mythology deeper than is requisite for an understanding of the words and place-names under consideration, nor shall I enlarge more than is necessary upon the mystic elements in that vast and little known mythology.

It has been said that the medieval story-teller is not unlike a peasant building his hut on the site of Ephesus or Halicarnassus with the stones of an older and more majestical architecture. That Celtic mythology exhibits all the indications of a vast ruin is the opinion not only of Matthew Arnold, but of every competent student of the subject, and it is a matter of discredit that educated Englishmen know so little about it.

Among the phenomena of Celtic mythology are numerous identities with tales related by Homer. Sir Walter Scott, alluding to one of these many instances, expresses his astonishment at a fact which, as he says, seems to argue some connection or communication between these remote highlands of Scotland, and the readers of Homer of former days which one cannot account for. His explanation that "After all, perhaps, some Churchman, more learned than his brethren, may have transferred the legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of Loch Lomond," is not in accord with any of the probabilities, and it is more likely that both Greek and Highlander drew independently from some common source. The astonishing antiquity of these tales may be glimpsed by the fact that the Homeric poems themselves speak of a store of older legends from an even more brilliant past. Somebody once defined symbolism as "silent myth". To what extent it elucidates primeval custom has yet to be seen, but there is unquestionably an intimate connection 1 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.

between symbolism and burial customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities

2 FT

suggest that the latter may have been buried alive with its mother, which is a proposition that one cannot absolutely deny. But there is just as great a possibility that neither the mother nor the child came to so sinister and miserable an end. Apart from the pathetic attitude of the two bodies, the skulls are as moral and intellectual as any modern ones, and in face of the simple facts it would be quite justifiable to assume that the mother and the child were not buried alive, nor committed suicide, but died in the odour of sanctity and were reverently interred. The objects surrounding the remains are fossil echinoderms, which are even now known popularly among the unlettered as fairy loaves, and as there is still a current legend that whoso keeps at home a specimen of the fairy loaf will never lack bread,' one is fairly entitled to assume that these "fairy loaves' were placed in the grave in question as symbols of the spiritual food upon which our animistic-minded ancestors supposed the dead would feed. It is well known that material food was frequently deposited in tombs for a similar purpose, but in the case of this Dunstable grave there must have been a spiritual or symbolic idea behind the offering, for not even the most hopeless savage could have imagined that the soul or fairy body would have relished fossils-still less so if the material bodies had been buried alive.

I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship, tree-worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts was largely based upon symbolism. In symbolism alone can one find any rational explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries, the debris of which has come down to us degraded into 1 Johnson, W., Byways in British Archæology, p. 304.

1

superstitious "custom" and it is probable that in sym

bolism may also be found the origin of totemism.

Is symbol the husk, the dry bone,

Of the dead soul of ages agone?

Finger-post of a pilgrimage way
Untrodden for many a day?

A derelict shrine in the fane

Of an ancient faith, long since profane?

A gew-gaw, once amulet?

A forgotten creed's alphabet ?

Or is it . . . .1

Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and exclusive connection with phallicism. which some writers have been pleased to assign it. On the contrary, it more often flushes from unlikely quarters totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was undeniably a primitive mode of thinging thought or expressing abstract ideas by things. As Massey says of mythology: "There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, . . . the insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the depository of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this-when truly interpreted once more it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth."2 That the ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is unquestionable to account for the identities of these pagan fables with certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one of the Early Fathers-Tertullian, I believe -that "God was rehearsing Christianity ".

In the opinion of those best able to judge, Druidism originated in neolithic times. Just as the Druid sacrificed 2 Luniolatry, p. 2,

1 Cloudesley Brereton, in The Quest.

white bulls before he ascended the sacred oak, so did the Latin priest in the grove, which was the holy place of Jupiter. "But," says Rice Holmes, "while every ancient people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy". The clergy of to-day would find it profitable to study the symbolism which flourished so luxuriously among their predecessors, but, unfortunately, with the exception of a few time-honoured symbols such as the Dove, the Anchor, and the Lamb, symbolism in the ecclesiastical and philosophic world is now quite dead. It still, however, lingers to a limited extent in Art, and it will always be the many-coloured radiancy which colours Poetry. The ancient and the at-one-time generally accepted idea that mythology veiled Theology, has now been discarded owing to the disconcerting discovery that myths were seemingly not taught to the common people by the learned, but on the contrary spread upwards from the vulgar to the learned. This latter process has usually been the doom of Religion, and it is quite unthinkable that fairy-tales could survive its blighting effect. As a random instance of the modern attitude towards Imagination, one may cite the Rev. Prof. Skeat, who, commenting upon the Music of the Spheres, gravely informs the world that: "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres". "These spheres," he adds, "have disappeared and their music with them except in poetry."

1 Ancient Britain, p. 298.

2 This dictum would have cheered the heart of Tertullian, who maintained that God could never forgive an actor because Christ said: No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature; a statement which the actor impiously falsified by wearing high heeled boots. Commenting upon The Lost Language of Symbolism, The Expository Times very courteously observed: "To the reader of the Bible its worth is more than to all others,