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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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