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
We speak ironically to-day of our "Jehus," and the word _hack_ still
survives: in Chaucer's time English carters encouraged their horses with
the exclamation Heck![299] the Irish for _horse_ was _ech_, and the
inscription beneath the effigy on Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads,
according to Akerman, EKK. That the _hack_ was connected in idea with
the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my possession, the
eye or centre of which is represented by an oak corn or _ac_orn. In the
North of England the elves seem to have been known as _hags_, for fairy
rings are there known as _hag_ tracks. The word _hackney_ is identical
with Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Cæsar's
reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the Ikeni: whence it
is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, were worshippers of
Invicta, the Great Hackney, the _Ceni Magna_ or Hackney Magna.
The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted with the Scotch
kelpie, which is radically _ek Elpi_ or _Elfi_: the kelpie or water
horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly spook, just as Alpa in
Scandinavia is a ghoul and _Ephialtes_ in Albany or Scotland is a
nightmare: but there must almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for
the Greeks held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, and
Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the European side of the
Pillars of Hercules. From the surnames Killbye and Gilbey one may
perhaps deduce a tribe who were followers of _'K Alpe_ the _Great All
Feeder_: that the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious
from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil coin of Fig.
133.
[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Iberian. From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG. 132.--British. From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Channel Islands. From Barthelemy.]
The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as
Godolphin--whence the family name Godolphin--implies, like Robin
Goodfellow, _Good Elphin_. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be
connected the Celtic Goddess Epona, "the tutelar deity of horses and
probably originally a horse totem". To Epona may safely be assigned the
word _pony_; Irish _poni_; Scotch _powney_, all of which the authorities
connect with _pullus_, the Latin for _foal_: it is quite true there is a
_p_ in both. We have already traced a connection between neighing,
knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further
connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and _opine_, for
according to Plato the horse signified "reason and _opinion_ coursing
about through natural things".[300]
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