CHAPTER V GOG AND MAGOG "Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, And bent on marriages the young men vie To till new settlements, while I to each Due law dispense and dwelling place supply, Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, -VIRGIL, The Æneid. THE British Chronicles relate that when Brute and his companions reached these shores the island was then uninhabited, save only for a few giants. Seemingly these natives did not oppose the Trojan landing, for the story runs that "Nought gave Corineus (Brute's second-in-command) greater pleasure than to wrestle with the giants of whom there was a greater plenty in Cornwall than elscwhere". On a certain day, however, the existing relations ceased, owing to an obnoxious native named Goemagog, who, accompanied by a score of companions, interrupted a sacred function which the Trojans were holding. From the recommendations of the pious Æneas, it would seem that the Trojans had suffered similarly in other directions:When thy vessels, ranged upon her shore, Rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light The votive altars, and the gods adore, Veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight, And shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight, Lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine, Break in, and mar the omen and the rite. The sons of sons unborn, and all the Trojan line.' The graceless Goemagog and his ruffianly crew did passing cruel slaughter on the British, howbeit at the last the Britons, rallying from all quarters, prevailed against them and slew all save only Goemagog. Him, Brute had ordered to be kept alive as he was minded to see a wrestling bout betwixt him and Corineus, "who was beyond measure keen to match himself against such a monster". Corineus, all agog and o'erjoyed at the sporting prospect, girded himself for the encounter, and flinging away his arms challenged Goemagog to a bout at wrestling. After "making the very air quake with their breathless gaspings," the match ended by Goemagog being lifted bodily into the air, carried to the edge of the cliff, and heaved over." One cannot read Homer without realising that this alleged incident was in closest accord with the habits and probabilities of the time. Alike among the Greeks and the Trojans wrestling was as popular and soul-absorbing a pastime as it is to-day, or was until yesterday, among Cornishmen:— Tired out we seek the little town, and run The sterns ashore and anchor in the bay, Past all the Argive towns, through swarming Greeks, to slip.3 2 Cf. Geoffrey's Histories of the Kings of Britain (Everyman's Library), p. 202. 3 Virgil, The Eneid, Bk. III., 37. The untoward Goemagog was probably one of an elementary big-boned tribe whose divinities were Gog and Magog, and there are distinct traces, at any rate, of Magog in Ireland. According to De Jubainville, "the various races that have successively inhabited Ireland trace themselves back to common ancestors descended from Magog or Gomer, son of Japhet, so that the Irish genealogy traditions are in perfect harmony with those of the Bible ".' The figures of Gog and Magog used until recently to be cut into the slope of Plymouth Hoe: in Cambridgeshire, are the Gogmagog hills; at the extremity of Land's End are two rocks known respectively as Gog and Magog, and there is an unfavourable allusion to the same twain in Revelation.2 Gog and Magog are the "protectors" of London, and at civic festivals their images used with pomp and circumstance to be paraded through the City. In some parts of Europe the civic giants were represented as being eight in number, and the Christian Clergy inherited with their office the incongruous duty of keeping them in good order. One of these ceremonials is described by an eye-witness writing in 1809, who tells us that in Valencia no procession of however little importance took place, without being preceded by eight statues of giants of a prodigious height. "Four of them represented the four quarters of the world, and the other four their husbands. Their heads were made of paste-board, and of an enormous. size, frizzled and dressed in the fashion. Men, covered with drapery falling on the ground, carried them at the head of the procession, making them dance, jump, bow, turn, and twist about. The people paid more attention to these gesticulations than to the religious ceremony which 1 Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 50. 2 xx. 8. followed them. The existence of the giants was deemed of sufficient importance to require attention as to the means of perpetuating them; consequently there was a considerable foundation in Valencia for their support. They had a house belonging to them where they were deposited. Two benefices were particularly founded in honour of them; and it was the duty of the Ecclesiastics who possessed these benefices to take care of them and of their ornaments, particular revenues being assigned for the expense of their toilettes."1 Four pairs of elemental gods were similarly worshipped in Egypt, each pair male and female, and these eight primeval Beings were known as the Ogdoad or Octet. In Scotland, the Earth Goddess who is said to have existed "from the long eternity of the world," is sometimes described as being the chief of eight "big old women," at other times as "a great big old wife," and with this untoward Hag we may equate the English "Awd Goggie" who was supposed to guard orchards. The London figures of Gog and Magog-constructed of wicker work had movable eyes which, to the great joy of the populace, were caused to roll or goggle as the images were perambulated. Skeat thinks the word gog is "of imitative origin," but it is more likely that goggle was originally Gog oeuil or Gog Eye. The Irish and Gaelic for Goggle-eyed is gogshuileach, which the authorities refer to gog, "to move slightly" and suil, "an eye". At Gigglewick or Giggles-fort in Yorkshire (anciently Deira), there is a celebrated well of which the famed peculiarity is its eightfold flow, and it was of this Giggle Well that Drayton wrote in Polyolbion: 1 Wood, E. J., Giants and Dwarfs, p. 54. At Giggleswick where I a fountain can you show, In Cornwall at St. Isseys there used to be a sacred fountain known as St. Giggy's Well, and as every stream and fount was the supposed home of jinns or genii it is possible that "Saint Giggy" may be equated with igigi, a word meaning in Babylonian mythology "the spirits of Heaven". Jinn or Genie may also be connoted with a well near Launceston known as Joan's Pitcher, the pitcher or vase whence the living waters were poured being a constantly recurring emblem of Mother Nature. It will be noticed in Fig. 25, p. 142, and in Fig. 256, p. 428. The French have an expression a gogo ("origin unknown") which means at one's ease, or in clover; in old French gogue (" origin unknown") meant pleasantry or fun, and goguenard a funmaker, or a jester. All these and kindred terms are probably correlate to the jovial Gogmagog carnivals and festivals. In London the house of Gog and Magog is the Guildhall in Aldermanbury: if born within the sound of the bells of the neighbouring St. Mary-le-Bow a Londoner is entitled to be termed a cockney; Cockayne is an old and romantic term for London, and it would therefore seem likely that among the cluster of detached duns which have now coalesced into London, the followers of Gog and Magog had a powerful and perhaps aboriginal footing. Around Londonderry in Ireland are the memories of a giant Gig na Gog, and at Launceston in Cornwall there used to be held a so-called Giglot Fair. At this a gogo festival every wench was at liberty to bestow the eye of favour, ogle, or look gougou, on any swain she fancied : whence obviously the whole village was agog, or full of eagerness, and much ogling, giggling, goggling, and gougounarderie. |