[Illustration: FIGS. 115 and 116.--British. From Akerman.] [Illustration: FIG. 117.--Iberian. From Akerman.] [Illustration: FIG. 118.--British. From Evans.] [Illustration: FIG. 119.--British. From Akerman.] The White Horse--which subsequently became the Hobby Horse, or the Hob's Horse, of our popular revels--has been carved upon certain downs in England and Scotland for untold centuries. That these animals were designedly white is implied by an example on the brown heather hills of Mormond in Aberdeenshire: here the subsoil is black and the required white has been obtained by filling in the figure with white felspar stones.[292] It will be noticed that the White Horse at Uffington as reproduced overleaf is beaked like a bird, and has a remarkable dot-and-circle eye: in Figs. 110 to 113 the animal is similarly beaked, and in Fig. 111 the object in the bill is seemingly an egg. The designer of Fig. 109 has introduced apparently a goose or swan's head, and also a sprig or branch. The word BODUOC may or may not have a relation to Boudicca or Boadicea of the Ikeni--whose territories are marked by the Ichnield Way of to-day--but in any case _Boudig_ in Welsh meant victory or Victorina, whence the "very peculiar horse" on this coin may be regarded as a prehistoric Invicta. The St. George of Persia there known as Mithras was similarly worshipped under the guise of a white horse, and Mithras was similarly "Invictus". The winged genius surmounting the horse on Fig. 114, a coin of the Tarragona, Tarchon, or _dragon_ district--is described as "Victory flying," and there is little doubt that the idea of White Horse or Invictus was far spread. At Edgehill there used to be a Red Horse carved into the soil, and the tenancy of the neighbouring Red Horse Farm was held on the condition that the tenant scoured the Red Horse annually _on Palm Sunday_: the palm is the emblem of Invictus, and it will be noticed how frequently the palm branch appears in conjunction with the horse on our British coinage. [Illustration: FIG. 120.--Gaulish. From Akerman.] [Illustration: FIG. 121.]