According to Caesar, the Druids worshipped Mercury in particular, and possessed many images of the god. They regarded him as the inventor of all arts, looked to him as their guide of ways on their journeys, and considered him to have great influence over mercantile transactions. Next to Mercury, they adored Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. 'Concerning them, they have almost the same opinion as other nations, namely, that Apollo wards off diseases, that Minerva instructs them in the principles of works and arts, that Jupiter holds the empire of heaven, and that Mars rules in war. To him, when they have determined to engage in battle, they generally vow those things which they shall have captured in war. When they are victorious, they sacrifice the captured animals, and pile up the other spoils in one place. The Gauls declare that they have all sprung from their father Pluto; and this, they say, was delivered to them by the Druids.'[1]

'Caesar's statement, that the Druids worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, is of the same base metal as the statement of more modern writers—that the Buddhists worship the Trinity, and that they take Buddha for the Son of God.' So says Max Muller[2].

Caesar, however, as we shall find, knew what he was talking about. Such divinities as were familiar to him he identified by their nature, and transliterated their names according to Roman equivalents. So far as it went, Caesar's statement is entirely true and trustworthy. It is supplemented by Richard of Cirencester, who writes of the Britons thus 'Among their gods, the principal object of their worship was Mercury. Next to him they adored Justice (under the name of Astarte), then Apollo and Mars (who was called Vitucadrus), Jupiter, Minerva, Hercules, Victory (who was called Andate), Diana, Kubele, and Pluto.'[3]

[p.312] Dionysius Periegetes sings:—

'Upon the ocean's northern coasts are found
Two British islands fronting to the Rhine,
Where in the sea he disembogues his stream
Of these th' extent is vast, no other isles
To the Britannic justly can compare
Islets adjacent lie, wherein the wives
From the Amnites' distant shore perform
Due rites to Bacchus thro' the livelong night,
Deck'd in the dark-leav'd ivy's clustering buds,
While the shrill echo of their chaunt resounds:
Not so, upon Absinthus' Thracian banks
Eistonians hail the harsh Iraphiote;
Nor thus, around the dark-gulf'd Ganges stream,
The Indians with their sons on Bacchus call,
Noisy and loud, amid the festive scene,
As shout these women, "Evoe" to their god.'[4]

Geoffrey, in his History[5], tells us that Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man of great eloquence, and learned in foreign histories, offered him a very ancient book in the British tongue, in which lie found the story of Brut, the first king of the Britons, written in an elegant style, and continued down to the time of Cadwallader. This he rendered into Latin.

The present writer can have no difficulty in accepting the tale of the book brought from Brittany, and translated into Latin by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Walter, as a Latin scholar, did as Caesar did, he read the myth, common to various races, because each had derived it from the same original, as if it were Roman. He knew the name of Brutus, the legend of Troy, and the tradition of Aeneas, but was unacquainted with the mythos as British, or with the character of Prydhain, the youthful solar god, whose reign was established when the celestial Troy was overthrown, that was, when the Sabean cult and reckoning were superseded by the solar, the dragon-tyranny overturned, the son of the Virgin Mother elevated to the supreme place as the Father in Heaven, and the idea of a divine fatherhood exalted over that of the earlier motherhood. Geoffrey Latinized the British mythos. The Troy city that was overthrown is still figured in the children's games in Cornwall and Wales, and consists of seven circles round a centre cut in the grassy sod. These represent the seven regions of Dyved, the seven encirclers of the Great Bear. The seven belonged to the great mother, and with the son added, as Eshmen (8th), the earlier Sabean Sut, this was the Egyptian Troy or Teruui, the circumference, a form of Sesennu, and no. 8. It can be identified by the shield or circle of Pridwen, in which the ogdoad of Arthur and his seven companions escape from the deluge. The naming of London as the New Troy (Trinovantum), when collated with the gate and tower of Belin, can be restored to its proper place in the mythos. Belin is the son, considered as the child of the virgin mother. In one version of the 'Hanes Taliesin' [p.313] the speaker says: 'I have endured hunger for the Son of the Virgin. I have been in the White Hill in the Court of Cynvelyn, in bonds for a year and a day. I have had my abode in the kingdom of the Trinity,'[6]—this in enumerating the manifestations of the word or announcer of the various cycles of time.

Belin is said to have made a road from Totness to Caithness, and another from Southampton to St. David's[7]. And when he had made the burgh of Kaer-Usk, he went to London, the burgh he greatly loved. He 'there began a tower, the strongest of all the town; and with much art a gate there under made; then men called it Billingsgate.'[8]

The New Troy was established by the young sun-god, considered as the child of the mother. 'I am come here,' says Taliesin, 'to the remains of Troy.'[9] Also, New Troy, the White Hill, and the Gate of Belin will supply a possible rendering for the name of London. Renn (Eg.), the virgin, pure, unblemished, is the equivalent of white; as in linen (renn); thus Renn-ten (London) is the White Hill.

Helvellyn is another Hill of Belin, and retains his name so long as mountains stand. 'Now and evermore the name standeth there,'[10] says Lazamon's Brut of Billingsgate, the Gate of Belin, in the account given of the tower built by Belin, the good king who lived there as the prince of peace and plenty, the Nefer-Hept of Egypt. Belin, like Sutekh and Sat-ren, means the little or child Baal, who was Sut, the star-god, in the Sabean mythos, and Pryd (or Brute) in the solar. So interpreted, London is the royal seat (tun), the throne-room of the renn. The renn is also the nursing mother, who was Rennut in Egypt, Luna and Selene in Greece, and the Celtic Luan, the moon-goddess. Tradition tells us that a temple of Luan once stood where St. Paul's now stands. Thus London is the tun of the virgin (renn) and child of a pre-Christian religion. Belin is the diminutive of Baal, and he is the mythical builder of London. Belin is the nursling, i.e., the renn, and London was his seat and throne, or tun, as witnessed by Billingsgate; therefore the most probable derivation of the name of the city is from Renn-tun (Lenn-tun), the throne of the child, who was Belin in the British mythos. The child who came to the 'remains of Troy' was Pryd, who is represented by Geoffrey as Brute who came from the remains of Troy[11].

The sun of the resurrection, i.e., of the vernal equinox, is the potent because pubescent son. Hence he is the bearded or the long-haired god in many mythologies; the elder Horus being the wearer of the lock of childhood. This is illustrated by Arthur in the story of the giant who had made himself furs formed of the beards of kings whom he had slain, and who commanded Arthur to cut off his beard and send [p.314] it to him as a tributary offering[12]. Belin and his brother Brennes are a form of the 'two-halved youth,' the dual Horus or double Anubis of Egyptian mythology. Brennes or Brennius is but the Latinised form of the Pren (branch), that is, the renn (Eg.) or nursling child of the mother, a type of which is extant in the wren as the little king, the prince of all the birds, the Breton roen.

The wren was hunted to death on Christmas Day, and on the day following it was carried about, suspended by the foot in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles. A procession used to be formed in every village of men, women, and children, who sang an Irish catch importing the wren to be the king of all birds[13]. Now the hieroglyphic noose for the feet of cattle is a ren. In this ceremony the dead wren was typical of the first of the two brothers who died and rose again, or was transformed.

The process of modernizing the ancient fragments by recasting in the classical or biblical mould is sufficiently apparent. In the Poem in Praise of Lludd the Great[14] the name of the god Aeddon (Hu) has become Adonai. How easy is it to turn round and claim this to be the Hebrew Adonai, and then to infer that he was derived from the Hebrew writings! Aeddon is identical with Adonai and with Adonis, and Tammuz, and Duzi, and other forms of the same god in divers lands, who were independently derived from the Egyptian Aten, long before the Jews brought their version of the mythos out of Egypt. The same perversion of the original imagery is manifest in Freemasonry through this recasting of the ancient matter in the biblical mould. It was this process of interpreting the fragments by the Hebrew rendering of the same original matter that put Davies irrecoverably on the wrong track. The process may be followed into the Christian stage in which the Christ is substituted for Prydhain.

All this and much more is admitted without determining the true nature of the ancient British relics, which can only be done by collecting their correlatives, and showing how they belong to an original system of thought, of mythology, of typology, of eschatology, which it is now proposed to identify as Egyptian at first, and pre-Hebraic in the isles. The Welsh text of these fragments cannot be adequately rendered without their mystic meaning being understood and allowed, instead of laughed at.

It has to be shown that the most ancient form of the great mother was the goddess whose image in heaven is the Great Bear. Her name in Egypt runs through the gamut of Taurt, Khepsh, Kheft, Aft, Apt, Khebt, Kheb, Kep, Ap. Her name in full is synonymous with that of Egypt. Af signifies born of; ap is the first; aft the abode and the four corners. She was represented as the hippopotamus, the cow, or horse of the waters. Her name is likewise that of the north. Lower Egypt was to the north, and her constellation revolved about the pole of the [p.315] north. The celestial north is the oldest place of birth in mythology. Kheb means to give birth to; khep is the womb; and khebt was the birthplace in the north personified. From Egypt (Lower) the name of Kheft extended to Phoenicia, Kheft or Keft being the Egyptian name of that country, which was called so from the north. The Hebrew name of Japhet, Japht, or Apht (תפי), corresponds to the Egyptian Aft, earlier Kheft, the lady or queen of heaven, and is represented by Aipht, the Welsh name of Egypt. In the account of the generations of Noah in the Book of Genesis, Japhet and his descendants are the people who migrate and take possession of the isles. 'By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.'[15] The present writer believes that books have been written, although he has not read them, to identify Gomer with the Cymry of Wales. After long seeking and by very different roads he arrives at the same result, and anticipates having the pleasure of seeing the ripple of derision ironed smoothly out of the faces of the scoffers and scorners this time by the weighty pressure of hard facts.

Kheft is the north, the birthplace, the genetrix. She was the bearer, the great or pregnant mother, hence her type of the water-horse, the ark of life amid the waters before any artificial means of carrying had been invented. Kheft, by a well known law of language, becomes Khêt. So Kheft, the abode of birth, becomes Ket-Mut, the Mother Ket or Kat. Kat, like kheft, means the womb. Kat softens into hat, the habitation of the child, named Hathor. By this process we are enabled to claim our British goddess Ked as the old mother Kheft figured as the living ark of the waters. Kéd is the Arkite goddess of the British Druids.

The readers of Davies' writings will remember how like a ridiculous dance witnessed by one who may be deaf to the music seemed all his wearisome references to the goddess Kêd and her ark, which was also a mare—as bad as any nightmare. Yet there was original meaning in the whole matter, although its expounder knew not how to put or prove it.

Kheft or Aft was the goddess of the four quarters of the first circle made in heaven. Aft, the abode, is also the four corners. This circle of the four quarters was repeated in the Caer or sanctuary of Kéd, called the 'quadrangular enclosure.' The Druids, her teachers, are described as Druids of the Circle, of four dialects, coming from the four regions[16].

Taliesin, in Praise of Lludd the Great, recognises the Cymry of four languages, and says, 'the Kymry of four languages shall change their speech.'[17] These four quarters of the Kaer and four languages of the Cymry affiliate them to Aft of the four corners, the earlier Kheft, or Ked. Taliesin says that necessity produced nothing [p.316] earlier than Kéd (Keridwen), and the primary sacred order in the world was that of her priests[18]; the claim in relation to the four quarters is exactly the same as that made by the monarchs of Egypt and Assyria.

In the first period of the Round Table, Kêd is represented as living in the time of that Arthur whose symbol in the heavens was the Great Bear, and whose harp was the constellation Lyra[19]. Arth is the name of the Great Bear, and of Arthur it is said, 'Aythur­ap-Arth-Hen against foeman's attack and injury made the blade (for use) in battle,' which identifies him as the son of the old Arth, the genetrix, goddess of the Great Bear[20]. Khebt, the hippopotamus of the waters, became the fish-goddess as Derketo, the Syrian mermaid. And in an old Christian poem which was palmed off as one of Taliesin's, the fish that swallowed Jonah is called 'Kyd.' The writer asks, 'Who brought Jonah out of the belly of Kyd?'[21]

The ark of Kêd is described as passing through the dale of grievous waters, having the fore part stored with corn, and mounted aloft with the connected serpents[22]. The bard Cuhelyn[23] sings (eighth century) of 'the goddess of various seeds,' and of the 'enjoyment of the society of Kêd,' and the poems sung in her praise by the 'chanters of Caw.' This is in allusion to the Druidic mysteries. She is the goddess of corn and of those who carry ears of corn, as did her priests. Taurt, a name of Khebt, may be translated the corn-bearer, the genetrix being represented at times with the modius or corn-measure on her head. This 'ta,' illustrated by the Akkadian Umme-da, the bearing-mother, means the enceinte. Ta-urt is the enceinte, or Great Mother, and corn was one of the ideographs.

The Cornish hay, English Gipsy giv, English gofe, for corn harvested, Sanskrit yava, Lithuanian javai, Egyptian sef, Greek zeiá, lead back to khefi (Eg.), harvest, the Kaffir kwebu, an ear of corn, and to Khepsh, Khept, or Kefa, the name of the genetrix as the primal corn-bearer. So is it with the name of Ta-urt. Ta is corn, but, as in the Akkadian Umme-da and the Maori to, it also denotes pregnancy. Da-mater (Demeter) is the mother of corn, but the external is not the original sense, and she was the great mother, the gestator. The corn or seed was an image of life. One of Kêd's names is Lladd, to cut, reap, and mow, which corresponds to rept (Eg)., the goddess of harvest and lady of corn; and this name of the lady of corn was certainly not derived from the Saxon hlafdig. Llad (Welsh) means to confer favours, gifts, blessings; and the favourer, the giver, was the lady, the good lady, Welsh lladai, Gaelic leudi, from repti (Eg.), the lady of corn and goddess of harvest.

Enough to show that Kêd was, as the fragments of the Barddas and [p.317] Druids claim; much more might be cited to prove that she has been. As we have seen, the Welsh call the Great Bear by the name of Arth, the Irish Art, its Egyptian form minus the ta. The Bear was originally the water-horse image of Ta-urt, the typhonian Great Mother. In this connection with the horse we are enabled to identify Taurt with the prefix to the name.

On one of Camden's[24] coins, no. 32, there is a female head with the legend Direte. History, says Davies[25], mentions no queen or city of this name, but in our old orthography Direit, and in the modern Dyrreith, is a title of the mystical goddess who is introduced by the name of Dyrreith in the ancient British poem called the Talisman of Cunobeline[26]. She is a goddess, and takes the form of the mare to carry the hero to battle and victory. It is said 'Cunobeline, the indignant, the lofty leader of wrath and that divine allurer Dyrreith, of equal rank with Morion, shall go under the thighs of the liberal warriors.'[27] This was the bearer, the ark of the waters, and Ta-urt is the chariot and bearer of the waters. It is now claimed that our Druidic Direit, the goddess whose symbol was the mare, the crosser of the waters, is a British form of Taurt by name, which doubles the identity of Khebt and Kêd.

The word tasc is frequently found on the British coins, sometimes tascio, tascia, or tascie. This has never been satisfactorily accounted for, although Davies rightly connected the word with corn and the corn-bearing vessel of Kêd. The great mother of mythology is depicted as the corn-bearer whose solar son is Hu, or Corn, and whose earlier Sabean child was Sut, a name of seed or corn. The ear of corn is frequently depicted on the coins, along with the mare or mother. It is omitted, however, from one coin[28], but in its stead we find the word dias enclosed within a frame. Dias in Irish signifies an ear of corn; it here takes the place of the ear of corn, and in Egyptian tes is corn and food made from corn, also a tie or bond. Moreover, tes is a part of the style of the great mother, meaning the enveloped form and very self; Ta-su signifying the bearer of corn, or the child.

Tas in English is a mow of corn, the tasker, a reaper of corn. Tiscan in Cornish is a handful of corn tied up as a sheaf. On a coin published by Whitaker, and reproduced by Davies[29], the goddess appears in the dual shape of the mother and mare, in the act of going, like the hieroglyphic Ses-Mut. The coin bears the legend, 'Tasc-ia­no-va-lin.' Tasc is corn, ia or iua. (Eg.) is a boat; nu means a divine type; fa (Eg.) is to bear, carry the corn, with the corn-modius on the head—a symbol of pregnancy; and lin is the water. The title thus interpreted is that of the divine boat which carried the corn across the waters as the Ark of Kêd. This figure was the water-horse in Egypt, and is the mare in Britain. Both are [p.318] personifications of the womb, or the mother great with child, called the Great Mother.

Whitaker also publishes a coin[30] on which there is a child borne upon a dog with the legend, 'Tasc No Va,' the same as Tascianova, with the boat, iua (Eg.), omitted. This reads the bearer of divine corn, or corn typically carried. The dog connects the legend with Sothis or Sut, the Dog-star, the first child borne by the great mother, whom we shall try to identify with the mythical Arthur, whose star is the Great Bear.

The noose hieroglyphic held in the hands of Ta-urt is the ark sign of reckoning, the end of a period, a cycle of time. So, on the back of the mare[31], the vase of Kêd is portrayed, the pair or cauldron that boiled for a year and a day, and is, therefore, the symbol of a cycle, the circle and period of the water-horse or Bear. The one equates with the other. Kheb (Eg.), the water-horse, gave us the hob, or hobby-horse, of the mysteries and mummeries.

Memorials of the goddess Kêd exist in many symbols and things that bear her name. She was the genetrix. Kat (Eg.) is the womb, and the cat, or cut, is a type-name of the female emblem. The chat, cat, or gat, is alluded to by the wife of Bath, who says, 'Gat-toothed I was, and that became me well.'[32] Her teeth were cut, indented, suggestive of the gate, the opening. Cate signifies lecherous; hence the gat-tooth is the liquorous tooth. Kêd is the typical female in other applications of her name. The chid-lamb is the female lamb; the chideress, or chidester, is a female scold; also the cat in the same sense. She was the cat, and is still the cat with nine lives; the nine months of gestation during which she kills the rat nine times. She was the abode of birth, and the cot, cottage, quod, cathedral, and city, are forms of the abode named after Kêd. She was the first house, and the kit is an outhouse for cattle; the cat a shed for protecting soldiers. She was the lady of corn, Ceres, and cod is an enclosure of seed and a seed-basket. The cod-fish is the prolific seed-fish; the milt of a single cod-fish has been calculated to contain one hundred and fifty thousand million animalcules: the eggs of the female are numerous in proportion, and this furnished a type of Kêd, and was named after the prolific great mother. We have her namesake in the kid or cod of peas, with which some ancient customs are connected. The 'scadding of peas' was a Scottish custom of boiling the common grey peas in the kid and shelling them afterwards. Skhet (Eg.) means to be enclosed, shut up, as in the pod. It was also a custom to woo and to divine with the peascod. The old chap-book called Mother Bunch's Closet Newly Broke Open[33] gives instructions for seeking a green peascod in which there are full nine peas, and writing on a slip of [p.319] paper, 'Come in, my dear, and do not fear'; this is to be placed inside the kid and laid under the door; the first man who enters is the predestined husband. Kêd was the seat and sustainer of being, and the cat is still used as a support. The Cather (har or ar Eg. is the child) is a cradle. Kêd was the first cradle of the har, child. She carried the tie or noose in heaven as one of her symbols, a sign of surrounding, inclosing, catching, tying up, being pregnant. In the children's game of cat's cradle we have Kêd's cradle, and the string twisted on the fingers is analogous to her tie; the game is hieroglyphical. She was the typical ship that carried us over the waters when she let us out of the ark, at the end of nine months, or ten moons, and the cat is still the tackle of a ship. It was also carried on board as the cat-o'-nine-tails. How profound the worship of Kêd in Britain must have been may be judged by the religious feeling with which we preserved the cat-o'-nine-tails! so dominating is the symbol. Kêd was a goddess of fire and ferment in one phase; one of Ta-urt's titles is spark-holder or reproducer; and her emblem is the Chad-pot or feminine fire-holder used by the lace-makers and straw-plaiters. Lastly, she became the devil in Egypt, and Quede is an English name for the devil; quaid, Scotch, evil. She was degraded to this secondary stage of deity when the male was made supreme; en revanche, Kêd seems to have become our St. Catherine, or Catern, who had her festival on Catern Day. Kêd became our Kate. Em, in Welsh, is a pledge. Em (Eng.) means to flow, run; and on Catern Day, Kate (Kêd) is pledged in the flowing bowl called the 'Catern Bowl' by the Chapter of Worcester[34]. Khat-renn (Eg.) would be the renewer of the race, the dandler of the child. Khat also means going round, wheeling round, as did the stars of Kêd, and the wheeling or circle-making of the Great Bear becomes the Catherine wheel of the spark-holder, still imaged by the firework. This was the wheeling round perpetuated in the ceremonies of Catern Eve, as in London, when, at six o'clock of the day, there used to be a procession round the battlements of St. Paul's, accompanied with fine singing and great lights[35].

On her day, in the Isle of Thanet, the carters place a small figure across a wheel on the front of their cart-sheds. But this has no relation to the popish imposture of St. Catherine and her wheel. It represented the circle of the year divided at the autumn equinox, and the celebration once dated September 25 instead of November 25, or more than 4,000 years earlier. In the Cadair Keridwen[36], the chair of 'Ged­widedd' identifies the goddess with the celestial circle of revolution and the stability dependent on cycle-making. Hence her wheel, for she is called the 'Goddess of the Silver Wheel.' Catherine has been [p.320] made the patron saint of weavers, knitters, and lace-makers, and kat (or at), in Egyptian, denotes weaving and knitting. Khet is to net, weave, a woof. The kat (Eg.) is the loom, the primal form of this being the womb (kat or ked). The genetrix was the first weaver and knitter, the ankh tie being a primitive symbol of her work. Kêd (Kheft), in going round, made the noose and did the netting, Catherine is the typical virgin. To coiffure St. Catherine, or to braid her hair, is to remain a virgin. Renn (Eg.) means virgin, and Rennut was the virgin mother, that is, the mother who bore before the fatherhood was acknowledged, as will be sufficiently explained. Kat-renn (Eg.), in this sense, denotes the virgin womb. The lace-makers of Buckinghamshire hold merrymakings on Catern Day, and eat a kind of cake called 'wigs.'[37] that is, they eat the symbol of hair instead of coiffuring it for the virgin condition. Hair was a sign of puberty, and it was tied, snooded, or wigged up, at marriage. The merrymaking celebrates the other of the two characters assigned to the mother. Also the name of Kheft was given to an Egyptian headdress. The vessel of Kêd. called a pair, English pail, Egyptian par, a pail, survives in the milkmaid's pail called, after the goddess, a kit. The 'milkmaids' dance' is yet performed on the first of May, the kit, or pail, being dressed and decorated for the occasion. At Baslow, in Derbyshire, there is a festival of dressing the kit now and again observed. The kits are fancifully and tastefully ornamented with ribbons and festooned with flowers. They are carried on the heads of the young women of the village, who parade the streets attended by the young men, preceded by a band of music. The day is ended in dancing[38]. One name of a fiddle is the kit. Baslow reminds one of bes (Eg.), to bear, to carry. The milkmaid with the kit on her head is an image of the bearer, one of whose types is the cow. The cat being a type of Kêd and a name also of the fiddle may have a serious bearing on the rhymes of:—

'Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle,'

and the cow that jumped over the moon may be the cow-goddess of Ursa Major, Kêd, who was anterior to and higher in heaven than Luna. Also, a 'diddle' is a young duck or a young pig, and both are types of the old genetrix; and the little dog, or Canis Minor, imaged Sut, the son of the cow-headed goddess, or Hes-Taurt, later Astarte and Eostre.

The seat of the goddess of the seven stars was represented by the seven hills[39]. She is the mythical beast, whose seat is the seven hills of Rome; the Mount Meru, with its seven steps or divisions, is a form of the sevenfold hilt. And at Great Grimsby the divinity Kêd sat enthroned on the symbolical seven hills. Two of these [p.321] seven, Holm and Abbey Hills, are joined together by an artificial bank, known as Kit's Bank, once a landing-place[40].

Teb, Kef, and Kheft are names of the goddess of the hinder part, the back, the north, the place of the mount, the fundamental seat. And in English, teb is the fundament; also the extreme end and outlet of a cart. Keb is the Peak of Derbyshire, with the same meaning. The Cefn or Keven is a ridge also called the Back, the hinder part. The Chevin is a ridge in Wharfdale, and Chevening is on the great ridge in North Kent. To this naming from the North, the hindward quarter, we may assign the Back as in Saddleback.

Kêd is synonymous with the good. The good time or tide is named from Kêd; Gut-tide is a name of Shrovetide; the good-day or holi­day was the day of Kêd. The good wife is a form of the goddess. Kedy, a familiar name with the British Barddas, is our 'Goody.' A goody was an old woman that wore the red cloak, and the red crown was worn by the genetrix in the lower world. One 'Good Woman' was a sign of a woman without a head. This too can be understood as a form of Kêd or Kheft, who represented the lower and hinder part; it was synonymous with the lower crown of Neith—minus the hut or head—the crown of the north and hieroglyphic of her name.

Our word ure means use, custom, practice, and ur (Eg.) is the first great, oldest, principal; this gives the primal sense of ure, as use and usage. Ured means to be fortunate, that is, fruitful. Urt (Eg.) is to be gentle, meek, peaceful, bearing or pregnant. The urt is the crown with asps, a type of maternity. Urt was the great mother, who in mythology is the goddess of luck and fortune. In Egypt she was personified as Ta-Urt, the pregnant Urt. She was depicted as the hippopotamus, with big belly and long drooping dugs of breasts, more like uddersi. In English ur is a name of the udder. The constellation of Urt was Ursa Major, and this most ancient form of the genetrix is identifiable in Ireland, where the name of the Great Bear is known as Art, and in Britain as Arth. And Urt is a name of Khebt, our goddess Kêd.

As-t or Hes-t, the Great Mother, who is personified as the heifer, the seat, the house, couch, or bed, reappears by name as Ast, a title of Kêd as the greyhound bitch, the female dog being a type of her, as were the dog and Dog-star of Isis in Egypt. One of Kêd's stone monuments in Cardiganshire was named 'Llech yr Ast,' the fiat-stone of the bitch[41]. A place near Tring, in Herts, called Astoe is probably the circle of Ast. Ast, the bitch, is a form of the as or hes, the seat, bed, chamber, abode of birth belonging to the female, personified in Astarte, Ashtareth, Ishtar, Asterodia, Eseye, and Eostre.

[p.322] Gwal y Vilast, in Glamorganshire, is the couch of the greyhound bitch. In the mysteries Keridwen, the great mother, is represented as transforming herself into the swift greyhound bitch and pursuing Gwion the Little[42]. In the story of Saneha, an Egyptian tale of the Twelfth Dynasty, it is said of the swift hero, 'His limbs are like (those of) the greyhound of the great goddess.'[43]

So in the hieroglyphics the bitch-dog khen is the image of the inner abode, the khent or womb. And this brings us to the meaning of Kêd's name of Keridwen. She is the khen. Wen has a prior form in gwen, the equivalent of khen. Gwen, the lady, is Khen, the hall, interior, or boat. Gwenhywyvar, the lady of the summit of the water, is the khen (khen, to image, navigate, carry on the water) personified as Keridwen. This Khen is written with the boat-oar assigned to the goddess; kher-it (Eg.) is the figured oar, and khart is the child. Keridwen, as the vessel of the child and the oar, is the ark of life.

The sow was a primitive type of the great mother as the suckler, the Dea Multimamnae and goddess of the Great Bear. It was cast out of Egypt as unclean, but its name of shaau shows it to have been an image of primal being, whilst the primordial name of Hathor as Shaat is the same as Shat, the sow. The sow was also an image of Taurt as Rerit. This was one of the shapes of the British genetrix Kêd, and is a proof of her being the goddess Khebt, the good Typhon. The ship or vessel of Kêd that carries the corn is typified by the sow called hwch (hog) in one of the Triads. Hwch is also an epithet for the ship. In English hug means to carry.

The sow of the Welsh Druids was born in Dyved, and she went to the Black Stone in Arvon; under this she laid a kitten which Colt threw from the top of the stone into the Menai. The sons of Paluc in Mona took it up and nursed it to their injury. This became the celebrated Paluc cat.

Even a sow that gives birth to a cat may be explained by Egyptian symbolism, for shau, the name of the sow, is the same as shau, the name of the cat, and the two are interchangeable types of the genetrix. The Druidic cat or tiger is spoken of as a large ferocious beast. In the Ritual we have the 'cat in the house of Pet, whose mouth is twisted when he looks because his face is behind him.'[44]

The cat and the ass are called the 'Sayers of Great Words' in the Hall of Two Truths. The cat is primarily a feminine type, that of Pasht or Pekht, the mortal enemy of the rat. When the solar mythos was adapted to the symbols and imagery previously extant, and the sun-god became supreme, the sun in one phase took on the female form, and in the passage of the Pool of Persea is made [p.323] to transform into the great cat or leopard[45]. The Greeks had the same representation, although the symbols had become a dead letter to them.

Apollo is designated the rat-killer; but why, the Greeks cannot tell us. A story is current about a priest of his, one Crinis, who neglected his sacred duties, whereupon the god sent against him a devouring swarm of rats. The priest repented, prayed for protection, and Apollo slew the rats.

Apollo is the rat-slayer because the evil Apophis in the Egyptian mythology takes the rat for one of his types. The rat is a form of the destroyer, 'the abominable rat of the sun,' as it is called. This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This was the rat that was put a stop to by coupling, and as rhyming is a kind of coupling, this may be the origin of the Irish practice of 'rhyming rats to death.' Remn (Eg.) denotes the limit and stopping-place, whence the rhyme.

The cat into which the sun transformed (or was catted) 'on the night of the battle made to bind the wicked,' when the cat attacked the 'abominable rat of the sun,' seems to have been represented in the rites at the witches' Sabbath, for we are told that after the supper or eucharist there stepped out of a statue standing in the midst of the assembly a black cat, as large as a goodly-sized dog, which advanced backwards towards them, having the tail turned up. Then the company gave the cat the kiss in ano, the hindward salute, a common formula of the witches' Sabbath, and sat in silence, with all heads bowed towards the cat. Then the lights were put out, and, like the Israelites, they rose up to play. After which there appeared a figure, half sun, half cat[46]. This was probably the transformation scene in which the great cat was re-transformed into its solar splendour.

The kiss in ano is equally the kiss in Annu, for annu (Eg.) also signifies behind, and in Annu occurred the scene of transformation into the cat, when the Egyptian mystery of Sem-Sem was enacted in the darkness. The witches' Sabbath serves to enlighten the obscurity of the Ritual and its mythological allusions. In the Hellenic cosmogony the sun is said to create the lion; the moon creates the cat. This likewise is an illustration of the Egyptian imagery.

In the two bulls issued by Pope Gregory the Ninth (1232 and 1233) against the Stedingers of North Germany, he charges them with their heathen practices, and amongst other secret ceremonies used on the initiation of a convert, he says that a shining personage appeared from the dark corner of the chamber, the upper part of his body being luminous as the sun, making radiant the whole room, [p.324] while his lower parts were rough and hairy, and like a cat[47]; an image of the sun above and cat below that perfectly reproduces the solar symbolry of the Egyptian Book of the Dead[48], where the sun in Annu makes his transformation into the cat.

This, then, it is claimed, is the speckled cat into which Taliesin, assimilated to the sun, says he had been transformed: 'I have been a cat with a speckled head upon a tripod,'[49] or a tree. Nor is the cat an isolated symbol, but carries with it the total cult and all its doctrines. The cat-headed solar goddess Pasht followed the sow-goddess, and in the British mythos the sow brought forth the cat. The cat-headed goddess Pasht is designated 'Menhi,' and she is also called Ur-Heku, the old ruleress, or the great magic power. With the article prefixed, p-ur-ukhu, the great magic power or the old ruleress, is the equivalent of the Paluc cat of Menai.

Not a refrain, burden, or rhyme of the old popular nursery lore but had a meaning once, and became a permanent possession on that account. Things thrown off without sense do not become matterful by repetition. They live after the sense is lost, because of the meaning they once conveyed.

'Ding, dong, dell,
Pussy's in the well,'

says the distich, and pussy as the goddess Pasht is found there in the Well or Pool of Persea, and at the bottom of the well we are to find Truth. That same well was the Pool of Maat, goddess of the twofold total truth. Our pussy even is a diminutive of puss, because si and sif (Eg.) denote the child.

There is a goddess Uati on the monuments, very ancient, but little is known of her. She is identified, however, with the Buto of the Greeks. Uati is the goddess of the north. Uat (Eg.) is the name of the north and of Northern Egypt. Khebt is also the north and Northern Egypt. Thus Uat and Khebt are synonymous. Khebt, goddess of the Great Bear, is likewise the Goddess of the North. Buto and Leto are one with the Greeks. Leto is Urt (or Urta), a name of Khebt, the old genetrix, and it follows from this that Uati is a continuation of Khebt, as Goddess of the North and of the Great Bear, the British Kêd, mother of the sun-god Hu.

Now we are told by Pliny that the British ladies, married and unmarried, stained their bodies with woad, and danced naked in the open air[50]. This was obviously in the performance of certain religious ceremonies, but it has given rise to many false notions about the ancient Britons being painted savages. One name of woad is wad. Wad is a Cumberland name for blacklead. Woad is also written ode. Kettle is a name of purple, and the purple orchis is called the [p.325] kettle-case. Kit is also to smear or daub. Woad implies a form written with k. In Egyptian khu is paint. Khu-t will be painted, and we have need of this for determining the nature of woad. Pliny[51] says the woad was black, and wad is blacklead. Caesar[52] called it blue. Jornandes[53] affirms that it was produced from iron ore.

In Egyptian uat is the name of bluish-green, as stone for paint, and green plants and herbs. It is also the name of a blue cosmetic in the Great Harris Papyrus[54]. And we can see that uat in uatmes, the name of Collyrium, merely means colour or paint, and uatmes is black paint. It is also found as a brown colour. Uat as the name of water included both green and blue. My own conjecture is that woad was green when wet, and that it dried on the flesh in a kind of blue tint. Green and blue were the two colours wanted for the types of lower and upper, earth and heaven, whilst the transformation of the wet-green into the dry-blue would be the most perfect realization of the symbol possible. Again, one of the great objects of worship was Hu, the solar god, whose sign is a tongue, and the tongue is found to be painted blue and red, two colours that interchange with blue and green, the image of the heavenly and the earthly, or spirit and flesh, soul and body.*

*As on the sarcophagus in the Amhurst collection. Copied in colours by Bonwick[55].

Uat in the dual form is Uati, goddess of wet and heat, the two truths of water and breath, the two factors of being also personified by Hu, as the sphinx. Madder is a name of woad, also of paints. As Egyptian, mat-ter would read the twin-total of truth. Uat is found to be the colour of vestments worn in certain religious ceremonies of the Egyptians. This is identical with the woad vestment of the British devotees; and the woad has the name of the goddess of the north, who was Uati and Khebt, our British goddess of the north, who was Kêd. We have our Wad's-den not far from Gad's-den; two forms of the name of Kêd.

Painting the rosy flesh with a blue tint was clothing the earthly with the heavenly, and the ladies, maiden and matron, who danced and showed their colours dedicated to Hu and Uati made the same sign that we still perpetuate on the Union Jack. In the Ritual[56] Uati is described seated with Pasht in the great quarter, the greatest of the heaven, i.e., in the north[57]. And in another chapter, with a vignette of the deceased adoring, we read: 'Oh, great land, I have come from thee, I have prepared, I have irrigated the meadows. I am the bull painted (drawn) blue, the lord of the fields: the bull called (by) Sothis at her time ... Oh Uat (blue­green), I have come, putting on my clothes. I have put on me the woof of the sun when within the heaven. Oh, Usert (sustenance) at the head of the place where Hu was born! Oh [p.326] divine land of corn and barley, I have come from thee. I have stopped my arm from working at my service in thee, who art called ruler of purity—pure mistress.'[58]

In this the worshipper of Uati and Hu says he has painted himself of a bluish-green hue, and put on the woof of the sun for his vestments. The bull of the sun wears the blue woof of heaven as his clothes. He has stained himself, as it were, with woad, like the worshippers of Hu and Kêd in Britain. Mistress of purity was a title of Kêd; she was said to be pure as the crescent moon, and fair 'as the snow which the cold has polished upon the lofty peak.'[59]

We have the name uat in watchet blue, now given to a palish kind of blue. But the original mixture of blue-green was worn by Sabrina (described by Drayton)[60], who sat as a queen in Neptune's throne wearing:—

'A watchet weed, with many a curious wave,
Which as a princely gift great Amphitrite gave.'

In mythology the son of the mother becomes her husband and his own father. This is the relationship of the god Hu to Kéd. His name of Hu-Gadarn is rendered Hu the Mighty. But such titles as this and that of El-Shadai, the Almighty, are all too vague for the primitive thought. Gadarn is susceptible of a fine rendering in Egyptian. Renn is the child, the nursling of the great mother called the old dandier, who is Kêd, and the Welsh em, a pledge, agrees with renn, the nursling, as the child of Kéd.

The Druids called Hu the overseer, and on the Mithraic sculptures this solar overseer is pictured in place of the disk, afloat overhead on wings, with the serpent attached. Pliny[61] said the Druids of Britain might have taught the Magi of Persia. But both drew from the parent source.

The magical banner of the ancient British was emblazoned with the same device of sun and serpent, and the Two Truths were likewise identified by the presence of Hu and Kéd, the father and mother who supported the disk and serpent[62]. One emblem of Hu (Eg.) was the tongue, from which he has been called Taste personified.

But the tongue means more than taste. Stockius observes that a tongue was the type of flame. The tongue denotes the word, utterance, mystic manifestation[63]. The tongue-emblem of Hu is represented on the tokens of Cuno along with the mother as the mare, Hu being the male deity[64].

The 56th Triad asserts that the god Hu had already instructed the race of the Cymry in the art of husbandry and the cultivation of corn, previous to their removal and separation from the old land[65].

[p.327] Hu, whose name in Egyptian signifies corn, also means spirit, ailment, and sustenance, and he is the giver of wine and generous liquor, who presides over the festive carousals. 'After the deluge he held the strong-beamed plough, active and excellent, this did our lord of stimulative genius.'[66] Hu (Eg.) means both aliment and genius. The god Hu on the monuments is the good demon, the winged sun, the sun in the act of shedding. In the Ritual he is said to be one of the gods attached to the generation of the sun[67]. He is seminal as well as solar, hence Hu represents the seed of life, the giver of corn.

The great emblem of Mu is the tebhut, the sun on expanded wings called the great god, lord of life. A British priest invokes the god under the title of Hu with the wings[68]. He too is the Teb­hut. Hu was depicted as the driver of his three oxen, and in the hieroglyphics hu signifies 'to drive.' Hu is the bull, the mighty bull, and the one bull takes the triadic form in the three hulls that draw the Avane out of the lake. The triad of bulls which. is the three-in-one is the analogue of the Egyptian male triad.

In the Ritual[69] we read, 'These gods who are attached to the generation of the sun are Hu and Ka; they are followers of their father Tum daily.' Ka or Kak was the god Touch. We still swear by touch in the sayings 'true as touch' and 'touch-true.' Kak, the blind god, went by touch, and touched home as the one who reached the boundary. Kak, in Eskimo, and kakoi, in Japanese, mean boundary. The boundary of Kak or Touch is extant in Tich-field and Tich-bourne, the bonnie in the latter being a translation of Tich. Tum (Atum) is the solar bull, the powerful bull, and Mu and Ka complete the bull-triad. The death of the bull as a sacrifice of virility was represented in the Druidic mysteries.

'The assembled train were dancing after their manner and singing in cadence with garlands on their brow, loud was the clattering of shields round the ancient cauldron in frantic mirth, and lively was the aspect of him who, in his prowess, had snatched over the ford that involved ball which cast its rays to a distance, the splendid product of the adder shot forth by serpents.* But wounded art thou, surely wounded, thou delight of princesses, thou who lovest the living herd. It was my earnest wish that thou mightest live, O thou victorious energy Alas! thou bull, wrongfully oppressed thy death I deplore.'[70]

* Compare Pliny's[71] account of the production of the serpent's egg or stone, to note another instance of the Roman and Greek ignorance of the ancient symbolism.

Aeddon is a name of Hu and Atum is said to be 'the duplicate of Aten.'[72] The priest of Hu was distinguished by the title of Aedd [p.328] after the god Aeddon, and in the hieroglyphics the at is a divine father, a priest.

Having shown the identity of the British and Egyptian Hu and Aeddon with Atum (earlier Aten or Adon), it is now intended to suggest that the triad of Atum, Hu, and Kak is the British triad of Tom, Hu, and Jack.

Atum in one character is the setting sun; he sets from the land of life[73]. He is the sun of autumn, to which season he has bequeathed his name. He is the god of the underworld, also named from him as the tomb. He was the lame and lessening sun of winter, and it is touching to think of the ancient deity who was the great god of heaven and earth, the great judge of the dead in the lower world, from whom we derive the primitive name of the judge as the Demster, and judging as dem-ing or condemning, and lastly damning, actually reduced to the condition of Tom Tiddler; but so it is. Tum was the winter sun: the slow-moving, long-in-coming, feeble sun, who as Tom Tiddler is Tom the Toddler, a sort of simpleton or Tim-doodle, who moves with slow tiny steps, and is twitted for being the lazy one, from whom his gold and silver may be filched with impunity. One game at his expense is played on the eminence up which he, the lower sun, has to mount and send off the mockers. Tum, the setting sun, is depicted as crossing the waters by means of the cow. In one instance, this sun, as lord of Hab, is making the passage, as it's called; and it is said of the deity, 'Thou hast rested in the cow, thou hast seized the horns, thou hast been immersed in the cow Mehur.'[74] The sun was reborn at the thigh of the cow[75]. How has the myth been minified by our faeryology in which Tom Thumb is described as being swallowed by the cow and reborn from it! Yet the matter is the same. Tum is the name of the lowest member of the hand, the thumb. Tum was the red as well as the lower sun. Both colour and lowliness meet in the plant called Thyme.

The Damson also is the redder, lesser plum, Tom is a close-stool, bottom, the lowest part, tawm, a swoon, a sinking down. The temples are the lower part of the head. The taum is a fishing-line which goes under. The tom-tit, a name of the wren, builds underground, the other Tom under the grass. The Tommy-bach stays in holes, the Tom-cull, Miller's Thumb, or Bull-head, lurks under stones. Tom-tiler is a hen-pecked husband who knuckles under; the tame and timid derive their appellations from Tum, the lower, hinder. Timings are the dregs of beer. Tum was the negative, sterile under, hindward sun. Hence tum signifies no, not, negative. He completed the circle of the day and of the year, hence tum, to announce, or Time, which depended on termination; thus 'tumt' is [p.329] total or timed. Tum the lower, hinder, and secondary, are among the meanings of the word, and these have been curiously applied in the formation of English, and in words not found in Egyptian, though shaped in its mould. Tum, as the lower, is the name of our underworld, the tomb. Toom means empty, hollow, void. From Tum, the winter sun, comes the word and meaning dim. This is echoed in many other languages, as dim, in Akkadian, a phantom; tumma, Finnish, dull, slow, dim; tumme, Esthonian, dim, dark, slow; tuom, Lapland, dull in action, slow, and dim; dum, Danish, obscure, dull, and dim; dimba, Swedish, haze, fog; tumu, Shoshone, winter; tomo, Wihinasht, winter; tamn, Kanuri, to complete, finish, end. In the Xhosa and Zulu Kaffir dialects, damba means to grow less and less in bulk, and a person who totters with unsteady gait, whether from drink or weakness, is called dambu-dambu. To tumble is to go under, to dimple is to dip under. To be in the dumps is to be down. Trees are timber when cut down. A timp is a place at the bottom of a furnace through which the metal runs. A dump is a deep hole in water, supposed to be bottomless. The ducking-stool was also called a tumbril. The helmsman at the hinder end of the vessel is a timoneer. A Tim-Sarah is a kind of sledge with wheels behind, and a Tim-whiskey is a chaise all bottom and no head. A Tom-noddy and Tim-doodle are foolish, deficient persons, and Tom, as the sign of the lower lesser, or little, attains the point of culmination in Tom Thumb.

A Tom-toddy is a tadpole. Here, too, is an image of Tum. One type of the sun crossing the waters was the frog-headed Ptah, the father of Tum, and our Tom-tadpole reproduces the son. Tom-toddy, or tutti, is literally the secondary type found in Tum, the son of Ptah. Tom-tut (in Egyptian the image of Tum) is also a kind of bogy. Children in Lincolnshire are frightened by being told of Tom-tut, a supernatural being that still haunts the nursery; and persons in a state of panic are called Tut-gotten. In Norfolk the same bugbear of naughty children, and the especial demon of dark places, is known as Tom-poker. Possibly this title actually enshrines the motherhood of the god. Tum was the son of Pekh, the cat-headed goddess[76], and Pekh-ar is the son of Pekh; Tum was Pekh-ar, as Osiris, the son of Hes, is Hes-Ar.

At Bromyard, in Herefordshire, among the ceremonies performed in the first hours of the new year, is a funeral service said over 'Old Tom,' as the departed year is called[77]. Here the transformation of Old Tum is applied to the year and made solstitial. In the Egyptian cult of Tum it was equinoctial, the old Tum changed into the young Iu-em­hept. When the devil appeared to the Witch of Edmonton, he called his name Dom[78]. That is Tum, the solar deity of darkness, who [p.330] becomes the devil of eschatology. Though dead and buried and transformed into the devil, the spirit yet lives, and still bears the name of 'Old Tom,' in a kind of gin.

Tum, as the lower, was the sun of the left hand. And there was a custom of drinking over the left thumb connected with passing the bottle round the table according to the course of the sun, and the left hand or lower sun was the solar god Tum. Also instructions were given that in a fit of convulsions or shortness of breath you should hold your left thumb with your right hand, and the god Tum was the breather of life, the breath of the mouth. Children were taught to fold the thumb inside the hand as a charm against approaching danger; it was an English custom to double the thumbs of the dead within the hand. This was a typical mode of laying hold of Tum, the great judge of the dead.

It is reported that during the battle of Solferino Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, kept his right thumb doubled in his hand for good luck[79]. He was typically holding on to the god of justice.

The good old Irish names of O'Toin and O'Jack, common in an Irish poem by O'Duvegan[80], of the early fourteenth century, are of divine origin after all.

Tum's two manifestations are in the persons of Hu and Ka or Hak, earlier Kak. In the pictures of the lower sun (Tum), crossing the Ament in the boat of the solar disc, Hu is at the prow and Hak (Kak) is at the helm[81].

Tom is our impersonation of all that belongs to the lower, minimized, dull-looking, lagging winter sun, and Jack is his natural antithesis. If down, Jack leaps up, or springs, as illustrated by the Jack-in-the-box; or ascends, as by the beanstalk. Jack is the lively lad, the spirited, full of spirit, a spirit or sprite. Jack-bandy is a name of the spritely minnow. The jack-a-dandy dances on the ceiling, Jack-a-lanthorn is the dancing will-o'-the-wisp, Jack-in-the green dances in true Egyptian colour on May Day. Green with them was the hue of reproduction from the invisible or spirit-world, and Jack as the sprite of the May dances invisibly in green. We still perpetuate the symbol in the colour called 'invisible green.' The flesh of both Ptah and Num was painted green, the hue in which the spirit of life emerges from the underworld. The Aztec divinity Huitziton was represented with his head decorated with feathers, his arms in the shape of tree-trunks with branches, while from his girdle green leaves fell or flowed downwards[82].

The god Ka is the more ancient Kak, whose name modifies into Ka and Hak. Akh (Eg.) is a spirit, lively, gay, and the word also means to [p.331] rise up and illumine. Akh is to elevate, suspend, adjust. An image of this is extant in our Jack-in-the-box, who is suspended on springs and who 'jacks up' with a broad smile to illumine with merriment, being now reduced to a solar symbol for the nursery. Jack dances on May Day in green leaves, and akha is to be verdant, green. Jack is the quick, clever, sharp, hence the knave. Akar in Egyptian is to be quick, clever, sharp, always ready, just as we say 'Jack's the lad,' the character aimed at by 'cheap Jack.' Akh is a spirit, the creative or virile spirit in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hebrew. It is the evil spirit in Japanese. In English the Jack used to hold the spirit. Jackey is a name of gin and strong ale, it is said or sung of our ancestors that they 'took a smack of the old black Jack, till the fire burned in their brain.' The Jig is the lively dance, full of spirit. The Egyptian akh, to lift up, suspend, is embodied in the jack instrument for lifting a weight, and akh, to turn round, is imaged by the Jack suspended and adjusted to revolve in the chimney. The Jacks used to jump up in the spinnette of old, Jack Ketch hangs up, the Union Jack is run up, the Jack struck the bell when the hour was up. Jack in his box leaping up with a laugh or a broad grin is a type of the sun or of the soul ascending from the nether world. Here is the fellow picture from the Egyptian Ritual:[83] 'I rise up as a god from men. I prevail as ye do with that god taller than his box. I have sat in my place on the horizon.' Just as the Jack leaps up. 'Oh, taller than his box; lord of the crown Atf!'[84] That is the headdress of Jack! The akh in his box is literally the Jack, and this spirit taller than his box is the akh. Jack-in-the-box is an Egyptian hieroglyphic of resurrection, and this gives the significance to 'Jack's Barrow,' a large tumulus in the parish of Duntesbourn, Gloucestershire. The name was like a warrant for rising again. A place near 'Jack's Barrow' is named 'Jack's Green.' Jack represents the spirit of life in spring, in the act of springing up or in jactation. One image of this was the ascending sun that rises up, aspires, illumines, puts a spirit of youth in everything, or 'Jacks up,' rises, revolves, and reigns higher and higher, and ranges from little Jack who climbed up the bean-stalk, to the place of the giant, or to the top of the great circle, over which reigns Hu with wide-expanded wings as the god in his disk, or, to reverse the process, from him who rides on the heavens by the name of Jach, down to our Jack of the beanstalk, and the box. Possibly Jack, the akh who jumps up out of his box as the young god, the sun of the spring equinox, is extant as the veritable 'little Jack Horner.' The divinity was represented as the young one, the ar or har. His place was the corner, and he is described as being in his corner, or angle. Says Ra, in the last judgment, 'Let the great one, who is in his angle call the souls of the just, and have them placed in their abodes near [p.332] the angle.'[85] Har-khuti is not only god of the corner, he is personified as 'the brilliant Triangle which appears in the shining place.'[86] And this god, who rises up victorious on the horizon, spiritualized (akh) is literally Jack Horner, for Hor is Horus, and ner (Eg.) means victory. Jack's corner has been removed to the place of the solstice, and his victory minimized to the pulling out of plums. One wonders if these plums, like those of snapdragon, may represent souls snatched from the burning or the abyss. His exclamation, 'What a good boy am I,' still preserves the title of the youthful god called Nefer (the good, the young), applied to Nefer-Tum, and Khunsu Nefer-hept.

Har-Khuti, god of both horizons, the sum total of the Tum triad, called 'the brilliant triangle which appears in the shining place,' seems to be extant in the Lord (Ham) Cadi, and the triangle to be reproduced in his garland.

The Cadi is a remarkable character among the May mummers in Wales. He is the most active personage, chief marshal, buffoon, and money-collector. He is generally arrayed in a dress of both sexes, male above and female below. The number of the other mummers is thirteen. They are dressed in white decorated skirts worn over black velvet breeches. This dual dress of the Cadi and his followers corresponds to the Two Truths, two birds (light and black) two colours, two origins, and two horizons, of Tum-Har-Khuti, and the mythical personage designated by Taliesin the 'two-halved youth.'[87] The company carried the May garland, the glorified image of the circle completed and once more renewed at the time of the vernal equinox.

The Cadi, as primus, suggests the god Khuti of Egypt, called Har­Khuti, the sun of both horizons, lord of the two seats or double seat of the equinox, one of whose types was the sphinx. One name of the sphinx is Hu, and Hu is the god of the horizon, and the British sun-god. The mixing of sex in the dresses answers to the dual nature of the sphinx, and the Two Truths. The garland of the Cadi, says the Every Day Book[88], consists of a long staff or pole, to which is affixed a triangular or square frame. In the procession the triangular garland is carried next after the Cadi. The god Har-Khuti is pre-monumental. In the record of the divine dynasties, a period of 13,420 years is claimed for the Shus-en-Har or worshippers of the har, who as Sut-Har (whether Sabean or solar or both) manifested on the double horizon as Har-Makhu and Har-Khuti. Another hieroglyphic of Har-Khuti of the brilliant triangle is extant in the three-cornered cake. In the city of Coventry one of the New Year presents given by all classes [p.333] of people is the God-cake, invariably made in a triangular shape. The god and triangle meet in one name as Har-Khuti. The cake is the Egyptian symbol of the sun and the horizon; Har-Khuti of the triangle is god of the horizon, the British Hu. This custom is peculiar to Coventry[89]. The Coventry three-cornered cakes are called god cakes, and the name of God is one etymologically with Khut, the god of the triangle, of which the equinox was the apex, the khut, the solstices being marked as low down on the horizon, the equinox in the zenith. The cake was a hieroglyphic of the triangle. Coventry is supposed to take its name as Conventry from a priory founded there in 1044, by Earl Leofric and Lady Godiva. But were there such persons as Leofric and Godiva? It is on Trinity Friday that the Lady Godiva rides naked through the town. The day also agrees by name with the three-cornered cakes and the triangular god, Har-Khuti, who was the manifestor of the Trinity. The corner or angle at which the young sun-god was reborn is the Kheb or Kep, i.e., Coy. It was in the place of the two times, the 'teriu,' where the two became three in one. The Egyptian 'teriu' is expressed by three, and gives us the word, and kep-en-terui is the corner and the concealed sanctuary of the two times. Terui also denotes the limit, the circumference, and a form of Sesennu, the seat of the eight gods in the lunar birthplace. The Egyptian name is represented by the Welsh daru or deryw, an end, and by the troi, a turn, a circle, the figure of Troy, earlier Trev, the rep (Eg.) or religious house of Egypt, whence we derive our Trefs, Tres, and Troys. En (Eg.) is the preposition 'of' or 'of the.' The name Godiva will resolve into Khutifa, the bearer of this god Khuti, from fa, to bear, carry, be pregnant with Khuti, the child. Thus Godiva, the lady, the patroness of Coventry, apparently becomes a form of the goddess Khet-Mut (Eg.), the British Kêd. Further, Iva or Iua (Eg.) is the boat, the symbol answering to fa, to bear, carry, and Kêd was the bearer whose image is the boat that bore the seed across the 'dale of grievous waters, having the forepart stored with corn,' a symbol of the mother, great with her child. Khep denotes the secret place, the sanctuary, the Ha-Kheb, in which the god was reborn at the Terui or Troy, to become the young divinity of the double-seat, he being the 'brilliant triangle.' The same word kep means hiding, concealing, lying in wait, looking, watching. And Tum in the Kep-en-terui would be in the place of concealment, watching, looking, lying in wait, literally the Peeping Tom of the Coventry mystery. One application of the word Tum actually means to spy, and covet, with the eye for determinative. It would indeed be strange if the Coventry mystery were based on historical characters, for Godiva is just the native goddess who appears on the monuments as Khatesh or Khen, the bearer, the boat of the waters, first of all personified as the pregnant hippopotamus, Khebt, later Khet, [p.334] the British Ked. Kef or Kep is the genetrix; the word means mystery. Khep is the goddess of mystery, the mystery of fermentation, fermented spirits, and fertilization. The Coventry mysteries were among the most famous in Britain. The word mystery or mes-terui (Eg.) means the birth, a child of the dual time, born at the spring equinox in Kef-en­Terui. This derivation of the name of Coventry, as opposed to Conventry, is supported by another name, that of Daventry. Tef or Tep is a variant of kep, and the tep is likewise the abode of birth at the terui. Tep was a mythical locality consecrated to Buto or Uati, the goddess of the north, the British Kêd, and it permutes with the Kep or Khab, as the Ha-Khab.

The 'try' as a form of the tref or tre, Egyptian rep, trep, and terui, our Troy, will not agree with the Convent.

'Curcuddie,' says Jamieson, 'is a phrase used in Scotland to denote a game played by children, in which they squat down on their hams and hop round in a circular form.'[90] The word curr means to sit in this fashion. It is the Egyptian kar, to stoop down, bear, carry and be under; khuti is to make the circuit, go round in a circle. The game is probably an imitation of the lame sun moving round slowly and with difficulty through the lower kar, belonging to the childhood of the race, and its mimetic mode of enacting ideographic representations. Kar-Cuddie is the hard form of Har-Khuti, and the sun in the kar-neter is well represented by the English caddee, a servant employed under another servant; he is the Kar-Cuddie, the child Har, who was maimed in his lower members.

In the game of 'noughts and crosses' there are two players; one makes the circle and one the cross. It is gained by the one who can first get three marks in a line. Here we find the circle, the cross, and the triad. But when neither of the two players wins the game it is given to 'Tom.' 'Tommy Dodd' is a term also used in tossing, when the odd man goes out. Tum is the god of both horizons, and Hu is his representative of the circle (the Hut); Hak, of the crossing; when neither Hu nor Hak win the game, it is given to Tum, so that each has it in turn. The cross and four circles or dots of Tit-tat-toe form one of the chief patterns in the artistic designs of the Bronze age[91]. It depends on the particular cult as to which of these three is acknowledged figurehead and primus of the triad. In the Egyptian Ritual Tum is the supreme; with the British it was Hu, and with the Hebrews it was Jah Iach or הי.

The house that Jack built is the solar mansion of the thirty-six gates in the upper half of which was stored the bread and drink of life, both being represented hieroglyphically as grain. Jack is the akh or jach who, as Tum, is said to 'build the house.' The rat that ate the malt is the 'abominable rat of the sun,' found in the Ritual.

The cat-headed goddess Pasht is designated the cat devouring the [p.335] abominable rat[92]. The dog that worried the cat occurs in the shape of a dog-faced demon, with human eyebrows, that lived off the fallen ones at the angle of the pool of fire in the west, the domain of Athor, the cow-headed goddess, who at this point, having tossed the dog, took the sun (Atum or Tum) between her horns and carried him across to the east. The cow and the cat were both bringers forth of the new sun of spring in the house that Jack built; the house of the two horizons. This was the representation of Egyptian mythology, doubtless the very form in which the facts were taught in the mysteries.

The Aztecs, at certain religious festivals, as in the feast of Tlaloc, in the sixth month, were accustomed to carry in their arms the images of gods 'made of that gum which is black and leaps, called Ulli' these were named Ulteteu, that is, gods of Ulli[93]. Ulli is India-rubber. And the leaping gods, the Ulteteu, suggest kinship to our Jack-in-the-box, whose progenitors leaped in India-rubber before other springs were invented.

This India-rubber image of deity, a type not yet extinct, is in our day subjected to a great deal of stretching.

A more mystic image of our Jack is the dance of sunbeams on the ceiling, reflected from water in motion, called Jack-a-dandy, or Jack beating his wife with a silver stick. It is emblematical of the two sources illustrated by sun and water; for Jack is a sun-god, and his wife is water, a pail of which he went for with Gula, or Jill, up the hill.

Jack dancing on the water is the same solar image that we find in the Ritual: 'Oh sun, thou hast lodged dancing'[94]; that is, on the waters. The box of Jack is the ark in which the sun lodged dancing, and crossed the water. 'The great one crossed in the cabin, capped in the ark.'[95] 'I saw the sun in the midst of his box when I hailed his disk daily, the living Lord,'[96] says the spirit in crossing from this life to the other.

Atum was the lord of An: lord of the double-seated boat in An. Atum is one with Aeddon (Hu), and this solar god of the Britons appears in one of Taliesin's poems[97] as Teyrn On, the Sovereign On, or of On, i.e., An, usually written Annwn. This is identifiable, because in another poem of Taliesin's, on the rod of Moses, he connects the British On or An with Heliopolis. He says of Joseph, 'the son of Teyrn On collected treasures from his associates, and the sons of Jacob had those treasures in possession.' The title of his poem is Kadair Teyrn On, or the Chair of the Sovereign of On. In this he sings of the 'Person of two origins of the race of Al-Adur, with his divining staff and pervading glance, and his neighing coursers, and his regulator of kings, and his potent number, and his blushing purple, and his vaulting over the boundary, and his appropriate chair: [p.336] amongst the established train, the sovereign of On, the ancient, the generous feeder,' or Heilin Pasgadur, the feeder[98].

Hu (Eg.) signifies corn, food, and aliment. Tum is the generous feeder. He provides the bread of Tu and the drink of Tep for the Osirian. 'My father Tum did it for me; he placed my house above the earth; there are corn and barley in it; unknown is their quantity. I made in it the festival of Tum.'[99] Tum is the lord of An, and the feast is in An. The altars in An are piled with plenty. Tum is called Hetu Abi[100], and hetu means bread. Tum is the ancient god, called Ra in his first sovereignty, and the oldest of the chiefs, who is represented as Har-Makhu of the two origins, or horizons. The boundary was that of the horizon, where the seat was established in An.

The poet sings of Teyrn On, 'Let him be the conductor of his fleet, then, were the billows to overwhelm beyond the strand, so that of firm land there should indeed remain neither cliff nor defile, hill nor dale, nor the smallest sheltering cover from the wind when its fury is roused, yet the sovereign of On will protect his chair: skilful is he who guards it.'[101]

This will appear less remote when we have set forth the typology of the Ark and the Deluge[102]. The writer apparently means that were the deluge to break forth again, there is always one place of safety in the ark of On; that seat of the god will remain secure. This was the seat of Atum in An, the established region; the double-seated boat is there, the ark of Sekari, found with Atum in the procession of the great gods[103]. 'There let them be sought; let application be made to Kedig for the men of Kêd, who have been lost.'[104]* That is, in An, the established region, called Tattu the Eternal.

* Davies, whom I have here followed. He is not to be compared with Skene as a translator, but was right as to the Barddas being in possession of the ancient mythical matter, although it was not derived from the Hebrew writings.

The eel was a type peculiar to Atum as sun of the underworld. It took the place of the solar serpent, as the crawler through the waters and mud of the abyss. The eel preserves its divine name, and being a divine type, it was too sacred to be eaten. That was the primitive law of the case. Things forbidden to be eaten were hallowed and not abominated. This was the later phase when the theology had changed. At first the Jews did not eat the pig because it was sacred, a form of the multi-mammalian mother; afterwards because it was degraded and denounced. The later cursing implies previous consecrating. And to this consecration of the eel in Egypt the present writer attributes the yet surviving horror of the eel found in Ireland and in Scotland, where it is invested, rightly too, with the character of the serpent. This repugnance to eating the eel is a superstition; the feeling against eating it was once religiously fostered because it was a divine type, and when the theology changes [p.337] and the thing is anathematized as unclean, the horror of eating it is there, ready to be set against it.

The superstitions of folklore and religion are mainly a deposit of denaturalized mythology, and not until the original types are interpreted and rightly explained can these superstitions be estimated justly.

The eel is a symbol then, extant in our islands, but not understood, which can be interpreted in Egypt, where it belonged to a deity of the dark, worshipped in the remotest times. This accounts for the eel that was seen by a man in Loin as he was fishing, which was passing from morning until sunset without coming to an end—that was a long eel! Not at all. It was the type of a circle, or the completion of the circle passing through the deep, as the sun-god Atum, whose name denoted a water-type. A namesake of Tum is extant in the timber, a kind of worm.

Tum was known in Egypt as the living god. That is the ankh. And we have our divinity of the same name in the god Jingo, whose worship has outlived that of Kêd, Hu, Prydhain, and others of the ancient pantheon. Jingo is the modified Kingo, the mentula type of deity. Jingo was a god, also, of the Bask people. 'By Jingo' is a common oath, but the more emphatic form is 'by the living Jingo'; that identifies the ankh (Eg.) with the living one.

'Ankh,' the living, and also the name of the king, was an oath and a covenant, so sacred that it was profane and punishable to use it vulgarly, or to swear by the life (ankh) of the pharaoh. Profane swearing consists in making the sacred usage common.

The Irish beangan and Welsh pincen, for a sprig or branch, are derivatives from ankh, the living. The 'living Jingo' apparently translates and identifies the Egyptian ankh, an oath meaning by the living or the life. This sense of life enters into our words jink and 'high-jinks.' Jink is to be gay and ebullient with life. 'High­jinks' are the very festival of frolic life.

Unki (Eg.) is also a god, or the name for God. According to Brugsch-Bey, the special ankh, unki, or jingo of Lower Egypt was the god Atum, the only one who is expressly denominated the ankh or living god[105]. Our Jingo ought therefore to be identified with the Tum triad, as he may be. Eidin, a form of Aeddon, signifies the living, and both names are identical with Adon and Atum, who is the living god of Pithom, the ankh, our living Jingo.

Again, the wedding-ring was formerly placed on the thumb. The author of Hudibras refers to this,

'Others were for abolishing
That tool of matrimony, a ring,
With which the unsanctified bridegroom
Is married only to a thumb.'[106]