Archaic England Part 61

[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," Caesar 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 a.s.signed 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 c.o.c.kney refers to his sweetheart as his _donah_.

[872] See "Archaeologia" (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 a.s.sa.s.sins_.

[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 Berks.h.i.+re, Skeat thinks _Synods_ may have once been held. The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.

[881] The authorities a.s.sume 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 Caesar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons "cleared a s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sionately 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 t.i.tle 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 Suss.e.x. 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] "Archaeologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), p. 270.

[893] "Archaeologia" (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 sh.e.l.ls 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-sh.e.l.l 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-sh.e.l.ls 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing mariners used customarily to doff their sails:--

Great G.o.ds, 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 sh.o.r.eward 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.