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 British Faërie there figures prominently a certain "Man in the Oak":
according to Keightley, Puck, _alias_ Robin Goodfellow, was known as
this "Man in the Oak," and he considers that the word _pixy_ "is
evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive _sy_ being added to Puck like
Bet_sy_, Nan_cy_, Dix_ie_".[255] It is probable that this adjectival
_si_ recurring in _sw_eet, _so_oth, _su_ave, _sw_an, etc., may be
equated with the Sanscrit _su_, which, as in _sw_astika, is a synonym
for the Greek _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious. When
used as an affix, this "endearing diminutive" yields _spook_, which was
seemingly once "dear little Pook," or "soft, gentle, pleasing, and
propitious Puck". In Wales the fairies were known as "Mothers'
Blessings," and although spook now carries a sinister sense, there is no
more reason to suppose that "dear little Pook" was primarily malignant
than to suggest that the Holy _Ghost_ was--in the modern
sense--essentially _ghastly_. Skeat suggests that _ghost_ (of uncertain
origin) "is perhaps allied to Icelandic _geisa_, to rage like fire, and
to Gothic _us-gais-yan_, to terrify". Some may be aghast at this
suggestion, others, who cannot conceive the Supreme Sprite except as a
raging and consuming fury, will commend it. In the preceding chapter I
suggested that the elementary derivation of ghost was _'goes_, the Great
Life or Essence, and as _te_ in Celtic meant good, it may be permissible
to modernise _ghoste_, also _Kostey_ of the egg, into _great life good_.
That there was a good and a bad Puck is to be inferred from the West of
England belief in Bucca Gwidden, the white or good spirit, and Bucca
Dhu, the black, malevolent one.[256] Puck, like Dan Cupid, figures in
popular estimation as a _pawky_ little pickle; in Brittany the dolmens
are known as _poukelays_ or Puck stones, and the particular haunts of
Puck were heaths and desert places. The place-name Picktree suggests one
of Puck's sacred oaks; Pickthorne was presumably one of Puck's
hawthorns, and the various Pickwells, Pickhills, Pickmeres, etc., were
once, in all probability, _spook_-haunted. The highest point at Peckham,
near London, is Honor Oak or One Tree Hill, and Peckhams or Puckhomes
are plentiful in the South of England. One of them was inferentially
near Ockham, at Great and Little Bookham, where the common or forest
consists practically solely of the three pre-eminently fairy-trees--oak,
hawthorne, and holly. The summit of the Buckland Hills, above Mickleham,
is the celebrated, box-planted Boxhill, and at its foot runs Pixham or
Pixholme Lane. On the height, nearly opposite Pixham Lane, the Ordnance
Map marks Pigdon, but the roadway from Bookham to Boxhill is known, not
as Pigdon Hill, but Bagden Hill. In all probability the terms Pigdon and
Bagden are the original British forms of the more modern Pixham and
Bok's Hill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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