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
It is a curious fact that practically the first scratchings of a horse
represent the animal as bridled, whence the authorities assume that
horses were kept semi-domesticated in a compound for purposes of food:
immense collections of horse bones have been discovered, whence it seems
probable that horses were either sacrificed in hecatombs or were eaten
in large quantities; but the Tartars kept horses mainly for the mare's
milk.
Pliny mentions a horse-eating tribe, in Northern Spain, entitled the
Concanni, with which Iberians may be connoted the Congangi of
Cumberland, whose headquarters were supposedly Kendal: the western point
of Carnarvonshire is named by Ptolemy Gangani, and the same geographer
mentions another Gangani in the West of Hibernia. The Hibernian
Ganganoi, situated in the neighbourhood of the Shannon, worshipped a
Sengann whose name is supposed to mean _Old Gann_: we have illustrated
the earthwork wheel cross of Shanid (_ante_ p. 55), and have suggested
the equation of Sen Gann with Sinjohn. In all probability the fairy
known in Ireland as Gancanagh, who appears in lonesome valleys and makes
love to milkmaids, is a survival of the Gangani's All Father. The name
Konken occurs among the kingly chronology of Archaic Britain; the most
ancient inscribed stone in Wales is a sepulchral stone of a certain
Cingen: the Saxon name Cunegonde is translated as having meant _royal
lady_.
The French _cancan_, an exuberant dance which is associated with Paris,
the city of the Parisii, may be a survival from the times of the
Celtiberian Concanni: Paris was the Adonis of the Hellenes, or Children
of Hellas, and it is not unlikely that the lament _helas!_ or _alas!_
was the cry wailed by the women on the annual waning of the Solar Power.
At Helstone in Cornwall--supposed to be named from _hellas_, a
marsh--there is still danced an annual Furry dance of which the feature
is a long linked chain similar to that of the French farandole: if
_faran_, like _fern_, be the plural of _far_, it follows that the
_furry_ and the _faran_dole were alike festivals of the Great Fire,
Phare, Fairy, Phairy, or Peri; the Parisii who settled in the
Bridlington district are by some scholars assigned to Friesland.
Persia, the home of the peris, is still known locally as Farsistan,
whence the name Farsees or Parsees is now used to mean fire worshippers:
the Indian Parsees seem chiefly to be settled in the district of India,
which originally formed part of the ancient Indian Konkan kingdom, and
the probabilities are that the Konkani of the East, like the Cancanii of
the West, were worshippers of the Khan Khan, or King of Kings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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