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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 Elboton, 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 Elboton 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:—

Fig. 40.—From The Everyday Book (Hone, W.).

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]

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.

Fig. 41.—From Les Filigranes (Briquet, C. M.).

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.

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 Bonchurch, 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.

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.