Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitionsBayley, Harold
History
Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions
Bayley, Harold
Archaeology; England -- Antiquities
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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