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 the near neighbourhood of Biddenden are Peckham, Buckman's Green,
Buckhill, and Buggles, or Boglesden: the two bogles now under
consideration were possibly responsible for the neighbouring Duesden,
_i.e._ the Dieu's den or the Two's den. According to Skeat the word
_bad_, mediæval _badde_, is formed from the Anglo-Saxon _baeddel_,
meaning an hermaphrodite; all ancient deities seem to have been regarded
as hermaphrodites, and it is impossible to tell from the Britannia,
Bride, or Biddy figures on p. 120 whether Bru or Brut was a man or a
maid. Apollo was occasionally represented in a skirt; Venus was
sometimes represented with a beard; the beard on the obverse of No. 46,
on p. 364, is highly accentuated, and that this feature was a
peculiarity of Cumbrian belief is to be inferred from the life of Saint
Uncumber. St. Uncumber, or _Old Queen Ber_, was one of the seven
daughters born at a birth to the King of Portugal, and the story runs
that her father wanting her to marry the prince of Sicily, she grew
whiskers, "which so enraged him that he had her crucified".[383]
One may infer that the fabricator of this pious story concocted it from
some picture of a bearded virgin extended like Andrew on the Solar
wheel: close to Biddenden is Old Surrender, perhaps originally a den or
shrine of Old _Sire_ Ander.[384]
At Broadstone, by Biddenden, we find Judge House, and doubtless the
village _juge_ once administered justice at that broad stone. In Kent
the paps are known colloquially as _bubs_ or _bubbies_: by Biddenden is
a Pope's Hall, and a Bubhurst or Bubwood, which further permit the
equation of the Preston Maids with Babs, Babby, or Barbara. St. Barbara
was not only born at Heliopolis, but her tomb is described by
Maundeville as being at Babylon, by which he means not Babylon in
Chaldea, but Heliopolis in Egypt. In _The Welsh People_ Sir J. Morris
Jones establishes many remarkable relationships between the language of
Wales and the Hamitic language of early Egypt; in 1881 Gerald Massey
published a list of upwards of 3000 similarities between British and
Egyptian words[385]; and _In Malta and the Mediterranean Race_, Mr. R.
N. Bradley prints the following extraordinary statement from Col. W. G.
MacPherson of the Army Medical Service: "When I was in Morocco City, in
1896, I met a Gaelic-speaking missionary doctor who had come out there
and went into the Sus country (Trans-atlas), where 'Shluh' is the
language spoken, just as it is the language of the Berber tribes in the
Cis-atlas country. He told me that the words seemed familiar to him,
and, after listening to the natives speaking among themselves, found
they were speaking a Gaelic dialect, much of which he could follow. This
confirmed my own observation regarding the names of the Berber tribes I
myself had come across, namely, the Bini M'Tir, the Bini M'Touga, and
the Bini M'Ghil. The 'Bini' is simply the Arabic for 'Children of,' and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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