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PICUS WHO IS ALSO ZEUS 
 
 by 
 RENDEL HARRIS 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1916 
 

 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE present volume is a continuation of the one which was 
 published in 1913 under the title of Boanerges, much in 
 the same way as Boanerges was the expansion and extension of 
 the previous volumes dealing with the Dioscuri in Christian Legend, 
 and the Cult of the Heavenly Twins, which are cited in the following 
 pages under the abbreviated forms, Dioscuri and Cult respectively. 
 It is assumed (for how could one continue the argument on any 
 other hypothesis ? ) that the main positions in the previous volume 
 are sound, and that they furnish a secure foundation upon which 
 the students of Man and of Man's Religions may build further: 
 this does not mean that there are no corrections necessary and no 
 re-statements desirable, but that, on the whole, we have liberty 
 to proceed : for the investigation, as far as it has gone, has thrown 
 too much light into odd corners of human history to be altogether 
 negligible. The student of classical archaeology cannot afford to 
 ignore it, for it explains many hitherto unintelligible features in 
 Greek and Roman Mythology, and shows us in what direction to 
 look for the origin of the Olympian worship. The student of 
 history cannot pass by discoveries which, to a large extent, enable 
 us to re-write the story of the foundation of Rome and other great 
 cities of the past. Folk-lore, folk-medicine, and the like, begin 
 to be translated out of a thousand languages into a single speech, 
 expressing the Unity of Civilisation and the Interrelation of 
 Religions. Let us see how far we have gone, and then we shall 
 see the lines that are laid for the progress of the present volume. 
 It has been shown that mankind, in its primitive state, the 
 subject of many fears, and evolving its faith from its fears 
 ("primus in orbe deos fecit timor"), found itself beset especially 
 by two Fears, one the great rational Fear, the Fear of the Thunder, 
 the other, the great irrational Fear, the Fear of Twin Children. 
 From the first of these Fears came the worship of Zeus, from the 
 
 a3 
 
 430033 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 /, ::'' . 
 
 second the reverence lor the ckildren of the Thunder, known by 
 various names as Dioscuri, Boanerges, and the like. The road to 
 Zeus-worship was shown to start from the belief that the Thunder 
 was a bird, and commonly the explanation was made that it was 
 a bird with a red head. In particular the bird which personified 
 the Thunder over Europe and part of Asia (and perhaps elsewhere) 
 was the Bed-headed Woodpecker, omitting for convenience some 
 associated bird-forms that have slight claims to similar rank. 
 This Red-headed Woodpecker, either the Great Black Woodpecker, 
 the Picus Martins of ancient Latins and of the modern Zoologists, 
 or the Green Woodpecker, the Gecinus Viridis, dominates the 
 whole religious evolution of Greece and Rome. He is the " Picus 
 who is also Zeus" of the Cretan and Italian tradition, the good 
 King Keleos (sometimes the bad Keleos) of Cretan and Eleu- 
 sinian story. From one or other of these forms the Zeus and the 
 Jupiter with which we are familiar have been derived; and the 
 colour with which he is supposed to symbolise the thunder becomes 
 a religious token of the first moment, in Europe, Asia and Africa, 
 as well among the priesthood of the Capitoline Jupiter as among 
 the soldiery of the Spartans, and the medicine-men of tribes of 
 West Africa. It was pointed out also that this Thunder-god 
 who was a bird and became a man made his evolution in easy 
 stages, and that we could catch him in the transition from the 
 ornithomorph to the anthropomorph, among existing people like 
 the American Indians of the Pacific slope, who confess him in 
 both forms, or among the Chinese and Japanese who figure him, 
 indeed, as a man, but encumber the human form with bird-like 
 appendages, in the shape of claws and wings and a beak-like nose, 
 in order that we may say in Chinese the equivalent of the Cretan 
 formula that "Picus is also Zeus." Something of the same kind 
 may, perhaps, be traced in the early Vedic religion. 
 
 When we came to the second great primal Fear, we were able 
 to show it to be diffused over almost the whole world, and fre- 
 quently to be expressed in what we could only describe at the 
 present day as acts of systematic and revolting cruelty. It 
 appears. that primitive man was in the habit of making away with 
 any woman who bore twins, and that the twin-children were 
 themselves destroyed; sometimes reason came to the relief of 
 the situation and sometimes humanity asserted itself: in such 
 cases it was argued that only one child was abnormal, it was a 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 spirit-child, a devil-child, a bird-child, a thunder-child, and 
 therefore only one was killed. The theory of a dual paternity 
 changed the situation, exile was substituted for murder, and the 
 Twin-village was formed; we thus discovered one of the missing 
 origins of human Sanctuary, in the island or bush-clearing, where 
 the exiled twins and their mother were allowed to live, but under 
 the severest of taboos. Moreover since, in many parts of the world, 
 the supposition that the second parent in the fatherhood of a 
 pair of twins was regarded as a bird, and particularly as the bird 
 which was the thunder, there was a blending of the two great 
 Fears into a single and combined Reverence, in which the Thunder 
 and the Twins were a sacred triad, known to the Greeks as Zeus 
 and the Dioscuri (or Zeus' boys), and revered in common ; similar 
 evolutions occurred elsewhere, and even religions that became 
 monotheistic, like the Hebrew religion, for a long time did not 
 regard it as impious or idolatrous to associate a pair of celestial 
 Sons of Thunder with the central worship of Jahveh. 
 
 Probably the discovery that will be most far-reaching in 
 connection with Twins and the Thunder-cult is precisely that of 
 the Twin-town. We can already begin to mark the twin-towns 
 upon our classical maps, just as we can do in the Niger district, 
 and, as we hope to show in the present volume, on the map of 
 England. 
 
 It is not, of course, maintained that one can, all over the 
 world, find Thunder-cults, either in the present or the past ; nor 
 that the Twin-Fear is universal; nor that the areas of the one 
 Fear are necessarily the areas of the other, so that every Thunder- 
 bird would have Thunder-children, and there would be a pair of 
 Dioscures for every sacred Woodpecker. It is not necessary to 
 assume that there was a Thunder-bird in ancient Egypt, where 
 there is not normally any Thunder; we may not always be able 
 to connect the Twin-cult with the Thunder-cult, even where both 
 of them exist. All that we at present assert is that in the course 
 of human evolution the two fears in question have existed over 
 very wide areas, and that the areas where they do exist overlap 
 one another widely. That will be a sufficient statement from which 
 to work. 
 
 In the region of Greek Mythology, our gains have been very 
 great. The legends of the birth of Zeus are now reasonably 
 intelligible. The Curetes and Corybantes who protect with their 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 clatter and clamour the infant god turn out to be the counterpart 
 of the humble peasantry who call the swarming bees by beating 
 upon tin pans ! And the reason why the bee-maidens and others 
 fed the babe Zeus with honey arises out of a very natural supposi- 
 tion that the Woodpecker, who is the Thunder-bird and is also 
 Zeus, has a fondness for bees and bee-products. We ought, of 
 course, to have found out long ago the riddle of the Curetes and 
 Corybantes, for it was disclosed in unambiguous language by 
 Vergil himself. 
 
 The Heavenly Twins were shown to be the patrons of many 
 human arts and industries, especially they were credited with the 
 invention of the Plough and the invention of the Ship. It was 
 shown that in each case the Woodpecker parent was really 
 responsible. From this point a new departure was made with 
 the greatest of all the Greek Myths, the story of the Argonauts. 
 Jason was shown to be a Heavenly Twin and his ship to be manned, 
 for the most part, by pairs of twin heroes. The ship had been 
 evolved out of a dug-out with twins on board, just such an alveus 
 as Romulus and Remus were exposed in on the Tiber! 
 
 The religious importance of the enquiries became clear when 
 the results were applied to the Christian Scriptures. In the Old 
 Testament and in the Apocrypha there were shown to be many 
 stories that were based upon twin-myths, and it was evident that 
 such beliefs in twin-myths lasted nearly to the borders of the 
 Christian era, so far as literary evidence was forthcoming. Perhaps 
 the best instances will be found in the explanations that were 
 made of the story of Esau and Jacob, the inverted birthright in 
 these legends being capable of immediate illustrations from West 
 African twin-customs. 
 
 If literary evidence for Dioscurism was in evidence down to 
 the borders of the Christian era, it goes without saying that the 
 Twins were current in folk-lore in the times of the N.T. itself; 
 consequently there was no reason to explain away, by exegetical 
 subtlety, the reference to the Boanerges or Sons of Thunder amongst 
 the disciples of Our Lord. The real difficulty arose out of the 
 observation of an apparent parallel between Jesus in the Gospels 
 and Jason in the Argonautica. Could we assume the equivalence 
 of Jesus and Jason etymologically ? Was Jason originally a 
 Semitic product, borrowed, as so many other Oriental features, 
 }>y the (IriM-ks? If so, was it possible that the Gospel, either 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 in its central figure or its leading incidents, had been Jasonised? 
 If not Jasonised, might we say Dioscurised ? As regards Jason, it 
 was made out that the Jason-Cult was widely diffused in Asia, but 
 the final evidence for his Semitic ancestry is not yet forthcoming. 
 It seems more probable that the home of the hero was in Thessaly 
 or in Crete than in Palestine. So the identification to which we 
 have referred is covered at present by a suspense of judgement. 
 Dioscurism, however, is a much more widely diffused factor than 
 Jasonism, and there is reason to suspect that its influence may be 
 capable of detection in the New Testament, beyond the playful 
 cognomen given to the Sons of Zebedee. It will require a good 
 deal of patient investigation to define the limits within which the 
 influence has operated. 
 
 We come now to the outlook of the present volume. The 
 discovery of the Aryan Twins, the Sanskrit A9vins or Nasatiya, 
 upon the Hittite Monuments, would lead naturally enough to the 
 enquiry as to whether traces of Twin-cult exist among the popula- 
 tions who now occupy the ground of the ancient Hittite Empire. 
 An accidental discovery made it possible to carry such an enquiry 
 out to a definite conclusion, and to show that in the region in 
 question, and down to a time at least as late as the second 
 century of the Christian era, twins were regarded as the sons or the 
 priests of the Thunder-god, and that such a twin-priest received 
 the name Barlaha or Son of God ; this startling discovery occupies 
 the front place in the present volume 1 . 
 
 After that we return to Zeus, who is now resolved into the 
 Thunder-bird (the Woodpecker), the Thunder-tree, and the Thun- 
 der-bolt, or axe. The question of the diffusion of Woodpecker- 
 cult is taken up afresh, and it is asked whether in the British Isles 
 there are traces of Woodpecker-cult or of Twin-cult at special 
 centres. The results are again surprising; for it can be shown 
 that, all over England, there are traces of the deference paid to 
 the Woodpecker. 
 
 In this way the argument proceeds, and the results of the 
 previous volumes become more and more accentuated and assured. 
 It is not easy to say how much further this reconstruction of 
 primitive religion is likely to go : it is already long past the stage 
 
 1 The chapter is reprinted from Preuschen's Zeitschriftfur N. T. Wissenschaft 
 for 1914, where it formed a part of a votive number to Julius Wellhausen on his 
 seventieth birthdav. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 en by 
 
 of the incredulous jest with which it was at first received, even 
 some who were folk-lorists of high repute; the proved human 
 interest in twins and their destruction cannot be limited to the 
 question "which of them shall I keep?" We are confident also 
 that the supposition on the part of some unsympathetic readers 
 (if indeed they were actual readers) that the writer with whom 
 they professed to be acquainted saw everything double, will not 
 much longer be found satisfactory to educated people. Howev( 
 let them say what they will. The present volume shows that 
 are continuing the investigation. It is a part of the Quest f( 
 Truth to which we have been all our lives committed. 
 
 R. H. 
 
 February 1916. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION v 
 
 I. ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" IN NORTHERN SYRIA . 1 
 
 II. THE WOODPECKER IN THE BRITISH ISLES ... 17 
 
 III. THE POPULAR NAMES OF THE WOODPECKER ... 37 
 
 IV. THE WOODPECKER AS RAIN-MAKER 45 
 
 V. THE WOODPECKER AS Dux Viae 48 
 
 VI. THE ORIGIN OF BEES ....... 52 
 
 VII. THE LIGHTNING WHIP 57 
 
 VIII. CAIN AND ABEL 61 
 
 IX. THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM 66 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" IN NORTHERN SYRIA 
 
 An inscription in Greek characters was recently sent me by 
 my friend Professor Lootfy Levonian, of the American College 
 at 'Ain Tab, which ran as follows: 
 
 BAPAAA 
 [Figure of an eagle] 
 
 AAYfie XAI 
 P 
 
 6TOYCZAY 
 i.e. Ba/)X,aa, d\vjr ^alpe' erou? f\i/ . 
 
 This inscription may serve as the point of departure for the 
 following investigation; it does not contain anything which 
 cannot be paralleled from other quarters, but it contains within 
 its own brief compass several important statements, from which 
 equally important inferences can be drawn ; so we will begin by 
 considering it from the side of epigraphic lore. 
 
 In the first place, then, it is a funeral inscription. This 
 appears from the conjunction of the name of the person (a) with 
 the figure of an eagle, a common funerary symbol in northern 
 Syria 1 , (6) with a common form of Greek farewell to the departed, 
 (c) with a date which is presumably the date of death. 
 
 The next thing we notice is that although the inscription is 
 in Greek, the name of the deceased is transliterated from the 
 Syriac ; he is called Bar r a ] ldhd, or Son of God. It is, therefore, 
 the grave of a Syrian. When we have recognised this indisputable 
 fact, of which, strange as it may seem that a Syrian should have 
 such a name, we shall find abundance of confirmation and parallel, 
 we may perhaps be able to clear up an obscurity as to the date. 
 
 1 Cumont has written at length on the subject of the " Funerary Eagle among 
 the Syrians" in Revue de VHistoire des Religions for 1910. 
 
 R. H. 1 
 
2 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [OH 
 
 For if the deceased is of Syrian family (though the family were 
 bilingual and had Greek for a second language), the stone-cutter 
 of the inscription is probably a Syrian, and that would explain 
 why he has written the figures of the date in reverse order, so as 
 to give the year Xi/, where he should have written vXf, i.e. the 
 year 437 of the Seleucid era, corresponding to the Christian date 
 A.D. 125-6 1 . 
 
 The inscription itself was found not very far from : Ain Tab, 
 and we may, therefore, describe it as a funeral inscription from 
 Commagene in the early part of the second century (the date 
 depending upon the accuracy of the transcription and its inter- 
 pretation, which I do not think admit of serious question). We 
 shall see presently reasons for believing that it cannot be very 
 far wrong, for we shall be able to refer other Bar-Alaha inscrip- 
 tions to the same period, and to connect them, directly or indirectly, 
 with the same locality. The Greek formula a\v7re x a ^P nee d n t 
 detain us long; in this shape and in a somewhat more extend 
 one awpe KOI a\vire %at/3e we find it in use in the East : I quote 
 an instance from a Palmyrene bust in the possession of a sheik 
 at Kuryatein, on the road to Palmyra, which appears in Lidzbarski 
 in the following form : 
 
 Greek Palmyrene 
 
 NACPAA * 
 
 
 AAOEMAA * 
 
 XOYAAYFTE Sl 
 
 XAIPE 
 where the Greek is deciphered by Lidzbarski as follows: 
 
 the Palmyrene showing simply Nasra, son of Malku, son of Nasra, 
 
 1 Such lapidary reversals are common on the Palmyrene monuments. Cf. 
 Lidzbarski, Handbuch : " Palmyrene Inscriptions," i. p. 458 et sqq. where are the 
 Greek dates: 
 
 trovs vv' =A.D. 139. 
 
 frovs 9"' =A.D. 179. 
 
 #rous 50' =A.D. 193. 
 
 *TOVS 5i>0'=A.D. 242-3, etc., 
 
 and which dates are certified by the Palmyrene texts. The same thing occurs 
 in the trilingual inscription from Zebed, whose date is given, in words, in tin- 
 Syriac as 823 (i.e. of the Seleucid era), but in Greek in the form ZTOVS yicw' (328). 
 
 2 Lidzbarski, n. 450. 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 3 
 
 mourning. The two sides are independent, the Palmyrene giving 
 only the names : but it is reasonable that the names on the two 
 sides should agree. It is quite impossible that the person buried 
 should be called NacrpaXXaflo?, but he may very well have borne 
 the name Nacrpd\\a or Aquila Dei, in which case we have a sug- 
 gestive parallel to our Barlaha inscription 1 . The Greek of this 
 inscription, however, needs to be re-examined. We will only use 
 it at present to show how the Greek funeral formulae assert 
 themselves in a bilingual country. 
 
 Here is another instance from Membidj (Hierapolis) which 
 lies much nearer to 'Ain Tab 2 . 
 
 Ba/e^ie XprjGTe a\wjre ^alpe' Btf YopTTiaiov ft... 
 In this inscription we have again the conjunction of the funerary 
 eagle with the Greek formula ; and whether we take (3/c to represent 
 the Seleucid year or the day of the month (it is almost certainly 
 the latter) the lapidary has again written his figures in the Semitic 
 order, and is therefore probably a Syrian. If the day of the month 
 be the 22nd, then the year which follows and begins with ft has 
 also its figures reversed. 
 
 Now for a word with regard to the bird whom Cumont calls 
 the funerary eagle. It is commonly represented as holding a 
 crown or garland in its beak, as a symbol of triumph and of the 
 attainment of an immortal life among the blessed. In this form, 
 for example, it is a constant motive upon the tombs at Membidj, 
 the ancient Hierapolis of which Lucian writes. Similar things 
 may be remarked at Balkis on the Euphrates, which Cumont 
 holds to be the real Zeugma (commonly identified with Biredjik), 
 where the road from 'Ain Tab crossed the Euphrates : so that we 
 may see that, in this part of Syria, the funerary eagle is conven- 
 tional ; Cumont maintains further that it was from the East that 
 the Romans borrowed their idea of apotheosis of the Emperors, 
 and the fiction that Romulus was carried up to heaven on the back 
 of an eagle. It is probable that the problem of apotheosis by 
 the help of eagles can be solved more simply: for if the eagle 
 should turn out to be not a piece of Syrian ornithology, but the 
 Thunder-bird itself, which turns up at the origin of all religions, 
 he will not need to be imported into Rome from the East; he 
 
 1 Perhaps Na<rpctXXa0e means that the stone-cutter began to write deov after 
 NacrpaXXa. 
 
 2 It will be found in Cumont, loc. cit. p. 120, from Hogarth, Annual of the British 
 School at Athens for 1907-8. pp. 186 sqq. 
 
 12 
 
4 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [CH. 
 
 will be at home there already, just as he is in any place where 
 his royalty has displaced the minor claims of the Woodpecker to 
 be the bird-form of the Thunder. 
 
 We shall point out presently that in the case of our Barlaha 
 inscription, the eagle has a nexus with Barlaha, quite indepen- 
 dently of the fact that Barlaha happens to have died : of this we 
 have more to say at a later point. The inscription is non-Christian ; 
 we should suspect this from the occurrence of a pagan and hopeless 
 formula, and from the presence of the eagle; but we are quite 
 certain that no Christian in the year 125 would ever have been 
 designated by the title of Son of God, nor is it likely that the term 
 could have been employed by the Jews. The problem before us, 
 then, is to determine the meaning of this pagan formula of 
 nomenclature. Who is the god that is indicated, and how does 
 anyone come to be his son? What honours attach to such 
 sonship and what functions does the son discharge? And by 
 what marks, if any, is he recognised ? Is it royalty that is meant 
 by the term, or is it priesthood? Or does the title depend upon 
 physical and moral characteristics ? These, and similar questions, 
 are the points that require to be considered; and it will easily 
 be seen that there are similar questions in most of the great 
 religions, and in not a few of the small ones. The relation of 
 kingship, for example, interpreted as sonship, is common in the 
 earlier Judaism: the Psalms are full of it; "Thou art my Son, 
 this day have I begotten thee 1 ," is an adoptionist formula in the 
 older religion, which became an adoptionist formula in the Christian 
 religion: and again, as the writer to the Hebrews would say, 
 will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son 2 ." The sai 
 exact terms of adoptionism are found in Ps. Ixxxix. 27, " I will make 
 him my first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth." In all 
 these cases the king is regarded as, by adoption, the Son of God. 
 What is true of Judaism is true of the Syrian Kingdom of Damascus, 
 where we find a decided tendency to name their kings Bar-hadad, 
 that is, to define them as the children of the Thunder-god ; for 
 Hadad (Adad) is the Amorite and Mesopotamian god of the 
 Thunder: and in that sense, a Syrian king so named might be 
 called in the terms of a later day, Son of God. 
 
 It is, however, useless to look in this direction for the meani 
 of Barlaha, for in the first place the country is under Roman rule, 
 
 1 Ps. ii. 7. 2 2 Sam. vii. 14. Heb. i. 5. 
 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 5 
 
 and there are no more kings to be affiliated to the gods, and in the 
 next place, as we shall see, the name in question is borne by 
 persons who are politically civilians. Our humble inscription is 
 certainly not the tombstone of a king. Perhaps we shall reach a 
 solution most easily by removing our attention for a while from 
 the first syllable of the name, and fixing it on the remainder. 
 Whatever sonship may mean, there is no question as to the 
 meaning of the word Alaha. What god is meant by this title in 
 Commagene in the year 125 A.D. ? The answer to this enquiry 
 is certain : if any god is especially indicated by the name Son of 
 God, it should be the one whom archaeologists know as Jupiter 
 Dolichenus, i.e. the Jupiter worshipped at Doliche, a town a few v 
 hours to the north of 'Am Tab, represented to-day by a wretched 
 Moslem village known as Tell Diiluk, with many ruined walls and 
 an occasional Syrian inscription, indicating obscurely the former 
 greatness of the town. This town, whose ruins I have visited, 
 though with no prospect of making excavations, has impressed 
 itself on the whole western world, chiefly by means of its religion, 
 which soldiers from Commagene carried as far as England, Scot- 
 land and Wales, Gaul, Germany, Pannonia, Dacia, and Numidia, 
 to say nothing of countries lying nearer to the centre of civilisation. 
 In fact, Commagene became a recruiting ground of the Antonine 
 emperors, and the soldiers who were thus incorporated with the 
 Roman army carried their religious symbols with them wherever 
 they went, adapting themselves skilfully to the nomenclature of 
 the Roman religion, so as to call their chief deity by the name of 
 Jupiter, and establishing shrines and votive monuments wherever 
 they travelled, much in the same way as did the worshippers of 
 Mithras. The extent of the Dolichene influence can be judged by 
 the number of inscriptions belonging to the cult. Hardly one has 
 been found as yet in Commagene itself (though no doubt they will 
 turn up when Tell Diiliik is excavated), but apart from Commagene 
 they are found all over the Roman Empire. Who then is Jupiter 
 Dolichenus, for it is certain that in an ancient Eastern province, 
 which has formed part of some of the greatest empires of the world, 
 he was not called Jupiter, nor was he known by a place-name 
 such as Dolichenus? The answer is that he is a survival from 
 Hittite and Assyrian days. In some ways he resembles the 
 Hittite storm-god Teshub ; in others he is like the Amorite Adad, 
 or Hadad, the thunder-god of Northern Mesopotamia, or the 
 
6 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [ 
 
 two 
 
 Assyrian Ramman, the storm-god of the great empires on the tw 
 rivers. From the fact that he is always represented with the double- 
 axe (thunder-axe), in his right hand, and with the bunch of split 
 lightnings in his left, we might be disposed to say that he was 
 simply the Thunder-god of the population of this region, slightly 
 Romanised into a Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and accompanied 
 by such religious symbols as we are accustomed to in the Thunder- 
 cults of the East and West. Closer examination shows, however, 
 that the matter is not so simple ; for although the figure of Jupiter 
 Dolichenus himself, in the monuments of the cult, is undoubtedly 
 that of a thunder-god, there are features which suggest that he 
 is Sky-god as well as Thunder-god, exactly as was the case with 
 Zeus himself, who obtains his name from the bright sky, and 
 discharges the functions of the darkened sky. In the Dolichene 
 cult, we shall find the central figure accompanied by lesser figures 
 of the Sun and Moon, sometimes associated with a pair of stars. 
 Sometimes a feminine goddess is added, who passes for Juno, and 
 may be the wife of the Solar deity. The denomination of the 
 cult as that of a thunder-god is, therefore, not exhaustive. The 
 main idea is certainly that of the Thunder. Jupiter Dolichenus 
 stands on the back of a bull marching from left to right, the bull 
 being his cult-symbol, as it is for Ramman in Assyria; he has 
 the thunder-eagle with him, sometimes perched on the head of the 
 bull, sometimes crouching beneath it, as if to support it, and 
 sometimes flying with garlands symbolic of victory ; and as we have 
 said, he always carries the thunder-axe and the bunch of lightnings. 
 
 The god, therefore, who is involved in the name Barlaha 
 must be sought for amongst the thunder-gods and sky-gods of 
 the Oriental peoples. That being the case, the nearest equivalent 
 that we can find in ancient history for the term Barlaha is the 
 name Bar-Hadad (the Benhadad of the Hebrew Bible). Kingship 
 being, however, excluded as an explanation, we must now try 
 priesthood. It is well known that priests commonly acquire 
 theophoric names, expressive of their relation to the God whom 
 they serve; sometimes they actually pose under the name of the 
 god himself. Let us, then, see whether we can make a priest of 
 Barlaha. 
 
 In an inscription, preserved in the Museum at Salona in 
 Dalmatia, we find the following 1 : 
 
 i C.I.L. in. Suppl. n. 8785. 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 7 
 
 D(is) M(anibus) | Aurelius Ger|manus Barla|ha 
 Sacerdos | I(ovis) O(ptimi) M(aximi) Doli|cheni 
 vivus | sibi posuit et | Syre coniugi | 
 Figure of a double-axe. 
 
 Here there is a votive inscription for the tomb of a priest of 
 Jupiter Dolichenus named Barlaha, with his wife, whose name is 
 simply Syra or Syre, the Syrian lady; and the inscription is 
 accompanied by the symbol of the thunder. It is clear, then, 
 that a priest of Jupiter Dolichenus might be named Barlaha; it 
 does not follow that every one named Barlaha is necessarily a 
 priest of Dolichenus ; and it seems to be made .out that the Alaha 
 of the Commagene Barlaha really does mean someone attached 
 to Jupiter Dolichenus, or the thunder-god (sky-god) who lies 
 behind him. 
 
 Let us now try to find out some more about this Dolichene 
 priesthood ; for if the priests are in the habit of wearing theophoric 
 names, as in the instance before us, we may find from the inscrip- 
 tions some more information about the cult than is betrayed by 
 a scrutiny and study of the surviving Dolichene sculptures. 
 The simplest way to determine what were the favourite names of 
 Dolichene priests is to work through the collection of the inscrip- 
 tions of the cult in Kan, De Jovis Dolicheni cultu. We shall 
 easily detect five varieties of appellation (omitting names which 
 are clearly Roman, and generally imperial, like Flavius or Antoninus 
 and the like). These five varieties are as follows: 
 
 1. Those priests who bear the name Marinus or Marianus: 
 
 2. those who bear the names Castor and Polydeuces: 
 
 3. the priestly name of Barlaha: 
 
 4. the name Barsamya: 
 
 5. the name Aquila. 
 
 All of these names are those of priests attached to the service of 
 the god, and they have, to say the least, a theophoric flavour. 
 The evidence is as follows, the numbers of the inscriptions being 
 as in Kan. 
 
 No. 3. Polydeuces Theophili along with Lucius Capito and Flavius 
 Reginus. 
 
 No. 4. Castor and Aquila with Cantor and Polydeuces. 
 
 No. 11. Aelius Valentinus veteranus sacerdos. 
 
 No. 14. Marinus Mariani Bassus. 
 
 No. 15. Aurelius Marinus with Adde bar Semei and Oceanus Socratis. 
 
 No. 17. Bassus Aquila and Gai Gaiani. 
 
8 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" 
 
 No. 22. Aurelius Germanus Barlaha ut supra. 
 
 No. 26. Aurelii Sabinianus et Maximus et Apollinarius. 
 
 No. 33. Aurelius Domittius with the brethren 
 
 Flavius Castor and) . 
 
 AureHus Maximus} brothers > not said Positively to be priests. 
 
 No. 44. Antonius. 
 No. 48. Antiochus and Marinus. 
 No. 53. Bellicus Marini filius sacerdos. 
 No. 59. Demittius sacerdos. 
 
 No. 64. Sacerdotibus. Sopatrus et Marinus et Calus (sic). 
 No. 67. C. Julius Marinus miles, not said to be a priest. 
 No. 70. Flavius Marinus and Chrysas Thyrsus. 
 No. 72. C. Fabius Germanus. 
 No. 75. Aurelius Severus veteranus curator tempuli (in Aventino) et 
 Aurelius Antiochus sacerdos, etc. 
 No. 83. M. Ulfius Chresimus. 
 No. 84. Aurelius Teatecnus filius Hela. 
 No. 86. Aurelius Julianus eques Romanus sacerdos. 
 No. 99. Antipatrus sacerdos. 
 No. 100. Marcus Barsemias. 
 Nos. 104 and 105. C. Julius Flaccus. 
 No. 106. L. Aurelius Valerius. 
 No. 136. Arcias Marinus. 
 
 No. 141. G. Julius Marinus (not said to be a priest). 
 No. 152. Lucinus (?) Donatii, Aquila Barsemon and Flavius Dam as. 
 
 It will be seen at a glance that these lists of priestly names are 
 significant. Setting aside a number of imperatorial names of the 
 time, we have, for the most part, a series of theophoric names, 
 which belong to the Dolichene religion, and will help us to under- 
 stand the nature of the cult. Of these the first is Marinus and its 
 associated Marianus. The name stands for an old Syriac form 
 Marin, and its companion Maryan : each formed from the word 
 Mari, which becomes Mar in later Syriac (with silent yud), by 
 the addition of a suffix in the first person plural. The meaning 
 is then "our Lord," and it is an archaic title of honour, probably 
 used both for priests and kings. It becomes the appellation of 
 saints in the Eastern Church. It does not appear from our list 
 of cases that it is exclusively a priestly title, nor that it must be 
 necessarily read in a theophoric sense, though one remembers how 
 common is the doctrine that the honour of the priest is as the 
 honour of God. As it happens, in one case Marinus is described 
 as a soldier, and therefore presumably not a priest 1 . Other 
 
 1 This statement may require qualification; we do not know whether Doli- 
 chene priests accompanied the Syrian legions into foreign countries. Some 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 9 
 
 instances of similar character can be brought forward. Students 
 of Philo will remember the way in which the mob in Alexandria 
 made a mock king of the poor idiot Carabas and saluted him with 
 cries of Marin. Here the name has its loftiest connotation. We 
 can, however, find a number of persons of humble origin, who 
 bear the name without any sense of elevation or dignity. It 
 appears to have become conventional 1 . 
 
 The next case is more striking: we have Castor and Pollux 
 in conjunction, and Castor several times separately. There can 
 be no mistake about the meaning of this; the Heavenly Twins 
 are a part of the Dolichene priesthood : and we must conclude that 
 the cult involved not merely the Sky or the Thunder, but the 
 Children of the Sky and the Children of the Thunder. Such 
 priests are in all probability twins, or are acting representatively 
 in a line of priests who have the care of a twin-cult. (A good 
 instance is the priest Amphion at Antioch, for whom Tiberius set 
 up the monument of Zethus and Amphion.) Now this might 
 have been divined: for in Commagene we are in the Hittite 
 country ; and it is known from the inscriptions found at Boghaz koi, 
 that the Hittites had not only a thunder-god (Teshub) but that 
 there was also in the vicinity of the Hittite empire, and perhaps 
 within the empire itself, a pair of twin deities who are called by 
 their Aryan name Nasatiyau in the treaties between the Hittites, 
 the Mitanni, etc. Thus every reason for regarding the cult of 
 Jupiter Dolichenus as a survival, is a reason for expecting the 
 survival of the cult of the Twins. 
 
 In the light of this important discovery of the existence of a 
 twin element in the Dolichene priesthood, we may ask whether 
 this fact can be used to illustrate the monuments. The answer 
 
 priestly functions may have been discharged by soldiers; e.g. in the inscription 
 from the Aventine (No. 75 in Kan) the curator of the temple is expressly said 
 to be a veteranus. So in the inscription No. 11 of Kan, Aelius Valentinus is 
 expressly said to be both veteranus and sacerdos. In No. 53 Bellicus the priest is 
 almost certainly a soldier ; from the description of him as Filius Marini it is possible 
 that his father may have been a priest also. In No. 67 we have another soldier 
 named Marinus, who may suggest a similar explanation. 
 
 Hettner, De Jove Doliche.no, p. 9, says that the cognomen Marinus is found 
 much more often in Dolichene inscriptions than can be explained by chance ; as in 
 not less than seven instances the name is that of a priest, he concludes that the 
 Dolichene Marini are connected with the cult. 
 
 1 E.g. at the end of the Edessan Acts of Sharbil, we are told that Marinus was 
 one of the notaries who composed the document. But perhaps this is consistent 
 with dignity. 
 
 
10 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [CH. 
 
 is that the pair of stars in the Dolichene monuments must be held 
 to be symbols of the Twins. Are the Twins themselves repre- 
 sented? Not in the Roman or Greek form; it is possible that 
 the sun or the moon may have come in to represent the Twins as 
 they do in some Assyrian inscriptions. What seems to corifirm 
 the supposed Assyrian influence at this point is the fact that 
 the Dolichene monuments sometimes represent the Sun and 
 Moon as carrying whips. Now the whip is from India westward 
 a well-known Dioscuric symbol. The following sentence from 
 Mr A. B. Cook's recently published Zeus will illustrate the point 1 . 
 He is describing one of the Dolichene plates found at Heddernheim : 
 
 The upper division contains a bust of Sarapis ; the lower, busts of the Sun 
 and Moon. The Sun has the horns of a bull; the Moon, a rayed nimbus: 
 both bear whips. Over their heads are two stars. 
 
 Without laying too much stress on this point, we can see- 
 that the reference to Castor and Polydeuces amongst the Dolichene 
 priesthood requires us to admit that the Twins are a fundamental 
 part of the cult, and that their presence on the monument is not 
 due to syncretism 2 . 
 
 But what were their names in Syriac, for after all, Castor and 
 Pollux can only be a translation ? It is possible that they may have 
 had names which have come down to us as Cosmas and Damian, the 
 ecclesiastical substitute for the Twins in this region, but we have 
 not the means of determining this at present. The names Cosmas 
 (Cosmus) and Damas are both found on the Dolichene monuments, 
 and Damas appears to be a priest. That is as far as we can go 
 with what, for the present, is little more than a suggestion. 
 
 There is, however, remarkable evidence in our list of the cur- 
 rency of the word Twin as a name. Twin, in Syriac, as is well 
 known, is Tauma, and the similarity of this to the word for Abyss 
 or Ocean (TeJwma), led earlier compilers of Onomastica to derive 
 the name Thomas (or twin) from Abyssus. In the same way 
 when pious persons attempted to get rid of the statement in the 
 
 1 Loc. cit. i p. 620. 
 
 2 Thus, when we find upon a Roman inscription (No. 71, Kan) that it is dedi- 
 cated to J(ovi) O(ptimo) s(ancto) p(raestantissimo) D(olicheno) et Junoni Sanctae 
 Herao Castoribus et Apollini, we are to regard all these as Roman equivalents 
 for figures in the Dolichene cult. Juno as Hera is a double substitution ; Apollo 
 is the Sun-god of the east, and the Castors are the Twins. 
 
 On the inscription No. 91 of Kan, Juno is expressly called Juno Assyria regina 
 Dolichena. 
 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 11 
 
 Syriac Acts of Thomas that Judas Thomas was the Twin of the 
 Messiah, they did it by substituting the Abyss, or (as Wright 
 translates it) the Ocean-flood of the Messiah. Now notice that 
 in our list of priestly names, one man has actually given his name 
 as Oceanus Socratis. It is safe to say that no one ever had such 
 a name in the course of nature : it has come to him artificially ; 
 it is translator's Latin, and bad translation at that. In his own 
 country, this priest would have been called Twin, or perhaps Thomas 1 . 
 
 Our next case is the name with which we started, Bar 
 Alaha, which we have sufficiently explained. Look, however, at 
 No. 84, where Teatecnus (read Theotecnos = Oeo-reKvos) occurs. 
 Evidently Theotecnos is an attempt to turn Bar Alaha into 
 Greek: nor is this all; another translation is given into Latin, 
 for the inscription says Teatecnus filius Hela, which is only a 
 blundering Latin version of Barlaha by someone who forgot that 
 Alaha was written backward. We shall find this name Theo- 
 tecnos (Theotecna) in the Edessan literature. In the story of 
 the Martyrdom of Habib the Deacon in the year A.D. 308, mention 
 is made of a certain Theotecna, a veteran and a chief of the 
 governor's band. Although a pagan, he shows himself friendly 
 to Habib. There is nothing definitely to intimate priesthood: 
 he appears to have been simply a military official. On the other 
 hand, we have already pointed out a case in Rome, where the 
 veteranus Aurelius Severus is said to have been the warden of the 
 Dolichene temple on the Aventine, and another Italian case of a 
 veteranus who is definitely described as sacerdos. 
 
 So here again we have the Dolichene priest as Son of God, 
 with a possible parallel from the not far distant city of Edessa. 
 The priest in question has sought to render this both in Latin 
 and Greek. Such translations are not mere western adaptations, 
 they occur in Commagene, which is a bilingual country, and to 
 some extent trilingual. 
 
 The next sacerdotal name occurs under slightly variant forms : 
 Adde bar Semei, 
 Marcus Barsemias, 
 
 and Aquila Barsemon, 
 
 the three forms are evidently for one Syriac name, which must be 
 "bar Semaya (Son of the Sky)." Here then the Dolichene Alaha 
 
 1 Hettner, p. 10, thinks that both Marinus and Oceanus may be variant trans- 
 lations of a Syriac word ( =lat. mare). We have explained Marin above, and shown 
 that it is altogether Syriac. 
 
12 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [OH. 
 
 is definitely recognised as the Sky-god. The alternative explana- 
 tion Bar Samaya, son of the blind man, is untenable: we could 
 not have three sons of blind men in our list : but the alternative 
 should be noted because it explains the name of the Edessan 
 bishop Barsamya, who is said to have been the second catholic 
 bishop of Edessa and successor of Palut. We must take this 
 Barsamya to be a Christianisation of an original Bar Semaya. 
 The Edessan traditions refer him to the times of Fabian, Pope of 
 Home, and so before 250 A.D. He is probably a convert from 
 paganism. 
 
 The name Adde is also Syriac ; it is = Addai, the supposed 
 apostle of the church at Edessa. It is itself perhaps a thunder-name. 
 
 Last of all we have three cases of Aquila as a proper name. 
 In view of the connection of the names already discussed with the 
 cult, it is reasonable to suggest that the priest, who bears the 
 name, bears it theophorically, because of the companionship of 
 the eagle with the thunder. 
 
 We have now discussed the character of the Dolichene priest- 
 hood, the god being accompanied by twins as his assessors, and 
 perhaps by a feminine conjugate. At Commagene, at all events, 
 if any one comes forward with the name Son of God, we identify 
 him as either a priest of the Thunder, or a twin-child of the 
 Thunder, or both. 
 
 Keviewing the argument as far as it has gone, we have arrived 
 at the following facts: 
 
 A bilingual inscription from Commagene commemorates a 
 Syrian bearing the name Son-of-God, who died in the year 125 A.D. 
 The god after whom he is named must be identified with Jupiter 
 Dolichenus. We actually find the name as a priest's name in the 
 cult in question. On studying the names of Dolichene priests 
 which have come down to us in inscriptions, we find that they 
 were called by such names as the following, all of which express 
 their relation to the cult : Our Lord, Son of God, Heavenly Twin, 
 Son of the Sky, Twin, Eagle (of God ?). The Dolichene cult was, 
 therefore, a twin-cult as well as a sky-cult and a thunder-cult, 
 and the Twins, who here turn up with Zeus, have come down out 
 of ancient times as the Children of the Sky or the assessors of the 
 Thunder. This discovery is important for the study of Twin-cult 
 in Western Asia ; it might have been anticipated from the discovery 
 of the Aryan twins on Hittite monuments. 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 13 
 
 * * 
 
 We have now to cross the Euphrates, in order to find out 
 whether the Barlaha phenomenon reappears in Mesopotamia, and, 
 in particular, in the district Osroene with its capital Edessa. 
 
 We must be prepared for a change of values in religious 
 symbols when we enter Edessa ; for here the Sky counts for more 
 and the Thunder for less. Edessan worship is largely solar, and 
 the twins who are the solar assessors (Monim and Aziz) are almost 
 certainly the Morning and Evening Stars. Alongside of this there 
 appear traces of old Assyrian worship, but not especially of 
 Ramman or Adad so much as of Bel and Nebo. The first impres- 
 sion is that, on entering Mesopotamia, we have left the Thunder 
 behind us. This is not really the case, for down to the sixth 
 century we can find traces of Thunder-cult. One very interesting 
 example will be found in the Scholia of Theodore Bar Koni 1 . 
 He describes a sect in the district of Gozan who worship thunder, 
 and are called Barqaye (i.e. People of the Lightning) : 
 
 Barqa is not that which dazzles in the clouds, but once upon a time there 
 was a man at Rkem in Gaya, who was called Barqin. He was rich but child- 
 less and he made for himself a statue which he called the Thunder (Lightning) 
 of the people of Gozan. 
 
 Upon which Pognon notes that from what Theodore Bar Koni 
 says, we must conclude that down to his day, or not long before 
 his day, the people of the district of Gozan worshipped a deity 
 whom they called Barqa (the Lightning). 
 
 Evidently Bar Koni was puzzled by the accounts given to him 
 of certain Lightning- worshippers : he suggests explanations as to 
 the importation of the statue of the Thunder from abroad, and that 
 it was not really the Thunder, but a certain Mr Thunder. We 
 need not doubt the existence of a Mesopotamian sect of Thunder- 
 worshippers in the sixth century of our era. 
 
 Now let us come to Edessa, and see what we find that is 
 analogous to the Barlaha priest in the district of Commagene. 
 
 We have already stumbled upon one parallel, viz. the case of 
 the veteran Theotecnos, who turns up in the story of the Martyr- 
 dom of Habib the deacon. Theotecnos is, as we have shown, a 
 Dolichene translation of Barlaha, and there is good probability 
 that the name had the same significance in Edessa. We can, 
 moreover, actually find traces of the name Barlaha untranslated 
 in Edessa. 
 
 1 I quote the Scholia from Pognon, Coupes de Khouabir, Part n. Append, n. 
 
14 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [CH. 
 
 First of all, there was a gate of the city called the gate of 
 Barlaha ; and second, there was a sanctuary outside the city called 
 by the name of Beth Mar 1 Barlaha. 
 
 Professor Wright, in his edition of the Chronicle of Joshua the 
 Stylite, reproduces Carsten Niebuhr's map of Edessa 1 with cor- 
 rections from Prof. Hoffmann: in this map we find the gate of 
 Barlaha placed, with some hesitation, on the north of the city. 
 As to the sanctuary of Barlaha, which should be connected, one 
 would think, with the gate of the same name, we are in some 
 difficulty, for it is clearly a Christian sanctuary, and Barlaha has 
 the prefixed Mar 1 of the Christian dignity, and ought therefore to 
 be a Christian saint, unless we take this Mar 1 also to be a survival 
 from a pagan Marin, such as was suggested by the Dolichene 
 inscriptions. Thus we have the perplexity of finding a Christian 
 Barlaha, which appears to contradict what we said of the occur- 
 rence of the name in Commagene as a definitely pagan religious 
 name. Let us see what authorities we have for the Son-of-God 
 Sanctuary. 
 
 We find in the Edessan Chronicle the following statement: 
 "In the year 720 (= A.D. 409) Mar Diogenes became Bishop of 
 Edessa. He began to build the sanctuary of Barlaha." Upon 
 which Hallier notes 2 that nothing is known as to the situation of 
 this shrine. The odd thing about this bishop and his building 
 is that his own name is a Greek equivalent of Barlaha! Later 
 references in the Edessene Chronicle only tell us of more bishops 
 being buried there, as if it were a kind of episcopal mausoleum. 
 
 In the year 525 A.D. Bishop Asklepios of Edessa died in Antioch 
 and was buried there ; his body was translated in the same year 
 to Edessa, and buried in Beth Mar 1 Barlaha, along with Bishop 
 Nonnus. In the year 532 A.D., on Dec. 6th, died Bishop Andreas, 
 and was buried with Bishop Nonnus and Bishop Asklepios in 
 Beth Mar 1 Barlaha. 
 
 The sanctuary must have been a place of some importance, 
 at least from the beginning of the fifth century. There appears 
 to be no knowledge of any saint or martyr after whom it could 
 have been named. The natural suggestion is that it was a pagan 
 sanctuary converted to Christian uses, and that Barlaha was 
 
 1 Voyage en Arabic et en cTautres Pays circumvoisins, traduit de 1'Allemand, 
 1780 n. p. 330. 
 
 2 Edessenische Chronik, p. lor,. 
 
 
i] IN NORTHERN SYRIA 15 
 
 either a pagan priest or one of the Heavenly Twins. He may 
 even have been the Bishop Diogenes himself, in a pre-Christian 
 state of existence. 
 
 Certainly something like this transfer and modification of 
 pagan terms and cults appears to have taken place in the case of 
 Barsamya, one of the earliest of the Edessan martyrs. Here the 
 Commagene parallel is very close, where we found three separate 
 modifications of the name Bar Semaya, the Son of the Sky. We 
 have no means of testing the historical value of the Barsamya 
 legends, but if we have conjectured rightly the meaning of the 
 name, it is not very far from Son of the Sky to Son of God. Both 
 names would, in this view, belong to a pagan cult of the Sky and 
 the Heavenly Bodies. 
 
 There is another reason for believing that in Edessa Barlaha 
 is a pagan name with a pagan meaning. We can actually find a 
 sepulchral inscription containing the feminine form of the name 
 Barlaha. Readers of my Cult of the Heavenly Twins will find a 
 photograph of a sepulchral mosaic, recently discovered on the 
 north of the City of Edessa. It has now been transferred to the 
 museum of Constantinople. It contains a series of portraits of 
 Aphthoniya (if Prof. Burkitt's correction of my first reading be 
 taken) and of his family. This Aphthoniya (or Aphthonius) is 
 the person who is commemorated on one of the Twin Pillars of 
 Edessa as having set up the pillar for Shalmath the Princess. 
 We are discussing what may be described as the central mosaic 
 in a royal mausoleum. The portraits in the mosaic are grouped 
 as follows, with names attached: 
 
 Shumu. Aphthoniya bar Garmu. 
 
 Asu. Garmu. 
 
 Shalmath (Inscription). Barthlaha. 
 
 Clearly this must be regarded as a pagan sepulchre : for two of 
 the persons mentioned in it are connected with the setting up of 
 the Twin Pillars, which cannot be a Christian function. The 
 inscription, too, in which Aphthoniya records the making of the 
 sepulchre for himself and his family, has nothing Christian about 
 it. We may, therefore, feel sure that Barthlaha is a pagan name, 
 and is the exact conjugate of Barlaha which we have been dis- 
 cussing. We cannot speak positively as to how she became 
 entitled to the name Daughter-of-God, i.e. Daughter of the Sky. 
 It does not seem likely a priori that she was a priestess, though 
 
16 ON THE NAME "SON OF GOD" [CH. i 
 
 this is not impossible; perhaps the simplest explanation is that 
 she obtained this name because she was a twin. It seems probable 
 that when this sepulchre was made, Edessa was still pagan. 
 
 Eeviewing the course of the enquiry, the evidence seems to 
 point to a pagan Sky-cult in Edessa: we have drawn attention 
 to (a) Theotecnos; (b) to Barsamya, probably a Christian modi- 
 fication of an original Son of the Sky; (c) to the occurrence of 
 Barlaha as the name of a gate and of a sanctuary at Edessa; 
 (d) to the actual occurrence of the feminine Barthlaha in a pagan 
 sepulchre. 
 
 Our real difficulty was to see how such a name as Barlaha could 
 have passed into Christian use at all. It would almost be blas- 
 phemous to a Christian of the Nicene days, if used as a personal 
 appellation. The case of Barhadad is not quite an exact parallel. 
 We are able to find a Christian Bishop of Telia in the sixth century 
 bearing the name Barhadad. His story is told in the Chronicle 
 of Joshua the Stylite. This name might, however, have become 
 colourless, through the disuse of any reference to Hadad as a 
 deity: it was not much worse than Diogenes. But Barlaha 
 could never lose its meaning, as long as Syriac continued to be 
 spoken, and the meaning must have been offensive to Christian 
 ears. 
 
 The total impression produced on the mind by the enquiry 
 is that Barlaha, as a personal name, in Edessa, has the same 
 meaning as it had in Commagene, with the exception that the 
 deity involved is the Sky-god rather than the Thunder- god. The 
 next thing to be done is to examine whether traces of similar 
 cults and nomenclatures of priesthoods or twins can be found in 
 other districts, and especially in Palestine or the adjacent 
 countries. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE WOODPECKER IN THE BRITISH ISLES 
 
 We now return to the Woodpecker-cult with the object of 
 finding out whether there are any traces of Twin-cult centres or 
 Woodpecker sanctuaries in the British Isles. 
 
 Our investigation into the place of the Woodpecker in Greek 
 and Roman religion has taught us how to proceed. We ascertained, 
 for example, that there was a town in Attica, called Keleai, ruled 
 over by a certain King Keleos, who had twin children, named 
 Jason (or Jasion) and Triptolemos, and who was on terms 
 of friendship and hospitality with Demeter. Since Keleos is the 
 Green Woodpecker, and twins are involved in the legend, we 
 identify Keleai as a twin-town. It is a not unnatural supposition, 
 judging from West African parallels, to suggest that Keleai might 
 have been Twin-village to Eleusis, or even to Athens. However 
 that may be, the identification tells us to look for the cult-centres 
 in places named after the Thunder-bird or the Thunder, or in places 
 that have a traditional connection with Twins. The same kind 
 of enquiry would be made, if the town in question had been named 
 after the twins, instead of their sire. 
 
 In Italy we do not always have the evidence before us in com- 
 plete form. Picenum is certainly a Woodpecker town, and the 
 legends of Picenum tell us that the Woodpecker was actually 
 worshipped on a pillar as the guide of the original emigrants who 
 founded the city. As we have no Picene history we cannot be 
 certain that Twins were involved in the foundation, but there is 
 a probability that the Picus of Picenum is parallel to the Keleos 
 of Keleai, and that the emigration under the leadership of the 
 
 R.H. 2 
 
18 THE WOODPECKER IN [CH. 
 
 Woodpecker was in reality an exile of persons under the Twin and 
 Woodpecker taboo 1 . In the case of Rome the evidence is more 
 nearly complete : the twins are there, and the woodpecker parents 
 on the sacred tree : the sanctuary also is, as Livy shows us, part 
 of the primitive Roman tradition. We do not yet know the 
 meaning of Rome, or of Romulus (Romus) and Remus, but that 
 does not prevent us from a convincing identification of Rome as 
 a Twin- town and a Woodpecker- town. 
 
 Now let us turn to Northern Europe, and in particular to the 
 British Isles. 
 
 Following the analogy of Eleusis (i.e. Keleai) and Picenum, 
 we should naturally look for places that are named after the 
 Woodpecker, including places that are named after the Thunder, 
 in later than bird-form. If such places exist, they may be 
 sufficiently numerous to convince us that we are dealing with a 
 cult, and with centres at which the cult is practised. In the same 
 way we may, apart from places, find persons who bear a name 
 that is directly or indirectly borrowed from the Woodpecker or 
 the Thunder: if such names were to occur frequently we should 
 suspect that they had a religious meaning: and especially if the 
 personal names turned out to be place-names as well, we should 
 put down the inferred place-names as cult-centres or sanctuaries. 
 This, then, is the direction in which we have to look, and it is 
 not one that at first sight seems promising of good results. For 
 in the first place, the etymology either of localities or of persons 
 has been a hunting-ground for the unscientific, whose zeal for 
 foregone conclusion was equal to their ignorance of philology: 
 and in the next place, those persons who have been studying 
 philologically the place-names of the British Isles (and the same 
 thing is true of the personal names) have almost nothing to offer 
 us as the results of what has been in many cases a painstaking 
 and scientific investigation. 
 
 During the past few years a number of excellent monographs 
 have appeared dealing with the place-names of various counties 
 
 1 We may, however, show that the case of Picenum was not peculiar. The 
 same feature occurs among the people of Latium whom the Romans called 
 Aborigines, where we have the oracle of the l>inl described alternatively as an 
 oracle of Mars. On the one hand this leads us to infer that in Rome "Picus was 
 also Mars," and therefore again we see that the Woodpecker is the parent of the 
 Roman twins: on the other hand, the conjunction of Picus and Mars is suggested 
 for Picenum, and this again suggests the twin-cult. See Dion. Hal. Antiq. I. 14. 
 
n] THE BRITISH ISLES 19 
 
 and districts in England. My friend, the late Professor Skeat, 
 was responsible for Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedford- 
 shire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire 1 : but neither in these mono- 
 graphs, nor in any of the studies of place-names of other counties 
 which have been published (with one or two slight exceptions), 
 does there appear to be any consciousness of the Woodpecker's 
 existence, or any sense that he might, conceivably, have a right 
 to exist. The only exceptions which I have noted thus far 
 (without any pretence at completeness of acquaintance with 
 possible forms) are as follows. 
 
 Goodall in his Place-names of S.W. Yorkshire, p. 138, remarks 
 on the forms Fenay and Fenwick, that "the first element may be 
 either OE fin, a plant-name, or OE fina, a woodpecker." 
 
 Again, on p. 167, he notes as follows: 
 
 Hickleton, Doncaster, DB Chicheltone, Icheltone, PF 1201 Hykelton, 
 PC 1240 Hikilton, KI 1285 Hikylton. BCS has the place-name Hiceleswyrth 
 which may be explained as "the farm of Hicel" 2 . It will be noted, however, 
 that the early forms of Hickleton have neither -s nor -e to represent the 
 genitive. Probably the name must therefore be explained as "woodpeckBr 
 farm" from OE Hicol; see Middendorff. 
 
 The reference at the end is to MiddendorfFs Altenglisches 
 Flurnamenbuch, p. 70, where we find as follows: "hicol st. m. 
 Specht: ne.dial. hickol. aethiceles wyrde 27 (vor a. 672)," 
 i.e. hicol is a strong English masculine form and means wood- 
 pecker: in neo-English dialect it is hickol: in the Saxon Cartu- 
 laries of Birch, we find the place-name "set hiceles wyrde" (or 
 
 1 To this I must now add the recent monograph on the place-names of Suffolk 
 (A.D. 1913), which appears to have been his last published work. It is, in fact, 
 posthumous. And here the Woodpecker is discovered, as the following extract 
 will show (p. 46): "Spexhall. Copinger gives as old spellings such forms as 
 Speccyshale, Spectyshale (obvious error for Speccyshale), Spetteshale (error for 
 Specceshale), Speckshall. The suffix is clearly hale. The prefix can only take the 
 form of Specces, gen. of an A.S.* Specc, which is unknown. If it were a name we 
 should then have 'Speck's nook' as the sense. The E.D.D. says that Speck is 
 the Norf. word for a woodpecker, which would represent an A.S.* specc and would 
 be cognate with the German Spech-t. Kluge says that the E. Speight, a woodpecker, 
 is borrowed from German, but thinks that the G. Specht may be allied to the 
 A.S. specca, a speck; with reference to the parti-coloured plumage of the bird. 
 My guess is that the name means ' woodpecker's nook '." 
 
 2 The algebra of this is meant for experts: DB is the Domesday Book, PF 
 stands for Pedes finium, PC for the Pontefract Chartulary, KI for Kirkbys inquest, 
 BCS for Birch's Cartularium Saxonicum: the numbers represent the dates of the 
 documentary evidence. 
 
 22 
 
20 THE WOODPECKEK IN [OH. 
 
 Hicklesworth) before the year A.D. 672 l . I do not think there 
 is any other writer on place-names who has made the same or 
 a similar suggestion. Commonly the reference is made to a per- 
 sonal name Finn, to which a place-ending has been attached, or, 
 for the other form quoted, and related forms, to a personal name 
 Hicel. For example, Mutschmann, in his Place-names of Notting- 
 hamshire, derives Hickling as "an O.E. patronymic: cet (H)ic- 
 lingum, 'at the dwelling-place of the family of Hicel .' The 
 Iclingas were a noble family to whom St Guthlac belonged. It is, 
 however, by no means certain that Hickling was a settlement of 
 that particular clan. The descendants of any man called Hicel 
 would be called Hicelingas." 
 
 There are, as we see in this typical example, no attempts to 
 explain the hypothetical Hicel. It is clear that the Woodpecker, 
 if he lies hidden under the forms alluded to, has not been 
 recognised as a factor in English place-names, to any appreciable 
 extent. 
 
 The same thing is also true of the personal names which are 
 so closely involved in the names of places. It is unfortunate that 
 the study of personal names is so far behind the study of place- 
 names : it is still hardly out of the pre-scientific stage, where forms 
 are explained by the imagination without regard to their history 
 and development. Such a work as Bardsley's on English Surnames 
 is an illustration of what we refer to. It is a mixture of pseudo- 
 science and pious reflections. To do Bardsley justice, however, 
 he must be credited with having discovered the Woodpecker as 
 a personal name. For example, p. 495: "In our 'Woodalls,' 
 ' Woodales' and ' Woodwalls,' not to say some of our * Woodwells,' 
 we are but reminded of the woodwale, the early woodpecker." 
 After which the absurd addition is made that "Our 'Rains' 
 are but the old * Robert or William le Rain' , another term for the 
 same," because the Woodpecker is a rain-bird and prognosticates 
 rain by its crying. No doubt the last statement is correct enough, 
 but it will task the ingenuity of the imaginative to find a Wood- 
 pecker who is called, even popularly, le Rain 2 . 
 
 1 From Middendorff, apparently, came Goodall's other reference, if we may 
 judge from the following (p. 51): "fin, Pflanzenname; Hauhechel, Ochsenkraut 
 (ononis arvensis) ne. dial, fin; to finleage 627 (a. 909); fmbeorh <)!)2 (a. <>f>7). jinn ; 
 sw. m. Specht; fina; marsopicus, Ep. Gl. 648; to finan ma><l\vum LMii (um 780)." 
 
 2 Mr Bardsley in his list of bird-names has also noted Speight, of which more 
 anon. 
 
n] THE BRITISH ISLES 21 
 
 Mr Moorman, in his valuable monograph on W . Riding Place- 
 Names, introduces the Woodpecker-hypothesis only to reject it, 
 e.g. p. vii: 
 
 To the student of local nomenclature it would seem at first sight as if these 
 names (compounded with Eccle or Eccles) signified the hill, brook, ford, or 
 enclosure of a man named Ecel, Eccel, or ./Ecel; and bearing in mind the 
 modern dialect word eckle, meaning a green woodpecker, he might assume 
 that O.E. Ecel, Eccel, or JScel was a nickname, bestowed upon some early 
 English settlers in the same way that other bird and beast and fish names 
 were bestowed. But this interpretation of the place-names compounded 
 with Eccles is open to two objections. 
 
 So Mr Moorman throws the Woodpecker over. 
 
 Since, then, we cannot find much done for us in the suggested 
 enquiry by previous topographers, we must begin the investigation 
 anew, with a full sense of the danger that besets us, of falling 
 into the same philological traps that have been in the way of those 
 who have preceded us. 
 
 A few stray notes have already appeared in the pages of 
 Boanerges: it will be convenient to ignore these and begin the 
 enquiry afresh. 
 
 In such an investigation our first care is to avoid dulness in 
 the treatment of the theme. It would be easy to begin by 
 gathering long lists of names of places that might reflect coinci- 
 dences with possible names of the Woodpecker: but we would 
 rather, in such an interesting enquiry, begin in a different way 
 and leave the statistics and anything approaching to tabular 
 record to the last stage of the study. The following appears to 
 be the most attractive way of opening up the question. 
 
 Some time ago, when walking down the High Street of Guild- 
 ford, my eyes fell upon a name which stood over one of the leading 
 houses of business ; the name which caught my attention was an 
 unusual one, which I had never noticed before; it is a common 
 amusement with me to try and unravel the names which are on 
 the sign -boards of the streets through which one passes. The 
 name to which I refer was Woodhatch. Instinctively I trans- 
 lated it as Woodpecker. Could this identification be justified? 
 Or was it just a freak of the imagination? 
 
 Those who have some acquaintance with the ornithology of 
 Great Britain will recall that there is another British bird, closely 
 allied by the classification of natural orders to the Woodpecker, 
 which passes under the name of Nuthatch. Here we have the 
 
22 THE WOODPECKER IN [CH. 
 
 same termination as in Woodhatch, and since the bird in question 
 is named from its curious habit of fixing nuts in the bark of trees 
 and similar convenient crevices, and then hammering the shells 
 with its beak, it would seem that the last syllable of its name 
 ought to have something to do with the process of opening the 
 nuts. That is, Nuthatch should be cognate to Nuthack. We 
 must try and find out whether such a form nuthack exists, and if 
 it exists, we must then go on and enquire whether a similar cognate 
 form Woodhack can be found to go with Woodhatch. Before doing 
 this, a brief justification may be made of the habits of the Nut- 
 hatch in getting at its food. White, in his History of Selborne 1 , 
 remarks of the Nuthatch that 
 
 As this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like 
 an adroit workman he fixes it, as it were, in a vice, in some cleft of a tree or 
 in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the stubborn shell. 
 We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post where nut-hatches 
 have been known to haunt, and have always found that those birds have 
 readily penetrated them. While at work they make a rapping noise that can 
 be heard at a considerable distance. 
 
 The description makes it easy to see that the Nuthatch belongs 
 to the same natural order as the Woodpecker. 
 
 Now let us see what Sir Thomas Browne says of the Nuthatch. 
 In discussing certain birds found in Norfolk, he remarks as follows 2 
 
 Picus Martius, or Woodspeck, many kinds, (including) a dun-coloured 
 little bird, called a nuthack. They make holes in the trees without any 
 consideration of the winds or quarters, butt as the rottenness thereof 
 affordeth convenience. 
 
 Here we see that Sir Thomas Browne has rightly recognised 
 the Nuthatch as belonging to the same order as the Woodpecker ; 
 but he tells us further that the birds in question are, in Norfolk, 
 called respectively Nuthack and Woodspeck. Here, then, is the 
 evidence that -hatch in Nuthatch is the same thing as -hack. It 
 is natural, then, to suggest that if we went further north, remem- 
 bering that hatch changes into hack, as we pass from South English 
 to North, we might find the Woodpecker under the form Woodhack. 
 Enquiry elicits the interesting information that the Woodpecker 
 is actually known as the Woodhack in Lincolnshire. Sir Thomas 
 Browne's other information also turns out to be verified, for the 
 bird is at this very day called in Norfolk the W oodspack ; and it 
 
 1 Loc. cit. ii. IT-''. 2 Notes on Certain Birds found in Norfolk 
 
 in Sir Thomas Browne's works (ed. Sayle), ra. 520. 
 
ii] THE BRITISH ISLES 23 
 
 seems clear that we have here (and as we shall see, elsewhere) the 
 equivalent of the German Specht. We conclude, then, that the 
 Guildford name which drew our attention is the name of the 
 Woodpecker. 
 
 Starting with this discovery we now proceed to the next 
 point, which is that the name in question is not really a personal 
 name at all, but a place-name. For there is, in the same county 
 of Surrey, about two miles from Reigate, a village named Wood- 
 hatch: and we naturally infer that the Guildford family are a 
 migration from that particular village, and that their name, as 
 so often occurs in English, is the name of their place of origin. 
 From which it follows that we have discovered in Surrey a Wood- 
 pecker village. 
 
 The method of demonstration is very simple, but it has 
 advantages of its own. If we had first found the village, the 
 authorities on place-names, from Skeat downward, would have 
 insisted that Woodhatch merely meant Wood-gate, and that 
 hatch was for the Anglo-Saxon haecca, a gate. It is chronic with 
 the philologians to explain hatch in this way. We are not con- 
 cerned to deny that their explanation is sometimes correct, as for 
 instance, that in Shakespeare (and in Cambridge Colleges) a 
 buttery-hatch is a half-gate over which beer, etc., can be served ; 
 and that a ship's hatchway requires a similar explanation; but 
 if we follow this derivation too closely we shall miss the solution 
 of the corresponding forms in hack, for which the same philologians 
 usually refer us to the Norwegian personal name Haco or Hacon. 
 It is clear that they must be often, perhaps very often, on the 
 wrong track. We propose to them an alternative solution that 
 hack and hatch are equivalent forms, and belong to the action of 
 the birds referred to in getting their food. In making that 
 statement we open up at once a wide field for further enquiry; 
 for there are a number of places that contain hack and hatch in 
 composition, and a number of personal names from the same roots. 
 We must clearly go further and see if there are more Woodpeckers 
 on the path before us. 
 
 Suppose we go into Hampshire ; we shall find a village whose 
 name is Hatchwood. Clearly this must be the same name as the 
 Woodhatch with which we started. Then we shall find Hatch by 
 itself in Bedford, Surrey, Devon, Somerset and Wilts. In Hamp- 
 shire we shall find also a place named Hackwood, in which the 
 
24 THE WOODPECKEK IN [CH. 
 
 harder northern pronunciation appears somewhat unexpectedly. 
 In Surrey again we find Hatchlands, where Hatch can certainly not 
 be a gate, nor can it represent the hacking action of the bird; 
 it must be the bird itself : so that when the personal name Hack 
 turns up (as it does in my own family) or the corresponding Hatch 
 (as in the case of one of our great Church historians of the last 
 generation), we must say of them that they belong to the Wood- 
 pecker clan. 
 
 We thus have acquired already a number of Woodpecker 
 centres: nor does it appear that we have done any violence to 
 English philology in drawing the conclusions. The only objection 
 that could be made would be to show that the place-names or the 
 associated personal names which we are discussing are not in their 
 earliest documentary form : every student of place-names knows 
 how the apparent meaning of the name is contradicted, when we 
 come across its archaic form in the Domesday book or the Pipe- 
 rolls. That is the direction in which the traps lie for the unwary 
 amateur. In the present case, however, it is clear that since we 
 have, as has been demonstrated, a village named Woodhatch, 
 and a bird of an equivalent name, the primitive form of the one 
 will be the primitive form of the other, for the same laws of 
 phonetic change may be assumed to have operated in the two 
 cases : hence, whatever the primitive form may be, the place-name 
 and the bird-name can still be identified. We may also say, 
 without making too rapid generalisations, that it will be wise to 
 examine carefully place-names in which hack or hatch is a factor, 
 in order to see whether they conceal the form or activity of the 
 Woodpecker. 
 
 We have also learned another thing from Sir Thomas Browne. 
 His identification of the Norfolk Woodpecker with the Woodspeck 
 opened up at once the connection between the Norfolk name and 
 the German Specht. We shall clearly have to collect not merely 
 the English names of the Woodpecker but such names as may 
 correspond to them in French, German or Norwegian, for it is 
 by such identifications that we can make ourselves reasonably 
 sure that our interpretations are correct, and not due to the way- 
 wardness of our own imagination. Suppose we find that in 
 Bavaria the Woodpecker is called baumhdckel (baum = tree), 
 the form betrays parallelism with Woodhatch ; if we had any 
 residual doubt it would disappear on finding that in Prussia the 
 
ii] THE BRITISH ISLES 25 
 
 Woodpecker is called holzhacker (holz = wood), which certainly 
 has nothing to do with Anglo-Saxon haecca, a gate, and is almost 
 exactly the equivalent of Woodhack. The German forms bring 
 out more clearly the meaning of the English : the hack or hdckel 
 is a hoe, the hacker is a person who strikes with a hoe or a pick. 
 Either the pick and the hoe have been named after the Wood- 
 pecker or conversely. I think we shall see reason to believe that 
 primitive man named his first digging-stick after the bird, and not 
 the bird after his digging-stick. He probably revered the Wood- 
 pecker before practising agriculture. There is nothing strange in 
 Picus giving his name to the pick. 
 
 Let us see what Grimm's German dictionary will say on the 
 points before us. Here is a specimen. 
 
 Hackel. Auch d.er baume beheckende specht heizt im bair. baumhackel 
 Schmeller 2149 (sonst baumJiacker) : zu diesem hackel stellt sich ganz das 
 mundartliche englische eckle a Woodpecker, Halliwell 329 a. 
 
 Our journey to the German dictionary sends us back enriched. 
 We are not only told that the Specht hacks trees, and so furnishes 
 us with the parallel to our Woodhack, but we are told also that 
 there is a nearer parallel to hdckel in a popular English name for 
 the Woodpecker, which is called in many places eckle. If Grimm 
 is right in his parallel, we shall be able presently to explain a number 
 of English place-names. Meanwhile, we note in passing that the 
 Woodpecker is a personal name in Germany as well as with 
 ourselves, and that the author of the Riddle of the Universe may 
 at least find out something about himself, whatever he does with 
 the other conundrum. Here is another specimen from Grimm, 
 which will give us some information in another direction. 
 
 baumhaekel, picus arborarius, we.il der specht in den baum hackt, baum- 
 bicker, ostr. baumhackel Hofer 1. 66. 
 
 der baumheckel, der baumheckel 
 
 kaum auch hernach gelaufen 
 
 Uhland 36. 
 
 griinspecht und baumhackel, den bienenstocken bose gaste: Hohberg 2. 376. 
 vgl. bienenwolf und specht. 
 
 This entry is peculiarly interesting: the Woodpecker hacks 
 at the tree, he is called also baumbicker which is a very close 
 parallel to woodpecker, and stands for an original baum-picker. 
 Then we have the dialect form, baumheckel, and lastly a reminder 
 that Germany also had a Beowulf, or Bee-wolf, which was an 
 enemy to the beehives, just as we saw in the case of King Keleos. 
 
26 THE WOODPECKER IN [CH. 
 
 We have before us the task of collecting the folk-names of the 
 Woodpecker, and the corresponding names in European languages, 
 more or less closely related to our own. For the former we may 
 naturally refer to Wright's Dialect Dictionary, where we shall find 
 a good many collected, or to Swainson's list in Folk-Names of 
 British Birds', for the latter, we shall use an important article 
 by Riegler in Zeitschrift fur Volkskunde for 1913 (heft 3, pp. 265- 
 277), as well as a special Scandinavian list, kindly furnished to 
 us by Dr Feilberg. To take an example : Wright will tell us that 
 in Shropshire, the Woodpecker is known by the name of Yockle. 
 A reference to a county map will show us, at a short distance from 
 Shrewsbury, a village named Yockleton. If Yockle is really the 
 Salopian Woodpecker, then Yockleton is a Woodpecker village; 
 and this result is practically independent of the original form of 
 the place-name ; for setting aside the possible influence upon the 
 life-history of a word from the addition of a suffix and consequent 
 change of accent, we must admit that whatever Yockleton goes 
 back into, Yockle will go back with it. That means that we have 
 discovered another Woodpecker village ; perhaps it may even be 
 the twin-village attached to Shrewsbury 1 . 
 
 Here is another curious place-identification. In Yorkshire 
 the Woodpecker has had a number of popular names, such as 
 Yaffle, Speight and Pickatree. The first is supposed to represent 
 the laughing cry of the bird (one of its two fundamental notes), 
 the second we shall establish presently and show that it is the 
 German Specht; the third is the name that perplexed me most, 
 as I could not find an analogical formation, nor a corresponding 
 place-name. For this reason I stated in Boanerges (p. 332) that 
 I had not found any parallel to it. Pickatree may be interpreted 
 as Pick-on-tree, that is, it may be explained by the action or the 
 position of the bird. The parallel form comes to us from Denmark, 
 where we find the name Traepikker for the Woodpecker, or the 
 
 1 The students of place-names are all at sea over Yockleton, which is in the 
 Domesday Book in the form Loclehuile (or Yockle-hill). Johnston, in his 
 Place-Names of England and Wale*, reports the matter as follows: "Yockleton, 
 (Shrewsbury) Dom. Loclehuile, error for Geochulle, just as Dom. has Locheshale 
 for Yoxall. This seems to be 'village of the yokel,' at least there seems no likely 
 man's name; only yokel, 'a boor, a country lout,' is, so far as records go, a recent 
 and dialect word, for which we can find nothing earlier than Jamieson's yochel, 
 'a big stupid person.' Probably it is derived from yoke and meant originally 'a 
 ploughman. 1 '' See also Duignan, Staffordshire Place-Names, pp. 177, 178. 
 
ii] THE BRITISH ISLES 27 
 
 Norwegian Traepikka ; and I see now that Picktree is the name of 
 a village in Durham not far from Chester-le-Street. So here is 
 another Woodpecker village identified. 
 
 Woodhack and Traepikker lead us naturally to the discussion 
 of forms which involve Pick, and may be connected either remotely, 
 or directly through the Romance languages, with the name of the 
 Woodpecker. There seems to be little doubt that the Woodpecker 
 is directly responsible for the personal name Peckover, either 
 through the Italian Pico verde (Green Woodpecker) or the equiva- 
 lent French Pic-vert; and when we find in Cheshire a village 
 named Pickforton 1 , it seems almost a necessity to explain it as 
 the town of the Pic-vert. What then shall we say of Picton and 
 a number of associated forms? It used to be said that Pickshill 
 in Bedfordshire was named after the Picts: as Skeat points out 
 it is "absurdly spelt Pictshill in the Ordnance map." Skeat's 
 explanation is that the "prefix is the A.S. Pices, gen. of Pic, 
 answering to the modern E. Pika as a surname 2 ." Very good, 
 but who is Pic ? A closely connected form is Pickhill near Thirsk 
 in Yorkshire, of which Johnston notes that in the Domesday 
 Book it is Picala, -ale and that it means the Nook of Pice. Who 
 then is Ptcc? (See what Skeat says above in reference to the 
 Suffolk name Spexhall.) 
 
 When we come to discuss Pickton and Pickworth, we are 
 advised that in A.D. 1340 Pickton (Cheshire) is spelt Pykton, and 
 that Pickworth (Rutland) is in A.D. 818 Piccingawurth and in 
 A.D. 1460 Pykeworth. So that these names represent the "town 
 of Pice" and the "farm of the descendants of Pice." Who then 
 is Pice who gives his name to so many centres in different parts 
 of the country? Searle's Onomasticon suggests as Saxon names 
 both Pic and Pice, but has only a single instance of either. It is 
 
 1 I am not quite satisfied about Picforton ; in the Domesday Book it is given 
 as Pievreton, which looks like an attempt to render the French Pie-vert or pic-vert. 
 On the other hand, in documents as early as 1093 A.D., and for centuries after, 
 the common spelling is Pecforton, the second e of the Domesday name being 
 replaced by an o: it is possible that this stands for Pic-ford-ton, which brings 
 the Woodpecker in by another road. See what is said below on Pickford as a 
 Woodpecker name. 
 
 2 So Wyld and Hirst, Place-Names o/ Lancashire, p. 209, identify Pexhill as 
 follows : 
 
 ]- Pexhille: De Lac. comp. pp. 45, 48, 59. 
 1305 ' 
 
 The "hill" named after a person called Paecc, or Pecc. 
 
28 THE WOODPECKEK IN 
 
 clear that the personal name must have existed, but how does it 
 colour the country-side so widely? The simple and natural 
 explanation is that the Woodpecker has been a factor in personal 
 and local names, just as he gave us Picus and Picenum in ancient 
 Italy. 
 
 In this particular case the name has reached us by two roads. 
 It may be the Latin Picus through French influence. It may, 
 however, have come from the north of Europe, and answer to a 
 Scandinavian Pikker. In this connection here is an important 
 piece of evidence showing that the Woodpecker was actually 
 worshipped on the Baltic as late as the seventeenth century. 
 The evidence comes to us from John Gutslaff, who took down 
 the subjoined prayer from the lips of an old Esthonian farmer. 
 (John Gutslaff is the man to whom we owe the design, in A.D. 1656, 
 of translating the New Testament into the Esthonian dialect, 
 which translation, according to Darlow and Moule, was published 
 at Riga in 1686 1 .) The prayer is quoted from Gutslaff in Grimm, 
 Teutonic Mythology, and apparently from Grimm by Frazer 
 (G. B. n. 368), and Fiona Macleod in the Turn of the Year, pp. 48 
 sqq. I make these references as it is important to see how Grimm 
 has been treated in citation. Now for the prayer, as it is given 
 in the English translation of Grimm. 
 
 Dear Thunder (Woda Picker), we offer to thee an ox that hath two horns 
 and four cloven hoofs, and we would pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, 
 that our straw be copper-red, our grain be golden-yellow. Push elsewhither 
 all the thick black clouds, over great fens, high forests and wildernesses. But 
 unto us ploughers and sowers give a fruitful season and sweet rain. Holy 
 Thunder (poka Picken) guard our seed-field that it bear good straw below, 
 good ears above, and good grain within. 
 
 Upon this Grimm remarks that Picker and Picken are closely 
 related to the Finnic pitkdinen thunder, and that " as the fertility 
 of the land depends on thunder-storms and rains, Pickaine and 
 Zeus appear as the oldest divinity of agricultural nations." 
 Apparently Grimm had not the least suspicion that the Pikker 
 whom he was identifying with the Thunder was the Woodpecker. 
 Frazer is in the same case, for in transcribing Grimm, apparently 
 
 1 Gutslaff' s book is called Kurzer bericht und unterricht von der falsch heilig 
 genandten bdche in Liefland Wohhanda. Dorpt, 1644. 
 
 See also Petersen, Finn. Mythol. p. 17; Rosenplanter's Beitrdge, heft 5, 
 p. 157. 
 
ii] THE BRITISH ISLES 29 
 
 from the original, he gives us "Dear Thunder... holy Thunder/' 
 and thus drops Pikker altogether. 
 
 Fiona Macleod, however, who is normally far less trustworthy, 
 as scholars would judge, has given the right meaning to the passage 
 in a delightful essay on The Awakener of the Forests , where he 
 quotes Grimm as follows : 
 
 Perhaps to this day the Esthonian peasant offers in his heart a prayer 
 to Pikker, the Woodpecker-god, god of Thunder, and storm-god too, of the glades 
 and fields where these can devastate a prayer such as that which Johann 
 Gutslaff, a Finnish author of the seventeenth century, cites as the supplication 
 of an old Esthonian farmer: Beloved Pikker, etc. 
 
 No doubt this is the correct explanation, the Esthonian cloud- 
 compelling Zeus was the Woodpecker. If he is called Pikker or 
 Pikken, we need not detach these from the Scandinavian forms 
 in which he appears as traepikker or traepikka, nor from the 
 parallel forms in English dialects : and when a statement of English 
 names traces back a form to a Saxon Pice or Picca, we ought to 
 have no hesitation as to the meaning of the name: it is our 
 primeval god that has come upon the scene! 
 
 The question then takes the form of an enquiry into the 
 distribution of the "pick" sites. We must collect the probable 
 names, and endeavour by means of early documents, Anglo-Saxon 
 charters, Domesday entries and the like, to find the earliest 
 forms in which the names appear. Sometimes names which have 
 provoked suspicion will have to be removed from our collections ; 
 but sometimes it will be found that, where no suspicion had been 
 provoked, the early documents will betray the form. Here are 
 some names that will repay examination: 
 
 Pickford (Warwick). Pickhill (N. Riding of Yorks.). 
 
 Pickmere (Cheshire). Pickwell (Sussex and Leicester). 
 
 Pickwick (Wilts.). Pickness (Yorks.). 
 
 Some of these are surely Woodpecker names. 
 
 Then we can also employ the parallelism of the forms which 
 occur under "hack" and then under "pick." It must be lawful 
 to group together 
 
 Pickness (Yorks.) with Hackness (Yorks.). 
 
 Pickford (Warwick) with Hackford (Norfolk). 
 
 Pickwood (Yorks.) with Hackwood (Hampshire). 
 
 Picton (Yorks., etc., etc.) with Hackton (Essex). 
 
 If one of a pair is a Woodpecker name, the other will almost 
 certainly follow the classification. 
 
30 THE WOODPECKER IN [CH. 
 
 When we examine the distribution of the places identified we 
 see that they are all over the country-side, so that it will not be 
 permissible to assume that they are personal names in the first 
 instances, or generally. A clan of Picks, Pikes or Peakes, would 
 not be spread over the country : we might trace their migrations, 
 or even determine their nationality, but even then they will only 
 lie on lines and in defined districts. The Woodpecker, however, 
 cannot be "cribbed, cabined or confined" by boundaries other than 
 forests; and at first the forests are everywhere. The personal 
 names, however, will have their own interests ; sometimes, as we 
 have so often seen, they are place-names obscured : it is interesting 
 to know that the waggons that pass along our roads bearing the 
 name of Pickford 1 owe their superscription to a Woodpecker 
 which once had the duty of guarding the passage of a stream in 
 days when, perhaps, there were no bridges ! And of course it is 
 a joy to find the village that Mr Pickwick came from, and to take 
 him back to his place in folk-lore. How he would have loved the 
 study, preferring it even to the tittlebats on Hampstead Heath 
 or to the epigraphic labours of Mr William Stumps! 
 
 Our next group is what may be called the Specht-group. 
 Sir Thomas Browne introduces us to it, by the remark that in 
 Norfolk, in his day, the Woodpecker was called Woodspeck. This 
 can only be the German Specht. Collateral forms will be the 
 Swedish Hackspett with the variant form Hackspik. The simpler 
 form in that same language is Spatt or Spett. In Norway we have 
 Spetta and Hakkespek. All these forms are instructive: for 
 instance, the meaning of Hack is hardly in doubt; nor need we 
 hesitate if we find in Norfolk the form Woodspite to equate the 
 second syllable with Specht. In Yorkshire Speight is a character- 
 istic name, and it is certainly a Woodpecker. I do not think you 
 will find a single Speight in the whole city of Birmingham, but 
 you will find them abundantly in Yorkshire. The first great 
 Chaucer student bore this name, and he was a Yorkshire man. 
 
 Here is a more obscure case. Three miles east of Worcester 
 is a village called Spetchley. The place-namers are in difficulties 
 over its meaning. The matter is analysed by Duignan in his 
 
 1 There is an alternative supposition (v. supra) (hat, just as Telford has been 
 evolved out of a primitive Norman-Fn n< -h Taill<--f,r, which itself subsists among 
 us as Telfer, so Pickford may stand for an original Pic-vert. But then we have 
 Hackford also as a place-name. 
 
n] THE BRITISH ISLES 31 
 
 excellent book on Worcestershire Place- Names. First he collects 
 the dated early forms: we have 
 
 A.D. 816. Specleaton. 
 
 A.D. 967. Speclea (and so in Domesday). 
 
 A.D. 1275. Spechesleye. 
 
 These forms lead to the suggestion of a proper name spaec- : but, 
 says Dr Duignan, there is no such recorded name, nor anything 
 like it. He then suggests the Anglo-Saxon spaec speech, and 
 conjectures that Spetchley may have been a place of popular 
 assembly: but being evidently dissatisfied with his Garden of 
 Speech or Lea of Speech, he falls back on the solution " Spaec 
 probably represents some unrecorded proper name." He leaves 
 it unsettled, but his investigation was entirely on the right line. 
 It only needed the observation that the missing proper name was 
 (with the smallest internal change) the Woodpecker. 
 
 Under this head a number of interesting place-names come 
 into consideration. The village of Speeton in Yorks, to the north 
 of Bridlington, is in the Domesday Book under two or three 
 entries and spellings ; there is Speeton and Spetton : and which- 
 ever is the genuine spelling, it must be the equivalent of Speight- 
 town. We actually get the form Speighton in Devon (a county 
 not very rich in Woodpecker names). We must also examine 
 Spaxton (Somerset), Spettisbury (Dorset), Speke (Lancashire), 
 and Spixworth (Norfolk). For the variation between Speight 
 and Speke we may compare the Swedish forms of the Woodpecker- 
 name Hackspett and Hackspik. For the meaning of Speke we 
 have an interesting note in Wyld and Hirst, Place-Names of 
 Lancashire. First the forms are collected: 
 
 A.D. 1086. Spec. 
 A.D. 1340. Speck. 
 A.D. 1509. Speake. 
 
 Then the previous suggestions are canvassed, as to whether it 
 means " swine-pastures," from the O.E. spic which means " bacon " : 
 of which the remark is made that it does not seem probable. 
 Then comes the suggestion that perhaps it has something to do 
 with O.E. sp(r)ecan, speak, which is dismissed as just as difficult 
 to believe! Finally, in despair, we are told that "these uncom- 
 pounded names are very difficult." As may be seen above, the 
 name could have been found in composition, Speeton, etc. 
 
32 THE WOODPECKEK IN [CH. 
 
 We now come to a very interesting group of place-names, 
 which are almost certainly connected with a group of folk-names 
 of the Woodpecker. 
 
 It was observed above that Goodall in his Place-Names of 
 S.W. Yorkshire had explained the form Hickleton as being a 
 Woodpecker- ton, because hicel or hicol is one of the English names 
 for the Woodpecker. In this he was following Middendorff, who 
 had apparently learnt from Halliwell that the bird was commonly 
 called eckle. The folk-names come to our aid at this point: for 
 instance, at the present day the Woodpecker is known all over 
 Worcestershire as the stock-eagle (or tree-eagle). Here the eagle is 
 evidently the same thing as the form eckle referred to above: 
 and it will be difficult to dissociate it from hicel or hicol. In 
 Northamptonshire, the bird is known by the popular name of 
 Jack Ickle, which connects itself readily with the other forms. 
 
 Now there is a place-name which in one form or other, simply 
 or in composition, is found all over the country, and it is commonly 
 supposed that the word Eccles means a church and is connected 
 with Ecclesia. That is the popular explanation, and we must 
 not assume that it is always wrong: there are, however, grave 
 objections to it. For instance, Mr Horsfall Turner pointed out 
 that the name was attached to places in Yorkshire where there 
 has certainly never been a church. In the next place, there is a 
 simpler form to be detached ; and this simpler form Eccle cannot 
 by any subtlety be evolved from Eccles. It must be itself the 
 original, and Eccles must be its genitive formation. Not only is 
 it true of the place-names, but even the associated personal 
 names preserve the form Eccle ; I noted it recently in the Expositor 
 in the form Ekil (which is the folk-name of the bird in Oxfordshire) 
 as the writer of an article. Let us see what explanations are 
 current of Eccle and Eccles. 
 
 Goodall discusses among S.W. Yorkshire place-names the 
 forms Eccles, Eccleshall, Ecclesfield, Eccleshill, Exley, etc., and 
 says that "the name Eccles in its simplest form" (by which I 
 suppose he means Eccles out of composition) "is to be found as 
 far north as the Firth of Forth, and as far south as the borders 
 of the English Channel. There are even instances across the 
 North Sea. The diffusion can be seen if we register eight cases of 
 Eccles in Kent, Lanes., Yorks., N.E. Norfolk, Scotch Lowlands, 
 and N.E. France, together with Ecclesbrook (Wore.), Eccles- 
 
ii] THE BRITISH ISLES 33 
 
 bourne (Sussex, Hants and Derby), Eccleston (Cheshire, two), 
 Ecclesborough (Berks), Eccleswall (Hereford), Ecclerigg (West- 
 morland), Ecclesfield (Yorks), Eccleshill (Lanes), Ecclescraig 
 (Kincardine), Ecclesmachan (Linlithgow) and Ecclefechan (Dum- 
 fries; the birth-place of Carlyle). Goodall admits that some of 
 these are genitive formations and is not satisfied with the general 
 applicability of Ecclesia as an etymology. 
 
 It would be certainly difficult to make anything but " little 
 Eccle" out of Ecclefechan 1 , and if Ecclerigg is a correct form, it 
 carries with it Ecclescraig and Eccleshill. It will be seen that the 
 Church will have to retire from the ownership of some of the 
 places 2 . 
 
 It has been common to refer them all to an Anglo-Saxon 
 origin ; for instance, Duignan, discussing the Warwickshire Exhall, 
 shows that it comes from an eighth century Eccleshale, and 
 explains it to mean Aecle's meadow-land, with the remark that 
 the personal name Aecle is not recorded. Assuming this to be so, 
 we are at once struck with the fact that the Eccle-names should 
 apparently be found from the Firth of Forth to the Channel, and 
 yet no word be found in historical documents of the person involved. 
 Duignan points out that there is an Anglo-Saxon name Aegel or 
 Aegle, but that this would evolve into Ayle-, the intervocalic g 
 becoming a y, as in Aylesbury, Aylesthorp, Aylesford, etc. 
 
 We have a series of names of the following type: 
 
 Aylesbury (Bucks). 
 
 Aylesby (Lines). 
 
 Aylesford (Kent) and perhaps as its older name Eaglesford. 
 
 Aylsham (Norfolk) with Eaglesham (Renfrew). 
 
 Aylton (Hereford) with Eagleton (Hereford). 
 
 Egleton (Rutland). 
 
 Eggleton (Hereford). 
 Aylestone (Leicester) and Egglestone (Durham). 
 
 The parallel forms seem to confirm Duignan's argument and to 
 justify the underlying Aegle. In that case, it surely must be the 
 Woodpecker (the stock-eagle of Worcestershire) : and the question 
 arises whether Aecle is anything else but a duplicate of this, just 
 
 1 Fechan is Celtic for "little." Cf. "Llanfairfechan," Little St Mary's. 
 
 2 Mr Moorman, as we stated above, holds to the Church derivation, and will 
 have Ecclefechan to mean (p. viii) "the little Church," or "the Church of 
 St Fechin." He has to allow that on his hypothesis of a mutilated Celtic Ecclesia, 
 such compounds as Ecclestun, Ecclesford, Ecclesfeld arc hybrid formations. That 
 is not exactly fatal, only there are too many of them. 
 
 R. H. 3 
 
LVy 
 
 1 
 
 34 THE WOODPECKER IN [CH. 
 
 as among the folk-names of the Woodpecker we have (stock-) 
 eagle and eckle. In fact, Eccleshill in Yorks takes the form 
 Eggleshill in the Domesday Book, and Eccleston in Lanes becomes 
 Egleston in the same quarter. We should then understand the 
 wide diffusion of the ecc/e-forms, without any necessary reference 
 to ecdesia at all. 
 
 Perhaps we may find the two forms in question existing sid< 
 by side: for example we shall find Eccles in Kent in close con- 
 tiguity to Aylesford. We have not, however, yet exhausted th( 
 related forms of this group. We have already referred to Midden- 
 dorff, Altenglische Flurnamen, who explains aeccel, eccel as the 
 Green Woodpecker, with the modern form eckle, and the following 
 Anglo-Saxon instances, Aeccelcumb, Aeceles beorh, and Eccleshall 
 Middendorff goes further, and explains the name Hickleswortl 
 (= aet hiceles wyrd'e), by equating hicol with Woodpecker. If h( 
 is right, as he certainly seems to be, we explain not only Hickl( 
 worth, but such forms as Ickleford (Herts), Ickleton (Cambs), 
 Icklesham (Sussex), etc., in all cases without introducing Ecclesia. 
 From not seeing the meaning of the underlying aecle, the wril 
 on place-names have got into unnecessary perplexity: Johnstoi 
 Place-Names discusses Eccles as follows: 
 
 Eccles (Lanes, Attleborough, Maidstone) and Ecdesfield (Sheffield). Lai 
 E. sic. c. 1100. Sh. E. Dom. Eclesfelt, 1179 Ecclesfield. Either L. ecdema, 
 W. eglun/s, 'a church,' or rare case of a personal name in gen. used for a place, 
 without suffix, '(village of) Mcd? or ' Mde? a known O.E. name.... It is hard 
 to be certain which alternative is right; both are contrary to the usual. 
 E.g. why should the name Mdz so often be used alone, when almost no other 
 is? 
 
 Upon which we remark that it is not absolutely necessary to 
 exclude either alternative, but that, of the two, the Woodpecker 
 generally seems to have the right of way against the Church. Of 
 the names assigned to the Woodpecker, the continental parallels 
 suggest higher antiquity for a form haeckel, than for the Worcester- 
 shire (stock-)eagle. 
 
 A word may now be added on the form Fina (a weak masculine 
 form in Anglo-Saxon) detected by Middendorff and again by 
 Goodall. If this form of the Woodpecker's name be conceded, 
 quite a number of place-names will have to be examined, such as 
 Finborough (Suffolk), Finham (Warwick), Findon (Aberdeen and 
 Sussex), Finedon (Northants), Finstock (Oxford), Finsthwai 
 (Lancashire), Finsbury (Middlesex). The genitive formation 
 
n] THE BRITISH ISLES 35 
 
 Anglo-Saxon ought to be Finan, which seems to rule out two or 
 three of our group at once (i.e. if we assume them to be possessive 
 formations). The alternative seems to be the assumption of an 
 O.E. personal name Finn, which can be readily justified. The 
 matter deserves, however, some clearer investigation. Finsthwaite 
 is certainly Scandinavian, as far as its termination goes, and 
 according to Bjorkman, the name Finn is found in England before 
 the Danish period, but has always a more or less mythological 
 character (whatever that may mean). Can a Scandinavian origin 
 be found for all the forms in the foregoing group? 
 
 There is one other perplexing group of names which I have 
 not yet succeeded in resolving, which may have some connection 
 with a hypothetical Woodpecker. I refer to names involving 
 Clop or Clap. We have in Scandinavia a series of Woodpecker 
 names, such as Tme-Kloppe (tree-clapper), Vidkleppa (wood- 
 clapper), and in the Rhineland we have the form Baumklopper. 
 There is no doubt that these forms are connected with the German 
 klopfen and the English clap. This raises the question whether 
 the Woodpecker may not have had a name of the type clopper or 
 clapper. The enquiry is the more interesting because of the 
 existence of a number of related place-names which have not yet 
 had their meaning resolved. For instance, Skeat says of Clophill 
 in Bedfordshire, that "the sense is uncertain; perhaps it means 
 'stubby-hill.'" This is not very illuminating. Of Clapham in 
 Bedfordshire, he shows that in the parallel case of Clapham in 
 Surrey the original form is Cloppa-ham, which he says is a genitive 
 plural from Clop. But "the meaning of Clop is not certainly 
 known." ^Duignan suggests a personal name Cloppa for Clopton 
 near Stratford-on-Avon. Clopton would thus be Clopp's town, 
 original form Cloppantun. Middendorff suggests that Clop is the 
 German klopf, and means a rock or boulder. It will be seen that 
 the explanation of the word is much in doubt. It is possible that 
 we may be on the track of another Woodpecker name. I have not, 
 however, yet found the parallel to the German names among the 
 folk-names of the Woodpecker 1 . There are many Claphams, 
 Claptons, and Cloptons up and down the country, waiting for 
 explanation. One Clapton, 1\ miles N.W. of Bristol, is called 
 Clapton in Gordano, and is said to have abundance of Wood- 
 
 1 The Oxford Diet, says that one member of the Woodpecker tribe is called 
 Clape in the State of New York. 
 
 32 
 
36 THE WOODPECKER IN THE BRITISH ISLES [CH. n 
 
 peckers. We leave this part of the problem for the presen 
 unsolved. 
 
 From Wright's Dialect Dictionary we learn that in Cheshi 
 the Woodpecker goes by the name Ettwall. This is not v 
 easy of explanation; but, whatever it means, we find it as 
 place-name in the next county (Derbyshire), six miles S.W. of 
 Derby, so that here we recover another Woodpecker site. 
 
 Reviewing the investigation of the present chapter it will b 
 admitted that the Woodpecker is in evidence all over the country- 
 side, in the names of places and persons, to a degree beyond 
 what has been suspected, and far beyond what can be affirmed of 
 any other bird. Since there is no reason to suppose that th 
 Woodpeckers outnumbered other birds, singly or collectively, w 
 can only explain the attention given to them historically and 
 geographically by saying that they are the centre of some kind of 
 devotion, and that some, at all events, of the places where we fin 
 their names are cult-centres. When personal names contain the 
 Woodpecker element, not derived from previous place-names, it 
 seems reasonable to explain their relationship to the Woodpecke 
 through the same kind of links as in the cases which turn up in 
 Greek and Roman mythology, and to suggest that they stand fo 
 some kind of a Thunder-ancestry. In fact, the cult of the Wood 
 pecker, judged by what we find in the case of Picus-of-Picenum 
 of Keleos-of-Keleai, or Dryope-of-Amphissa, is probably either a 
 Thunder-cult, or a Twin-cult, or both. We must see if further 
 illustrations can be found of the hypotheses before us 1 . 
 
 1 Parts of this chapter and the following have been employed in an article in 
 the Contemporary Review for Feb. 1916 on The Place of the Woodpecker in 
 Primitive Religion, and are reproduced by the permission of the Editors. 
 
 ! 
 
 LA 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE POPULAR NAMES OF THE WOODPECKER 
 
 We shall now try to classify roughly the titles and terms by 
 which the Woodpecker is described among European peoples; 
 for, as we have said in the foregoing chapter, it is not reasonable 
 to ignore the Teutonic, Latin, or Scandinavian names which have 
 influenced our own vocabulary. Moreover, since, as we have shown, 
 the country-folk still preserve a number of ancient titles in their 
 local dialects, we have a second road on which to pursue the enquiry, 
 running parallel, or nearly so, to the first. Let us then see whether 
 we can arrange the matter conveniently for study and reference. 
 
 Our first group is composed of names which describe the 
 action of the bird in hacking or pecking at the bark of a tree: 
 
 Holzhacker (i.e. Woodhacker) ... Germany. 
 Baumhacker (i.e. Tree-hacker) ... 
 
 Baumhackel Bavaria. 
 
 Baumhecken ... ... ... ... 
 
 Baumbeck Tyrol. 
 
 Bomhacker Rheinland. 
 
 Baumpecker 
 
 Traepikker Denmark. 
 
 Traepikku ... ... ... ... ,, 
 
 Trepikka Norway. 
 
 Traknarr Sweden. 
 
 Woodpecker England. 
 
 Pick-a-tree (Yorks). 
 
 Baumklopper (? Tree-clapper) ... Rheinland. 
 
 Trae-kloppe ... ... ... ... Norway. 
 
 Vid-kleppe (Vid = wood) , 
 
 Ronnenpicker (i.e. Rindenpecker Rheinland. 
 or bark-picker) 
 
 Rine-tabberer England (Leicester). 
 
 Tabberer j 
 
 Tapperer and> 
 
 Tapper 
 
38 
 
 THE POPULAR NAMES OF 
 
 [CH. 
 
 Holtbecker (Holt = Holz = wood)... Heligoland. 
 
 Holzhacker ... ... ... ... Prussia. 
 
 Tannenbicker (fir-picker) ... ... Switzerland. 
 
 Nicker-picker England (Notts). 
 
 Wood-knacker (Hants). 
 
 Woodchuck (Salop). 
 
 Woodhack (Lincoln). 
 
 Vedknarre (Ved = wood) (The Gt Sweden (Dalarne). 
 
 black W.) 
 
 Skogsknarr (Skog = forest) ... 
 
 Hakel England (Glouc.). 
 
 Hickle (Northants). 
 
 (Warwick). 
 
 (Oxford). 
 
 Eccle (Wore.). 
 
 Eakle (Glouc.). 
 
 (Oxford). 
 
 Hickol (Hereford). 
 
 And a number of related forms : 
 
 Hackspik Sweden. 
 
 Hackspett ... ... ... ... ,, 
 
 Hakkespet Norway. 
 
 Stock-hekle England. 
 
 Stock-eakle (Staffs). 
 
 Stock-eikle (Wore.). 
 
 Stock-eagle 
 
 Hickwall ... ... ... ... 
 
 Hickway ,, 
 
 Ettwall (Cheshire). 
 
 Pic and Pie ... ... ... ... France. 
 
 Pik'escource (ecorce = bark) ... 
 
 Picvert (pivert) 
 
 Picamaderos Spain. 
 
 Picaposte ... ... ... ... 
 
 Picapotros 
 
 Pico Spain and Italy. 
 
 Picchio Italy. 
 
 Ciocanitoare (= knock-with-hammer) Roumania. 
 
 Bocanitoare (= knock-with-beak) ... 
 
 Awl-bird England. 
 
 Woodall (Woodwale, etc.) 
 
 Cnocell (i.e. pecker) Wales. 
 
 Cnocell-y-coed (i.e. Woodpecker) ... 
 
 Coblyn \ l 
 
 N. Wales. 
 
 Coblyn-y-coedJ 
 
 Tyllwr-y-eoed (= wood-borer) 1 ... 
 
 1 For these two forms of. Woodall and awl-bird, supra. 
 
in] THE WOODPECKER 39 
 
 Hewhole (Prob. hole for holt = holz) England. 
 
 Pump-borer (Salop). 
 
 Whetile (prob. = cutter) (Essex, Herts). 
 
 Woodpie , (Hants, Staffs, Som.). 
 
 Taille-bois France. 
 
 Coupe-bois 
 
 Boque-bois 
 
 Pique-bois 
 
 Perce-bois 
 
 Bec-de-bois 
 
 Then there is a group of names in which the bird's action is com- 
 pared with various trades and crafts: thus he is called 
 
 Zimmermann ( = Carpenter) ... Germany. 
 Serra-Chiavi (= Key-filer) Italy, 
 
 and perhaps we should here include 
 
 Taille-bois (= Carpenter) as above France. 
 His physical peculiarities are answerable for 
 
 Longo lengo (= long tongue) ... Provence. 
 
 Braga rossa ( = red hose) ... ... Italy. 
 
 Culo rosso (= red rump) 
 
 Beretta rossa (= red cap) ... ... ,, 
 
 From its supposed diet of wood or of bees, it is called 
 
 Woodsucker ... ... ... ... England (New Forest). 
 
 Holtfraeter (i.e. Holtfresser or wood- N. Germany, 
 eater) 
 
 Xylophagos Mod. Greek. 
 
 Beo-wulf ( = Bee-wolf) 1 ... ... Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Bienenwulfe (= Bee-wolf) N. Germany. 
 
 The next group to study is the Specht-group. The meaning 
 of the ground-form is still uncertain : we have the following names 
 in current use: 
 
 Specht 2 Germany. 
 
 Spette Denmark. 
 
 Sortspaette (Gt Black W.) 
 
 Gronspaette (= Green W.) 
 
 Graspaette (Spotted W.) 
 
 1 The name is due to a misunderstanding of the Woodpecker's diet : a similar 
 mistake prevails to-day with regard to the Honey-buz/ard, which eats the larvae 
 of the bees and wasps. Grimm points out that this supposed hostility between 
 Woodpecker and Bee is the reason why people who carry about with them the bill 
 of a Woodpecker are never stung by bees. 
 
 2 The name appears modified in Spessart ( = Spehteshart = Spechtwald). 
 
THE POPULAR NAMES OF 
 
 [CH. 
 
 Flagspaette (= flecked or spotted W.) Denmark (Jutland) 
 Flakspaette ............ ( ) 
 
 Flakstaer (= Spotted tail?) ... ( ) 
 
 Spatt or Spett ......... Sweden. 
 
 Gronspett ... ... ... ... ,, 
 
 Gronspik ............ 
 
 Hackspett (ut sup.) ......... 
 
 Hackspik ............ 
 
 Spetta ............... Norway. 
 
 Hakkespek ... ... ... ... ,, 
 
 Gronspetta (= Green W.) ...... 
 
 Speight ............ England. 
 
 Woodspite ............ (Norfolk). 
 
 Woodspeck ............ ( ). 
 
 Woodspack ............ ( , Suffolk). 
 
 Sprite (? for Spite) ......... (Suffolk). 
 
 Espeche ............ Old French. 
 
 Speht ............... Old High German. 
 
 Spe'h ............... Elsass and Rheinland. 
 
 Griinspek ( = Green Woodpecker)... Tyrol. 
 
 Spaetr ... ... ... ... ... Old Norse. 
 
 Kakspjot 1 ............ Norway. 
 
 We come now to folk-names derived from the note of the bird. 
 It has two cries, one which has been compared to the neighing 
 of a horse, and to the human laugh : the other when it is supposed 
 to be calling for rain. Thus it has been called 
 
 Waldpferd (= Woodhorse) ... 
 Boschhengst (= Thicket-horse) 
 Baumreiter (= Tree-rider) ... 
 Baumrutscher (= Tree-creeper) 
 Wieherspecht (= Neighing W.) 
 
 Laughing-bird 
 
 Laughing Betsy 
 
 Germany. 
 
 Egerland. 
 
 Tyrol. 
 
 England (Salop). 
 
 and perhaps to the same group belong 
 
 Yaffle England (Yorks, Surrey, 
 
 Hants). 
 
 Yaffler England (Hants). 
 
 Yaffingale ,> 
 
 Yelpingale 
 
 Yockle (Salop). 
 
 Hufil (E. Riding of Yorks). 
 
 1 I am not clear that this is a Specht-form nor as to its meaning. 
 
in] THE WOODPECKER 41 
 
 The rain-cry is variously represented and gives rise to the 
 following names: 
 
 Giessvogel (= pouring-rain-bird) ... Germany. 
 
 Gissvogel Austria. 
 
 Giitvogel ] 
 
 GietvogelV Low German. 
 
 Gutfugel J 
 
 The cry of geuss, geuss, giet (= pour) is said to augur a down-pour 
 of rain. We have the same belief in the power of the Woodpecker's 
 cry to produce rain in the popular language of the West of England. 
 In Devonshire the farm-labourers say, "Us be goin' to have rain; 
 the 'oodalls are hollering" (i.e. the Woodwalls, or Woodwales, are 
 crying). Another form arising out of the rain-cry, and belonging 
 to the same imitative sound-names as Giet and Giess, is 
 
 Ki-ek ... ... Mongolia. 
 
 This is evidently a parallel name to Giet. It occurs in a curious 
 Mongol story 1 to the effect that the Woodpecker was once a 
 servant of the prophet Moses, and very much given to thieving. 
 At last Moses lost his temper with him, and punished him by ^ 
 making him live on nothing but wood. The Woodpecker tries 
 to say, ' There is nothing to eat/ but he only gets as far as ke-ek, 
 and no one can understand him. Here we have the rain-cry but 
 with a new explanation and a fresh mythology. This name 
 interests me, because Kiek (dissyllable) is the mysterious and 
 hitherto unexplained name of a friend of mine (formerly Con- 
 gregational minister at Hanley, and now at Halifax). His name 
 gave me much perplexity, but I see now that he is a Woodpecker 
 crying for rain. 
 
 In Germany, also, we find the closely-related Giek and the 
 name of Holzgieker. At least these appear to belong to the same 
 group. In France, also, there is a popular name Plieu, expressing 
 at once the sound of the bird's cry and the expected rain: thus 
 Michelet says 2 that "In dry seasons especially his lot is wretched; 
 his ,prey flies from him and retires to an extreme distance, in 
 search of moisture. Therefore he invokes the rain with constant 
 cries of Plieu, Plieu" These rain-making functions are of the 
 highest importance in the study of the Woodpecker-cult; for 
 
 1 Quoted in Dannhardt. Natursagen 3, 2327 from Folk-lore Journal 3328. 
 
 2 The Bird (Eng. Trans, p. 225). 
 
42 THE POPULAR NAMES OF [CH. 
 
 they descend from a time when the Woodpecker was the Thunder- 
 bird, and are to be studied in the light of the bird's ancestry. 
 To this rain-group belong the following: 
 
 Regen-vogel (= Rain-bird) ...... Tyrol. 
 
 Rainbird 1 
 
 J ............ 
 
 Ramfowl 
 
 Rainpic (= Rain- Woodpecker) ... 
 
 Ragnfagel (= Rain-bird) ...... Sweden (Stockholm). 
 
 Ragnpytta ............ (Finveden). 
 
 Regnkrake (= Rain-crow) ...... 
 
 Pic de la pluie (= Rain- Woodpecker) France. 
 Avocat de Meunier (= Miller's Coun- 
 
 seller) 1 
 Windracker ............ Altmark, 
 
 and then there is a triad of English names: 
 
 Storm-cock and) 
 
 Weather-cock J " " En S land ' 
 
 and Weather-hatcher ......... England (Sussex). 
 
 These last should be noticed because they show that the weather- 
 cock on the church spire is not necessarily a cock and does not by 
 its mobility indicate weather that is likely to be, by pointing out 
 from which quarter the wind is coming. The bird was originally 
 fixed in position and not rotating; he was actually the weather 
 in his own person ; originally in a prophylactic sense of Thunder 
 averting Thunder, and then as a rain-producer, because Thunder 
 brings rain 2 . 
 
 There are a few other names which maybe attached to this group, 
 where the Woodpecker is perhaps named after other birds, such as : 
 
 Waldhalm (= Forest cock) ... Germany. 
 
 Holzgiiggel (= Wood-cock) ... Switzerland. 
 
 Hohlkrahe (= Wood-crow) ...... Switzerland. 
 
 Holkraaka (= Wood-crow) ...... S. Norway 3 . 
 
 Sprlkroka, etc. ......... Sweden. 
 
 1 Because if there is no rain there will be no grain. We shall refer to this later. 
 
 2 The cry of the bird for rain is said in Shropshire to be weet, wee.t, as the fol- 
 lowing bit of dialect, reported by Margaret Burne (of Newport) in Folk-Lore for 
 1911 (p. 238), will show: "I've allus noticed that when the Ayquils hollohs 
 'wcet, weet,' we gets rine. If you listen to them you can hear them speak quite 
 plain ' wet, wet.' They've been hollohing very loud this last day or two, and see 
 what rino we've got. They hollohs as they flies along." 
 
 Note the dialect variation of Ayquil for Eckle. 
 
 8 Thus they say in dialect in S. Norway, "Holkraaka spaar regn," i.e. the 
 Hole Crow predicts rain. 
 
in] THE WOODPECKER 43 
 
 Then there is a group of playful names: from its Latin form of 
 
 Picus Martius we have three French names: 
 
 Grande Marte France (Isere). 
 
 Little Martha ( ) 
 
 St Martin's Bird ( ), 
 
 to which add 
 
 Marechal Ferrant France, 
 
 and the Gertrude group from Scandinavia: 
 
 Gjerstruet Norway. 
 
 Gjertrusfugl ... ... ... ... ,, 
 
 Gjertrudsfugl Sweden. 
 
 The foregoing names are interesting, because they are religious 
 as well as playful. The substitution of Martha for Mars is very 
 like what goes on when a divinity is turned into a saint in the 
 Calendar: for Picus Martius is not a modern classifier's name, it 
 appears for example, as Piquier Martier (genitive?), inthelguvine 
 tables 1 . 
 
 As for Gertrude, she is probably a direct substitute for Freya, 
 and we shall perhaps be able to show that Freya has a peculiar 
 position in the cycle of rain and thunder deities. 
 
 In North Italy the Woodpecker is named: 
 
 Catlinoun Lombardy. 
 
 Great Catarina ... ... ... Cremona, 
 
 while in England it passes under the humorous title of " Laughing 
 Betsy" or "Jack Ickle" (i.e. Jack Woodpecker), (Northants) ; 
 the form Ickel may be classed as above with Ekil, Hickle, etc. 
 In Denmark it has the name " John Larssen " or " Lassen." The 
 surname is common enough and perhaps is destitute of any special 
 meaning. 
 
 Nearly all the foregoing names belong to the Green Woodpecker 
 (Gecinus viridis)', the Great Black Woodpecker (Picus Martius) 
 is not an English bird. Occasionally the names refer to the Great 
 Spotted Woodpecker or the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker; and 
 some names are especially given to the two latter species. Thus 
 the Great Spotted Woodpecker is, in the south of England, known 
 as the French Galley Bird; and the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker 
 is in Sussex called the French Magpie, or French Pie. The latter 
 is sometimes known as the Small Barred Woodpecker from its 
 black and white stripes. 
 
 1 See Biicheler, Umbrica, p. 37. 
 
44 POPULAR NAMES OF THE WOODPECKER [OH. in 
 
 In Cornwall the green Woodpecker is called "Kazek," a name 
 which is, at present, unexplained. In Shropshire another name 
 is "High-hoe/' which is also obscure. 
 
 The following groups of names are of some importance, on 
 account of their antiquity: 
 
 Witwoll England. 
 
 Witwall , 
 
 Witwale 
 
 Wood wall (perhaps the same as (Somerset, Devon). 
 Woodawl, supra) 
 
 Yokel England. 
 
 Yukel 
 
 Yuckel (Wilts). 
 
 Yockle (Salop). 
 
 The Wood wall or Wood wale is a very early English form. 
 It occurs in the English Romance of the Rose in Thynne's edition 
 of 1582 as follows : 
 
 For there was many a byrde syngyng, 
 
 Throughout the yerde al thringing, 
 
 In many places was nightyngales, 
 
 Alpes 1 , finches, and woodwales, 
 
 That in the swete song delighten. (1. 653.) 
 
 And he was al with byrdes wrien, 
 
 With popingay, with nightingale, 
 
 With cholaunder and with wodewale, 
 
 With finche, with larkes anfl with archangel!. (1. 902.) 
 
 We have now collected nearly 170 Woodpecker names, of 
 which the greater part are English; and it must be clear that 
 there was a special interest in the bird and that it also dis- 
 charged useful functions. If we can be clear upon this point, 
 then the step to identifying the Woodpecker centres as cult- 
 centres will not be a difficult one to take. 
 
 1 i.e. Bullfinches. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE WOODPECKER AS RAIN-MAKER 
 
 A very little study of the foregoing list of Woodpecker names 
 will show that it is par excellence the Rain-bird. Quite a number 
 of its names turn upon the discharge of the functions of rain- 
 making. In this respect it differs from another closely associated 
 cult-bird, the Robin Redbreast. Both of them are original 
 Thunder-birds, but while the Robin is still connected with the 
 Thunder, and in some quarters is the original Fire-bringer, the 
 Woodpecker has largely moved from Fire in the direction of 
 Water. Sometimes, as in the Esthonian prayer quoted in a 
 previous chapter, he is invoked to keep hurtful thunder off and to 
 bestow sweet rain. His function is undergoing differentiation. 
 As the Thunder, he, or his cognate, the Domestic Cock, will protect 
 buildings, but this is automatic and needs no ritual. He can stay 
 outside the Church and keep the Thunder off : when rain is wanted 
 he must come inside and we must talk to him. 
 
 If we examine the French Woodpecker names we see (1) that 
 we are to ask for rain ; (2) that what we are really asking for is 
 bread. The bird is the Miller's adviser ; as pointed out above, 
 no rain means no grain. If there is no rain the Woodpecker 
 must be scolded, as all fetishes, for not giving bread. This is 
 perfectly simple, but it is surprising how much light it throws on 
 certain folk- traditions. Take for instance, the story of old Mother 
 Red-cap who was turned into a Woodpecker. Why was she 
 metamorphosed? The answer is that Jesus came to her door 
 when she was baking and begged a bit of bread. When she 
 finally refused to give him the bit of dough which had expanded 
 in the oven into a great cake, she is cursed for not giving bread, 
 and sent up the chimney and becomes Gertrude's fowl. What 
 she really refused was rain, and she was really a Woodpecker, 
 
46 THE WOODPECKER [CH. 
 
 just as King Picus, or King Keleos, or Zeus before he was Olym- 
 pianised. Why is she called Gertrude? The answer is that 
 Gertrude is the Christian substitute for Freya. Was Freya, then, 
 a rain-maker? Let us look into the matter and see. 
 
 There seems to have been a division of function between Thor 
 and Freya in the matter of meteorology. Thor is certainly the 
 Thunderer, the Scandinavian Zeus, and must be related to a 
 previously existing and worshipped bird-form. It does not, 
 however, appear that Thor is appealed to for rain. Thus Grimm 
 says (i. 175): 
 
 I cannot call to mind a single passage, even in O.N. legend, where Thorr 
 is said to have bestowed rain when it was asked 1'or: we are only told that 
 he sends stormy weather when he is angry. 
 
 So there is nothing exactly answering to Zeus. Let us see what 
 they say of Freya : we are to show (i) that she is the cult ancestress 
 of Gertrude ; (ii) that she has to do with rain. As regards Gert- 
 rude, the identification was suspected by Grimm, from the custom 
 of drinking the minne of St Gertrude the first night after a decease. 
 
 Freya's dwelling is called Folkvangr or Folkvangar, the plains on which 
 the (dead?) folk troop together; this imparts new credibility to the con- 
 nection of St Gertrude, whose minne is drunk, with Frowa, for the souls 
 of the departed were supposed to lodge with Gertrude the first night. (Grim in, 
 i. 305.) 
 
 It was customary to honour an absent or deceased one by making mention 
 of him at the assembly or the banquet and draining a goblet to his memory ; 
 this goblet, this draught, is called in O.N.... minne. (Ibid. i. 59.) 
 
 In the Middle Ages it was two saints in particular that had minne drunk 
 in honour of them, John the Evangelist and Gertrude.... 
 
 In a MS. of the 15th century we are informed: 
 
 Aliqui dicunt, quod quando anima egressa est, tune prima nocte per- 
 noctabit cum beata Gerdrude, secunda nocte cum archangelis, sed tertia 
 nocte vadit sicut diffinitum est de ea. (Ibid. i. 61.) 
 
 So Grimm suggests that Gertrude discharged Freya's functions 
 to the dead. 
 
 Is Freya a rain-goddess ? The answer is that she is a weeping 
 goddess, and that mythology is invoked to say why she weeps. 
 She has been forsaken by her husband, and wanders round the 
 world seeking him and shedding tears. Freya's tears are said 
 to be golden, gold is named after them, and she herself is said to 
 be "gratfagr," i.e. fair in greeting (i.e. weeping). (See Snorre 
 37, 119, 113.) Freya is, then, easily identified as a rain-goddess: 
 
iv] AS RAIN-MAKER 47 
 
 that is, then, the reason why the old Mother Red-cap, who becomes 
 a Woodpecker, is called Gertrude, and why the Woodpecker is, in 
 Scandinavia, called Gertrude's fowl. 
 
 There is a variant form of the Gertrude story in English 
 folk-lore, which Shakespeare has immortalised in Hamlet. Ophelia 
 is made to say, " The owl was a baker's daughter : Lord, we know 
 what we are, but we know not what we may be." Here the 
 old lady who was baking is replaced by a masculine baker, whose 
 daughter refuses bread and is turned into an owl as a punishment. 
 We have had occasion to point out elsewhere that the owl is one 
 of the denizens of the sacred (hollow) tree, and is an unsuccessful 
 Thunder-bird. It shows its hostility to the Robin, for example, 
 and when the poor little bird has its feathers burnt off in bringing 
 fire to mankind, and the other birds take up a feather collection 
 for its benefit, the owl is the only bird that refused to put anything 
 in the plate! 
 
 This Scandinavian legend is really the story of the bird that 
 gave no rain. In studying it in its Norse form, we shall find 
 commonly a second folk-tale attached to it. The old woman 
 strikes Christ <on the head, so as to produce a putrefying wound, 
 out of which bees arise. It is easy to detach this part of the 
 story and study it separately, as it occurs in the folk-lore of 
 eastern Europe. The two legends lie near together, for, as we 
 have shown, and will explain more at length, the origin of bees 
 and bee-culture is in the same tree that houses the Woodpecker. 
 When we have briefly examined into this new element in the lore 
 of the bee, we can return to the Woodpecker and discuss some 
 further points in his cult. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WOODPECKER AS DUX VIAE 
 
 It has been shown, in the examination of the function of the 
 Heavenly Twins, that they were in request, inter alia, as Rain- 
 makers on account of their kinship with the Thunder-god, and so 
 were the patrons of fertility; and it was further explained that 
 the Twins were the guardians of travellers by sea and land, and 
 in particular presided over dangerous situations on seas and 
 rivers, and that they became ultimately the patrons of navigation. 
 In a previous chapter we showed that the same rain-making art 
 is credited to the Woodpecker in northern Europe and probably 
 elsewhere in extreme antiquity. This does not in the least 
 surprise us either in the case of the Twins or of the Woodpecker, 
 for the Twins are the children of the Thunder and the Woodpecker 
 is the Thunder. We are now going to show that Woodpecker-cult 
 is like Twin-cult in its patronage of the traveller and the sailor, 
 and we shall express this briefly by saying that the Woodpecker 
 is Dux Viae. 
 
 Let us, for a moment, recall the methods by which we established 
 the care of the Twins over the traveller. One way was to notice 
 the saints in the Christian calendar who have displaced the Twins, 
 and who occupy themselves with the guardianship of dangerous 
 places on rivers, or dangerous passages in the seas. For example, 
 Cosmas and Damian had charge of the rapids on the Canon of 
 the Upper Euphrates, where their ruined temple still stands. 
 Lower down the river, at Zeugma, where the road to the east crossed 
 the river, they are said to have had a sanctuary which was 
 restored by one of the pious emperors. These two cases constitute 
 guardianship of the river-rapids and guardianship of the river- 
 fords (or at least of the traject). On the Bosporus, where we 
 have shown 1 the Heavenly Twins to have been the Pilots and 
 
 1 Vide infra p. 66. 
 
CH. v] THE WOODPECKER AS DUX VIAE 49 
 
 Wardens of men sailing to or from the Euxine, we find them replaced 
 by St Michael the Archangel on both sides of the Strait, and 
 the substituted cult continues to the present day. Now let us 
 see whether there is anything parallel to this in English life. We 
 have our own peculiar dangers both in sea-faring and in land- 
 faring. At sea we shall find our coasts marked by sanctuaries 
 only one degree removed from original Twin-cult, shrines of 
 St Cosmas and St Damian, St Crispin and St Crispian, St Michael 
 the Archangel and the like. Especial dangers, like the Goodwin 
 Sands, are covered by special patronage, as the history of Kent 
 Churches will abundantly show. When we move inland we find 
 that there are no great rivers with rapids to be negotiated like 
 the Euphrates; the traveller's difficulty in early English life is 
 the ford; there are no bridges, or next to none. Hence the 
 traveller is in danger from the depth of the stream and from the 
 nature of the bottom. If he is observant he will name the ford 
 and describe its character. When the bridge comes it will naturally 
 appear where there was formerly a ford or perhaps a ferry. Then 
 the name of the place will be Stamford Bridge, i.e. Stainford 
 Bridge, or Ferry Bridge. The name will tell the nature of the 
 original stone crossing and the primitive method of transit. Here 
 is a little statement on the matter from Moorman's W. Riding 
 Place-Names (p. iv). 
 
 Let us for a moment consider... the name Bradford. Bradford is now 
 a city with a population of nearly a quarter of a million ; but it is by no means 
 certain that when it received its name the broad ford there was a single 
 house there. Like Aberford, Woodlesford, Milford, Garforth, Horsforth, etc., 
 it is a landmark name, denoting the spot where a stream, together with the 
 swampy land adjoining it, was crossed by a ford. It is probable that the name 
 Bradford was bestowed, at a time when bridges were little known, upon 
 scores of fords in all parts of England. 
 
 This extract shows us clearly the importance of the ford in 
 topography, and the fords are the danger-points to the traveller : 
 he may be 
 
 Drowned in passing through the ford 
 
 Or killed in falling from his horse. 
 
 Here then he will need protection and direction. These will be 
 the places in which to look for saints, or for the Twins and the 
 Woodpecker who preceded the saints, and are the cause of the 
 saints. So we may begin by asking whether the topography of 
 R. H. 4 
 
50 THE WOODPECKER [CH. 
 
 Great Britain betrays any sign of the presence of the Woodpecker 
 at the fords. 
 
 Looking back over the pages of the foregoing enquiry into the 
 Woodpecker-names of Great Britain, we see at once that we have 
 Pickford and Hackford, and Aylesford, and Eaglesford, Ickleford 
 and Ecclesford. The probability is that most of these are cases 
 where the ford was marked by the supposed presence of a Wood- 
 pecker. It could not mean that one person saw a Woodpecker 
 at a particular river-crossing and made the fact permanent by 
 the name: he could not secure that the bird, if observed, would 
 stay. Nor is it a case like Oxford, or Horsford, where the prefix 
 tells us something about the depth of the passage. The natural 
 explanation is that the Woodpecker is there as the patron of the 
 passage ; and if the danger of the crossing is real, I should not be 
 in the least surprised to find that the nearest Church had a dedica- 
 tion to or a shrine of a Twin-cult. That is a matter worth enquiring 
 into on its own account : for even if we had no Woodpecker names, 
 the places where the ancient roads cross the rivers are the danger- 
 points; there, if anywhere, we should expect twin-oversight, or 
 the like. Perhaps this will come out clearer to the future student 
 of the topography of the British Isles. 
 
 Assuming that we have cases of fords presided over by the 
 Woodpecker, can we say anything on the larger theme of the 
 Woodpecker as Dux Viael In the Kalevala the Woodpecker is 
 the special guide of the huntsman. He is appealed to under the 
 name of Nyyrikki as follows: 
 
 Nyyrikki, O Son of Tapio, 
 Thou the mighty red-capped hero, 
 Blaze the path across the country, 
 And erect me wooden guide-posts, 
 That I trace this evil pathway, 
 And pursue the righteous roadway, 
 While I seek my destined quarry. 
 
 (Kalevala: tr. Kirby, xiv. 37.) 
 
 Here the Woodpecker is entreated to score the trees on the track 
 of the huntsman, so that he may not lose his way. 
 
 The same kind of guidance by a Woodpecker appears to be 
 implied in a passage from the Lay of Igor (79) of which Grim in 
 remarks 1 that "Woodpeckers by their tapping show the way to 
 
 1 Mythol (Eng.tr.): ii. 675. 
 
v] AS DUX VIAE 51 
 
 the river." Does this mean that they are to see the traveller 
 across? At all events, the bird is the Dux Viae. 
 
 It is quite likely that the recognition of guidance by the 
 Woodpecker may underlie the tradition of the people of Picenum, 
 that they were guided to that city by the bird after whom the 
 city is named. 
 
 There seems, too, some reason to believe that the Woodpecker 
 is a patron of travellers by land and water, just as the Dioscuri 
 are. 
 
 42 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF BEES 
 
 We have shown that primitive man made the right attributioi 
 of the invention of honey one of his scientific enquiries, and came 
 to the conviction that the discovery of this valuable adjunct to 
 civilised life in his day was due either to Aristaeus, who is a by-form 
 of Zeus, or to the Kuretes, the fosterers of the infant Zeus, and that 
 Aristaeus was connected with the Hollow Oak, and the Kuretes 
 with the Woodpecker. There is, however, another question 
 which provoked the enquiry of our ancestors; they appear to 
 have studied the problem of the origin of the bee as well as that 
 of the discovery of honey. To this enquiry there seem to have 
 been various solutions; one of them is well known to scholars, 
 viz. that bees arise spontaneously in the carcase of an ox which 
 has been left to decompose, or actually buried with the exception 
 only of its horns. There is a well-known Biblical parallel in the 
 story of the bees that took possession of the carcase of a lion 
 which had been slain by Samson. The references to these ox-born 
 swarms will be found in Robert Tornow's book at sufficient length, 
 and need not here be repeated. It seems, however, to be clear 
 that the observation of the early natural philosopher had gone 
 further: he did not, indeed, understand that the hive of bees 
 was ruled by a queen; from Aristotle onwards, and probably 
 long before the time of that particular philosopher, it was supposed 
 to be a king, but he did understand that the larvae in the hive 
 were young bees, and this set him thinking on two lines : first he 
 compared the larvae with the maggots and worms of a decom- 
 posing body, and asked himself from what body they had come. 
 Next he asked himself the question as to why the little bees were 
 so white, and the mature bees so black. European folk-l< 
 contains interesting and instructive cases of these enquiries, from 
 the study of which we shall get some valuable information as to 
 the thought processes of the early and nascent scientific mind. 
 
CH. vi] THE ORIGIN OF BEES 53 
 
 In the first place, it was natural that a comparison should be 
 made between the little bee-larvae and the maggots of decom- 
 position. Quite possibly this may be the idea which lay at the back 
 of the story about the finding of bees in the carcase of a dead or buried 
 ox. A very small confirmation of theory by experiment, such 
 as the actual finding of bees or honeycombs in the skin of such 
 an animal, would lead to the belief that the bees had sprung 
 in some way from the decomposed animal. Experimental 
 confirmation, however, is not strongly insisted on in primitive 
 science. 
 
 Here, however, a fresh difficulty would arise in the case of the 
 finding of the bees and their combs and larvae in the oak-tree. 
 Where was the decomposed or decomposing animal in such a 
 case ? What creature furnished the worm that was the larva and 
 became the bee? That is one of the questions to which we and 
 our ancestors have to find the answer. 
 
 The other question relates to the difference in appearance 
 between the larva and the bee. Why did the white become 
 black ? Who or what blackened it ? And in the same connection, 
 who is responsible for the fact that the bee is almost cut in two 
 centrally? Let us see what the European peasants say on this 
 point to-day. One story is that the larvae came from a wound 
 in Christ's forehead, it having been noticed that the requisite 
 putrefaction could occur in living bodies as well as in dead bodies. 
 If we ask how Christ came to have a wound in his forehead, the 
 answer was easy : we have already drawn attention to the Norse 
 legend of how the old woman (Mother Red-cap, let us call her, 
 in Norwegian her name is Gertrude) who refused bread to Christ 
 was changed into a Woodpecker, or Gertrude's fowl, and flew up 
 the chimney. The story teller goes on to say that she had actually 
 struck Christ on the forehead with the baking shovel or the kitchen 
 poker. This wound in his head produces worms, which, when 
 placed in a hole of a tree, become a swarm of bees. 
 
 The story of the Norse Mother Red-cap appears in many forms. 
 We have shown in the previous chapter that Shakespeare has one 
 such form in mind, when he makes Ophelia say in Hamlet, 
 
 They say the owl was a baker's daughter, 
 
 in which we have the same underlying theme of an ungracious 
 baking-woman, who would not give bread to the hungry, and was 
 changed, as a punishment, into an owl. The story is told of 
 
54 THE ORIGIN OF BEES 
 
 Christ, or of Christ and Peter : but it is probable that this is onb 
 a Christianisation of an earlier folk-tale. The variation betwe< 
 owl and Woodpecker is one that we have already come acre 
 traces of. There are other translations in folk-tales of the un| 
 cious baker's wife or baker's daughter, who puts the bit of dough 
 a-baking for Jesus, and then refuses it to him because it has swelled 
 to too great a size. Sometimes she becomes a peewit, sometimes 
 a tortoise. The meaning of these variations is not always clear. 
 Occasionally, there is no resulting metamorphosis. For instance, 
 among the Basques it is the Virgin who begs bread from an old 
 woman; the bit of dough grows to a great loaf in the usual 
 manner ; the old woman is not transformed, but a curse is laid on 
 the village for ever and ever 1 . 
 
 It is to this theme that the story of the bees that spring from 
 the wound in Christ's head has been attached. This latter story 
 is not really a part of the Red-cap legend : it has been attached 
 to it by means of the introduced baking-shovel or kitchen poker. 
 We can see this by watching the variants of the latter part of the 
 story. 
 
 Among the Tshuvasses in Bulgaria it is said that the bees 
 crept out of the navel of the great God, Mun Jure, instead of out 
 of the forehead of Christ 2 . The Russian peasants say a similar 
 thing, by making the origin of the emerging bee (or larva) the 
 navel of Christ on the Cross. 
 
 The bee-worm is taken from a hole in the Divine body and 
 placed in a hole in the tree. It is easy to see that we have here 
 the tree in which the bees live, artificially duplicated: we have 
 both the anthropomorph and the tree-form or phytomorph. Christ 
 comes in as being himself the Thunder-man, or the Son of Thunder ; 
 he is, therefore, animistically identified with the sacred Thunder - 
 tree; and the bees, which are found in the holes of the trees, 
 belong to his body : they come from a hole in his head, when the 
 bees' nest is high up, and from his navel when the bees' nest was, 
 as Hesiod says, in the midmost bark. 
 
 One of the simplest forms, completely independent of Mother 
 Red-cap, is told in German Bohemia. Jesus and Peter were going 
 through a forest, and came to a hollow tree. "What is the use 
 
 1 The series of uncharitable bakers can be studied in Dannhardt, Natursagen, 
 11. 123 sqq. 
 
 1 Strauss, Die Bulyaren, p. 12. Dannhardt, loc. cil. I. 128. 
 
vi] THE ORIGIN OF BEES 55 
 
 of this hollow tree?" said Peter. Jesus, whose forehead was 
 itching, drew Peter's attention to it. A maggot came out, which 
 Jesus set in the hollow tree. Later on, when they passed that 
 way again, the tree had become a beehive 1 . 
 
 We have now detached and explained the primitive conception 
 of the origin of bee-life, and can see the underlying theme. We 
 may now go on with some further early speculations which have 
 come down to us in the folk-lore of eastern Europe. 
 
 It is apparent that, to our ancestors, the reason why the bee 
 has turned black is due to the fact that someone (the Devil by 
 preference) has struck it with his whip. For instance, the 
 Wallachian peasants say that the bee used to perch on the Devil's 
 head and overhear his plans and designs as he talked of himself. 
 Then he would fly away and tell God what the Devil was doing. 
 This enraged the Devil, so that one day he struck the bee with 
 his whip, and made him turn black. He also cut him clean in 
 two, or nearly so. 
 
 In another form of the legend, it is St Peter who struck at the 
 bee ; but this variant is not idle or useless, for the narrators say 
 that Peter struck the bee with his fiery lightning whip 2 . Here 
 the suggestion is made that the whip which has struck the bee is 
 the lightning ; the Devil being, as in so many cases, the disguise 
 of the Thunder. The consequences of this suggestion, which can 
 be carried into very early times, are so important that we purpose 
 to treat them in a separate chapter. For the present we note 
 that the bee has been thunder-struck. 
 
 Now let us return to the story of Mother Red-cap, and of the 
 owl who was a baker's daughter. We can understand the 
 variation between Owl and Woodpecker, as explained above: 
 they are rival Thunder-birds, with a common liking for hollow 
 trees, and there is a feud between them in consequence of their 
 claims to Thunder rank. The Owl is well known in folk-lore as 
 being the enemy of the Woodpecker ; it is not so generally known 
 that it is hostile to another Thunder-bird, which does not live in 
 a hollow tree, the Robin Redbreast. When the Robin burnt his 
 feathers in bringing fire to men, and all the other birds were, out 
 of gratitude or sympathy, lending of their plumage, the owl 
 
 1 Dannhardt, loc. cit. n. 131. 
 
 2 Dannhardt, quoting from Albert and Arthur Schott, Walachische Mdrchen, 
 1845, p. 283 ft. 
 
56 THE ORIGIN OF BEES [CH.VI 
 
 alone refused to subscribe a feather ! The fact is, the owl is an 
 unsuccessful Thunder-god, and he is the victim of jealousy. 
 Other birds have outdistanced him in the discharge of the Fire and 
 Lightning functions 1 . 
 
 Now when we try to explain the two metamorphoses before 
 us, the Mother Red-cap into a Woodpecker, and the Baker's 
 Daughter into an Owl, we shall easily see that the key to the situ- 
 ation is that somewhere there has been a failure to discharge a 
 function. We have the theme underlying all the legends, she 
 gives no bread, and this means, she makes no rain, for without 
 rain there can be no bread, either for Christ or Peter or Christ's 
 folk or the poor generally. Mother Red-cap is the unsuccessful 
 rain-maker. As to her conversion to bird-form, that only means 
 that she was originally a Woodpecker, like King Picus and King 
 Keleos. Most of these metamorphoses in the story-books took 
 place in the reverse order. We may put it in this way if we please : 
 Mother Red-cap is the primitive priestess and representative of the 
 Woodpecker, and the Woodpecker is the Thunder. So the popular 
 legends as to the failure to give bread (i.e. rain), go on naturally 
 to the punishment of the bird that is responsible for the defect, 
 which suffers from continual thirst, is compelled to drink out of 
 puddles, and whose cry (gi-et, gi-et, ki-ek, ki-ek) is interpreted 
 everywhere to be a call for rain. Thus the whole series of legends 
 is a dramatisation of the failure to bring rain and the proper 
 punishment of such failure 2 . 
 
 1 A similar reason underlies the Greek belief in the hostility between the Wren 
 and the Eagle, which appear as rivals for bird-sovereignty (cf. King Picus, etc.). 
 Thus Aristotle speaks of rpoxiXos dery 7ro\<?/uos (H. A. 8. 3. 5) and Pliny (H. N. 
 x. 74), " Dissident aquila et trochilus, si credimus, quoniam rex appellatur avium." 
 
 2 E.g. in the Teutonic mythology the Woodpecker says "Giet, giet," and is 
 supposed to be crying for rain. Grimm (Mythol., ed. Stallybrass, n. 674), "The 
 green-pecker has the alias giessvogel, Austr. gissvogel, goissvogel : Low G. giitvogel, 
 gietvogel, gutf'iigeL..beca,uae his cry of geuss geuss giet is said to augur a downpour 
 of rain." 
 
 In France he invokes the rain, with constant cry, Plieu, plieu, and is accordingly 
 so named. It is easy to see why the bird is called in France Tin .17/7/<r\<* Provider, 
 in view of the equation between rain and bread. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LIGHTNING WHIP 
 
 Now let us return to the story of the way the Devil struck 
 at the bee with his whip, and the accompanying suggestion that 
 the whip is the lightning. The importance of this suggestion 
 lies in the fact that there are abundant traces of the belief, 
 ranging over wide areas and long tracts of time. For example, 
 Grimm had already noted that the Chinese described the lightning 
 as the whip of the thunder : " For lightning they have along with 
 their regular expressions the metaphorical hu-pien, i.e. the whip of 
 the thunder (or the thunderer) 1 " 
 
 Now it seems likely that this is the direction in which we are 
 to look for the explanation of certain passages in the Rig Veda 
 in which the A9vins and the Maruts (Storm-spirits) are described 
 as carrying a whip. For instance, the Acvins are invited to come 
 and sprinkle the sacrifices with their whip, furnished with sweet- 
 ness and pleasant of sound. Max Miiller's explanation of this 
 prayer was as follows: 
 
 As whips had probably some similarity to the instruments used for sprink- 
 ling butter on the sacrificial viands, the Agvins are asked to sprinkle the 
 sacrifice with their whip, i.e. to give rain 2 . 
 
 No doubt rain is one of the services which the A9\dns are to 
 render, but it would be difficult to find a more far-fetched and 
 meaningless explanation of their whip. 
 
 Myriantheus certainly improved on Max Miiller's explanation, 
 by suggesting that the whip was the wind, whose whistling might 
 be compared to the crack of a whip, and which had in it the promise 
 of descending rain 3 . It is, however, much more natural to identify 
 the whip of the Agvins directly with the lightning. This does 
 
 1 Grimm (Jacob), Vber die Namen des Donners, p. 27, Berlin, 1855. 
 
 2 Twelve Hymns of the Maruts, p. 176. 
 
 3 Die Acvins. p 133. 
 
58 THE LIGHTNING WHIP [c 
 
 not altogether exclude wind and rain under the similitude o 
 whips; we must not make the definitions of primitive man 
 precise. In order to establish this point, let us turn to the 
 Atharva Veda, where we shall actually find a hymn addressed to 
 the Whip of the Avins 1 : from this hymn we propose to make a 
 few extracts. 
 
 First we are told (ix. i. 1) that the "Avins' Honey- whip was 
 born from heaven and earth, from middle air, and from fire and 
 wind." 
 
 Again (ix. i. 3): "She (the whip) is the first-born daughter 
 of the Maruts and derives her origin from Wind and Agni " (i.e. 
 Wind and Fire). 
 
 Again (ix. i. 10) : " The Thunder is thy voice, Lord of 
 Creatures (sc. Prajapati). A Bull, thou castest on the earth thy 
 vigour. The Honey-whip is the Marut's first-born daughter." 
 
 Again (ix. i. 21): "The Whip itself is Heaven, Earth is the 
 handle; the point of juncture is the air's mid-region. The lash 
 is lightning and the tip is golden." These passages are sufficient 
 to show that the whip of the Avins is the Lightning, just as the 
 Devil's whip is the Lightning to the peasants of eastern Europe. 
 We must not equate it with the Wind, for it is the product of 
 Fire and Wind, nor with the Storm-god, for it is the daughter of 
 the Storm ; nor must we explain it away in the manner of Max 
 Miiller's comments upon the two passages in the Rig Veda where 
 the Whip is mentioned. On the other hand, as we have said, we 
 must not detach the whip too positively from the ideas of Fire and 
 Wind. 
 
 The very same hymn in the Atharva Veda brings out clearly 
 the connection between the Twins and Honey. E.g. (ix. i. 16) : 
 
 As honey bees collect and add fresh honey to their honey-store, 
 Even so may both the Agvins lay splendour and strength within my soul. 
 
 And (ix. i. 19): 
 
 May both the A9vins, lords of light, t>alm im with honey of the bees, 
 That I may speak among the folk words full of splendour and of strength. 
 
 So it seems that the connection between the Twins and the 
 bees, which we had detected in the ancient Greek mythology, 
 as well as the connection between the Twins and the Lightning, 
 can be traced also in the ancient Indian literature and ritual. 
 
 1 Book TX. hymn i. 
 
vn] THE LIGHTNING WHIP 59 
 
 It is very interesting to see how the folk-lore of the peasants 
 in Wallachia and Russia has led us to the solution of a Vedic 
 riddle which scholars have hitherto failed to resolve. 
 
 It is interesting to notice that the Vedic conception of the 
 Lightning as a whip still survives in modern India. Every one 
 has been reading of late Tagore's Gitanjali, in which the poetry 
 of Bengal is done into English prose that hardly differs from 
 poetry. 
 
 In one of these prose poems God is addressed in the following 
 strain : " Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, 
 with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end." 
 
 It was natural to imagine that we had here a misprint for 
 flashes of lightning ; but Tagore informs me, in answer to enquiry, 
 that the text is correctly printed, and that the word has its obvious 
 meaning. 
 
 In the Greek mythology the Lightning Whip becomes the 
 special property of Castor the Horse-tamer and Chariot-driver 
 from whom it descends at last to Gervasius of Milan, the patron 
 saint of cab-drivers, and to St Ambrose : in the case of the latter 
 it was exhibited to the faithful in concrete and visible form, as 
 I have shown in the Cult of the Heavenly Twins 1 . The Whip is 
 wielded by both the Twin-brethren in the story of Heliodorus in 
 the second book of the Maccabees. They scourged him merci- 
 lessly and left him half-dead, using the implements proper to their 
 nobility : and so they preserved the sanctuary at Jerusalem and 
 its treasure inviolate from his touch and greed. That is clearly 
 the way the Twins ought to behave : at an earlier period in history 
 they would probably have struck him directly with Fire from 
 heaven; it would have been the same whip from another point 
 of view. 
 
 It is impossible to state the case for the Dioscuric scourging 
 of Heliodorus and his expulsion from the temple, without remem- 
 bering that there was a somewhat similar case in which the 
 covetous and rapacious traders were expelled from the temple at 
 Jerusalem by a figure wielding a whip of small cords. The 
 suggestion comes from an unexpected quarter that the whip of 
 St Ambrose represents the expulsion of the Arians, as Christ 
 drove the traders from the temple. In the volume entitled 
 
 1 Loc. cit. pp. 126-128. 
 
60 THE LIGHTNING WHIP [CH. vu 
 
 Anibrosiana, Prof. Calligaris 1 discusses at length the famous whip 
 of St Ambrose and its history and fortunes, in the course of which 
 he draws attention to the popular belief that Ambrose had 
 scourged the Arians out of the Church in the same way as 
 Jesus Christ had expelled the profane. The illustration is an 
 unfortunate one: for if Ambrose's whip, whether used against 
 Arians or in the defence of Milan and the Milanese, should 
 turn out to be the survival of the Lightning Whip of the 
 Dioscures, which we have been tracing in remote antiquity, 
 what are we to say of the scourge of small cords in the Gospel? 
 Is it another Dioscuric trait in the Gospels, following, in St John's 
 Gospel, the story of the marriage at Cana, for which a Dioscuric 
 affinity has also been suggested 2 ? It is not easy to decide the 
 question in the present state of our mythological knowledge. We 
 have proved that Jesus was in certain quarters regarded as a 
 Dioscure, and credited with Dioscuric functions; and we have 
 shown that the story of Heliodorus, which has a certain parallelism 
 with the Cleansing of the Temple, is fundamentally Dioscuric in 
 character. The problem does not seem, as yet, to admit of a 
 complete solution; but we must certainly classify the Temple 
 incident amongst cases of suspected or possible Dioscurism. 
 
 1 Anibrosiana: where it is the thirteenth essay and occupies sixty -three pages: 
 II flagello di Sanf Ambrogio e le leggende delle lotte Ariane. 
 
 2 The whip does not occur in Mark, whom John is correcting : and it is possible 
 to maintain that it is a later apocryphal addition : by sacrificing the historicity of 
 this detail, it may be possible to get rid of the Dioscuric colour in the cleansing 
 of the temple. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CAIN AND ABEL 
 
 I am often asked by those who are interested in Dioscurism 
 on the side of the Christian Scriptures, whether the case of Cain 
 and Abel at the beginning of the Book of Genesis is not a story 
 of origins Dioscurically told. It has always seemed to me, however, 
 to be best to defer the discussion of doubtful cases of Biblical 
 Dioscurism, and to concentrate one's critical attention on those 
 which are reasonably certain, on which we have a prima facie 
 probability, and then to proceed to the more doubtful cases in 
 the light of the results thus obtained. For this reason we put 
 the story of Cain and Abel on one side in the first survey, for the 
 account does not say that they are twins, and if they are not 
 twins they have to be inferred to be such by the Dioscuric elements 
 in their experience, which is something like building a structure 
 and putting in the foundations afterwards. It is not really as 
 illogical as that: the inference as to twinship may be perfectly 
 lawful, even if no definite statement on the point is forthcoming: 
 in that case the other observed Dioscuric traces are really our 
 foundation : preliminary twinship is not necessary. If, however, 
 we have a case like that of Esau and Jacob, in which twinship 
 is dilated upon by the narrator, it is very easy to go on from this 
 point and identify the Dioscuric features, the fratricidal struggle, 
 the red colour, the dispute as to primogeniture, the exile of a twin 
 in place of his death and the like. No reasonable doubt can arise 
 that the greater part of the story is pure myth. 
 
 In the case of the fighting saints in the Maccabees who protect 
 the temple against the rapacious Heliodorus, even though there 
 is no positive statement that they are twins, the parallel stories 
 
62 CAIN AND ABEL [OH. 
 
 from Roman History and the like are sufficient to enable us to 
 fill in the omitted detail, and to regard the whole adventure as 
 a Dioscuric incident in Jerusalem's history, as clearly made out 
 as the battle of the Lake Regillus. We cannot, however, at once 
 infer the twinship of Cain and Abel with quite the same confidence 
 of induction. The best way to proceed with the matter will 
 probably be the following. 
 
 First of all, as a preliminary observation, note that in the 
 case of the triad, Jabal, Jubal and Tubal in the same chapter 
 (Genesis c. 4), we have a Kabiric group engaged in occupations 
 and the discovery of human arts, just like those which are credited 
 to the sacred twins and triplets of Greece or Phoenicia. Jubal's 
 lyre is the same as Amphion's, or for that matter, Apollo's. 
 Kastor, too, belongs to the same musical academy. Even the 
 parenthetically introduced sister Noema has her parallel in Helen ; 
 and although the fortunes of the group are told in an absurdly 
 abbreviated form, the family likeness is not obscured by the 
 brevity of the narration. If you like, it is a Dioscuric or Kabiric 
 snap-shot. 
 
 Second, we may say that if we proceed, as elsewhere, by the 
 way of hypothesis, and assign to the hypothesis the value of that 
 which it lawfully explains, then we may test the story of Cain and 
 Abel and see how much of it would be explicable on the hypothesis 
 of twinship. In that case, we note that twinship is not excluded 
 by the narration: all that the book says is that Eve brought 
 forth a man-child, and said she had gotten Jahveh, and that she 
 added to bear a second child. If that child is immediately sub- 
 sequent to the other, then we have a thunder-child and his brother, 
 the typical explanation of twins at one period of human thought. 
 How much would the hypothesis explain of further detail? 
 Obviously the first answer is that it explains the first murder; 
 Cain is equated with Romulus : Abel with Remus or with Kastor. 
 It does, however, more than this : it explains the exile of Cain ; 
 for, just as when the twins are tabooed, they are exiled where they 
 are not exposed ; so it is perfectly natural that when one twin is 
 killed, the other should be exiled. Thus we see that the real reason 
 for Cain's wanderings does not lie in the fact that he is a proscribed 
 murderer, but that he is a proscribed person who has not been 
 murdered. As he is taboo, a taboo mark is placed on him, prob- 
 ably on his forehead, as it is expressly said to be, for identification. 
 
vni] CAIN AND ABEL 63 
 
 Thus we explain at once the exile and the taboo. We do more 
 than this, however, for it will be remembered that one of our most 
 important discoveries in the region of Twin-cult was the formation 
 of Twin-towns by the exiled twins and their mother; we have 
 shown that this is the real meaning of the building of Rome by 
 Romulus and Remus, and of a number of other similarly formed 
 towns or sanctuaries. Now in the story of Genesis, it has always 
 been a perplexity of the pious to explain how, when there were, 
 presumably, no more than four persons in the world, or little more 
 than four, one of them should go off into a remote spot and build 
 a city. The inexplicable and sudden advance in civilisation 
 becomes clear as day, when we remark that it is the fashion for 
 twins at an early stage of civilisation to build Twin-towns. The 
 only residual difficulty lies in the fact that the little twin, round 
 whom the twin-town has already developed, is without his mother's 
 care, and has already killed his brother: but this is just the kind 
 of tangle into which mythologists always get : they have to inter- 
 pret the traditional murder of a single twin, and they say "twin 
 kills twin" and "twin hates twin," and build up explanatory 
 legends. In the story of the building of Rome the same confusion 
 occurs. The mortal twin ought to have died by exposure: he 
 actually goes on till the walls of twin -town are rising, when another 
 story-teller comes forward to explain how Rome was rid of him. 
 
 It appears therefore, that the twin-hypothesis is almost a 
 necessity in the Cain and Abel legends; to invoke it is obvious, 
 when we know how the history of ancient peoples is traditionally 
 regarded. 
 
 A few words may now be added to show that the direction in 
 which we are throwing our search-light is the real line of advance 
 on the knowledge of Hebrew mythology. By that we mean that, 
 while not denying the existence of Solar myths in the Hebrew 
 and other Semitic traditions, the twin -myths have often the right 
 of way against them. Twin-myths are not really Solar myths, 
 they descend from the thunder, not from the bright sky ; and the 
 attempt to read Solar myths on the wide scale into Hebrew history 
 has just the same tragical collapse as it has in the Greek or Roman 
 mythology. For instance, a large part of Goldziher's learned and 
 diffuse Mythology among the Hebrews is vitiated by a false starting- 
 point, the universal ubiquitous Solar myth. Let us see, for ex- 
 ample, how Goldziher would treat the Cain and Abel story (we 
 
64 CAIN AND ABEL [CH. 
 
 might equally have selected the story of Esau and Jacob) ; here 
 is a specimen 1 : 
 
 The battle of the Day with the Night is still more frequently represented 
 as a quarrel between brothers. At the very threshold of the earliest Biblical 
 history we meet a brothers' quarrel of this kind, the source of which is the 
 nature-myth, spread out among all nations of the world without exception. 
 It is not difficult to prove that Cam (Kayin) is a solar figure, and that Abel 
 (Hebhel) is connected with the sky dark with night or clouds.... Cain is an 
 agriculturist, Abel a shepherd. We have demonstrated... that agriculture 
 always has a solar character, whereas the shepherd's life is connected with 
 the phenomenon of the cloudy or nightly sky. 
 
 It would be more correct to say "we have imagined" than 
 "we have demonstrated." However, to proceed: Goldziher 
 makes some just remarks on the parallelism between Cain 
 (= Smith) and Tubal-Cain, and between Abel and Jabal, some 
 of which is valid, not perhaps etymologically, but because Dioscures 
 and Kabiri are necessarily parallel. He remarks that: 
 
 We have seen above, and I shall show still more clearly... that in the myths 
 of all peoples the Solar heroes are regarded as the founders of city-life, and 
 that a fratricide often precedes the building of the city. The agricultural 
 stage, which is connected with the Solar worship, overcomes the stage of 
 nomadic life, which holds to the dark sky of night or clouds; and, after 
 conquering the herdsmen, the surviving agriculturists build the first city. 
 It will not surprise us if the solution of the question raised by F. Lenormant, 
 "pour en suivre toutes les formes depuis Cain batissant la premiere ville 
 Hanoch apres avoir assassine Abel, jusqu'a Romulus fondant Rome dans le 
 sang de son frere Remus," proves the consistency and universality of the 
 ideas of mankind at the mythic stage in reference to this point. Whether 
 the connection of the zodiacal figure of the Twins with this feature of the 
 myth is so close as this acute French scholar imagines, is an independent 
 question. 
 
 Perhaps we have quoted enough to show how completely 
 side-tracked Goldziher was in his investigation of the encum- 
 bering solar hypothesis, and how much nearer Lenormant was to 
 the truth than he. Goldziher goes on to explain the wandering 
 of Cain, by the motions of the Sun, who as the hero described in 
 the Psalms, "rejoices to run a race." We cannot run about after 
 him: he is almost as wide of the mark as Max Miiller himself! 
 We do not mean to be understood as saying that there are no 
 Solar myths; even the contradiction of them requires correction 
 and modification. Twin-myths, however, are not Solar myths. 
 1 p. 110. (My reference is made to the English translation of Goldziher by 
 Russell Martin oau.) 
 
vin] CAIN AND ABEL 65 
 
 We may conclude with the expectation that, like as we have 
 explained mythology in terms of Twins, and have discounted the 
 explanations of many who have preceded us, so there will be 
 those who come after us who will talk of the Ignis Fatuus of 
 Twin-speculations, which has led us away from the region of 
 historical truth into that of mythological fancy: for every man 
 walketh in a vain show : he heapeth up hypotheses, and knoweth 
 not who shall annihilate them! 
 
 R. H. 
 
CHAPTER IX 1 
 
 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM AND THE 
 NEIGHBOURHOOD 
 
 During a recent sojourn in Constantinople, I took the oppor- 
 tunity to verify a hypothesis which I had emitted with regard 
 to the popularity of the Heavenly Twins on the Bosporus, in 
 their capacity of Saviour Gods, and with regard to the influence 
 which that most popular cult had upon the hagiology of the Chris- 
 tian Church. It was not at all surprising that such suggestions 
 of primitive Byzantine worship, and of subsequent Byzantine 
 displacements, should have been made, when one reflects on the 
 extent to which the Dioscures and their alternative Kabirs were 
 in evidence in the N.-E. corner of the Aegean, and all round the 
 Black Sea, from the Symplegades onwards. Was it likely that 
 shrines should be erected to them at Tomi, at Olbia or in Colchis, 
 in Delos or Lemnos or Samothrake or Tenedos, but that the sailors 
 should cease making appeal to them, when passing the Dardanelles, 
 or when working up the Bosporus into the further sea that they 
 so much dreaded? Had Byzantium no blessing in the name of 
 the Twins for those that put out to sea, and no facilities for the 
 emphasis of gratitude on the part of the mariner, who had success- 
 fully returned to his port again? And since the care of sailors 
 and the rendering docile of the waves sailed over was only one 
 branch of their saving art, was it likely that the Byzanti:m 
 colony of ancient days, or the proud city of Constantine, had no 
 memorials of its hero benefactors, and no places where they 
 practised their beneficence ? Obviously, it is in the highest degree 
 improbable that the Heavenly Twins had no hold upon the 
 populations that bordered on the Sea of Marmora, or the straits 
 connected with it; and almost as unlikely that there was an 
 
 1 Reprinted from Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway on his 
 sixtieth birthday, 6 August 1913, by permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge 
 I'nivrsity Press. 
 
CH.IX] THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM 67 
 
 abrupt change of faith at the coming of Christianity, which left 
 the people nothing that corresponded to their original and age- 
 long devotion to the Great Twin Brethren. 
 
 Moreover, there is a reason why the Twins should be in evidence 
 on the Bosporus, even if they had been altogether unknown in the 
 Euxine or the Aegean. I have shown elsewhere that the Twins 
 are always to be looked for in situations of peculiar difficulty or 
 danger to mariners ; that they preside over shallows (as at Cyrene 
 and Barca over the great Syrtis), over dangerous places (like the 
 entrance to the harbour at Alexandria or the reef of rocks outside 
 Jaffa), over all straits, from the English Channel downward, and 
 wherever a lighthouse or look-out station is to be found (as in 
 the case of the Pharos at Alexandria or the Dioscureion on Mount 
 Cassius). The Bosporus, in early times, was marked both by 
 lighthouses and by look-out stations ; it had dangers of its own, 
 arising from the current which sets through the Strait from the 
 Black Sea, which is difficult for sailing ships in bad weather, and 
 for boats propelled by oars in any weather, at least at those points 
 where the current strikes against some jutting-out headland, or 
 when the stream is reinforced by the North wind so that boats, 
 sailing towards the Black Sea, can no more make headway against 
 it, and have commonly to be carried overland past the points 
 where the downward stream is strongest. 
 
 There is then, on every account, an a priori probability that 
 we shall find the Twins in the harbour of Byzantium and on the 
 straits ; at the Golden Horn, or on the Asiatic or European shores 
 of that most beautiful of waterways. Now my hypothesis was 
 that the Twins had been worshipped on the Bosporus at various 
 points, until they were finally displaced by the Archangel Michael ; 
 and that they discharged naval and medical functions in Byzantium 
 itself, where they were finally displaced by pairs of Christian 
 saints, notably by Cosmas and Damian, who had wandered this 
 way out of Syria and Cilicia. 
 
 The first part of the thesis concerned the case of the displace- 
 ment of the Twins by St Michael the Archangel, in which case it 
 was necessary to prove that Christian sailors made vows in certain 
 places to St Michael, and that the Twins had been in those 
 situations before him. If it can be proved that St Michael received 
 such worship and had such antecedents, the case is proved for the 
 Bosporus; and it will be confirmed for every indication that we 
 
68 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM [CH. 
 
 may find elsewhere that Michael took over the trade of the Twins 
 or that he received honours in Dioscuric situations. It was no 
 difficult to make the necessary proofs : Michaelia, in the sense of 
 Dioscureia, are actually in existence, and legends are not wanting 
 which can only be interpreted as meaning that Michael did what 
 the Twins used to do. We will give presently a classical passage 
 which establishes the foregoing statement. I first drew attention 
 to it in c. xvi of the Cult of the Heavenly Twins ; but as I have 
 had recent opportunity of studying with some care the configuration 
 and currents of the Bosporus, and have also had the opportunity 
 of discussing the whole matter, from the standpoint of Byzantine 
 antiquity, with my learned friend Dr van Millingen, of Robert 
 College, Constantinople, I have been able to improve my former 
 statements and to extend them, so that Dioscurism on the Bosporus 
 can be regarded as finally and sufficiently demonstrated. 
 
 We will arrange the argument in the following order: 
 
 (i) There are special points of danger on the Bosporus. 
 
 (ii) At some of these points shrines of St Michael still exist. 
 
 (iii) There are also a number of look-out stations and signalling 
 stations, and lighthouses which appear to be of venerable antiquity. 
 
 (iv) There is literary evidence that the Michaelia on the 
 Bosporus were originally Dioscureia. 
 
 In order to make these points clear we must take the Bosporus 
 steamer, or its equivalent, a Murray's Handbook for travellers. 
 When we have thus discussed the topography and the steni- 
 ography (if I may coin a word), we can return to Constantinople 
 and take up the similar problems which that city presents of the 
 transition from popular Dioscurism to equally popular Christian 
 hagiology. This transition is easier than it looks. Strange as 
 it may at first sound, the Dioscuri are not felt to be a cult alien 
 to monotheism. This is true both for Palestine and for Con- 
 stantinople; it is true even for Rome. A man was not the less 
 a good monotheist Jew, because he believed that Jahweh had 
 come with the Dioscuri to converse and banquet with Abraham 
 at the Holy Oak in Mamre. If he had any theistic qualms, he 
 silenced them by rechristening the angels of the visit as Michael 
 and Gabriel; but any unprejudiced person can see that it is a 
 Theophany accompanied by a Dioscurophany, and it is probably 
 quite a late alteration to dress the Twin Brethren as archangels. 
 It would be easy to show that Dioscurism was current in Jerusalem 
 
 ; 
 
ix] AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 69 
 
 to within a hundred years of the Christian era, and the cult 
 resumed its rights when the Christian era had arrived, so soon as 
 the Fall of the City had announced the cessation of the more 
 highly evolved national ritual. Near Constantinople, Dioscuri sm 
 held its own under the Christian regime without suspicion ; Con- 
 stantine decorated his new city with the ancient statues of the 
 Twins, although he founded the city as a monument of the victory 
 of Christianity over Paganism! 
 
 Now let us return to the Bosporus, and make our Periplus, or 
 more exactly, our Anaplus and Cataplus of the various stations. 
 The first point of danger that we reach is at Arnaut-Keui, where 
 the current, which has been running down the Asiatic shore in 
 great force, sets across the strait to a point just above the before- 
 mentioned village. Now let us see what Murray says of our 
 voyage : 
 
 ARNAUT-KEUI, Albania village, is the ancient Hestiae or Anaplus, which 
 was later called Vicus Michaelicus, from the celebrated church of the arch- 
 angel Michael which was built there by Constantine the Great and repaired 
 by Justinian. The Church was destroyed by Sultan Mohammed II, and the 
 material was used in the construction of the castle at Rumili-Hissar....It is 
 built on the S. side of AKINDI BURNU, current cape, where the current runs so 
 strong, four knots an hour, that small vessels and kaiks generally land their crews 
 and track round the point. Trackers, yedikjis, can always be obtained on pay- 
 ment of half piastre each. In stormy weather the passage round is dangerous 
 for kaiks, and the current here is called SHEITAN AKINDISI, DeviVs current. 
 
 Here, then, we have our first Michaelion; it is clearly due to 
 the danger of the navigation, and this danger was there before 
 St Michael came this way: it is, therefore, almost certain that 
 sailors had a shrine, in early times, in the neighbourhood of 
 Arnaut-Keui. 
 
 The historical details in the foregoing passage can be verified 
 from Sozomen (H . E. n. 3) ; he definitely says that the place was 
 called Michaelion for a primitive Hestiae. The place was on the 
 right hand as you came down the strait from the Black Sea; it 
 was about 30 stadia from the city, as the crow flies, or more 
 exactly as the mariner crosses the bay, but it was more than 
 70 stadia, if you coasted round the bay and did not cut across. 
 The detail about the restoration of the Michaelion is due to 
 Procopius, who says that there were shrines of St Michael, 
 both at Hestiae and on the opposite side 1 . According to him 
 
 1 Procopius, De aedific. I. 8, 9. 
 
 63 
 
70 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM [CH. 
 
 there was a point, clearly a promontory, called Proochthoi by the 
 old men, where on the European side was the Anaplus, where 
 sailors worked up stream, and where the shrine of St Michael 
 stood. There was another Michael shrine on the opposite side, 
 and a third at a place called Mokadion, which has yet to be 
 identified, where Justinian restored the buildings. The evidence 
 for Michaelia is increasing. 
 
 Continuing our journey towards the Black Sea, and passing 
 Bebek and Rumeli-Hissar, where Darius crossed and Mahmoud II, 
 and where the great American college now stands, we come to a 
 place called Stenia, or the straits. It is a wooded shore, enclosing 
 the best harbour on the Bosporus, the scene of many sea-fights, 
 and of much ship-building. Here the Argonaut tradition is in 
 evidence. The Argonauts had landed on the opposite shore, 
 where Amykus the King of the Bebryces ruled, at the foot of the 
 Giant's Mountain. Apparently Amykus regarded the straits as 
 his own, and the adjacent wood and water. Whatever the Argo- 
 nauts got, either in right of water-way or in right of water-supply, 
 they had to fight for: and the story of their victory over the 
 pugilistic Amykus at the hands of the equally pugilistic Pollux 
 (Poly deuces) is a favourite theme with the great Greek poets : the 
 story is splendidly told by Apollonius Rhodius and by Theokritus, 
 and was probably frequently put on the stage. According to 
 Murray's Handbook, the place where the Argonauts took refuge, 
 when first threatened by Amykus, now known as Stenia, was 
 originally called Leosthenius and Sosthenius. 
 
 It bore among the Byzantines the names of Leosthenius and Sostheniu*. 
 The first name is derived from its founder, Leosthenes the Megarian; the 
 second, from the temple of safety, Sosthenia, erected by the Argonauts, out 
 of gratitude for their deliverance : ...in memory of their victory they dedicated 
 the temple (Sosthenia) with the statuo of the heavenly face. Constantine 
 the Great, who found here the temple and the statue of a winged genius, 
 converted the former into a church; and the winged genius, who appeared 
 as a saviour to the Argonauts, into the archangel Michael, as the commander 
 of its heavenly host. 
 
 Here is Michael again in evidence, and in connection with an 
 Argonaut temple. It is clear that there must be some reason for 
 his constant appearance, beyond the occurrence of a particular 
 statue at the special point. Michael is a Byzantine cult, and must 
 be regarded as replacing an earlier cult. Moreover, in the story 
 which we have just been reciting, the whole of the legend has not 
 
ix] AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 71 
 
 been told : for it will appear that the popular belief related that 
 Michael was the very person who fought with Amykus : in other 
 words, Michael at this point was Pollux. The verification of this 
 lies in what may be called the classical passage for the change of 
 cult from the Dioscuri to Michael, a statement by John Malalas 1 , 
 from which the previous account was taken, to the following 
 effect : 
 
 Malalas begins with the story of how the Argonauts, working 
 up the Hellespont, were attacked by the Cyzicenes, whom they 
 routed in a naval combat; after having slain Cyzicus, the king ^/ 
 of the city, and captured the place, they found, to the mutual 
 regret of themselves and the Cyzicenes, that they were in tribal 
 fellowship: so they built an expiatory shrine and consulted the 
 oracle of Apollo, as to its dedication. At this point the chrono- 
 grapher makes the god prophesy the coming of the Virgin Mary 
 and her Son, an oracle which the Argonauts inscribe on their new 
 building, which they somewhat inconsistently consecrate to the 
 Mother of the gods. This only means that an early temple of 
 Rhea or Cybele has become a Church of the Blessed Virgin, and 
 Malalas proceeds to state this definitely: KaXevavres TOV olicov 
 'Pea? priTpos 6ewv, otrrt? ol/co? fiera xpovov? TroXXoi/? eyevero 
 /c/c\rjfTia rrjs dyias KOI Oeorovov Ma^ta? VTTO r /tijva)vo<; fiacriXea)?. 
 It is interesting to notice how the chronographer has projected 
 back the later consecration on the earlier so as practically to make 
 the Argonauts responsible for the whole. The story then con- 
 tinues, that the Argonauts made for the Princes' Islands, and then 
 passing Chalcedon, they attempted the passage to the Pontic Sea 
 (Malalas says, dvrj\0ov TOV Xa\KrjS6vos TT\OVV, Trepao-at, povKopevos 
 TOV dvarr\ovv r^? Ilo/m/a)? 6a\d(T(Tri^: we should correct irepaaai 
 to Tretpao-ai, they were for trying the passage to the Euxine). 
 
 In this attempt they were set upon by Amykus. They fled 
 in fear to a wooded bay (evidently the bay of Stenia), and here 
 there appeared to them a vision of a fearsome man with wings, 
 who made them the oracular promise of a victory over Amykus. 
 In commemoration of which victory, they erected a shrine and a 
 monument of the Power that had appeared to them, calling the 
 shrine or the place Sosthenes, because of the salvation from their 
 enemy. It was this shrine that Constantine came to see, and 
 remarking that the memorial appeared to be half-angel and half- 
 
 1 Malalas, Chron. TV. p. 78. 
 
72 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM [CH. 
 
 monk (dyy\ov arj^etov a^rj^ari fjiova-^ov), he prayed for further 
 information as to the Power in question; he incubated at the 
 shrine, and in a vision of the night it was disclosed to him that it 
 was a memorial shrine of Michael: 6/c7r\a<yei<; eVl TCO TOTTW /cai 
 TU> KTidfjiari,, teal evt^dfjievov yvwvai, Trota? eVrl $vvd/j,ws d r y r y\ov 
 
 TO /CTV7T(OfjLa, TTapeKOi/jLTJBTJ TO) TOTTft) KOi d/COVCTd? V OpdfJLaTi TO 
 
 ovo/jia rr;? Swaged)?, eu#eo>9 eyepOei? e/cooyi^ere TOV TOTTOV, Troiijaas 
 KCLT dva,TO\d<; ev%r)V KOI eVcoyo/Aacre TO evKTrjpiov, IJTOL TOV TOTTOV, 
 TOV ayiov ap%ay<y6\ov Mt^ar/X,. 
 
 Here again we see Malalas projecting Christian matter back 
 on the displaced shrine, just as he did with the dedication of the 
 shrine at Cyzicus to the mother of the gods. What is certain 
 from the story is that a shrine has been converted to Christian 
 uses, which formerly was connected with the Argonauts, and with 
 the fight over Amykus. The displaced occupant of the Heroon in 
 question is not the winged genius that promises the victory, but 
 the quite unmonastic and scarcely angelic person who secured 
 the triumph; in other words, either Pollux, or the Dioscuri in 
 common. According to this the converted shrine is either a 
 Dioscureion or a Jasoneion, the two terms for sailors being very 
 nearly equivalent. Michael may, therefore, be regarded as a 
 displacement of a Heavenly Twin, Pollux by preference. 
 
 We come now to the entrance to the Bosporus : at this point 
 we have the invasion of another cult from the Black Sea, that of 
 Serapis. There are Serapeia as well as Michaelia and Dioscureia. 
 We come on such a Serapeion, near the mouth of the Chrysorrhoas, 
 and here Murray's Handbook reminds us, "Jason, after having 
 offered sacrifices on the Asiatic shore to the twelve great gods, 
 erected an altar to Cybele." So we are once more on the track 
 of the Argonauts, in whose company Castor and Pollux find a 
 place. Here, too, we find the ancient Pharos, and a custom-house 
 for each side of the strait. If we may treat the modern names as 
 perpetuating ancient sanctities, we have two sacred trees, one on 
 each shore, giving their names to Rumili Kavak, the European 
 poplar, and Anatoli Kavak, the Asiatic poplar. The lighthouse 
 and look-out station stood at the head of the ravine, and, according 
 to Murray, bore anciently the name of Ovid's Tower, or the 
 Tunis Timaea. 
 
 This was the old Pharos, from which torches were held up at night, whose 
 lights, placed in a straight line with those at the mouth of the Bosporus, 
 
ix] AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 73 
 
 saved the ships navigating the Black Sea from being wrecked on the Cyanean 
 rocks or the Thracian coast. 
 
 At Anatoli Kavak, there was again a temple, said to be dedicated 
 by Jason to the Twelve Gods, on his return from Kolchis. This 
 Hieron is now occupied by the Genoese castle at the entrance to 
 the Black Sea ; but it had been formerly taken over by Justinian, 
 who built here a church and dedicated it to the " Archangel Michael, 
 leader of the Heavenly Hosts, who was the special guardian of the 
 straits of the Bosporus." Note how Michael appears to be 
 following the track of Jason. He is clearly an Argonaut in 
 disguise ! 
 
 As we return down the strait on the Asiatic side, we shall 
 presently come to Vani-Keui, then to a large Barrack, and the 
 village of Kulehli or Kuleh Bagcheh. Here again we shall find 
 a church dedicated to St Michael. The guide-book informs us that : 
 
 Formerly the church of the Archangel Michael stood here, exactly opposite 
 to the one built on the European side at Kuru Chesmeh. The Archangel 
 Michael was regarded as the special guardian of the Bosporus, and hence 
 churches were dedicated to him at Anaplus, Hieron, Kuru Chesmeh, and 
 Kuleh Bagcheh. 
 
 I am not quite sure whether the Michaelion at Kuru Chesmeh is 
 distinct from the one at the Anaplus. It seems to be the same 
 as the one previously described. 
 
 We noted above that we passed the village of Vani-Keui. At 
 this point the hill above the village has a fine range of landscape, 
 and is admirably suited for a look-out station. It is actually 
 employed to-day for wireless telegraphy, and in Abdul Hamid's 
 time was one of the fire-stations of the city. It stands to reason, 
 however, that in the ancient time when there were no telegraphs, 
 and when one could not always be sure of crossing the strait, a 
 fire-station for Constantinople would never be placed on the 
 Asiatic shore. Moreover, there is a high tower in Stamboul to-day 
 that expressly serves for a fire-station, from which to announce 
 conflagrations. 
 
 The stations at Vani-Keui may be taken for an original look- 
 out station, with a possible Pharos, and in that capacity both it, 
 and the corresponding fire-station in Stamboul, were probably 
 Dioscureia. 
 
 We have now followed St Michael up and down the Bosporus. 
 We find him on both sides of the strait, presiding over sanctuaries 
 
74 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM [CH. 
 
 which appear to occur in pairs. These sanctuaries appear to be 
 either Jasoneia or Dioscureia. The story in Malalas appears to 
 identify Michael with Pollux the Argonaut, rather than with 
 Castor or Jason. Serapis, whom Leucius suggests as the ancestor 
 of Michael, is clearly not to be thought of. 
 
 It will be interesting to see how far this connection between 
 Michael and the Twins can be made out elsewhere. There is one 
 curious case which came to my notice in recent years ; the news- 
 papers reported that at the great eruption of Vesuvius, the stream 
 of lava and mud from the crater had overwhelmed the church of 
 St Michael, which was formerly a shrine of the Heavenly Twins 1 . 
 No doubt there are many more such cases besides the one I acci- 
 dentally stumbled upon. 
 
 Now let us return to harbour and see what traces we can find 
 archaeologically of the Cult of the Twins. We have already 
 suggested the possibility of the existence of an ancient look-out 
 station on the highest part of Stamboul. 
 
 We learn from Zosimus 2 that when Constantine began to plan 
 his new city, he found the statues of the Dioscuri on the place 
 where he was planning the new Hippodrome. He did not remove 
 them. It is even said that he went further, and brought from 
 Mt Dindymus a statue of Cybele, which was credited to the 
 Argonauts. So Constantine had not quite accomplished his 
 religious revolution ! Probably, as the Sea of Marmora would have 
 been visible in those days from the Hippodrome, the place was 
 a look-out station, and a Pharos, which the carefully preserved 
 statues of the Twins help us to recognise as a Dioscureion. 
 
 There was another shrine of the Twins at the head of the 
 Golden Horn, on the hill above Eyoub. Hesychius Milesius is 
 quoted by Ducange in Constantinopolis Christiana, lib. I, p. 15, 
 to the following effect 3 : T&V Se Aiocrtcovpo)!', Kao-ropo? 8e, </>7;//t, 
 
 1 The information came in a Router (d.-main; and I noted it in The Western 
 Daily Mercury (Plymouth) for Ap. 10, 1906. The despatch concludes as follows : 
 
 "The road between Cercola and Ottaiano is destroyed. It is covnvd with 
 I >uming mud. Refugees from the district of Ottaiano state that eight or ten 
 houses and five churches have collapsed, among them being the Church of San 
 Michele, which was rich in artistic treasures and was built on the site of the ancient 
 Castor and Pollux Temple." 
 
 2 n. 30, 31. 
 
 8 Hesychius Milesius 4, 3. The goddess Semestra here mentioned was a nymph 
 or nereid, whose cult preceded the arrival of the Greek colonists : she belongs to 
 an old nature worship. 
 
ix] AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 75 
 
 KCLl oVVKOVS, V Tft> T?<? 6/A6CTT/3a9 (i)/Ji(p, KOI T 
 
 /ufe*., eV w Kal Xucrt? TWV TraOwv rot? avOp^iro^ eycvero. Aedem 
 Castoris et Pollucis aedificavit idem Byzas ad Borbyzae et Cydari 
 confluentes; ad Semestrae aram et fluminum confluentes, ubi et 
 a morbis homines sanabantur. 
 
 The streams above mentioned are what are now popularly 
 called the "Sweet Waters of Europe" ; and the site of the Temple 
 of Castor and Pollux here given corresponds, with sufficient near- 
 ness, to the site of the Church of Ss Cosmas and Damian, on the 
 hill above Eyoub. 
 
 Tt is interesting to notice that the Twins appear at the point 
 in question as healers, and it is as healers that the famous fee-less 
 doctors, Cosmas and Damian, displace them. Another tradition, 
 preserved by Dionysius of Byzantium, connects the sanctuary at 
 the Sweet Waters of Europe with Jason and his companions, 
 which is a slight variation from the preceding: according to 
 Dionysius, Barbyses, after whom one of the streams is named, 
 was either the person who reared Byzas, the founder of Byzantium, 
 or he was the steersman of Jason and the Minyans. The alter- 
 native is to describe the sanctuary as a Jasoneion or a Dioscureion, 
 a choice which will frequently occur 1 . 
 
 Justinian, who professed to have been healed by the Cosmas 
 and Damian Twins, built churches in their honour, not only in 
 Constantinople, but also in Cyrrhus, near the Euphrates, where 
 their bodies were supposed to be lying 2 , and at Aegae, and perhaps 
 at Zeugma on the Euphrates, where they had charge of the passage 
 of the river. That they commonly displaced the pair Castor and 
 Pollux is betrayed by a naive story, told by their hagiographers, 
 of the discomfiture of some unbelieving, or ill-believing Greeks, 
 who attempted an incubation in the new Church (or old Temple), 
 and were reproved by the saints who told them, "You seem to 
 imagine that we are Castor and Pollux; we beg to inform you 
 that we are Cosmas and Damian ! " Thus were the wicked Greeks 
 reproved for imagining that it was the original firm, who were 
 doing business at the old stand, under a new name. 
 
 The saints in question, whom we unhesitatingly identify as 
 
 1 Dion. Byzant. Anaplus, ed. Wescher, p. 11, apxtrat d T&I> iroTafj.wv KvSapos 
 fjiev airb QepivTjs Screws, Bap/Si/crT/s de tiri ddrepa Kara fiopeav avenov. TOVTOV ol /j,ei> 
 Tp6<pea KaKovffi Rufavros- oi 8e 'laaovi, /cat rots GVV avr^i Mii'tfats i)ye/j.6i>a. rod 
 
 rives de ewixwpiov r/p&a. 
 
 2 ProcopUis, De aedif. n 11. 
 
76 THE DIOSCURI IN BYZANTIUM 
 
 Dioscures, not only because they were twins, but because th 
 discharged twin-functions, became the centre of a Greek brother- 
 hood, and gave their name to an open space in Constantinople, 
 known by the name of Cosmidion. When they moved West and 
 took their place in Old Rome, they arrived by two roads; one 
 of which led them near to the Forum to found the church of 
 Ss Cosimo and Damiano; the other to the neighbourhood of the 
 Bocca della Verita, a circular drain-head where Romans used 
 swear, thrusting their hands into the Bocca. At this point 
 built the church of St Maria in Cosmedin, rebuilt in the eight 
 century by Hadrian I, with a beautiful campanile. The Church 
 belonged originally to a Greek brotherhood, as is shown by the 
 reference to Cosmedin, and by its alternative title as Sancta Ma 
 in Schola Graeca. 
 
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