Читать книгу Archaic England - Harold Bayley - Страница 17

Table of Contents

[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.