_Shenet_ or Shanid, attached to which is a rath or earthwork of which the ground-plan, from Mr. Westropp's survey, is here reproduced. As it is a matter of common knowledge that the worldwide wheel cross was an emblem of the sun, I should therefore have no scruples in connoting Castle Shenet with the primeval _jeyantt_ or the Golden _Shine_; and suggesting that it was a sanctuary originally constructed by the Ganganoi, a people mentioned by Ptolemy as dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Shannon. The eponymous hero of the Ganganoi was a certain Sengann,[56] who is probably the original St. Jean or Sinjohn to whom the fires of St. Jean and St. John have been diverted. We shall see that _Giant_ Christopher was symbolically represented as _chien_ headed, that he was a personification of the _Shine_ or _Sheen_ of the _Sun_, and that he was worshipped as the solar dog at the holy city of Cynopolis or _dog-town_. We have already noted English "_chien_" or _cyn_ coins inscribed _cun_, which is seemingly one of the innumerable puns which confront philology. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--From _Proc. of the Royal Irish Acad._, xxxiii., C., No. 2.] Years ago Bryant maintained that "the fable of the horse certainly arose from a misprision of terms, though the mistake be as old as Homer". There was nothing therefore new in the theories of the Max Müller school that all mythologies originated from a "disease of language". Dr. Wilder, alluding to symbolism, speaks of the punning so common in those days, often making us uncertain whether the accident of similar name or sound led to adoption as a symbol or was merely a blunder. It was, I think, neither, and many instances will be adduced in favour of the supposition, that words originated from symbolic ideas, and not _vice versa_. That symbolism existed before writing is evident from the innumerable symbols unearthed at Mykenæ, Troy, and elsewhere, where few traces of script or inscriptions have been found. By symbolism, primitive man unquestionably communicated ideas, and, as has already been pointed out, the roots of language bear traces of the rudimentary symbolism by which our savage forefathers named the objects around them as well as the conceptions of their primitive religion.[57] Faced by the "curiosity" that the Greek and Latin words for _archaic_, _arch_, _ark_, _arc_, are all apparently connected in an intricate symbolism in which there is more than a suspicion that there is an etymological as well as a mystical interconnection, a writer in _The Open Court_ concludes: "it would seem as though the roots of such words derived their meaning from the Mysteries rather than that their mystical meaning was the result of coincidence".[58]