was customary to represent the Hop Lady within hoops or wheels; and that the Virgin was regarded indifferently as either One, Two, Three or Four is clear from the indeterminate number of dolls which served on occasion as the idola or ideal.
In Irish _oun_ or _ain_ means the cycle or course of the seasons, and the great Queen Anu or Aine who was regarded as the boss, hub, or centre of the Mighty Wheel may be equated with Una, the Fairy Queen.
The Druids are said to have considered it impious to enclose or cover their temples, presumably for the same reasons as prevailed among the Persians.
These are explained by Cicero who tells us that in the expedition of Xerxes into Greece all the Grecian temples were destroyed at the instigation of the Magi because the Grecians were so impious as to enclose those gods within walls who ought to have all things around them open and free, their temple being the universal world.
In Homer's time-On rough-hewn stones within the sacred cirque Convok'd the hoary sages sat.
and there is little doubt that similarly in these islands the priest-chiefs held their solemn and ceremonial sessions.
The word Druid is in disfavour among modern archæologists; nevertheless, apparently all over Britain the Druids were traditionally associated in the popular memory with megalithic monuments.
Martin, in the relation of his Tour of the Hebrides, made in the middle of the eighteenth century, observes: "In the Western Islands where there are many, what are called by the common people _Druin Crunny_, that is Druids' Circles," and the same observer recounts: "I inquired of the inhabitants what tradition they had concerning these stones, and they told me it was a place appointed for worship in the time of heathenism, and that the chief Druid stood near the big stone in the centre from whence he addressed himself to the people that surrounded him".
[620] There is presumptive and direct evidence that the stone circles of Britain served the combined uses of Temple, Sepulchre, Place of Assembly, and Law Court.
The custom of choosing princes by nobles standing in a circle upon rocks, prevailed until comparatively recent times, and Edmund Spenser, writing in 1596 on the State of Ireland, thus described an installation ceremony: "One of the Lords arose and holding in his hand a white wand perfectly straight and without the slightest bend, he presented it to the chieftain-elect with the following words, 'Receive the emblematic wand of thy dignity, now let the unsullied whiteness and straightness of this wand be thy model in all thy acts, so that no calumnious tongue can expose the slightest stain on the purity of thy life, nor any favoured friend ever seduce thee from dealing out even-handed justice to all'.
"[621] The white wand figuring in this ceremony is evidently the magic rod or fairy wand with which the Elphin Queen is conventionally equipped, and which was figured in the hand of the Cretan "Hob," _ante_, page 494.
Sometimes in lieu of a centre stone the circles contained stone chairs.
Many of these old Druidic thrones have been broken up into gate-posts or horse-troughs, but several are still in existence, and some are decorated with a carving of two footprints.
These two footprints were in all probability one of the innumerable forms in which the perennial Pair were represented, _vide_ the Vedic invocation: "Like two lips speaking sweetly to the mouth, like two breasts feed us that we may live.
Like two nostrils as guardians of the body, like two ears be inclined to listen to us.
Like two hands holding our strength together ... like two hoofs rushing in quickly," etc.
In the British coin here illustrated the Giant Pair are featured as joint steeds: "Coming early like two heroes on their chariots ... ye bright ones every day come hither like two charioteers, O ye strong ones!
Like two winds, like two streams your motion is eternal; like _two eyes_[622] come with your sight toward us!
Like two hands most useful to the body; _like two feet_ lead us towards wealth.
"[623] [Illustration: FIG.
334.--British.
From Akerman.]
Occasionally the two footprints are found cut into simple rock: in Scotland the King of the Isles used to be crowned at Islay, standing on a stone with a deep impression on the top of it made on purpose to receive his feet.
The meaning of the feet symbol in Britain is not known, but Scotch tradition maintained that it represented the size of the feet of Albany's first chieftain.
On Adam's Peak in Ceylon (ancient _Tafrobani_) there is a super-sacred footprint which is still the goal of millions of devout pilgrims, and on referring to India where the foot emblem is familiar we find it explained as very ancient, and used by the Buddhists in remembrance of their great leader Buddha.
In the tenth century a Hindu poet sang:-In my heart I place the feet The Golden feet of God.
and it would thus seem that the primeval Highlander anticipated by many centuries Longfellow's trite lines on great men, happily, however, before departing, graving the symbolic footprints of his "first Chieftain," not upon the sands of Time, but on the solid rocks.
The Ancients, believing that God was centred in His Universe, a point within a circle was a proper and expressive hieroglyph for Pan or All.
The centre stone of the rock circles probably stood similarly for God, and the surrounding stones for the subsidiary Principalities and Powers thus symbolising the idea: "Thou art the Eternal One, in whom all order is centred; Lord of all things visible and invisible, Prince of mankind, Protector of the Universe".
[624] A tallstone or a longstone is physically and objectively the figure one, 1.
If it were possible to track the subsidiary Powers of the Eternal One to their inception we should, I suspect, find them to have been personifications of Virtues, and this would seem to apply not merely to such familiar Trinities as Faith, Hope, and Charity; Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word, but to quartets, quintets, sextets, and septets such as the Seven Kings or Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, _i.e._, "Ye gifte of wisdome; ye gifte of pittie; ye gifte of strengthe; ye gifte of comfaite; ye gifte of understandinge; ye gifte of counyinge; ye gifte of dreede".
The Persian Trinity of Thought, Deed, and Word, is perfectly expressed in the three supposed Orders of the Christian hierarchy.
As stated in _The Golden Legend_ these are--sovereign Love as touching the order of Seraphim, perfect Knowledge, and perpetual Fruition or usance.
"There be some," continues De Voragine, "that overcome and dominate over all vices in themselves, and they by right be called of the world, gods among men.
"[625] It is related of King Arthur that he carried a shield named Prydwen, and if the reader will trouble to count the dots ranged round the centre boss of the shield on page 120 the number will be found to be _eleven_.
At Kingston on Thames, where the present market stone is believed to be the surviving centre-piece of a stone-circle, a brass ring ornamented with _eleven_ bosses was discovered.
[626] In Etruria _eleven_ mystic shields were held in immense veneration:[627] it will further be noted that the majority of the wheatears on British and Celtiberian coins consist of _eleven_ corns.
The word _eleven_, like its French equivalent _onze_, _ange_, or _angel_, points to the probability that for some reason eleven was essentially the number sacred to the _elven_, _anges_, or _onzes_.
Elphinstone, a fairly common surname, implies the erstwhile existence of many Elphinstones: there is an Alphian rock in Yorkshire; bronze urns have been excavated at Alphamstone in Essex, and the supposititious Aelfin, to whom the Alphington in Exeter is attributed, was far more probably Elphin.
The dimensions of many so-called longstones--whether solitary or in the centres of circles--point to the probability that menhirs or standing-stones were frequently and preferably 11 feet high.
In Cornwall alone I have noted the following examples of which the measurements are extracted from _The Victoria County History_.
The longstone at Trenuggo, Sancreed, now measures 11 feet 2 inches; that at Sithney 11 feet; that at Burras "about 10 feet," that at Parl 12 feet; and that at Bosava 10 feet.
In the parish of St. Buryan the longstones standing at Pridden, Goon Rith, Boscawen Ros, and Trelew, now measure respectively 11 feet 6 inches, 10 feet 6 inches, 10 feet, and 10 feet 4 inches.
If one takes into account such casualties of time as weathering, washing away of subsoil, upcrop of undergrowth, subsidence, and other accidents, the preceding figures are somewhat presumptive that each of the monuments in question was originally designed to stand 11 feet high.
Frequently a circle of stones is designated The Nine Maids, or The Virgin Sisters, or The Merry Maidens.
The Nine Maidens is suggestive of the Nine Muses, and of the nine notorious Druidesses, which dwelt upon the Island of Sein in Brittany.
The Merry Maidens may be equated with the Fairy or Peri Maidens, and that this phairy theory holds good likewise in Spain is probable from the fact that at Pau there is a circle of nine stones called La Naou _Peyros_.
[628] "When we inquired," says Keightley, "after the fairy system in Spain, we were told that there was no such thing for that the Inquisition had long since eradicated such ideas."
He adds, however, "we must express our doubt of the truth of this charge": I concur that not even the Inquisition was capable of carrying out such fundamental destruction as the obliteration of all peyros.
Probably the old plural for peri or fairy was _peren_ or _feren_, in which case the great Fernacre circle in the parish of St. Breward, Cornwall, was presumably the sacred eye or hoop of some considerable neighbourhood.
About 160 feet eastward of Fernacre (which is one of the largest circles in Cornwall), and in line with the summit of _Brown_ Willy (the highest hill in Cornwall) is a small erect stone.
The neighbouring Row Tor (_Roi_ Tor or _Rey_ Tor?)
rises due north of Fernacre circle, and as the editors of _Cornwall_ point out: "If as might appear probable this very exact alignment north and south, east and west, was intentional, and part of a plan where Fernacre was the pivot of the whole, it is a curious feature that the three circles mentioned should have been so effectively hidden from each other by intervening hills".
[629] The major portion of this district is the property of an Onslow family; there is an Onslow Gardens near Alvastone Place in Kensington, and there is a probability that every Alvastone, Elphinstone, or _On_slow neighbourhood was believed to be inhabited by _Elven_ or _Anges_: it is indeed due to this superstition that the relatively few megalithic monuments which still exist have escaped damnation, the destruction where it has actually occurred having been sometimes due to a deliberate and bigoted determination, "to brave ridiculous legends and superstitions".
[630] Naturally the prevalent and protective superstitions were fostered and encouraged by prehistoric thinkers for the reasons doubtless quite rightly surmised by an eighteenth century archæologist who wrote: "But the truth of the story is, it was a burying place of the Britons before the calling in of the heathen sexton (_sic_ query _Saxon_) into this Kingdom.
And this fable invented by the Britons was to prevent the ripping up of the bones of their ancestors."
The demise of similar fables under the corrosive influence of modern kultur, has involved the destruction of countless other stone-monuments, so that even of Cornwall, their natural home, Mr. T. Quiller Couch was constrained to write: "Within my remembrance the cromlech, the holy well, the way-side cross and inscribed stone, have gone before the utilitarian greed of the farmer and the road man, and the undeserved neglect of that hateful being, the _cui bono_ man".
Parish Councils of to-day do not fear to commit vandalisms which private individuals in the past shrank from perpetrating.
[631] A Welsh "Stonehenge" at Eithbed, Pembrokeshire, shown on large-scale Ordinance maps issued last century, has disappeared from the latest maps of the district, and a few years ago an archæologist who visited the site reported that the age-worn stones had been broken up to build ugly houses close by--"veritable monuments of shame".
In the Isle of _Pur_beck near _Bourne_mouth, _Brank_sea, _Bronks_ea (Bronk's _ea_ or island) _Branks_ome and numerous other _Bron_ place-names which imply that the district was once haunted by Oberon, is a barrow called Puckstone, and on the top of this barrow, now thrown down, is a megalith said to measure 10 feet 8 inches.
In all probability this was once 11 feet long, and was the Puckstone or Elphinstone of that neighbourhood: near Anglesea at Llandudno is a famous longstone which again is _eleven_ feet high.
In Glamorganshire there is a village known as Angel Town, and in Pembroke is Angle or Nangle: Adamnan, in his _Life of Columba_, records that the saint opened his books and "read them on the Hill of the Angels, where once on a time the citizens of the Heavenly Country were seen to descend to hold conversation with the blessed man".
Upon this his editor comments: "this is the knoll called 'great fairies hill'.
Not far away is the 'little fairies hill'.
The fairies hills of pagan mythology became angels hills in the minds of the early Christian saints.
"[632] One may be permitted to question whether this metamorphosis really occurred, and whether the idea of Anges or Angles is not actually older than even the Onslows or _ange_ lows.
The Irish trinity of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and St. Columba, are said all to lie buried in one spot at Dunence, and the place-name _Dunence_ seemingly implies that that site was an _on's low_, or _dun ange_.
The term _angel_ is now understood to mean radically a messenger, but the primary sense must have been deeper than this: in English _ingle_--as in inglenook--meant _fire_, and according to Skeat it also meant a darling or a paramour.
Obviously _ingle_ is here the same word as _angel_, and presumably the more primitive Englishman tactfully addressed his consort as "mine ingle".
The Gaelic and the Irish for fire is _aingeal_; we have seen that the burnebee or ladybird was connected with fire, and that similarly St. Barneby's Day was associated with Barnebee _Bright_: hence the festival held at _Engle_wood, or _Ingle_wood (Cumberland) yearly on the day of St. Barnabas would appear to have been a primitive fire or _aingeal_ ceremony.
It is described as follows: "At Hesket in Cumberland yearly on St. Barnabas Day by the highway side under a Thorn tree according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air, is kept the Court for the whole Forest of Englewood, the 'Englyssh wood' of the ballad of Adam Bel".
[633] Stonehenge used to be entitled Stonehengels, which may be modernised into the _Stone Angels_,[634] each stone presumably standing as a representative of one or other of the angelic hierarchy.
When the Saxons met the British in friendly conference at Stonehenge--apparently even then the national centre--each Saxon chieftain treacherously carried a knife which at a given signal he plunged into the body of his unarmed, unsuspecting neighbour; subsequently, it is said, hanging the corpses of the British royalties on the cross rocks of Stonehenge: hence ever after this exhibition of Teutonic _realpolitik_ Stonehenge has been assumed to mean the Hanging Stones, or Gallow Stones.
[635] We find, however, that Stonehenge was known as Sta_hengues_ or Est_anges_, a plural form which may be connoted with Hengesdun or Hengston Hill in Cornwall: Stonehenge also appears under the form Senhange, which may have meant either _Old Ange_ or _San Ange_, and as the priests of ancient cults almost invariably assumed the character and titles of their divinity it is probable that the Druids were once known as _Anges_.
In Irish the word _aonge_ is said to have meant _magician_ or _sorcerer_, which is precisely the character assigned by popular opinion to the Druids.
In _Rode hengenne_, another title of Stonehenge,[636] we have apparently the older plural hen_gen_ with the adjectival _rood_ or _ruddy_, whence Stonehenge would seem to have been a shrine of the Red Rood Anges.
[Illustration: FIG.
336.--Stonehenge.
From _The Celtic Druids_ (Higgens, G.).]
As this monument was without doubt a national centre it is probable that as I have elsewhere suggested Stonehenge meant also the _Stone Hinge_: the word _cardinal_ means radically hinge; the original Roman cardinals whose round red hats probably typified the ruddy sun, were the priests of Janus, who was entitled the Hinge, and there is no reason to suppose that the same idea was not equally current in England.
That the people of CARDIA associated their _angel_ or _ange_ with _cardo_, a _hinge_ or _angle_ is manifest from the coin illustrated in Fig.
336.
According to Prof. Weekley, "_Ing_, the name of a demi-god, seems to have been early confused with the Christian _angel_ in the prefix _Engel_ common in German names, _e.g._, Engelhardt anglicised as _Engleheart_.
In Anglo-Saxon we find both _Ing_ and _Ingel_.
The modern name Ingoll represents Ingweald (Ingold) and _Inglett_ is a diminutive of similar origin.
The cheerful _Inglebright_ is from Inglebeort.
The simple _Ing_ has given through Norse Ingwar the Scottish _Ivor_.
"[637] But is it not possible that Ivor never came through Ingwar, but was radically a synonym--_fairy_ = _Ing_, or _fire_ = _ingle_?
Inga is a Scandinavian maiden-name, and if the Inge family--of gloomy repute--are unable to trace any cheerier origin it may be suggested that they came from the Isle of Man where the folk claim to be the descendants of fairies or anges: "The Manks confidently assert that the first inhabitants of their island were fairies, and that these little people have still their residence amongst them.
They call them the 'Good people,' and say they live in wilds and forests, and mountains, and shun great cities because of the wickedness acted therein.
"[638] As there is no known etymology for _inch_ and _ounce_ it is not improbable that these diminutive measures were connected with the popular idea of the _ange's_ size and weight: Queen Mab, according to Shakespeare, was "no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman," and she weighed certainly not more than an ounce.
The origin of Queen Mab is supposedly Habundia, or La Dame Abonde, discussed in a preceding chapter, and there connoted with Eubonia, Hobany, and Hob: in Welsh Mab means _baby boy_, and the priests of this little king were known as the Mabinogi, whence the _Mabinogion_, or books of the Mabinogi.
Whether there is any reason to connect the three places in Ireland entitled Inchequin with the _Ange Queen_, or the Inchlaw (a hill in Fifeshire) with the Inch Queen Mab I have had no opportunity of inquiring.
The surnames Inch, Ince, and Ennis, are all usually connoted with _enys_ or _ins_, the Celtic and evidently more primitive form of _in_sula, an island, _ea_ or _Eye_.
The Inge family may possibly have come from the Channel Islands or _insulæ_, where as we have seen the Ange Queen, presumably the Lady of the Isles or _inces_, was represented on the coinage, and the Lord of the Channel Isles seems to have been Pixtil or _Pixy tall_.
That this _Pixy tall_ was alternatively _ange tall_ is possibly implied by the name Anchetil, borne by the Vicomte du Bessin who owned one of the two fiefs into which Guernsey was anciently divided.
It will be remembered that in the ceremony of the Chevauchee de St. Michel, _eleven_ Vavasseurs functioned in the festival; further, that the lance-bearer carried a wand 11-1/4 feet long.
The Welsh form of the name _Michael_ is _Mihangel_, and as Michael was the Leader of all angels, the _mi_ of this British mihangel may be equated with the Irish _mo_ which, as previously noted, meant _greatest_.
As Albion or _albi en_, is the equivalent to Elphin or _elven_, it is obvious that England--or _Inghil_terra, as some nations term it--is a synonym for Albion, in both cases the meaning being Land of the Elves or Angels.
For some reason--possibly the Masonic idea of the right angle, rectitude, and square dealing--_angle_ was connected with _angel_, and in the coin here illustrated the angel has her head fixed in a photographic pose by an angle.
In Germany and Scandinavia, Engelland means the mystic land of unborn souls, and that the Angles who inhabited the banks of the _Elbe_ (Latin _Alva_) believed not only in the existence of this spiritual Engelland, but also in the living existence of Alps, Elves, Anges, or Angels is a well-recognised fact.
The Scandinavians traced their origin to a primal pair named Lif and Lifthraser: according to Rydberg it was the creed of the Teuton that on arriving with a good record at "the green worlds of the gods"; "Here he finds not only those with whom he became personally acquainted while on earth, but he may also visit and converse with ancestors from the beginning of time, and he may hear the history of his race, nay, the history of all past generations told by persons who were eye-witnesses".
[639] The fate of the evil-living Teuton was believed to be far different, nevertheless, in sharp distinction to the Christian doctrine that all unbaptised children are lost souls, and that infants scarce a span in size might be seen crawling on the fiery floor of hell, even the "dull and creeping Saxon" held that every one who died in tender years was received into the care of a Being friendly to the young, who introduced them into the happy groves of immortality.
[Illustration: FIG.
336.--Greek.
From Barthelemy.]
The suggestion that the land of the Angels derived its title from the angelic superstitions of the inhabitants, may be connoted with seemingly a parallel case in Sweden, _i.e._, the province of Elfland.
According to Walter Scott this district "had probably its name from some remnant of ancient superstition":[640] during the witch-finding mania of the sixteenth century at one village alone in Elfland, upwards of 300 children "were found more or less perfect in a tale as full of impossible absurdities as ever was told round a nursery fire".
Fifteen of these hapless little visionaries were led to death, and thirty-six were lashed weekly at the church doors for a whole year: an unprofitable "conspiracy" for the poor little "plotters"!
[Illustration: FIG.
337.--From _Essays on Archæological Subjects_ (Wright, T.).]
There figures in Teutonic mythology not only Lif the first parent, but also a divinity named Alf who is described as young, but of a fine exterior, and of such remarkably white splendour that rays of light seemed to issue from his silvery locks.
Whether the Anglo-Saxons, like the Germans, attributed any significance to _eleven_ I do not know: if they did not the grave here illustrated which was found in the white chalk of Adisham, Kent, must be assigned to some other race.
It is described by its excavator as follows: "The grave which was cut very neatly out of the rock chalk was full 5 feet deep; it was of the exact shape of a cross whose legs pointed very minutely to the four cardinal points of the compass; and _it was every way eleven feet long_ and about 4 feet broad.
At each extremity was a little cover or arched hole each about 12 inches broad, and about 14 inches high, all very neatly cut like so many little fireplaces for about a foot beyond the grave into the chalk.
"[641] It would seem possible that these crescentic corner holes were actually ingle nooks, and one may surmise a primitive lying-in-state with corner fires in lieu of candles.
As the Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries were notoriously in need of conversion to the Cross it is difficult to assign this crucial sepulchre to any of their tribes.
Whether Albion was ever known as Inghilterra or Ingland before the advent of the Angles from the Elbe need not be here discussed, but, at any rate, it seems highly unlikely that Anglesea, the sanctuary or Holyhead of British Druidism, derived its name from Teutonic invaders who can hardly have penetrated into that remote corner for long after their first friendly arrival.
At the end of the second century Tertullian made the surprising and very puzzling statement: "Places in Britain hitherto unvisited by the Romans were subjected to Christianity":[642] that the cross was not introduced by the Romans is obvious from the apparition of this emblem on our coinage one to two hundred years before the Roman invasion; the famous megalithic monument at Lewis in the Hebrides is cruciform, and the equally famed pyramid at New Grange is tunnelled in the form of a cross.
[Illustration: FIG.
338.--_Plan an Guare_, St. Just.
From _Cornwall_ (Borlase).]
According to Pownal, New Grange was constructed by the Magi "or _Gaurs_ as they were sometimes called":[643] Stonehenge or Stonehengels is referred to by the British Bards as Choir _Gawr_, a term which is of questioned origin: the largest stone circle in Ireland is that by Lough _Gur_; the amphitheatre at St. Just is known as Plan an Guare or _Plain of Guare_, and the place-name _Gor_hambury or Verulam, where are the remains of a very perfect amphitheatre, suggests that this circle, as also that at Lough Gur, and Choir Gawr, was, like Bangor, a home, seat, or Gorsedd of the Gaurs or Aonges.
Doubtless the _gaurs_ of Britain like the _guru_ or holy men of India, and the _augurs_ of Rome, indulged in augury: in Hebrew _gor_ means a congregation, and that the ancients congregated in and around stone circles choiring, and gyrating in a _gyre_ or wheel, is evident from the statement of Diodorus Siculus, which is now very generally accepted as referring to Stonehenge or Choir Gawr.
"The inhabitants [of Hyperborea] are great worshippers of Apollo to whom they sing many many hymns.
To this god they have consecrated a large territory in the midst of which they have a magnificent round temple replenished with the richest offerings.
Their very city is dedicated to him, and is full of musicians and players on various instruments who every day celebrate his benefits and perfections."
Among the superstitions of the British was the idyll that the music of the Druids' harps wafted the soul of the deceased into heaven: these harps were constructed with the same mysterious regard to the number three as characterised the whole of the magic or Druidic philosophy: the British harp was triangular, its strings were three, and its tuning keys were three-armed: it was thus essentially a harp of Tara.
That the British were most admirable songsters and musicians is vouched for in numerous directions, and that Stonehenge was the Hinge of the national religion is evident from the fact that it is mentioned in a Welsh Triad as one of the "Three Great _Cors_ of Britain in which there were 2400 saints, that is, there were 100 for every hour of the day and night, in rotation perpetuating the praise of God without intermission".
[644] That similar _choirs_ existed among the _gaurs_ of ancient Ireland would appear from an incident recorded in the life of St. Columba: the popularity of this saint was, we are told, so great, even among the pagan Magi, that 1200 poets who were in Convention brought with them a poem in his praise: they sang this panegyric with music and chorus, "and a surpassing music it was"; indeed, so impressive was the effect that the saint felt a sudden emotion of complacency and gave way to temporary vanity.
The circle of St. Just was not only known as _Plan an guare_, but also as _Guirimir_, which has been assumed to be a contraction of _Guiri mirkl_, signifying in Cornish a _mirkl_ or _miracle_ play.
[645] Doubtless not only Miracle Plays, but sports and interludes of every description were centred in the circles: that the Druids were competent and attractive entertainers is probable in view of the fact that the Arch Druid of Tara is shown as a leaping juggler with golden ear-clasps, and a speckled coat: he tosses swords and balls into the air "and like the buzzing of bees on a beautiful day is the motion of each passing the other".
[646] The circles were similarly the sites of athletic sports, duels, and other "martial challenges": the prize fight of yesterday was fought in a ring, and the ring still retains its popular hold.
The Celts customarily banquetted in a circle with the most valiant chieftain occupying the post of honour in the centre.
We know from Cæsar that the Gauls who were "extremely devoted to superstitious rites," sent their young men to Britain for instruction in Druidic philosophy: we also know that it was customary when a war was declared to vow all captured treasures to the gods: "In many states you may see piles of these things heaped up in their consecrated spots, nor does it often happen that anyone disregarding the sanctity of the case dares either to secrete in his house things captured or take away those deposited: and the most severe punishment with torture has been established for such a deed".
[647] As British customs "did not differ much" from those of Gaul it is thus almost a certainty that Stonehenge was for long periods a vast national treasure-house and Valhalla.
Notwithstanding the abundance of barrows, earthworks, and other evidences of prehistoric population it is probable that Salisbury Plain was always a green spot, and we are safe in assuming that Choir Gawr was the seat of Gorsedds.
By immemorial law and custom the Gorsedd had always to be held on a green spot, in a conspicuous place in full view and hearing of country and aristocracy, in the face of the sun, the Eye of Light, and under the expansive freedom of the sky that all might see and hear.
As _sedum_ is the Latin for _seat_, and there seems to be some uncertainty as to what the term Gorsedd really meant, I may be permitted to throw out the suggestion that it was a Session, Seat, or Sitting of the Gaurs or Augurs: by Matthew Arnold the British Gorsedd is described as the "oldest educational institution in Europe," and moreover as an institution not known out of Britain.
Slightly over a mile from Stonehenge or Choir Gawr is the nearest village now known as Amesbury, originally written Ambrosbury or Ambresbury: here was the meeting-place of Synods even in historic times, and here was a monastery which is believed to have taken its name from Ambrosius Aurelius, a British chief.
It is more probable that the monastery and the town were alike dedicated to the "Saint" Ambrose, particulars of whose life may be found in De Voragine's _Golden Legend_.
According to this authority the name Ambrose may be said "of _ambor_ in Greek which is to say as father of light, and _soir_ that is a little child, that is a father of many sons by spiritual generations, clear and full of light".
Or, says De Voragine, "Ambrose is said of a stone named _ambra_ which is much sweet, oderant, and precious, and also it is much precious in the church".
That amber was likewise precious in the eyes of the heathen is obvious from its frequent presence in prehistoric tombs, and from the vast estimation in which it was held by the Druids.
Not only was the golden amber esteemed as an emblem of the golden sun, but its magical magnetic properties caused it to be valued by the ancients as even more precious than gold.
There was also a poetic notion connecting amber and Apollo, thus expressed by a Greek poet:-The Celtic sages a tradition hold That every drop of amber was a tear Shed by Apollo when he fled from heaven For sorely did he weep and sorrowing passed Through many a doleful region till he reached The sacred Hyperboreans.
[648] It will be remembered that Salisbury Plain was sometimes known as Ellendown, with which name may be connoted the statement of Pausanias that Olen the Hyperborean was the first prophet of Delphi.
[649] On turning to _The Golden Legend_ we seem to get a memory of the Tears of Apollo in the statement that St. Ambrose was of such great compassion "that when any confessed to him his sin he wept so bitterly that he would make the sinner to weep".
The sympathies of St. Ambrose, and his astonishing tendency to dissolve into tears, are again emphasised by the statement that he wept sore even when he heard of the demise of any bishop, "and when it was demanded of him why he wept for the death of good men for he ought better to make joy, because they went to Heaven," Ambrose made answer that he shed tears because it was so difficult to find any man to do well in such offices.
The legend continues, "He was of so great stedfastness and so established in his purpose that he would not leave for dread nor for grief that might be done to him".
In connection with this proverbial _constancy_ it may be noted that at the village of _Constantine_ there is a Longstone--the largest in Cornwall--measuring 20 feet high and known as Maen Amber, or the Amber Stone: this was apparently known also as Men _Perhen_, and was broken up into gateposts in 1764.
In the same parish is a shaped stone which Borlase describes as "like the Greek letter omega, somewhat resembling a cap": from the illustration furnished by Borlase it is evident that this monument is a _knob_ very carefully modelled and the measurements recorded, 30 feet in girth, _eleven_ feet high,[650] imply that it was imminently an Elphinstone, Perhenstone, or Bryanstone.
With this constantly recurrent combination of 30 and 11 feet, may here be connoted the measurements of the walls of Richborough or Rutupiæ: according to the locally-published _Short Account_ "the north wall is the most perfect of the three that remain, 10 feet 8 inches in thickness and nearly 30 feet in height; the winding courses of tiles to the outer facing are in nearly their original state".
[651] The winding courses here mentioned consists of five rows of a red brick, and if one allows for inevitable _detritus_ the original measurements of the quadrangle walls may reasonably be assumed as having been 30 × 11 feet: the solid mass of masonry upon which Rutupiæ's cross is superimposed reaches "downward about 30 feet from the surface".
Four or five hundred yards from the castle and upon the very summit of the hill are the remains of an amphitheatre in the form of an egg measuring 200 × 160 feet.
To this, the first _walled_ amphitheatre discovered in the country, there were three entrances upon inclined planes, North, South, and West.
The first miracle recorded of St. Ambrose is to the effect that when an infant lying in the cradle a swarm of bees descended on his mouth; then they departed and flew up in the air so high that they might not be seen.
Greek mythology relates that the infant Zeus was fed by bees in his cradle upon Mount Ida, and a variant of the same fairy-tale represents Zeus as feeding daily in Ambrosia-The blessed Gods those rooks Erratic call.
Birds cannot pass them safe, no, not the doves Which his ambrosia bear to Father Jove.
[652] Ambrosia, the fabled food of the gods, appears to have been honey: it is said that the Amber stones were anointed with Ambrosia, hence it is significant to find in immediate proximity to each other the place-names Honeycrock and Amberstone in Sussex.
The Russians have an extraordinary idea that Ambrosia emanated from horses' heads,[653] and as there is a "Horse Eye Level" closely adjacent to the Sussex Honeycrock and Amberstone we may assume that the neighbouring Hailsham, supposed to mean "Home of Aela or Eile," was originally an Ellie or Elphin Home.
Layamon refers to Stonehenge, "a plain that was pleasant besides Ambresbury," as Aelenge, which probably meant Ellie or Elphin meadow, for _ing_ or _inge_ was a synonym for meadow.
The correct assumption may possibly be that all flowery meads were the recognised haunts of the anges or ingles: the fairy rings are usually found in meadows, and the poets feigned Proserpine in a meadow gathering flowers ere she was ravished below by Pluto: as late as 1788 an English poet expressed the current belief, "'Tis said the fairy people meet beneath the bracken shade on _mead_ and hill".
Across the Sussex mead known as Horse Eye Level runs a "Snapsons Drove": Snap is a curious parental name and is here perhaps connected with Snave, a Kentish village, presumably associated with _San Aphe_ or _San Ap_.
[654] Not only was the hipha or hobby horse decorated with a knop or knob, but a radical feature of its performance seems to have been movable jaws with which by means of a string the actor snapped at all and sundry: were these snappers, I wonder, the origin of the Snapes and Snapsons?
In view of the fact that the surname Leaper is authoritatively connoted with an entry in a fifteenth century account-book: "To one that _leped_ at Chestre 6s.
8d.," the suggestion may possibly be worth consideration.
In Sussex there are two Ambershams and an Amberley: in Hants is Amberwood.
St. Ambrose is recorded to have been born in Rome, whence it is probable that he was the ancient divinity of _Umbria_: in Derbyshire there is a river Amber, and in Yorkshire a Humber, which the authorities regard as probably an aspirated form of _cumber_, "confluence".
The magnetic properties of _amber_, which certainly cause a _humber_ or confluence, may have originated this meaning; in any case _cumber_ and _umber_ are radically the same word.
Probably Humberstones and Amberstones will be found on further inquiry to be as plentiful as Prestons or Peri stones: there is a Humberstone in Lincolnshire, another at Leicester, near Bicester is Ambrosden, and at Epping Forest is Ambresbury.
This Epping Ambresbury, known alternatively as Ambers' Banks, is admittedly a British _oppidum_: the remains cover 12 acres of ground and are situated on the highest plateau in the forest.
As there is an Ambergate near _Bux_ton it is noteworthy that Ambers' Banks in Epping are adjacent to Beak Hill, Buckhurst Hill, and High Beech Green.
I have already connoted Puck or Bogie with the beech tree, and it is probable that Fairmead Plain by High Beech Green was the Fairy mead where once the pixies gathered: close by is Bury Wood, and there is no doubt the neighbourhood of Epping and Upton was always very British.
In old English _amber_ or _omber_ meant a pitcher--query a honey-crock[655]--whence the authorities translate the various Amberleys as _meadow of the pitcher_, and Ambergate, near Buxton, as "probably pitcher road".
The Amber Hill near Boston, we are told, "will be from Old English _amber_ from its shape," but as it is extremely unusual to find hills in the form of a pitcher this etymology seems questionable.
At the Wiltshire Ambresbury there is a Mount Ambrosius at the foot of which, according to local tradition, used to exist a college of Druidesses,[656] in which connection it is noteworthy that just as Silbury Hill is distant about a mile from the Avebury Circle, so Mount Ambrosius is equally distant from Choir Gawr.
[Illustration: FIG.
339.--A Persian King, adorned with a Pyramidal Flamboyant Nimbus.
Persian Manuscript, Bibliothèque Royale.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
To Amber may be assigned the words _umpire_ and _empire_; Oberon, the lovely child, is haply described as the _Emperor_ of Fairyland, whence also no doubt he was the lord and master of the _Empyrean_.
When dealing elsewhere with the word _amber_ I suggested that it meant radically _Sun Father_,[657] and there are episodes in the life of St. Ambrose which support this interpretation, _e.g._, "it happened that an enchanter called devils to him and sent them to St. Ambrose for to annoy and grieve him, but the devils returned and said that they might not approach to his gate because there was a great fire all about his house".
Among the Persians it was customary to halo their divinities, not with a circle but with a pyre or pyramid of fire, and in all probability to the _auburn_ Auberon the Emperor of the Empyrean may be assigned not only _burn_ and _brand_, but also _bran_ in the sense of bran new.
That St. Ambrose was Barnaby Bright or the White god of day is implied by the anecdote "a fire in the manner of a shield covered his head, and entered into his mouth: then became his face as white as any snow, and anon it came again to his first form".
[658] The basis of this story would seem to have been a picture representing Ambrose with fire not entering into, but _emerging from_, his mouth and forming a surrounding halo "in the manner of a shield".
_Embers_ now mean ashes, and the Ember Days of Christianity probably trace backward to the immemorial times of prehistoric fire-worship.
At Parton, near Salisbury, one meets with the curious surname Godber: and doubtless inquiry would establish a connection between this Godber of Parton and Godfrey.
[Illustration: FIG.
340.--The Divine Triplicity, Contained within the Unity.
From a German Engraving of the XVI.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
The weekly fair at Ambresbury used to be held on _Fri_day; the maid Freya, to whom Friday owes its name, was evidently _Fire Eye_; the Latin _feriæ_ were the hey-days or holidays dedicated to some fairy.
Fairs were held customarily on the festival of the local saint, frequently even to-day within ancient earthworks: the most famous Midsummer Fair used to be that held at _Barnwell_: Feronia, the ancient Italian divinity at whose festival a great fair was held, and the first-fruits of the field offered, is, as has been shown, equivalent to Beronia or Oberon.
[Illustration: FIG.
341.--God, Beardless, either the Son or the Father.
French Miniature of the XI.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
342.--British.
From Evans.]
According to Borlase there is in Anglesea "a horse-shoe 22 paces in diameter called Brangwyn or Supreme court; it lies in a place called Tre'r Drew or Druids' Town".
[659] Stonehenge consists of a circle enclosing a horse-shoe or hoof--the footprint and sign of Hipha the White Mare, or Ephialtes the Night Mare, and a variant of this idea is expressed in the circle enclosing a triangle as exhibited in the Christian emblem on p. 571.
That Christianity did not always conceive the All Father as the Ancient of Days is evident from Fig.
341, where the central Power is depicted within the _writhings_ of what is seemingly an acanthus _wreath_: the CUNOB fairy on the British coin illustrated _ante_, page 528, is extending what is either a ball of fire or else a wreath.
The word _wraith_, meaning apparition, is connoted by Skeat with an Icelandic term meaning "a pile of stones to warn a wayfarer," hence this _heap_ may be connoted with _rath_ the Irish, and _rhaith_ the Welsh, for a fairy dun or hill.
Skeat further connotes _wraith_ with the Norwegian word _vardyvle_, meaning "a guardian or attendant spirit seen to follow or precede one," and he suggests that _vardyvle_ meant _ward evil_.
Certainly the _wraiths_ who haunted the raths were supposed to ward off evil, and the giant Wreath,[660] who was popularly associated with Port_reath_ near _Redruth_, was in all probability the same _wraith_ that originated the place-name Cape Wrath.
In Welsh a speech is called _ar raith_ or on the mound, hence we may link _rhe_toric to this idea, and assume that the raths were the seats of public eloquence as we know they were.
As wreath means a circle it is no doubt the same word as _rota_, a wheel, and Rodehengenne or Stonehengels may have meant the Wheel Angels.
The cruciform _rath_, illustrated _ante_, page 55, is pre-eminently a _rota_, and in Fig.
343 Christ is represented in a circle supported by four somewhat unaerial Evangelists or Angels.
Mount Ida in Phrygia was the reputed seat of the _Dactyli_, a word which means _fingers_, and these mysterious Powers were sometimes identified with the Cabiri.
The Dactyli, or _fingers_, are described as fabulous beings to whom the discovery of iron and the art of working it by means of fire was ascribed, and as the philosophy of Phairie is always grounded upon some childishly simple basis, it is probable that the Elphin eleven in its elementary sense represented the ten fingers controlled by Emperor Brain.
The digits are magic little workmen who level mountains and rear palaces at the bidding of their lord and master Brain: the word _digit_, French _doight_, is in fact _Good god_, and _dactyli_ is the same word plus a final _yli_.
[Illustration: FIG.
343.--Christ with a Plain Nimbus, Ascending to Heaven in a Circular Aureole.
Carving in Wood of the XIV.
Cent.
From Evans.]
In _Folklore as an Historical Science_ Sir Laurence Gomme lays some stress upon a tale which is common alike to Britain and Brittany, and is therefore supposed to be of earlier date than the separation of Britons and Bretons.
This tale which centres at London, is to the effect that a countryman once upon a time dreamed there was a priceless treasure hidden at London Bridge: he therefore started on a quest to London where on arrival he was observed loitering and was interrogated by a bystander.
On learning the purpose of his trip the Cockney laughed heartily at such simplicity, and jestingly related how he himself had also dreamed a dream to the effect that there was treasure buried in the countryman's own village.
On his return home the rustic, thinking the matter over, decided to dig where the cockney had facetiously indicated, whereupon to his astonishment he actually found a pot containing treasure.
On the first pot unearthed was an inscription reading-Look lower, where this stood Is another twice as good.
Encouraged he dug again, whereupon to his greater astonishment he found a second pot bearing the same inscription: again he dug and found a third pot even yet more valuable.
This fabulously ancient tale is notably identified with Upsall in Yorkshire; it is, we are told, "a constant tradition of the neighbourhood, and the identical bush yet exists (or did in 1860) beneath which the treasure was found; a _bur_tree or elder.
"[661] Upsall was originally written Upeshale and Hupsale (primarily Ap's Hall?)
and the idea is a happy one, for in mythology it is undeniably true that the deeper one delves the richer proves the treasure trove.
In suggesting that eleven may have been the number of the ten digits guided and controlled by the Brain one may thus not only remark the injunction to the Jews: "Thou shalt make curtains of goatshair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: _eleven_ curtains shalt thou make,"[662] but one may note also the probable elucidation of this Hebrew symbolism:-Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes Or any searcher know by mortal mind; Veil after veil will lift, but there must be Veil upon veil behind.
[663] Assuming that in the simplest sense the elphin eleven were the ten digits and the Brain, one may compare with this combination the ten Powers or qualities which according to the Cabala emanated from "The Most Ancient One".
"He has given existence to all things.
He made ten lights spring forth from His midst, lights which shone with the forms which they had borrowed from Him and which shed everywhere the light of a brilliant day.
The Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, is a high beacon, and we know Him only by His lights which illuminate our eyes so abundantly.
His Holy Name is no other thing than these lights.
"[664] According to _The Golden Legend_ the Emperor of Constantinople applied to St. Ambrose to receive the sacred mysteries, and that Ambrose was Vera or Truth is hinted by the testimony of the Emperor.
"I have found a man of _truth_, my master Ambrose, and such a man ought to be a bishop."
The word _bishop_, Anglo-Saxon _biscop_, supposed to mean _overseer_, is like the Greek _episcopus_, radically _op_, an _eye_.
[665] Egyptian archæologists tell us that in Egypt the Coptic Land of the Great Optic, even the very games had a religious significance; whence there was probably some ethical idea behind the British "jingling match by eleven blind-folded men and one unmasked and hung with bells".
This joyous and diverting _jeu_ is mentioned as part of the sports-programme at the celebrated Scouring of the White Horse: we have already noted the blind-folded Little Leaf Man, led blind Amor-like from house to house, also the _Blind_ Man who is said to have sat for _eleven_ years in the Church of St. Maur (or Amour?
), and among other sports at the Scouring, eleven enters again into an account of chasing the fore wheel of a wagon down the hill slope.
The trundling of a fiery wheel--which doubtless took place at the several British Trendle Hills--is a well-known feature of European solar ceremonies: the greater interest of the Scouring item is perhaps in the number of competitors: "_eleven_ on 'em started and amongst 'em a sweep-chimley and a millard [milord], and the millard tripped up the sweep-chimley and made the zoot fly a good 'un--the wheel ran pretty nigh down to the springs that time".
[666] [Illustration: FIGS.
344 and 345.--British.
From Akerman and Evans.]
The Jewish conception of The Most Ancient One, the most Hidden of the hidden, reappears in Jupiter Ammon, whose sobriquet of Ammon meant _the hidden one_: "Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself".
In England the game of _Hide and Seek_ used to be known as _Hooper's Hide_,[667] and this curious connection between Jupiter, the Hidden one, and _Hooper's Hide_ somewhat strengthens my earlier surmise that Hooper = Iupiter.
In the opinion of Sir John Evans "there can be little doubt" of the head upon the obverse of Fig.
344 being intended for Jupiter Ammon;[668] in Cornish Blind Man's Hide and Seek, the players used to shout "Vesey, vasey vum: _Buckaboo_ has come!
"[669] [Illustration: FIG.
346.--Glass Beads, England and Ireland.
From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (B.M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
347.--From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_ (B.M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
348.--From _Archaic Sculpturings_ (L.
Mann).]
If as now suggested the wheel and the "spindle whorl" were alike symbols of the Eye of Heaven, it is equally probable that the amber, and many other variety of bead, was also a talismanic eyeball:[670] among grave deposits the blue bead was very popular, assumedly for the reason that blue was the colour of heaven.
Large quantities of blue "whorls" were discovered by Schliemann[671] at Mykenæ, and among the many varieties of beads found in Britain one in particular is described as "of a Prussian Blue colour with three circular grooves round the circumference, filled with white paste".
[672] This design of three circles reappears in Fig.
347 taken from the base of a British Incense-cup; likewise in a group of rock sculpturings (Fig.
348) found at Kirkmabreck in Kirkcudbrightshire.
Mr. Ludovic Mann, who sees traces of astronomical intention in this sculpture, writes: "If the pre-historic peoples of Scotland and indeed Europe had this conception, then the Universe to their mind would consist of eleven units, namely, the nine celestial bodies already referred to, and the Central Fire and the 'Counter-Earth'.
Very probably they knew also of elliptical motions.
Oddly enough the cult of eleven units (which I detected some fifteen years ago) representing the universe can be discerned in the art of the late Neolithic and Bronze Ages in Scotland and over a much wider area.
For example, in nearly all the cases of Scottish necklaces of beads of the Bronze Age which have survived intact, it will be found that they consist of a number of beads which is eleven or a multiple of eleven.
I have, for example, a fine Bronze Age necklace from Wigtownshire consisting of 187 beads (that is of 17 × 11) and a triangular centre piece.
The same curious recurrence of the number and its multiples can often be detected in the number of standing stones in a circle, in the number of stones placed in slightly converging rows found in Caithness, Sutherland, some parts of England, Wales, and in Brittany.
The number eleven is occasionally involved in the Bronze Age pottery decorations, and in the patterns on certain ornaments and relics of the Bronze Age....
The Cult of eleven seems to survive in the numerous names of Allah, who was known by ninety-nine names, and hence it is invariably the case that the Mahommedan has a necklace consisting of either eleven or a multiple of eleven beads but not exceeding ninety-nine, as he is supposed to repeat one of the names for each bead which he tells.
"[673] We have seen that the _rudraksha_ or eye of the god S'iva seeds are usually eleven faceted, and my surmise that the whorls of Troy were universal Eyes is further implied by the group here illustrated.
According to Thomas, our British Troy Towns or Caer Troiau were originally astronomical observatories, and he derives the word _troiau_ from the verb _troi_ to _turn_, or from _tro_ signifying a _flux of time_:--[674] By ceaseless actions all that is subsists; Constant rotation of th' unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, Her beauty and fertility.
She dreads An instant's pause and lives but while she moves.
The Trojan whorls are unquestionably _tyres_ or _tours_, and the notion of an eye is in some instances clearly imparted to them by radiations which resemble those of the _iris_.
The wavy lines of No.
1835 and 1840 probably denote water or the spirit, in No.
1847 the "Jupiter chain" of our SOLIDO coin reappears; the astral specks on 1841 and 1844 may be connoted with the stars and planets, and in 1833 the sense of rolling or movement is clearly indicated.
[Illustration: FIG.
349.--Specimen Patterns of Whorls Dug up at Troy.
From _Ilios_ (Schliemann).]
[Illustration: FIG.
350.--Specimen Patterns of Whorls Dug up at Troy.
From _Ilios_ (Schliemann).]
Schliemann supposes that the thousands of whorls found in Troy served as offerings to the tutelary deity of the city, _i.e._, Athene: some of them have the form of a cone, or of two cones base to base, and that Troy was pre-eminently a town of the Eternal Eye is perhaps implied by the name Troie.
Fig.
351 is a ground plan of Trowdale Mote in Scotland which, situated on a high and lonely marshland within near sight of nothing but a few swelling hillocks amongst reeds and mosses and water, has been described as the "strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric looking of all our motes".
[675] [Illustration: FIG.
351.--From Proceedings Soc.
Ant.
Scot.]
It was popularly supposed that all the witches of West Cornwall used to meet at midnight on Midsummer Eve at Trewa (pronounced _Troway_) in the parish of Zennor, and around the dying fires renewed their vows to the Devil, their master.
In this wild Zennor (supposedly _holy land_) district is a witch's rock which if touched nine times at midnight reputedly brought good luck.
The "Troy Town" of Welsh children is the Hopscotch of our London pavements; at one time every English village seems to have possessed its maze (or Drayton?
), and that the mazes were the haunts of fairies is well known:-... the yellow skirted fays Fly after the night steeds Leaving their moon-loved maze.
In _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ Titania laments:-The nine men's morris is filled up with mud And the quaint mazes in the wanton green For lack of tread are indistinguishable.
At St. Martha's Church near Guildford, facing Newlands Corner are the remains of an earthwork maze close by the churchyard, and within this maze used to be held the country sports.
[676] We shall consider some extraordinarily quaint mazes and Troy Towns in a subsequent chapter, but meanwhile it may here be noted that in the Scilly Islands (which the Greeks entitled Hesperides) is a monument thus described: "Close to the edge of the cliff is a curious enclosure called Troy Town, taking its name from the Troy of ancient history; the streets of ancient Troy were so constructed that an enemy, once within the gates, could not find his way out again.
The enclosure has an outer circle of white pebbles placed on the turf, with an opening at one point, supposed to represent the walls and gate of Troy.
Within this there are several rows of stones; the spaces between them represent the streets.
It presents quite a maze, and but few who enter can find their way out again without crossing one of the boundary lines.
It is not known when or by whom it was constructed, but it has from time to time been restored by the islanders.
"[677] This Troy Town is situated on _Camper_dizil Point; in the same neighbourhood is Carn _Himbra_ Point, and _Himbrian, Kymbrian_, or _Cambrian_ influences are seemingly much evident in this district, as doubtless they also were at Comberton[678] famous for its maze.
At the very centre, eye, or _San Troy_ of St. Mary's Island is situated Holy Vale, and here also are the place-names Maypole, Burrow, and Content.
It has already been suggested that Bru or Burrow was originally _pure Hu_ or _pere Hu_, Hu being, as will be remembered, the traditional Leader of the Kymbri into these islands, and the first of the Three National Pillars of Britain: the chief town of St. Mary's is Hugh Town, and running through Holy Vale is what is described as a paved way (in wonderful preservation) known as the Old Roman Road, formerly supposed to be the main-way to Hugh Town.
One may be allowed to question whether the Legions of Imperial Rome ever troubled to construct so fine a causeway in so insignificant an island; or if so, for what reason?
The houses of Holy Vale are embowered in trees of larger growth than those elsewhere in the neighbourhood: they "complete a picture of great calm and repose," and that this Holy Vale was anciently an _abri_ is fairly self-evident apart from the interesting place-name _Burrow_, and the neighbouring Bur Point.
The Romans entitled the Scillies _Sillinæ Insulæ_: I have already suggested they were a seat of the Selli; we have met with Selene in connection with St. Levan's, and it is not improbable that the deity of _Sillinæ Insulæ_ was Selene, Helena, or Luna.
The Silus stone from the ruined chapel of St. Helen's at Helenium or Land's End (Cape Cornwall) has been already noted: the most ancient building in all the _Sillinæ Insulæ_ or the Scillies is the ruined chapel on St. Helen's of which the northern aisle now measures 12 feet wide and 19 feet 6 inches long.
As the Hellenes usually had ideas underlying all their measurements it is probable that the 19 feet 6 inches was primarily 19 feet, for nineteen was a highly mystic Hellenic number.
Of the Hyperboreans Diodorus states: "They say, moreover, that Apollo once in nineteen years comes into the island in which space of time the stars perform their courses and return to the same points, and therefore the Greeks call the revolutions of nineteen years the Great Year".
Nineteen nuns tended the sacred fire of St. Bridget, and according to some observers the inmost circle of Stonehenge consisted of nineteen "Blue Stones".
[679] These nineteen Stone Hengles may be connoted with the nineteen ruined huts on the summit of Ingleborough in Yorkshire: the summit of Ingleborough is a plateau of about a mile in circuit and hereupon are "vestiges of an ancient British camp of about 15 acres inclosing traces of _nineteen_ ancient _horseshoe shaped_ huts".
[680] As the word _ingle_, meaning _fire_, is not found until 1508 the authorities are unable to interpret Ingleborough as meaning Fire hill, although without doubt it served as a Beacon: the same etymological difficulty likewise confronts them at Ingleby Cross, Inglesham, numerous Ingletons, and at Ingestre.
We have seen that Inglewood was known as Englysshe Wood;[681] in Somerset is Combe English, and in the Scillies is English Island Hill: 500 yards from this English Hill is a stone circle embracing an upright stone the end of which is 18 inches square.
[Illustration: FIG.
352.--Stonehenge Restored.
From _Our Ancient Monuments_ (Kains-Jackson).]
Eighteen courtiers were assigned to the _ange_ Oberon: the megalith Long Meg is described as a square unhewn freestone column 15 feet in circumference by 18 feet high, and there is no doubt that eighteen or twice nine possessed at one time some significance.
I suspect that the double nine stood for the Twain, each of which was reckoned as nine or True: on the top of Hellingy Downs in the Scillies is a barrow covered with large stones _nine_ feet long, and built upon a mound which is surrounded by inner and outer rows of stone.
[682] On Salakee Downs there is a monolith resting on a large flat rock, on three projections situated at a distance of _eighteen_ inches from one another and each having a diameter of about 2 inches:[683] this is known as the Druid's throne, and about 5 yards to the east are two more upright rocks of similar size and shape named the Twin Sisters.
[684] The Twin Sisters of Biddenden, whose name was Preston, were associated with five pieces of ground known as the Bread and Cheese Lands, in which connection it is interesting to find that near English Island Hill is Chapel _Brow_, constituting the eastern point of a deep bay known by the curious name of Bread and Cheese Cove.
[685] In connection with Biddenden we connoted Pope's Hall and Bubhurst; it is thus noteworthy that near Bread and Cheese Cove is a Bab's Carn, and a large sea cavern known as Pope's Hole.
In Germany and Scandinavia the stone circles are known not as Merry Maidens, but as Adam's Dances.
Close to Troy Town on St. Agnes in the Scillies are two rocks known as Adam and Eve: these are described as _nine_ feet high with a space about _nine_ inches between them: "Here, too, is the Nag's Head, which is the most curious rock to be met with on the islands; it has a remote resemblance to the head of a horse, and would seem to have been at one time an object of worship, being surrounded by a circle of stones".
[686] On the lower slopes of Hellingy are the remains of a primitive village, and the foundations of many circular huts: among these foundations have been found a considerable quantity of crude pottery, and an ancient hand-mill which the authorities assign to about 2000 B.C.
We have seen that the goddesses of Celtdom were known as the _Mairæ, Matronæ, Matres_, or _Matræ_ (the mothers): further, that the Welsh for Mary is Fair, whence the assumption becomes pressing that the "Saint" Mary of the Scillies was primarily the Merry Fairy.
The author of _The English Language_ points out that in Old English _merry_ meant originally no more than "agreeable, pleasing".
Heaven and Jerusalem were described by old poets as "merry" places; and the word had supposedly no more than this signification in the phrase "Merry England," into which we read a more modern interpretation.
[687] That the Scillies were permeated with the Fairy Faith is sufficiently obvious; at Hugh Town we find the ubiquitous Silver Street, and the neighbouring Holvear Hill was not improbably holy to Vera.
Near the Island of St. Helen's is a group of rocks marked upon the map as Golden Ball Bar; near by is an islet named Foreman.
The farthest sentinel of the Scillies is an islet named the Bishop, now famous to all sea-farers for its _phare_.
It is quite certain that no human Bishop would ever have selected as his residence an abode so horribly exposed, whence it is more likely that the Bishop here commemorated was the Burnebishop or Boy Bishop whose ceremonies were maintained until recent years, notably and particularly at Cambrai.
In England it is curious to find the Lady-bird or Burnie Bee equated with a Bishop, yet it was so; and hence the rhyme:-Bishop, Bishop Burnebee, tell me when my wedding will be, Fly to the east, fly to the west, Fly to them that I love best.
In connection with the Island of St. _Agnes_ it may be noted that _ignis_ is the Latin for _fire_, whence it is possible that the islets, Big Smith and Little Smith, Burnt Island and Monglow, all had some relation to the Fieryman, Fairy Man, or Foreman: it is also possible that the neighbouring Camperdizil Point is connected with _deiseul_, the Scotch ejaculation, and with _dazzle_.
Troy Town in St. Agnes is almost environed by Smith Sound, and this curious combination of names points seemingly to some connection between the Cambers and the metal smiths.
[688] It will be remembered that Agnes was a title of the Papesse Jeanne, who was said to have come from Engelheim or _Angel's Home_: in Germany the Lady Bird used to be known as the Lady Mary's Key-bearer, and exhorted to fly to Engelland: "Insect of Mary, fly away, fly away, to Engelland.
Engelland is locked, its key is broken.
"[689] Sometimes the invocation ran: "Gold chafer up and away to thy high storey to thy Mother Anne, who gives thee _bread and cheese_.
'Tis better than bitter death.
"[690] Thanks to an uncultured and tenacious love of Phairie, the keys of rural Engelland have not yet been broken, nor happily is Engelland locked.
Our history books tell us of a splendid pun[691] perpetrated by a Bishop of many centuries ago: noticing some captured English children in the market-place at Rome, he woefully exclaimed that had they been baptised then would they have been _non Angli sed angeli_.
Has this episcopal pleasantry been overrated?
or was the good Bishop punning unconsciously deeper than he intended?
FOOTNOTES: [593] Gomme, Sir L., _London_, p. 74.
[594] _De bello Gallico_, v., 21.
[595] Blackie, C., _Dictionary of Place-names_, p. 21.
[596] Garnier, Col., _The Worship of the Dead_, p. 240.
[597] Thomas, J., _Brit.
Antiquissima_, p. 108.
[598] The choral music of the Teutons did not create a favourable impression on the mind of Tacitus, _vide_ his account of a primitive Hymn of Hate: "The Germans abound with rude strains of verse, the reciters of which, in the language of the country, are called Bards.
With this barbarous poetry they inflame their minds with ardour in the day of action, and prognosticate the event from the impression which it happens to make on the minds of the soldiers, who grow terrible to the enemy, or despair of success, as the war-song produces an animated or a feeble sound.
Nor can their manner of chanting this savage prelude be called the tone of human organs: it is rather a furious uproar; a wild chorus of military virtue.
The vociferation used upon these occasions is uncouth and harsh, at intervals interrupted by the application of their bucklers to their mouths, and by the repercussion bursting out with redoubled force."
--_Germania_, I., iii., p. 313.
[599] Blackman, Winifred S., _The Rosary in Magic and Religion_, Folklore, xxiv., 4.
[600] Wright, E. M., _Rustic Speech and Folklore_, p. 303.
[601] _Cf._ Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., p. 314.
[602] Cockney dialect is closely akin to Kentish, and abounds in venerable verbal relics: "The stranger enters, but he nonetheless pays his toll; he does not leave any mark on London, but London leaves an indelible stamp upon him.
The children of the foreigner, the children of the Yorkshireman or Lancastrian, belong in speech neither to Yorkshire nor Lancashire, they become more Cockney than the Cockneys; and even the alien voices of the east end, notably less musical than those of our own people, take on the tones of London's ancient speech."
--MacBride, Mackenzie, _London's Dialect, An Ancient form of English Speech, with a Note on the Dialects of the North of England, and the Midlands and Scotland_, p. 8.
[603] Bliss, J.
B., _A Mound of Many Cities or Tell el Hesy Excavated_.
[604] I was unaware of this rather corroborative evidence when I put forward the suggestion five years ago that _Egypt_ was radically _ypte_ or _Good Eye_.
[605] The Iberians and Jews also possessed a never-to-be-uttered sacred Name.
[606] _Barddas_, p. 95.
[607] _Ibid._, p. 251.
[608] _Barddas_, p. 23.
[609] As also was the Bardic conception of God, summed up in the Triad:-"Three things which God cannot but be; whatever perfect Goodness ought to be; whatever perfect Goodness would desire to be; and whatever perfect Goodness can be."
Again-"There is nothing beautiful but what is just; There is nothing just but _love_; There is no love but God."
And thus it ends.
Tydain, the Father of Awen, sang it, says the Book of Sion Cent (_Barddas_, p. 219).
[610] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 146.
[611] Illustrated on page opposite.
[612] This name appears on maps sometimes as Salla Key, sometimes as Salakee.
[613] Tonkin, J. C., _Lyonesse_, p. 38.
[614] Randolph (1657).
[615] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 185.
[616] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 309.
[617] Quoted from Harrison, J., _Ancient Art and Ritual_, p. 188.
[618] _Folklore_, XXV., iv., p. 426.
[619] Larwood and Hotten, _Hist.
of Signboards_, p. 504.
[620] _Cf._ Borlase, W., _Cornwall_, pp.
193, 201.
[621] One may connote this ceremony with the Bardic triad: "God is the measuring rod of all truth, all justice, and all goodness, therefore He is a yoke on all, and all are under it, and woe to him who shall violate it".
[622] See Fig.
331, p. 538.
[623] Quoted from _Science of Language_, Max Müller, p. 540.
[624] Sabean Litany attributed to Enoch.
[625] _G.
L._, v. 185, 195.
[626] Walford E., _Greater London_, vol.
ii., p. 299.
[627] Dennis G., _Cities of Etruria_.
[628] _Cornwall_, vol.
i., 397; _Victoria County Histories_.
[629] _Cornwall_, vol.
i., 394; _Victoria County Histories_.
[630] Blackie's _Dictionary of Place-Names_ defines Godmanham as follows: "the holy man's dwelling, the site of an idol temple destroyed under the preaching of Paulinus whose name it bears," p. 98.
[631] "The year before last I went to Bodavon Mountain to take photographs of the cromlech that used to lie there.
When I got there, however, I found the place absolutely bare, not a vestige of the cromlech remaining.
On making inquiries, a road newly metalled was pointed out to me, and I was told that the cromlech had been used for that purpose.
This was done despite the fact that many tons of loose stone are lying on the mountain-side close by."
--Griffith, John E., _The Cromlechs of Anglesey and Carnarvon_, 1900.
[632] Huyshe, W., _Life of St. Columba_, p. 176.
[633] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 210.
[634] "The metrical historian Hardyng twice employed but without explaining the appellation _stone Hengels_, 'which called is the Stone Hengles certayne'.
This reads like _lapides Anglorum_ or _lapides Angelorum_."
--Herbert, A., _Cyclops Christianus_, p. 165.
[635] "Who would ween, in this worlds realm, that Hengest thought to deceive the king who had his daughter.
For there is never any man, that men may not over-reach with treachery.
They took an appointed day, that these people should come together with concord and with peace, in a plain that was pleasant beside Ambresbury; the place was _Aelenge_; now hight it Stonehenge.
There Hengest the traitor, either by word or by writ, made known to the king; that he would come with his forces, in honour of the king; but he would not bring in retinue but three hundred knights, the wisest men of all that he might find.
And the king should bring as many on his side bold thanes, and who should be wisest of all that dwelt in Britain, with their good vestments, all without weapons, that no evil, should happen to them, through confidence of the weapons.
Thus they it spake, and eft they it brake; for Hengest the traitor thus gan he teach his comrades, that each should take a long saex (knife), and lay be his shank, within his hose, where he it might hide.
When they came together, the Saxons and Britons, then quoth Hengest, most deceitful of all knights: 'Hail be thou, lord king, each is to thee thy subject!
If ever any of thy men hath weapon by his side, send it with friendship far from ourselves, and be we in amity, and speak we of concord; how we may with peace our lives live.'
Thus the wicked man spake there to the Britons.
Then answered Vortiger--here he was too unwary--'If here is any knight so wild, that hath weapon by his side, he shall lose the hand through his own brand, unless he soon send it hence'.
Their weapons they sent away, then had they nought in hand; knights went upward, knights went downward, each spake with other as if he were his brother.
"When the Britons were mingled with the Saxons, then called Hengest of knights most treacherous: 'Take your saexes, my good warriors, and bravely bestir you and spare ye none!'
Noble Britons were there, but they knew not of the speech, what the Saxish men said them between.
They drew out the saexes, all aside; they smote on the right side, they smote on the left side; before and behind they laid them to the ground; all they slew that they came nigh; of the king's men there fell four hundred and five, woe was the king alive!"
--Layamon, _Brut._.
[636] _Cf._ Herbert, A., _Cyclops Christianius_, p. 163.
[637] _Surnames_, p. 31.
[638] _Cf._ Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faith and Folklore_, ii., 389.
[639] _Teutonic Mythology_, Rydberg, p. 360.
[640] _Demonology_, 177.
[641] _Cf._ Wright, T., _Essays on Archæological Subjects_, i., 120.
[642] Davies, D., _The Ancient Celtic Church of Wales_, p. 14.
[643] _Cf._ _Sketches of Irish History_, anon., Dublin, 1844.
[644] _Cf._ Gordon, E. O., _Prehistoric London, its Mounds and Circles_, p. 67.
[645] Borlase, _Cornwall_, p. 208.
[646] _Cf._ Bonwick, J., _Irish Druids_, p. 11.
[647] _De Bello Gallico_, VI., x., 17.
[648] Quoted by Bryant from _Appollon Argonaut_, L. 4, V. 611.
[649] _Cf._ Wilkes, Anna, _Ireland, Ur of the Chaldees_, p. 88.
[650] Borlase, _Antiquities of Cornwall_, p. 173.
[651] p. 6.
[652] _Odyssey_, XII.
[653] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 440.
[654] As all our _Avons_ are traced to Sanscrit _ap_, meaning water, one may here note the Old English word _snape_, meaning _a spring_ in arable ground.
[655] In the mediæval _Story of Asenath_, the Angel who describes himself as "Prince of the House of God and Captain of His Host," and was thus presumably Michael, says to Asenath; "Look within thine _Aumbrey_, and thou shall find withal to furnish thy table".
Then she hastened thereto and found "a store of Virgin honey, white as snow of sweetest savour".
The archangel tells Asenath that "all whom Penitence bringeth before Him shall eat of this honey gathered by the bees of Paradise, from the dew of the roses of Heaven, and those who eat thereof shall never see death but shall live for evermore."
--_Aucassin and Nicolette and other Mediæval Romances_, p. 209 (Everyman's Library).
[656] Gordon, A. O., _Prehistoric London_, p. 66.
[657] _Lost Language_, ii., 141.
[658] _Golden Legend_, iii., 117.
[659] _Cornwall_, p. 207.
[660] Hunt, J., _Popular Romances of the West of England_, p. 76.
[661] P. 20 [662] Exod.
xxvi.
7.
[663] Arnold, E., _Light of Asia_.
[664] _Cf._ Abelson, J., _Jewish Mysticism_, p. 137.
[665] The Bryan of popular ballad seems to have been famed for the casting of his glad eye:-"Bryan he was tall and strong Right blithsome rolled his een."
--_Percy Reliques_, i., 276.
[666] Hughes, T., _Scouring the White Horse_, p. 110.
[667] Taylor, J., _The Devil's Pulpit_, ii., 297.
[668] P. 344.
[669] Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 175.
[670] Among the Maoris potent powers were supposed to reside in the human eye.
"When a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the _atua tonga_, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew, the greater did his divinity become."
--Taylor, R., _Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants_.
[671] _Mykenæ_, p. 77.
[672] B.M., _Guide to the Early Iron Age_, p. 107.
[673] _Archaic Sculpturings_, p. 23.
[674] _Britannia Antiquissima_, p. 50.
[675] Coles, F. R., _The Motes of Kirkcudbrightshire_, p. 151.
[676] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 195.
[677] _Lyonesse, a Handbook for the Isles of Scilly_, p. 70.
[678] The Cambridgeshire Comberton is situated on the Bourn brook: there is also a Great and Little Comberton underlying Bredon Hill in the Pershore district of Worcester.
[679] The term "Bluestone" in the West of England meant _holy stone_.
[680] Wilson, J. G., _Imperial Gazetteer_.
[681] On the tip-top of Highgate Hill is now standing an _Englefield_ House immediately adjacent to an _Angel_ Inn.
[682] _Lyonesse_, p. 41.
[683] _Ibid._, p. 39.
[684] _Ibid._, p. 39.
[685] _Ibid._, p. 79.
[686] _Ibid._, p. 78.
[687] P. 112.
[688] Writing _not_ in connection with either Monglow or Camperdizil Miss Gordon observes: "We may conjure up the scene where the watery stretches reflected in molten gold the 'pillars of fire' symbolising the presence of God; we seem to behold the reverend forms of the white clad Druids revolving in the mystic 'Deasil' dance from East to West around the glowing pile, and so following the course of the Sun, the image of the Deity".--_Prehistoric London_, p. 72.
[689] Eckenstein, L., _Comp.
St. Nursery Rhymes_, p. 97.
[690] P. 98.
[691] Skeat believed _pun_ meant something _punched_ out of shape.
Is it not more probably connected with the Hebrew _pun_ meaning _dubious_?
CHAPTER XI THE FAIR MAID "We could not blot out from English poetry its visions of the fairyland without a sense of irreparable loss.
No other literature save that of Greece alone can vie with ours in its pictures of the land of fantasy and glamour, or has brought back from that mysterious realm of unfading beauty treasures of more exquisite and enduring charm."
--ALFRED NUTT.
"We have already shown how long and how faithfully the Gaelic and Welsh peasants clung to their old gods in spite of all the efforts of the clerics to explain them as ancient kings, or transform them into wonder-working saints, or to ban them as demons of Hell."
--CHARLES SQUIRE.
In the preceding chapter it was shown that the number eleven was for some reason peculiarly identified with the Elven, or Elves: in Germany eleven seems to have carried a somewhat similar significance, for on the eleventh day of the eleventh month was always inaugurated the Carnival season which was celebrated by weekly festivities which increased in mirthful intensity until Shrove Tuesday.
[692] Commenting upon this custom it has been pointed out that "The fates seem to have displayed a remarkable sense of artistry in decreeing that the Great War should cease at the moment when it did, for the hostilities came to an end at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month".
[693] Etymologists connect the word Fate with fay; the expression _fate_ is radically _good fay_, and it is merely a matter of choice whether Fate or the Fates be regarded as Three or as One: moreover the aspect of Fate, whether grim or beautiful, differs invariably to the same extent as that of the two fairy mothers which Kingsley introduces into _The Water Babies_, the delicious Lady Doasyouwouldbedoneby and the forbidding Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
[Illustration: FIG.
353.--Printer's Ornament (English, 1724).]
The Greek _Moirae_ or Fates were represented as either three austere maidens or as three aged hags: the Celtic _mairae_, of which Rice Holmes observes that "no deities were nearer to the hearts of Celtic peasants," were represented in groups of three; their aspect was that of gentle, serious, motherly women holding new-born infants in their hands, or bearing fruits and flowers in their laps; and many offerings were made to them by country folk in gratitude for their care of farm, and flock, and home.
[694] In the Etrurian bucket illustrated on page 474, the Magna Mater or Fate was represented with two children, one white the other black: in the emblems herewith the supporting Pair are depicted as two Amoretti, and the Central Fire, Force, or Tryamour is portrayed by three hearts blazing with the fire of Charity.
There is indeed no doubt that the Three Charities, Three Graces, and Three Fates were merely presentations of the one unchanging central and everlasting Fire, Phare, or Force.
Among the Latins the Moirae were termed Parcae, and seemingly all mythologies represent the Great Pyre, Phare, or Fairy as at times a Fury.
In Britain Keridwen--whose name the authorities state meant _perpetual love_--appears very notably as a Fury, and on certain British coins she is similarly depicted.
What were the circumstances which caused the moneyers of the period to concentrate such anguish into the physiognomy of the pherepolis it would be interesting to know: the fact remains that they did so, yet we find what obviously is the same fiery-locked figure with an expression unmistakably serene.
[Illustration: FIG.
354.--Printer's Ornament (English, 1724).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
355 to 358.--British.]
[Illustration: FIG.
359.--Mary, in an Oval Aureole, Intersected by Another, also Oval, but of smaller size.
Miniature of the X.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
Tradition seems to have preserved the memory of the Virgin Mary as one of the Three Greek Moirae or Three Celtic Mairae or Spinners, for according to an apocryphal gospel Mary was one of the spinsters of the Temple Veil: "And the High priest said; choose for me by lot who shall spin the gold and the white and fine linen, and the blue and the scarlet, and the true purple.
And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary, and she took them and went away to her house.
"[695] The purple heart-shaped mulberry in Greek is _moria_, and the Athenian district known as Moria is supposed to have been so named from its similitude to a mulberry leaf.
In Cornwall the scarlet-berried holly is known as Aunt Mary's Tree, and as _aunt_ in the West of England was a title applied in general to _old_ women, it is evident that Aunt Mary of the Holly Tree must have been differentiated from the little Maid of Bethlehem.
According to _The Golden Legend_ St. Mary died at the age of seventy-two, a number of which the significance has been partially noted, and she was reputed to have been fifteen years of age when she gave birth to the Saviour of the World: the number fifteen is again connected with St. Mary in the miracle thus recorded of her early childhood: "And when the circle of three years was rolled round, and the time of her weaning was fulfilled, they brought the Virgin to the Temple of the Lord with offerings.
Now there were round the temple according to the fifteen Psalms of Degrees, fifteen steps going up.
"[696] Up these mystic fifteen steps we are told that the new-weaned child miraculously walked unaided.
The New Testament refers to three Marys; in the design overleaf the figure might well represent Fate, and that there was once a Great and a Little Mary is somewhat implied by the fact that in Jerusalem adjoining the church of St. Mary was "another church of St. Mary called the Little":[697] that there was also at one time a White Mary and a Black Mary is indubitable from the numerous Black Virgins which still exist in continental churches.
Even the glorious Diana of Ephesus was, as has been seen, at times represented as black: the name Ephesus, where the Magna Mater was pre-eminently worshipped, is radically Ephe, and that Godiva of Coventry was alternatively associated with night is clear from the fact that the Godiva procession at a village near Coventry included two Godivas, one white, the other black.
[698] Near King's Cross, London, in the ward of Farendone, used to exist a spring known as Black Mary's Hole: this name was popularly supposed to have originated from a negro woman who kept a black cow and used to draw water from the spring, but tradition also said that it was originally the Blessed Mary's Well, and that this having fallen into disrepute at the time of the Reformation the less attractive cognomen was adopted.
[699] [Illustration: FIG.
360.--Engraving on Pebble, Montastruc, Bruniquel.
FIG.
361.--Dagger-handle in form of mammoth, Bruniquel.
From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age_ (B.M.).]
The immense antiquity of human occupation of this site is indicated by the fact that opposite Black Mary's Hole there was found at the end of the seventeenth century a pear-shaped flint instrument in the company of bones of some species of elephant: after lying unappreciated for many years the tool in question has since been recognised as a piece of human handiwork, and may fairly claim to be the first of its kind recorded in this or any other country.
[700] That the contemporaries of the mammoth were no mean artists is proved by the Bruniquel objects--particularly the engraving on pebble--here illustrated: not only does the elephant figure on our prehistoric coinage, but it is also found carved on upwards of a hundred stones in Scotland and notably upon a broch at _Brechin_ in Forfarshire.
Such was the skill of the Brigantian flintworkers who were settled around Burlington or Bridlington (Yorkshire, anciently _Deira_) that they successfully fabricated small fish-hooks out of flint, a feat forcing one to endorse the dictum of T. Quiller Couch: "This is a matter not unconnected with our present subject, as the hand which fashioned so skilfully the barbed arrow-head of flint, and the polished hammer-axes may be fairly associated with a brain of high capabilities".
[701] [Illustration: FIG.
362.--Probable Restoration of Dagger with Mammoth Handle.
From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age_ (B.M.).]
We have seen that in Scandinavia Mara--doubtless Black Mary--was a ghastly spectre associated with the Night _Mare_: to this Black Mary may perhaps be assigned _mar_, meaning to injure or destroy, and probably also _morose_, _morbid_, and _murder_.
We again get the equation _mar_ = Mary in _marrjan_ the old German for _mar_, for _marrjan_ is equivalent to the name Marian which is merely another form of Mary.
The Maid Marian who figured in our May-day festivities in association with the sovereign archer Robin Hood, was obviously not the marrer nor the morose Mary but the Merry Lady of the Morris Dance, _alias_ the gentle Maiden Vere or daughter deare of Flora.
To White Mary or Mary the Weaver of the scarlet and true purple, may be assigned _mere_, meaning true and also _merry_, _mirth_, and _marry_: to Black Mary may be assigned _myrrh_ or _mar_, meaning bitterness, and it is characteristic of the morose tendency of clericalism that it is to this root that the authorities attribute the Mary of Merry England.
The association of the May-fair or Fairy Mother with fifteen, and merriment is pointed by the custom that the great fair which used to be held in the Mayfair district of London began on May 1 and lasted for fifteen days: this fair, we are told, was "not for trade and merchandise, but for musick, showes, drinking, gaming, raffling, lotteries, stage plays, and drolls".
[702] That the Mayfair district was once dedicated to Holy Vera is possible from Oliver's Mount, the site of which, now known as Mount Street, is believed to mark a fort erected by Oliver Cromwell.
We have noted an Oliver's Castle at Avebury or Avereberie, hence it becomes interesting to find an Avery Row in northern Mayfair, and an Avery Farm Row in Little Ebury Street.
The term Ebury is supposed to mark the site of a Saxon _ea burgh_ or _island fort_, an assumption which may be correct: at the time of Domesday there existed here a manor of Ebury, and that this neighbourhood was an _abri_ or sanctuary dedicated to Bur or Bru is hinted in the neighbouring place-names _Bruton_ Street (adjoining Avery Row, which is equivalent to Abery Row), _Bour_don Street, _Bur_ton Street, and _Bur_wood Place.
Among the charities of Mayfair is one derived from a benefactor named Abourne: we have noticed that the tradition of the neighbourhood is that Kensington Gardens were the haunt of Oberon's fair daughter, and I have already ventured the suggestion that Bryanstone Square--by which is Brawn Street--marks the site of a Brawn, Bryan, Obreon, or Oberon Street.
Northwards lies Brondesbury or Bromesbury: at Bromley in Kent the parish church was dedicated to St. Blaze, and the local fair used to be held on St. Blaze's Day,[703] and that the Broom or _planta genista_ was sacred to the primal Blaze is further pointed by the ancient custom of firing broom-bushes on 1st May--the Mayfair's day.
[704] In Cornwall furze used to be hung at the door on Mayday morning: at Bramham or Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire the custom of making a blaze on the eve of the Summer Solstice prevailed until the year 1786.
[705] By Bromesbury or Brondesbury is Primrose Hill, which was also known as Barrow Hill: there are, however, no traces of a barrow on this still virgin soil which was probably merely a brownlow, brinsley, or brinsmead, unmarked except by fairy bush or stone.
[706] The French for primrose is primevere, and that the Mayfair was the Prime and Princess of _all_ meads is implied by Herrick's lines:-Come with the Spring-time forth, fair Maid, and be This year again the Meadow's Deity.
Yet ere ye enter, give us leave to set Upon your head this flowry coronet; To make this neat distinction from the rest, You are _the Prime_, and Princesse of the feast: To which with _silver_ feet lead you the way, While sweet-breath'd nymphs attend you on this day.
This is your houre; and best you may command, Since you are Lady of this fairie land.
Full mirth wait on you, and such mirth as shall Cherrish the cheek, but make none blush at all.
With the "silver feet" of the Meadow Maid may be connoted the curious custom of the London Merrymaids thus described by a French visitor to England in the time of Charles II.
: "On the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the pretty young country girls, that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very neatly and borrow abundance of silver plate whereof they make a pyramid which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads instead of their common milk-pails.
"[707] That this pyramid or pyre of silver represented a crown or halo is further implied by an engraving of the eighteenth century depicting a fiddler and two milk-maids dancing, one of the maids having on her head a silver plate.
It is probable that this symbolised the moon, and that the second dancer represented the sun, the twain standing for the Heavenly Pair, or the Powers of Day and Night.
In Ireland there is little doubt that St. Mary was bracketed inextricably with St. Bride, whence the bardic assertion:-There are _two_ holy virgins in heaven By whom may I be guarded Mary and St.
Brighed.
[708] In a Latin Hymn Brighid--"the Mary of the Gael"--is startlingly acclaimed as the Magna Mater or Very Queen of Heaven:-Brighid who is esteemed the Queen of the true God Averred herself to be _Christ's Mother_, and made herself such by words and deeds.
[709] At Kildare where the circular pyreum assuredly symbolised the central Fire, the servants of Bride were known indeterminately as either Maolbrighde or Maolmuire, _i.e._, servants of Brighde, or servants of Muire, and it is probable that _Muire_, the Gaelic form of Mary, was radically _mother ire_, the word _ire_ being no doubt the same as _ur_, an Aryan radical meaning _fire_, whence _ar_son, _ar_dent, etc.
The circular pyreum of Bride or Brighit the Bright, may be compared with the "round church of St. Mary" in Gethsemane: here the Virgin was said to have been born, and on the round church in question containing her sepulchre it was fabled that "the rain never falls although there is no roof above it".
[710] This circular church of St. Mary was thus like the circular hedge of St. Bride open to the skies, and it is highly probable that the word Mary, Mory, Maree, etc., sometimes meant _mor_, _mawr_, or _Big_ Eye.
The golden centre or Bull's Eye will be subsequently considered, meanwhile it is relevant to _Mor eye_ to point out that less than 200 years ago it was customary to sacrifice a bull on 25th August--a most ardent period of the year--to the god Mowrie and his "devilians" on the Scotch island of Inis Maree, evidently Mowrie's island.
[711] At other times and in other districts, Mowrie, Muire, or Mary was no doubt equated with the Celtic Saints Amary and Omer: the surviving words _amor_, _amour_, pointing logically to the conclusion that _love_ was Mary's predominant characteristic.
There is no radical distinction between _amour_ and _humour_, both words probably enshrining the adjectival _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious: humour is merriment.
A notable connection with Mary and _amour_ is found in Germany where Mother Mary is alternately Mother Ross or Rose: not only is the rose the symbol of _amour_, but the word _rose_ is evidently a corrosion of _Eros_, the Greek title of Cupid or Amor.
Miss Eckenstein states: "I have come across Mother Ross in our own [English] chapbook literature,"[712] whence it becomes significant to find that Myrrha, the Virgin Mother of the Phrygian Adonis, was the consort of a divine Smith, or Hammer-god named Kinyras.
The word Kinyras may thus reasonably be modernised into King Eros, and it is not unlikely that inquiries at Ross, Kinross, and Delginross would elicit a connection between these places and the God of Love.
[Illustration: FIG.
363.--From _Cities of Etruria_ (Dennis, C.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
364.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C.
W.).]
The authorities are slovenly content to equate Mary with Maria, Muire, Marion, etc., assigning all these variations without distinction to _mara_, or bitterness: with regard to Maria, however, it may be suspected that this form is more probably to be referred to Mother Rhea, and more radically to _ma rhi_, _i.e._, Mother Queen, Lady, or Princess.
That the word was used as generic term for Good Mother or Pure Mother is implied by its almost universal employment: thus not only was Adonis said to be the son of Myrrha, but Hermes was likewise said to be the child of Maia or Myrrha.
The Mother of the Siamese Saviour was entitled Maya Maria, _i.e._, the Great Mary; the Mother of Buddha was Maya; Maia was a Roman Flower goddess, and it is generally accepted that _May_, the month of the Flower goddess, is an Anglicised form of Maia.
[Illustration: FIG.
365.--Maya, the Hindoo Goddess, with a Cruciform Nimbus.
Hindostan Iconography.
From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C.
W.).]
The _earliest known_ allusion to the morris dance occurs in the church records of Kingston-on-Thames, where the morris dancers used to dance in the parish church.
[713] There are in Britain not less than forty or fifty Kingstons, three Kingsburys, four Kentons, seven Kingstons, one Kenstone, and four Kingstones: all these may have been the towns or seats of tribal Kings, but under what names were they known before Kings settled there?
It is highly improbable that royal residences were planted in previously uninhabited spots, and it is more likely that our Kings were crowned and associated with already sacred sites where stood a royal and super-sacred stone analogous to the Scotch _Johnstone_.
This was certainly the case at Kingston-on-Thames where there still stands in the market-place the holy stone on which our ancient Kings were crowned: near by is _Can_bury Park, and it would not surprise me if the original barrow or mound of _Can_ were still standing there.
The surname Lovekyn, which appears very prominently in Kingston records, may be connoted with the adjective _kind_, and it is probable that Moreford, the ancient name of Kingston-on-Thames, did not--as is supposed--mean _big ford_, but Amor or Mary ford.
In Spain and Portugal (Iberia) the name Maria is bestowed indiscriminately upon men and women: that the same indistinction existed in connection with St. Marine may be inferred from the statement in _The Golden Legend_: "St. Marine was a noble virgin, and was _one only_ daughter to her father who changed the habit of his daughter so that she seemed and was taken for his son and not a woman".
[714] If the Mary of the Marigolds or "winking marybuds," which "gin to ope their golden eyes," was Mary or Big Eye, it may also be surmised that San Marino was the darling of the Mariners, and was the chief Mary-maid, Merro-maid or Mermaid: although the New Testament does not associate the Virgin Mary with _mare_ the sea, amongst her titles are "Myrhh of the Sea," "Lady of the Sea," and "Star of the Sea".
At St. Mary's in the Scillies, in the neighbourhood of Silver Street, is a castle known as Stella Maria: this castle is "built with salient angles resembling the rays of a star," and Pelistry Bay on the opposite side of the islet was thus presumably sacred to Belle Istry, the Beautiful Istar or Star.
It has often been supposed that Start Point was named after Astarte, and there is every probability that the various rivers Stour, including the Kentish Great Stour and Little Stour, were also attributed to Istar or Esther.
The Greek version of the Book of _Esther_--a varient of Istar--contains the remarkable passage, "A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water": in the neighbourhood of the Kentish Stour is Eastry; in Essex there is a Good Easter and a High Easter, and in Wilts and Somerset are Eastertowns.
In England the sun was popularly supposed to dance at Eastertide, and _in Britain alone_ is the Easter festival known under this name: the ancient Germans worshipped a Virgin-mother named Ostara, whose image was common in their consecrated forests.
What is described as the "camp" surrounding St. Albans is called the Oyster Hills, and amid the much water of the Thames Valley is an Osterley or Oesterley.
On the Oyster Hills at St. Albans was an hospice for infirm women, dedicated to St. Mary de Pree, the word _pree_ here being probably _pre_, the French for a meadow--but Verulam may have been _pre land_, for in ancient times it was known alternatively as Vrolan or _Bro_lan.
[715] The Oesterley or Oester meadow in the Thames Valley, sometimes written Awsterley, was obviously common ground, for when Sir Thomas Gresham enclosed it his new park palings were rudely torn down and burnt by the populace, much to the offence of Queen Elizabeth who was staying in the place at the time.
Notwithstanding the royal displeasure, complaints were laid against Gresham "by sundry poor men for having enclosed certain common ground to the prejudice of the poor".
Next Osterley is Brentford, where once stood "the Priory of the Holy Angels in the Marshlands": other accounts state that this organisation was a "friary, hospital, or fraternity of the Nine holy orders of Angels".
With this holy Nine may be connoted the Nine Men's Morrice and the favourite Mayday pageant of "the Nine Worthies".
As _w_ and _v_ were always interchangeable we may safely identify the "worthies" with the "virtues," and I am unable to follow the official connection between _worth_ and _verse_: there is no immediate or necessary relation between them.
The Danish for _worth_ is _vorde_, the Swedish is _varda_, and there is thus little doubt that _worthy_ and _virtue_ are one and the same word.
In _Love's Labour's Lost_ Constable Dull expresses his willingness to "make one in a dance or so, or I will play the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the Hey".
Osterley is on the river Brent, which sprang from a pond "vulgarly called Brown's Well,"[716] whence it is probable that the Brent vulgarly derived its name from Oberon, the All _Parent_.
Brentford was the capital of Middlesex; numerous pre-historic relics have been found there, and that it was a site of immemorial importance is testified by its ancient name of Breninford, supposed to mean King's Road or Way.
But bren_en_ is the plural of bren--a Prince or King, and two fairy Princes or two fairy Kings were traditionally and proverbially associated with the place.
In Cowper's _Task_ occur the lines:-United yet divided twain at once So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
Prior, in his _Alma_, refers to the two Kings as being "discreet and wise," and it is probable that in Buckingham's _The Rehearsal_, of which the scene is laid at Brentford, we have further scraps of genuine and authentic tradition.
_The Rehearsal_ introduces us to two true Kings and two usurpers: the true Kings who are represented as being very fond of one another come on to the stage hand-in-hand, and are generally seen _smelling at one rose_ or one nosegay.
Imagining themselves being plotted against, one says to the other:-Then spite of Fate we'll thus combined stand And like true brothers still walk hand in hand.
Driven from their throne by usurpers, nevertheless, towards the end of the play, "the two right Kings of Brentford descend in the clouds singing in white garments, and three fiddlers sitting before them in green".
Adjacent to Brentford is the village of Twickenham where at the parish church used to prevail a custom of giving away on Easter Day the divided fragments of two great cakes.
[717] This apparently innocuous ceremony was, however, in 1645 deemed to be a superstitious relic and was accordingly suppressed.
We have seen that charity-cakes were distributed at Biddenden in commemoration of the Twin Sisters; we have also seen that St. Michael was associated with a great cake named after him, hence it is exceedingly probable that Twickenham of the Two Easter Cakes was a seat of the Two or Twa Kings who survived in the traditions of the neighbouring Breninford or King's Ford.
[Illustration: FIGS.
366 to 370.--British.
From Akerman.]
That the Two or Twa Kings of Twickenham were associated with Two Fires is suggested by the alternative name Twi_ttan_ham: in Celtic _tan_ meant fire, and the term has survived in _tan_dsticker, _i.e._, fire-sticks, or matches: it has also survived in _tinder_, "anything for kindling fires from a spark," and in _etincelle_, the French for spark.
In Etruria Jupiter was known as Tino or Tin, and on the British Star-hero coin here illustrated the legend reads TIN: the town of Tolentino, with which one of the St. Nicholas's was associated in combination with a star, was probably a shrine of Tall Ancient Tino; in modern Greece Tino is a contracted form of Constantine.
The Bel_tan_ or Bel_tein_ fires were frequently in pairs or twins, and there is a saying still current in Ireland--"I am between Bels fires," meaning "I am on the horns of a dilemma".
The Dioscuri or Two Kings were always associated with fires or stars: they were the _beau-ideal_ warriors or War Boys, and to them was probably sacred the "Warboy's Wood" in Huntingdon, where on May Day the poor used to go "sticking" or gathering fuel.
The Dioscuri occur frequently on Roman coins, and it will be noticed that the British Warboy is often represented with a star, and with the palm branch of Invictus.
On the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary it is said that an angel appeared before her bearing "a bough of the palm of paradise--and the palm shone by right great clearness and was like to a green rod whose leaves shone like to the morrow star".
[718] There is very little doubt that the mysterious fish-bone, fern-leaf, spike, ear of corn, or back-bone, which figures so frequently among the "what-nots" of our ancient coinage represented the green and magic rod of Paradise.
[Illustration: FIG.
371.--Star or Bush (MS., circa 1425).
From _The History of Signboards_ (Larwood & Hotten).]
At Twickenham is Bushey Park, which is assumed to have derived its name from the bushes in which it abounded: for some reason our ancestors combined their Bush and Star inn-signs into one, _vide_ the design herewith: we have already traced a connection between _bougie_--a candle, and the _Bogie_ whose habitation was the brakes and bushes: whence it is not unlikely that Bushey Park derived its title from the Elphin fires, Will-o-the-wisps, or bougies which must have danced nightly when Twickenham was little better than a swamp.
The Rev.
J.
B. Johnston decodes Bushey into "Byssa's" isle or peninsula, and it is not improbable that Bushey in Hertfordshire bears the same interpretation, only I do not think that the supposititious Byssa, Bissei, or Bisi was an Anglo-Saxon.
That "Bisi" was Bogie or Puck is perhaps implied further by the place-name Den_bies_ facing Boxhill: we have already noted in this district Bagdon, Pigdon, Bookham, and Pixham, whence Denbies, situated on the brow of Pigdon or Bagdon, suggests that here seemingly was the actual Bissei's den.
The supposititious Bissei assigned to Bushey may be connoted with the giant Bosow who dwelt by repute on Buzza's Hill just beyond Hugh Town, St. Mary's.
According to Miss Courtney the Cornish family of Bosow are traceable to the giant of Buzza's Hill.
[719] Presumably to Puck or Bog, are similarly traceable the common surnames Begg, Bog, etc.
By the Italians the phosphorescent lights or bougies of St. Elmo are known not as Castor and Pollux, but as the fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas: the name Nicholas is considered to mean "Victory of the People"; in Greek _nike_ means _victory_: we have seen that in Russia Nicholas was equated with St. Michael, in face of which facts it is presumptive that St. Nicholas was Invictus, or the Unconquerable.
In London, at Paternoster Lane used to stand "the fair parish church of St. Michael called Paternoster,"[720] and that St. Nicholas was originally "Our Father" or Paternoster is implied by the corporate seal of Yarmouth: this represents St. Nicholas supported on either side by angels, and bears the inscription _O Pastor Vere Tibi Subjectis Miserere_.
It must surely have savoured of heresy to hail the supposed Nicholas of Patara in Lycia as _O Pastor Vere_, unless in popular estimation St. Nicholas was actually the Great Pastor or True Feeder: that Nicholas was indeterminately either the Father or the Mother is deducible from the fact that in Scotland the name Nicholas is commonly bestowed on girls.
In France and Italy prayers are addressed to Great St. Nicholas, and it is probable that there was always a Nichol and a Nicolette or _nucleus_: we are told that St. Nicholas, whose mother's name was Joanna, was born at Patara, and that he became the Bishop of Myra: on his fete day the proper offering was a cock, and that Nicholas or Invictus was the chanteur or Chanticleer, is implied by the statement: "St. Nicholas went abroad in most part in London singing after the old fashion, and was received with many people into their houses, and had much good cheer, as ever they had in many places": on Christmas Eve St. Nicholas still wanders among the children, notwithstanding the sixteenth century censure--"thus tender minds to worship saints and wicked things are taught".
Nicholas is an extended form of Nike, Nick, or Neck, and the frequent juxtaposition of St. Nicholas and St. George is an implication that these Two Kings were once the Heavenly Twins.
We have already noted an Eleven Stone at Trenuggo--the _abode of Nuggo?_ and there is a likelihood that Nuggo or Nike was there worshipped as One and Only, the _Unique_: that he was Lord of the Harvests is implied by the fabrication of a harvest doll or Neck.
According to Skeat _neck_ originally meant the nape or knop of the neck; it would thus seem that _neck_--Old English _nekke_--was a synonym for knob or knop.
In Cornwall Neck-day was the great day of the year, when the Neck was "cried"[721] and suspended in the ingle nook until the following year: in the words of an old Cornishwoman: "There were Neck cakes, much feasting and dancing all the evening.
Another great day was Guldise day when the corn was drawn: Guldise cakes and a lump of pease-pudding for every one.
"[722] Near London Stone is the Church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and at Old Jewry stood St. Mary Cole Church: it is not unlikely that this latter was originally dedicated to Old King Cole, the father of the lovely Helen and the Merry Old Soul whose three fiddlers may be connoted with the three green fiddlers of the Kings of Brentford.
The great bowl of Cole, the _ghoul_ of other ages, may be equated with the _cauldron_ or _calix_ of the Pastor Vere: the British word for _cauldron_ was _pair_, and the Druidic bards speak with great enthusiasm of "their cauldron," "the cauldron of Britannia," "the cauldron of Lady Keridwen," etc.
This cauldron was identified with the Stone circles, and the Bardic poets also speak of a mysterious _pair dadeni_ which is understood to mean "the cauldron of new birth or rejuvenescence".
[723] The old artists seemingly represented the Virtues as emerging from this cauldron as three naked boys or Amoretti, for it is said that St. Nicholas revived three murdered children who had been pickled in brine by a wicked inn-keeper who had run short of bacon.
This miracle is his well-known emblem, and the murder story by which the authorities accounted for the picture is probably as silly and brutal an afterthought as the horrid "tortures" and protracted dolours of other saints.
Nevertheless some ghoulish and horrible practices seem to have accompanied the worship of the cauldron, and the author of _Druidism Exhumed_ reproduces a Scotch sculpture of a cauldron out of which protruding human legs are waving ominously in the air.
St. Nicholas of Bari is portrayed resuscitating three youths from three tubs: that Nicholas was radically the Prince of Peace is implied, however, from the exclamation "Nic'las!"
which among children is equivalent to "fainites": the sign of truce or fainites is to cross the two fore-fingers into the form of the _treus_ or cross.
St. Nicholas is the unquestioned patron of all children, and in the past bands of lads, terming themselves St. Nicholas' Clerks or St. Nicholas' Knights, added considerably to the conviviality of the cities.
Apparently at all abbeys once existed the custom of installing upon St. Nicholas' Day a Boy Bishop who was generally a choir or singing boy: this so-called Bearn Bishop or Barnebishop was decked, according to one account, in "a myter of cloth and gold with _two knopps_ of silver gilt and enamelled," and a study of the customs prevailing at this amazing festival of the Holy Innocent leaves little doubt that the Barnebishop personified the conception of the Pastor Vere in the aspect of a lad or "knave".
The connection between _knop_ and _knave_ has already been traced, and the "two knopps" of the episcopal knave or bairnbishop presumably symbolised the _bren_ or breasts of Pastor Vere, the celestial Parent: it has already been suggested that the knops on Figs.
30 to 38 (p. 149) represented the Eyes or Breasts of the All Mighty.
In Irish _ab_ meant _father_ or _lord_, and in all probability St. Abb's Head, supposedly named after a Bishop Ebba, was once a seat of Knebba worship: that Cunobe was the Mighty Muse, singing like St. Nicholas after the old fashion, is evident from the British coin illustrated on page 305, a sad example of carelessness, declension, and degradation from the Macedonian Philippus.
The festival of the Burniebishop was commemorated with conspicuous pomp at Cambrai, and there is reason to think that this amazing institution was one of Cambrian origin: so fast and furious was the accompanying merriment that the custom was inevitably suppressed.
The only Manor in the town of Brentford is that of Burston or Boston, whence it is probable that Brentford grew up around a primeval Bur stone or "Denbies".
That the place was famous for its merriment and joviality is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that in former times the parish rates "were mainly supported by the profits of public sports and diversions especially at Whitsuntide".
[724] According to _The Rehearsal_ when the True Kings or Two Kings, accompanied by their retinue of three green-clad fiddlers, descended from the clouds, a dance was then performed: "an ancient dance of right belonging to the Kings of Brentford, but since derived with a little alteration to the Inns of Court".
On referring to the famous pageants of the Inns of Court we find that the chief character was the Lord of Misrule, known otherwise as the King of Cockneys or Prince of Purpool.
We have seen that the Hobby Horse was clad in purple, and that Mary was weaver of the true purple--a combination of true blue and scarlet.
The authorities connote _purple_, French _purpre_, with the Greek _porphureos_, "an epithet of the surging sea," and they ally it with the Sanscrit _bhur_, meaning _to be active_.
The cockney, and very active Prince of Purpool or Portypool was conspicuously celebrated at Gray's Inn which occupies the site of the ancient Manor of _Poripool_, and the ritual--condemned and suppressed by the Puritans as "popish, diabolical, and antechristian"--seems invariably to have started by a fire or phare lighted in the hall: this at any rate was the custom and status with which the students at St. John's, Oxford, opened the proceedings on All Hallows' Eve.
The Druidic Bards allude to their sacred pyreum, or fire-circle, as a _pair dadeni_, and that a furious Fire or Phare was the object of their devotion is obvious from hymns such as-Let burst forth ungentle The horse-paced ardent fire!
Him we worship above the earth, Fire, fire, low murmuring in its dawn, High above our inspiration, Above every spirit Great is thy terribleness.
[725] _Pourpre_ or _purple_, the royal or imperial colour, was doubtless associated with the Fire of Fires, and the connection between this word and _porphureos_ must, I think, be sought in the idea of _pyre furious_ or _fire furious_, rather than any epithet of the surging sea.
The Welsh for purple is _porffor_.
Either within or immediately adjacent to the Manor of Poripool or Purpool were some famous springs named Bagnigge Wells: at the corner of Bathhurst Street, Paddington, was a second Bagnigge Wells, and the river Fleet used also at one time to be known as the Bagnigge.
This ubiquitous Bagnigge was in all probability _Big Nigge_ or Big Nicky-Know you the Nixies gay and fair?
Their eyes are black and green their hair, They lurk in sedgy shores.
The fairy Nokke, Neck, or Nickel, is said to have been a great musician who sat upon the water's edge and played a golden harp, the harmony of which operated on all nature:[726] sometimes he is represented as a complete horse who could be made to work at the plough if a bridle of particular kind were used: he is also represented as half man and half horse, as an aged man with a long beard, as a handsome young man, and as a pretty little boy with golden hair and scarlet cap.
That Big Nigge once haunted the Bagnigge Wells is implied by the attendant legend of Black Mary, Black Mary's Hole being the entrance, or immediately adjacent, to one of the Bagnigge springs: similarly, as has been noted, Peg Powler, and Peg this or that, haunted the streams of Lancashire.
We have seen that Keightley surmised the word _pixy_ to be the endearing diminutive _sy_ added to Puck, whence, as in Nancy, Betsy, Dixie, and so forth, Nixy may similarly be considered as _dear little Nick_.
In Suffolk, the fairies are known as farisees, seemingly, _dear little fairies_, and our ancestors seem to have possessed a pronounced partiality for similar diminutives: we find them alluding to the Blood of the Lambkin, an expression which Adamnan's editors remark as "a bold instance of the Celtic diminutive of endearment so characteristic of Adamnan's style": they add: "Throughout Adamnan's work, diminutives are constantly used, and these in most cases are used in a sense of endearment difficult to convey in English, perfectly natural as they are in the mouth of the kindly and warm-hearted Irish saint.
In the present case Dr. Reeves thinks the diminutives may indicate the poorness of the animals from the little there was to feed them upon.
"[727] As the traditions of Fairyland give no hint for the assumption of any rationing or food-shortage it seems hardly necessary to consider either the pixies, the farisees, or the nixies as either half-starved or even impoverished.
In Scandinavia and Germany the nixies are known as the nisses, and they there correspond to the brownies of Scotland: according to Grimm the word _nisse_ is "Nicls, Niclsen, _i.e._, Nicolaus, Niclas, a common name in Germany and the North, which is also contracted to Klas, Claas"; but as _k_ seems invariably to soften into _ch_, and again into _s_, it is a perfectly straight road from Nikke to Nisse, and the adjective _nice_ is an eloquent testimonial to the Nisses' character.
Some Nisses were doubtless _nice_, others were obviously nasty, noxious, and nocturnal: the Nis of Jutland is in Friesland called Puk, and also Niss-Puk, Nise-Bok, and Niss-Kuk: the _Kuk_ of this last mentioned may be connoted with the fact that the customary offering to St. Nicholas was a cock--the symbol of the Awakener--and as St. Nicholas was so intimately connected with Patara, the cock of St. Peter is no doubt related to the legend.
St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, customarily travels by night: the nixies were black-eyed; Old Nick was always painted black; _nox_, or night, is the same word as nixy; and _nigel_, _night_, or _nicht_ all imply blackness.
According to Cæsar: "all the Gauls assert that they are descended from the god Dis, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the Druids.
For that reason they compute the divisions of every season not by the number of days but by nights; they keep birthdays, and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night.
"[728] The expressions fortnight, and sen'night thus not only perpetuate an idea of great antiquity but one which is philosophically sound: to our fore-runners Night was no wise evil, but the beneficent Mother of a Myriad Stars: the fairies revelled in the dark, and in eyes of old "the vast blue night was murmurous with peris wings"[729].
The place-name Knightsbridge is probably a mis-spelling of Neyte, one of the three manors into which Kensington was once divided: the other two were Hyde and Ebury, and it is not unlikely that these once constituted a trinity--Hyde being the Head, Ebury the Brightness, and Neyte--Night.
The Egyptian represented Nut, Naut, or Neith as a Mother Goddess with two children in her arms, one white the other black: to her were assigned the words: "I am what has been, what is, and what will be," and her worshippers declared: "She hath built up life from her own body".
In Scandinavia Nat was the Mother of all the gods: she was said to be an awe-inspiring, adorable, noble, and beneficent being, and to have her home on the lower slopes of the Nida mountains: _nid_ is the French for _nest_, and with Neyte may be connoted _nuit_, the French for _night_.
That St. Neot was _le nuit_ is implied by the tradition that the Church of St. Neot in Cornwall was built not only by night, but entirely by Neot himself who drew the stones from a neighbouring quarry, aided only by the help of reindeer.
These magic reindeer are obviously the animals of St. Nick, and it is evidently a memory of Little Nick that has survived in the tradition that St. Neot was a saint of very small stature--somewhere about 15 inches high.
[730] With Mother _Nat_ of Scandinavia, and Mother _Naut_ or Neith of Egypt, may be connoted Nutria, a Virgin-Mother goddess of Etruria; a divine nurse with whose name may be connected _nutrix_ (nurse) and _nutriment_.
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of seafarers and there are innumerable dedications to him at the seaside: that Nikke was Neptune is unquestionable, and connected with his name is doubtless _nicchio_ the Italian for a shell.
From _nicchio_ comes our modern _niche_, which means a shell-like cavity or recess: in the British EPPI coin, illustrated on page 284, the marine monster may be described as a nikke, and the apparition of the nikke as a perfect horse might not ineptly be designated a _nag_.
I have elsewhere illustrated many representations of the Water-Mother, the Mary-Maid, the Mermaid, the Merrow-Maid, or as she is known in Brittany--Mary Morgan.
The resident nymph or genius of the river Se_vern_ was named Sa_brina_; the Welsh for the Severn is Ha_vren_, and thus it is evident that the radical of this river name is _brina_, _vren_, or _vern_: the British Druids recognised certain governing powers named _feraon: fern_ was already noted as an Iberian word meaning _anything good_, whence it is probable that in Havren or Severn the affix _ha_ or _se_ was either the Greek _eu_ or the British and Sanscrit _su_, both alike meaning the _soft, gentle, pleasing_, and _propitious_.
Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies, knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
In the neighbourhood of Bryanstone Square is Lissom Grove, a corruption of Lillestone Grove: here thus seemingly stood a stone sacred to the Lily or the All Holy, and the neighbouring church of St. Cyprian probably marks the local memory of a traditional _sy brian_, _Sabrina_, or _dear little brownie_.
Near Silchester, on the boundary line between Berks and Hants, is a large stone known as the Imp stone, and as this was formerly called the Nymph stone,[731] it is probable that in this instance the Imp stone was a contraction of Imper or Imber stone--the Imp being the Nymph of the amber-dropping hair.
The Scandinavians believed that the steed of the Mother Goddess Nat produced from its mouth a froth, which consisted of honey-dew, and that from its bridle dropped the dews in the dales in the morning: the same idea attached to the steeds of the Valkyre, or War Maidens, from whose manes, when shaken, dew dropped into the deep dales, whence harvests among the people.
[732] Originally, _imp_ meant a scion, a graft, or an offspring, a sprout, or sprig: _sprig_, _spright_, _spirit_, _spirt_, _sprout_, and _sprack_ (an old English word meaning lively, perky, or pert), are all radically _pr_: in London the sparrow "was supposed to be the soul of a dead person";[733] in Kent, a sparrow is termed a _sprug_, whence it would appear that this pert, perky, little bird was once a symbol of the sprightly sprout, sprite, or spirit.
[Illustration: FIG.
372.--Six-winged angel holding lance, wings crossed on breast, arrayed in robe and mantle.
(From Didron.)]
Stow mentions that the fair parish church of St. Michael called Paternoster when new built, was made a college of St.
Spirit and St. Mary.
All birds in general were symbols of St.
Spirit, but more particularly the Columba or Culver,[734] which was pre-eminently the emblem of Great Holy Vere: we have already illustrated a half white, half black, six-winged representation of this sacred sign of simplicity and love, and the six-winged angel here reproduced is, doubtless, another expression of the far-spread idea:-The embodied spirit has a thousand heads, A thousand eyes, a thousand feet, around On every side, enveloping the earth, Yet filling space no larger than a span.
He is himself this very universe; He is whatever is, has been, and shall be; He is the lord of immortality.
[735] It is difficult to conceive any filthiness or evil of the dove, yet the hagiologists mention "a foul dove or black culver," which is said to have flown around the head of a certain holy Father named Nonnon.
[736] We may connote this Nonnon with Nonna or Non, the reputed mother of St. David, for of St. David, we are told, his birth was heralded by angels thirty years before the event, and that among other miracles (such as restoring sight to the blind), doves settled on his shoulders.
Dave or Davy is the same word as dove; in Welsh _dof_ means _gentle_, and it is more probable that the gentle dove derived its title from this word than as officially surmised from the Anglo-Saxon _dufan_, "to plunge into".
According to Skeat, _dove_ means literally _diver_, but doves neither dive nor plunge into anything: they have not even a diving flight.
The Welsh are known familiarly as Taffys, and the Church of Llan_daff_ is supposed to mean Church on the River Taff: it is more probable that Llandaff was a shrine of the Holy Dove, and that David with the doves upon his shoulder was a personification of the Holy Spirit or Wisdom.
_Non_ is the Latin for _not_, and the black dove associated with Nonnon or _not not_ was no doubt a representation of that _Neg_ation, non-existence or inscrutable void, which existed before the world was, and is otherwise termed Chaos or Cause.
That Wisdom or the Holy Spirit was conceived as the primal and inscrutable _Darkness_, is evident from the statement in _The Wisdom of Solomon_: "For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with Wisdom.
For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the orders of stars: being compared with the light _she is found before it_."
The Nonnon of whom "it seemed that a foul dove or black culver flew about him whilst he was at Mass at the alter" was said to be the Bishop of Heliopolis, _i.e._, the city of the Sun, and he comes under notice in connection with St. Pelagienne--"said of _pelagus_ which is as much to say as the _sea_".
The interpretation further placed upon St. Pelagienne is that "she was the sea of iniquity, and the flood of sins, but she plunged after into the sea of tears and washed her in the flood of baptism".
That poor Pelagienne was the Water Mother of Mary Morgan is implied further by the fragment of autobiography--"I have been called from my birth Pelagienne, but for the pomp of my clothing men call me Margaret":[737] we have seen that Pope Joanna of Engelheim was also called Margaret, whence it is to be suspected that although it is true that _pelagus_ meant _the sea_ St. Pelagienne was primarily the _Bella_ or beautiful _Jeanne_, _i.e._, Mary Morgan or Morgiana.
[Illustration: FIGS.
373 to 376.--Greek.
From Barthelemy.]
On the coins of King _Janus_ of Sicily there figured a dove; _jonah_, _yuneh_, or _Ione_ are the Hebrew and Greek terms for dove; the Ionian Greeks were worshippers of the dove, and the consociation of St. Columbe Kille or the "little dove of the church" with the Hebridean island of Iona is presumptive evidence of the worship of the dove in Iona.
In the Rhodian Greek coins here illustrated the reverse represents the rhoda or rose of Rhodes, and the obverse head may be connoted with the story of St. Davy with the dove settled on his shoulder: that the dove was also an English emblem is obvious from the British coins, Figs.
377 to 384; the dove will also be found frequently introduced on the contemned _sceattae_ illustrated _ante_, page 364.
[Illustration: FIG.
377.--British.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG.
378.--British.
From Evans.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
379 to 384.--British (Channel Islands).
From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIG.
385.--The Father, Represented as Slightly Different to the Son.
French Miniature of the Close of the XIII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
386.--The Divine Dove, in a Radiating Aureole.
From a French Miniature of the XV.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
387.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
388.--God the Father, with a Bi-Triangular Nimbus; God the Son, with a Circular Nimbus; God the Holy Ghost, without a Nimbus, and within an Aureole.
(Fresco at Mount Athos.)
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
389.--The Three Divine Persons, Adorned with the Cruciform Nimbus.
Miniature of the close of the XIII.
Cent.
MS. in the Bibliothèque Royale.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
390.--God the Father, and God the Son, with Features Exactly Identical.
French Miniature of the commencement of the XIII.
Cent.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
Among the golden treasures unearthed by Schliemann at Mykenae was a miniature "model of a temple" on which are seated two pigeons with uplifted wings:[738] among the curious and interesting happenings which occurred during the childhood of the Virgin Mary it is recorded that "Mary was in the Temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food as from the hand of an angel": Fig.
380 appears to illustrate this dove dwelling in a Temple.
The legend continues that when the Holy Virgin attained the age of twelve years the Angel of the Lord caused an assembly of all the widowers each of whom was ordained to bring with him his rod: the High Priest then took these rods and prayed over them, but there came no sign: at last Joseph took his rod "and behold a dove came out of the rod and flew upon Joseph's head".
[739] It is said by Lucian that in the most sacred part of the temple of Hieropolis, the holy city of Syria, were three figures of which the centre one had a golden dove upon its head: not only was no name given to this, but the priests said nothing concerning its origin or form, calling it simply "The sign": according to the British Bards--"To Addav came the sign.
It was taught by Alpha, and it was the earliest polished melody of Holy God, and by a wise mouth it was canticled."
There is little doubt that the descending dove with wings outstretched was a variant of the three rays or Broad Arrow, that the _awen_ was the _Iona_, and that this same idea was conveyed by the Three _ains_, or _eyen_, Eyes, Golden Balls, or pawnbroker's sign.
It is recorded of St. Nicholas of Bari, the patron saint of pawnbrokers, that immediately he was born he stood up in the basin in which he was being washed and remained with hands clasped, and uplifted eyes, for two hours: in later life he became wealthy, and threw into a window on three successive nights a bag of gold as a dowry for three impoverished and sore-tempted maidens.
In commemoration of these three bags of gold St. Nicholas became the patron saint of pawnbrokers whose sign of the Three Golden Balls is a conversion of the three anonymous gifts.
[Illustration: FIG.
391.--From Barthelemy.]
[Illustration: FIG.
392.--British (Channel Islands).
From Barthelemy.]
In Hebrew the Three Apples, Eyes, or Golden Balls are called _ains_ or fountains of living water, and to this day in Wales a spring of water is called in Welsh the Eye of the Fountain or the Water Spring.
It will be remembered that the sister of St. Nonna, and therefore the aunt of St. Davy, was denominated Gwen of the Three Breasts, _Tierbron_, or three breasts, may be connoted with three-eyed Thor, and the combination of Eyes and Sprigs is conspicuously noticeable in Fig.
39, page 364: one will also note the head of No.
49 on the same plate.
The Three Holy Children on the reverse of Fig.
391--a Byzantine coin--are presumably the offspring of St. Michael _alias_ Nichol on the obverse: the arms of Cornwall consist of fifteen golden balls called _besants_; the county motto is One and All.
Of St. Nicholas of Tolentino who became a friar at the age of _eleven_, we are told that a star rested over his altar and preceded him when he walked, and he is represented in Art with a lily in his hand--the symbol of his pure life--and a star over his head: that Nicolette was identified with the Little Star or Stella Maris is clear from Troubadour _chansons_, such as the following from that small classic _Aucassin and Nicolette_-Little Star I gaze upon, Sweetly drawing to the moon, In such golden haunt is set Love, and bright-haired Nicolette.
God hath taken from our war Beauty, like a shining star.
Ah, to reach her, though I fell From her Heaven to my Hell.
Who were worthy such a thing, Were he emperor or king?
Still you shine, oh, perfect Star, Beyond, afar.
It is impossible to say whether the three-eyed elphin faces illustrated _ante_, page 381, are asters, marguerites, marigolds, or suns: in the centre of one of them is a heart, and without doubt they one and all symbolised the Great Amour or Margret.
During excavations at Jerusalem in 1871, the symbol of Three Balls was discovered under the Temple of King Solomon on Mount Moriah: this temple was circular, and it is probable that the name Moriah meant originally Moreye or Big Eye.
That the three cavities in question were once ains or eyes is implied by the explorer's statement: "Within this recess are three cylindrical holes 5-1/4 inches in diameter, the lines joining their centres forming the sides of an equilateral triangle.
Below this appears once to have been a basin to collect the water, but whatever has been there, it has been violently removed ... there can be little doubt that this is an ancient overflow from the Birket Israil.
"[740] It is probable that the measure of these three cup-like holes was once 5 inches, and that the resultant fifteen had some original connection with the fifteen besants or basins of Byzantine Britain.
[Illustration: FIG.
393.--From _The Recovery of Jerusalem_ (Wilson and Warren).]
With the _brook Birket Israil_ at Mount Moriah may be connoted the neighbouring "large pool called El Burak": the existence on Mount Moriah of subterranean cisterns or basins known as Solomon's Stables renders it probable that El Burak was El Borak, the fabulous white steed upon which the faithful Mussulman expects one day to ride.
The Eyes of the British broks or nags here illustrated are curiously prominent, and in Fig.
396 the _eleven_-eared wheat sprig is springing from a trefoil: with the lily surmounting the CUNO steed may be connoted the two stars or morrow stars which frequently decorate this triune emblem of Good Deed, Good Thought, Good Word: they may be seen to-day on the badges of those little Knights of To-morrow, the Boy Scouts.
[Illustration: FIGS.
394 to 396.--British.
From Evans.]
[Illustration: FIG.
397.--British (Channel Islands).
From Barthelemy.]
The lily appears in the hand of the PIXTILOS figure here illustrated, and among the Pictish emblems found on the vitrified fort at Anwath in Scotland is the puckish design illustrated on page 496, Fig.
293.
This was probably a purely symbolic and elementary form of the dolorous and pensive St. John which Christianity figured with a pair of marigolds or marguerites in lieu of feathers or antennae.
[Illustration: FIG.
398.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
[Illustration: FIG.
399.--From _An Essay on Ancient Gems_ (Walsh, R.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
400.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIGS.
401 and 402.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
[Illustration: Fig.
403.--From _Symbolism of the East and West_ (Aynsley, Mrs.
Murray).]
[Illustration: FIG.
404.--English Eighteenth Century Printer's Ornament.]
Accompanying the Pictish inscription in question were the elaborate barnacles or spectacles reproduced _ante_, page 495: in Crete the barnacles, as illustrated on page 494, are found humanised by a small winged figure holding a wand, and the general effect of the two circles when superimposed is that of the figure 8.
The nine-rayed ABRACAX lion as portrayed by the Gnostics, and doubtless a variant of Abracadabra, has its serpentine body twined into an 8; on a Longstone in Brittany there is a figure holding an 8 tipped staff, and the same emblem will be noticed on the coins of the Longostaliti, a _Gaul_ish people who seemingly were so ghoulish as to venerate a _cal_ix or _caul_dron: from the _pair dadeni_ or cauldron of renaissance represented on these astral coins it will be noticed there are emerging two stars and other interesting nicknacks.
The locks of hair on the astral figure represented on the coins of Marseilles--a city founded by a colony of Phocean Greeks from Ionia--number exactly eight: in Scotland we have traced the memory of eight ancient hags, the Mothers of the World: in Valencia we have noted the procession of eight scrupulously coiffured Giants, and there is very little doubt that the eight survivors of the Flood,[741] by whom the world was re-peopled, is a re-statement of the same idea of the Gods of the four quarters and their Consorts.
In connection with the Ogdoad or Octet of eight gods one may connote the curious erection which once decorated the London Guildhall, the seat of Gogmagog:[742] here, "on each side of the flight of steps was an _octangular_ turreted gallery, balustraded, having an office in each, appropriated to the hallkeeper: these galleries assumed the appearance of arbours from being each surrounded by six palm-trees in ironwork, the foliage of which gave support to a large balcony, having in front a clock (with three dials) elaborately ornamented, and underneath a representation of the Sun, resplendent with gilding; the clock frame was of oak.
At the angles were the cardinal virtues, and on the top a curious figure of Time with a young child in his arms.
"[743] At the village of _Thame_-on-Thames, which the authorities state meant _rest, quiet_, otherwise _tame_ or kindly, gentle _Time_, there is a celebrated figure of St. Kitt, _alias_ Father Time, with the little figure of New Time or _Change_ upon his shoulder.
In Etruria a parallel idea would seem to have been current, for Mrs. Hamilton Gray describes an Etruscan work of art inscribed "Isis nourishing Horus, or Truth teaching Time".
[744] It is most unusual to find the Twins depicted as old men, or Bald ones with the mystic Lock of Horus on their foreheads, but in the eighteenth-century emblem here reproduced the intention of the deviser is unmistakable, and the central Sun is supported by two Times.
In a cave situated at the cross roads at Royston in Hertfordshire, there is the figure of St. Kitt beneath which are apparently eight other figures: these are assumedly "other saints," but the Christian Church does not assign any singular pre-eminence to St. Christopher, and the decorators of the Royston Cave evidently regarded St. Kitt as the Supreme One or God Himself.
It is abundantly evident that to our ancestors Kit or Kate was God, Giant, Jeyantt,[745] or Good John: that he was deemed the deity of the ocean is obvious from instances where the water in which he stands is full of crabs, dolphins, and other ocean creatures.
I have suggested that Christopher was a representation of _dad_ or Death carrying the soul over the river of Death, _i.e._, "Dowdy" with the spriggan on his back.
Among sailors Death is known familiarly as "Old Nick," "Old Davy," or "Davy Jones," and in Cornwall they have a curious and inexplicable saying: "as ancient as the Flood of Dava".
I think this Dava must have been the genius of the rivers Dove, Taff and Tavy.
[Illustration: FIG.
405.--St.
Christopher.
From Royston Cave.
[_To face page 640._ ] [Illustration: FIG.
406.--Mediæval Paper mark.
From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
That Kit was connected with the eight of the Cretan Eros figure is further implied by the fact that on the summit of a lofty hill near Royston or Roystone there is, or was, a "hollow oval".
The length of this prehistoric monument was stated in 1856 as about 31 feet (originally 33?)
and its breadth about 22 feet.
"Within this bank are two circular excavations meeting together in the middle and nearly forming the figure eight.
Both excavations descend by concentric and contracting rings to the walls which form the sides of the chambers.
"[746] From this description the monument would appear to be identical in design with the 8-in-an-oval emblem here illustrated, a mediæval papermark traceable to the Italian town of St. Donino.
Examples of twin earthwork circles forming the figure 8 are not unknown in Ireland.
At Royston, which, as we shall see, was the Lady Roesia's town, is a place called Cocken Hatch, but whether this is the site of the eight-form monument in question, I am unaware: in the megalithic stone illustrated on p. 638 the Cadi is not only holding an 8 on the tip of his _caduceus_, but he has also a _cadet_ or little son by the hand: _cadi_ is Arabic for a _judge_, and in Wales the Cadi no doubt acted as the final judge.
In Celtic the word _cad_ meant war, an implication that in one of his aspects Ked or St. Kitt was the ever-victorious Michael or the all-conquering Nike: there is a Berkshire ballad extant, in which the word _caddling_, meaning fighting, is employed, yet caddling is the same word as _cuddling_.
In Scotland, _caddie_ means a messenger or errand boy: Mercury or Hermes was the Messenger of the Gods: among the Greeks, Iris was the Messenger, and Iris was unquestionably the Turkish Orus or St. George.
In Arabia, St. George is known as El Khoudr, and it is believed that El Khoudr is not yet dead, but still flies round and round the world: in a subsequent chapter it will be shown that Orus is the same as Horus the Egyptian dragon-slayer; hence Giggras, another of St. George's titles, may be resolved into Mighty Mighty Horus or Eros, and it is possible that the Pictish town of Delginross should read _Tall King Eros_.
The eleven rows of rocks at Carnac extend, it is said, for _eight_ miles, and at the neighbouring Er-lanic are two megalithic circles, one dipping into the sea, the other submerged in deep water: according to Baring-Gould, these two rings are juxtaposed, forming an 8, and lie on the south-east of the island; the first circle consists of 180 stones (twice _nine_), but several are fallen, and it can only be seen complete when the tide is out; one stone is 16 feet high; the second circle can be seen only at low tide.
[747] It is probable that the measurements of the Venus de Quinipily, illustrated on p. 530, are not without significance: the statue stands upon a pedestal, 9 feet high, and the figure itself rises 8 feet high.
[748] With eight may be further connoted the eastern teaching of the "Noble Eightfold Path," and also the belief of Western Freemasonry as stated in Mackey's _Lexicon of Freemasonry_: "Eight was esteemed as the first cube (2 × 2 × 2), and signified friendship, prudence, counsel, and justice.
It designated the primitive Law of Nature, which supposes all men to be equal."
The root of _eight_, _octave_, and _octet_ or _ogdoad_ is _Og_, the primeval giant, who, as we have seen, was reputed to have waded alongside the ark with its eight primordial passengers.
When flourishing, the megalithic monument at Carnac must have dwarfed our dual-circled, two-mile shrine at Avebury: "The labour of its erection," to quote from Deane, "may be imagined from the fact that it originally consisted of eleven rows of stones, about 10,000 in number, of which more than 300 averaged from 15 to 17 feet in height, and from 16 to 20 or 30 feet in girth; one stone even measuring 42 feet in circumference".
One of the commonest of sepulchral finds in Brittany is the stone axe, sometimes banded in alternate stripes of black and white: the axe was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem, and my suggestion that the Carnac stones were originally erected to the honour of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins is somewhat strengthened by the coincidence that the London Church of St. Mary Axe was closely and curiously identified with the legend.
According to Stow: "In St. Marie Street had ye of old time a parish church of St. Marie the Virgin, St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, whose church was commonly called St. Marie at the Axe of the sign of an axe over against the east, and thereof on St. Marie Pellipar".
In view of the fact that the town of Ypres boasted an enormous collection of relics of the 11,000 Virgins, the title Pellipar may be reasonably resolved into _Belle power_: the Cretan axe or double axe symbolised almighty _power_.
[749] [Illustration: FIG.
407.--Bronze statuette, Despeña Perros.
FIG.
408.--Bronze statuette, Aust-on-Severn, Gloucs.
From _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_ (B.M.).]
According to an Assyrian hymn, Istar, the immaculate great _Star_, the "Lady Ruler of the Host of Heaven," the "Lady of Ladies," "Goddess without peer," who shaped the lives of all mankind was the "Stately world-Queen sov'ran of the Sky".
Adored art thou in every sacred place, In temples, holy dwellings, and in shrines.
Where is thy name not lauded?
Where thy will Unheeded, and thy images not made?
[750] In the caves or "fetish shrines" of Crete have been found rude figurines of the Mother and the Child, and it is probable that the pathetically crude bronze statuettes here illustrated represent the austere wielder of the wand of doom.
Fig.
407 comes from Iberia where it was discovered in the vicinity of what was undoubtedly a shrine near the pass over the Sierra _Morena_ at Despena _Perros_: Fig.
408 comes from the English village of Aust-on-Severn.
The place-name Aust appears in Domesday as Austreclive, and the authorities suppose it to have meant "not _East_ as often thought, but the Roman Augusta": I doubt whether any Roman Augusta ever troubled to claim a mere cleeve, and it is more probable that Austreclive was a cleft or pass sacred to the austere Austre.
There is an Austrey at Atherstone, an Austerfield at Bawtry, and an "Austrells" at Aldridge: this latter, which may be connoted with the Oyster Hills round Verulam, the authorities assume to have meant "Austerhill, hill of the hearth, forge or furnace".
That Istar was the mighty Hammer Smith is probable, for the archaic hymnist writes:-I thee adore-The gift of strength is thine for thou art strong.
In all likelihood the head-dress of our figurines was intended to denote the crescent moon for the same hymnist continues:-O Light divine, Gleaming in lofty splendour over the earth, Heroic daughter of the moon, O hear!
O stately Queen, At thought of thee the world is filled with fear, The gods in heaven quake, and on the earth All spirits pause and all mankind bow down With reverence for thy name ... O Lady Judge Thy ways are just and holy; thou dost gaze On sinners with compassion, and each morn Leadest the wayward to the rightful path.
Now linger not, but come!
O goddess fair, O Shepherdess of all, thou drawest nigh With feet unwearied.
I have suggested that the circle of Long Meg and her daughters originally embodying the idea of a Marygold, Marguerite, or Aster, was erected to the honour of St. Margaret the Peggy, or Pearl of Price, and it is possible that the oyster or producer of the pearl may have derived its name from Easter or Ostara: that Astarte was St. Margaret is obvious from the effigies herewith, and the connection is further pointed by the already noted fact that in the neighbourhood of St. Margaret's, Westminster, there prevailed traditions of a Giantess named Long Meg.
This powerful Maiden was evidently Margaret or Invicta, on the War-path, her pugilistic exploits being far-famed: it is particularly related that Long Meg distinguished herself in the wars at Bulloigne, whence it will probably prove that "Bulloigne" was associated with the War Maid whom the Romans termed Bellona, and that both Bulloigne and Bologna were originally shrines of Bello gina, either the _Beautiful Woman_ or the _War Queen_.
[Illustration: FIG.
409.--St.
Margaret.
From Westminster Abbey.
From _The Cross: Christian and Heathen_ (Brock, M.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
410.--Astarte, the Syrian Venus.
From a Coin in the British Museum.
From _The Cross: Christian and Heathen_ (Brock, M.).]
That Istar, "the heroic daughter of the moon," was Bellona or the Queen of War is clear from the invocation-O hear!
Thou dost control our weapons and award In battles fierce the Victory at will, O crowned majestic Fate.
Ishtar most high, Who art exalted above all the gods, Thou bringest lamentation; thou dost urge With hostile hearts our brethren to the fray.
_The gift of strength is thine for thou art strong_, Thy will is urgent brooking no delay, Thy hand is violent, thou _queen of war_, Girded with battle and enrobed with fear, Thou sov'ran wealder of the wand of Doom, The heavens and earth are under thy control.
There is very little doubt that the heroic Long Meg of Westminster was alternatively the Mary Ambree of old English ballad: in Ben Jonson's time apparently any remarkable virago was entitled a Mary Ambree, and the name seems to have been particularly associated with Ghent.
[751] As the word Ambree is radically _bree_, it is curious to find John of Gaunt, who is associated with Kensington, also associated with Carn Brea in Cornwall: here, old John of Gaunt is believed to have been the last of the giants, and to have lived in a castle on the top of Carn Brea, whence in one stride he could pass to a neighbouring town four miles distant.
The Heraldic Chain of SSS was known as John of Gaunt's chain: the symbol of SSS occurs frequently on Candian or Cretan monuments, and it is probable that John of Gaunt's chain was originally Jupiter's, or Brea's chain.
[752] The name Ghent, Gand, or Gaunt may be connoted not only with Kent or Cantium, and Candia or Crete, but also with Dr. Lardner's statement: "That the full moon was the chief feast among the ancient Spaniards is evident from the fact that _Agandia or Astartia_ is the name for Sunday among the Basques".
We have already seen that Cain was identified with "the Man in the Moon," that _cann_ was the Cornish for _full moon_, and we have connoted the fairy Kenna of Kensington with the New Moon: the old English _cain_, meaning _fair_ or bright, is clearly connected with _candid_ and _candescent_.
Kenna is the saint to whom the village of Keynsham on the Somersetshire Avon is dedicated, and St. Kenna is said there to have lived in the heart of a wood.
To the north of Kensington lies St. John's Wood, and also the ancient seat named Caen or Ken Wood: this Ken Wood, which is on the heights of Highgate, and is higher than the summit of St. Paul's, commands a panoramic view of the metropolis that can nowhere else be matched.
Akin to the words _ken_, _cunning_, and _canny_, is the Christian name Conan which is interpreted as being Celtic for _wisdom_.
The Celtic names Kean and Kenny--no doubt akin to Coyne--meant _vast_, and in Cornish _ken_ meant _pity_.
On the river Taff there is a Llan_gain_ of which the church is dedicated to St. Canna, and on the Welsh river Canna there is a Llan_ganna_ or Llan_gan_: at Llan_daff_ by Car_diff_ is Canon's Park.
There is a celebrated well in Cornwall known as St Kean's, St. Kayne's, St. Keyne's, or St. Kenna's, and the supposed peculiarity of this fountain is that it confers mastery or chieftainship upon whichever of a newly-wedded couple first drinks at it after marriage.
St. Kayne or St. Kenna is also said to have visited St. Michael's Mount, and to have imparted the very same virtue to a stone seat situated dizzily on the height of the chapel tower: "whichever, man or wife, sits in this chair first _shall rule_ through life": this double tradition associating rule and mastery with St. Kayne makes it justifiable to equate the "Saint" with _kyn_, _princess_ and with _khan_ the _great Han_ or King.
There was a well at Chun Castle whose waters supposedly bestowed perpetual youth: _can_, meaning a drinking vessel, is the root of _canal_, _channel_, or _kennel_, meaning water course: we have already connoted the word _demijohn_ or Dame Jeanne with the Cornish well termed Joan's Pitcher, and this root is seemingly responsible for _canopus_, the Egyptian and Greek term for the human-headed type of vase as illustrated on page 301.
A writer in _Notes and Queries_ for 3rd January, 1852, quotes the following song sung by children in South Wales on New Year's morning, _i.e._, 1st January, when carrying a can of water newly drawn from the well:-Here we bring new water From the well so clear, For to worship God with The happy New Year.
Sing levez dew, sing levez dew, The water and the wine; The seven bright gold wires And the bugles they do shine.
Sing reign of Fair Maid With gold upon her toe, Open you the west door, and let the old Year go.
Sing reign of Fair Maid With gold upon her chin, Open you the east door, And let the New Year in.
We have traced Maggie Figgy of St. Levan on her titanic chair supervising the surging waters of the ocean, and there is little doubt that the throne of St. Michael's was the corresponding seat of Micah, the Almighty King or Great One.
The equation of Michael = Kayne may be connoted with the London Church now known as St. Nicholas _Acon_: this name appearing mysteriously in ancient documents as alternatively "Acun," "Hakoun," "Hakun," and "Achun" it is supposed may have denoted a benefactor of the building.
In Cornish _ughan_ or _aughan_ meant _supreme_; in Welsh _echen_ meant _origins_ or _sources_,[753] and as _Nicholas_ is the same word as _nucleus_ it is impossible now to say whether St. Nicholas Acon was a shrine of the _Great One_ or of _echen_ the little Nicholas or _nucleus_.
Probably as figured at Royston where Kitt is bearing the Cadet or the small _chit_ upon his shoulder, the two conceptions were concurrent: on the opposite side of the Royston Cave is figured St. Katherine, Kathleen, or Kate: Catarina means _the pure one_, but _catha_ as in _catholic_ also means the universal, and there is no doubt that St. Kathleen or Kate was a personification of the Queen of the Universe.
Cendwen or Keridwen, _alias_ Ked, was represented by the British Bards as a mare, whale, or ark, whence emerged the universe: the story of Jonah and the whale is a variant of the Ark legend, and it is not without significance that the Hebridean island of Iona is identified as the locale of a miraculous "Whale of wondrous and immense size lifting itself up like a mountain floating on the surface".
[754] Notwithstanding the forbidding aspect of this monster, St. Columba's disciple quiets the fears of his companion by the assurance: "Go in peace; thy faith in Christ shall defend thee from this danger, I and that beast are under the power of God".
It has been seen that Night was not necessarily esteemed as evil, nor were the nether regions considered to be outside the radius of the Almighty: that Nicholas, Nixy, or Nox was the black or nether deity is obvious, yet without doubt he was the same conception as the Babylonish "exalted One of the nether world, Him of the radiant face, yea radiant; the exalted One of the nether world, Him of the dove-like voice, yea dove-like".
[755] That St. Margaret was the White Dove rather than the foul Culver is probable from her representation as the Dragon-slayer, and it is commonly accepted that this almost world-wide emblem denoted Light subduing Darkness, Day conquering Night, or Good overcoming Evil.
But there is another legend of St. Margaret to the effect that the maid so meek and mild was swallowed by a Dragon: her cross, however, haply stuck in its throat, and the beast perforce let her free by incontinently bursting (date uncertain); in Art St. Margaret therefore appears as holding a cross and rising from a dragon, although as Voragine candidly admits--"the story is thought to be apocryphal".
We have seen that Magus or the Wandering Jew was credited with the feat of wriggling out of a post--"and they saw that he was no other than a beardless youth and fair faced": that the adventure of Maggie was the counterpart to that of Magus is rendered probable by the fact that St. Margaret's birth is assigned to Antioch, a city which was alternatively known as Jonah.
With Jonah or Iona may be connoted the British Aeon-Aeon hath seen age after age in long succession, But like a serpent which has cast its skin, Rose to new life in youthful vigour strong.
In Calmet's _Biblical Dictionary_ there is illustrated a medal of ancient Corinth representing an old man in a state of decrepitude entering a whale, but on the same medal the old man renewed is shown to have come out of the same fish in a state of infancy.
Among the Greeks Apollo or the Sun was represented as riding on a dolphin's back: the word _dolphin_ is connected with _delphus_, the womb, and doubtless also with _Delphi_, the great centre of Apollo worship and the legendary navel of the Universe.
Alpha has been noted as the British name of Noah's wife, and it is probable that Delphi meant at one time the Divine Alpha or Elf: in the Iberian coin here illustrated (origin uncertain) the little Elf or spriggan is equipped with a cross; in the coin of Carteia (Spain) the inscription XIDD probably corresponds to the name which the British Bards wrote--"Ked".
[Illustration: FIGS.
411 and 412.--Iberian.
From Akerman.]
In India the Ark or Leviathan of Life is represented as half horse or half mare, and among the Phoenicians the word _hipha_ denoted both _mare_ and _ship_: in Britain the _Magna Mater_, Ked, was figured as the combination of an old giantess, a hen, a mare, and as a ship which set sail, lifted the Bard from the earth and swelled out like a ship upon the waters.
Davies observes: "And that the ancient Britons actually did portray this character in the grotesque manner suggested by our Bard appears by several ancient British coins where we find a figure compounded of a bird, a boat, and a mare".
The coin to which Davies here refers is that illustrated on page 596, Fig.
356: that the Babylonians built their ships in the combined form of a mare and fish is clear from the illustration overleaf.
The most universal and generally understood emblem of peace is a dove bearing in its beak an olive-branch,[756] or sprig, and this emblem is intimately associated with the Ark: among the poems of the Welsh Bard Aneurin is the expectation-The crowned Babe will come like Iona Out of the belly of the whale; great will be his dignity.
He will place every one according to his merits, He is the principal strong tower of the Kingdom.
[757] [Illustration: FIG.
413.--A Galley (Khorsabad).
From _Nineveh_ (Layard).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
414 and 415.--British (Channel Islands).
From Barthelemy.]
As Iona means dove, the culver on the hackney's back (Fig.
415) is evidently St. Columba, and the crowned Babe in Fig.
414 is in all probability that same "spriggan on Dowdy's back," or Elphin, as the British Bards speak so persistently and mysteriously of "liberating".
In Egypt the spright is portrayed rising from a maculate or spotted beast, and in all these and parallel instances the emblem probably denoted rejuvenescence or new birth; either Spring _ex_ Winter, Change _ex_ Time, the Seen from the Unseen, Amor _ex_ Nox, Visible from Invisible, or New from Old.
[Illustration: FIG.
416.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhler).]
[Illustration: FIG.
417.--Mediæval Papermark.
From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
The eight parents from the Ark may be connoted with Aught from Naught, for _eight_ is the same word as _aught_ and _naught_ is the same word as _night_, _nuit_, or _not_: _naughty_ means evil, whence the legend of Amor being born from Nox or Night might perhaps have been sublimated into the idea of Good emerging even from things noxious or nugatory.
[758] Yet in the Cox and Box like rule of Night and Day the all-conquering Nikky was no doubt regarded as _unique_: "Shining and vanishing in the beauteous circle of the Hours, dwelling at one time in gloomy Tartarus, at another elevating himself to Olympus giving ripeness to the fruits": it is not unlikely that the ruddy _nectarine_ was assigned to him, and similarly _nectar_ the celestial drink of the gods, or _ambrosia_ in a liquid form.
Of the universally recognised Dualism the black and white magpie was evidently an emblem, and the superstitions in connection with this bird are still potent.
The Magpie is sometimes called Magot-pie, and Maggoty-pie, and for this etymology Skeat offers the following explanation: "Mag is short for Magot--French _Margot_, a familiar form of _Marguerite_, also used to denote a Magpie.
This is from Latin _Margarita_, Greek _Margarites_, a pearl."
There is no material connection between a pearl and a Magpie, but both objects were alike emblems of the same spiritual Power or Pair: between Margot and Istar the same equation is here found, for in Kent magpies were known popularly as _haggisters_.
[759] Although I have deemed _hag_ to mean _high_ it will be remembered that in Greek _hagia_ meant holy, whence haggister may well have been understood as _holy ister_.
Layamon in his _Brut_ mentions that the Britons at the time of Hengist's invasion "Oft speak stilly and discourse with whispers of two young men that dwell far hence; the one hight Uther the other Ambrosie".
Of these fabulous Twain--the not altogether forgotten Two Kings of their ancestors--we may equate Uther with the _uter_ or womb of Night and Aurelie Ambrosie with Aurora the Golden Sunburst.
It is probable that the Emporiae, some of whose elphin horse coins were reproduced on page 281, were worshippers of Aurelie Ambrosie or "St. Ambrose" of whom it will be remembered: "some said that they saw a star upon his body": it is also not unlikely that our Mary Ambree or Fair Ambree was the daughter of Amber, the divine Umpire and the Emperor of the Empyrean.
The ballad recalls:-There was none ever like Mary Ambree, Shee led upp her souldiers in battaile array 'Gainst three times theyr number by breake of the day; Seven howers in skirmish continued shee, Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree?
[760] The sex of this braw Maiden was disguised under a knight's panoply, and it was only when the fight was finished that her personality was revealed.
No captain of England; behold in your sight Two breasts in my bosome, and therefore no knight, No knight, sons of England, nor captain you see, But a poor simple lass called Mary Ambree.
If the reader will turn back to the Virago coins illustrated _ante_, p. 596, which I think represent _Ked_ in the aspect of _Hecate_--the names are no doubt cognate--he will notice the pastoral crook of the little Shepherdess or Bishop of all souls, and there is little doubt that these figures depict what a Welsh Bard termed "the winged genius of the splendid crosier".
Although Long Meg of Westminster was said to be a Virago, and was connected in popular opinion with "Bulloigne," it is not unlikely that Bulloigne was a misconception of Bulinga; the ornamental water of what is now St. James' Park is a reconstruction of what was originally known as Bulinga Fen, and in that swamp it is probable that Kitty-with-her-canstick, _alias_ Belinga the _Beautiful Angel_, was supposed to dwell.
The name Bolingbroke implies the existence somewhere of a Bolinga's brook where Belle Inga might also probably have been seen "dancing to the cadence of the stream"; in Shropshire is an earthwork known as Billings Ring, and at Truro there is a Bolingey which is surmised to have meant "isle of the Bollings".
These Bollings were presumably related to the Billings of Billingsgate and elsewhere,[761] and the Bellinge or Billing families were almost certainly connected with Billing, the race-hero of the Angles and Varnians.
According to Rydberg the celestial Billing "represents the evening and the glow of twilight, and he is ruler of those regions of the world where the divinities of light find rest and peace": Billing was the divine defender of the Varnians or Varinians, which word, says Rydberg, "means 'defenders' and the protection here referred to can be none other than that given to the journeying divinities of light when they have reached the Western horizon".
[762] [Illustration: FIG 418.--Adapted from the Salisbury Chapter Seal.
From _The Cross: Christian and Pagan_ (Brock, M.).]
That Billing and the Ingles were connected with Barkshire, the county of the Vale of the White Horse or Brok, is implied by place-names such as Billingbare by Inglemeer Pond in the East, by Inkpen Beacon--originally Ingepenne or Hingepenne--in the South, and by Inglesham near Fearnham and Farringdon in the West.
Near Inglemeer is Shinfield and slightly westward is Sunning, which must once have been a place of uncanny sanctity for "it is amazing that so inconsiderable a village should have been the See of _eight_ Bishops translated afterwards to Sherborn and at last to Salisbury.
"[763] The seal of Salisbury represents the Maiden of the Sun and Moon, and it is probable that the place-name Maidenhead, originally Madenheith, near Marlow (Domesday Merlawe--Mary low or hill?)
did not, as Skeat so aggressively assumes, mean a _hythe_ or landing place for maidens, but Maiden_heath_, a heath or mead sacred to the braw Maiden.
With the Farens and the Varenians may be connoted the Cornish village of Trevarren or the abode of Varren: this is in the parish of St. Columb, where Columba the Dove is commemorated not as a man but as a Virgin Martyr.
Many, if not all, Cornish villages had their so-called "Sentry field" and the Broad Sanctuary at St. Margaret's, Westminster, no doubt marks the site of some such sanctuary or city of refuge as will be considered in a following chapter.
That St. Margaret the Meek or Long Meg was the _Bride_ of the adjacent St. Peter is a reasonable inference, and it is probable that "Broad Sanctuary" was originally hers.
According to _The Golden Legend_: "Margaret is Maid of a precious gem or ouche[764] that is named a Margaret.
So the blessed Margaret was white by virginity, little by humility, and virtuous by operation.
The virtue of this stone is said to be against effusion of blood, against passion of the heart, and to comfortation of the spirit."
I am unable to trace any immediate connection between St. Margaret and the Dove, but an original relation is implied by the epithets which are bestowed by the Gaels to St. Columbkille of Iona who is entitled "The Precious Gem," "The Royal Bright Star," "The Meek," "The Wise," and "The Divine Branch who was in the yoke of the Pure Mysteries of God".
These are titles older than the worthy monk whose biography was written by Adamnan: they belong to the archetypal Columba or Culver.
There is a river Columb in Devonshire upon which stands the town of Cullompton: in Kent is Reculver once a Royal town of which "the root is unknown, but the present form has been influenced by old English _culfre_, _culfer_, a culver-dove or wood-pigeon".
That St. Columba of Iona was both the White and the Black Culver is implied by his two names of Colum (dove) and Crimthain (wolf): that the great Night-dog or wolf was for some reason connected with the _nutrix_ (_vide_ the coin illustrated on page 364, and the Etrurian Romulus and Remus legend) is obvious, apart from the significance of the word _wolf_ which is radically _olf_.
Columbas' mother, we are told, was a certain royal Ethne, the _eleventh_ in descent from Cathair Mor, a King of Leinster: Leinster was a _stadr_, _ster_, or place of the Laginenses, and that Columba was a personification of Young Lagin or the Little _Holy King_ of Yule is implied (apart from much other evidence) in the story that one of his visitors "could by no means look upon his face, suffused as it was with a marvellous glow, and he immediately fled in great fear".
Among the Gaels the Little Holy King of Tir an Og, or the Land of the Young, was Angus Og or Angus the youthful: when discussing Angus (_excellent virtue_) in connection with the ancient goose and the cain goose I was unaware that the Greek for goose is _ken_.
In the far-away Hebrides the men, women, and children of Barra and South Uist (or Aust?)
still hold to a primitive faith in St. Columba, St. Bride, or St. Mary, and as a shealing hymn they sing the following astonishingly beautiful folk-song:-Thou, gentle Michael of the white steed, Who subdued the Dragon of blood, For love of God and the Son of Mary Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Mary, beloved!
Mother of the White Lamb Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness, Queen of Beauty!
Shepherdess of the flocks!
Keep our cattle, surround us together, Keep our cattle, surround us together.
Thou Columkille, the friendly, the kind, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit Holy, Through the Three-in-One, through the Three, Encompass us, guard our procession, Encompass us, guard our procession.
Thou Father!
Thou Son!
Thou Spirit Holy!
Be the Three-One with us day and night, On the Machair plain, on the mountain ridge, The Three-One is with us, with His arm around our head, The Three-One is with us, with His arm around our head.
But the Boatmen of Barray sing for the last verse:-Thou Father!
Thou Son!
Thou Spirit Holy!
Be the Three-One with us day and night, And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side, Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our head, Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our head.
[765] FOOTNOTES: [692] _The Evening Standard_, 12th Nov., 1918.
[693] _Ibid._ [694] _Ancient Britain_, p. 283.
[695] _Cf._ Stoughton, Rev.
J., _Golden Legends of the Olden Time_, p. 9.
[696] _Cf._ Stoughton, Rev.
J., _Golden Legends of the Olden Time_, p. 5.
[697] Wright, T., _Travels in the East_, p. 39.
[698] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 116.
[699] Mitton, G. E., _Clerkenwell_, p. 79.
[700] B.M., _Guide to Antiquities of Stone Age_, p. 26.
[701] _Holy Wells of Cornwall._ [702] Mitton, G. E., _Mayfair_, p. 1.
[703] Walford, E., _Greater London_.
[704] Bonwick, E., _Irish Druids_, p. 208.
[705] Hardwick, C., _Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore_, p. 34.
[706] The surname Brinsmoad still survives in the Primrose Hill neighbourhood.
[707] _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 401.
[708] Herbert, A., _Cyclops Christianus_, p. 114.
[709] _Ibid._, p. 114.
[710] _Travels in the East_, p. 28.
[711] Donnelly, I., _Atlantis_, p. 428.
[712] _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 82.
[713] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 305.
[714] iii., 226.
[715] _A New Description of England_, p. 112.
[716] _A New Description of England_, p. 118.
[717] Walford, E., _Greater London_, i., 77.
[718] _Golden Legend_, iv., p. 235.
[719] _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 114.
[720] Stow, p. 217.
[721] In some parts this ceremony was known as "crying the Mare": in Wales the horse of the guise or goose dancers was known as Mari Lhwyd.
[722] Mrs. George of Sennen Cove.
[723] Irvine, C., _St.
Brighid and her Times_, p. 6.
[724] _Greater London_, l., p. 40.
[725] Quoted, _St.
Brighid and Her Times_, p. 7.
[726] Keightley, I., _F.
M._, pp.
139-49.
[727] Huyshe, W., _Life of Columba_, p. 129.
[728] _De Bello Gallico_, p. 121.
[729] See Appendix B, p. 873.
[730] _Cf._ Courtney, Miss M. E., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 105.
[731] Wilson, J., _Imperial Gazetteer_, i., 1042.
[732] Rydberg, V., _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 361.
[733] Windle, Sir B. C. A., _Life in Early Britain_, p. 63.
[734] The _cul_ of _culver_ or _culfre_ and _columba_ was probably the Irish _Kil_: hence the _umba_ of _columba_ may be connoted with _imp_.
[735] Rig-Veda (mandala X, 90).
[736] _Golden Legend_, v., 235.
[737] _Golden Legend_, v., 236.
[738] Mykenae, p. 267.
[739] Stoughton, Dr. J., _Golden Legends of the Olden Time_, p. 9.
[740] Wilson and Warren, _The Recovery of Jerusalem_, i., 166.
[741] Noah, Shem, Ham, Japhet, and their respective wives.
[742] Gogmagog is also found at Uriconium, now Wroxeter, in Shropshire.
Since suggesting a connection between Gog and Coggeshall in Essex, I find that Coggeshall was traditionally associated with a giant whose remains were said to have been found.
_Cf._ Hardwick, C., _Traditions, Superstitions and Folklore_, p. 205.
[743] Thornbury, W., _Old and New London_, i., 386.
[744] _Sepulchres of Ancient Etruria_, p. 16.
[745] The civic giant of Salisbury is named Christopher.
[746] _Archæologia_, from _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol.
i., p. 124.
[747] _Brittany_, p. 232.
[748] Aynsley, Mrs. Murray, _Symbolism of the East and West_, p. 87.
[749] I have elsewhere reproduced examples of the double axe crossed into the form of an ex (X).
Sir Walter Scott observes that in North Britain "it was no unusual thing to see females, from respect to their supposed views into futurity, and the degree of divine inspiration which was vouchsafed to them, arise to the degree of HAXA, or chief priestess, from which comes the word _Hexe_, now universally used for a witch".
He adds: "It may be worth while to notice that the word Haxa is still used in Scotland in its sense of a druidess, or chief priestess, to distinguish the places where such females exercised their ritual.
There is a species of small intrenchment on the western descent of the Eildon hills, which Mr. Milne, in his account of the parish of Melrose, drawn up about eighty years ago, says, was denominated _Bourjo_, a word of unknown derivation, by which the place is still known.
Here a universal and subsisting tradition bore that human sacrifices were of yore offered, while the people assisting could behold the ceremony from the elevation of the glacis which slopes inward.
With this place of sacrifice communicated a path, still discernible, called the _Haxellgate_, leading to a small glen or narrow valley called the _Haxellcleuch_--both which words are probably derived from the Haxa or chief priestess of the pagans" (_Letters on Demonology_).
It may be suggested that the mysterious _bourjo_ was an _abri_ of pere Jo or Jupiter.
The Scotch _jo_ as in "John Anderson my Jo," now signifying _sweetheart_, presumably meant joy.
[750] _Cf._ McKenzie, Donald A., _Myths of Babylonia_, p. 18.
[751] Mary Ambree Who marched so free, To the siege of Gaunt, And death could not daunt As the ballad doth vaunt.
[752] In Kirtlington Park (Oxon) was a Johnny Gaunt's pond in which his spirit was supposed to dwell.
A large ash tree was also there known as Johnny Gaunt's tree.
[753] Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 202.
[754] _Life of Columba_, p. 40.
[755] _Cf._ Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Babylonia_, p. 86.
[756] There is a London church entitled "St. Nicholas Olave".
[757] _Cf._ Morien, _Light of Britannia_, p. 67.
[758] Skeat connotes _naughty_ with "_na_ not, _wiht_ a whit, see no and whit": it would thus seem to have been equivalent to _no white_, which is black or nocturnal.
[759] Hardwick, C., _Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore_, p. 254.
[760] The _seven_ hours in skirmish are suggestive of the Fair maid with gold upon her toe:-The _seven_ bright gold wires And the bugles they do shine, _ante_, p. 650.
[761] Presumably Billingham River in Durham was a home of the Billings: there is a Billingley in Darfield parish, Yorkshire, a Billingsley in Bridgenorth, Salop: Billingbear in Berks is the seat of Lord Braybrook: Billingford _or Pirleston_ belonged to a family named Burley: at Billington in Bradley parish, Staffs, is a commanding British camp known as Billington Bury.
Billinge Hill, near Wigan, has a beacon on the top and commands a view of Ingleborough.
[762] _Teutonic Mythology_.
[763] _A New Description of England_, 1724, p. 61.
[764] An _ouche_ is a _bugle_: "the bugles they do shine".
[765] Quoted from _Adamnan's Life of Columba_ (Huyshe, W.).
CHAPTER XII.
PETER'S ORCHARDS.
"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."
--_Provençal Fairy Tale_.
Among the relics preserved at the monastery of St. Nicholas of Bari is a club with which the saint, who is said to have become a friar at the age of _eleven_, was beaten by the devil: a club was the customary symbol of Hercules; the Celtic Hercules was, as has been seen, depicted as a baldhead leading a rout of laughter-loving followers by golden chains fastened to their ears, and as it was the habit of St. Nicholas-of-the-Club to wander abroad singing after the ancient fashion, one may be sure that Father Christmas is the lineal descendant of the British Ogmios or Mighty Muse, _alias_ the Wandering Jew or Joy.
That Bride "the gentle" was at times similarly equipped is obvious from a ceremony which in Scotland and the North of England used to prevail at Candlemas: "the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats and dress it up in woman's apparel, put it in a large basket and lay a wooden club by it, and this they call "Briid's Bed," and then the mistress and servants cry three times: "Briid is come, Briid is welcome"!
This they do just before going to bed": another version of this custom records the cry as--"Bridget, Bridget, come is; thy bed is ready".
In an earlier chapter we connected Iupiter or Jupiter with Aubrey or Oberon, and that this roving Emperor of Phairie Land was familiar to the people of ancient Berkshire is implied not only by a river in that county termed the Auborn, but also by adjacent place-names such as Aberfield, Burfield, Purley, and Bray.
Skeat connotes Bray (by Maidenhead) with "Old English _braw_, Mercian _breg_, an eyebrow," but what sensible or likely connection is supposed to exist between the town of Bray and an eyebrow I am unable to surmise: we have, however, considered the prehistoric "butterfly" or eyebrows, and it is not impossible that Bray was identified with this mysterious Epeur (Cupid) or Amoretto.
The claims to ubiquity and antiquity put by the British poet into the mouth of Taliesin or _Radiant Brow_--the mystic child of Nine constituents[766]--is paralleled by the claims of Irish Ameurgin, likewise by the claims of Solomonic "Wisdom," and there is little doubt that the symbolic forms of the "Teacher to all Intelligences" are beyond all computation.
That Berkshire, the shire of the White Horse, was a seat of beroc or El Borak the White Horse is further implied by the name Berkshire: according to Camden this originated "some say from Beroc, a certain wood where box grew in great plenty"; according to others from a disbarked oak [_i.e._, a _bare oak_!]
to which when the state was in more than ordinary danger the inhabitants were wont to resort in ancient times to consult about their public affairs".
[767] Overlooking Brockley in Kent is an Oak of Honor Hill, and probably around that ancient and possibly bare Oak the natives of old Brockley or Brock Meadow met in many a consultation.
[768] At Coventry is Berkswell: Berkeleys are numerous, and that these sites were _abris_ or sanctuaries is implied by the official definition of Great Berkhamstead, _i.e._, "_Sheltered, home place, or fortified farm_".
At St. Breock in Cornwall there is a pair of Longstones, one measuring 12 feet 4 inches, the other 8 feet, and in all probability at some time or other these pierres or petras were symbols of the phairy Pair who were the Parents and Protectors of the district.
At St. Columb in Cornwall there is a Longstone known as "The Old Man": now measuring 7 feet 6 inches, in all probability this stone was originally 8 feet high; it was also "once apparently surrounded by a small circle".
[Illustration: FIG.
419.--British.
From Akerman.]
In the British coin here illustrated the Old Man jogging along with a club is probably CUN the Great One, or the Aged One.
The brow of Honor Oak ridge is known as Canonbie Lea, which may be resolved into the "meadow of the abode of King On": from this commanding height one may contemplate all London lying in the valley; facing it are the highlands of Cuneburn, Kenwood, Caenwood, and St. John's Wood.
London stone is situated in what is now termed Cannon Street--a supposed corruption of Candlewick Street: the greater probability is that the name is connected with the ancient Kenning or Watch Tower, known as a _burkenning_, which once occupied the site now marked by Tower Royal in Cannon Street: the ancient Cenyng Street by Mikelgate at York, or Eboracum--a city attributed to a King Ebrauc who will probably prove to be identical with Saint Breock--marked in all likelihood the site of a similar broch, burgkenning, barbican, or watch tower.
One may account for ancient Candlewick by the supposition that this district was once occupied by a candle factory, or that it was the property of a supposititious Kendal, who was identical with the Brook, Brick, or Broken of the neighbouring Brook's wharf, Brickhill, and Broken wharf.
At Kendal in Westmorland, situated on the river Can or Kent, around which we find Barnside, the river Burrow or Borrow, and Preston Hall, we find also a Birbeck, and the memories of a Lord Parr: this district was supposedly the home of the Concanni.
The present site of Highbury Barn Tavern by Canonbury (London) was once occupied by a "camp" in what was known as Little St. John's Wood,[769] and as this part of London is not conspicuously "high," it is not improbable that Highbury was once an _abri_: in the immediate neighbourhood still exists Paradise Road, Paradise Passage, Aubert Park and a Calabria Road which may possibly mark the site of an original Kil abria.
At Highbury is Canonbury Tower, whence tradition says an underground passage once extended to the _priory_ of St. John's in Clerkenwell: from Highbury to the Angel at Islington there runs an Upper Street: _upper_ is the Greek _hyper_ meaning _over_ (German _uber_), and that the celebrated "Angel" was originally a fairy or Bellinga, is somewhat implied by the neighbouring Fairbank Street--once a fairy bank?--and by Bookham Street--once a home of Bogie or Puck?
From Canonbie Lea at Honor Oak, Brockley (London), one overlooks Peckham, Bickley, Beckenham, and Bellingham, the last named being decoded by the authorities into _home of Belling_.
We have noted the tradition at Brentford of Two Kings "united yet divided twain at once," yet there is also an extant ballad which commences-The noble king of Brentford Was old and very sick.
The Cornish hill of Godolphin was also known as Godolcan, and in view of the connection between Nicolas and eleven it may be assumed that this site was sacred either to Elphin, the _elven_, the Holy King, or the Old King.
At Highbury is an Old Cock Tavern, and in Upper Street an Old Parr Inn: not improbably Old Parr was once the deity of "Upper" Street or "Highbury," and it is also not unlikely that the St. Peter of Westminster was similarly Old Parr, for according to _The History of Signboards_--"'The OLD MAN,' Market Place, Westminster, was probably intended for Old Parr, who was celebrated in ballads as 'The Olde, Olde, Very Olde Manne'.
The token represents a bearded bust in profile, with a bare head.
[770] In the reign of James I. it was the name of a tavern in the Strand, _otherwise called the Hercules Tavern_, and in the eighteenth century there were two coffee-houses, the one called 'the OLD MAN'S,' the other 'the YOUNG MAN'S' Coffee-house.
"[771] If the Old, Old, Very Old Man were Peter the white-haired warden of the walls of Heaven it is obvious that the Young Man would be Pierrot: it is not by accident that white-faced Pierrot, or Peterkin, or Pedrolino, is garbed in white and wears a conical white cap, the legend that accounts for this curious costume being to the effect that years and years ago St. Peter and St. Joseph were once watching (from a burkenning?)
over a wintry plain from the walls of Paradise, when they beheld what seemed a pink rose peering out from beneath the snow; but instead of being a rose it proved to be the face of a child, who St. Peter picked up in his arms, whereupon the snow and rime were transformed into an exquisite white garment.
It was intended that the little Peter should remain unsullied, but, as it happened, the Boy, having wandered from Paradise, started playing Ring-o-Roses on a village green where a little girl tempted him to talk: then the trouble began, for Pierrot speckled his robe, and St. Peter was unable to allow him in again; but he gave him big black buttons and a merry heart, and there the story ends.
[772] In Pantomime--which has admittedly an ancestry of august antiquity--the counterpart to Pierrot is Columbine, or the Little Dove; doubtless the same Maiden as the Virgin Martyr of St. Columb, Cornwall: this parish is situated in what was termed "The Hundred of _Pydar_"; in Welsh Bibles Peter is rendered _Pedr_, and one of the Welsh bards refers to Stonehenge as "the melodious quaternion of Pedyr": in Cornwall there is also a Padstow or Petroxstowe, and there is no doubt that Peter, like Patrick, was the Supreme Padre or Parent.
According to the native ancient ecclesiastical records of Wales known as the Iolo MSS., the native name of St. Patrick was Maenwyn, which means _stone sacred_: hence one may assume that the island of Battersea or Patrixeye was the abode of the padres who ministered at the neighbouring shrine of St. Peter or petra, the Rock upon which the church of Christ is traditionally built.
[Illustration: FIG.
420.--From _A New Description of England_ (1724).]
At Patrixbourne in Kent was a seat known as Bifrons, once in the possession of a family named Cheyneys:[773] whether there be any connection between this estate named Bifrons and _Bifrons_, or _Two fronted_, a sobriquet applied to Janus, I am unaware: the connection Cheyneys--Bifrons--Patrixbourne is, however, the more curious inasmuch as they immediately neighbour a Bekesbourne, and on referring to Peckham we find that a so-termed Janus bifrons was unearthed there some centuries ago.
The peculiarity of this Peckham Janus is that, unlike any other Janus-head I know, it obviously represents a Pater and Mater, and not two Paters, or a big and little Peter.
The feminine of Janus is Jane or Iona, and at Iona in Scotland there existed prior to the Reformation when they were thrown into the sea, some remarkable _petræ_, to wit, three noble marble globes placed in three stone basins, which the inhabitants turned three times round according to the course of the sun:[774] these were known as _clacha brath_ or Stones of Judgment.
Tradition connects St. Columba of Iona in the Hebrides with Loch Aber, or, as it was sometimes written, Loch Apor, and among the stories which the honest Adamnan received and recorded "nothing doubting from a certain religious, ancient priest," is one to the effect that Columba on a memorable occasion, turning aside to the nearest rock, prayed a little while on bended knees, and rising up after prayer blessed the brow of the same rock, from which thereupon water bubbled up and flowed forth abundantly.
With the twelve-mouthed _petra_ or rock of Moses which, according to Rabbinic tradition, followed the Israelites into the wilderness, may be connoted the rock-gushing fountain at Petrockstowe, Cornwall.
That St. Patrick was Shony the Ocean-deity, to whom the Hebrideans used to pour out libations, is deducible from the legend that on the day of St. Patrick's festival the fish all rise from the sea, pass in procession before his altar, and then disappear.
The personality of the great St. Patrick of the Paddys is so remarkably obscure that some hagiographers conclude there were seven persons known by that name; others distinguish three, and others recognise two, one of whom was known as "_Sen_ Patrick," _i.e._, the senile or senior Patrick: there is little doubt that the archetypal Patrick was represented indifferently as young and old and as either seven, three, two, or one: whence perhaps the perplexity and confusion of the hagiographers.
It is not improbable that the Orchard Street at Westminster may mark the site of a burial ground or "Peter's Orchard," similar to that which was uncovered in Wiltshire in 1852: this was found on a farm at Seagry, one part of which had immemorially been known as "Peter's Orchard".
[775] From generation to generation it had been handed down that in a certain field on this farm a church was built upon the site of an ancient _heathen_ burial ground, and the persistence of the heathen tradition is seemingly presumptive evidence, not only of inestimable age, but of the memory of a pre-Christian Peter.
It may be assumed that "Peter's Orchard" was originally an apple orchard or an Avalon similar to the "Heaven's Walls," which were discovered some years ago near Royston: these "walls," immediately contiguous to the Icknield or Acnal Way, were merely some strips of unenclosed but cultivated land which in ancient deeds from time immemorial had been called "Heaven's Walls".
Traditional awe attached to this spot, and village children were afraid to traverse it after dark, when it was said to be frequented by supernatural beings: in 1821 some labourers digging for gravel on this haunted spot inadvertently discovered a wall enclosing a rectangular space containing numerous deposits of sepulchral urns, and it then became clear that here was one of those plots of ground environed by walls to which the Romans gave the name of _ustrinum_.
[776] The old Welsh graveyards were frequently circular, and there is a notable example of this at Llanfairfechan: the Llanfair here means holy enclosure of Fair or Mairy, and it is probable that Fechan's round churchyard was a symbol of the Fire Ball or _Fay King_.
At Fore in Ireland the Solar wheel figures notably at the church of "Saint" Fechan on an ancient doorway illustrated herewith.
That the Latin _ustrinum_ was associated with the Uster or Easter of resurrection is likely enough, for both Romans and Greeks had a practice of planting roses in their graveyards: as late as 1724 the inhabitants of Ockley or Aclea in Surrey had "a custom here, time immemorial, of planting rose trees in the graves, especially by the young men and maidens that have lost their lovers, and the churchyard is now full of them".
[777] That "The Walls of Heaven" by Royston was associated with roses is implied by the name Royston, which was evidently a rose-town, for it figures in old records as _Crux Roies_, _Croyrois_, and _Villa de cruce Rosia_.
The expression "God's Acre" still survives, seemingly from that remote time when St.
Kit of Royston, the pre-Christian "God," was worshipped at innumerable Godshills, Godstones, Gaddesdens, and Goodacres.
[Illustration: FIG.
421.--From _The Age of the Saints_ (Borlase, W.
C.).]
Tradition asserts that the abbey church of St. Peter's at Westminster occupies the site of a pagan temple to Apollo--the Etrurian form of Apollo was Aplu, and there is no doubt that the sacred _apple_ of the Druids was the symbol of the "rubicund, radiant Elphin" or Apollo.
According to Malory, a certain Sir Patrise lies buried in Westminster, and this knight came to his untoward end by eating an apple, whereupon "suddenly he brast (burst)":[778] from this parallel to the story of St. Margaret erupting from a dragon it is probable that Sir Patrise was the original patron of Westminster, or ancient Thorney Eye.
Patera was a generic title borne by the ministers at Apollo's shrines, and as glorious Apollo was certainly the Shine, it is more than likely that Petersham Park at Sheen, where still stands a supposedly Roman _petra_ or altar-stone, was a park or enclosure sacred to Peter, or, perhaps, to Patrise of the apple-bursting story.
The Romans applied the title Magonius to the Gaulish and British Apollo; sometimes St. Patrick is mentioned as Magounus, and it is probable that both these epithets are Latinised forms of the British name Magon: the Druidic Magon who figures in the traditions of Cumberland is in all probability the St. Mawgan whose church neighbours that of the Maiden St. Columb in the Hundred of Pydar in Cornwall.
One of the principal towns in Westmorland is Appleby, which was known to the Romans as Abellaba: the Maiden Way of Westmorland traverses Appleby, starting from a place called Kirkby Thore, and here about 200 years ago was found the supposed "amulet or magical spell," illustrated in Fig.
422.
The inscription upon the reverse is in Runic characters, which some authorities have read as THOR DEUS PATRIUS; and if this be correct the effigy would seem to be that of the solar Sir Patrise, for apparently the object in the right hand is an apple: there is little doubt that the great Pater figures at Patterdale, at Aspatria, and at the river Peterill, all of which are in this neighbourhood, and in all probability the Holy Patrise or Aspatria was represented by the culminating peak known as the "Old Man" of Coniston.
Some experts read the legend on Fig.
422 as THURGUT LUETIS, meaning "the face or effigies of the God Thor": according to others Thurgut was the name of the moneyer or mintmaster; according to yet others the coin was struck in honour of a Danish Admiral named Thurgut: where there is such acute diversity of opinion it is permissible to suggest that Thurgut--whose effigy is seemingly little suggestive of a sea-dog--was originally the _Three Good_ or the _Three God_, for the figure's sceptre is tipped by the three circles of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word.
In Berkshire the country people, like the Germans with their _drei_, say _dree_ instead of _three_, and thus it may be that the Apples Three, or the Apollos Three (for the ancients recognised Three Apollos--the celestial, the terrestrial, and the infernal) were worshipped at Apple_dre_, or Apple_dore_ opposite Barnstable, and at Apple_dur_ Comb or Apple_dur_well, a manor in the parish of Godshill, Isle of Wight.
[Illustration: FIG.
422.--From _A New Description of England_.]
English "Appletons" are numerous, and at Derby is an Appletree which was originally Appletrefelde: it is known that this Apple-Tree-Field contained an apple-tree which was once the meeting place of the Hundred or Shire division, and it is probable that the two Apuldre's of Devon served a similar public use.
As late as 1826 it was the custom, at Appleton in Cheshire, "at the time of the wake to clip and adorn an old hawthorn which till very lately stood in the middle of the town.
This ceremony is called the bawming (dressing) of Appleton Thorn".
[779] Doubtless Appleton Thorn was originally held in the same estimation as the monument bushes of Ireland, which are found for the most part in the centre of road crossings.
According to the anonymous author of _Irish Folklore_,[780] these ancient and solitary hawthorns are held in immense veneration, and it would be considered profanation to destroy them or even remove any of their branches: from these fairy and phooka-haunted sites, a lady dressed in a long flowing white robe was often supposed to issue, and "the former dapper elves are often seen hanging from or flitting amongst their branches".
We have in an earlier chapter considered the connection between spikes and spooks, and it is obvious that the White Lady or Alpa of the white thorn or aubespine is the Banshee or Good Woman Shee:-She told them of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, Where Merlin,[781] _by the enchanted thorn-tree_ sleeps.
In the forest of Breceliande--doubtless part of the fairy Hy Breasil--was a famed Fountain of Baranton or Berendon into which children threw tribute to the invocation, "Laugh, then, fountain of Berendon, and I will give thee a pin".
[782] The first pin was presumably a spine or thorn; the first flower is the black-thorn; on 1st January (the first day of the first month), people in the North of England used to construct a blackthorn globe and stand hand in hand in a circle round the fire chanting in a monotonous voice the words "Old Cider," prolonging each syllable to its utmost extent.
I think that Old Cider must have been Thurgut, and that in all probability the initial _Ci_ was _sy_, the ubiquitous endearing diminutive of pucksy, _pixie_, etc.
According to Maundeville, "white thorn hath many virtues; for he that beareth a branch thereof upon him, no thunder nor tempest may hurt him; and no evil spirit may enter in the house in which it is, or come to the place that it is in": Maundeville refers to this magic thorn as the aubespine, which is possibly a corruption of _alba_ thorn, or it may be of Hob's thorn.
In modern French _aube_ means the dawn.
We have seen that there are some grounds for surmising that Brawn Street and Bryanstone Square (Marylebone) mark the site of a Branstone or fairy stone, in which connection it may be noted that until recently: "near this spot was a little cluster of cottages called 'Apple Village'":[783] in the same neighbourhood there are now standing to-day a Paradise Place, a Paradise Passage, and Great Barlow Street, which may quite possibly mark the site of an original _Bar low_ or _Bar lea_.
Apple Village was situated in what was once the Manor of Tyburn or Tyburnia: according to the "Confession" of St. Patrick the saint's grandfather came from "a village of Tabernia,"[784] and it is probable that the Tyburn brook, upon the delta of which stands St. Peter's (Westminster), was originally named after the Good Burn or Oberon of Bryanstone and the neighbouring Brawn Street.
The word _tabernacle_ is traceable to the same roots as _tavern_, French _auberge_, English _inn_.
Around the effigy of Thurgut will be noted either seven or eight M's: in mediæval symbolism the letter M stood usually for Mary; the parish church of Bryanstone Square is dedicated to St. Mary, and we find the Virgin very curiously associated with one or more apple-trees.
According to the author of _St.
Brighid and Her Times_: "Bardism offers nothing higher in zeal or deeper in doctrine than the _Avallenan_, or Song of the Apple-trees, by the Caledonian Bard, Merddin Wyllt.
He describes his Avallenan as being one Apple-tree, the Avallen, but in another sense it was 147 apple-trees, that is, mystically (taking the sum of the digits, 1 4 7 equal 12), the sacred Druidic number.
Thus in his usual repeated description of the Avallen as one apple-tree, he writes:-Sweet apple-tree!
tree of no rumour, That growest by the stream, without overgrowing the circle.
Again, as 147 apple trees-Seven sweet apple-trees, and seven score Of equal age, equal height, equal length, equal bulk; Out of the bosom of mercy they sprung up.
Again-They who guard them are one curly-headed virgin."
In fairy-tale the apple figures as the giver of rejuvenescence and new life, in Celtic mythology it figures as the magic Silver Branch which corresponds to Virgil's Golden Bough.
According to Irvine the word _bran_ meant not only the Druidical system, but was likewise applied to individual Druids who were termed _brans_: I have already suggested that this "purely mystical and magical name" is our modern _brain_; according to all accounts the Druids were eminently men of brain, whence it is possible that the fairy-tale "Voyage of _Bran_" and the Voyage of St. Brandon were originally brainy inventions descriptive of a mental voyage of which any average brain is still capable.
The Voyage of Bran relates how once upon a time Bran the son of Fearbal[785] heard strange music behind him, and so entrancing were the sounds that they lulled him into slumber: when he awoke there lay by his side a branch of silver so resplendent with white blossom that it was difficult to distinguish the flowers from the branch.
With this fairy talisman, which served not only as a passport but as food and drink, and as a maker of music so soothing that mortals who heard it forgot their woes and even ceased to grieve for their kinsmen whom the Banshee had taken, Bran voyaged to the Islands called Fortunate, wherein he perceived and heard many strange and beautiful things:-A branch of the Apple Tree from Emain I bring like those one knows; Twigs of white silver are on it, Crystal brows with blossoms.
There is a distant isle Around which sea horses glisten: A fair course against the white swelling surge, Four feet uphold it.
In Wales on 1st January children used to carry from door to door a holly-decked apple into which were fixed three twigs--presumably an emblem of the Apple Island or Island of Apollo, supported on the three sweet notes of the Awen or creative Word.
Into this tripod apple were stuck oats:[786] the effigy of St. Bride which used to be carried from door to door consisted of a sheaf of oats; in Anglo-Saxon _oat_ was _ate_, plural _aten_, and it is evident that oats were peculiarly identified with the Maiden.
In Cormac's _Adventure in the Land of Promise_ there again enters the magic Silver Branch, with three golden apples on it: "Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded or women in childbed or folk in sickness would fall asleep, at the melody when that branch was shaken".
The Silver Branch which seems to have been sometimes that of the Apple, sometimes of the Whitethorn, corresponds to the mistletoe or Three-berried and Three-leaved Golden Bough: until recent years a bunch of Mistletoe or "All Heal"--the essential emblem of Yule--used to be ceremoniously elevated to the proclamation of a general pardon at York or Ebor: it is still the symbol of an affectionate _cumber_ or gathering together of kinsmen.
King Camber is said to have been the son of Brutus; he was therefore, seemingly, the young St. Nicholas or the Little Crowned King, and in Cumberland the original signification of the "All Heal" would appear to have been traditionally preserved.
In _Tales and Legends of the English Lakes_ Mr. Wilson Armistead records that many strange tales are still associated with the Druidic stones, and in the course of one of these alleged authentic stories he prints the following Invocation:-_1st Bard_.
Being great who reigns alone, Veiled in clouds unseen unknown; Centre of the vast profound, Clouds of darkness close Thee round.
_3rd Bard_.
Spirit who no birth has known, Springing from Thyself alone, We thy living emblem show In the mystic mistletoe, Springs and grows without a root, Yields without flowers its fruit; Seeks from earth no mother's care, Lives and blooms the child of air.
_4th Bard_.
Thou dost Thy mystic circle trace Along the vaulted blue profound, And emblematic of Thy race We tread our mystic circle round.
_Chorus_.
Shine upon us mighty God, Raise this drooping world of ours; Send from Thy divine abode Cheering sun and fruitful showers.
In view of the survival elsewhere of Druidic chants and creeds which are unquestionably ancient, it is quite possible that in the above we have a genuine relic of prehistoric belief: that the ideas expressed were actually held might without difficulty be proved from many scattered and independent sources; that Cumberland has clung with extraordinary tenacity to certain ancient forms is sufficiently evident from the fact that even to-day the shepherds of the _Borrow_dale district tell their sheep in the old British numerals, _yan_, _tyan_, _tethera_, _methera_,[787] etc.
The most famous of all English apple orchards was the Avalon of Somerset which as we have seen was encircled by the little river Brue: with Avalon is indissolubly associated the miraculous Glastonbury Thorn, and that Avalon[788] was essentially British and an _abri_ of King Bru or Cynbro is implied by its alternative title of Bride Hay or Bride Eye: not only is St. Brighid said to have resided at Avalon or the Apple Island, but among the relics long faithfully preserved there were the blessed Virgin's scrip, necklace, distaff, and bell.
The fact that the main streets of Avalon form a perfect cross may be connoted with Sir John Maundeville's statement that while on his travels in the East he was shown certain apples: "which they call apples of Paradise, and they are very sweet and of good savour.
And though you cut them in ever so many slices or parts across or end-wise, you will always find in the middle the figure of the holy cross.
"[789] That Royston, near the site of "Heaven's Walls," was identified with the Rood, Rhoda, or Rose Cross is evident from the ancient forms of the name Crux Roies (1220), Croyrois (1263), and Villa de Cruce Rosia (1298): legend connects the place with a certain Lady Roese, "about whom nothing is known," and probability may thus associate this mysterious Lady with Fair Rosamond or the Rose of the World.
In the Middle Ages, The Garden of the Rose was merely another term for Eden, Paradise, Peter's Orchard, or Heaven's Walls, and the Lady of the Rose Garden was unquestionably the same as the Ruler of the Isles called Fortunate---a Queen So beautiful that with one single beam Of her great beauty, all the country round Is rendered shining.
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 illustrated 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.
[Illustration: 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 assumed 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 assume 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 associated 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.
[Illustration: 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] assuredly 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 Janus or St. Peter.
[Illustration: 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 massacred their unsuspecting hosts, a Bard relates that-The glad repository of the world was amply supplied.
Well did Eideol prepare at _the spacious 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 assumed 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] [Illustration: 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 peacock 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 balls 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 peacock 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 assume that the apple was its only or peculiar nourishment.
The Mystic Boughs illustrated 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 pass 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 passed 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 leafage.
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 space 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 God 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 God and Love in such fashion, no harm can come to any, for God and Love are one.
God loves sense and chivalry; and Love holds them not in despite.
God hates pride and false seeming; and Love loveth loyalty.
God praiseth honour and courtesy; and fair Love disdaineth them not.
God lendeth His ear to prayer; neither doth Love refuse it her heart.
God 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 vassals of Love, and so you hold truly to them, God 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 principal--it is the gift of God.
"[800] [Illustration: 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 Sussex: 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 _verbum_.
The Rev.
Professor Skeat derives the words _human_ and _humane_ from _humus_ the ground, whence the Latin _homo_, 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 _père_.
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 ejaculating "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 titles 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 Goddess Nehellenia or New Helen of London.
Nehellenia 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 Nehellenia:[805] Nelly, however, is no corruption but a variant of Ellen.
The Goddess 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 title 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 associated with Allen, _e.g._, Peterhead in Scotland, near Ellon, and Petrockstowe or Padstowe in Cornwall is near Helland on the river Allan.
[Illustration: FIG.
431.--Sixteenth Century Printer's Ornament.]
In the emblem herewith the _alan_ or cheery old Pater is associated 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 substitute 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 illustrated from Kanauj may be connoted with Minnussinchen or the little Sinjohn of Tartary.
[Illustration: 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.
"Mediæval 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 Assyrian Zodiac: these seventy-two dodecans I have already connoted with the seventy-two stones constituting 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 passed 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] 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 Strasse 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 pronounced 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 archæologist, 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 illustrated _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 illustrated 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 associated 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.
[Illustration: FIG.
433.--From _Earthwork of England_ (A. Hadrian Allcroft).]
[Illustration: 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 illustrated 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.
[Illustration: FIG.
435.--From _The Word in the Pattern_ (Watts, Mrs. G.
F.).]
The Pixie's Garden illustrated in Fig.
433 (A) obviously consists of four T's centred to one base and the elaborate svastika, illustrated 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] [Illustration: FIG.
436.--Celtic Emblem.
From _Myths of Crete_ (Mackenzie, D.
A.).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
437 and 438.--Mediæval 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 'God 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 God," "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 illustrated 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 title _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 illustrated in Fig.
440, and this the reader will compare with Fig.
439, representing a terra-cotta tablet found by Schliemann at Troy.
[Illustration: FIG.
439.--From _Troy_ (Schliemann).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
440 and 441.--Mediæval 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 illustrated 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.
[Illustration: 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 illustrated, which is unmistakeably a _Rosa mystica_.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 hell 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 God; 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 ass: 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."
"Brecilicn etait une de ces forets sacrees qu'habitaient les pretresses du druidisme dans le Gaule; son nom et celui de sa vallee l'attesteraient a defaut d'autre temoignage; les noms de lieux sont les plus surs garans des evenemens passés."
--_Cf._ Notes on _The Mabinogion_ (Everyman's Library), p. 383-90.
[783] Mitton, G. E., _Hampstead and Marylebone_.
[784] Probably the Glamorganshire "Tabernae Amnis," now Bont y Von.
[785] Fearbal or sometimes Fibal.
The "Merry Devil" associated in popular tradition with Edmonton beyond Islington was known by the name of Peter Fabell: I think he was originally "the Angel," and that the names Fearbal or Fabell meant _Fairy or Fay Beautiful_.
[786] "Morien," _Light of Britannia_, p. 61.
[787] I am inclined to think that the _eena deena dina dux_ of childrens' games may be a similarly ancient survival.
[788] There was also an Aballo, now Avalon, in France: there is also near Dodona in Albania an Avlona or Valona.
A correspondent of _The Westminster Gazette_ points out that: "Valona is but a derivative of the Greek (both ancient and modern) _Balanos_.
This is clearer still if you realise that the Greek _b_ is (and no doubt in ancient days also was) pronounced like an English _v_: thus, _valanos_."
[789] _Travels in the East_, p. 152.
[790] According to Malory: "Merlin made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship."
--_Morte D'Arthur_, Book xiv.
11.
[791] Fenner, W., _Pasquils Palinodia_, 1619.
[792] _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 401.
[793] _Ibid._, 402.
[794] Aneurin's _Gododin_.
[795] _Cf._ "Laganiensis," _Irish Folklore_, p. 35.
[796] _Cf._ _New Light on Renaissance_, p. 169.
[797] Birdwood, Sir G., preface to _Symbolism of East and West_, p. xvi.
[798] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, ii., 402.
[799] _Cf._ _Aucassin and Nicoletté_, Everyman's Library.
[800] Fraser, J.
B., _Persia_, p. 129.
[801] At Looe in Cornwall the site of what was apparently the ancient forum or Fore street, is now known as "Hannafore".
Opposite is St. George's Islet.
The connection between George and Hanover suggests that St. George was probably the patron saint of Hanover.
[802] Hardwick, C., _Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore_, p. 159.
[803] The _lungs_ are the organs of _haleine_.
[804] Courtney, Miss M. E., _Cornish Feasts_, p. 3.
[805] Johnson, W., _Folk Memory_, p. 212.
[806] _Cf._ _ibid._, p. 211.
[807] The authorities are perplexed by this place-name.
"O. E. _Llynn_ means usually a torrent running over a rock which does not exist here.
Its later meaning, a pool, is not recorded until 1577".
[808] The Elsdale Street at Hackney which is found in close contact with Paradise Passage, Well Street, and Paragon Road may mark an original Elves or Ellie's Dale.
Leading to "The Grove" is _Pigwell_ Passage.
[809] _Ante_, p. 323.
[810] _Cf._ Hardwick, C., _Trad.
Super.
and Folklore_, p. 159.
[811] This word means evidently much more than, as supposed, _bridge builder_.
[812] The Rev.
Baring-Gould quotes portions of this epistle in his _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, but its contents are evidently distasteful to him as he breaks off: "I may be spared further extracts from this extraordinary letter which proceeds to describe the church in which Prester John worships, by enumerating the precious stones of which it is constructed, and their special virtues": as a matter of fact, the account is an agreeable fairy-tale or fable which is no more extravagant than the account of the four-square, cubical, golden-streeted New Jerusalem attributed to the Revelations of St. John.
[813] Chambers' _Encyclopædia_, viii., 398.
[814] Guest, Dr., _Origines Celtica_, ii., 182.
[815] _Cf._ Schliemann, _Troy_.
[816] _Cornish Feasts_, p. 76.
[817] _Cf.
ante_, p. 345, Fig.
183, No.
10.
[818] Aynsley, Mrs. Murray, _Symbolism of the East and West_, p. 60.
[819] _The Word in the Pattern_.
CHAPTER XIII.
ENGLISH EDENS At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days.
Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts.
Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars--the stars that shone in Eden, and will flash again in Paradise.--Dr.
J. FORT NEWTON.
The name under which Jupiter was worshipped in Crete is not yet deciphered, but as we are told that the favourite abode of King Jou at Gnossus was on Mount Olympus where in its delightful recesses he held his court, and administered patriarchal justice; and as we are further told by Julius Firmicus that: "vainly the Cretans to this day adore the tumulus of Jou," it is fairly obvious that, however many historic King Jou's there may have been, the archetypal Jou was a lord of the tumulus or dun.
The ancient Irish were accustomed to call _any_ hill or artificial mound under which lay vaults, a _shee_, which also is the generic term for fairy: similarly we have noted a connection between the term _rath_--or dun--and _wraith_.
Although fairies were partial to banks, braes, purling brooks, brakes, and bracken, they particularly loved to congregate in duns or raths, and their rapid motions to and fro these headquarters were believed to create a noise "somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive".
I have little doubt that all hills, _bryns_, or barrows were regarded not only as _bruen_, or breasts, but as ethereal beehives, and the superstitions still associated with bees are evidence that bees themselves were once deemed sacred.
There are upwards of a thousand localities in Ireland alone where the word _rath_, _raw_, _rah_, _ray_, or _ra_ marks the site of a fairy rath,[820] and without going so far as to assert that every British -_dun_ or -_ton_ was a fairy _dun_ or _doun_ further investigation will probably establish an unsuspected multitude of Dunhills or Edens.
[Illustration: FIG.
444.--Birs Nimroud.]
We have seen that in Ireland _fern_ meant anciently _anything good_, and also in all probability _fer en_ the Fires or Fairies: at the romantic hill of Cnock-Firinn or the _Hill of firinn_ was supposed to dwell a fairy chief named Donn Firineach, _i.e._, Donn the Truthful or the Truthteller;[821] evidently, therefore, this Don was a counterpart and consort of Queen Vera, and as he is reputed to have come from Spain his name may be connoted with the Spanish _don_ which, like the Phoenician _adon_, is a generic term meaning _the lord_.
With "Generous Donn the King of Faery" may be connoted the Jewish Adonai, a plural form of _Adon_ "lord" combined with the pronoun of the first person: when reading the Scriptures aloud the Jews rather than utter the super-sacred word Jhuh, substitute Adonai, and in Jewry Adonai is thus a title of the Supreme Being.
Among the Phoenicians Adon or _the lord_ was specially applied to the King of Heaven or the Sun and that sacred Nineveh was essentially a dunhill is evidenced by Fig.
444 With Adon may be connoted Adonis, the lovely son of Myrrha and Kinyras, whose name has been absorbed into English as meaning any marvellously well-favoured youth: prior to the festivals of Adonis it was customary to grow forced gardens in earthen or _silver_ pots, and there would thus seem to have been a close connection in ideas between our English "_whytepot_ queen" or maiden with the pyramid of silver, and with the symbolic Gardens of Adonis or Eden as grown in Phrygia and Egypt.
Skeat connotes the word maiden--which is an earlier form than _maid_--with the Cornish _maw_, a boy: if, however, we read _ma_ as _mother_ the word _maiden_ becomes _Mother Iden_, and I have little doubt that the Maiden of mythology and English harvest-homes was the feminine Adonis.
Adonis was hymned as the Shepherd of the Twinkling Stars; I have surmised that Long Meg of the seventy-two Daughters was the Mighty Maiden of the Stars, whence it is interesting to find Skeat connoting _maiden_ with Anglo-Saxon _magu_, a kinsman: that Long Meg was the All Mother whence _mag_ or _mac_ came to mean _child of_ has already been suggested.
Not only does Long Meg of Cumberland stand upon Maiden Way, but there is in the same district a Maidenmoor probably like Maidenhead or Maidenheath, a heath or mead dedicated to the Maid.
Our dictionaries define the name May as a contraction of either Mary or Margaret, _i.e._, Meg: in the immediate neighbourhood of Long Meg is another circle called Mayborough, of which the vallum or enclosure is composed of stones taken from the beds of the Eamount or Eden rivers; in the centre of Mayborough used to stand four magnificent monoliths probably representative of the four _deacons_ or Good Kings who supported the Whytepot Queen.
There is a seat called St. Edans in Ireland close to Ferns where, as will be remembered, is St. Mogue's Well: in Lincolnshire is a Maidenwell-_cum-Farworth_, and at Dorchester is a Haydon Hill in the close proximity of Forstone and _Goodman_stone.
That this Haydon was the _Good Man_ is implied by the stupendous monument near by known as Mew Dun, Mai Dun, or Maiden Castle: this _chef d'oeuvre_ of prehistoric engineering, generally believed to be the greatest earthwork in Britain, is an oblong camp extending 1000 yards from east to west with a width of 500 yards, and it occupies an area of 120 acres:[822] entered by four gates the work itself is described as puzzling as a series of mazes, and to reach the interior one is compelled to pass through a labyrinth of defences.
The name Dorchester suggests a Droia or Troy camp, and I have little doubt that the labyrinthine Maiden was a colossal Troy Town or Drayton.
Among the many Draytons in England is a Drayton-Parslow, which suggests that it stood near or upon a Parr's low or a Parr's lea: out of great Barlow Street, Marylebone, leads Paradise Place and Paradise Passage: there is a Drayton Park at Highbury, and in the immediate proximity an Eden Grove and Paradise Road: there was a Troy Town where Kensington Palace now stands,[823] and in all likelihood there was another one at Drayton near Hanwell and Hounslow.
That Hounslow once contained an _onslow_ or _ange hill_ seems to me more probable than that it was merely the "burial mound" of an imaginary _Hund_ or _Hunda_: in Domesday Hounslow figures as Honeslow which may be connoted with Honeybourne at Evesham and Honeychurch in Devon.
With regard to the latter it has been observed: "The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of _Huna_": the official explanation of "Honeybourne" is--"brook with honey sweet water," but it is more probable that Queen Una was reputed to dwell there.
That Una was not merely the creation of Spenser is evidenced from the fact that in Ireland "Una is often named by the peasantry as regent of the preternatural _Sheog_ tribes":[824] at St. Mary's-in-the-Marsh, Thanet, is a Honeychild Manor and an Old Honeychild: with the Three White Balls at Iona it may be noted that on the summit of Hydon Heath (Surrey) is a place marked Hydon's Ball.
At a distance of "about 110 yards" from Mayborough is another circle known as Arthur's Round _Table_: a mile from Dunstable is a circular camp known as Maiden Bower, whence it is probable that Dunstable meant either Dun staple (market), or that the circular camp there was a "table" of "generous Donn".
That the term "Maiden" used here and elsewhere means _maiden_ as we now understand it may be implied from the famous Maiden Stone in Scotland: this sculptured Longstone, now measuring 10 feet in height, bears upon it the mirror and comb which were essentially the emblems of the Mairymaid.
There is an eminence called Maiden Bower near Durham which figures alternatively as _Dun_holme; Durham is supposed to mean--"wild beast's home or lair," but I see no more reason to assign this ferocious origin to Durham than, say, to Dorchester or Doracestria: Ma, the mistress of Mount Ida, was like Britomart[825] esteemed to be the Mother of all beasts or _brutes_, and particularly of _deer_; Diana is generally represented with a deer, and the woody glens of many-crested Ida were indubitably a lair of forest brutes-Thus Juno spoke, and to her throne return'd, While they to spring-abounding Ida's heights, Wild nurse of forest beasts, pursued their way.
[826] Yorkshire, or Eboracum and the surrounding district, the habitat of the Brigantes, was known anciently as Deira: by the Romans Doracestria, or Dorchester was named Durnovaria upon which authority comments: "In the present name there is nothing which represents _varia_, so that it really seems to mean 'fist camp'"; doubtless, fisticuffs, boxing-matches, and many other kind of Trojan game were once held at Doracestria as at every other Troy or Drayton.
King Priam, the Mystic King of Troy, is said to have had fifty sons and daughters: the same family is assigned not only to St. Brychan of Cambria, but also to King Ebor, or Ebrauc of York, whence in all probability the Brigantes who inhabited Yorkshire and Cumberland were followers of one and the same Priam, Prime, Broom, Brahm, or Brahma: the name Abraham or Ibrahim is defined as meaning "father of a multitude".
The Kentish Broom Park near Patrixbourne whereby is Hearts Delight, Maydeacon House, and Kingston is on Heden Downs, and immediately adjacent is a Dennehill and Denton: at Dunton Green, near Sevenoaks, the presence of a Mount Pleasant implies that this Dunton was an Eden Town.
There is an Edenkille, or Eden Church at Elgin, and at Dudley is a Haden Cross, supposed to have derived its title "from a family long resident here": it would be preferable and more legitimate to assign this family name to the site and describe them as the "De Haden's".
There is a Haddenham at Ely, and at Ely Place, Holborn, opposite St. Andrews, is Hatton Garden: I suggest that Sir Christopher Hatton, like the Hadens of Haden Cross, derived his name from his home, and not _vice versa_.
In the Hibernian county of Clare is an Eden Vale: Clare Market in London before being pulled down was in the parish of St. Clement _Dane_, here also stood Dane's Inn, and within a stone's throw is the church of St. Dunstan.
The numerous St. Dunstans were probably once Dane stones, or Dun stanes, and the sprightly story of St. Dunstan seizing the nose of a female temptress with the tongs must be relegated to the Apocrypha.
In the opinion of Sir Laurence Gomme the predominant cult in Roman London was undoubtedly that of Diana, for the evidence in favour of this goddess includes not only an altar, but other finds connected with her worship: Sir Laurence goes even further than this, stating his conviction that "Diana practically absorbed the religious expression of London":[827] that London was a _Lunadun_ has already been suggested.
It has always been strongly asserted by tradition that St. Paul's occupies the site of a church of Diana: if this were so the Diana stones on the summit of Ludgate Hill would have balanced the Dun stones on the opposing bank of the river Fleet, or Bagnigge.
We have seen that _mam_ in Gaelic meant a gently sloping hill; the two dunhills rising from the river Fleet, or Bagnigge, were thus probably regarded like the Paps of Anu at Killarney, as twin breasts of the Maiden: there are parallel "Maiden Paps" near Berriedale (Caithness), others near Sunderland, and others at Roxburgh.
According to Stow the famous cross at Cheapside was decorated with a statue of Diana, the goddess, to which the adjoining Cathedral had been formerly dedicated: prior to the Reformation, two jets of water--like the jets in Fig.
44 (p. 167)--prilled from Diana's naked breast "but now decayed".
By Claremarket and the church of St. Clement Dane stood Holywell Street, somewhat north of which was yet another well called--according to Stow--Dame Annis the _Clear_, and not far from it, but somewhat West, was also one other _clear_ water called Perilous Pond.
This "perilous" was probably once _peri lass, i.e., perry lass_, or _pure lass_, and the neighbouring Clerkenwell (although the city clerks or _clerken_ may in all likelihood have congregated there on summer evenings), was once seemingly sacred to the same type of phairy as the Irish call a _cluricanne_.
[828] The original Clerken, or Cluricanne, was in all probability the resplendent _clarus_, clear, shining, _Glare_ King, or _Glory_ King: but it is equally likely that the -_ken_ of Clerken was the endearing diminutive _kin_, as in Lambkin.
That St. Clare was adored by her disciples is clear from _The Golden Legend_, where among other interesting data we are told: "She was crowned with a crown right clear shining that the obscurity of the night was changed into clearness of midday": we are further told that once upon a time as a certain friar was preaching in her presence: "a right fair child was to fore St. Clare, and abode there a great part of the sermon".
It is thus permissible to assume that this marvellous holy woman, whose doctrine shall "enlumine all the world," was originally depicted in company of the customary Holy Child, or the Little Glory King.
The original Clerken Well stood in what is now named Ray Street, and quite close to it is Braynes Row; not far distant was Brown's Wood.
[829] The name Sinclair implies an order or a tribe of Sinclair followers, and that the St. Dunstan by St. Clement's Dane and Claremarket was something more than a monk is obvious from the tradition that "Our Lord shewed miracles for him _ere he was born_": the marvel in point is that on a certain Candlemas Day the candle of his Mother Quendred[830] miraculously burned full bright so that others came and lighted their tapers at the taper of St. Dunstan's mother; the interpretation placed upon this marvel was that her unborn child should give light to all England by his holy living.
[831] [Illustration: FIG.
445.--Gaulish.
From Akerman.]
As recorded in _The Golden Legend_ the life of poor St. Clare was one long dolorous great moan and sorrow: it is mentioned, however, that she had a sister Agnes and that these two sisters loved marvellously together.
We may thus assume that the celestial twins were Ignis, _fire_ and Clare, _light_: _Agnes_ is the Latin for _lamb_, and this symbol of Innocence is among the two or three out of lost multitudes which have been preserved by the Christian Church.
In the illustration herewith the lambkin, in conjunction with a star, appears upon a coin of the Gaulish people whose chief town was Agatha: its real name, according to Akerman, was Agatha Tyke, and its foundation has been attributed both to the Rhodians and the Phoceans.
Agatha is Greek for _good_, and _tyke_ meant fortune or good luck: the effigy is described as being a bare head of Diana to the right and without doubt Diana, or the divine Una, was typified both by _ignis_ the fire, and by _agnes_ the lamb: in India Agni is represented riding on a male _agnes_, and in Christian art the Deity was figured as a ram.
[Illustration: FIG.
446.--Agni.]
[Illustration: FIG.
447.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
At the Cornish town of St. Enns, St. Anns, or St. Agnes, the name of St. Agnes--a paragon of maiden virtue--is coupled with a Giant Bolster, a mighty man who is said to have held possession of a neighbouring hill, sometimes known as Bury-anack: at the base of this hill exists a very interesting and undoubtedly most ancient earthwork known as "The Bolster".
[832] As Anak meant _giant_,[833] Bury Anack was seemingly the _abri_, _brugh_, _bri_, or fairy palace of this particular Anak, and if we spell Bolster with an e he emerges at once into Belstar, the _Beautiful Star_ who is represented in association with Agnes on page 719: probably the maligned Bolster of Cornwall had another of his abris at Bellister Castle on the Tyne, now a crumbling mass of ruins.
Some accounts mention the Clerkenwell pool of Annis the Clear as being that of Agnes the Clear: opposite the famous Angel of this neighbourhood is Claremont Square, and about half a mile eastward is Shepherdess Walk; that the Shepherdess of this walk was Diane, _i.e.,_ Sinclair the counterpart of Adonis, the Shepherd of the twinkling stars, is somewhat implied by Peerless Street, which leads into Shepherdess Walk.
Perilous Pool at Clerkenwell was sometimes known as Peerless Pool: it has been seen that the hags or fairies were associated with this Islington district which still contains a Paradise Passage, and of both "Perilous" and "Peerless" I think the correct reading should be _peri lass_; it will be remembered that the peris were quite familiar to England as evidenced by the feathery clouds or "perry dancers," and the numerous Pre Stones and Perry Vales.
[834] In Red Cross Street, Clerkenwell, are or were Deane's Gardens; at Clarence Street, Islington, the name Danbury Street implies the existence either there or elsewhere of a Dan barrow.
Opposite Clare Market and the churches of St. Dunstan and St. Clement Dane is situated the Temple of which the circular church, situated in Tanfield Court,[835] is dedicated to St. Anne: St. Anne, the mother of St. Mary, is the patron saint of Brittany, where she has been identified with Ma or Cybele, the Magna Mater of Mount Ida; that Anna was the consort of Joachim or the Joy King I do not doubt, and in her aspect of a Fury or Black Virgin she was in all probability the oak-haunting Black Annis of Leicestershire: "there was one flabby eye in her head".
In view of the famous round church of St. Mary the Virgin it is permissible to speculate whether the "small circular hut of stone," in which Black Mary of Black Mary's Hole was reputed to have dwelt on the banks of the Fleet, Bagnigge or Holeburn (now Holborn) was or was not the original Eye dun of the Pixy, or Big Nikke.
The emblems associated with the Temple and its circular church are three; the Flying Horse or Pegasus; two men or _twain_ riding on a single horse (probably the Two Kings) and the Agnus Dei: in the emblem herewith this last is standing on a dun whence are flowing the four rivers of Eden.
The lamb was essentially an emblem of St. John who, in Art, is generally represented with it; whence it is significant that in Celtic the word for lamb is identical with the name Ion, the Welsh being _oen_, the Cornish _oin_, the Breton _oan_, the Gaelic _uan_, and the Manx _eayn_.
That Sinjohn was always _sunshine_ and the _sheen_, never apparently darkness, is implied by the Basque words _egun_ meaning _day_, and Agandia or Astartea meaning Sunday.
The Basque for _God_ is _jainco_, the Ugrian was _jen_, and the Basque _jain_, meaning _lord_ or _master_, is evidently synonymous with the Spanish _don_ or _donna_.
[Illustration: FIG.
448.--Divine Lamb, with a Circular Nimbus, not Cruciform, Marked with the Monogram of Christ, and the [Greek: A] and [Greek: Ô].
Sculptured on a Sarcophagus in the Vatican.
The earliest ages of Christianity.
From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
In addition to St. Annes opposite St. Dunstans, and St. Clement Dane there is a church of St. Anne in Dean Street, Soho: Ann of Ireland was alternatively Danu, and it is clear from many evidences that the initial _d_ or _t_ was generally adjectival.
The Cornish for _down_ or dune is _oon_, and Duke was largely correct when he surmised in connection with St. Anne's Hill, Avebury: "I cannot help thinking that from Diana and Dian were struck off the appellations Anna and Ann, and that the _feriæ_, or festival of the goddess, was superseded by the fair, as now held, of the saint.
I shall now be told that the fane of the hunting goddess would never have been seated on this high and bare hill, that the Romans would have given her a habitation amidst the woods and groves, but here Callimachus comes to my aid.
In his beautiful Hymn on Diana he feigns her to entreat her father Jupiter, 'also give me _all_ hills and mountains'."
Not only is Diana (Artemis) made to say "give me all hills and mountains," but Callimachus continues, "for rarely will Artemis go down into the cities": hence it is probable that all denes, duns, and downs were dedicated to Diana.
In Armenia, Maundeville mentions having visited a city on a mountain seven miles high named Dayne which was founded by Noah; near by is the city of Any or Anni, in which he says were one thousand churches.
Among the rock inscriptions here illustrated, which are attributed to the Jews when migrating across Sinai from Egypt, will be noticed the name Aine prefixed by a thau cross: the mountain rocks of the Sinai Peninsular bear thousands of illegible inscriptions which from time to time fall down--as illustrated--in the ravines; by some they are attributed to the race who built Petra.
[836] I am unable to offer any suggestion as to how this Roman lettering AINE finds itself in so curious a milieu.
[Illustration: FIG.
449.--View of Wady Mokatteb from the S. E. From _The One Primeval Language_ (Forster, O.).]
Speaking of the bleak moorlands of Penrith (the _pen ruth?_), where are found the monuments of Long Meg and of Mayborough, Fergusson testily observes: "No one will now probably be found seriously to maintain that the long stone row at Shap was a temple either of the Druids or of anyone else.
At least if these ancient people thought a single or even a double row of widely-spaced stones stretching to a mile and a half across a bleak moor was a proper form for a place to worship in, they must have been differently constituted from ourselves[837]."
Indubitably they were; and so too must have been the ancient Greeks: the far-famed Mount Cynthus, whence Apollo was called Cynthus, is described by travellers as "an ugly hill" which crosses the island of Delos obliquely; it is not even a mountain, but "properly speaking is nothing but a ridge of granite".
I am told that Glastonbury--the Avalon, the Apple Orchard, the Sacred Eden of an immeasurable antiquity--is disappointing, and that nowadays little of any interest is to be seen there.
"Donn's House," the gorgeous _bri_ or palace of generous Donn the King of Faery, is in reality no better than a line of sandhills in the Dingle Peninsula, Kerry; of the inspiring Tipperary I know nothing, but can sympathise with the prosaic Governor of the Isle of Man, who a century or so ago reported that practically every dun in Manxland was crowned with a cairn which seemed "nothing but the rubbish of Nature thrown into barren and unfruitful heaps".
"Miserable churl" sang the wily, enigmatic Bird, whose advice to the rich villein has been previously quoted,[838] "when you held me fast in your rude hand easy was it to know that I was no larger than a sparrow or a finch, and weighed less than half an ounce.
How then could a precious stone three ounces in weight be hid in my body?
When he had spoken thus he took his flight, and from that hour the orchard knew him no more.
_With the ceasing of his song the leaves withered from the pine, the garden became a little dry dust and the fountain forgot to flow._" Among the legends of the Middle Ages is one to the effect that Alexander, after conquering the whole world determined to find and compass Paradise.
After strenuous navigation the envoys of the great King eventually arrived before a vast city circled by an impenetrable wall: for three days the emissaries sailed along this wall without discovering any entrance, but on the third day a small window was discerned whence one of the inhabitants put out his head, and blandly inquired the purpose of the expedition; on being informed the inhabitant, nowise perturbed, replied: "Cease to worry me with your threats but patiently await my return".
After a wait of two hours the denizen of Heaven reappeared at the window and handed the envoys a gem of wonderful brilliance and colour which in size and shape exactly reproduced _the human eye_[839].
Alexander, not being able to make head or tail of these remarkable occurrences, consulted in secret all the wisest of the Jews and Greeks but received no suitable explanation; eventually, however, he found an aged Jew who elucidated the mystery of the hidden Land by this explanation: "O King, the city you saw is the abode of souls freed from their bodies, placed by the Creator in an inaccessible position on the confines of the world.
Here they await in peace and quiet the day of their judgment and resurrection, after which they shall reign forever with their Creator.
These spirits, anxious for the salvation of humanity, and wishing to preserve your happiness, have destined this stone as a warning to you to curb the unseemly desires of your ambition.
Remember that such insatiable desires merely end by enslaving a man, consuming him with cares and depriving him of all peace.
Had you remained contented with the inheritance of your own kingdom you would have reigned in peace and tranquillity, but now, not even yet satisfied with the conquest of enormous foreign possessions and wealth, you are weighed down with cares and danger."
The name of the aged Jew who furnished Alexander with this information is said to have been Papas, or Papias: Papas was an alternative name for the Phrygian Adonis, whence we may no doubt equate the old Adonis (_i.e._, Aidoneus, or Pluto?)
with the Aged Jew, or the Wandering Jew.
It has been seen that the legend of the Wandering Jew apparently originated at St. Albans: in France _montjoy_ was a generic term for herald, and I have little doubt that these Mountjoys were originally so termed as being the denizens of some sacred Mount.
There is a Mount Joy near Jerusalem, and there was certainly at least one in France: among the legends recorded in Layamon's _Brut_ is one relating to a Mont Giu and a wondrous Star: "From it came gleams terribly shining; the star is named in Latin, comet.
Came from the star a gleam most fierce; at this gleam's end was a dragon fair; from this dragon's mouth came gleams enow!
But twain there were mickle, unlike to the others; the one drew toward France, the other toward Ireland.
The gleam that toward France drew, it was itself bright enow; to _Munt-Giu_ was seen the marvellous token!
The gleam that stretched right west, it was disposed in seven beams.
"[840] It is probable that Chee Tor in the neighbourhood of Buxton, Bakewell,[841] and Haddon Hall, was once just as bogie a Mount as Munt-Giu: at Church_down_ in Gloucester is a Chosen Hill, which apparently was sacred to Sen Cho, and this hill was presumably the original church of Down; all sorts of "silly traditions" are said to hang around this spot, and the natives ludicrously claim themselves to be "the Chosen" People.
[Illustration: FIG.
450.--From _The Everyday Book_ (Hone, W.).]
Chee Tor at Buxton overlooks the river Wye, a name probably connected with _eye_, and with numerous _Ea_mounts, _Ey_tons, _Ea_tons, _How_dens, etc.
: that Eton in Bucks was an Eye Dun is inferable from the _ad montem_ ceremonies which used until recently to prevail at Salt Hill.
[842] In British, _hy_ or _ea_, as in Hy Breasil, Batters_ea_, Chels_ea_, etc., meant an island, and the ideal Eden was usually conceived and constructed in island form: if a natural "Eye Town" were not available it was customary to construct an artificial one by running a trench around some natural or artificial barrow.
The word _eye_ also means a shoot, whence we speak of the eye of a potato, and the standard Eyedun seems always to have possessed an eye of eyes in the form either of a tree, a well, or a tower: it was not unusual to surmount the Beltan fire or Tan-Tad with a tree; the favourite phare tree was a fir tree, in Provence the Yule log was preferably a pear tree.
It was anciently supposed that the earth was an island established upon the floods, and Homer preserves the belief of his time by referring to Oceanus as a river-stream:-And now, borne seaward from _the river stream_ _Of the Oceanus_, we plow'd again The spacious Deep, and reach'd th' Ææan Isle, Where, daughter of the dawn, Aurora takes Her choral sports, and whence the sun ascends.
[843] According to Josephus, the Garden of Eden "was watered by one river which ran round about the whole earth,[844] and was parted into four parts," and this immemorial tradition was expressed upon the circular and sacred cakes of ancient nations which were the forerunners of our Good Friday's Hot Cross Buns.
Associated with the pagan Eucharists here illustrated[845] will be noted Eros--whose name is at the base of _eucharist_--also what seemingly is the Old Pater.
In Egypt the cross cake was a hieroglyph for "civilised land," and was composed of the richest materials including milk and honey, the familiar attributes of Canaan or the Promised Land.
The remarkable earthwork cross at Banwell has no doubt some relation to the Alban cross on our Easter _bun_, Greek _boun_, and the so-termed Pixies' Garden illustrated in Fig.
433(A), probably was once permeated by the same phairy imagination as perceived Paradise in the dusty "Walls of Heaven," "Peter's Orchard," and "Johanna's Garden".
[Illustration: FIG.
451.--Love-Feast with Wine and Bread.
Relief in the Kircher Museum at Rome, presumably pagan.
After Roller, pl.
LIV.
7.]
[Illustration: FIG.
452.--A Pagan Love-Feast.
Now in the Lateran Museum.
From Roller, _Les Cata.
de Rome_, pl.
LIV.
The pagan character is assured by the winged Eros at the left.]
The name Piccadilly is assumed to have arisen because certain buns called piccadillies were there sold: the greater likelihood is that the bun took its title from Piccadilly.
This curious place-name, which commemorates the memory of a Piccadilly Hall, is found elsewhere, and is probably cognate with Pixey lea, _Poukelay_, and the legend PIXTIL, etc.
Opposite Down Street, Piccadilly, or Mayfair, there are still standing in the Green Park the evidences of what may once have been tumuli or duns, and the Buckden Hill by St. Agnes' Well in Hyde Park may, as is supposed, have been a den for bucks, or, as is not more improbable, a dun sacred to Big Adon:[846] leading to Buck Hill and St. Agnes' Well there is still a pathway marked on the Ordnance map Budge Walk, an implication seemingly that Bougie, or Bogie, was not unknown in the district.
We have connoted Rotten Row of _Hyde_ Park with Rotten Row Tower near Alnwick: this latter is situated on _Aidon_ Moor.
By _Down_ Street, Mayfair, is Hay Hill, at the foot of which flowed the Eye Brook, and this beck no doubt meandered past the modern Brick Street, and through the Brookfield in the Green Park where the fifteen joyful heydays of the Mayfair were once celebrated: whether the Eye Brook wandered through Eaton Square--the site of St. Peter's Church--I do not know, nor can I trace whether or not the "Eatons" hereabout are merely entitled from Eaton Hall in the Dukeries.
Each Eaton or island ton, certainly every sacred island, seems to have been deemed a "central boss of Ocean: that retreat a goddess holds,"[847] and this central boss appears to have been conceived indifferently or comprehensively as either a Cone, a Pyramid, a Beehive, or a Teat.
Wyclif, in his translation of the Bible, refers to Jerusalem as "the totehill Zyon," and there is little doubt that all teathills were originally cities or sites of peace: according to Cyprien Roberts: "The first basilicas, _placed generally upon eminences_, were called Domus Columbæ, dwellings of the dove, that is, of the Holy Ghost.
They caught the first rays of the dawn, and the last beams of the setting sun.
"[848] Everywhere in Britain the fays were popularly "gentle people," "good neighbours," and "men of peace": a Scotch name for Fairy dun or High Altar of the Lord of the Mound used to be--_sioth-dhunan_, from _sioth_ "peace," and _dun_ "a mound": this name was derived from the practice of the Druids "who were wont occasionally to retire to green eminences to administer justice, establish peace, and compose differences between contending parties.
As that venerable order taught a _saogle hal_, or World-beyond-the-present, their followers, when they were no more, fondly imagined that seats where they exercised a virtue so beneficial to mankind were still inhabited by them in their disembodied state".
[849] In Cornwall there is a famous well at Truce which is legendarily connected with Druidism:[850] Irish tradition speaks of a famous Druid named Trosdan; St. Columba is associated with a St. Trosdan;[851] at St. Vigeans in Scotland there is a stone bearing an inscription which the authorities transcribe "Drosten,"[852] probably all the dwellers on the Truce duns were entitled Trosdan,[853] and it is not unlikely that the romantic Sir Patrise of Westminster was originally Father Truce.
It has already been noted that _treus_ was Cornish for cross, that children cross their fingers as a sign of fainits or truce, and there is very little doubt that cruciform earthworks, such as Shanid, and cruciform duns such as Hallicondane in Thanet were truce duns.
The Tuatha de Danaan, or Children of Donn, who are supposed to have been the introducers of Druidism into Ireland, were said to have transformed into fairies, and the duns or raths of the Danaan are still denominated "gentle places".
[854] That the ancient belief in the existence of "gentle people" is still vivid, is demonstrated beyond question by the author of _The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_, who writes (1911): "The description of the Tuatha de Danaan in the 'Dialogue of the Elders' as 'sprites or fairies with corporeal or material forms, but endued with immortality,' would stand as an account of prevailing ideas as to the 'good people' of to-day".
[855] The generous Donn, the King of Faery, is obviously Danu, or Anu, or Aine, the Irish goddess of prosperity and abundance, for we are told that well she used to cherish the circle of the gods.
[856] At Knockainy, or the _Hill of Ainy_, Aine, whose name also occurs constantly on Gaulish inscriptions,[857] was until recent years worshipped by the peasants who rushed about carrying burning torches of hay: that Aine was Aincy, or _dear little aine_, is inferred by the alternative name of her dun Knockain_cy_: "Here," says Mr. Westropp, "a cairn commemorates the cult of the goddess Aine, of the god-race of the Tuatha De Danaan.
She was a water-spirit, and has been seen, half raised out of the water, combing her hair.
She was a beautiful and gracious spirit, 'the best-natured of women,' and is crowned with meadow-sweet (_spiræa_), to which she gave its sweet smell.
She is a powerful tutelary spirit, protector of the sick, and connected with the moon, her hill being sickle-shaped, and men, before performing the ceremonies, used to look for the moon--whether visible or not--lest they should be unable to return.
"[858] By St. Anne's in Dean Street, Soho, is Dansey Yard, where probably _dancing_ took place, and dins of every sort arose.
The original sanctuary at Westminster was evidently associated with a dunhill which seems to have long persisted for Loftie, in his _History of Westminster_, observes: "The _hillock_ on which we stand is called Thorn Ey".
[859] Tothill Street, Westminster, marks the site of what was probably the teat hill of Sir Patrise: the tothills being centres of neighbourly intercourse a good deal of tittle-tattle doubtless occurred there, and from the toothills watchmen _touted_, the word _tout_[860] really meaning peer about or look out: "How beautiful on the Mounds are the feet of Him that bringeth _tidings_--that publisheth Peace".
[861] It has been supposed that certain of the Psalms of David were addressed not to the Jewish Jehovah, but to the Phoenician Adon or Adonis, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that these hymns of immemorial antiquity were first sung in some simple Eyedun similar to the wattled pyreum at Kildare, or that at Avalon or Bride Eye.
The oldest sanctuary in Palestine is a stone circle on the so-called Mount of God, and in Britain there is hardly a commanding eminence which is not crowned with a Carn or the evidences of a circle.
The Cities of Refuge and the Horns of the Altar, so constantly mentioned in the Old Testament, may be connoted with the fact that in an island fort at Lough Gur, Limerick, were discovered "two ponderous horns of bronze," which are now in the British Museum: it will be remembered that at Lough Gur is the finest example of Irish stone circles.
But stone circles are probably much more modern than the reputed founding of St. Bride's first monastery at Kildare.
We are told that Bride the Gentle, the Mary of the Gael, who occasionally hanged her cloak upon a lingering sunbeam, had a great love of flowers, and that once upon a time when wending her way through a field of _clover_[862] she exclaimed, "Were this lovely plain my own how gladly would I offer it to the Lord of Heaven and Earth".
She then begged some sticks from a passing carter, staked and wattled them into a circle, and behold the Monastery was accomplished.
The character of this simple edifice reminds one of "that structure neat," to which Homer thus alludes:-Unaided by Laertes or the Queen, With tangled thorns he fenced it safe around, And with contiguous stakes riv'n from the trunks Of solid oak black-grain'd hemm'd it without.
[863] The circle of Mayborough originally contained two cairns which are suggestive of Andromache's "turf-built cenotaph with altars twain": the great bicycle within a monocycle at Avebury is trenched around, and the summit of the circumference is still growing thickly with "tangled thorns".
On the Wrekin there is a St. Hawthorn's Well; of "Saint" Hawthorn nothing seems to be known, and I strongly suspect that he was originally a sacred thorn or monument bush.
The first _haies_ or hedges were probably the hawthorn or haw hedges around the sacred Eyes, and the original _ha-has_ or sunk ditches were presumably the water trenches which surrounded the same jealously-guarded Eyes: and as _ha-ha_ is also defined as "an old woman of surprising ugliness, a caution," it may be suggested that the caretakers or beldames[864] of the awful Eyes were, like some of the vergers and charwomen of the present day, not usually comely.
[Illustration: FIG.
453.--Trematon, Cornwall.]
[Illustration: FIG.
454.--Chun Castle.]
The iris-form of the Eye was shown in the ground plan _ante_, page 534, and that this design was maintained even for ages after the first primitive Rock or Tower had given place to statelier edifices might be shown by many more evidences than the design here illustrated: the _maton_ of this Trematon Castle was in all probability the same Maiden as the Shee of Maiden Castle, Maiden Paps, and the Maiden Stane.
Trematon, in Cornwall, was the site of a Stannary Court, whence arose the proverbial localism "Trematon Law," and there are peculiarities about the Castle which merit more than passing attention.
Rising majestically amid the surrounding foliage the keep is described as standing on the summit of a conical mound: Baring-Gould characterises the aspect as being that of a pork pie, whence its windowless walls would seem to bear a resemblance to the massive masonry at Richborough.
The Richborough walls now measure 10 feet 8 inches in thickness and nearly 30 feet in height; those at Trematon are stated as being 10 feet thick and 30 feet high.
Like Maiden Castle at Dorchester, Trematon is of an oval form and it was formerly divided into apartments, but as there are no marks of windows they would appear to have been lighted from the top.
[865] The gateway consisted of three strong arches, and the general arrangements would seem to have resembled those at Chun where, as will be noted, there were three outer chambers encircling about a dozen inner stalls.
Chun is cyclopean unmortared stonework; Maiden Castle is earthwork; Richborough is supposedly Roman masonry: of Trematon little is known that may be deemed authentic, but it is generally believed to have been originally erected prior to the Conquest: as, however, the Anglo-Saxons were incapable of masonry it would seem that Trematon might be assigned to an antiquity not less than that of Richborough Castle which it so curiously parallels.
With the various Maiden Lanes of King's Cross, Covent Garden, and elsewhere may be connoted the Mutton Lane of Hackney, which was famous for a bun house which once rivalled that at _Cheynes_ Walk, Chelsea: Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, is a continuation of Chandos Street, and it will probably prove that the surname Chandos is ultimately traceable to _Jeanne douce_.
In Caledonia _douce_ is not necessarily feminine, and the King John tradition, which unaccountably lingered around Canonbury,[866] may be connoted with the John Street and Mutton Hill of Clerkenwell.
The sheep or mutton is the proper emblem of St. John, and perhaps the same King John may be further identified with the Goodman of the adjacent Goodman's Fields.
We have seen that in Caledonia the gudeman was the devil, whence it becomes interesting to find near Brown's Wood, Islington, stood once a "Duval's (vulgarly called Devil's) Lane".
[867] St. Columba alludes affectionately to-My _derry_, my little oak grove, My dwelling and my little cell.
The Eye dun illustrated _ante_, page 584, which is described as the strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric-looking of all our motes, is known as _Trow_dale Mote; St. Columba is associated with _Tiree_; he is also said to have been imprisoned at _Tara_, and to have written the book _Durrow_ with his own hand: there is thus some ground for tracing the Mote, Maton, Maid or Maiden, _alias_ St. Columba, to Droia or Troy.
That the dove was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem is well known, and that all derrys or trees were sacred Troys or sanctuaries is further implied by the ancient meaning of the adjective _terribilis_, _i.e._, sacred: thus we find Westminster or Thorn Ey alluded to by old writers as a _locus terribilis_,[868] and it would seem that any awe-inspiring or awful spot was deemed _terrible_ or sacred.
In the Celtic Calendar there figures a St. Maidoc or Aidan: Maidoc is _maid high_, and I am afraid St. Aidan was occasionally "a romping girl" or _hoiden_.
One does not generally associate Pallas Athene with revelry, and it is difficult to connect with gaiety the grim example of Athene which the present proprietors of _The Athenæum_ have adopted as their ideal; yet, says Plato, "Our virgin Lady, delighting in the sports of the dance, thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in full armour, and in this attire go through the dance.
And youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the festivals."
Hoiden or hoyden meant likewise a gypsy--a native of Egypt "the Land of the Eye"--and also a heathen: Athene, who was certainly a heathen maid, may be connoted with Idunn of Scandinavia, who keeps the apples which symbolise the ever-renewing and rejuvenating force of Nature.
[869] Tradition persistently associates Eden with an apple, although Holy Writ contains nothing to warrant the connection: similarly tradition says that Eve had a daughter named Ada: as Idunn was said to be the daughter of Ivalde we may equate Idunn, the young and lovely apple-maid, with Ada or Ida, and Ivalde, her mother with the Old _Wife_, or Ive Old.
[870] In an earlier chapter we connected Eve with _happy_, Hob, etc., and there is little doubt that Eve, "the Ivy Girl," was the Greek Hebe who had the power of making old men young again, and filled the goblets of the gods with nectar.
Idunn, "the care-healing maid who understands the renewal of youth," was, we are told, the youthful leader of the _Idunns_ or fairies: in present-day Welsh _edyn_ means a _winged one_, and _ednyw_ a spirit or essence.
It is said that from the manes of the horses of the Idunns dropped a celestial dew which filled the goblets and horns of the heroes in Odin's hall; it is also said that the Idunns offer full goblets and horns to mortals, but that these, thankless, usually run away with the beaker after spilling its contents on the ground.
There must be an intimate connection between the legend of the fair Idunns, and the fact that at the Caledonian Edenhall, on the river Eden, is preserved an ancient goblet known as The Luck of Edenhall:-If this glass do break or fall Farewell the luck of Edenhall.
The river Eden flows into the Solway Firth, possibly so named because the Westering Sun must daily have been seen to create a golden track or sun-way over the Solway waters.
Ptolemy refers to Solway Firth as Ituna Estuarium, so that seemingly Eden or Ituna may be equated not only with the British rivers Ytene and Aeithon, but also with the Egyptian Aten.
According to Prof. Petrie, the cult of Aten "does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth.
The Sun is represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends in a hand which imparts life and power to the king and to all else.
In the hymn to the Aten, the universal scope of this power is proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and allegiance.
No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know, and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions while it is even more abstract and impersonal and may well rank as a scientific theism."
[Illustration: FIG.
455.--British.
From Evans] Egyptian literature tells of a King Pepi questing for the tree of life in company with the Morning Star carrying a spear of Sunbeams.
Thy rising is beautiful, O living Aton, Lord of Eternity, Thou art shining, beautiful, strong, Thy love is great and mighty.
Thy rays are cast into every face Thy glowing hue brings life to hearts When thou hast filled the two Lands with thy love O God, who himself fashioned himself, Maker of every land.
Creator of that which is upon it, Men, all cattle, large and small.
All trees that grow in the soil, They live when thou dawnest for them.
Thou art the mother and the father of all that thou has made.
Yet this resplendent Pair or Parent was also addressed by the Egyptians as the Sea on High and invoked-Bow thy head, decline thy arms, O Sea!
The Maiden Morning Star or Stella Maris was imagined as refreshing the heart of King Pepi to life: "She purifies him, she cleanses him, he receives his provision from that which is in the Granary of the Great God, he is clothed by the Imperishable Stars."
The intimate connection between Candia and Egypt, the "Land of the Eye" is generally admitted, and as it is an etymological fact that the letters _m_ and _n_ are almost invariably interchangeable (indeed if language begins with voice and ends with voice it is impossible to suppose that two such similar sounds could have maintained their integrity), it is probable that Candia is radically related to Khem, which seemingly was the most ancient name for Egypt.
The celebrated "Maiden Bower," by Mount Pleasant, Dunstable, is believed to be the modern equivalent of magh _din_ barr, pronounced mach _dim_ barr, and it is decoded as _magh_, a level expanse, _din_, a hill or hill fortress, and _barr_, a summit: I note this derivation--which certainly cannot be applied to the Maiden Stane--as it equates _din_ with _dim_, in which connection it is noteworthy that in France and Belgium _Edinburgh_ becomes _Edimbourg_.
In all probability therefore Adam, Master of Eden, was originally Adon or "the Lord," and Notre _Dame_ of France was equivalent to the _Madonna_ of Italy.
[Illustration: FIG.
456.--From _The Correspondences of Egypt_ (Odhner).]
In Caledonia the moothills were known alternatively as _Dom_hills, and in the "Chanonry of Aberdeen" was a dun known as Donidon or Dunadon: _doom_ still means fate or judgment; in Scots Law giving sentence was formerly called "passing the doeme"; the judge was denominated the Doomster, and the jury the Doomsmen.
In the Isle of Man the judges are termed Deemsters, and in Scandinavia stone circles are known as Doom rings: the Hebrew Dan meant _judgment_, and the English Dinah[871] is interpreted as _one who judges_; in the Isle of Man the Laws are not legal until they have been proclaimed from the _Tyn_wald Hill.
That the Domhills of Britain have largely preserved their physical condition is no doubt due to the doom frequently inflicted on malefactors that they should carry thither a certain quantity of earth and deposit it.
[872] In Europe there are numerous megalithic monuments known popularly as "Adam's Graves," and near Draycott at Avebury the maps mark an Adam's Grave.
On the brow of a hill near Heddon (Northumberland) is a trough-like excavation in the solid rock known as the Giant's Grave; there is a similar Giant's Grave near Edenhall by Penrith, and a neighbouring chasm entitled The Maiden's Step is popularly connected with Giant Torquin: this Torquin suggests Tarquin of Etruria, between which and Egypt there was as close if not a closer connection than that between Candia and Khem.
At Maidstone, originally Maidenstone, there is a _Moat_ Park: in Egypt _Mut_ was one of the names given to the Queen of Heaven, or Lady of the Sky: Mut was no doubt a variant of Maat, or Maht, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, for in the worship of the Egyptian Aton "Truth" occupied a pre-eminent position, and the capital of Ikhnaton, the most conspicuous of the Aton-worshipping kings, was called the "Seat of Truth".
[Illustration: FIG.
457.--Maat.]
[Illustration: FIG.
458.--Mut.]
Surmounting the Maat here illustrated is a conspicuous _feather_ which we have already connoted with _feeder_ and _fodder_.
Maat, the giver of provision from that which is in the granary of the Great God, is thus presumably allied with _meat_, also to _mud_,[873] or liquid earth.
The word _mud_ is not found in Anglo-Saxon, but is evidently the Phoenician _mot_, and it would be difficult for modern science to add very much to the prehistoric conception of the Phoenicians.
According to their great historian Sancaniathon: "The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus.
Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus" (_mud_), "but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture.
And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.... And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters.
"[874] It is probable that _Sancaniathon_, the Phoenician sage to whom the above passage is attributed, was radically _Iathon_ or _Athene_.
We have connoted the Egyptian sun-god Phra with Pharoah, or Peraa, who was undoubtedly the earthly representative of the same Fire or Phare as was worshipped by the Parsees, or Farsees of Persia: the Persian historians dilate with enthusiasm on the justice, wisdom, and glory of a fabulous Feridoon whose virtues acquired him the appellation of the Fortunate, and it is probable that this Feridoon was the Fair Idoon whose palace, like the Fairy Donn's, was located on some humble fire dun, or peri down.
The name Feridoon, or Ferdun (the Fortunate),[875] is translated as meaning _paradisiacal_: Ferdusi is etymologically equivalent to _perdusi_, which is no doubt the same word as _paradise_, and we can almost visualise the term _feridoon_ transforming itself into _fairy don_.
Nevertheless by one Parthian poet it was maintained-The blest Feridoon an angel was not, Of musk or of amber, he formed was not; By justice and mercy good ends gained he, Be just and merciful thou'lt a Feridoon be.
[876] In Germany, Frei or Frey meant a privileged place or sanctuary: in London such a sanctuary until recently existed around the church of St. Mary Offery, or Overy (now St. Saviours, Southwark), and in a subsequent chapter we shall consider certain local traditions which permit the equation of St. Mary Overy, and of the Brixton-Camberwell river _Effra_, with the Fairy _Ovary_ of the Universe.
The Gaelic and Welsh for an opening or _mouth_ is _aber_, whence Aberdeen is held to mean the mouth of the Don: but at Loch_aber_ or Loch _Apor_ this interpretation cannot apply, and it is not improbable that Aberdeen on the river Don was primarily a Pictish Abri town--a Britain or Prydain.
As the capital of Caledonia is Edinburgh or Dunedin, it may be suggested that the whole of Caledonia stern and wild was originally a _Kille_, or church of Don.
At Braavalla, in Osturgothland, there are remains of a marvellous "stone town," whence we may assume that this site was originally a Braavalla, or _abri valley_: the chief of the Irish Barony of Barrymore who was entitled "The Barry" is said to have inhabited an enchanted brugh in one of the Nagles Hills.
Near New Grange in Ireland there is a remarkable dolmen known locally as the house or tomb of Lady "Vera, or Birra":[877] five miles distant is Bellingham, and I have little doubt that every fairy dun or fairy town, the supposed local home of Bellinga, the Lord Angel or the Beautiful Angel, was synonymously a "Britain"; that Briton and Barton are mere variants of the same word is evident from such place-names as Dumbarton, originally Dunbrettan.
[Illustration: FIG.
459.--New Grange, Ireland.
Fig.
I _The Barrow at New Grange_ Fig.
II _Section of the Tumulus_ Fig.
III _Section of the Gallery & Dome_] [Illustration: FIG.
460--Kit's Coty, near Maidstone.
[_To face page 751._ ] It has been seen that Prydain--of whom it was claimed that before his coming there was little ordinance in these Islands save only a superiority of oppression--was the reputed child of King Aedd: Aedd was one of the titles of Hu, the first of our national Three Pillars, and he was probably identical with Aeddon, a name which, says Davies, "I think was a title of the god himself": the priests of Hu were apparently termed Aeddons, whence like the Mountjoys of France we may assume they were the denizens of the Aeddon duns: inquiry will probably establish one of these sanctuaries at Haddington; at Addington (Domesday _Edin_tone) in Kent there are the remains of one still standing.
With the pagan Aeddons may be connoted the Celtic Saint Aidan, Æden, or Aiden, whose name is associated with Lindis_farne_, also the St. Aidan, or Maidoc of _Ferns_, who among other prodigies is recorded as having driven to and from Rome in twenty-four hours.
At _Farn_ MacBride in Glencolumkille, there are some cromlechs which exactly resemble in plan the house of Lady Vera, or Birra, at New Grange:[878] at Evora, in _Por_tugal, situated on bleak heathland, is a similar monument which Borrow described as the most perfect and beautiful of its kind he had ever seen: "It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something like the shape of _scallop shells_.... Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior in which was growing a small thorn tree.
"[879] The scallop shell, like the cockle and all coquilles, was obviously an emblem of Evora, the Ovary, the Aber, the opening.
The _Bona dea_ of Candia was represented with a headdress in the form of a cat; we shall connote this animal (German _kater_) with St. Caterina or Kate, the immaculate pure one, and it is not unnoteworthy that the Kentish _Kit's_ coty, near Maidstone, _vide_ the photograph here reproduced, contains what might be a rude much-weathered image of the sacred _cat_, lioness, or _kit_ten:[880] In Caledonia is a famous Cat[881] Stane, and the Duchess of Sutherland still bears the honorary title "Lady of the Cat".
[882] The word _kitt_en resolves into Great Itten: the New Forest used to be known as the Forest of Ytene,[883] and I do not think that the great British Forest of Dean has any real connection with the supposition that the Danes may have taken up their residence there: _Dean_ was almost a generic name for forest, and we meet with it from Arden to the Ardennes.
[884] For an explication of the word _dawn_ Skeat observes: "see day"; it is, however, probable that _dawn_ was the little or young Don or Adon.
By the Welsh the constellation Cassiopeaia is known under the title of Don's chair.
That the Irish Don was Truth is probable from the statement "His blue dome (the sky) was an infallible weather-glass, whence its name the Hill of Truth".
[885] According to the Edda,[886] a collection of traditions which have been assigned variously by scholars to Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles, the world was created by the sons of Bor, and in the beginning the gods built a citadel in Ida-plain and an age of universal innocence prevailed.
Situated on Cockburn Law in Berwickshire--a wick or fortress of Ber upon which stands the largest of all the brochs--is a prehistoric circle known as Edina or Wodens Hall.
The English name Edana or Edna, defined as meaning _perfect happiness_ or _rich gift_, is stated to be a variant of Ida or Ada: in Hebrew the name Adah means _beauty_, and Ada, the lovely daughter of Adam, is probably Eda, the "passionately beloved"[887] Breaton princess of Hibernia, or Ma Ida of Tyburnia or Marylebone.
The Garden of Eden has somewhat unsuccessfully, I believe, been located in Mesopotamia: the Jews doubtless had their Edens even though Palestine is arid, and the authorities translate the name Adam as having meant _red earth_: according to early Rabbinical writers Adam was a giant; he touched the Arctic pole with one hand and the Antarctic with the other.
[888] I have here noted but a handful of the innumerable Edens in Britain which includes five rivers of that name:[889] that the Lady of Britain was Prydain, Brython, or _pure Athene_, _i.e._, Wisdom, is a well-recognised tradition, for she is conventionally represented as Athene.
In Greece the girl-name Theana meant _Divine Intelligence_,[890] and Ida was interpreted _far seeing_: in Troy the goddess of the city, which originally stood upon a dun hill, was Athene, and the innumerable owl-headed emblems found there by Schliemann were her sign: "Before the human form was adopted her (Athene's) proper symbol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness and refinement, of organic perception; its eyes being calculated to discern objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness; its ear to hear sounds distinctly when no other can perceive them at all, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease.
"[891] We have noted the existence of some exclusively British fairies known as Portunes: among the Latins Portunas was a name of Tri_ton_ or Nep_tune_: the Mother of the British Portunes might be termed Phortuna, or, as we should now write the word, Fortuna, and the stone circle at Goodaver in Cornwall might be described as a Wheel of Good Phortune: the Hebrew for _fortune_ is _gad_, and it is probable that the famous Gadshill, near Rochester, was at one time a God's Hill; from Kit's Coty on the heights above Rochester it is stated that according to tradition a continuous series of stone monuments once extended to Addington where are still the remains of another coty or cromlech.
There are in England numerous Addingtons or Edintones, and at at least two of these are Druidic remains: the Kentish Addington, near Snodland and Kit's Coty, is dedicated to St. Margaret, and the church itself is situated on a rise or dun.
Half a mile from Bacton in Hereford is a small wood known as St. Margaret's Park, and in the centre of this is a cruciform mound, its western arm on the highest ground, its eastern on the lowest: this cruciform mound was described in 1853 as being 15 feet at base,[892] a familiar figure which may be connoted with the statement in _The Golden Legend_ that St. Margaret was fifteen years of age.
In addition to the cruciform mount at St. Margaret's Park, Bacton, there are further remains of archæologic interest: about 100 years ago nine large yew trees which were surrounding it--one of gigantic size--were felled to the ground, and my authority states that its venerable antiquity was evident from the decayed stumps of _oaks_ still visible felled ages ago together with more recent ones.
[893] In addition to the cross in this prehistoric Oak grove of the Lady Margaret there are three curious cavities, two of them circular, the third oval or egg-shaped: the ancient veneration for the _oeuf_, or egg, has degenerated to the Easter egg, and in Ireland the Dummy's Hill,[894] associated with egg-trundling may, I think, be equated with Donna or the Dame.
The Cretan Britomart in Greek was understood to mean _sweet maiden_; in Welsh _pryd_ meant precious, dear, fair, beautiful; Eda of Ireland was "passionately beloved," and to the Britons the sweet maiden was inferentially Britan_nia_, the _new_ pure Athene, Ma Ida the Maid or Maiden whose character is summed up in the words _prude_, _proud_, _pride_, and _pretty_.
In Ireland we may trace her as Meave, _alias_ Queen Mab, and the headquarters of this Maiden were either at Tara or at Moytura: the latter written sometimes Magh Tuireadh, probably meant the plain of Troy, for there are still all the evidences here of a megalithic Troy town.
The probabilities are that Stanton Drew in Somerset, like Drewsteignton in Devon, with which tradition connects St. Keyna, was another Dru stonetown for here are a cromlech, a logan stone, two circles, some traces of the Via Sacra or Druid Way and an ancient British camp: in Aberdeen there are circles at _Tyre_bagger, Dun_adeer_, and at Deer.
Among other so-called monuments of the Brugh at Moytura recorded in the old annalists are "the Two Paps of the Morrigan," "The Mound of the Morrigan," _i.e_., the Mound of the Great Queen, also a "Bed of the Daughter of Forann":[895] Forann herself was doubtless the Hag whose weirdly-sculptured chair exists at Lough Crew in Meath: _Meath_ was esteemed the _mid_, _middle_, or _midst_, of Ireland, and here as we have seen existed the central stone at Birr.
There is a celebrated Hag's Bed at Fermoy, doubtless the same Hag as the "Old Woman of Beare," whose seven periods of youth necessitated all who lived with her to die of old age: this Old Woman's grandsons and great grandsons were, we are told, tribes and races, and in several stories she appears to the hero as a repulsive hag who suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful Maid.
At Moytura--with which tradition intimately associates the Children of Don--is a cairn called to this day the "cairn of the One Man": with this One Man we may connote Un Khan or Prester John, of whose mystic Kingdom so many marvellous legends circulated during the Middle Ages.
Among the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is one to the effect that by the commandment of God he "made in the earth a great circle with his staff": this might be described as a _byre_, _i.e._, an enclosure or bower, and we may connote the word with the stone circle in Westmoreland, at Brackenbyr, _i.e._, the byre of Brecon, Brechin, or the Paragon?
The husband of Idunn was entitled Brage, whose name _inter alia_ meant King: Brage was the god of poetry and eloquence; a superfluity of prating, pride, and eloquence is nowadays termed _brag_.
The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: "In Duno," says _The Golden Legend_, "these three be buried all in one sepulchre": the word Duno is _d'uno_, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of "the One Man": Honeyman[896] is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man's ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant's Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]--the parallel of which existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye--was originally a Hunne Bed or _grotte des fees_.
"Of Paradise," says Maundeville, "I cannot speak for I have not been there": nevertheless this traveller--who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular assumption--has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the word _paradise_ is the Persian _pairidaeza_, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with our _park_, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair.
Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898] more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic for _fire_: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt that Thanet, "by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,"[899] was originally sacred to Athene.
In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean "how, or mound of the _thing_, or provincial assembly": the chief Cantian _thing_ or folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the word _think_ implies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the words _remercie_ and _thank_, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name.
In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked for _meat_, _i.e._, _fare_, or _forage_; _free_, according to Pearsall, "comes from an Aryan root meaning _dear_ (whence also our word _friend_), and meant in old Teutonic times those who are _dear_ to the head of the household--that is connected with him by ties of friendship, and not slaves, or in bondage".
[900] The word _dear_, French _adore_, connects _tre_ or abode with Droia or Troy: yet the _Sweet Maiden_ of Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: "The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with".
[901] The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden's Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either the Troy Queen or the Eternal Queen, or _dur queen_, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener a _dear Queen_, _i.e._, Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the passionately beloved, the _Adorée_.
"Bride, the _gentle_" is an epithet traditionally applied to St. Bride, St. Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh, _brig_ and _brigant_ mean _tip top_ or _summit_, and these terms may be connoted with the Irish _brig_ meaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem.
At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the "Nymph-Goddess Brig," and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the Goddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.
In the British Museum is a coin lettered CYNETHRYTH REGINA: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed "in long curls, behind head long cross": assuredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was "the Truth against the world," we may perhaps assume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.
In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture illustrated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.
[Illustration: FIG.
461.--Britannia, A.D. 1919.
_By permission of the Proprietors of "Punch"._] The frequent discovery of coins--Roman and otherwise--within cromlechs such as Kit's Coty and other sacred sites appears to me to prove nothing in respect of age, but rather a survival of the ancient superstition that the fairies possessed from time immemorial certain fields which could not be taken away or appropriated without gratifying the pixy proprietors by a piece of money:[902] the land-grabber is no novelty, nor seemingly is conscience money.
That important battles occurred at such sites as Moytura and Braavalla is no argument that those fantastic Troy Towns or Drewsteigntons were, as Fergusson laboriously maintained, monuments to commemorate slaughter.
According to Homer-Before the city stands a lofty mound, In the mid plain, by open space enclos'd; Men call it Batiaea; but the Gods The tomb of swift Myrinna; muster'd _there The Trojans and Allies their troops array'd_.
[903] Nothing is more certain than that with the exception of a negligible number of conscientious objectors, a chivalrous people would defend its Eyedun to the death, and that the last array against invaders would almost invariably occur in or around the local Sanctuarie or Perry dun.
It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as "the Fatherland": the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: "_At first_," says Mackenzie, "the Cretan Earth Mother was the _culture deity_ who instructed mankind ... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes.
She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation.
"[904] FOOTNOTES: [820] _Irish Folklore_, p. 32.
[821] _Irish Folklore_, p.78 [822] Heath, F. R. and S., _Dorchester_, p. 40.
[823] Dorchester stands on the "Econ Way" [824] _Irish Folklore_, p. 79.
[825] In _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes remark that Browning's great monologue corresponds perfectly with all we know of the Minoan goddess-I shed in Hell o'er my pale people peace On earth, I caring for the creatures guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness.
[826] _Iliad_, xv., 175.
[827] _London_, p. 59.
[828] _Irish Folklore_, p. 34.
[829] Gomme, Sir L., _The Topography of London_, ii., 215.
[830] See Cynethryth _post_, p. 761.
[831] _Golden Legend_, iii., 188.
[832] Hunt, R., _Popular Romances of the West of England_, p. 73.
[833] Cf.
Numbers xiii.
33.
[834] Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill road, Inglemere road, _Allen_by road, and _Ex_bury road.
[835] This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an individual named Tanfield.
Wherever the original Tanfield was it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan similar to the joyous "Tan Tads," or "Fire Fathers" of Brittany.
[836] _Cf_.
Forster, Rev.
C., _The One Primeval Language_, 1851.
[837] _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 131.
[838] "His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened and plumed himself carefully with his beak."
[839] _Folklore_, xxix., No.
3, p. 195.
[840] P. 165.
[841] At Bickley in Kent there is a _Shaw_field Park, which may be connoted with the Bagshaw's Cavern at Buxton.
[842] By Chee Tor is Mon_sal_ Dale, and we may reasonably connote _sal_ and "_salt_" with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon Edwin or Scandinavian Odin.
(Since writing I find it was originally named Dunedin, _cf._ Morris Jones, Sir G., _Taliesin_.)
[843] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.
[844] Chapter I.
[845] From an article by Dr. Paul Carus in _The Open Court_.
[846] The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at "The Den" was transported from Devonshire about a century ago--no doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archæologist.
[847] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.
[848] _Cours d'Hieroglyphique Chretienne_, in _L'Universite Catholique_, vol.
vi., p. 266.
[849] _Cf._ Hazlitt, W. C., _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.
[850] Hunt, p. 328.
[851] Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name from _deur_, the Gaelic for _tear_, because St. Drostan shed tears there.
The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says: "Drostan's tears came on parting with Columcille".
Said Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward".
[852] Fergusson, p. 273.
[853] The Tuttle family may similarly be assigned to one or other of the innumerable Toothills.
[854] _Irish Folklore_, p. 31.
[855] Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.
[856] In Irish _aine_ means _circle_.
[857] Westropp, T. J., _Proc.
of Royal Irish Academy_.
[858] _Cf._ _Folklore_, xxix., No.
2, p. 159.
[859] Quoted from Besant's _Westminster_.
[860] Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from watermen touting there for fares.
[861] Ps.
lii.
7.
[862] In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical of the Persian triads.
[863] _Odyssey_, xiv., 12.
[864] Skeat comments upon the word _hag_ as "perhaps connected with Anglo-Saxon _haga_, a hedge enclosure, but this is uncertain": this authority's definition of a _ha-ha_ is as follows: "Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.).
From F. _haha_ an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one).
The French word also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a 'caution'."
The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame.
As to the ha-has, or "unexpected obstacles," Cæsar has recorded that "the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river": if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha!
or haw-haw!
as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.
[865] Stockdale, F. W. L., _Excursions Through Cornwall_, 1824, p. 116.
[866] Gomme, Sir L., _The Topography of London_, ii., 222.
[867] _Ibid._, ii., 216.
[868] Besant, W., _Westminster_, p. 20.
[869] Rydberg, _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 118.
[870] In the Kentish neighbourhood of Preston, Perry-court, Perry-wood, Holly Hill, Brenley House, and Oversland is an _Old Wives Lees_, and Britton Court Farm.
[871] A London cockney refers to his sweetheart as his _donah_.
[872] See "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 286.
[873] The English moot hills are sometimes referred to as _mudes_ or _muds_, Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 67.
[874] Quoted from Donnelly, I., _Ragnarok_.
[875] Moody, S., _What is Your Name?_ p. 266.
[876] Anon, _Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the Assassins_.
[877] Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 231.
[878] Fergusson, p. 523.
[879] _Ibid._, p. 390.
[880] Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan's Hill, and in close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall, Pratling Street, and Bredhurst, _i.e._, Bred's Wood.
That Bred was _San Od_ is possibly implied by the adjacent _Snod_hurst and _Snod_land.
At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire, Skeat thinks _Synods_ may have once been held.
The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.
[881] The authorities assume that the _cat_ is here cath, the Gaelic for _war_.
It might equally well be _cad_, the Gaelic for _holy_: in the East a _jehad_ is a Holy War.
[882] Lang, A., _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i., 72.
[883] _A New Description of England_, 1724.
[884] Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons "cleared a space in the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers of trees.
Such a collection of houses formed one of their towns."
_Din_ is the root of _dinas_, the Welsh word in actual use for a _town_.
[885] Westropp, T. J., _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, p. 165.
[886] With _Edda_, a general term for the rules and materials for verse-making, may be connoted our _ode_.
[887] According to the original Irish of the story-teller, translated and published for the first time in 1855, Conn, the Consort of Eda, "was a puissant warrior, and no individual was found able to compete with him either on land or sea, or question his right to his conquest.
The great King of the West held uncontrolled sway from the island of Rathlin to the mouth of the Shannon by sea, and as far as the glittering length by land.
The ancient King of the West, whose name was Conn, was good as well as great, and passionately loved by his people.
His Queen (Eda) was a Breaton (British) princess, and was equally beloved and esteemed, because she was the great counterpart of the King in every respect; for whatever good qualification was wanting in the one, the other was certain to indemnify the omission.
It was plainly manifest that heaven approved of the career in life of the virtuous couple; for during their reign the earth produced exuberant crops, the trees fruit ninefold commensurate with their usual bearing, the rivers, lakes and surrounding sea teemed with abundance of choice fish, while herds and flocks were unusually prolific, and kine and sheep yielded such abundance of rich milk that they shed it in torrents upon the pastures; and furrows and cavities were filled with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy.
All these were blessings heaped by heaven upon the western districts of Innes Fodhla, over which the benignant and just Conn swayed his sceptre, in approbation of the course of government he had marked out for his own guidance.
It is needless to state that the people who owned the authority of this great and good sovereign were the happiest on the face of the wide expanse of earth.
It was during his reign, and that of his son and successor, that Ireland acquired the title of the 'happy Isle of the West' among foreign nations.
Con Mor and his good Queen Eda reigned in great glory during many years."
[888] Wood, E. J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 11.
According to Maundeville in Egypt "they find there also the apple-tree of Adam which has a bite on one side".
[889] There is a conspicuously interesting group of names around the river Eden in Sussex.
At Edenbridge is Dencross, and in close neighbourhood Ide Hill, Dane Hill, Paxhill Park, Brown Knoll, St. Piers Farm, Hammerwood, Pippenford Park, Allen Court, Lindfield, Londonderry, and Cinder Hill.
With Broadstone Warren and Pippinford Park it is noteworthy that opposite St. Bride's Church, Ludgate Hill, is Poppins Court and Shoe Lane: immediately adjacent is a Punch Tavern, whence I think that Poppins was Punch and _Shoe_ was Judy.
The gaudy _popinjay_, at which our ancestors used to shoot, may well have stood in Poppins Court: a representation of this brilliant parrot or parrakeet is carved into one of the modern buildings now occupying the site.
[890] Moody, S., _What is Your Name_?
p. 257.
[891] Knight, R. Payne, _The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and Mythology_, p. 128.
[892] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), p. 270.
[893] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), p. 270.
[894] "When I was a child I would no more have thought of going out on Easter morning without a real Easter egg than I would have thought of leaving my stocking unsuspended from the foot of my bed on Christmas Eve.
A few days before Easter I used to go out to the park, where there were a great many whin bushes, and gather whinblossoms, which I carried home to my mother, who put two eggs in a tin, one for me and one for my sister, and added the whinblossoms and water to them, and set them to boil together until the eggs were hard and the shells were stained a pretty brown hue.
"On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a mound in the park called 'The Dummy's Hill,' and would trundle them down the slope.
All the boys and girls we knew used to trundle their eggs on Easter Monday.
We called it 'trundling'.
The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of 'trundling,' and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better than an egg eaten in the ordinary way.
'The Dummy's Hill' was sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday morning.
"My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of 'trundling' eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite.
It seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient significance whatever."
--Ervine, St. John, _The Daily Chronicle_, 4th April, 1919.
[895] Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 191.
[896] The surname Honeywell found at Kingston implies either there or somewhere a Honeywell.
There are several St. Euny Wells in Cornwall.
[897] It measures 36 feet x 18 feet 9 inches, see _ante_, p. 9.
[898] At Margate are Paradise Hill, Dane Park, Addington Street leading to Dane Hill, and Fort Paragon: at Ramsgate is also a Fort Paragon, and a four-crossed dun called Hallicondane.
There used to be a Paradise near Beachy (Bougie, or Biga Head (?
)): by Broadstairs or Bridestowe which contains a shrine to St. Mary to which all passing vessels used to doff their sails, is Bromstone, and a Dane Court by Fairfield, all of which are in St. Peter's Parish.
By the Sister Towers of Reculver are Eddington, Love Street, Hawthorn Corner, and Honey Hill: in Thanet, Paramour is a common surname.
By Minster is Mount Pleasant and Eden Farm: by Richborough is Hoaden House and Paramore Street.
To Reculver as to Broadstairs passing mariners used customarily to doff their sails:-Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey, Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o'er the main.
Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay, And on the cliffs is seen Minerva's fane.
We furl the sails, and shoreward row amain Eastward the harbour arches, scarce descried, Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain, Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.
Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.
--_Æneid_, Bk.
III., lxviii.
[899] _A New Description of England and Wales_, 1724, p. 84.
[900] _The English Language_, p. 141.
[901] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 123.
[902] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.
[903] _Iliad_, ii., 940.
[904] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, pp.
70, 190.
The italics are mine.
CHAPTER XIV.
DOWN UNDER.
"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 Pen_deen_, 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 Pen_deen_, 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_.
[Illustration: 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 _Trew_oofe: 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] [Illustration: FIG.
463.]
[Illustration: Sections of a Dene-hole and Ground Plan of Chambers.
(_Based upon a plan and description by Mr. T. V. Holmes, F.G.S._) FIG.
464.--From _The Chislehurst Caves_ (Nichols, W.
J.).]
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.
[Illustration: FIG.
465.--Ground plan of a group of Dene Holes in Hangman's Wood, Kent.
From a plan by Mr. A. R. Goddard, F.S.A.]
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:-To the Goddess Nehalennia-For his goods well preserved-Secundus Silvanius A chalk Merchant Of Britain Willingly performed his merited vow.
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 _Dur_ham and at _Dun_stable 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] [Illustration: FIG.
466.--Section of Royston Cave traced from a drawing in _Cliff Castles and Cliff Dwellings of Europe_ (Baring-Gould, S.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
467.--From _Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism_ (Inman, C.
W.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
468.
[_To face page 788._] 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.
[Illustration: FIGS.
469 and 470.--From _A New Description of England_ (Anon, 1724).]
[Illustration: FIG.
471.--Sculpturings from the interior of Royston Cave.
[_To face page 784._] 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 _Dur_ham 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 _Shen_field, 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:-Beautiful child of the Druid, answer me right well.
What would'st thou that I should sing?
Sing to me the series of number one that I may learn it this very day.
There is no series for one, for One is Necessity alone.
The father of death, there is nothing before and nothing after.
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."
[Illustration: Thirteenth Century Window from Chartres.
FIG.
472.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).]
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 _six_fold 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:-In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
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 16-1/2 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-I know every pillar in the Cavern of the West.
Similarly the author of _The Incantation of Cunvelyn_ maintained:-With the habituated to song (Bard) Are flashes of light to lead the tumult In ability to descend Through spikes along brinks Through the opening of trapdoors.
[939] 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 Tar_chon_ 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 Dun_dalgan_, and the Glen_dalgeon_, 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.
[Illustration: FIG.
473.--Sculpture on the Wall of St. Clement's Cave, Hastings.
[_To face page 797._] 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 Art_hur_ or Ar_tur_, 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 _Ag_land Moor, as also _Ox_ted, suggests the troglodyte King Og of Edrei.
Among the Reigate caves is one denominated "The Dungeon": _Tin_tagel was known alternatively not only as _Dun_dagel, but also as _Dune_chein, 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 _Tin_well, 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 _Don_seil[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] [Illustration: FIG.
474.
PLAN OF THE GROTTO AT MARGATE.]
I invite the reader to note the significance of these measurements and to compare the general design of the Donseil _souterrain_ with the form of Fig.
474: this is the ground plan of a grotto which was accidentally discovered by some schoolboys in 1835, and exists to-day in the side of _Dane_ Hill, Margate.
Its form is very similar to the apparent design of the great two-mile Sanctuary at Avebury, see page 351, and its situation--a dene or valley on the side of a hill--coincides exactly with that of the small Candian cave-shrines dedicated to the serpent goddess.
In Candia no temples have been discovered but only small and insignificant household shrines: "It is possible," says Mr. Hall, "that the worship of the gods on a great scale was only carried out in the open air, or the palace court, or in a grave or cave not far distant.
Certainly the sacred places to which pilgrimage was made and at which votive offerings were presented, were such groves, rocky gorges, and caves.
"[960] The sanctity of Cretan caves is indisputably proved by the immense number of votive offerings therein found, in many cases encrusted and preserved by stalagmites and stalactites.
Among the house shrines of the Mother Goddess and her Son remain pathetic relics of the adoration paid by her worshippers: one of these saved almost intact by Sir Arthur Evans is described as a small room or cell, smaller even than the tiny chapels that dot the hills of Crete to-day--a place where one or two might pray, leave an offering and enjoy community with the divinity rudely represented on the altar ... one-third of the space was for the worshipper, another third for the gifts, the last third for the goddess.
[961] There are diminutive _souterrains_ in Cornwall notably at St. Euny in the parish of Sancreed where the gift niches still remain intact: in many instances these "Giants Holts" are in serpentine form, and the serpentine form of the Margate Grotto is unmistakable.
The Mother Goddess of Crete has been found figured with serpents in her hands and coiling round her shoulders: according to Mr. Mackenzie: "Her mysteries were performed in caves as were also the Paleolithic mysteries.
In the caves there were sacred serpents, and it may be that the prophetic priestesses who entered them were serpent charmers: cave worship was of immense antiquity.
The cave was evidently regarded as the door of the Underworld in which dwelt the snake-form of Mother Earth.
"[962] [Illustration: FIG.
475.--Ground plan of _Souterrain_ at St. Euny's, Sancreed, Cornwall.]
It has been seen that the serpent because of sloughing its skin was the emblem of rejuvenescence, regeneration, and New Birth; it is likely that the word _sanctus_ is radically the same as _snag_, meaning a short branch, and as _snake_, which in Anglo-Saxon was _snaca_: it is certain that the _snake trou_ or snake cave was one of the most primitive _sanctuaries_.
[963] Not only is the Margate Grotto constructed in serpentine form, but upon one of the panels of its walls is a Tree of Life, of which two of the scrolls consist of horned serpents: these are most skilfully worked in shells, and from the mouth of each serpent is emerging the triple tongue of Good Thought, Good Deed, Good Word.
The word dean, French _doyen_, is supposed to be the Latin _decanum_ the accusative of decanus, one set over ten soldiers or ten monks: it is, as already suggested, more probable that the original deans were the priests of Diane, and that they worshipped in dene holes, in dens, in denes, on downs, and at dunhills.
The word _grot_ is probably the same as _kirit_, the Turkish form of Crete, and as the _Keridwen_ or _Kerid Holy_ of Britain.
The ministers of the Cretan Magna Mater were entitled _curetes_, and the modern curate may in all likelihood claim a verbal descent from the Keridwen or Sancreed whose name is behind our _great, crude_, and _cradle_.
The Magna Mater of Kirid or Crete was sometimes as already mentioned depicted with a cat upon her head: I have equated the word _cat_ with Kate, Kitty, or Ked, and in all probability the catacombs of Rome anciently Janicula were originally built in her honour.
In Scotland _souterrains_ are termed _weems_, a word which is undoubtedly affiliated both in form and idea with womb, tomb, and coombe: the British bards allude frequently to the grave as being the matrix or womb of Ked; as archæologists are well aware, primitive burials frequently consisted of contracting the body into the form of the foetus, depositing it thus in a stone cist, chest, or "coty": and there is little doubt that the St. Anne who figures so prolifically in the catacombs of Janicula, was like St. Anne of Brittany the pre-Christian Anne, Jana, or Diane.
At Caddington by Dunstable there is a Dame Ellen's Wood; Caddington itself is understood to have meant--"the hill meadow of Cedd or Ceadda," and among the prehistoric tombs found in this neighbourhood was the interment illustrated on page 64.
It has been cheerily suggested that "the child may have been buried alive with its mother": it may, but it equally may not; the pathetic surround of sea-urchins or popularly-called fairy loaves points to sentiment of some sort, particularly in view of the tradition that whoso keeps a specimen of the fairy loaf in his house shall never lack bread.
[964] _Echinus_, the Latin for sea-urchin, is radically the same word as Janus; in the Margate grotto an echinus forms the centre of most of the conchological suns or stars with which the walls are decorated, and a large echinus appears in each of the four top corners of the oblong chamber.
I have suggested that the Kentish Rye, a town which once stood on a conical islet and near to which is an earthwork known nowadays as Rhee wall, was once dedicated to Rhea or Maria, and that Margate owes its designation to the same Ma Rhea or Mother Queen.
According to "Morien" _Rhi_ was a Celtic title of the Almighty, and is the root of the word _rhinwedd_ (Virtue): according to Rhys _rhi_ meant _queen_, and was a poetic term for a lady: according to Thomas _Rhea_ is the feminine noun of _rhi_, prince or king; it would thence follow that _regina_, like the French name Rejane, meant originally Queen Gyne, either Queen Woman or Royal Jeanne.
There are numerous Ryhalls, Ryhills, and in Durham is a Ryton which figured anciently as Ruyton, Rutune, and _Ruginton_: near Kingston is Raynes Park, and at Hackney, in the neighbourhood of the Seven Sisters and Kingsland Roads, is Wren's Park.
That the Candians colonised the North of Africa is generally supposed, whence it becomes likely that the marvellous excavations at _Rua_ were related to the worship of the serpentine _Rhea_: these are mentioned by Livingstone who wrote: "Tribes live in underground houses in Rua.
Some excavations are said to be 30 miles long, and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them.
The 'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them.
"[965] The word grotesque admittedly originated from the fantastic designs found so frequently within grottos or grots, and if the natives of Rua could construct a _souterrain_ 30 miles in extent, I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of the tradition that the natives of Reigate had run a tunnel towards Rye which is within a few miles of St. Clement's Caves at Hastings.
The _gate_ of Margate and Reigate means _opening_; _wry_ means awry or twisting, and we may probably find the original name of Reigate in the neighbouring place-name Wray Common.
The Snake grotto at Margate, which is situated almost below a small house named "Rosanna Lodge," is decorated throughout with a most marvellous and beautiful mosaic of shellwork, the like of which certainly exists nowhere else in Britain: the dominant notes of this decoration are roses or rosettes, and raisins or grapes; over the small altar in the oblong chamber, at the extremity, are rising the rays of the Sun.
The shells used as a groundwork for this decorative scheme were the yellow periwinkle now naturally grey with antiquity but which, when fresh, must, when illuminated, have produced an effect of golden and surpassing beauty.
In the shrines of Candia large numbers of sea-shells, artificially tinted in various colours, have come to light:[966] that the altar at the Cantian Margate grotto was constructed to hold a lamp or a candle cannot be doubted, in which connection one may connote a statement by "Morien" that "All shell grottos with a candle in it (_sic_) were a symbol of the cave of the sun near the margin of the ocean with the soul of the sun in it".
[967] There is indeed little doubt that the snake trou under Rosanna Lodge was, like the grotto at St. Sulpice le Donseil, dedicated to le Donseil or _donna sol_.
At the mouth of the shrine is a figurine seated, of which, unfortunately, the head is missing, but the right hand is still holding a cup: in Fig.
44 _ante_, page 167, Reason is holding a similar cup into which is distilling _la rosee_, or the dew of Heaven--doubtless the same goblet as was said to be offered to mortals by the fairy Idunns; their earthly representatives, the Aeddons, may be assumed once to have dwelt in the Dane Park or at Addington Street, now leading to Dane Hill where the grotto remains.
We have connected the Cup of Reason with the mystic Cauldron of Keridwen, or "cauldron of four spaces," and have noted among the recipe "the liquor that bees have collected _and resin_," to be prepared "when there is a calm dew falling": another Bard alludes to "the gold-encircled liquor contained in the golden cup," and I have little doubt that resin, rosin, or rosine was valued and venerated as being, like amber, the petrified tears of Apollo.
I do not suggest that the Rosanna Lodge in the dene at Margate has any direct relation to the grotto of Reason beneath, but there is evidently a close connection with the small figurine holding a cup and the Lady Rosamond of Rosamond's Well at Woodstock.
"There was," says Herbert, "a popular notion of an infernal maze extending from the bottom of Rosamond's Well": this labyrinth almost certainly once existed, for as late as 1718 there were to be seen by the pool at Woodstock the foundations of a very large building which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond's Labyrinth.
[968] The story of Fair Rosamond being compelled to swallow poison is precisely on a par with the monkish legend that St. George was "tortured by being forced to drink a poisoned cup," and how the Rosamond story originated is fairly obvious from the fact that on her alleged tombstone, "among other fine sculptures was engraven the figure of a cup.
This, which perhaps at first was an accidental ornament (perhaps only the chalice), might in aftertimes suggest the notion that she was poisoned; at least this construction was put upon it when the stone came to be demolished after the nunnery was dissolved."
The above is the opinion of an archæologist who died in 1632, and it is in all probability sound: the actual site of Rosamond's Bower at Woodstock seems to have been known as Godstone, and it was presumably the ancient Ked Stone that gave birth to the distorted legend.
According to the Ballad of Fair Rosamond, that maiden was a ladye brighte, and most peerlesse was her beautye founde:-Her crisped locks like threads of gold Appeared to each man's sighte, Her sparkling eyes like Orient pearls Did cast a heavenlye light.
The blood within her crystal cheekes Did such a colour drive As though the lillye and the rose For mastership did strive.
The ballad continues that the enamoured King-At Woodstock builded such a bower The like was never seene, Most curiously that bower was built Of stone and timber strong An hundered and fifty doors[969] Did to this bower belong, And they so cunninglye contrived With turnings round about, That none but with a clue of thread Could enter in or out.
According to Drayton, Rosamond's Bower consisted of vaults underground arched and walled with brick and stone: Stow in his _Annals_ quotes an obituary stone reading, _Hic jacet in tumba Rosa Mundi; non Rosa Munda, non redolet sed olet_, which may be Anglicised into, Here lies entombed a mundane Rosa not the Rose of the World; she is not redolent, but "foully doth she stinke".
I am inclined, however, to believe that the traditional Rosamond was really and indeed the "cleane flower" and that the ignorant monks added calumny to their other perversions.
History frigidly but very fortunately relates that "the tombstone of Rosamond Clifford was taken up at Godstone and broken in pieces, and that upon it were interchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and green and the picture of the cup, out of which she drank the poison given her by the Queen, carved in stone".
[970] At the Cornish village of Sancreed, _i.e._, San Kerid or St. Ked, engraved upon the famous nine foot cross is a similar cup or chalice, out of which rises a tapering fleur de lys: with the word _creed_ may be connoted the fact that the artist of Kirid or Crete, "with a true instinct for beauty, chose as his favourite flowers the lovely lily and iris, the wild gladiolus and crocus, all natives of the Mediterranean basin, and the last three, if not the lily, of his own soil".
[971] Opinions differ as to whether the Sancreed lily is a spear head or a fleur de lys: they also differ as to the precise meaning of the cup: in the opinion of Mr. J. Harris Stone, "the vessel or chalice is roughly heart-shaped--that is the main body of it--and the head of the so-called spear is distinctly divided and has cross-pieces which, being recurved, doubtless gave rise to the lily theory of the origin.
Now there was an ancient Egyptian cross of the Latin variety rising out of a heart like the mediæval emblem of _Cor in Cruce, Crux in Corde_, and this is irresistibly brought to my mind when looking at this Sancreed cross.
The emblem I am alluding to is that of Goodness.
"[972] [Illustration: FIG.
476.--The famous Sancreed Cross.
From _The Cornish Riviera_ (Stone, J. Harris).
[_To face page 816._] With this theory I am in sympathy, and it may be reasonably suggested that the alleged "tombstone" of Rosamond at Godstone was actually a carved megalith analogous to that at Sancreed: the carving on the latter may be comparatively modern, but in all probability the rock itself is the original _crude_ Creed stone, Ked stone, or Good stone, touched up and partly recut.
The Rose is the familiar emblem of St. George or Oros who, according to some accounts, was the son of Princess Sophia the Wise: his legs were of massive silver up to the knees, and his arms were of pure gold from the elbows to the wrists.
According to other traditions George was born at Coventry, and "is reported to have been marked at his birth (forsooth!)
with a red bloody cross on his right hand".
[973] The first adventure of St. George was the salvation of a fair and precious princess named Sabra from a foul dragon who venomed the people with his breath and this adventure is located at Silene: with this Silene may be connoted the innocent Una, who in some accounts occupies the position of the Lady Sabra: Sabra is suggestive of Sabrina, the little Goddess of the river Severn, whose name we have connected with the soft, gentle, pleasing and propitious Brina: that St. Burinea, the pretty daughter of Angus whose memory is sanctified as the patron of St Burian's or Eglos_berrie_, was originally _pure_ Una is more likely than that this alleged Maiden was an historic personage of the sixth century.
The series of excavations at Reigate, of which the principal is the Baron's Cave, extends to a Red Cross Inn which marks the vicinity where stood the chapel of the Holy Cross, belonging to the Priory of the Virgin and Holy Cross: about a mile from Reigate in a little brook (the Bourne Water) used to stand a great stone stained red by the victims of a water Kelpie, who had his lair beneath.
The Kelpie was exorcised by a vicar of Buckland: nevertheless the stone remained an object of awe to the people, which, says Mr. Ogilvie, "was regarded as a vile superstition by a late vicar who had the stone removed to demonstrate to his parishioners that there was nothing under it, but some of the old folks remember the story yet".
[974] Part of Reigate is known as Red Hill, obviously from the red sandstone which abounds there: at Bristol or Bristowe, _i.e_., the Stockade of Bri, the most famous church is that of St. Mary Redcliffe: the Mew stone off Devonshire is red cliff, the inscriptions at Sinai are always on red stone, and there is little doubt that red rock was particularly esteemed to be the symbol of gracious Aine, the Love Mother.
In Domesday the Redcliff of St. Mary appears as Redeclive,[975] and may thus also have meant Rood Cleeve: in London we have a Ratcliffe Highway, and in Kensington a Redcliffe Square.
In what is now the Green Park, Mayfair, used to be a Rosamond's Pool: with Rosamond, the Rose of the World, and Rosanna--whose name may be connoted with the inscription RU NHO or QUEEN NEW,[976] which occurs on one of the Sancreed crosses may also be connoted St. Rosalie of Sicily or Hypereia, whose grotto and fete still excite "an almost incredible enthusiasm".
The legend of St. Rosalie represents her as-Something much too fair and good For human nature's daily food, and her mysterious evanishment is accounted for by the tradition that, disgusted by the frivolous life and empty gaiety of courts, she voluntarily retired herself into an obscure cavern, where her remains are now supposed to be buried under wreaths of imperishable roses which are deposited by angels.
[977] [Illustration: FIG.
477.--Iberian.
From Akerman] [Illustration: FIG.
478.--Kerris Roundago.
From _Antiquities of Cornwall_.]
According to ecclesiastical legend the beloved St. Rosalie--whose fete is celebrated in Sicily on the day of St. Januarius--was the daughter of a certain Tancred, the first King of Sicily: it is not unlikely that this Tancred was Don Cred or Lord Cred, a relation of the Cornish Sancreed.
[978] Sancreed is supposed to derive its name as being "an abstract dedication to the Holy Creed": but it is alternatively known as San_cris_: the Cretans, or Kiridians, or Eteocretes claimed Cres the Son of Jupiter by the nymph Idea as their first King, and they traced their descent from Cres.
In a subsequent volume we shall consider this Cres at greater length, and shall track him to India in the form of Kristna, to whose grace the subterranean cross at Madura seems to have been dedicated.
In Celtic _cris_ meant pure, holy; _crios_ meant the Sun:[979] the principal site of Apollo-worship was the island of Crissa; in England Christy[980] is a familiar surname, and I am convinced that the Christ tradition in Britain owed little to the Roman mission of Augustine, but was of far older origin.
We may perhaps trace the original transit of Cris to Sancris at Carissa, now Carixa, in Spain: among the numerous coins of this district some as figured herewith bear the legend Caris, some bear the head of the young Hercules, others a female head.
[981] As in classic Latin _C_ was invariably pronounced hard, it is probable that the maiden Caris was Ceres, and that the Cretan pair are responsible for Kerris Roundago, an egg-like monument near Sancreed; also for Cresswell in Durham where is the famous Robin Hood Cave:[982] one may further trace Caris at Carisbrook near Ryde, at the diminutive Criss Brook near Maidstone, and at the streamlet Crise in Santerre.
[Illustration: FIG.
479.--Christ, with a Nimbus Resembling a Flat Cap, or Casquette.
From a Carving on Wood in the Stalls of Notre Dame d'Amiens.
XVI.
Cent.
From Didron.]
The town of Carissa, now Carixa, may be connoted with the synonymous _cross_ or _crux_: the Cornish for _cross_ was _crows_, and at Crows-an-Rha, near St. Buryans, there is a celebrated wayside cross or crouch.
[983] That Caris was _carus_ or _dear_, and that he was the inception of _charis_ or charity will also eventually be seen: I have elsewhere suggested that _charis_, or _love_, was originally 'k Eros or Great Eros; in the Christian emblem here illustrated Christ is associated with a rose cross, which is fabricated from the four hearts, and thus constitutes the _Rosa mystica_.
At Kerris Roundago are four megaliths.
[Illustration: FIG.
480.]
[Illustration: FIG.
481.]
The Sancris cup or chalice[984] might legitimately be termed a _cruse_: Christ's first miracle was the conversion of a cruse or can of water into wine, and the site of this miracle was Cana.
The _souterrain_ of St. Sulpice le Donseil is situated in a district known as La Creuse, and the solitary pillar in the heart of this grotto, as also that in the Margate grotto, and that in the _souterrain_ at Tinwell, were probably symbols of what the British Bard describes as "Christ the concealed pillar of peace".
The Celtic Christs here reproduced from an article in _The Open Court_ by Dr. Paul Carus are probably developments of ancient Prestons or Jupiter Stones: the connection between these crude Christs and Cres, the Son of Jupiter, by the nymph Idea, is probably continuous and unbroken.
A cruse corresponds symbolically to a cauldron or a cup: according to Herbert, "The Cauldron of the Bards was connected by them with Mary in that particular capacity which forms the portentous feature in St. Brighid (_viz._, her _being Christ's Mother_) to the verge of identification.
The reason was that divine objects considered by them essentially, and, as it were, sacramentally as being Christ, were prepared within and produced out of that sacred and womb-like receptacle."
He then quotes two bardic extracts to the following effect:-(1) The One Man and our Cauldron, And our deed, and our word, With the bright pure Mary daughter of Anne.
(2) Christ, Creator, Emperor and our Mead, Christ the Concealed, pillar of peace, Christ, Son of Mary and of my Cauldron, a pure pedigree!
[985] The likelihood is that the solitary great Jasper stone in the roof of the four-columned hall at Edrei, the Capital of King Og, was similarly a symbol of the ideal Corner Stone or the Concealed Pillar of Peace.
At Mykenae the celebrated titanic gateway is ornamented by two lions guarding or supporting a solitary pillar or numeral 1: at other times a figure of the Magna Mater takes the place of this ONE, and it is probable that the Io of Mykenae was originally My Kene, _i.e._, Mother Queen or, more radically, Mother Great One.
That Io was represented by the horns or crescent moon is obvious from the innumerable idols in the form of cows horns found at Mykenae: we have already connected Cain, Cann, and Kenna with the moon or _choon_, Latin _luna_, French _lune_, otherwise Cynthia or Diana.
Not only was Crete or Candia essentially an island of caves, but the district of the British Cantii seems if anything to have been even more riddled: _canteen_ is a generic term for cellar or cool cave, and the origin of this word is not known.
In Mexico _cun_ meant _pudenda muliebris_, in London _cunny_ and _cunt_ carry the same meaning, and with _cenote_, the Mexican for _cistern_, may be connoted our English rivers Kennet and Kent.
Dr.
Guest refers to the cauldron of _Cend_wen (Keridwen): according to Davidson the magic cup of the Cabiri corresponded to the _Condy_ Cup[986] of the Gnostics which is the same as that in which _Guion_ (Mercury) made his beverage--the beverage of knowledge or divine Kenning, the philosophical Mercury of the mediæval alchemists.
Sometimes the Egg or Cup was encircled by two serpents said to represent the Igneous and Humid principles of Nature in conjunction: it is not improbable that the spirals found alike at Mykenae and New Grange represented this dual coil, spire, or maze of Life, and the Coil Dance or the Snail's Creep, which was until recently executed in Cornwall, may have borne some relation to this notion.
[987] [Illustration: FIG.
482.--Entry to New Grange.]
In the neighbourhood of Totnes and the river Teign is the world-famous Kent's Cavern,[988] whence has emanated evidence that man was living in what is now Devonshire, contemporaneously with the mammoth, the cave-lion, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and other animals which are now extinct.
Kent's Cavern is in a hill, _dun_, _tun_, or what the Bretons term a _torgen_, and the _torgen_ containing Kent's Cavern is situated in the Manor of Torwood in the parish of Tor, whence Torbay, Torquay, etc.
: in Cornwall _tor_, or _tur_, meant belly, and _tor_ may be equated with _door_, Latin _janua_.
The entrance to Kent's Hole is in the face of a cliff, and the people mentioned in the Old Testament as the _Kenites_ were evidently cliff-cave dwellers, for it is related that Balaam looked on the Kenites and said: "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock":[989] Kent is the same word as _kind_, meaning _genus_; also as _kind_, meaning affectionate and well-disposed, and it is worthy of note that the cave-dwelling Kenites of the Old Testament were evidently a kindly people for the record reads: "Saul said unto the Kenites 'Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for _ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up_ out of Egypt'.
[990] So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
"[991] There is evidence that Thor's Cavern in Derbyshire was inhabited by prehistoric troglodites; the most high summit in the Peak District is named Kinder Scout, and in the southern side of Kinder Scout is the celebrated Kinderton Cavern: at Kinver in Staffordshire there are prehistoric caves still being lived in by modern troglodites, and at Cantal in France there are similar cave dwellings.
In Derbyshire are the celebrated Canholes and at Cannes, by Maestricht, is an entrance to the amazing grottos of St. Peter: this subterranean quarry is described as a succession of long horizontal galleries supported by an immense number of square pillars whose height is generally from 10 to 20 feet: the number of these vast subterranean alleys which cross each other and are prolonged in every direction cannot be estimated at less than 2000, the direct line from the built up entrance near Fort St. Peter to the exit on the side of the Meuse measures one league and a half.
That these works were at one time in the occupation of the Romans, is proved by Latin inscriptions, but evidently the Romans did not do the building for, "underneath these inscriptions you can trace some ill-formed characters traditionally attributed to the Huns; which is ridiculous since the Huns did not build, and therefore had no need of quarries, and moreover were ignorant of the art of writing".
[992] In view of the fact that the gigantic cavern farther up the Meuse, is entitled the Han Grotto, this tradition of Hun "writing" is not necessarily ridiculous: the Huns in question, whoever they were, probably were the people who built the Hun's beds and were worshippers of "the One Man and our Cauldron".
The Peter Mount now under consideration does not appear to have been such a Peter's Purgatory as found on "the island of the tribe of Oin": on the contrary its galleries, based on pillars about 16 feet high, are traced on a regular plan.
These cross one another at right angles, and their most noticeable feature is the extreme regularity and perfect level of the roof which is enriched with a kind of cornice--a cornice of the severest possible outline, but with a noble simplicity which gives to the galleries a certain monumental aspect.
Within the criss-cross bowels of the Peter Mount is another very remarkable curiosity--a small basin filled with water called Springbronnen ("source of living water") which is incessantly renewed, thanks to the drops falling from the upper portion of a fossil tree fixed in the roof.
[993] The modern showman does not vaunt among his attractions a "source of living water," and we may reasonably assume that this appellation belongs to an older and more poetic age: the Hebrew for "fountain of living waters" is _ain_, a word to be connoted with Hun, Han, and St. Anne of the Catacombs: St. Anne is the patron of all springs and wells; at Sancreed is a St. Eunys Well, and the word _aune_ or _avon_ was a generic term for any _gentle flowing_ stream.
It is reasonable to equate St. Anne of the Catacombs with "Pope Joan" of Engelheim, and it is probable that the original Vatican was the terrestrial seat of the celestial Peter, the Fate Queen or Fate King: with St. Peter's Mount may be connoted the Arabian City of Petra which is entirely hewn out of the solid rock.
The connection between the Irish Owen, or Oin, and the Patrick of Patrick's Purgatory has already been considered, and that Janus or Janicula was the St. Peter of the Vatican is very generally admitted: we shall subsequently consider Janus in connection with St. Januarius or January; at Naples there are upwards of two miles of catacombs, and the Capo di _Chino_, under which these occur, may probably be identified with the St. Januarius whose name they bear.
[Illustration: FIG.
483.--Seventeenth Century Printer's Mark.]
That Janus, the janitor of the Gates of Heaven and of all other gates, was a personification of immortal Time is sufficiently obvious from the attributes which were assigned to him; that the Patrick of Ireland was also the Lord of the 365 days is to be implied from the statement of Nennius that St. Patrick "at the beginning" founded 365 churches and ordained 365 bishops.
[994] I was recently accosted in the street by a North-Briton who inquired "what _dame_ is it?
": on my failure to catch his meaning his companion pointed to my watch chain and repeated the inquiry "what _time_, is it"; but even without such vivid evidence it is clear that _dame_ and _time_ are mere variants of the same word.
It is proverbial that Truth, _alias_ Una, _alias_ Vera, is the daughter of Time: that Time is also the custodian of Truth is a similar commonplace: Time is the same word as Tom, and Tom is a contracted form of Thomas which the dictionaries define as meaning _twin, i.e., twain:_ Thomas is the same name as Tammuz, a Phrygian title of Adonis, and in Fig.
404 (_ante_, p. 639), Time was emblemised as the Twain or Pair; in Fig.
483, Father Time is identified with Veritas or Truth, for the legend runs, "Truth in time brings hidden things to light".
[995] The Lady Cynethryth, who dwells proverbially at the bottom of a well, is, of course, daily being brought to light; it is, however, unusual to find her thus depicted clambering from a dene hole or a den.
In all probability the "Sir Thomas" who figures in the ballad as Fair Rosamond's custodian was originally Sir Tammuz, Tom, or Time-And you Sir Thomas whom I truste To bee my loves defence, Be careful of my gallant Rose When I am parted hence.
The relentless Queen who appears so prominently in the story may be connoted with the cruel Stepmother who figures in the Cinderella cycle of tales--a ruthless lady whom I have considered elsewhere.
The silken thread by which the Queen reached Rosamond--to whose foot, like Jupiter's chain, it was attached--is paralleled by the thread with which Ariadne guided the fickle Theseus.
In an unhappy hour the Queen overcomes the trusty Thomas, and guided by the silken thread-Went where the Ladye Rosamonde Was like an Angel sette.
But when the Queen with steadfast eye Beheld her beauteous face She was amazed in her minde At her exceeding grace.
The word _grace_ is the same as _cross_, and grace is the interpretation given by all dictionaries of the name John or Ian: the red cross was originally termed the Jack, and to the Jack, without doubt, was once assigned the meaning "Infinite in the East, Infinite in the West, Infinite in the South.
Thus it is said, He who is in the fire, He who is in the heart, He who is in the Sun, they are _One_ and the same:" in _China_ the Svastika is known as the _Wan_.
FOOTNOTES: [905] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 95.
[906] Mottingham, anciently Modingham, is supposed to be from Saxon _modig_, proud or lofty, and _ham_, a dwelling.
Johnstone derives it as, "Enclosure of Moding," or "of the Sons of Mod or Mot".
We may assume these people were followers of the Maid, and that Mottingham was equivalent to Maiden's Home.
[907] Mackenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. xlvi.
[908] Borlase, Wm., _Antiquities of Cornwall_, p. 296.
[909] _Cliff Castles_, p. 33.
[910] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Cliff Castles_.
[911] Chislehurst is supposed to mean the pebble hurst or wood, but Chislehurst is on chalk and is less pebbly than many places adjacent: at Chislehurst is White Horse Hill: Nantjizzel or _jizzle valley_, in Cornwall, is close to Carn Voel, _alias_ the Diamond House, and thus, I am inclined to think that Chislehurst was a selhurst or selli's wood sacred to Chi the great Jehu.
[912] Adams, W. H. A., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 90.
[913] Spence L., _Myths of Mexico and Peru_, p. 293.
[914] In 1867 Mr. Roach Smith published the following description: "The ground plan of the caves was like a six-leaved flower diverging from the central cup which is represented by the shaft.
The central cave of each three is about 14 yards long and about 6 yards high.
The side caves are smaller, about 7 yards long and 2 yards wide.
The section is rather singular: taken from end to end the roof line is horizontal: but the floor rises at the end of the cave so that a sketch of the section from end to end of the two principal caves is like the outline of a boat, the shaft being in the position of the mainmast.
The section across the cave is like the outline of an egg made to stand on its broader end.
They are all hewn out of the chalk, the tool marks, like those which would be made by a pick, being still visible."
--_Archæologia_, i., 32.
Dr. Munro states: "They are usually found on the higher ground of the lower reaches of the Thames ... in fact, North Kent and South Essex appear to be studded with them."
--_Prehistoric Britain_, p. 222.
[915] _Nat.
Hist._, lib.
xvii., cap.
viii.
[916] Part I.
[917] One of the most characteristic symbols of the Ægean is St. Andrew's Cross: I have suggested that the Scotch Hendrie meant _ancient drie_ or _drew_, and it is not without significance that tradition closely connects St. Andrews in Scotland with the Ægean.
The legend runs that St. Rule arrived at St. Andrews bringing with him a precious relic--no less than Sanct Androwis Arme.
"This Reule," continues the annalist, "was ane monk of Grece born in Achaia and abbot in the town of Patras"--Simpkins, J. E., _Fife_, Country Folklore, vol.
vli., p. 243.
[918] _The Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 72.
[919] "It is certain that ancient caves do exist in Palestine which in form and circumstance, and to some extent also in decoration, approximate so nearly to the Royston Cave that if any historical connection could be established between them, it would scarcely seem doubtful that the one is a copy of the other."
--Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24.
According to the same authority there are indications at the Royston Cave "of an extreme and primeval antiquity," and he adds, "it bears, indeed, a strong resemblance in form and dimension to the ancient British habitation; and certain marks and decorations in its oldest parts such as indentations and punctures, giving a diapered appearance to the surface, are very similar to what is seen in confessedly Druidical and Phoenician structures," p. 22.
[920] Beldam, J., _The Royston Cave_, p. 24.
[921] In Caledonia dovecots or _doocats_ are still superstitiously maintained: there may be a connection between _doocat_ and the "Dowgate" Hill which neighbours the present Cathedral of St. Paul.
[922] Nichols, W. J., _The Chislehurst Caves and Dene Holes_, p. 5.
[923] Walford, E., _Greater London_, ii., 127.
[924] _Ibid._, p. 131.
[925] Goddard, A. R., _Essex Archæological Society's Transactions_, vol.
vii., 1899.
[926] Courtois, _Dictionaire Geographique de l'Arrondissement de Saint Omer_, p. 156.
[927] Wilson, J. G., _Gazetteer_, i., 1044.
[928] Eckenstein, L., _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_, p. 154.
[929] Dan or Don is one of the main European root river names; it occurs notably in the story of the _Dan_aides who carried water in broken urns to fill a bottomless vessel, and again in _Dan_aus who is said to have relieved Argos from drought.
[930] P. 242.
[931] Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 154.
[932] Wright, T., _Patrick's Purgatory_, p. 162.
[933] _Ibid._, p. 231.
[934] _Travels in the East_, p. 2.
[935] "This was the _round_ church of St. Mary, divided into two stories by slabs of stone; in the upper part are four altars; on the eastern side below there is another, and to the right of it an empty tomb of stone, in which the Virgin Mary is said to have been buried; but who moved her body, or when this took place, no one can say.
On entering this chamber, you see on the right-hand side a stone inserted in the wall, on which Christ knelt when He prayed on the night in which He was betrayed; and the marks of His knees are still seen on the stone, as if it had been as soft as wax."
[936] Wright comments upon this: "Dr. Clarke is the only modern traveller who has given any notice of these subterranean chambers or pits, which he supposes to have been ancient places of idolatrous worship".
[937] _Cf._ Baring-Gould, _Curious Legends_, p. 238.
[938] _Mysteries of the Cabiri_, ii., 393.
[939] _Cf._ Herbert, A., _Cyclops_, p. 155.
[940] _Ibid._, p. 154.
[941] It is not improbable that the Pied Piper incident was actually enacted annually at the Koppenburg, and that the children of Hamelyn were given the treat of being taken through some brilliantly lit cavern "joining the town and close at hand".
Whether the Koppenburg contains any grottos I am unable to say.
[942] _Cyclops_, p. 156.
[943] The authorities connect the surnames Kettle and Chettle with the Kettle or Cauldron of Norse mythology, whence Prof. Weekley writes: "The renowned Captain Kettle, described by his creator as a Welshman, must have descended from some hardy Norse pirate".
Why Norse?
The word _kettle_, Gaelic _cadhal_, is supposedly borrowed from the Latin _catillus_, a small bowl: the Greek for cup is _kotulos_, and it is probable that _kettle_ and _cotyledon_ are alike radically Ket, Cot, or Cad.
In Scotland _adhan_ meant cauldron, whence Rust thinks that Edinbro or Dunedin was once a cauldron hill.
[944] Sandringham, near King's Lynn, appeared in Domesday as Sandersincham: upon this Johnston comments, "Curious corruption.
This is 'Holy Dersingham,' as compared with the next parish Dersingham.
French _saint_, Latin _sanctus_, Holy."
[945] Ogilvie, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 183.
[946] _Ibid._, p. 166.
[947] _Ibid._, p. 167.
The italics are mine.
[948] "The old Bourne stream, generally known as the 'Surrey Woe Water,' has already commenced to flow through Caterham Valley, and at the moment there is quite a strong current of water rushing through an outlet at Purley.
"There are also pools along its course through Kenley, Whyteleafe, and Warlingham, which suggest that the stream is rising at its principal source, in the hills around Woldingham and Oxted, where it is thought there exists a huge natural underground reservoir, which, when full, syphons itself out at certain periods about every seven years.
"Tradition says that when the Bourne flows 'out of season' or at irregular times it foretells some great calamity.
It certainly made its appearance in a fairly heavy flow in three of the years of the war, but last year, which will always be historical for the declaration of the armistice and the prelude of peace, there was no flow at all."
--_The Star_, 15th March, 1919.
[949] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 283.
[950] _Cf._ Johnson, W., _Byeways_, pp.
411, 417.
[951] Ogilvy, J. S., _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 164.
[952] That the solar horse was sacred among the Ganganoi of Hibernia is probable, for: "On that great festival of the peasantry, St. John's Eve, it is the custom, at sunset on that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout the country, built like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bogwood, and such other combustibles as they can gather.
The turf yields a steady, substantial body of fire, the bogwood a most brilliant flame: and the effect of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up volumes of smoke from every part of the horizon, is very remarkable.
Early in the evening the peasants began to assemble, all habited in their best array, glowing with health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation and excess of enjoyment that characterise the enthusiastic people of the land.
I had never seen anything resembling it: and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and the playful, but really modest deportment of the maidens; the vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the children.
The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up; and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when the bogwood is thrown on.
After a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau-ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-plenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes and the endless jig began.
"But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little.
When the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced.
Every one present of the peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some 8 feet long, with a horse's head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance.
This was greeted with loud shouts as the '_white horse_'; and having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming and laughing in every direction.
I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle.
"Here was the old pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name!
I was confounded; for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people, with their children and, in a figure, all their cattle passing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true God."
--Elizabeth, Charlotte, _Personal Recollections_, quoted from "S. M." _Sketches of Irish History_, 1845.
[953] _The Religion of Ancient Britain_, p. 28.
[954] _Prehistoric London_, p. 137.
[955] _Man the Primeval Savage_, p. 328.
[956] _Ibid._, p. 66.
[957] _Archæologia_, i., 29.
[958] _Le donseil_ probably here means _donsol_, or _lord sun_.
Adonis and all the other Sun lords were supposed to have beep born in a cave on 25th December.
We have seen that Michael's Mount (family name St. Levan), was known alternatively as _dinsol_.
[959] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 183.
[960] _Ægean Archæologia_, p. 156.
[961] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 65.
[962] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 183.
[963] "Herodotus in _Book VIII_.
says that the ancients worshipped the Gods and Genii of any place under the form of serpents.
'Set up,' says some one in Persius' _Satires_ (No.
1), 'some marks of reverence such as the painting of two serpents to let boys know that the place is sacred.'"
--Seymour, F., _Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria_, p. 237.
[964] Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 304.
[965] _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, 1869.
[966] MacKenzie, D. A., _Myths of Crete_, p. 138.
[967] _Light of Britannia_, p. 200.
[968]_Cf._ _Percy Reliques_ (Everyman's Library), p. 21.
[969] The Baron's Cave at Reigate is "about 150 feet long" (_ante_, p. 799).
[970] _Percy Reliques_, p. 20.
[971] Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 125.
[972] _The Cornish Riviera_, p. 265.
[973] H. O. F., _St.
George for England_, p. 15.
[974] _A Pilgrimage in Surrey_, ii., 177.
[975] At Bristol is White Lady's Road.
[976] The curious name Newlove occurs as one of the erstwhile owners of the Margate grotto: the Lovelace family, for whose name the authorities offer no suggestions except that it is a corruption of the depressing Loveless, probably either once worshipped or acted the Lovelass.
This conjecture has in its favour the fact that "many of our surnames are undoubtedly derived from characters assumed in dramatic performances and popular festivities".--Weekley, A.
B., _The Romance of Names_, p. 197.
"To this class belong many surnames which have the form of abstract nouns, _e.g._, _charity_, _verity_, _virtue_, _vice_.
Of similar origin are perhaps, _bliss, chance, luck_, and _goodluck_."
--_Ibid._, p. 197.
[977] With the old English custom of burying the dead in roses, and with the tradition that at times a white lady with a red rose in her mouth used to appear at Pen_deen_ cave (Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 9), in Cornwall may be connoted the statement of Bunsen: "The Phoenicians had a grand flower show in which they hung chaplets and bunches of roses in their temples, and _on the statue of the goddess Athena_ which is only a feminine form of Then or Thorn" (_cf._ Theta, _The Thorn Tree_, p. 40).
The probability is that not only was the rose sacred to Athene but that Danes Elder (_Sambucus ebulus_), and Danes flower (_Anemone pulsutilla_) had no original reference to the Danes, but to the far older Dane, or donna, the white Lady.
Both _don_ and _dan_ are used in English, as the equivalent of _dominus_, whence Shakespeare's reference to Dan Cupid.
[978] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 177.
[979] Davidson, P., _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 51.
[980] The term Christ is interpreted as "the anointed".
[981] Akerman, J. Y., _Ancient Coins_, p. 25.
[982] We shall consider Robin Hood whom the authorities already equate with Odin in a subsequent chapter.
In Robin Hood's Cave have been discovered remains of paleolithic Art representing a horse's head.
In Kent the ceremony of the Hooden Horse used until recently to survive, and the same Hood or Odin may possibly be responsible for "_Wood_stock".
[983] Crutched Friars in London marks the site of a priory of the freres of the Crutch or Crouch.
[984] The San_creed_ chalice may be connoted ideally and philologically with the San_graal_, Provençal _gradal_: the apparition of a child in connection with the graal or gradal also permits the equation _gradal_ = _cradle_.
At Llandudno is the stone entitled _cryd Tudno, i.e._, the cradle of Tudno.
[985] _Cyclops_, p. 137 [986] _The Mistletoe and its Philosophy_, p. 31.
[987] "The young people being all assembled in a large meadow, the village band strikes up a simple but lively air, and marches forward, followed by the whole assemblage, leading hand-in-hand (or more closely linked in case of engaged couples) the whole keeping time to the tune with a lively step.
The band or head of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, whilst its train of dancing followers becomes coiled around it in circle after circle.
It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences, for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a number of young men with long, leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision."
--_Cf._ Courtney, Miss M. L., _Cornish Feasts and Folklore_, p. 39.
[988] The name Kent here appears to be of immemorial antiquity, and was apparently first printed in a 1769 map which shows "Kent's Hole Field".
[989] Num.
xxiv.
21.
[990] In modern Egyptian _kunjey_ means _kinship_.
[991] 1 Sam.
xv.
6.
[992] Adam, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 167.
[993] Adams, W. H. D., _Famous Caves and Catacombs_, p. 163.
[994] Usher, Dr. J., _A Discourse on the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British_, p. 77.
[995] At the foot of this emblem the designer has introduced an intreccia or Solomon's knot between his initials R. S. CONCLUSIONS "I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darknesse to a thin mist, and have gonne further than any man before me."
--JOHN AUBREY.
"But for my part I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by their distant antiquity; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have only groped in the dark."--CAMDEN.
[Illustration: FIG.
484.--From _Mythology of the Celtic Races_ (Rolleston, T.
W.).]
[Illustration: FIG.
485.--_Ibid._] One may perhaps get a further sidelight on the marvellous labyrinthic cave temples of the ancients by a reference to the so-called worm-knots or cup-and-ring markings on cromlechs and menhirs.
With regard to these sculptures Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes: "Another singular emblem, upon the meaning of which no light has yet been thrown, occurs frequently in connection with megalithic monuments.
The accompanying illustrations show examples of it.
Cup-shaped hollows are made in the surface of the stone, these are often surrounded with concentric rings, and from the cup one or more radial lines are drawn to a point outside the circumference of the rings.
Occasionally a system of cups are joined by these lines, but more frequently they end a little way outside the widest of the rings.
These strange markings are found in Great Britain and Ireland, in Brittany, and at various places in India, where they are called _mahadeos_.
I have also found a curious example--for such it appears to be--in Dupaix' _Monuments of New Spain_.
It is reproduced in Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities of Mexico_, vol.
lv.
On the circular top of a cylindrical stone, known as the Triumphal Stone, is carved a central cup, with nine concentric circles round it, and a duct or channel cut straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim.
Except that the design here is richly decorated and accurately drawn, it closely resembles a typical European cup-and-ring marking.
That these markings mean something, and that wherever they are found they mean the same thing, can hardly be doubted, but what that meaning is remains yet a puzzle to antiquarians.
The guess may perhaps be hazarded that they are diagrams or plans of a megalithic sepulchre.
The central hollow represents the actual burial-place.
The circles are the standing stones, fosses, and ramparts which often surrounded it: and the line or duct drawn from the centre outwards represents the subterranean approach to the sepulchre.
The apparent avenue intention of the duct is clearly brought out in the varieties given herewith, which I take from Simpson.
As the sepulchre was also a holy place or shrine, the occurrence of a representation of it among other carvings of a sacred character is natural enough; it would seem symbolically to indicate that the place was holy ground.
How far this suggestion might apply to the Mexican example I am unable to say.
"[996] Mr. Rolleston is partially right in his idea that the designs are as it were ground plans of monuments, but that theory merely carries the point a step backward and the question remains--Why were monuments constructed in so involved and seemingly absurd a form?
I hazard the conjecture that the Triumphal Stone with its central cup and _nine_ concentric circles was a symbol of Life, and of the _nine_ months requisite for the production of Human Life; that the duct or channel straight from the cup through all the circles to the rim implied the mystery of creation; and that the seemingly senseless meander of long passages was intended as a representation of the maw or stomach.
That the Druids were practised physiologists is deducible from the complaint made against one of them, that he had dissected 600 bodies: the ancient anatomists might quite reasonably have traced Life to a germ or cell lying within a mazy and seemingly unending coil of viscera: we know that auguries were drawn from the condition of the entrails of sacrificial victims, whence originally the entrails were in all probability regarded as the seat of Life.
_Mahadeo_, the Indian term for a worm-knot or cup-marking, resolves as it stands into _maha_, great; and _deo_, Goddess: our English word _maw_, meaning stomach, is evidently allied to the Hebrew _moi_, meaning bowels; with _moeder_, the Dutch for womb, may be connoted Mitra or Mithra, and perhaps Madura.
It is well known that the chief Festival celebrated in the Indian cave temples at Madura and elsewhere is associated with the _lingam_, or emblem of sex, and it may be assumed that the invariable sixfold form of the Kentish dene holes was connected in some way with sex worship.
The word _six_ is for some reason, which I am unable to surmise, identical with the word _sex_: the Chaldees--who were probably not unconnected with the "pure Culdees" of Caledonia--taught that Man, male and female, was formed upon the _sixth_ day: Orpheus calls the number _six_, "Father of the celestial and mortal powers," and, says Davidson, "these considerations are derived from the doctrine of Numbers which was highly venerated by the Druids".
[997] Six columbas centring in the womb of the Virgin Mary were illustrated on page 790, and it will probably prove that _columba_ meant holy womb, just as _culver_ seemingly meant holy ovary.
[Illustration: FIGS.
486 to 491.--Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems, Showing the Combination of Serpent, Circle, and Six Lobes.
From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.
M.).]
[Illustration: FIGS.
492 to 502.--Paper-marked Mediæval Emblems, Showing Circle and Serpent "like the intestines".
From _Les Filigranes_ (Briquet, C.M.).]
The sixfold marigold or wheel was used not infrequently as an emblem during the Middle Ages: in Fig.
504--a mediæval paper-mark--this design is sanctified by a cross, and the centre of Fig.
486 consists of the circle and Serpent.
Figs.
492 to 502 exhibit further varieties of this circle and Serpent design--the symbol of fructifying Life--and some of these examples bear a curious resemblance to the twists and convolutions of the entrails.
In Egypt, Apep, the Giant Serpent, was said to have--"resembled the intestines":[998] the word Apep is apparently related to _pepsis_, the Greek for _digestion_, as likewise to our _pipe_, meaning a long tube.
[Illustration: FIG.
503] Prof. Elliot Smith, who has recently published some lectures entitled _The Evolution of the Dragon_, sums up his conclusions as follows: "The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually became the symbol of the powers of evil".
[999] I have elsewhere illustrated a mediæval dragon-mark which was sanctified by a cross, and it is a highly remarkable fact that the papermakers of the Middle Ages were evidently _au fait_ with the ancient meaning of this sign.
Several of their multifarious serpent designs are associated with the small circle or pearl, in which connection it is noteworthy that not only had pearls the reputation of being givers of Life, but that _margan_, the ancient Persian word for pearl, is officially interpreted as meaning _mar_, "giver," and _gan_, "life".
This word, says Prof. Elliot Smith, has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages ranging from Hungary to Kamchatka, also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.
[1000] The Persian _gan_, in Zend _yan_, seeming corresponds to the European John, or Ian; and it is evident that Figs.
486 to 491 might justly be termed marguerites.
One of the most favourite decorations amongst Cretan artists is the eight-limbed octopus, and it is believed that the Mykenian volute or spiral is a variant of this emblem.
According to Prof. Elliot Smith the evidence provided by Minoan paintings, and Mykenian decorative art, demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus.
[1001] Other authorities believe that the octopus symbolised "the fertilising watery principle," and that the svastika is a conventionalised form of this creature.
In the light of these considerations it would thus seem highly probable that the knot, maze, Troy Town, or trou town, primarily was emblematic of the Maze or Womb of Life, conceived either physically or etherially in accord with the spirit of the time and people.
There is a certain amount of testimony to the fact that the Druids taught and worshipped within caves, and there is some reason to suppose that the Druids had a knowledge, not only of the lense, telescope, or Speculum of the Pervading Glance, but also of gunpowder, for Lucan, writing of a grove near Marseilles, remarks: "There is a report that the grove is often shaken and strangely moved, and that dreadful sounds are heard from its caverns; and that it is sometimes in a blaze without being consumed".
That abominations were committed in these eerie places I do not doubt: that animals were maintained in them there is good reason to suppose; and in all probability the story of the Cretan Minotaur, to whom Athenian youths were annually sacrificed, was based on a certain amount of fact.
The Bull being the symbol of life and fecundity, there would have been peculiar propriety in maintaining a bull or _toro_, Celtic _tarw_, within the _trou_, labyrinth, or maze of life: upon two of the British coins here illustrated the Mithraic Bull appears in combination with an intreccia.
The colossal labyrinths built in Egypt to the honour of the sacred toro are well known: in Europe remains of the horse are constantly discovered within caves,[1002] and it is a cognate fact that in Mexico a tapir--the nearest approach Mexico could seemingly show to a horse--was maintained in the subterranean temple of the god Votan.
[Illustration: FIGS.
504 to 506.--British.
From Akerman.]
This Votan of South America is an interesting personality: according to the native traditions of the Chiapenese Indians--there was once a man named Votan, who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge.
Votan was ordered by the Lord to people America and "He came _from the East_" bringing with him seven families: Votan, we are further told, was of the race of Chan, and built a city in America named Nachan, after Chan his family name.
The name Votan is seemingly a variant of Wotan, the Scandinavian All Father, and also of Wootton, which is a common Kentish family name: Wotan of _Wednesday_ was, it is believed, once widely worshipped in Kent, notably at _Woodnes_borough, which is particularly associated with the tradition: on Christmas Eve Thanet used to celebrate a festival called _Hooden_ing which consisted of decorating either the skull of a horse, or the wooden figure of a horse's head, which then was perambulated on a pole by a man hidden beneath a sheet.
[1003] In Central America _chan_ meant serpent, in which connection it is noteworthy that in Scandinavian mythology Wotan presides over the great world snake coiled at the roots of the mighty Ash Tree, named Iggdrasil.
This word may, I think, be resolved into _igg dra sil_, or High Tree Holy, and the Ash of our innumerable Ashdowns, Ashtons, Ashleys, Ashursts, etc., may in all probability be equated not only with _aes_, the Welsh for _tree_, but also with _oes_, the Welsh for _life_.
That Janus, whose coin was entitled the _as_, was King As has already been suggested, and that As or Ash[1004] was Odin is hardly open to doubt.
According to Borlase (W. C.): "There is reason to believe that the Sun was a principal divinity worshipped under the name of Fal, Phol, Bel, Beli, Balor, and Balder, all synonymous terms in the comparative mythology of the Germanic peoples whether Celtic or Teutonic in speech.
A curious passage in Johannes Cornubiensis permits us to equate this deity with Asch or As, one name of Odin.
The more deeply we study this portion of the subject the more certain becomes the identity of the members of the pantheon of the two western branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples.
"[1005] The word _Kent_ or Cantium is, I think, connected with Candia, but whether Votan of the race of Chan came from Candia, Cantium, or Scandinavia is a discussion which must be reserved for a subsequent volume: it is sufficient here to note in passing that one-third of the language of the Mayas is said to be pure Greek, whence the question has very pertinently been raised, "Who brought the dialect of Homer to America?
or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?"
It is now well known that there was communication between the East and West long before America was rediscovered by Columbus, and there is nothing therefore improbable in the Chiapenese tradition that their Votan, after settling affairs in the West, visited Spain and Rome.
The legend relates that Votan "went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored," these Culebres being presumably either the inhabitants of Calabar in Africa now embraced in the Niger Protectorate, or of Calabria, the southernmost province of Italy.
The allusion to a road which the Culebres had bored might be dismissed as a fiction were it not for the curious fact mentioned by Livingstone that tribes lived underground in Rua: "Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long and have running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them.
The 'writings' therein I have been told by some of the people are drawings of animals and not letters, otherwise I should have gone to see them."
The primitive but, in many respects, advanced culture of Mykenae and of Troy does not seem to have possessed the art of writing, and contemporary ideas must thus necessarily have been expressed by symbols akin to the multifarious animal-hieroglyphics of ancient Candia: it would even seem possible that the writings of underground Rua were parallel to the records of Egypt alleged in the following passage: "It is affirmed that the Egyptian priests, versed in all the branches of religious knowledge, and apprised of the approach of the Deluge, were fearful lest the divine worship should be effaced from the memory of man.
To preserve the memory of it, therefore, they dug in various parts of the kingdom subterranean winding passages, on the walls of which they engraved their knowledge, under different forms of animals and birds, which they call hieroglyphics, and which are unintelligible to the Romans.
"[1006] The existence of underground ways seems to be not infrequent in Africa, for Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his exploration for the source of the Nile, tells of a colossal tunnel or subway bored under the river Kaoma.
Grant asked his native guide whether he had ever seen anything like it elsewhere and the guide replied, "This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south of Lake Tanganyika": he then described a tunnel or subway under another river named also Kaoma, a tunnel so lengthy that it took the caravan from sunrise to noon to pass through.
This was said to be so lofty that if mounted upon camels the top could not be touched: "Tall reeds the thickness of a walking-stick grew inside; the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide--400 yards--that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it.
The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means."
The guide added that the people of Wambeh Lake shelter in this tunnel,[1007] and live there with their families and cattle.
[1008] In view of these Rider-Haggard-like facts it is unnecessary to discredit the tradition that the South American Votan of the tribe of Chan visited his kinsmen the Culebres, by the road which the Culebres had bored.
The journey is said to have taken place in the year 3000 of the world or 1000 B.C., and among the spots alleged to have been visited was the city of Rome where Votan "saw the house of God building".
It is well known that great cities almost invariably exhibit traces of previous cities on the same site: Schliemann's excavations at Troy proved the pre-existence of a succession of cities on the site of Troy, and the same fact has recently been established at Seville and elsewhere.
The city of Rome is famous for a labyrinth of catacombs, the building of which has always been a mystery: the catacombs abound in pagan emblems, and it is, I believe, now generally supposed that they are of pre-Christian origin.
A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggested in 1876 that the Roman Catacombs were the work of the prehistoric Cimmerii who notoriously dwelt _in subterraneis domiciliis_.
The rocks of the Crimea, notably at Inkerman, are honeycombed with caverns; in fact the burrowing proclivities of the Kymbri are proverbialised in the expression "Cimmerian darkness".
The same correspondent of _Notes and Queries_[1009] further drew attention to the remarkable fact that in the year 1770 coal mining operations in Ireland, at Fair Head, near The Giant's Causeway, disclosed prehistoric quarryings together with stone hammers "of the rudest and most ancient form".
It is difficult to believe that prehistoric man, surrounded by inexhaustible supplies of fuel in the form of forest and peat, found it necessary to mine, with his poor implements, for coal fuel, and the description of the supposedly prehistoric mine--"wrought in the most expert manner, the chambers regularly dressed and pillars left at proper intervals to support the roof"--arouses not only a strong suspicion that the _souterrain_ in question was actually a shrine, but also that the place-name Antrim--where these quarryings occur--may be connected with _antre_, a cave.
When the Fair Head labyrinth was accidentally disclosed we are told that two lads were sent forward who soon found themselves in "numerous apartments in the mazes and windings of which they were completely bewildered and were finally extricated, not without some difficulty".
With Joun of Etruria, and Janus of Janicula may be connoted the Ogane of Africa, whose toe, like that of Peter, was reverently kissed: that Northern Africa, Etruria, and Dodona were once peopled by a kindred race is one of the commonplaces of anthropology, and these Iberian people are, I think, traceable not only in Britain and Hibernia, but in the actual names _Berat_, _Bri_tain, _Aparica_ (now Africa), _Barbary_, _Berber_ or _Barabbra_, _Epirus_, _Hebrew_, _Culebre_, _Calabria_, and _Celtiberia_.
Tacitus, who describes the ancient Britons as being dark complexioned and curly haired, adds: "that portion of Spain in front of Britain encourages the belief that the ancient Iberians had come over and colonised this district--the Gauls took possession of the adjacent coast".
According to Huxley and Laing the aboriginal inhabitants of Caledonia were from--"the great Iberian family, the same stock as the Berbers of North Africa":[1010] the prehistoric inhabitants of Wales similarly belonged to the Iberian stock and--"no other race of men existed in Wales until the neolithic period".
[1011] In Cornwall the persisting Iberian type is popularly supposed to be the offspring of Spanish sailors wrecked at the time of the Armada, but this theory is not countenanced by anthropologists.
Speaking of the short natives of the Hebridean island of Barra--a significant name--Campbell, in his _West Highland Tales_, observes: "Behind the fire sat a girl with one of these strange foreign faces which are occasionally to be seen in the Western Isles, a face which reminded me of the Nineveh sculptures, and of faces seen in St. Sebastian.
Her hair was as black as night, her clear eyes glittered through the peat smoke.
Her complexion was dark and her features so unlike those who sat about her, that I asked if she were a native of the island, and learned that she was a Highland girl."
Whether this Barra maiden was a persistent type of Hebrew may be questioned: she was certainly not Mongolian, the other great family whose traces still persist here.
The Hebrews traditionally came from Candia, and the Candians or Cretans are universally described as diminutive and dark-haired: according to Prof. Keith the typical Bronze Age man was narrow-faced, round-headed, handsome, and about 5 feet 8 inches in height.
"It is curious," he says, "that men of this type are playing leading parts in large proportion to the number living."
The antithesis to the round-headed Gael, and the oval-headed Cynbro is the square-headed Teuton, Finn, or Mongol.
While the Cretan was essentially creative and artistic, we are told on the other hand that "it must always be remembered that the Phoenicians were only intermediaries and created no art of their own".
[1012] The same verity is still curiously true of the modern Jew who almost invariably is an intermediary, rarely if ever a producer: neither in Caledonia, Cambria, or Hibernia does one often find a Jewish nose, and the craftsmen-artists of the primeval world were, I think, not the Jews of Tyre, but the older Jous of Candia or Crete.
In the name Drew, translated to have meant _skilful_, we have apparently a true tradition of the Jous of Cornwall and the Jous of Droia, or Troy.
It is presumably the Mongolian influence in Prussia, the home of the square-headed, that justified Matthew Arnold in writing: "The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be gone--this is the weak side, the industry, the well-doing, the patient, steady elaboration of things, the idea of science governing all departments of human activity--this is the strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained excellent results."
The unimaginative and plodding German is the antithesis to the impressionable, poetic, and romantic Celt, as probably were the loathed Magogei to the chic Cretans whose national characteristics are commemorated in their frescoes and vases.
I have already suggested that the same antipathies existed between the ugsome Mongolians and the swarthy slim Iberians of Epirus or Albania.
Descendants of both Mongolians and Jous undoubtedly exist to-day in Britain, particularly in Cornwall, where Dr. Beddoe notes and comments upon the slanting Ugrian or Mongolian eye.
The same authority observes that anthropologists had long been calling out for the remains of an Iberian, or pre-Celtic, language in the British Isles before their philological brethren awoke to the consciousness of their existence.
"Mongolian or Ugrian types have been recognised though less distinctly; and now Ugrian grammatical forms are being dimly discerned in the Welsh and Irish languages.
"[1013] In Ireland only two Iberian words are known to have survived, one of which, as we have seen, was _fern_, meaning _anything good_.
In view of the fact that the Celtiberians were also known as Virones,[1014] and as the Berones (these last named neighbouring the Pyrenees), it would seem possible that the Iberians were the Hibernians, and had originally a first-class reputation.
As already noted our records state of Prydain, the son of Aedd, that before his advent there was little gentleness in Britain, and only a superiority in oppression.
It is probable that the Iberians were the original builders of _barrows_, and the excavators of the stupendous _burrows_, found from Burmah to Peru, and from Aparica to Barra: in which direction the Iberian culture flowed it would be premature at present to discuss, but the question will ultimately be settled by an exercise of the perfectly sound canon of etymology, that in comparing two words _a_ and _b_ belonging to the same language, of which _a_ contains a lesser number of syllables, _a_ must be taken to be a more original word unless there be evidence of contractions or other corruption.
The theory of a generation ago that our innumerable British monosyllables are testimonies of phonetic decay is probably as false as many similar notions that have recently been relegated to limbo.
In a paroxysm of enthusiasm for the German-made Science of Language, and for the theory that sound etymology has nothing to do with sound, one of the disciples of Max Müller has observed that unless _every letter_ in a modern word can be scientifically accounted for according to rule the derivation and definition cannot be accepted.
The Dictionaries now prove that spelling was a whimsical, temporary, shallow thing, and it will, I am confident, be an accepted axiom in the future that "Language begins with voice, language ends with voice".
If the present book fails to add any weight to this dictum of Latham the evidence is none the less everywhere, and is merely awaiting the shaping hand of a stronger, more competent, and more influential workman than the present writer.
Whether or not the radicals I have used will prove to be chips of Iberian speech remains to be further tested, but in any case, the official contention that the language we speak to-day is, "of course, in no sense native to England but was brought thither by the German tribes who conquered the island in the fifth and sixth centuries"[1015] may be confidently impugned: Prof. Smith is, however, doubtless correct in his statement that when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors came first to ravage Britain, and finally to settle there, they found the island inhabited by a people "weaker, indeed, but infinitely more civilised than themselves".
The present essay will not have been published in vain if to any extent it discredits the dull contempt in which our traditions and ancient coinage are now held; still less if it negatives the offensive supposition that England was "the one purely German nation which arose out of the wreck of Rome," and that practically all our English place-names are of German origin.
On re-reading my MSS.
in as far as possible a detached and impartial spirit, there would appear to be much _prima facie_ evidence in favour of the traditional belief that these islands once possessed a very ancient culture, and that the Kimbri, or followers of Brute, were originally pirates or adventurers who reached these shores "over the hazy sea from the summer country which is called Deffrobani, that is where Constantinoblys now stands".
[1016] Constantinople--originally the Greek colony of Byzantium--is the city nearest the site of Troy; Ægean influences have long been recognised in Britain, and the accepted theory is that these influences penetrated overland via Gaul.
This supposition seems, however, to be strikingly negatived in a fact noted recently by Prof. Macalister, who, speaking of the spiral decoration found alike at Mykenae and New Grange, observes: "But spirals cannot travel through the air; they must be depicted on some portable object in order to find their way from Orchomenos to the neighbourhood of Drogheda.
The lines of the trade routes connecting these distant places ought to be peppered with objects of late Minoan Art-bearing spirals.
Even a few painted potsherds would be sufficient.
But there is no such thing.
The media through which the spiral patterns were _ex hypothesi_ carried to the north have totally disappeared.
"[1017] We have seen a similar lack of connective evidence in the case of the British spearhead, which seemingly either evolved independently in this country, or was brought hither by sea from the Ægean.
With regard to Celtic and Ægean spiral decoration, Prof. Macalister writes: "People in the cultural stage of the builders of New Grange do not cultivate Art for Art's sake.
Some simple religious or magical significance must lie hidden in these patterns....
Therefore, if we are to suppose that the barbarians acquired the spiral patterns from the Ægean merchants we must once more postulate the enthusiastic trading missionary who taught them how to draw spirals in the intervals of business.
I, for one, cannot believe in that engaging altruist.
I prefer to believe that the spirals at New Grange are not derived from the Ægean at all, but that they are an independent growth.
"[1018] The Trojans were proverbially a pious race, and personally I should prefer the theory of enthusiastic (sea) trading missionaries to the painfully overworked hypothesis of independent growth.
According to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie the process of developing symbols from natural objects can be traced even in the Paleolithic Age:[1019] the earliest town at Troy which was built in the Neolithic Age existed on a hillock and has been likened to the ubiquitous hill fort of Caledonia; seemingly Troy was originally a Dunhill and it was not until about 2500 B.C.
that the original hillock, dunhill, or Athene Hill,[1020] was levelled.
It is a most remarkable fact that, according to Prof. Virchow, "the few skulls which were saved out of the lower cities have this in common, that without exception they present the character of a more civilised people: all savage peculiarities in the stricter sense are entirely wanting in them".
[1021] So far, then, as the testimony of anthropology carries weight, the Trojan fell from a high state of grace, and neolithic Man was quite as capable of the fair humanities as any modern Doctor of Divinity.
If, as I now suggest, the Iberians, the Hebrews, and the British or Kimbry were originally one and the same race, and if, as I further suggest, fragments of the "British" language are recoverable, it follows that the same words will unlock doors in every direction where Iberian or Kimbrian influence permeated: this in a subsequent volume I shall endeavour to show is actually the case, from Burmah to Peru.
[1022] Schliemann mentions in connection with Mykenae a small stream known nowadays as the Perseia, and as Mykenae was said to have been founded by Perseus, the stream Perseia was presumably connected with the ancient pherepolis.
The survival of this fairy name is the more remarkable as Mykenae itself was utterly destroyed, buried, and lost sight of, yet the title of this rivulet survived: is there any valid reason to deny a similar vitality and antiquity to the brookand river-names of Britain?
Most of these have been complacently ascribed to German settlers, others to Keltic words, but some are admittedly pre-Keltic.
Amongst the group of "rare insolubles" occurs the river Kennet which flows past Abury, and may be connoted with the river Kent in the Kendal district.
Apart from the Kentish Cantii Herodotus speaks of a race called Kynetes or Kynesii, both of which terms, as Sir John Rhys says, "have a look of Greek words meaning dogmen": according to Herodotus, "the Celts are outside the Pillars of Hercules and they border on the Kynetii, who dwell the farthest away towards the west of the inhabitants of Europe".
Ancient writers locate the Kynetes in the west of Spain which, according to Rhys, "suggests a still more important inference--namely, that there existed in Herodotus' time a continental people of the same origin and habits as the non-Celtic aborigines of these islands".
[1023] _Kennet_, as we have seen, was a British word meaning Greyhound; I think the Kynetes were probably worshippers of every variety of _chien_, and that dog-headed St. Christopher, the kindly giant of Canaan, was the jackal-headed "Mercury" of the track-making merchants of Candia.
[1024] In Ireland there figures in the Pantheon a Caindea, whose name is understood to mean the _gentle goddess_: the fact of the dove being held in such high estimation in Candia,[1025] as elsewhere, is presumptive evidence of the Candian goddess being fundamentally regarded as gentle, and that Candian adventurers were gentlemen.
That Crete or Candia was an Idaeal, Idyllic, and an Aerial island is implied not only by its titles Idaea, Doliche, and Aeria, but also by the characteristics of its Art.
Etymology--by which I mean a Science that does not quibble at everything beyond the view of Mrs. Markham as being out of bounds--permits us to assume that the faith of the Iberii was belief in the Iberian _peyrou_, the Parthian _peri_, the British _perry_, _phairy_, or _fairy_.
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 class 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 identity 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 nobody 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 identities 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 "noble 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 Cæsar.
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 entitled: 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 Japan 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 associated 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 assume, it is difficult to see at what period of his upward climb this curiously idyllic story came into existence: it would be simpler to assume 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 mediæval 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 class, 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 naïve type of mind which naturally assumes 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 entitled Bards according to the rights and institutes 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 principal 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 Cæsar'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 archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology 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 illustrated 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.
[Illustration: 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.
Archæology 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 documentary 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 Archæology has finished her researches any of the prehistoric Christianity preached by the Celtic Christies will prove actually lost, and whether the supposedly impassable 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 principally 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 assert, 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 noble 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 [Illustration: British.
From Akerman.]
FOOTNOTES: [996] _Mythology of the Celtic Races,_ p. 68.
[997] _The Mistletoe_, p. 30.
[998] Budge, W., _Legends of the Gods_, 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_ God: 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_, xxxiv., C. 10, 11, p. 387.
[1018] _Ibid._ [1019] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, p. 235.
[1020] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic 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.
[1025] The capital of old Ceylon was Candy: I am unable to trace the origin of the port of Colombo.
[1026] Baring-Gould, S., _Curious Myths_, p. 527.
[1027] The inhabitants of Tukopia are described as: "Tall, light-coloured men with thick manes of long, golden hair ... wonderful giants, with soft dark eyes, kind smiles, and child-like countenances".
The surroundings of the villages of this Polynesian island were like well-tended parks, all brushwood having been carefully removed.
"They presented sights so different in blissful simplicity from what were to be seen in Melanesia, they all looked so happy, gay, and alluring, that it hardly needed the invitations of the kind people, without weapons or suspicion, and with wreaths of sweet-scented flowers round their heads and bodies, to incline us to stay."
This exquisite morsel of Arcadia was, like other parts of pure Polynesia, governed by a dynasty of hereditary chieftains, who were looked up to with the greatest respect, and to whom honours were paid almost as to demi-gods.--_Cf._ Sir Harry Johnston in _The Westminster Gazette_.
[1028] "I think that the Eponymus of the Argive Danaia was no other than that of the Israelite Tribe of Dan; only we are so used to confine ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the Israelites that we treat them as if they were adscriptigleboe, and ignore the share they may have taken in the history of the world."
--_Ethnology of Europe_, p. 137.
[1029] Cæsar says it took twenty years' study to acquire: other writers say the Druids taught 20,000 verses.
[1030] _Cf._ _Evenings with a Reviewer_.
[1031] _Y Cymmroder_, xxiii.
[1032] _Cf._ Davies, E., _Celtic Researches_, p. 183.
[1033] In _Ragnarok_ Donnelly argues that the glacial epoch and the "drift" were due to the earth's collision with one of the many million comets which are careering through the solar universe.
It would certainly appear probable that such abnormous masses of ice as are evidenced by the Glacial Period, must have been the result of abnormous heat first sucking up the lakes and rivers, and then returning them in the form of clouds, rain, and snow.
Practically all mythologies contain an account of some unparalleled catastrophe, and in the opinion of Donnelly the widespread story of man's progenitors emerging from a cave is based upon the literal probability of man--if he survived at all--surviving in caverns.
Among the numerous myths which Donnelly cites in support of his ingenious theory is the following British one: "The profligacy of mankind had provoked the great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth.
A pure poison descended, every blast was death.
At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity, was shut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door (the cave?).
Here the just ones were safe from injury.
Presently a tempest of fire arose.
It split the earth asunder to the great deep.
The lake Llion burst its bounds, and the waves of the sea lifted themselves on high around the borders of Britain, the rain poured down from heaven, and the waters covered the earth."
Donnelly believes that comets were the origin of the world-wide fiery-dragon myth.
In support of this theory he might have instanced the following Scotch legend: "There lived once upon a time in Sutherland a great dragon, very fierce and strong.
It was this dragon that burnt all the fir woods in Ross, Sutherland, and the Reay country, of which the remains charred, blackened, and half-decayed may be found in every moss.
Magnificent forests they must have been, but the dragon set fire to them with his fiery breath and rolled over the whole land.
Men fled from before his face and women fainted when his shadow crossed the sky-line.
He made the whole land desert."
--(Henderson, Dr. G. H., Intro.
to _The Celtic Dragon Myth_, p.
xxii.)
The burnt forests found in Ireland were noted on p. 21.
[1034] All these "heretics" claimed to be the real possessors of the true Christian doctrine, and they charged Rome with being _Mère sotte_, an ignorant and blatant usurper: the incessant and insidious conflict which was carried on between Gnosticism and Rome has been considered in _A New Light on the Renaissance_, also in _The Lost Language of Symbolism_, and with the exception of a few surface errors there is little in those volumes which I should now rewrite.
The murderous campaign which was launched against the Albigenses not only failed seemingly to stamp them out, but if Baring-Gould's opinion is valid the descendants of the Albigenses are even to-day not extinct.
In _Cliff Castles_ he writes as follows: "There was a curious statement made in a work by E. Bose and L. Bonnemere in 1882, which if true would show that a lingering paganism is to be found among these people.
It is to this effect: 'What is unknown to most is that at the present day there exist adepts of the worship (of the Celts) as practised before the Roman invasion, with the sole exception of human sacrifices, which they have been forcibly obliged to renounce.
They are to be found on the two banks of the Loire, on the confines of the departments of Allier and Saone-et-Loire, where they are still tolerably numerous, especially in the latter department.
They are designated in the country as Les Blancs, because that in their ceremonies they cover their heads with a white hood, and their priests are vested like the Druids in a long robe of the same colour.
They surround their proceedings with profound mystery; their gatherings take place at night in the heart of large forests, about an old oak, and as they are dispersed through the country over a great extent of land, they have to start for the assembly from different points at close of day so as to be able to reach home again before daybreak.
They have four meetings in the year, but one, the most solemn, is held near the town of La Clayette under the presidence of the high priest.
Those who come from the greatest distance do not reach their homes till the second night, and their absence during the intervening day alone reveals to the neighbours that they have attended an assembly of the Whites.
Their priests are known, and are vulgarly designated as the bishops or archbishops of the Whites; they are actually druids or archdruids.... We have been able to verify these interesting facts brought to our notice by M. Parent, and our personal investigations into the matter enable us to affirm the exactitude of what has been advanced.'
If there be any truth in this strange story we are much more disposed to consider the Whites as relics of a Manichæan or Albigensian sect than as a survival of Druidism."
P. 46.
[1035] _Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults._ [1036] "Lords and Commons of England--Consider what nation whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the Governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.
Therefore, the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been persuaded that the School of Pythagoras, and the Persian Wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy of this Island, Britain."--Milton.
[1037] In _The Lost Language of Symbolism_ I anticipated this opinion.
[1038] Writing of the Pied Piper story Mr. Ernest Rhys observes: "There is every reason to believe that Hamelin was as near home as Newton, Isle of Wight, and that the Weser, deep and wide, was the Solent".--Preamble to _Fairy Gold_ (Ev.
Library).
[1039] _Proc.
of Royal Irish Academy_, xxxiv., C., No.
8, p. 140.
APPENDIX A. IRELAND AND PHOENICIA.
The following extract is taken from _Britain and the Gael: or Notices of Old and Successive Races; but with special reference to the Ancient Men of Britain and its Isles_.--Wm.
Beal, London, 1860.
Plautus, a dramatic writer, and one of the great poets of antiquity, who lived from one to two centuries before the Christian era; was mentioned in the last section.
In his Pænulus, is the tale of some young persons said to have been stolen from Carthage, by pirates, taken to Calydonia, and there sold; one of these was Agorastocles, a young man; the others were two daughters of Hanno, and Giddeneme, their nurse.
Hanno, after long search, discovered the place where his daughters were concealed, and by the help of servants who understood the Punic language, rescued his children from captivity.
Plautus gives the supposed appeal of Hanno, to the gods of the country for help, and his conversations with servants in the Punic language, are accompanied with a Latin translation.
The Punic, as a language, is lost, and those long noticed, but strange lines had long defied the skill of learned men.
But at length, by attending to their vocal formation (and all language, Wills states, is addressed to the ear).
It was discovered by O'Neachtan, or some Irish scholar, that they were resolvable into words, which exhibited but slight differences from the language of Keltic Ireland.
The words were put into syllables, then translated by several persons, and these translations not only accorded with the drama, but also, with the Plautine Latin version.
The lines were put to the test of more rigid examination, placed in the hands of different persons one of whom was Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore.
They were also given to different Irish scholars for translation, to persons who had no correspondence with each other on this subject, nor knew the principal object in view; and by the whole the same meaning was given.
Bohn's edition, by H. T. Riley, B.A., is before the writer; but from the edition used by the late Sir W. Betham, some few lines from Plautus, with the Gaelic or Irish underneath, are given, and the eye will at once perceive how closely the one resembles the other.
Milphio, the servant of Agorastocles, addressed Hanno and his servants in Punic, and asked them "of what country are you, or from what city?"
The following is the reply, and the supposed appeal of Hanno to the god, or gods of the country:-_Plautus._ { Hanno Muthumballe bi Chaedreanech.
_Irish._ { Hanno Muthumbal bi Chathar dreannad.
_English._ { I am Hanno Muthumbal dwelling at Carthage.
_Plautus._ { Nyth al O Nim ua-lonuth sicorathissi me com syth.
_Irish._ { N'iaith all O Nimh uath-lonnaithe socruidhse me comsith.
_English._ { Omnipotent much dreaded Deity of this country, assuage my troubled mind.
_Plautus._ { Chim lach chumyth mum ys tyal mycthi barii im schi.
_Irish._ { Chimi lach chuinigh muini is toil miocht beiridh iar mo scith.
_English._ { Thou the support of feeble captives, being now exhausted with fatigue, of thy free will guide me to my children.
_Plautus._ { Lipho can ethyth by mithii ad ædan binuthi.
_Irish._ { Liomtha can ati bi mitche ad eadan beannaithe.
_English._ { O let my prayers be perfectly acceptable in thy sight.
_Plautus._ { Byr nar ob syllo homal O Nim!
Ubymis isyrthoho.
_Irish._ { Bior nar ob siladh umhal O Nimh!
ibhim A frotha.
_English._ { An inexhaustible fountain to the humble; O Deity!
Let me drink of its streams.
_Plautus._ { Byth lym mo thym noctothii nel ech an ti daise machon.
_Irish._ { Beith liom mo thime noctaithe, neil ach tanti daisic mac coinne.
_English._ { Forsake me not!
my earnest desire is now disclosed, which is only that of recovering my daughters.
_Plautus._ { Uesptis Aod eanec Lic Tor bo desiughim lim Nim co lus.
_Irish._ { Is bidis Aodh eineac Lic Tor bo desiussum le mo Nimh co lus.
_English._ { And grateful Fires on Stone Towers will I ordain to blaze to Heaven.
_Plautus._ { Gau ebel Balsameni ar a san.
_Irish._ { Guna bil Bal-samen ar a san.
_English._ { O that the good Bal-samhen (_i.e._ Beal the sun) may favour them.
Act v. scene 1 and 2.
This alleged work of Plautus, and these strange lines, have long been before the world, and under the notice of men of letters.
Is there any reason to doubt whether it is genuine?
If not, can it be supposed that the writer purposely placed some strange jargon before his readers to bewilder them?
and if so, by what singular hazzard should it so closely resemble the language of the Gael.
Plautus avers, that Milphio addressed the strangers (Hanno and servants), in Punic, and declared to Agorastocles, his master, that "no Punic or Carthaginian man speaks Punic better than I".
Unless these statements can be proved to be worthless, will they not as connecting links appear to say, probably the Gaels of Britain, and the Punic people of Carthage, were branches of the old and once celebrated race, known as Phenicians?
APPENDIX B. PERRY-DANCERS AND PERRY STONES.
On page 312 I stated that in Kent the light cloudlets of a summer day were known as "Perry-dancers": as I am unable to trace any printed authority for this statement it is possible that it was a mis-remembrance of the following passage from Ritson's "Dissertation on Fairies," prefacing _English Folklore and Legends_, London, 1890: "Le Grand is of opinion that what is called Fairy comes to us from the Orientals, and that it is their genies which have produced our fairies ... whether this be so or not, it is certain that we call the auroræ boreales, or active clouds in the night, perry-dancers."
In connection with my suggestion that Stonehengles, now Stonehenge, of which the outer circle consists of thirty stones, meant _Stone Angels_, may be considered the repeated statements of Pausanias that the oldest gods of all were rude stones in the temple, or the temple precincts.
In Achaean _Pharae_ he found some thirty squared stones _named each after a god_: obviously these were phairy or peri stones, and the chief stone presumably stood for the _pherepolis_.
That _ange_ or _inge_ varied into _ink_ is implied not only by _Ink_pen Beacon figuring in old records as _Inge_penne and _Hinge_pene, but also by Ritson's statement: "In days of yore, when the church at _Ink_berrow was taken down and rebuilt upon a new site, the fairies, _whose haunt was near the latter place_, took offence at the change".
The following passage quoted by Keightley from Aubrey's _Natural History of Surrey_ is of interest apart from the significant names: "In the vestry of Frensham Church, in Surrey, on the north side of the chancel is an extraordinary great kettle or cauldron, which the inhabitants say, by tradition, was brought hither by the fairies, time out of mind, from Borough-hill about a mile hence.
To this place, if anyone went to borrow a yoke of oxen, money, etc., he might have it for a year or longer, so he kept his word to return it.
There is a cave where some have fancied to hear music.
In this Borough-hill is a great stone lying along of the length of about 6 feet.
They went to this stone and knocked at it, and declared what they would borrow, and when they would repay, and a voice would answer when they should come, and that they should find what they desired to borrow at that stone.
This cauldron, with the trivet, was borrowed here, after the manner aforesaid, and not returned according to promise; and though the cauldron was afterwards carried to the stone, it could not be received, and ever since that time no borrowing there."
APPENDIX C. BRITISH SYMBOLS.
In _Wookey Hole_ Mr. H. E. Balch quotes the following important passage from Gildas: "A blind people [the Britons], they paid divine honour to the mountains, wells, and streams.
Their altars were pillars of stone inscribed with emblems of the sun and moon, or of a beast or bird _which symbolised some force of nature_".
This passage justifies the supposition that the inscribed "barnacles," elephants, etc., were symbolic, and supports the contention that a people using such subtleties were far from "blind".
The Museum at Glastonbury contains a bronze ring about 3 inches in diameter, in the form of a serpent with its tail in its mouth.
Obviously this object, which was found at Stanton Drew, _i.e._, _the stone town of the Druids_, was symbolic, probably, of the Eternal Wisdom.
APPENDIX D. GLASTONBURY.
In view of the fact that Halifax claimed to possess the Holy Face of St. John, and that four roads centred there in the form of a cross at the chapel of St. John, it is interesting to note that the four cross-roads of Glastonbury are similarly associated with St. John.
In the words of a local guidebook, "From the Tor, a walk will bring you to Weary-All Hill to view the town, and it is curious to note that from this hill it seems to be laid out as a perfect cross, St. John's Church being the central point".
The probability is that there was some connection between the St. John of modern Glastonbury and the Fairy King Gwyn who was exorcised from the neighbouring Tor by a certain St. Collen.
APPENDIX E. THE DRUIDS AND CRETE.
Since the preceding pages were in the press I have come into the possession of _La Religion des Gaulois_ by Jacques Martin (Paris, 1727).
This standard writer favours the idea that _druid_ is derived from the Celtic _deru_, meaning an oak, but he also makes a remarkable statement to the following effect: "If the opinion of P. Pezron was well founded one should also say that certain people of Crete whom one called _Druites_, because their country was full of oaks, made a trade of magic and enchantment, which is far removed from the truth and perhaps also from good sense" (vol.
i., p. 176).
In the same volume (pp.
406-7) Martin illustrates a Gaulish god whose name Dolichenius is curiously suggestive of Dalgeon, Telchin, Talgean, and Telchinea.
L'ENVOI.
Now if any brother or well-wisher shall conscientiously doubt or be dissatisfied, touching any particular point contained in this treatise, because of my speaking to many things in a little room: and if he or they shall be serious in so doing, and will befriend me so far, and do me that courtesy, to send to me before they condemn me, and let me know their scruples in a few words of writing, I shall look upon myself obliged both in affection and reason, to endeavour to give them full satisfaction.
H. B. OVERBYE, CHURCH COBHAM, SURREY.
INDEX _Abar_, 325 Abaris, 325, 330, 377 Abb, St., 617 _Abbey_, 515 Abchurch, 513, 518 Abdera, 296 _Abdy_, 526 _Aber_, 310 _Aber!_ 310, 325 Aber, Loch, 670, 749 Aberdeen, 749 Aberfield, 664 Aberystwyth, 194 Abhras, 325 Abonde, 165, 216 -La Dame, 557 Abra, 328 Abracadabra, 325 Abraham, 227 _Abraham_, 716 _Abri_, 289 _Abroad_, 369 _Abundance_, 216 Abundia, 165 Abyss, 224 _Ac_, 48 _Ache_, 200 Achil, 280 Achill, 82 Achilles, 82 Acorn, 227 Ada, 455, 742 _Ada_, 753 Adad, 508 Adam, 745, 754 Adam and Eve, 495, 501, 589 Adam Cædmon, 110 Adam's Dances, 589 -Graves, 746 -Peak, 546 Addington, 750, 755, 785, 813 _Addy_, 509 _Adelphi_, 365 Adisham, 560 _Adkin_, 509 Adon, 712 Adonai, 712 Adonis, 46, 112, 153, 605, 712 Aedd, K., 309, 749 Aeddon, 749 Aeddons, The, 750 Ægean influences, 850 -The, 81, 93 Ægeon, 402 Ægina, 399 Aeithon, R., 743 Aeon, 203, 652 Aeons, 204 Aeria, 76 _Africa_, 375 Agatha, 719 -St., 253 Agland Moor, 799 Agglestone, 280 _Agnes, St._, 591 Agnes, St., Well, 732 -the Clear, 721 Agni, 591, 719 _Ague_, 200 Aidan, St., 742, 751 Aidon Moor, 732 Aine, 288, 368, 544, 724 Aion, 321 _Aitkin_, 509 Akeman, St., 38, 200 _Alas!_ 412 Alava, 322 _Alban_, 251 Alban, St., 129 Albani!
125 Albania, 84, 86, 112, 261 Albano, 89, 112 Albans, St., 107, 208, 268, 523, 791 Albanus, R., 89 Albany, The, 162 Alberic, 342 Alberich, 510 Albi, 377 Albigenses, 865 Albine, St., 148 Albinia, R., 97 Albinus, 321 _Albion_, 124 Albion, Prince, 162, 317 Albiorix, 301 Albon, 247 Al Borak, 347, 468 Albs, 342 Albury, 342 Alcmena, 140, 200 Alcantara, 290 _Alef_, 240 Alexander, 727 Alf, 559 _Alfred_, 153 _Alibone_, 131 Alipius, St., 321 Allah, 581 Allan apples, 696 -St., 696 Allantide, 698 Allan Water, 103 _Allen_, 104 Allen, St., 132 All Hallows, 244, 288 All-Heal, 181, 681 Allington, 290 "All is one," 133 _Allistone_, 318 _Alma_, 136 Alma Mater, 258 _Alma Mater Cantabrigia_, 167 Almaquah, 136 Almo, R., 136 Almond, R., 137 Aln, R., 417 Alne, R., 103, 697 Alnwick, 417 _Aloft_, 165 Alone, R., 103, 417 _Alp_, 127 Alpha, 152, 363, 653 Alphabet, 12, 13 -Bardic, 14 -Celtiberian, 14 Alphage, St., 154 Alpha Place, 288 Alph, R., 791 Alpheus, 288 Alphey, 154 Alphian Rock, 153, 548 Alphin, 284 Alphington, 548 Aluph, 165 Alva, Lady, 153 _Alvastone_, 318 Alvechurch, 524 Alvescott, 153 Amber, 565 -R., 569 -Stone, 566 Amberstone, 568 Amberwood, etc., 569 Ambresbury, 554, 569 Ambrose, St., 565 Ambrosden, 569 Ambrosia, 567, 688 Ambrosius aurelius, 565 Amergin, 326, 327, 665 _Amicable_, 249 Amor, 225, 287 Amoretti, 381-3 _Amour_, 604 Ana, 282, 288 Ancaster, 444 Anchetil, 557 Anchor, 496 Ancient One, 577 Anderida, 797 _Andrew_, 117, 122 Andrew, St., 117, 163, 319, 443, 471, 780 Andrews, St., 160 _Androgynous_, 122 _Ange_, 217, 556 Angel, 305 Angel Christopher, 262 Angel Inn, 588 -The, 667, 685 _Angel_, 552 Angels, 175 Angle, 552, 558, 792 _Angle_, 556 Anglesea, 492, 560 Anglo-Saxon, 60 Anglo-Saxons, 22, 85, 107 Angus Og, 661 _Angus_, 266 Angus Mac Oge, 397 Anlaf, St., 154 Anne, St., 722, 811, 828 Annesbury, 565 Annis, Dame, 717 -the clear, 721 Anses, 473 Antiquity of European habitation, Antlers, 257 Antony, St., 242 _Antre_, 797 _Antrim_, 845 Anu, 197, 722 -Paps of, 717 Anubis, 111 Any, 724 Apep, 836 Apex, 292 Apheia, 426, 532 Apsley, 529 Apt, 526 Apollo, 71, 104, 134, 242, 320, 324, 508, 562, 867 _Apollo_, 673 Apor, Loch, 749 _Appear_, 867 Apple, 674, 742 _Apple_, 674, 867 Apple of Adam, 754 -village, 678 Appleby, 674 Appledore, 675 Appledurwell, 675 Apples, Three, 181 Appleton, 675 _Archdruid of Tara_, 563 Archery, 508 Arethusa, 398 Argonauts, 84 Arianrod, 438 Ark, 56, 158, 450, 653 Arrow, 325 Arrow-Elf, 306 Artemis, 258, 724 Arthur, K., 63, 798 Aryans, 10, 168 Asch, 841 Ash, 841 Ass, 114, 212 Astarte, 646 Astronomy, 167 -Druidic, 804 Aten, 743 _Athenæum_, 742 Athene, 323, 461, 584, 742, 819 Athens, 322 Atlantis, 19, 855 _Attire_, 100 Aubers Ridge, 289 Auborn, R., 664 Aubrey Walk, 289, 439 _Auburn_, 507, 572 Aubury, 335 _Aught_, 655 Aulph, 165 Aumbrey, 569 Aunt, 597 Aunt Judy, 225 -Mary, 220 -Mary's Tree, 597 Austerfield, 645 Aust on Severn, 645 Austreclive, 645 Alvington, 349 Avagddu, 158 Avalon, 289, 682 _Avebury_, 27, 335, 351, 368, 475, 498, 518, 808 Avebury, 403 Averroes, 378 Avery, 601 Avereberie, 342 _Avon_, 425 -R., 828 "Awd Goggie," 189 Axe, 643 Aylesbury, 481 Aylesford, 480, 481 _Ayliffe_, 162 Babchild, 356 Babe, 653 Babes of wax, 788 Babette, 356 Bab's, 356 -Cairn, 589 Baccho, St., 240 Bacchus, 240 Bach Camp, 246 Backbone, 254 Bacon, 240 _Bacon_, 246 Bacton, 755 bad, 372 Badcock, 195 Bagden, 232 Baggy Point, 238 Bagnigge, R., 722 -Wells, 618 Bagshaw, 448, 728 Bain, R., 137 _bairn_, 325 _bake_, 245 Balder, 71, 76, 473 841 Bald one, 640 Baldwin, 154 Ball, 158 Balor, 192, 841 Balls, Three, 181 Bana, R., 137 Banac, R., 137 Bancroft, 138 Bandog, 112 Bandon, R., 137 Banney, R., 137 Bannockburn, 137 Banon, R., 137 Banstead, 445 Banwell, 445 Bara, Feast of, 320 Baranton, 676 Barbara, 329, 473 _Barbara_, 353 Barbara, St., 354 Barbarie, The Town of, 353 _barbaroi_, 889 _barbes_, 377 Barbe, St., 377 Barbury, 353 Bardic Triads, 177, 181, 184, 185 Bardism, 860 Bardon, 350 Barea, 329 Bargeist, 346 Barle, R., 348 Barlow, 678, 714 Bark, R., 348 Barnabas, St., 553 _Barnabas_, 507 Barnacles, 346 _Barnebas_, 509 Barneby Bright, 507 Barnwell, 572 Baroc, 468 _baron_, 319 Baron's Cave, 799 Barra, I., 661, 846 Barri, I., 467 Barrow, R., 510 _barrow_, 319 Barrows, 333 Barry, 839 _Barry_, 508 Barry, I., 348 -The, 749 Bashan, 194 Basilica Ulpia, 296 Basinghall, 511 Basques, 648 Battersea, 464, 669 Baucis, 227, 291 Beads, 82, 579 Beaker, 302 Beane, R., 110, 137 Bean-setting dance, 539 Bear, 72 Beard, 373 Beare, Old Woman of, 757 Beccles, 299 Beckjay, 282 Becky, R., 246 Bee, 46 Beech, 387, 569 Beeg, R., 246 Beelzebub, 222 Beer Head, 349 Bees, 567 Bega, St., 238 Bekesbourne, 670 Bel, 46, 841 _bel_, 248 Belerium, 193 Belgrave, 347 Beli, 841 Belin, 241 Belindi, 241 Bell, 445, 781 -Giant, 347 Belleros, 193 Bellingham, 749 Bellister, 721 Bellona, 647 Bel's Fires, 612 Ben, R., 137 Beneficia R., 110 Beltan, 730 Beltane, 169 Beltan fires, 611 Berat, 460, 467 Berbers, 205, 375, 846 Berberis, 385 Berea, 341 Bergyon, Giant, 331 Berith, 460 Berkeley, 666 Berkhampstead, 666 _Berkshire_, 664 Berkswell, 666 Berne, 329 Bernesbeg, 507 Beroë, 460, 484 Berrens, 761 Berries, Three, 181 Berry, 345 _Bertha_, 362 Bertinny, 334 Bertram, 507 Bewl Bri, 350 Beyrout, 460 Beyrut, 134 Bickley, 448 Biddenden, 589 -Maids, 371 Biddy, 372 Bifrons, 670 _big_, 238 Bigbury, 238 Bigha, 238 Bigness, 238 Billing-, 558, 668 Birbeck, 667 Bird of Fire, 691 Birds, 326, 691 Bird-wheel, 691 Birmingham, 431, 437 Birr, 335 Birra, Lady, 749 Birrenswork, 387 Bishop, The, 590 _bishop_, 577 Black, 475 -Annis, 722 -and White Dove, 486 Blackfriars, 467 Black Mary, 598, 722 -Mary's Hole, 619 Blackthorn, 419, 677 Blaze, St., 244, 602 Blban, 248 _bleary_, 193 Blind Fiddler, The, 226 -Man's Buff, 425 Blue, 270, 273, 579 -John, 795 --Cavern, 787 -Stones, 587 Boar, 58, 241, 242, 329 _Bocock_, 195 Boduo, 276 Boduoc, 277 _boer_, 242 Bog, 233 _bogel_, 233 Boggart, 232 Bogle, 518 Bohemia, 307 Bolerium, 193 _Bolingbroke_, 658 Bolleit caves, 771 Bolster, Giant, 720 _Bonchurch_, 163 _Bond_, 162 Bonfire, 169, 245 Bookham, 231, 667, 686 Bor, 752 Boreas, 422 Boreland Mote, 533 _borough_, 312 Borr, 471 Borrowdale, 682 Boskenna, 510 _bosom_, 509 Bosomzeal, 349 Bosow, Giant, 613 _boss_, 529 Bosse Alley, 509 Bossenden Woods, 510 Boston, 248, 510 _both_, 372 _bouche_, 293 Boudicca, 519 Boulogne, 210, 647 Bourdon, 601 Bourjo, 644 Bournemouth, 551 Bourne Water, 799, 818 Bowl, 615 Box-, 246 Boxhill, 231 Box Hill, 386 -tree, 665 Boy Bishop, 590, 616 Boyne R., 110 Braavalla, 749 Bracken, 385 Brackenbyr, 758 Bradford, 82 Bradmore, 432 Bradstone, 312 Brage, 758 Brahan Stone, 530 Brahma, 145, 161, 223 _Brahma_, 716 Brahmins, 163 Brahan Wood, 317 Brain, 378, 574 _brain_, 320, 324 Braintree, 430 Bramble, 159 Branch, Silver, 679 -The Divine, 660 Bran Ditch, 387 Brandon, 36, 349 -St., 679 Brangwyn, 572 Branksea, 551 Bran, the Blessed, 379 -Voyage of, 679 Brantome Cave, 783 _brass_, 467 _brat_, 458 Bratton, 402 Brawn, St., 317 Bray, 406, 664 -Down, 704 -R., 348 Braybroke, 798 Braynes Row, 718 _bread_, 460 Bread and Cheese Lands, 371, 589 _breath_, 460 Brecan's Cauldron, 689 Breceliande, 676 Brecon, 380 Brede Place, 460 Bredon, 350 Breeches, 377 _breed_, 458 Brehon Laws, 318, 333 Brennos, 379 Brent, R., 609 Brentford, 609, 617, 668 Breock, St., 666 Bress, 46, 389, 467 Bretons, 575 Breton souterrains, 778 Brewer, 295 Brew King, 689 Brian, 379, 389 -Boru, 380 Briancon, 379 Briareus, 82, 402 Brickel's Lane, 510 Bride Eye, 682 -St., 119, 327, 458, 552, 603, 663, 686, 736, 761, 823 Bridewell, 458 Bride's Fire, St., 472 Bridget, St., 169 Bridlington, 492 Brig, 761 Brigan, 379 Brigantes, 715 Brightlingsea, 119, 312, 343 Brigid, 459, 467 Brigit, 388 Brigit's Bird, 433 Bri Leith, 397 Brimham Rocks, 602 _brimstone_, 477 Brinsmead, 317 _Brinsmead_, 602 Brisen, Dame, 343 Brisons, The, 336, 343 + Bristol, 818 Britani, 852 Britannia, 118, 461 British character, 122 Britomart, 118, 460, 715, 757 _Briton_, 100, 377 Brittany, 44 Brixham, 343 Brixton, 343 Broad arrow, 363, 534, 629 -Sanctuary, 660 Broadstairs, 95, 119 Broad, The, 121, 337 Brochs, 343 Brockhurst, 343 Brockley, 343, 666 Brodhulls, 119 _broglodite_, 769 _brok_, 347 Brok, 471 Broken Wf., 510 Bromfield, 419 Bromley, 602 Bromley's, etc., 419 Brompton, 419 Brondesbury, 419, 602 Bronwen, 334 Bronze, 463 _bronze_, 467 Brooch, 348 _brood_, 458 _brook_, 510 Brookland, 343 Broom, 419, 602, 795 Broome Park, 716, 798, 799 _brow_, 324 _Browne_, 317 Brownies, 620 Brownie Stone, 316 Brownlows, 318 Brown Willy, 387 Brown's Well, 609 -Wood, 718, 741 Browny, 315 Bru, 311, 348, 349 Brue, R., 289, 348 Bruin, 329 Brun, R., 387 Bruno, St., 317 Brunswick, 402 Brute, 124 Brutes, Mistress of, 715 Bruton, St., 601 Brutus, 83, 119, 186, 681 -Stone, 312, 350 Bryan, 577 Bryanstone, 314, 507, 530, 601, 678 -Sq., 317 Brychan St., 379, 716 _bryony_, 328 _Brython_, 100 _bubs_, 374 Bubwood, 374 Bucato, 305 Bucca Dhu, 231 -Gwidden, 231 Buck, 239 Buckaboo, 578 Buckden, 732 Bucket, 294, 474, 479, 481 Buckingham, 387 Buckland, 231, 246 Bucklersbury, 518 Buckwheat, 254 Bug, 255 Bugbear, 232 Buggaboo, 232 Buggy, 405 Bukephalus, 280 Bulinga Fen, 658 Bull, 46, 119, 259, 265, 328, 336, 414, 604, 840 Bun, 261, 515 -Hot cross, 731 Bungen, 303 Bunhill, 155 Buratys, 331 Burchun, 331 Burdock, 385 Burfield, 664 Burford, 386 Burgate, 510 _burgeon_, 484 Burgoyne, 380 Burinea, St., 817 Burkenning, 666 _burn_ 510, 572 Burn, R., 387 Burnebishop, 590 Burnham, 387 Burnie Bee, 507 Burnsall, 402 Burrian, 327 Burry, R., 348, 387 Burtani, 852 Burtree, 576 Burwood, 601 _bury_, 319 Buryan, St., 345, 510 Buryan's St., 817 Buryanack, 720 _bush_, 293 Bush, 612 Bushey Park, 612 Butterfly, 46, 176 -idols, 360 Buxton, 291, 796 Buzza's Hill, 613 _Byron_, 317 Byzantium, 362, 510 Byzing Wood, 510 Cab, 504 Cabala, 577 Cabalists, 135 Cabiri, 493 Cabura, 493 Cac Horse, 453 _cackle_, 243 Cacus, 478 _caddie_, 642 Caddington, 787, 811 Cadi, 136, 234, 641 Cadlands, 785 _Cadman_, 110 Caenwood, 151 Cain, 149 -and Abel, 503 Caindea, 151, 319, 537 Cairn Voel, 424 Caistor, 443 _cake_, 245 _calandar_, 341 Caleb, 150 Calne, 342 Calpe, 283 Camber, K., 681 Camberwell, 705 Cambrai, 406, 617 Cambre Castle, 396 Cambria, 310 Cambourne, 222, 397 Camperdizil, 586 _Can_, 310, 630 Can-, 826 Can, R., 221, 667 Canaan, 150 Canbury, 349, 607 Cancan, 412 _candescent_, 212 Candia, 151, 319 _candid_, 212 Candle, 171 -in cave, 813 _candour_, 212 Candour, British, 101 Cane Goose, 223 Cangians, 519 Canhole, 448 Canna, R., 261 -St., 649 Cannibalism, Jewish, 185 Cannon, 274 -St., 666 _canny_, 212 Canonbie Lea, 666 Canonbury, 667 Cantabria, 322 Cantabres, 323 _canteen_, 824 _canter_, 409 Canterbury, 87, 90, 168, 239, 409 Cantii, 411, 519 Cantorix, 410 Cape Wrath, 574 Caphira, 494 Cardia, 556 Cardinal, 555 Carfax, 514 Caris, 820 Carisbroke, 821 Carnac, 217, 642 Carn Bre, 396 Cars, 503 Cart-wheeling, 164 _Cass_, 243 Cassock, 234 Castor and Pollux, 354, 475 _castra_, 477 Cat, 58, 751 -Lady of, 752 -Stane, 752 Catacombs, 810, 844 Catchpole, 446 Cathay, 191 _Catherine_, 243 Catherine, St., 784 Caucasus, 852 _Cauchemar_, 477 Cauldron, 615, 687, 797, 823, 875 -of Pwyll, 801 _cause_, 224 Causeway, 439 Cave, 765, 773, 780 Cave, at Bethlehem, 780 Cave = matrix, 790 Caverns, 193, 194 Celi, 224 _celibate_, 340 Celtiberia, 12 Celtiberians, 323 Celtic words, 61 Celts, 116, 228 Cendwen, 651, 824 Cenimagni, 283 Cenomagni, 411 Cenomani, 329 Centaur, 305, 424 Centaurs, 409 Centre, 794 Ceres, 402, 821 Chac, 161 Chad, St., 288 Chadfish, 212 Chadwell, 288, 783 Chain, 482 Chairs, Stone, 545 Chalice, 167 Chalk pits, 776 _Chandos_, 741 _change_, 146 Chaos, 224, 225, 292, 490, 507 Chariot, 435, 470, 517 -of Jehovah, 503 Charis, 469 Charon, 282 Chartres, 791 Chastity, 457 Chee Dale, 447 -Tor, 728 Chei, St., 447 Cheiran, St., 409 Chemin des Dames, 439 Chester, 444, 445 _Chester_, 447 Chevauchée, 511 -de St. Michael, 420 Chew Magna, 447 Cheyne, 93, 741 Cheyneys, 670 Chi, 772, 780 Chi ([Greek: X]), 385, 446 Chiana, R., 97 _chic_, 97 Chichester, 445 Children in Hell, 558 Chilperic, 342 Chin, 161 China, 191, 216, 272, 292 _chink_, 400 Chios, 225 Chiron, 409 Chisbury Camp, 446 Chislehurst, 766, 772 Chiun, 140 Choir, Gawr, 561 Chosen Hill, 729 Christ, 178, 206, 211, 214, 250, 264, 265, 487, 537, 574 _Christ_, 820 Christianity, 31, 864 Christian "tortures," 107 Christine, St., 496 Christmas, 257 Christofer, The, 270 Christopher, St., 54, 107, 112, 151, 164, 204, 264, 267, 299, 640, 853 Chuckhurst, 372 _chuckle_, 471 _chun_, 92 Chun, 649, 740 -Castle, 90 Chwyvan Cross, 708 Chyandour, 97 Ciconians, 192 Cimmerians, 844 Cingen, 412 Circle, 604 -and Triangle, 571, 573 Circles, 499, 503 -Stone, 543 Cirencester, 453 Cissbury Ring, 446 Cities of Refuge, 736 Clare, St., 718 Claus, 140 Clement, St., 716, 797 Clerkenwell, 718 Clover, 737 Clowes, 299 Club, 663, 666 Cluricanne, 718 _coach_, 468 Coal-mining, prehistoric, 845 _cock_, 195 Cock, 196, 197, 361, 620 -R., 197 Cockayne, 190, 195, 196 Cockburn Law, 752 Cockchafer, 255 Cocker, R., 198 Cockey, 197 Cock horse, 444 -Law, 197 Cockle, 245, 385, 473 -bread, 248 Cockles, Hot, 248 Cocknage, 197 Cockney, 190 -dialect, 529 Cockshott, 197 Cocks Tor, 197 Codfish, 213 _cog_, 195 Cogenhoe, 197 Coggeshall, 197, 639 Coggo, 197 Cogidumnus, 446 Cogs, 195 Cogynos, 197 _Cohen_, 112 Coil Dance, 824 _coin_, 897 Coinage, 394 -British, 240 Coins, 763 Coke hill, 197 Coldharbour, 299 Cole Abbey, 615 -Old King, 103 Coleman, 155 Coles pits, 801 Colman, St., 43 Colne, R., 342 Cologne, 216 Columb, R., 661 Columba, St., 43, 552, 660 Columbine, 93, 669 -St., 93, 669 _com_, 310 Com, 330 Comb, 715 Combarelles, 402 _Comber_, 310 Comberton, 586 Comet, 864 _commére_, 330 _common_, 440 Comparative method, 75 _compére_, 330 _Conan_, 649 Conann, 192 Concangi, 411 Concanni, 411, 667 Concord, St., 141 Condy Cup, 824 _cone_, 236 Cone, 398, 800 Coney Hall Hill, 785 Conical cap, 669 Coniston, 151 Conn, 753 -K., 151, 512 Connaught, 151, 182, 512 Conneda, 182, 753 Constantine, 226, 365, 566 Constantinople, 64 Conyers, 272 _Cook_, 195, 196, 245 Cooknoe, 197 Cook's Kitchen Mine, 222 Coquet, R., 197 _Coquille_, 248 _Cormac_, 517 Cornish types, 848 _Cos_, 510 Coundon, 435 Counter Earth, 580 Coveney, 430 Covent Garden, 428 Coventina, 427 Coventry, 427, 435 _Cox_, 195 _cradle_, 810 Cranbrook, 427 Cray, 796 Cres, 105, 819 Crescent, 254, 286, 390, 392, 528 Crescents, 492, 704 Cresswell Crags, 402 Cretan Caves, 808 -Horse, 407 -Maze Coins, 87 -Ship, 491 Cretans, 846 Crete, 11, 76, 104, 182, 192, 493, 687, 855 Crew, Lough, 200 Crimea, 844 Crissa, 820 Cromlechs, 17 Cronus, 82 Cross, 104, 106, 286, 296, 441, 445, 560, 561, 683 _cross_, 107, 821 Cross of St. John, 104 ---George, 104 -Red, 270 _crude_, 810 Cruse, 822 Cuchulainn, 278 Cuckmere, R., 452 Cuckoo, 197 Cuin, 290 -coin, 397 Culdees, 835 Culebres, 842 Cullompton, 661 _cumber_, 569 Cumberland, 682 _cun_, 92 _Cun-_, 235 Cunbaria, 330 Cunegonde, 412 Cuneval, 318 _cunning_, 212, 280 CUNO Cuno, 279, 305 Cunob, 528 Cunobeline, 241 Cup, 813 -and Ring markings, 833 Cupid, 225, 231, 233, 304, 326, 494, 594 Cupra, 493 _curate_, 810 Cuthbert, St., 362 Cuthbert's beads, St., 248 Cyclops, 192 Cymbeline, 241 Cymner, 310 Cymry, 310 Cynethryth, 761 Cynopolis, 54 Cynthia, 151, 213 Cynthus, Mt., 726 _da_, 320 Dactyli, 574 Dad-, 256 _dad_, 509 _daddy_, 209, 256 Daddy, 263 Daddy's Hole, 349 Dagda Mor, 169, 389, 397, 512 Daisy, 169, 210, 216, 233, 384 Dalston, 285 _dame_, 745 Danaan, Tuatha te, 766 Danbury, 721 Dancing, 540 Dandelion, 189 Dane Hill, 765 -John, 90, 683, 800 -R., 789 Dane's Inn, 716 Danoi, 858 Dansey, 735 Daphnephoria, 541 Darbies, 227 Darby, 227 Darkness, 626 Date palm, 258 Dava, Flood of, 641 David, St., 625 Davy Jones, 641 _dawn_, 752 _day_, 320 Day, St., 320 Dayne, 724 _dazzle_, 591 _deacon_, 687 _dean_, 779, 810 Dean, Forest of, 752 -R., 789 Deane's Gardens, 721 Dear, 734 _dear_, 760 Death, 263, 264, 307 -disregarded, 173 Deberry, 345 Deemster, 746 Dee, R., 320 Deer, 257, 405, 599, 715 Deffrobani, 84 Delginross, 605, 796 Delphi, 653 Demijohn, 302, 687 Denbies, 613 Deneholes, 765-74 Denmark, 690 Dennehill, 716 Derbyshire, 401 Derg, L., 792, 796 _derry_, 36 Deucalion, 337 Devil's Dyke, 519 Dew, 167 _dextra_, 477 Dhia, 319 Diamond Horse, The, 424 Diana, 134, 135, 239, 258, 444, 475, 717, 788 Dianthus, 189 Digits, 575 Diminutives, 619 _di_, 319 _dieu_, 319 Dinant, 788 Dingwall, 317 Dinsul, 208 Dioscoros, 366 Dioscorus, 354 Dioscuri, 354, 512 Dionysus, 71 Divinity of Kings, 172 Dod-, 256 Dodbrook, 349 Doddington, 262 Dodecans, 207, 700 Dodman, The, 263, 349 Dodona, 89, 92, 133, 260, 273, 339 Dog, 54, 57, 111, 112, 121, 150, 152, 155, 264, 293, 329, 346, 853 Doliche, 76 Dolmen chapel, 30 Dolphin, 653 Domhills, 745 Don, 664 Doncaster, 444 Donidon, 745 _donjon_, 800 Donn, 712 -Children of, 734 Don, R., 749, 789 Don's Chair, 752 Donseil cave, 806 Donn's House, 726 Doo Cave, 494 Doom Rings, 746 Doomster, 745 _Dorchester_, 713, 715 Dordogne, 406, 774 Dorking, 386 Dot and Circle, 276, 547 Dots, 105, 250 Double Disc, 494 _dour_, 119 Dove, 92, 144, 486, 624, 627, 652, 853 _dove_, 625 Dove Cots, 733 Dover, 95 Doves, 790 Dowgate Hill, 783 Dowdeswell, 252 Dowdy, 640 Down, County, 786 Dragon, 208, 242, 260, 270, 272, 274, 655, 836 -guards, 274 -slayer, 651 Drainage, 103 Dray, River, 87 Drayton, 714 Dress, 100, 122 _Drew_, 471 Drewsteignton, 757 _droit_, 101 Drosten, 734 Drucca coin, 483 _Druid_, 761 Druidesses, 570 Druidic Creeds, 536 -Fairy tale, 166 -Music, 562 -Remains in Spain, 324 Druidism, 6-9, 66, 87, 167, 171, 393, 488, 544 Druid Physiologists, 834 Druids, 554 -caves, 791 -circles, 544 -Town, 572 Druids = _brans_, 679 ducat, 397 Dudsbury, 263 _due_, 223 Dumbarton, 472, 523 Dummy's Hill, 756 Dun, R., 789 Duncannon, 274 Dundalgan, 796 Dunechein, 90 Dunence, 552 _dungeon_, 800 Dunodon, 745 Duno, 758 Dunstable, 714, 745, 777 -grave, 64, 65 Dunstan, St., 716 Dunton, 716 _Durham_, 715 Durovern, 258 Duval, 741 EAGLE, 280 Earthwork, 862 Easter, 608 -dancing, 540 Eaton, 733 _ebb_ 524 Ebbe, R., 524 Ebchester, 431 Ebgate, 513 Ebony, 165 Ebor, R., 370 Ebora, 328, 329 Ebrington, 349 Ebro, R., 323, 370 Ebur, 329 Ebury, 601, 621 Eceni, 411 Echo, 226 Eclipse, 167 Ecne, 390 Eda, 455, 753 -good Queen, 151 -Queen, 512 Edans, St., 713 Edda, The, 752 Eden, 683, 730, 858 Edenhall, 743 Edenkille, 716 Eden, R., 713 -Vale, 716 Edimbourg, 745 Edina Hall, 753 Edinburgh, 730 _Edinburgh_, 797 Edmonton, 679 Edna, 753 Edrei, 194, 769 Effingham, 430 Effra, R., 749 Egg, 223, 226, 276, 532, 756 Egypt, 9, 46, 69, 135, 166, 189, 252, 254, 414, 475, 577, 843 _Egypt_, 534 Eight, 188, 189, 204, 636, 642 _eight_, 655 Eight Bishops, 659 Eighteen, 206, 207, 588 El, 132, 135 Elaine, 103 Elbarrow, 133 Elbe, R., 558 El Borak, 635, 664 Elboton, 154 _elder_, 153 Elen, 103, 221, 235 -R., 103 Elens Ways, 519 Elephant, 160 Eleven, 214, 421, 548, 557, 574, 581, 593, 633, 788 _eleven_, 217 Eleven Blindfolded Men, 577 -curtains, 576 -feet longstones, 548, 552 -foot grave, 560 -hundred, 214 -Loch, 219 -thousand, 214 _elf_, 153 Elfe, 153 Elfland, 559 Elgin, 450 _Elijah_, 147 Elini Cunob, 528 Elisha, 147 Elk, 289 Ellan, 133 Ellen, Dame, 778 Ellendown, 565 Ellendune, 133 Elles, The, 154 Ellesmere, 439 Ellingfort, 285 _Ellistone_, 318 Elmo's Fires, St., 475 Elphin, 158, 664 -Horses, 281, 287 _Elphinstone_, 318 Elphinstone, 548 Elphinstones, 217 Elven, 217 Elwyn St., 132 Ely, 716 Ember Days, 572 _emerge_, 219 Empire, 570 Empyrean, 570 _enceinte_, 220 Engelheim, 359, 591 Engelland, 558, 788 Englefield, 588 Englewood, 553 Englysshe Wood, 588 Ennis, 557 Enns, St., 720 _Ep_, 430 Ep, 523 Epeur, 326 Ephesus, 598 Ephialtes, 478 Epirus, 322 _epo_, 430 Epona, 284, 445 Epora, 328 Eppi, 523 Eppilos, 430 Eppilus, 280 Epping, 445 Epsom, 430 _equity_, 332 Eros, 158, 604 Esclairmond, 683 Eseye, 531 Esus, 278 Ethereal Plant, 181 Ethereus, 215 Ethne, 461 _ethnic_, 462 Eton, 730 Etruria, 17, 89, 139, 145, 148, 217, 236, 475 Eubonia, 163, 165, 216, 346 Eubury, 335 Euchar, 389 Euny, St., 261, 828 Eure, R., 870 Europa, 265 Europe, 525 Eve, 152, 403, 500, 742 _Eve_, 496 Evesham, 430 Evora, 329, 751 Exton, 685, 697 _exuberance_, 328 Eye, 251, 252, 282, 532, 538, 604, 727 -ball, 579 -of Christ, 384 -of Heaven, 195, 216 -of Horus, 122 -Land of the, 252 -of S'iva, 526 -Towns, 730 Eyes, 499, 539, 624 F, 497 Fabell, Peter, 679 Fainites!
616 Fainits!
117 Fairbank, 667, 686 Fairmead, 569 Fairs, 572 Fairy Family, 522 -Hill, 764 -Hills, 552 -leaves, 65 -Queen, 308 _fake_, 206 Fal, 424, 450, 841 -R., 424 Falcon, 426 Faraday, 508 Farandole, 412 _farisees_, 619 Farn, 751 Faroe Islands, 507 Farringdon, 466 Fata, 202 Fate, 593 -Tree, 322 _fay_, 153 Fearbal, 679 Feather, 160, 258, 366, 746 Feathers, 496 Fechan, St., 672 _feckless_, 206 _fecund_, 206 Fées, 165 Felikovesí, 423 Felixstowe, 423, 426 Fen, 426 _Ferdinand_, 507 Feridoon, 748 _fern_, 266 Fern, 260, 267, 385 -Islands, 206, 209 Fernacre, 550 Ferns, 256 Feron, 286 Feronia, 572 Ferriby, 495 Fiddler, The, 225 Field-names, 41 Fiery cross, 107 Fife, 153, 201 Fifteen, 206, 598, 601, 633, 755, 806 Fifty Sons, 716 Fig, 206 -Sunday, 500 Fingers, 574 Finwell cave, 806 _fir_ = _quercus_ Fir Tree, 730 _fire_, 467 Fire, 72, 166, 167, 618 -Halo, 571 -Insurance, 705 -of Heaven, 164 Fish, 247, 254, 286, 296 _five_, 363 Five, 238, 437, 513, 503, 689 -acres, 372 -grains, 517 -islands, 517 -king's, 262 -peaks, 518 -roads, 516 -streams, 517 -wells, 261 Flamborough, 492 Fleur de lys, 816 _Fleur de lys_, 242 Flint Knapping, 349 Flokton, 435 Flood, 857 -The, 20 Flora dance, 486 Flounders Field, 419 Flower names, 68 Fly, 221 Foal, 422 _fog_, 211 Foleshill, 435 Folkestone, 423, 426, 432 Font de Gaune, 402 Footprints, 546 Forbury, The, 438 Fore, 672 Forfar, 368, 495 Fortunate Isles, 683, 690 Fortune, 489 -Wheel of, 537 Fosses des Inglais, 786 -Sarrasins, 786 Fossils in tomb, 65 Fountain of Knowledge, 689 Four Cities, 859 -Kings, 687 -Quarters, 188 -Rivers, 722 -Roads, 515 --streamed Mount, 130 --teated Horse, 284 Fox, 263 Fraid, St., 459 Frederick the Great, 462 _free_, 760 Freemasonry, 295 Frei, 748 Freisingen, 700 Freya, 572 Friday, 572 Fulham, 422, 426 _fun_, 57 Furry dance, 271, 274, 412, 486 Furze, 602, 795 _gad_, 143 Gaddeaden, 673 Gadfly, 282 Gadshill, 755 Gaelic, 79 -regrets, 69 Gaelic tenderness, 43 _gagga_, 478 Galva, Carn, 318 Gancanagh, 412 Gander, 223 Ganesa, 160, 280 Gangani, 411 Ganganoi, 54, 702 Ganging Day, 246 Gangrad, 143 Garden of the Rose, 683 Gardens of Adonis, 712 _gas_, 225 _gauche_, 477 Gauls and Britons, same speech, 91 Gaurs, 561 Gayhurst, 288 _Gedge_, 471 _Gee_, 91 Gee, 282 Geecross, 446 Geho, 282 Gemini, 475 _general_, 146 _generate_, 145 _Genesis_, 145 Geneva, 329 _geniality_, 140 _genie_, 146 _genital_, 145 genius, 146 _gennet_, 285 "Gentle People," 733 "Gentle Places," 734 Gentry, The, 146 _genus_, 145 _George_, 272 George, St., 242, 268, 271, 304, 614, 642, 695, 817 Gerberta, 362 Germans, 525 Germany, 74 Gest, 272 _gewgaw_, 448 Geyser, 243 _ghost_, 231 Gian Ben Gian, 140, 304 Giant's Beds, 758 -civic, 188 -grave, 746 -graves, 191 -hedges, 17 Giants = Dwarfs, 233 Gig, 433, 471 _gigantic_, 195 _giggle_, 190 Gigglewick, 189 Giggy's, St., 190 Giglet Fair, 194 Gig na Gog, 190 Gigonian Rock, 194 _gigue_, 195 Gilbey, 284 Givendale, 429 Givon's grove, 430 Glastonbury, 289, 682 Gnosis, 76, 279, 859 Gnossus, 76, 794 Gnostic gems, 108, 112 Gnostics, 135, 361 Goat, 57, 361, 504 Goblet, 813 _god_, 178 _Godber_, 572 Gode, 220 Godiva, 41, 403, 475, 598 Godmanham, 550 Godolcan, 285 Godolphin, 284 -Hill, 668 Godrevy, 531 God's Acre, 673 Godstone, 815 Godstones, etc., 673 Goemagog, 186-8 Gofannon, 432 Gog, 188, 478 _Gog_, 194 _goggle_, 189 Goginan, 194 Gogmagog, 83, 639 Golden Age, 858 -Ball Bar, 590 _Golden Bough, The_, 71, 74 Goldhawk, 433 _Gooch_, 195 _good_, 178 _Goodge_, 195, 477 Goodman, 741 Goodmanstone, 713 "Good Neighbours," 733 Good People, 556 --The, 174 Goodwood, 446 Goose, 223, 228, 243, 276, 346, 512, 661 _goose_, 224, 225, 231 Goosegog, 345 Goosey, 447 Goostrey, 447 Gorhambury, 111, 562 Gorsedd, 564 -prayer, 181 _Gosh_, 195 Gospel oak, 228 Goss, 243 Goswell, 243 Govan, 426 Govannon, 426 Gowk, 198 _Grace_, 830 Graces, Three, 181 _Great_, 810 Great Bear, 216 Greek, 81 -in Mexico, 842 Greeks, indebted to barbarians, 163 Green, 263 Greengoose Fair, 243 Green Man, 268 --and Still, 270 _Gretchen_, 302, 362 Greyhound bitch, 36 Grimm's Law, 51, 60 _grot_, 810 _grotesque_, 812 Gudeman, The, 109 Guedienus, 325 guess, 273 Guinea, 400 Guion, 824 Gun, 274 Gunpowder, 839 Gur, Lough, 736 _gush_, 273 _gust_, 243, 272 Gwenevere, 389 Gwennap, 531 _gyne_, 511 Gyre, 562 HABONDE, 165 Hack, 283 Hackington, 411 _Hackney_, 283 _hackney_, 392 Hackney, 285, 287, 699 Haddenham, 716 Haddington, 750 Haden Cross, 716 Hag, 737 Hagbourne, 38 Hagman, 199 Hag tracks, 200, 283 Hags, 685 -chair, 200 _Haha_, 58 Haha, 737 _Haig_, 199 Hailsham, 568 Hakon, 235 Halcyon, 290 Half moon, 490 Halifax, 514 Hallicondane, 290, 412, 734 Hamelyn, 867 Hammer, 270, 355 -of Thor, 706 Hammersmith, 431 Hand, 744 Hangman's Wood, 787 Han Grotto, 787, 827 Hannafore, 275 Hanover, 275, 695 Happy Valley, 523 Harp, 562 Harper, 305 Harpocrates, 118 Hastings, 95, 798 Hathor, 46 Hatton Garden, 716 Hawk, 205 _hawker_, 205 Hawthorn, 152, 159 -St., 737 Haxa, 644 _haycock_, 198 Haydon, 713 Hay Hill, 421 Haymarket, 421 Heart, 158, 287, 595, 816 -Cross, 105 Heart's Delight, 350, 687 Heathen chant, 373 Heaven's Walls, 672, 683 Hebe, 743 Heber, 310 Hebrew, 79 _Hebrew_, 191, 369 Hebrews, 184 _Hebrews_, 502 Hebrides, 165 _Hebrides_, 315 Hebron, 34, 370 Heck!
283 Heddon, 746 Helen, 103, 221, 286, 477 Helena, 104 Helen, St., 456, 587 Helen's day, St., 478 Helens, St., 95, 103 Helicon, 289 Heligan Hill, 289 Helios, 103, 104, 135 Hellana, 103 Hellas, 133, 412 Hellen, 337 Hellenes, 103, 412 Hellingy, 588 Helston, 271, 412 Hen, 197, 653 Hengist, 275 -and Horsa, 85 Hengston Hill, 554 Hensor, 386 _Hepburn_, 526 Hephaestus, 426 _Hepworth_, 527 Herculaneum and Pompeii, 19 Hercules, 97, 114, 139, 200, 666, 668 Hermes, 116 Herne's Oak, 239 Herring-bone-walls, 91 Hesy, Tel el, 531 Hewson, 450 Hexe, 644 Hibera, 323 _Hibernia_, 310 Hidden One, 577 Hide and Seek, 578 Hieroglyphics, 114 _high_, 125 Highbury, 667 Himbra, Pt., 586 Hindus, 168 _hinge_, 556 Hiniver, 695 Hinover, 275, 452 _hip_, 524 Hip!
Hip!
Hip!
526 Hipperholme, 514 _hips_, 526 Hipswell, 513 Hive, 710 Hivites, 497 Hob, 165, 513 Hobany, 216, 284 Hobby, 423 -Horse, 268, 275, 527 _Hobday_, 526 Hobredy, 165 _hoch_, 125 _Hogg_, 199 Hogmanay, 199 Hoketide, 244 Holborn, 722 Holda, 220 Holed stone, 538 Holiburn, Giant, 318 Holland House, 422 Hollantide, 245 Holle, 220 Holloway, 517, 521 Holly, 40, 140, 417, 597 Hollybush, 155 Hollyhock, 204 Holly tree, 220 Holofernes, 266 _holy_, 140 Holy Ghost, 487 -Holy Vale, 586 -Sepulchre, 793 Holvear Hill, 590 Holwood Park, 785 Homer, 63, 99, 225, 326, 327 Homerton, 287 Honeybourne, 261, 714 Honeybrooke, 38 Honey Child, 261, 714 Honeychurch, 714, 261 Honeycrock, 568 Honeydew, 623 _Honeyman_, 758 Honeysuckle, 258 Honor Oak, 228, 231, 666 Honover, 695 Hoodening, 841 Hoodown, 350 Hoof, 573 Hoop, 542 _hoop_, 525 Hooper, 425 Hooper's Blind, 311 -Hide, 578 Hop, 523 Hop o' my Thumb, 524 -Queen, 540 Hope, 523 _hope_, 524 Hopkin, 540 Hoppyland, 523 _hops_, 524 Horn, 286 Horns of Altar, 736 Horsa, 275 Horse, 241, 274, 389, 615, 623, 840 -Eye, 282 -Eye Level, 568 -flesh, 478 -hair wig, 332 -= Liberty, 328 Horselydown, 38 Horse-ornaments, 286 -ship, 654 Horseshoe, 572 Horus, 46 Hospitality, 227 Hounds, 461 Hounslow, 714 Howel, 104 Hoxton, 285, 685 Hoy, 758 Hoy obelisk, 9 Hoyden, 742 Hu, 84, 214, 320, 311, 327, 349, 386, 450, 586, 749 _hubbub_, 525 Hube, Mt., 542 Hudkin, 509 _huge_, 198 Huggen Lane, 511 Huggins Hall, 350 _Hugh_, 320 Hugh Town, 586 _humane_, 695 Humber, R., 569 _Hun_, 234 Hun, 827 Huns, 216 Hunsonby, 220 Hyde, 473, 455, 621 Hydon's Ball, 714 Hyperboreans, 324, 370, 562 Hypereia, 320, 346 Hyperion, 328 Hymn of Hate, 525 Ibar, St., 311, 826 Iberian coin, 292, 322, 397 -coins, 247, 254, 265, 297, 231, 386 -language, 266 Iberians, 451 Iceni, 248 Icenians, 451 _Ichnield_, 519 Ichnield way, 248, 411, 518, 520 Ickanhoe, 248 Ida, 742 _Ida_, 754 -Mt., 574, 715, 455 -plain, 752 -plains, 473 Idaeiana, 456 Ideia, 76 Idle, R., 462 Idle's Bush, 462 Idunn, 742 Ieithon, 461 Iffley, 40 Iggdrasil, 841 Ikeni, 283, 519 Iliberi, 322 Ilibiris, 330 _Iliffe_, 162 Ilkley, 290 Illtyd St., 257 Illtyds House, 257 _Ilma_, 136 Ilmatar, 137 Imp Stone, 623 Inachus, 266, 282 _inane_, 201 _inch_, 556 _Inch_, 557 Inchbrayock, 495 _inept_, 526 Ing, 556 Inga, 556 _Inge_, 556 Ingene Lane, 511 _ingle_, 552 Ingleborough, 587, 786 Inghilterra, 557 Inglesham, etc., 659 Ingletons, etc., 588 Inkberrow, 874 Inkpen, 659 Inn, 294, 298 Inquisition, 549 Intoxication, 688 Intreccia, 706, 840 Intreccia coins, 491 Invicta, 275 Invictus, 210 Io, 282, 362, 399 Iona, 627, 651, 670, 714 Ionia, 92 Ipareo, 320 Ippi, 523 Ireland, 182, 193 Iris, 265 Irish circles, 545 _Iron_, 574 _Isaac_, 471 Isle of Dogs, 38, 113 Islington, 685 Issey, St., 531 Istar, 608, 644 Ith, Plain of, 473 Ivalde, 742 Ives, St., 41, 425, 427, 430, 531 Ivy, 493 -Bridge, 427 -Girl, The, 40, 540 Ixion, 163 Iysse, St., 531 Jack, 97, 195, 417 Jack a lantern, 152 -in green, 268 -The, 270, 273 -the Giant Killer's well, 212 -up the orchard, 447 Jackal, 111, 263 _jackass_, 212 Jah, 161 Jaina cross, 105 Jana, 97 _Jane_, 447 Janicula, 828 Janina, 261, 460 _janitor_, 146 Januarius, St., 828 January, 140, 146 -1st, 650 Janus, 92, 141, 203, 140, 213, 241, 399, 490, 555, 626, 670, 795, 828, 841 -of Sicily, 143 Japan, 216, 857 Jason, 82 _jaunty_, 143 _Jay_, 91 Jay, 283 Jehovah, 184, 502, 508 Jehu, 282 jennet, 285 _jenny_, 212 Jenny, Aunt, 228 Jerusalem, 296, 794 Jesus, 214 _jeu_, 106, 448 _Jew_, 91 Jew, Eternal, 203 _Jews_, 502 Jews, 456 -Garden, 468 -in Cornwall, 80 -Harp, 448 -Lane, 697 -The Everlasting, 196 Jews Walk, 439 -Wandering, 448, 663, 696, 728 _jig_, 195 _jingle_, 400 _jinn_, 146 Jinn, 166 Jo, 644 Joan, 227 -Pope, 357 Joan's Pitcher, 190, 301 Jock, 106 Jockey, 444 _jocund_, 106 Johanna, 213 Johanna's garden, 703 _John_, 830 John, 53 -of Gaunt, 648 -of Perugia, 326 -St., 165, 268, 449, 514, 537, 539, 636 -the Baptist, 448 Johnstone, 53 Johnstone's Inn, 331 John's Wood, St., 151 Jonah, 652 _Jones_, 92 Jonn, 91 _jonnock_, 97, 236 _Joseph_, 147 Joseph's Rod, 629 Jou, 91, 147, 151, 456, 508, 710 Jove, 140, 257 -androgynous, 233 -coin, 282 _joviality_, 140 _Joy_, 91 _joy_, 106, 147 Juda, 362 Jude, St., 287 _Judge_, 447 Judge's bough, 691 -walk, 439 _Judson_, 447 Judy, 362, 754 Jug, 295, 301 _Jug_, 447 Jugantes, 453 Juggling, 563 Juktas, Mt., 471 _June_, 146 _junior_, 146 Juno, 144, 146, 223, 243, 407, 493, 715 _Jupiter_, 311 Jupiter, 142, 227, 283, 362, 386, 458, 508 -Ammon, 578 Jupiter's Chain, 581, 830 Just, St., 563 Jutt, 359 _Juxon_, 446 Kaadman, 109, 204, 249, 288 Kalbion, 125 Kate Kennedy, 319 -St., 784 Katherine Wheel, 107 Kayne, St., 212, 221, 649 _Keach_, 471 _Kean_, 212 Ked, 242 Kelpie, 283, 818 _Kember_, 310 _Ken_, 212 Ken, R., 221 -wood, 151, 649 Kendal, 221, 411, 667 Kenia, Mt., 236 Kenna, 213, 261, 317 -Princess, 162 -St., 649 Kennet, R., 853 Kenites., 826 Kennington, 292 _Kenny_, 212, 649 Kensington, 317 -Gore, 420 -Hippodrome, 449 Kent, 95, 411 -R., 667 Kent's Cavern, 4, 401, 825 -Copse, 349 Keridwen, 158, 651 _Keridwen_, 157 Kerris Roundago, 820 Keston, 785 Kettle, 797 Keyne, St., 757 Keynsham, 212 _Khan_, 234, 310 Khem, 745 Kid, 504 Kigbear, 194 Kilburn, 155 Kildare, 603 Kilkenny, 290 _Kil_kenny, etc., 340 Killbye, 284 Kilts, 98 Kimball, 39 Kimbdton, 39 _Kind_, 826 _King_, 234, 342 King Charles' Wain, 406 -of Cockney's, 617 -of the May, 527 King's cross, 288 -Lynn, 697 Kingston, 548, 606 _Kingston_, 349 Kingstons, etc., 606 Kinross, 605 Kinyras, 605 Kintyre, 409 Kio, 282 -eye coin, 253 Kirkcudbright, 362 Kirkmabreck, 579 Kit, St., 784 -with a canstick, 152 Kit's Coty, 153, 750, 751, 780 Knap Hill, 528 -well, 528 _Knave_, 529 Knightsbridge, 621 Knockainy, 288, 735 Knocking Stone, 317 _Knop_, 528 Knot, 707 _Know_, 280 _Konah_, 236 Konkan, 412 Konken, 412 Koppenburg, 303 Kostey, 226, 231 Kristna, 105, 820 Kun, Mt., 236 Kunnan, Island of, 157 Kwan yon, 216 Kyd brook, 784, 785 Kymbri, 16, 330 _Kymbri_, 310 Kymbric, 79 Kynetii, 853 L, 792 _labour_, 322 Labyrinth, 706 Labyrinths, 107 _Lac d'Amour_, 707 Ladies Walk, 439 _lady_, 512 Ladybird, 507 Lady Bird, 591 Lamb, 719, 722 Land's End, 193 Language, poetic element _lanky_, 285 Lanky man, 337 Lansdown, 342 Lansdowne, 417 Latin cross, 105 Laurel-Bearer, 541 Leaf, 427 -Man, Little, 305 _Leaper_, 568 Lear, K., 791 Leda, 354, 512 Leen, R., 697 Legs, 346 Leinster, 661 Len, R., 697 Lense, 839 Lenthall, 285 Leprechaun, 330 Levan, St., 212, 703 Leven, Loch, 219 Levens, 221 Leviathan, 162 Lewes, 416 Lewis, 432 _liberal_, 322 Liberini, 322 _liberty_, 322 Libora, 328 Liege, 330 Lieven, 217, 224 Lif and Lifthraser, 558 life, 153 Life Tree, 322 _Lily_, 242 Lily, 633 Linden, 154, 228 Linscott, 285 Lion, 57, 578 Lissom Grove, 623 Little Bird, Lay of, 692 -Britain, 522 -Leaf Man, 577 -London, 292 "Little Mothers," 174 _Livingstone_, 318 Lizard, 284 _Llan_, 103 Llandrindod, 367 Llandudno, 256, 272, 552 Llanfairfechan, 672 Llangan-, 261 _loaf_, 253 Londesborough, 285 _London_, 104 London, 103, 521, 522, 717 -Bridge, 575 -Fields, 285 -Stone, 513, 518 Lone, R., 221, 697 _long_, 285 Long Man, 337 -Meg, 205, 209, 266, 588, 646, 713 Lonsdale, 221 Lord of Misrule, 617 Lothbury, 470 Lough Gur, 562 _love_, 153 Love, 168, 225, 275 Lovekyn, 607 _Lovelace_, 818 Lucifer, 222 Luna, 234 Lune, R., 221, 697 Lunus, 234 Lyne grove, 285 Lyn R., 697 M, 678 m and n, 745 _ma_, 186 Ma, 136, 258 Maat, 746 Mab, Queen, 556, 757 Mabon, 163 Mabonogi, 557 _Mac_, 375 Mc, 205 McAlpine laws, 172 _McAuliffe_, 205 Macclesfield, 511 Macedonian stater, 394 Macha, 512 Madeira, 89 Madon, R., 789 _Madonna_, 745 Madonna, 790 Madura, 104 Maga, 202 _magazine_, 205 Maggie Figgie, 205, 211 -Figgy, 500 -Witch, 219 Maggots, 222 Magi, 181, 413, 544, 702 _magic_, 202 _magna mater_, medals, 128 Magog, 188 _magog_, 194 Magogoei, 191 Magon, 674 Magonius, 674 Magpie, 656 Magu, 436 _magus_, 202 Magus, 203, 436, 702 Magusae, 436 Mahadeo, 835 Mahadeos, 832 Maht, 746 Maia, 606 _maid_, 458 Maida, 151, 456 _maiden_, 712 Maiden Bower, 714, 745 -Castle, 713 -Lane, 428 -Paps, 209, 717 -Stane, 745 -Stone, 715 -Way, 206 Maidenhead, 660 Maidoc, St., 742, 751 Mairae, 594 _maisie_, 211 Mama Allpa, 135 -Cochs, 196 _mamma_, 136 Mammoth dagger, 599 Man in the Moon, 149, 161, 293 -Isle of, 163, 205, 320, 346, 556 -in the Oak, 230, 240 Manorbeer, 468 Manston, 96 Maoris, 579, 857 Mara, 600 Marazion, 91 Mare, 616, 653 Mare Street, 285 Maree, Loch, 604 Margaret, St., 208, 219, 220, 275, 647, 660, 755 Margate, 91 -Grotto, 765, 807 Margery Daw, 219 -Hall, 208 _margot_, 220 Marguerite, 210, 216 _Marguerite_, 839 _Maria_, 91, 301 Marian, Maid, 268 Marigold, 210, 607, 636 Marine, St., 607 _Marion_, 270 Market Jew, 91 Marlow, 660 Marne, 406 _marrain_, 330 _marry_, 601 Marseilles, 81 Martha's, St., 585 Martin, St., 274 _Mary_, 201, 604 Mary, 201 -Ambree, 648, 657 -Morgan, 201, 626 -St., 287, 590, 595, 793 Mary's Island, St., 586 Materialism, 74 Math, 432 Matterhorn, 147 Maur, St., 217, 576 Maurus, 217 Maurice, St., 217, 224 Mawgan, St., 674 _May_, 606, 713 May doll, 542 -Queen, 308, 686 Maya, 606 Mayas, 842 Mayborough, 713 _Maycock_, 195 Mayday, 268, 287 Maydeacon, 687 -House, 350 Mayfair, 601 Maypole, 260, 438, 684 mazes, 87, 585 _Meacock_, 195 Mead, 688 _mead_, 473 Meadows, 568 Meantol, 226 _meat_, 747 Meath, 757 Meave, 757 Meek, The, 660 _meek_, 211 Meg, 208 Megale, 223 Megalopolis, 362 Megstone, 206, 266 Meigle, 505 "Men of Peace," 733 _mer_, 91 _merchant_, 97 Mercury, 85, 97, 111, 134, 140, 195, 227, 262, 269, 347 _mère_, 91 Merlin's Cave, 797, 800 Merritot, 447 _merry_, 590, 600 Merry Andrews, 701 -Maidens, 206, 549 Meru, Mt., 708 Mesembria, 691 Metal inlay, 464 Mexico, 105, 161 Mirror, 251, 700, 715 Micah, 111, 184 Michal, 208 Michael, St., 111, 207, 245, 271, 287, 304, 416, 420, 504, 511, 557, 661 Michael's Mount, 208 Michaelmas, 245 -Day, 213 _Michelet_, 212 Mickleham, 208 Mihangel, 557 Mildmay, 287 Milkmaids, 603 Minerva, 139 Minnis Bay, 94 -Rock, 94 Minos, 333, 440 -King, 95 Minotaur, 840 Minster, 95 _minster_, 96 Mist, 211 Mistletoe, 181, 681 Mithra, 121, 768, 781, 835 Mithras, 413 _mo_, 234 Moccus, 240 Mogadur, 208 Mogounus, 202 Mogue, St., 266 _moke_, 211 Moirae, 594 Mona, 391 _monastery_, 96 Mongols, 191, 847 Mont Giu, 728 _montjoy_, 728 Moon, 149, 234 Moot hills, 209, 747 _morbid_, 600 Morgan, 201 Morgana, 317 Moria, 597, 322 Moriah, Mt., 633, 708 Morni, 175 Morning Star, R., 68 _morose_, 600 Morrigan, 757 Morris dance, 606 Mother Goose, 223, 225 "Mother Margarets," 222 Mother Ross, 604 "Mothers' Blessings," 174, 230 Mottingham, 764, 789 _mouche_, 221 Mound, 448 -of Peace, 733 Mounds, 171 Mount Pleasant, 288, 716, 745 Mountain tops, 171 _mouth_, 293 Mowrie, 604 Moytura, 757 _mud_, 747 Mudes, 747 _muggy_, 211 Mug's well, 208 Muire, 604 Mulberry, 596 _murder_, 600 Mushroom, 261 Music of Spheres, 67 Mut, 746 Mutton, 741 Mykale, 261 Mykenae, 258, 383, 430, 843, 850 _mykenae_, 824 Myrrh, 601 Myrrha, 605 Mysteries, The, 56 Nag, 622 Nag's Head, 589 Name, Sacred, 535 Nat, 621 _naught_, 655 _naughty_, 656 Necessity, 489 _neck_, 614 Neck Day, 614 _nectar_, 656 Nectar, 688 Nehelennia, 456, 777 Nehellenia, 697 _neigh_, 279 Neith, 621 _Nelly_, 697, 777 Nelly, 456 Neot, St., 621 _new_, 257 New Grange, 9, 166, 258, 266, 561, 750, 850 New Jerusalem, 702 New Year's Gifts, 141 Newark, 450 _Newbon_, 162 Newcastle, 700 Newmarket, 450 Newington, 450 Newlands Corner, 387 _Newlove_, 818 Newlyn, 697 Neyte, 621 _nice_, 620 _niche_, 622 _Nicholas_, 613 Nicholas, 478 -St., 140, 239, 504, 563, 614, 663 Nicolette, 633 Night, 621 _night_, 620 Nina, 46 Nine, 72, 94, 194, 214, 537, 549, 588, 609, 642, 664, 792, 834 Nine maids, 549 Nine men's morris, 585, 609 Nine Worthies, 609 Nineteen, 169, 472, 587, 806 Nineveh, 93 Nisses, 620 Nixy, 619 Noah, 152, 450 Noe, R., 450 Nonnon, 625 Norway, 96 November, 244 Noviomagus, 785 Nox, 225 _nucleus_, 614 Nut, 621 Nutria, 622 Nymph Stone, 623 Oaf, 524 Oak, 78, 67, 133, 226, 228, 370, 393, 665 Oannes, 201 Oats, 663, 680 Oberland, 329 Oberon, 317, 320, 570, 588, 683 _ocean_, 142 Oceanus, 142 -R., 730 Ock, R., 198 Ockbrook, 198 Ockham, 231 Ockley, 672 Octopus, 839 Oddendale, 461 Odestone, 461 Odin, 157, 461, 743, 842 Odstone, 509 Oendis, 537 Oengus, 266, 512 _Offa_, 524 Offham Hill, 416 Offida, 474 _Og_, 194, 195, 243 Og, 194, 769 -R., 198 Ogane, 400, 845 Ogbury, 198 Ogdoad, 189 _Ogle_, 190 Ogmios, 114, 148, 195, 201, 304, 663 Ogmore, R., 198 _ogre_, 198 Ogwell, 198 Ogygia, 193 OHIO, 535 Oin, 795 Oisin, 175 _Ok_, 126 Okehampton, 194 Okement, R., 194 Okenbury, 349 Olaf's Beard, St., 267 Olantigh Park, 292 Olave St., 155, 285 Olcan, R., 239 Old Cider, 677 -Davy, 641 -Harry, 199 -Hob, 527 -Joan, 90, 227 -King, The, 152 -man, The, 152, 225, 666, 668, 675 -Moore, 225, 327 -Nick, 140, 476, 620 -Parr, 327, 668 -Poole's Saddle, 796 -Shock, 447 -Surrender, 374 -Wife, 742 Olen, 566 _Oliff_, 162 Olinda Rd., 285 Oliphaunt, 159 Olive, 155, 427 -tree, 322 Oliver, 601 Olivet, Mt., 793 Oluf, St., 157 Omar, St., 225 On, 450 Ona, 282 One, 489, 537, 547 "One and All," 132 -Essence, 229 -Man, 758 -Man, The, 823 Onslow, 550 _ope_, 525 Ophites, 496 _opine_, 285 _oppidum_, 523 _Orand_, 572 Oratory of Gallerus, 450 Orchard, 671 Orme's Head, 272 _Osmund_, 267 _osmunda_, 267 Ossian, 177, 225 Ostara, 608, 646 Osterley, 608 _ounce_, 556 Ouphes, 524 Ovary, St., Mary, 748 _over_, 329 Oving, 419 Ovington Sq., 419 Overkirkhope, 495 Overton, 500 Owen, 795 Owl, 754 Oxford, 514 Oxted, 799 Oyster Hills, 608, 646 _pa_, 135 Pachevesham, 430 Padstow, 273, 669 Paddington, 151, 456 Pair, 354 _pair_, 458 Paleolithic symbol, 254 Palm, 278, 390 Palm leaf, 247, 255, 258 -of Paradise, 612 Palmette, 258 Palmtree, 256 Pan, 134, 137, 206, 250, 448 _Pankhurst_, 137 Panku, 137 Pann, 162 Pans, 169 Pansy, 169, 182 _pantaloon_, 377 _papa_, 126, 136 Papa Stour, etc., 339 Papas, 728 Papermarks, 365, 381, 503 Pappas, 136 Paps, 209, 757 -of Anu, 334 _Paradise_, 759 Paradise, 517, 667, 678, 683, 697, 699, 701, 714 -Celtic, 174 Paragon, 759 Parcae, 595 Pardenic, 424 Pardon churchyard, 472 _parent_, 323 Paris, 412 _parish_, 312 Parisii, 493 _parrain_, 330 _parricides_, 323 _parrot_, 327 Parsees, 412, 748 Parslow, 714 _Parsons_, 343 Parthenon, 207 Partholon, 337 Parton, 533, 572 Patera, 674 Patrick, 794 -St., 42, 113, 175, 182, 202, 552, 671, 758, 829 Patrick's Purgatory, 791, 794 Patrise, Sir, 674, 734 Patrixbourne, 670, 687, 716 Paul.
St., 342, 346 Paul's, St., 239, 472 Paul's Stump, 509, 542 _paunch_, 139 _pawky_, 231 Paxhill, 754 Peaceful immigrations, 85 Peace Mounds, 736 Peak, 291 -Hill, 440 Pear, 691 -Tree, 730 _Pearce_, 707 Pearl, 660, 836 Pechs, 244 Peck, 294 Peckham, 231, 373, 670 Pedlar of Swaffham, 575 Pedrolino, 668 _peer_, 319 Peerless Pool, 721 Peg, 232 Pegasus, 276, 277, 278, 287, 295, 305, 722 Peggy, 233 Peirun, 338 Pelagienne, St., 626 Pelasgi, 92 Pelasgian Heresy, 178 Pell's Well, 796 Pendeen, 766 _Pennefather_, 137 Penny, 169 _penny_, 397 Pennyfields, 169 Pennyroyal, 169, 267 Pen pits, 800 Penrith, 724 Penselwood, 800 Pentagon, 77 Pentargon, 90 Pentecost, 243 Penton, 800 Pentonville, 800 Pepi, King, 744 Pera, 702 _pere_, 323 Perigord, 402 Perilous Pool, 721 -Pond, 718 _periphery_, 368 Periwinkle, 384, 385 Perkunas, 431 Peronne, 406 Peroon, 358, 431 Perran Round, 387 Perranzabuloe, 316 Perriwiggen, 320 Perriwinkle, 320, 384, 385 Perro, 329 Perron du Roy, 315, 420 Perry Court, 313 -dancers, 312, 874 -Stones, 874 -Woods, 313 Perseia, R., 852 Persia, 168, 412 Persians, 171, 181, 182, 183, 322, 544, 570 _person_, 367 Perth, 461 Peru, 135, 196, 858 Perugia, 326 Perun, 316 _Peter_, 669 Peter Mount, 826 -St., 127, 249, 478, 613, 668 -the Poor, 502 Peter's Hill, 472 -Orchard, 671, 683 -Purgatory, 827 Peterill, R., 675 Peterkin, 668 Petersham, 674 Petra, 724 Petrockstow, 671 Petrocorii, 402 Petronius quoted, 73 _Phæton_, 504 Pharoah, 242 _Pharoah_, 507 Pherepolis, 313 Phial, 427 Philemon, 227 _philosophy_, 394 Phocean Greeks, 507 Phoebus, 111 Phoenicians, 13, 78, 99, 871 Phol, 424, 841 _phooka_, 206 Phoroneus, 266 Phra, 507, 748 Phrygia, 227, 326, 574 Phrygians, 164 Picardy, 381 Piccadilly, 731 Pichtil, 305 Pickhill, 231 Pickmere, 231 Pickthorne, 231 Picktree, 231 Pickwell, 231 Pictish sculptures, 381 Pictones, 244 Picts, 244 Pied Piper, 303, 700, 795 Piepowder, 698 Pierre, 668 Pierrot, 138, 668 _Piers_, 707 Pig, 240, 406 Pigdon, 231 _pigeon_, 144 Pigeon caves, 783 Pilgrim's Way, 520 Pillar, 241, 255, 269, 384, 481, 823 -palm, 258 Pillars, 297, 309 Pink, 169, 182 Pipbrook, 386 Piper, 305 Pipes of Pan, 158 Piran, St., 316 _pirate_, 526 Pisgies, 176 Pitcher, 300, 302, 570 Pixham, 231 Pixie's Garden, 703 Pixtil, 264, 305, 557 _pixy_, 230 Place-name persistences, 34 Plan au guare, 561 _planta genista_, 419 Pleasant, Mt., 759 Plough Monday, 227, 271, 272 Plutarch quoted, 75 _pock_, 290 _Pocock_, 195 Pol Hill, 801 _pollute_, 426 Polyphemus, 193 _Pontiff_, 701 _pony_, 284, 445 Pooctika, 305 Poole's cavern, 796 Poor John Alone, 696 _pope_, 126 Pope, 357-9 -Joan, 626, 703 Pope's Hole, 589 Popinjay, 754 Poppy, 245, 385 Population, density, Porsenna's Tomb, 236 Portreath, 574 Portunes, 489, 755 Poseidon, 440 Pot of Treasure, 576 Poukelays, 231, 316 _Power_, 458 _prad_, 402 _prate_, 327 Prechaun, 330 Precious Gem, The, 660 Prehistoric edifice, 863 _presbyter_, 330 Presteign, 319 Prester, John, 699, 858 Preston, 312, 313, 349, 372, 402, 416 Prestonbury Rings, 332 _pretty_, 458 Pria, 328 Priam, 716 Prickle, 292 Priest, 330 _pride_, 119 Prime, 602 Primrose, 182 -Hill, 602 _prince_, 318 Prince of Purpool, 617 Prize Ring, 563 Proboscis deities, 161 Prometheus, 153 Proserpine, 484 Proteus, 507 _proud_, 458 Provence, 170 Prow, 399 _prude_, 119, 458 Prujean, Sq., 331 Prussia, 847 Prydain, 118, 309, 311, 749 Prydwen, 548 _Psyche_, 177 Puck, 230, 280, 320 Puckstone, 552 Puckstones, 231, 316 _pun_, 592 Punch, 138, 754 Punchinello, 138 Punning, 54 Purbeck, 551 Pure, 458 Purfleet, 349 Purgatory, 175 Purity, Hymn to, 183 Purley, 664 Purple, 617 Pwll,477 Pwyll, 796 Pydar, 698 -Hundred of, 669 Pyrenees, 323 Pyrrha, 337 Pythagoras, 180 Quean, 511 _queen_, 235 Quendred, 719, 761 Quick, 153 _quick_, 245 _Quimper_, 310 Quinipily, 531 Ra, 152 Racing, Etrurian, 409 Radipole, 684 -rood, 438 Radwell, 470 Rainbow, 265 Rath, 711 _rath_, 574 Rawdikes, 434 Rayed Fingers, 356 Rayham, 93 Raynes Park, 812 Reading, 437 -St., 443 Rea, R., 436 _reason_, 437 Reason, 690, 695, 813 Reculver, 95, 661, 759 Red cliff, 818 -Cross, 104, 438, 471 -Horse, 278 -Rood, 555 Reddanick, 438 Redon, 434 Redones, 435 Redruth, 396, 438 _regina_, 812 Regni, 445 Reigate, 798 _Reigate_, 812 Reindeer, 622 Resin, 689, 814 _rex_, 300 Rey cross, 437 Rhadamanthus, 440 _Rhea_, 301 Rhea, 92, 493 _rhetoric_, 574 _rhi_, 300 _rhoda_, 338 Rhoda coin, 339 Rhode, 440 Rhodesminnis, 440 Rhodians, 683 Rialobran, 314, 318 Richborough, 441, 567, 738 _ride_, 435 _rigan_, 301 Ripon, 437 _river_, 437 River God, 142 Roads, 517 Roas Bank, 93 Robin Goodfellow, 230, 284 -Hood, 509 Rochester, 87, 443 Rock, 73, 127, 129, 207 -Monday, 127 -of Moses, 671 Rodau's Town, 339, 350, 435, 683 Roden, R., 435 Roding, R., 435 _roi_, 300 Romans, 26, 520 Rome, 17 _roue, 436_ Rood, 437 Rosalie, St., 819 _Rosa mystica_, 709 Rosamond, 683, 814, 830 Rosanna, 813 _Rose_, 604 Rose, 442, 610, 626, 669, 672, 817, 819 -coins, 683 Ross, 605 Rota coins, 683 Rothwell, 438 Rotomagi, 436 Rotten Row, 418, 732 Rottenrow, 433 Rottingdean, 443 Rotuna, 443 Round Table, 683 Row Tor, 550 Royal Bright Star, The, 660 Royston, 640, 641, 672, 678, 683, 781 Ruadan, St., 434 Rua excavations, 812 Rudra, 526 Rudstone, 435 _rue_, 435 Rule, cave of St., 160 Rule, St., 780 Ruthen, 443 Rutland, 434 Rutupiae, 442 Rye, 811 Sabra, Lady, 817 Sabrina, 622, 817 Saffron Walden, 260 Saint's, bisexual, 234 St., John and Father, 165 -Nicholas Acon, 850 Salakee, 589 Salisbury, 340 -Crags, 730 -Seal, 659 Salla Key, 538 Sampson, St., 313 Sancreed, 538, 549, 816 -cross, 816 _Sanctuary_, 810 Sanderstead, 786 Sandringham, 798 Sangraal, 822 Sanscrit, 49 Santa Claus, 140 Santones, 244 Saturn, 140 Saul, 208 Saxons, 452, 481, 553 Scales, 218 Scandinavians, 471, 558 Scarab, 122 Scarabeus, 256 Scarf, 264 Sceattae, 364, 506 Scilly, Islands, 340, 585 Scroll coins, 252 Seal, 224, 506 Sea Urchins, 811 Secrecy, 118 _Seeley_, 213 Selby, 340 Selena, 213 Selenus, 688 Selgrove, etc., 340 Sellinger's Round, 685 Selli, The, 339 Selly Oak, 340 Selsea, 340 Semele, 257 Sence, R., 437 Sengann, 411, 512 _Senile_, 146 Sennen, 425 Sentry Field, 660 Serapis, 497 Serpent, 204, 351, 352, 483, 486, 495, 500, 838 -Shrines, 809 Seven, 495, 657 -Barrows, 416 -Kings, 228, 547 Sevenoaks, 228 Seventy-two, 206, 597, 700 Severn, R., 622 Shadwell, 288 Shah, 696 Shaman, 699 Shamrock, 101, 182, 737 Shandy's Hill, 349 Shanid, 53, 411, 512 Shannon, 53, 411, 512 Shawfield, 448 _Shec_, 195 Sheen, 674 Sheep, 213 _shekel_, 400 Shells, 247, 248, 813 Shên jên, 517 Shened, Castle, 703 Shenstone, 53 Shepherdess, 657, 662 -walk, 721 Shick Shack Day, 447 Shield, 543 Ship, 166 -of Isis, 450 Shobrook, R., 447 Shock, Old, 272 Shoe Lane, 754 Shoes, 269 Shony, 142, 201, 671, 699, 795 Shuck, 447 Shuckborough, 447 Shuggy Shaw, 447 Sicily, 320 Sickles, 492, 705 Sid, 440 Silbury, 340, 352 -Hill, 341 Silenus, 213 Silgrave, 432 _Silly_, 213 Silus Stone, 339 Silver, 439, 512 -plate, 603 -St., 590 -wheel, 438 Silverhills, etc., 439 Sinann, 512 _Sinclair_, 718 Sindre, 471 Sindry Island, 96 _sinister_, 477 Sinjohn, 201, 722 Sinodun, 751 S'iva, 526 Six, 487, 490, 624, 788, 790, 835 Six-winged Dove, 486 _sleep_, 537 Sleep Bringer, 537 Slee, R., 298 Smile Bringer, 537 _smite_, 467 _smith_, 432 Smith, Big, 591 --brethren, 471 Smithfield, 466 Snail's creep, 824 Snake, 841 _Snape_, 568 Snapson's Drove, 568 Snave, 568 _snob_, 529 Snodland, 751 Soar, R., 791 Sockburn, 272 Soho, 722 Solar chariot, 405 -cross, 55 -faces, 381 _solemn_, 297 Soles Court, 292 Solmariaca, 296 Solomon, 296, 298 Solomon's Knot, 706 -Seal, 77 Solutre, 840 Solway, 340, 730, 743 Sophia, 817 -St., 487 Soul, 148, 173 -fivefold, 437 _Soul_, 172 Spain, 549 Sparrow, 623 -hawk, 433 _speak_, 251 Spearheads, 465 Specks, 250 Spectacle ornament, 381 Spectral Horse, 294, 300 Speculum, 251 Sphinx, 306, 320, 321 Spike, 253 _spike_, 293 Spiked chariots, 404 Spindle Whorls, 534, 582 Spine, 254 Spirals, 825, 850 Spirit, St., 624 Splendid Mane, 348 _spook_, 230, 293 Spots, 250 Spotted Beast, 655 -coins, 249 Sprig, 260, 689 Spring Festival, 307 Sprout, 260 SS, 479, 483 Stag, 257 Stanhope, 529 Stanton Drew, 757, 874 Star, 384, 612, 633, 744, 788 Statuettes, 645 Stella Maris, 607 Stone, 129 -circles, 8 -mortars, 17 -of Fruitful Fairy, 462 Stonehenge, 6, 18, 133, 403, 518, 553, 561, 688, 874 Stork, 46 Stour, R., 608 Sulli, Isle, 348 _sulphur_, 477 Sun, 166, 167, 195 -and Fire symbols, 690 -god, 134 Sunning, 659 _svastika_, 230 Svastika, 18, 106, 117, 345, 361, 690, 704, 706, 831, 839 Swan, 224, 225, 243, 512 _swan_, 240 Sweet Sis, 453 _swine_, 240 Swine, 240 _sy_, 230 Sydenham, 440 Symbols, antiquity of, 851 Symbolism, 54, 56, 66, 834, 874 _Synagogue_, 222 T, 705 _ta_, 320 Table, 714 Taddington, 261 _Taddy_, 509 Tailgean, 796 Talavera, 329 Talchin, 493 Talchon, 113 Taliesin, 83, 180, 324, 325, 378, 664 _tall_, 113 Tallstones, 547 Tammuz, 271 Tanfield, 722 Tapir, 840 Tara, 101, 182, 290, 424, 757 Tarchon, 89, 270, 795 _tariff_, 98 Tarquin, 90 Tarragona, 89, 278 Tarshish, 96 Tartan, 98 Tartars, 96, 253, 411 Tartary, 700 Tat, 256 Tattooing, 249 Tau, 392 Tear Bringer, 537 Tears of Apollo, 566 _teat_, 260 Tegid, 157 -Voel, 424 Telchines, 493 Telescope, 839 Telmo's Fires, St., 478 Temple, 296, 328 Ten Lights, 577 Terebinth, 227 Termagol, 192 _terre_, 99 _terrible_, 742 _terror_, 100 Teut or Teutates, 226 Teutons, 558 Thadee, 288 Thane Stone, 461 _Thanet_, 759 _thank_, 760 _Theana_, 754 Therapeuts, 779 _theta_, 250 _Thing_, 760 Thirty, 198, 199, 204, 242, 434 -and Eleven, 567 -by Eleven, 738 -three, 192, 198, 204, 214, 226, 641, 768, 806 Thistle, 328 Thopas, Sir, 159 Thor, 102, 355, 384, 674 Thorgut, 221 Thorn, 292, 558, 676 -bush, 152, 293 Thors Cavern, 826 Thoth, 251, 256 Thought, 264 Thread, 830 _three_, 182 Three Apples, 632, 675 -balls, 632 -basins, 634 --berried branch, 327 -breasts, 632 -chained whip, 273 -circles, 367, 381 -crescents, 286 -eyes, 102, 632 -fates, 594 -feathers, 366 -fiddlers, 610, 615 -fountains, 346 -fronds, 258 -Graces, 594 -grooves, 579 -hearts, 286 -holy hills, 708 -hundred and thirty, 203, 214 -kings, 228, 632 -legs, 163, 345 --One, 662 -paps, 367 -peaks, 257 Three rays, 535 -springs, 257 -stone balls, 670 -twigged apple, 680 -windows, 366 Threeleo cross, 350 Thurgut, 675 Thuringia, 305 Thurrock, 769 Thursday, 102 Ticehurst, 350 Tideswell, 448 _Time_, 829 Time, 639 -Three faced, 143 TIN, 611 Tino, 611 Tintagel, 90, 800 _tired_, 123 Tirre, Sir, 104 Titan, 263 Titans, 206 Titania, 261, 159 Tithonus, 263 Tiw, 319 Toadstool, 261 _toddy_, 367 _token_, 400 Tom-Tit-Tot, 263 Toothill, 788 Toothills, 209 Torfield, 797 Torquay, 95 _Torquay_, etc., 826 Torquin, 760 Torrent-fire, 20, 864 Tory Hill, 290 -Island, 96, 192, 355 Tot, 256 -Hill, 309 -Hill, St., 209 Totnes, 312, 349 Tottenham, 261 Touriacks, 376 Tours, 355 _tout_, 226 Toutiorix, 301 Tower, 355 _Tra mor, tra Brython_, 122 Tradition, 19, 27 Tranquil Dale, 798 Tray Cliff, 798 _tre_, 86 Trebiggan, Giant, 247 _tree_, 86 Tree, 96, 363 -Crystal, 181 -of Fate, 322 -of Life, 495, 500-2 Trefoil, 182 Trefoil, 286 Treleven, 214 Trematon, 738 Trendia, 537 Trendle Hills, 578 Treport, 96 Trevarren, 660 Trew, 770 Trewa Witcher, 584 Triangle, 571 -of Downs, 352 Trinacria, 320, 345 Trinidad, 256 Trinity, 101, 256, 499, 535 -in moon, 150 -of Evil, 356 Trinovantes, 86 Triple-tongued Serpent, 810 Triton, 247 Troglodites, 191 Trojan, 123 -Horse, 408 Trojans, 186, 309, 312, 319 "Trojan's or Jew's Hall," 91 Troo, 768 Trophonius, Den of, 771 Trosdan, 734 _trou_, 86 Troubadours, 701, 858 _trough_, 771 _trow_, 98 Trowdale, 741 -mote, 584 _Troy_, 584 Troy, 16, 19, 44, 49, 79, 83, 86, 102, 118, 227, 238, 399, 406, 411, 466, 534, 707, 852 -Game, 87, 215 -goddess, 754 -Town, 292, 443, 585, 714 -Towns, 87, 581 -weight, 104 Troynovant, 83, 86, 123 _truce_, 117 Truce, 734 _true_, 86 True, St., 349 Truth, 752, 761, 830 -and Righteousness, 166 _try_, 101, 122 Tryamour, 247, 594 Tuatha de Danaan, 858 Tudas, 205 Tudno, St., 256 Tuesday, 102 Tunnel, 843 _tur_, 90 _turn, tourney_, 88 Turones, 300 Turquoise mines, 776 _Tuttle_, 734 Twelve Old men, 698 Twickenham, 610 Twin Brethren, 473 -children, 474 -Mounds, 417 -Sisters, 589 Twinlaw cairns, 417 Two breasts, 253 -cakes, 610 -circles, 367, 475, 495 -cups, 268 -eyes, etc., 546 -horses, 479, 546 -Kings, 610 -miles, 416 -mounts, 209 -necks, 243 -pigeons, 628 -pits, 793 -racehorses, 478 -rocks, 207, 212 -serpents, 824 -stags, 258 -stars, 476 -tumuli, 208 -virgins, 603 Tyburn, 678 Tynwald, 746 Tyr, 102 _tyrant_, 100 Tyre, 79, 96 Tyrians, 89, 508, 772 UAR, 389 Uber, Mount, 191 Uffington, 275, 403 Uffingham, 416 _Uglow_, 685 _ugly_, 201 Ugrians, 848 Uig, 198 Uist, Island, 661 Ule!
181 Ulysses, 198 Umbria, 569 Umpire, 570 Una, 261, 734 Uncumber, St., 373 _unique_, 614 _up_, 525 _upper_, 328 Upsall, 576 Upwell, 513 Urn, 300, 301, 797 Ursula, St., 266, 214, 643 Uther, and Ambrosie, 656 V = W, 422 _vague_, 206 Valencia, 188 Vandalisms, 551 Varnians, 658 Varuna, 316 Varvara, 329, 368 Vatican, 828 Vedas, 168 Veil, upon veil, 576 Velchanos, 426 Ver, 267 _ver_, 266 Vera, 329, 362, 484 -Lady, 749 Verbal tradition, 180, 860 Verdun, 282 Ver Galant, 268, 270 Vergingetorix, 300 Vernon, 440 Verray, 484 Verulam, 608 Veryan, St., 345 Via Egnatio, 519 Vidforull, 203, 227 Vigeans, 827 Village Stone, 312 Vine, 499, 500 _virgin_, 484 Virgin as Cone, 398 -Mary, 206, 320 -Sisters, 549 -six-breasted, 296 _virtue_, 609 Virtues, 640 Virtues, Cardinal, 547 Vol coins, 423 Vorenn, 266 Votan, 840 Vulcan, 426, 469, 478 W = V, 422 Wakes, 323 Walbrook, 510 Walham, 422, 426 Wallands Park, 416 _wallow_, 422 Wambeh, Lake, 844 Wand, 545 Wanderer, the, 143 War Boys, 612 War treasures, 564 Water, 425, 650 -horse, 284 Wayland, 426, 439 Wayzgoose, 243 Well, 130, 804 Welland, R., 434 _welkin_, 438 Welsh language, 374 Werra, 485 Westminster Abbey, 673 Whale, 162, 651 Wheatear, 255, 287 Wheel, 164, 269, 276, 282, 438, 482, 574, 578 -cross, 490, 515 --coins, 491 -of Fortune, 506 _whirligig_, 195 Whitby, 95 White, 148, 475 -Horse, 273-5, 695, 803 --Hill, 403 --Stone, 481 --Vale of, 272 -Lady, 676 -thorn, 677 Whit Monday, 420 Whorls, 407 Whylepot Queen, 687, 712 Wicker monsters, 407 Wiggonholt, 402 Wilton, 424 Will o' the Wisp, 152 _willow_, 426 Winander Mere, 221 Wincanton, 800 Winchelsea, 91 Windsor, 273 Winged genii, 326 -wheels, 499 Wisdom, 625 Wise, The, 660 Woden's Hall, 753 Woe Water, 799 Wolf, 148, 378, 758 Womb, 781 Woodnesborough, 841 Woodpecker, 283 _word_, 390 _worthy_, 609 Wotan, 841 _wraith_, 574 Wreath, 573 Wreath, giant, 574 Wren's Park, 812 Wrestling, 186 Writing, 13 Wye, 292, 450 -R., 729 Xidd, 653 Yankee, 97 Yankeeisms, 405 _yell_, 131 _yellow_, 131 Yeoman, 508 Yeo, R., 151 Yew, 385 -barrow, 151 _Yokhanan_, 196 Yole!
194 York, 370, 667, 681, 715 Young Man, the, 668 Ypres Hall, 472 Ytene, 752 -R., 743 Ythan, R., 461 Yule, 124, 131 Zeal, 172 -Monachorum, 340 Zed, 495 Zendavesta, 695 Zennon, 424, 584 Zeus, 444, 472, 771 Zodiac, 207 ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PAPER BY SPALDING & HODGE, LTD.
BINDING BY A. W. BAIN & CO., LTD. Transcriber's Notes: Given the material, spelling errors were rarely corrected.
Those in the table below seemed suspicious given other instances of the same word.
Some punctuation errors have been silently corrected to avoid confusion or for consistency.
A number of words appear both hyphenated and unhyphenated.
If a word was found hyphenated on an end-of-line, the most frequent version was followed.
Figures 235, 236, 237 were misnumbered as 335, 336, 337 respectively.
These have been corrected.
William Carew Hazlitt's work "Faiths and Folklore" is also cited as "Faith and Folklore".
The variant is retained.
A number of footnoted quotations were missing either opening or closing quote marks.
Where possible, these have been confirmed in the referenced sources and placed properly; otherwise, they are simply noted.
The name 'Akerman' appears twice with an extraneous 'n' which has been removed.
Corrections and Comments 16 | wolves, beavers, and bisons.
["] | Provided closing quote.
62 | as English itself.
["] | Provided closing quote.
68n | mountain nor a flower[.]"
| Missing period.
| the old, famil[i]ar, fanciful | Added 'i'.
70 | music and dancing[,] stories, | Missing comma.
105 | spindl[l]e whorls | Likely redundant 'l'.
109n | [']the goodman's croft' | Leading ' restored.
122 | Centuries ago, Diodorus of Sicily...| The punctuation of this | | passage is confused.
| | by citations within | | citations, with some | | paraphrasing.
It is | | left as printed.
127 | A[yr/ry]an | Corrected.
134 | signifies _all_[./,] Pan | Stop/comma error.
148 | festivit[i]es | Missing 'i' provided.
159 | gene[e]sis | Redundant 'e' across page | | break removed.
163 | run[n]ing | Added 'n' missing on line | | break hyphenation.
176 | metemphsychosis | _sic_.
192 | black, or reddish.
["] | Added missing closing " 193 | ["/']slayer of Belleros[']".
| Nested quotation marks | | corrected.
216 | [h/l]and of the Rising Sun | Likely typo.
258 | fruit[]fulness | _sic_.
267 | FIGS.
95 to 102.--British.
Nos.
[ ] | The range of images from to [] from Akerman.
Nos.
[ ]to | Akerman & Evans are [ ] from Evans.]
| missing.
299 | and pilgrims.
["] | Added missing quote.
314 | "inscribed rock,['/"] | Corrected.
335 | [b/B]asque for _head_ | Corrected for consistency.
385 | the root of the bracken.
["] | Closing quote missing.
386 | plura[l] | Added missing 'l'.
386n | Byways in British Archæology, | | 3[7]5-7.
| Missing '7' provided and | | confirmed in source.
421 | floundering from F[l]ounders Field | Corrected to match prior | | instances.
428 | a corruption of Co[n]vent Garden | The intent seems to have | | been 'Convent' here.
431 | the scythes of Boudicca[']s | Probably possessive, but | | left as in the text.
432 | lewe[']s | Removed incorrect | | apostrophe.
438 | Arianrod/Arianrhod | Alternate spellings / | | pronunciation.
449 | the hippodrome[,/.]
| Comma/stop error | | corrected.
472 | and ever[]where our hope | _sic_.
479 | classica[l] | Provided missing 'l'.
522 | but ["]the fact remains | Opening of quotation from | | Gomme missing.
555n | Cyclops Christiani[a/u]s | Changed to conform to | | other instances.
612 | Will[-]o-the-wisps | Added '-' to conform.
635 | British [(]Channel [(]Islands) | Parenthesis misplaced, | | appears elsewhere as | | (Channel Islands).
649 | chieft[ia/ai]nship | Corrected.
665 | about their public affairs["].
| _sic_.
The opening quote | | mark for this citation | | could not be located.
674 | neigh[b]ours | Added missing 'b'.
679 | one curly-headed virgin.
["] | Likely close of quoted | | passage.
703 | ["]the four epochs | Missing quotation mark | | provided.
706 | the words ["/']God leadeth[']".
| Corrected nested quotes.
736 | watermen [t]outing | Likely typo: added 't'.
754 | mea[n]t | Typo: added 'n'.
779 | Budd[h]ist Monasteries | Added 'h' to conform.
819 | of the Cornish Sancreed.
[978] | The second footnote | | on the page has no | | anchor in the text.
| | One has been added, | | arbitrarily.
819n | _The Thorn Tree_, p. 40[)].
| Closed open '('.
823 | _Cyclops_, p. 1[3]7.
| May be p. 187.
859 | adscriptigleboe/_adscripti | | glebæ_ | The author misquotes R.G.
| | Latham.
The spelling | | is retained.
Index There were several anomalies in the Index, which have been corrected or completed to make the text useful.
Punctuation has been made regular.
Some entries had no page references, and no attempt was made to provide them.
878 | Antiquity of European | _sic_: Page reference missing.
| habitation[] | 881 | -British, 24[0] | 3rd digit is missing, but this | | begins a description of the | | topic on that page.
| _coin_, [8/3]97 | Corrected page reference to | | '397'.
| Co[n/o]knoe, 197 | Corrected typo.
| Co[n/o]k's Kitchen Mine, 222 | Corrected typo.
| Cunbaria, 330 | The entry is correct; p. 330, | | however, is misnumbered as | | 300.
883 | fainites!
/ fainits!
| The word is spelled both ways | | in the text, but the index | | entries reverse the references.
| | They have been switched here.
| fecu[u/n]d | Corrected flipped 'n'.
884 | Five, 238, 437, [513], 503, 689 | No reference to 'five'.
| | on p. 513 (out of order) | Grimm's Law, [51], 60 | '51' missing, but the Law | | is defined there.
885 | Herculaneum and Pompei[i, 19] | Final 'i' and page number | | missing.
Supplied by a | | search.
886 | -coins, 247, 254, 265, 297, | Typo: there are Iberian coins | 2[3/8]1, 386 | on p. 281.
Mis-ordering is | | retained.
888 | [Morin, 275 / Morni, 175] | This entry is corrupted in | | the text.
| The Mysteries, [56] | The text had no page reference | | '56' was added as the only | | plausible reference.
| | 890 | Population density, [ ] | _sic_: Page reference missing.
| | 893 | Trefoil, 286 | The duplicate entry referring | | to p. 286 seems an error.
| | There is an image there which | | which includes a shamrock | | but there is no mention in | | in the text.
The entry is | | is retained.