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Clojure Data Analysis
Cookbook
Second Edition

Dive into data analysis with Clojure through over 100

practical recipes for every stage of the analysis and
collection process

Eric Rochester

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Clojure Data Analysis Cookbook
Second Edition

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the
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First published: March 2013

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 Credits

Author Project Coordinator

Eric Rochester Neha Thakur

Reviewers Proofreaders
Vitomir Kovanovic Ameesha Green
Muktabh Mayank Srivastava Joel T. Johnson
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 About the Author

Eric Rochester enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with his wife and kids. When
he’s not doing these things, he programs in a variety of languages and platforms, including
websites and systems in Python, and libraries for linguistics and statistics in C#. Currently,
he is exploring functional programming languages, including Clojure and Haskell. He works
at Scholars’ Lab in the library at the University of Virginia, helping humanities professors and
graduate students realize their digitally informed research agendas. He is also the author of
Mastering Clojure Data Analysis, Packt Publishing.

I’d like to thank everyone. My technical reviewers proved invaluable.

Also, thank you to the editorial staff at Packt Publishing. This book is
much stronger because of all of their feedback, and any remaining
deficiencies are mine alone.

A special thanks to Jackie, Melina, and Micah. They’ve been patient and
supportive while I worked on this project. It is, in every way, for them.
 About the Reviewers

Vitomir Kovanovic is a PhD student at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh,

Edinburgh, UK. He received an MSc degree in computer science and software engineering
in 2011, and BSc in information systems and business administration in 2009 from the
University of Belgrade, Serbia. His research interests include learning analytics, educational
data mining, and online education. He is a member of the Society for Learning Analytics
Research and a member of program committees of several conferences and journals in
technology-enhanced learning. In his PhD research, he focuses on the use of trace data for
understanding the effects of technology use on the quality of the social learning process and
learning outcomes. For more information, visit http://vitomir.kovanovic.info/

Muktabh Mayank Srivastava is a data scientist and the cofounder of ParallelDots.com.

Previously, he helped in solving many complex data analysis and machine learning problems
for clients from different domains such as healthcare, retail, procurement, automation,
Bitcoin, social recommendation engines, geolocation fact-finding, customer profiling,
and so on.

His new venture is ParallelDots. It is a tool that allows any content archive to be presented
in a story using advanced techniques of NLP and machine learning. For publishers and
bloggers, it automatically creates a timeline of any event using their archive and presents
it in an interactive, intuitive, and easy-to-navigate interface on their webpage. You can find
him on LinkedIn at http://in.linkedin.com/in/muktabh/ and on Twitter at
@muktabh / @ParallelDots.
Federico Tomassetti has been programming since he was a child and has a PhD
in software engineering. He works as a consultant on model-driven development and
domain-specific languages, writes technical articles, teaches programming, and works as
a full-stack software engineer.

He has experience working in Italy, Germany, and Ireland, and he is currently working
at Groupon International.

You can read about his projects on http://federico-tomassetti.it/ or

https://github.com/ftomassetti/.
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 Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Importing Data for Analysis 7
Introduction 7
Creating a new project 8
Reading CSV data into Incanter datasets 9
Reading JSON data into Incanter datasets 12
Reading data from Excel with Incanter 14
Reading data from JDBC databases 15
Reading XML data into Incanter datasets 18
Scraping data from tables in web pages 21
Scraping textual data from web pages 25
Reading RDF data 29
Querying RDF data with SPARQL 33
Aggregating data from different formats 38
Chapter 2: Cleaning and Validating Data 45
Introduction 45
Cleaning data with regular expressions 46
Maintaining consistency with synonym maps 48
Identifying and removing duplicate data 50
Regularizing numbers 53
Calculating relative values 55
Parsing dates and times 57
Lazily processing very large data sets 59
Sampling from very large data sets 61
Fixing spelling errors 64
Parsing custom data formats 68
Validating data with Valip 70
Table of Contents

Chapter 3: Managing Complexity with Concurrent Programming 73

Introduction 74
Managing program complexity with STM 75
Managing program complexity with agents 79
Getting better performance with commute 82
Combining agents and STM 83
Maintaining consistency with ensure 85
Introducing safe side effects into the STM 88
Maintaining data consistency with validators 91
Monitoring processing with watchers 94
Debugging concurrent programs with watchers 96
Recovering from errors in agents 98
Managing large inputs with sized queues 100
Chapter 4: Improving Performance with Parallel Programming 101
Introduction 102
Parallelizing processing with pmap 102
Parallelizing processing with Incanter 106
Partitioning Monte Carlo simulations for better pmap performance 107
Finding the optimal partition size with simulated annealing 112
Combining function calls with reducers 116
Parallelizing with reducers 118
Generating online summary statistics for data streams with reducers 121
Using type hints 124
Benchmarking with Criterium 127
Chapter 5: Distributed Data Processing with Cascalog 131
Introduction 131
Initializing Cascalog and Hadoop for distributed processing 133
Querying data with Cascalog 137
Distributing data with Apache HDFS 138
Parsing CSV files with Cascalog 141
Executing complex queries with Cascalog 143
Aggregating data with Cascalog 146
Defining new Cascalog operators 148
Composing Cascalog queries 151
Transforming data with Cascalog 153

ii
 Table of Contents

Chapter 6: Working with Incanter Datasets 155

Introduction 156
Loading Incanter's sample datasets 156
Loading Clojure data structures into datasets 157
Viewing datasets interactively with view 159
Converting datasets to matrices 161
Using infix formulas in Incanter 163
Selecting columns with $ 165
Selecting rows with $ 167
Filtering datasets with $where 169
Grouping data with $group-by 170
Saving datasets to CSV and JSON 172
Projecting from multiple datasets with $join 173
Chapter 7: Statistical Data Analysis with Incanter 177
Introduction 177
Generating summary statistics with $rollup 178
Working with changes in values 180
Scaling variables to simplify variable relationships 182
Working with time series data with Incanter Zoo 184
Smoothing variables to decrease variation 186
Validating sample statistics with bootstrapping 189
Modeling linear relationships 192
Modeling non-linear relationships 195
Modeling multinomial Bayesian distributions 199
Finding data errors with Benford's law 202
Chapter 8: Working with Mathematica and R 207
Introduction 207
Setting up Mathematica to talk to Clojuratica for Mac OS X and Linux 208
Setting up Mathematica to talk to Clojuratica for Windows 212
Calling Mathematica functions from Clojuratica 214
Sending matrixes to Mathematica from Clojuratica 215
Evaluating Mathematica scripts from Clojuratica 217
Creating functions from Mathematica 218
Setting up R to talk to Clojure 219
Calling R functions from Clojure 221
Passing vectors into R 222
Evaluating R files from Clojure 224
Plotting in R from Clojure 226

iii
Table of Contents

Chapter 9: Clustering, Classifying, and Working with Weka 229

Introduction 229
Loading CSV and ARFF files into Weka 230
Filtering, renaming, and deleting columns in Weka datasets 232
Discovering groups of data using K-Means clustering 235
Finding hierarchical clusters in Weka 241
Clustering with SOMs in Incanter 244
Classifying data with decision trees 246
Classifying data with the Naive Bayesian classifier 249
Classifying data with support vector machines 251
Finding associations in data with the Apriori algorithm 254
Chapter 10: Working with Unstructured and Textual Data 257
Introduction 258
Tokenizing text 258
Finding sentences 259
Focusing on content words with stoplists 260
Getting document frequencies 262
Scaling document frequencies by document size 264
Scaling document frequencies with TF-IDF 266
Finding people, places, and things with Named Entity Recognition 270
Mapping documents to a sparse vector space representation 272
Performing topic modeling with MALLET 274
Performing naïve Bayesian classification with MALLET 277
Chapter 11: Graphing in Incanter 281
Introduction 281
Creating scatter plots with Incanter 282
Graphing non-numeric data in bar charts 284
Creating histograms with Incanter 287
Creating function plots with Incanter 288
Adding equations to Incanter charts 290
Adding lines to scatter charts 292
Customizing charts with JFreeChart 293
Customizing chart colors and styles 296
Saving Incanter graphs to PNG 298
Using PCA to graph multi-dimensional data 299
Creating dynamic charts with Incanter 302

iv
 Table of Contents

Chapter 12: Creating Charts for the Web 305

Introduction 305
Serving data with Ring and Compojure 306
Creating HTML with Hiccup 311
Setting up to use ClojureScript 313
Creating scatter plots with NVD3 317
Creating bar charts with NVD3 323
Creating histograms with NVD3 326
Creating time series charts with D3 329
Visualizing graphs with force-directed layouts 334
Creating interactive visualizations with D3 339
Index 345

v
 Preface
Welcome to the second edition of Clojure Data Analysis Cookbook! It seems that books
become obsolete almost as quickly as software does, so here we have the opportunity to
keep things up-to-date and useful.

Moreover, the state of the art of data analysis is also still evolving and changing. The
techniques and technologies are being refined and improved. Hopefully, this book will capture
some of that. I've also added a new chapter on how to work with unstructured textual data.

In spite of these changes, some things have stayed the same. Clojure has further proven
itself to be an excellent environment to work with data. As a member of the lisp family of
languages, it inherits a flexibility and power that is hard to match. The concurrency and
parallelization features have further proven themselves as great tools for developing
software and analyzing data.

Clojure's usefulness for data analysis is further improved by a number of strong libraries.
Incanter provides a practical environment to work with data and perform statistical analysis.
Cascalog is an easy-to-use wrapper over Hadoop and Cascading. Finally, when you're ready
to publish your results, ClojureScript, an implementation of Clojure that generates JavaScript,
can help you to visualize your data in an effective and persuasive way.

Moreover, Clojure runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), so any libraries written for Java are
available too. This gives Clojure an incredible amount of breadth and power.

I hope that this book will give you the tools and techniques you need to get answers from
your data.
Preface

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Importing Data for Analysis, covers how to read data from a variety of sources,
including CSV files, web pages, and linked semantic web data.

Chapter 2, Cleaning and Validating Data, presents strategies and implementations to

normalize dates, fix spelling, and work with large datasets. Getting data into a useable shape
is an important, but often overlooked, stage of data analysis.

Chapter 3, Managing Complexity with Concurrent Programming, covers Clojure's concurrency

features and how you can use them to simplify your programs.

Chapter 4, Improving Performance with Parallel Programming, covers how to use Clojure's
parallel processing capabilities to speed up the processing of data.

Chapter 5, Distributed Data Processing with Cascalog, covers how to use Cascalog as a
wrapper over Hadoop and the Cascading library to process large amounts of data distributed
over multiple computers.

Chapter 6, Working with Incanter Datasets, covers the basics of working with Incanter
datasets. Datasets are the core data structures used by Incanter, and understanding them is
necessary in order to use Incanter effectively.

Chapter 7, Statistical Data Analysis with Incanter, covers a variety of statistical processes and
tests used in data analysis. Some of these are quite simple, such as generating summary
statistics. Others are more complex, such as performing linear regressions and auditing data
with Benford's Law.

Chapter 8, Working with Mathematica and R, talks about how to set up Clojure in order to talk
to Mathematica or R. These are powerful data analysis systems, and we might want to use
them sometimes. This chapter will show you how to get these systems to work together, as
well as some tasks that you can perform once they are communicating.

Chapter 9, Clustering, Classifying, and Working with Weka, covers more advanced machine
learning techniques. In this chapter, we'll primarily use the Weka machine learning library.
Some recipes will discuss how to use it and the data structures its built on, while other recipes
will demonstrate machine learning algorithms.

Chapter 10, Working with Unstructured and Textual Data, looks at tools and techniques used
to extract information from the reams of unstructured, textual data.

Chapter 11, Graphing in Incanter, shows you how to generate graphs and other visualizations
in Incanter. These can be important for exploring and learning about your data and also for
publishing and presenting your results.

Chapter 12, Creating Charts for the Web, shows you how to set up a simple web application in
order to present findings from data analysis. It will include a number of recipes that leverage
the powerful D3 visualization library.
2
 Preface

What you need for this book

One piece of software required for this book is the Java Development Kit (JDK), which you
can obtain from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/
index.html. JDK is necessary to run and develop on the Java platform.

The other major piece of software that you'll need is Leiningen 2, which you can download
and install from http://leiningen.org/. Leiningen 2 is a tool used to manage Clojure
projects and their dependencies. It has become the de facto standard project tool in the
Clojure community.

Throughout this book, we'll use a number of other Clojure and Java libraries, including Clojure
itself. Leiningen will take care of downloading these for us as we need them.

You'll also need a text editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE). If you already have
a text editor of your choice, you can probably use it. See http://clojure.org/getting_
started for tips and plugins for using your particular favorite environment. If you don't have a
preference, I'd suggest that you take a look at using Eclipse with Counterclockwise. There are
instructions to this set up at https://code.google.com/p/counterclockwise/.

That is all that's required. However, at various places throughout the book, some recipes will
access other software. The recipes in Chapter 8, Working with Mathematica and R, that are
related to Mathematica will require Mathematica, obviously, and those that are related to R
will require that. However, these programs won't be used in the rest of the book, and whether
you're interested in those recipes might depend on whether you already have this software.

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers or data scientists who are familiar with Clojure and want to use
it in their data analysis processes. This isn't a tutorial on Clojure—there are already a number
of excellent introductory books out there—so you'll need to be familiar with the language,
but you don't need to be an expert.

Likewise, you don't have to be an expert on data analysis, although you should probably be
familiar with its tasks, processes, and techniques. While you might be able to glean enough
from these recipes to get started with, for it to be truly effective, you'll want to get a more
thorough introduction to this field.

3
Preface

Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of
information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions,
pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Now, there
will be a new subdirectory named getting-data.

A block of code is set as follows:

(defproject getting-data "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
:description "FIXME: write description"
:url "http://example.com/FIXME"
:license {:name "Eclipse Public License"
:url "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html"}
:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.6.0"]])

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or
items are set in bold:
(defn watch-debugging
[input-file]
(let [reader (agent
(seque
(mapcat
lazy-read-csv
input-files)))
caster (agent nil)
sink (agent [])
counter (ref 0)
done (ref false)]
(add-watch caster :counter
(partial watch-caster counter))
(add-watch caster :debug debug-watch)
(send reader read-row caster sink done)
(wait-for-it 250 done)
{:results @sink
:count-watcher @counter}))

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ lein new getting-data
Generating a project called getting-data based on the default template.
To see other templates (app, lein plugin, etc), try lein help new.

4
 Preface

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen,
in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Take a look at the
Hadoop website for the Getting Started documentation of your version. Get a single
node setup working".

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Downloading the example code

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5
Preface

Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in
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downloads/B03480_coloredimages.pdf.

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Questions
You can contact us at [email protected] if you are having a problem with any
aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

6
 Importing Data for
1
Analysis
In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

f Creating a new project

f Reading CSV data into Incanter datasets
f Reading JSON data into Incanter datasets
f Reading data from Excel with Incanter
f Reading data from JDBC databases
f Reading XML data into Incanter datasets
f Scraping data from tables in web pages
f Scraping textual data from web pages
f Reading RDF data
f Querying RDF data with SPARQL
f Aggregating data from different formats

Introduction
There's not much data analysis that can be done without data, so the first step in any project
is to evaluate the data we have and the data that we need. Once we have some idea of what
we'll need, we have to figure out how to get it.
Importing Data for Analysis

Many of the recipes in this chapter and in this book use Incanter (http://incanter.org/)
to import the data and target Incanter datasets. Incanter is a library that is used for statistical
analysis and graphics in Clojure (similar to R) an open source language for statistical
computing (http://www.r-project.org/). Incanter might not be suitable for every task
(for example, we'll use the Weka library for machine learning later) but it is still an important
part of our toolkit for doing data analysis in Clojure. This chapter has a collection of recipes
that can be used to gather data and make it accessible to Clojure.

For the very first recipe, we'll take a look at how to start a new project. We'll start with very
simple formats such as comma-separated values (CSV) and move into reading data from
relational databases using JDBC. We'll examine more complicated data sources, such as
web scraping and linked data (RDF).

Creating a new project

Over the course of this book, we're going to use a number of third-party libraries and external
dependencies. We will need a tool to download them and track them. We also need a tool to
set up the environment and start a REPL (read-eval-print-loop or interactive interpreter) that
can access our code or to execute our program. REPLs allow you to program interactively. It's a
great environment for exploratory programming, irrespective of whether that means exploring
library APIs or exploring data.

We'll use Leiningen for this (http://leiningen.org/). This has become a standard
package automation and management system.

Getting ready
Visit the Leiningen site and download the lein script. This will download the Leiningen JAR
file when it's needed. The instructions are clear, and it's a simple process.

How to do it...
To generate a new project, use the lein new command, passing the name of the project
to it:
$ lein new getting-data
Generating a project called getting-data based on the default template.
To see other templates (app, lein plugin, etc), try lein help new.

There will be a new subdirectory named getting-data. It will contain files with stubs for the
getting-data.core namespace and for tests.

8
 Chapter 1

How it works...
The new project directory also contains a file named project.clj. This file contains
metadata about the project, such as its name, version, license, and more. It also contains
a list of the dependencies that our code will use, as shown in the following snippet. The
specifications that this file uses allow it to search Maven repositories and directories of
Clojure libraries (Clojars, https://clojars.org/) in order to download the project's
dependencies. Thus, it integrates well with Java's own packaging system as developed with
Maven (http://maven.apache.org/).
(defproject getting-data "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
:description "FIXME: write description"
:url "http://example.com/FIXME"
:license {:name "Eclipse Public License"
:url "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html"}
:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.6.0"]])

In the Getting ready section of each recipe, we'll see the libraries that we need to list in the
:dependencies section of this file. Then, when you run any lein command, it will download
the dependencies first.

Reading CSV data into Incanter datasets

One of the simplest data formats is comma-separated values (CSV), and you'll find that
it's everywhere. Excel reads and writes CSV directly, as do most databases. Also, because
it's really just plain text, it's easy to generate CSV files or to access them from any
programming language.

Getting ready
First, let's make sure that we have the correct libraries loaded. Here's how the project
Leiningen (https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen) project.clj file should
look (although you might be able to use more up-to-date versions of the dependencies):
(defproject getting-data "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.6.0"]
[incanter "1.5.5"]])

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have
purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you
purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.
com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

9
Importing Data for Analysis

Also, in your REPL or your file, include these lines:

(use 'incanter.core
'incanter.io)

Finally, downloaded a list of rest area locations from POI Factory at http://www.poi-
factory.com/node/6643. The data is in a file named data/RestAreasCombined(Ver.
BN).csv. The version designation might be different though, as the file is updated. You'll also
need to register on the site in order to download the data. The file contains this data, which is
the location and description of the rest stops along the highway:
-67.834062,46.141129,"REST AREA-FOLLOW SIGNS SB I-95 MM305","RR, PT,
Pets, HF"
-67.845906,46.138084,"REST AREA-FOLLOW SIGNS NB I-95 MM305","RR, PT,
Pets, HF"
-68.498471,45.659781,"TURNOUT NB I-95 MM249","Scenic Vista-NO
FACILITIES"
-68.534061,45.598464,"REST AREA SB I-95 MM240","RR, PT, Pets, HF"

In the project directory, we have to create a subdirectory named data and place the file in
this subdirectory.

I also created a copy of this file with a row listing the names of the columns and named it
RestAreasCombined(Ver.BN)-headers.csv.

How to do it…
1. Now, use the incanter.io/read-dataset function in your REPL:
user=> (read-dataset "data/RestAreasCombined(Ver.BJ).csv")

| :col0 | :col1 | :col2

| :col3 |
|------------+-----------+--------------------------------------+-
---------------------------|
| -67.834062 | 46.141129 | REST AREA-FOLLOW SIGNS SB I-95 MM305 |
RR, PT, Pets, HF |
| -67.845906 | 46.138084 | REST AREA-FOLLOW SIGNS NB I-95 MM305 |
RR, PT, Pets, HF |
| -68.498471 | 45.659781 | TURNOUT NB I-95 MM249 |
Scenic Vista-NO FACILITIES |
| -68.534061 | 45.598464 | REST AREA SB I-95 MM240 |
RR, PT, Pets, HF |
| -68.539034 | 45.594001 | REST AREA NB I-95 MM240 |
RR, PT, Pets, HF |
…

10
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 England Janus is Jane or Iona, and at Iona in Scotland there
(1724). existed prior to the Reformation when they were
thrown into the sea, some remarkable petræ, to
wit, three noble marble globes placed in three stone basins, which the
inhabitants turned three times round according to the course of the
sun:[774] these were known as clacha brath or Stones of Judgment.
Tradition connects St. Columba of Iona in the Hebrides with Loch Aber,
or, as it was sometimes written, Loch Apor, and among the stories
which the honest Adamnan received and recorded “nothing doubting
from a certain religious, ancient priest,” is one to the effect that
Columba on a memorable occasion, turning aside to the nearest rock,
prayed a little while on bended knees, and rising up after prayer
blessed the brow of the same rock, from which thereupon water
bubbled up and flowed forth abundantly. With the twelve-mouthed
petra or rock of Moses which, according to Rabbinic tradition, followed
the Israelites into the wilderness, may be connoted the rock-gushing
fountain at Petrockstowe, Cornwall. That St. Patrick was Shony the
Ocean-deity, to whom the Hebrideans used to pour out libations, is
deducible from the legend that on the day of St. Patrick’s festival the
fish all rise from the sea, pass in procession before his altar, and then
disappear. The personality of the great St. Patrick of the Paddys is so
remarkably obscure that some hagiographers conclude there were
seven persons known by that name; others distinguish three, and
others recognise two, one of whom was known as “Sen Patrick,” i.e.,
the senile or senior Patrick: there is little doubt that the archetypal
Patrick was represented indifferently as young and old and as either
seven, three, two, or one: whence perhaps the perplexity and
confusion of the hagiographers.
It is not improbable that the Orchard Street at Westminster may mark
the site of a burial ground or “Peter’s Orchard,” similar to that which
was uncovered in Wiltshire in 1852: this was found on a farm at
Seagry, one part of which had immemorially been known as “Peter’s
Orchard”.[775] From generation to generation it had been handed
down that in a certain field on this farm a church was built upon the
site of an ancient heathen burial ground, and the persistence of the
heathen tradition is seemingly presumptive evidence, not only of
inestimable age, but of the memory of a pre-Christian Peter.
It may be assumed that “Peter’s Orchard” was originally an apple
orchard or an Avalon similar to the “Heaven’s Walls,” which were
discovered some years ago near Royston: these “walls,” immediately
contiguous to the Icknield or Acnal Way, were merely some strips of
unenclosed but cultivated land which in ancient deeds from time
immemorial had been called “Heaven’s Walls”. Traditional awe
attached to this spot, and village children were afraid to traverse it
after dark, when it was said to be frequented by supernatural beings:
in 1821 some labourers digging for gravel on this haunted spot
inadvertently discovered a wall enclosing a rectangular space
containing numerous deposits of sepulchral urns, and it then became
clear that here was one of those plots of ground environed by walls to
which the Romans gave the name of ustrinum.[776]
The old Welsh graveyards were frequently circular, and there is a
notable example of this at Llanfairfechan: the Llanfair here means holy
enclosure of Fair or Mairy, and it is probable that Fechan’s round
churchyard was a symbol of the Fire Ball or Fay King. At Fore in
Ireland the Solar wheel figures notably at the church of “Saint” Fechan
on an ancient doorway illustrated herewith. That the Latin ustrinum
was associated with the Uster or Easter of resurrection is likely
enough, for both Romans and Greeks had a practice of planting roses
in their graveyards: as late as 1724 the inhabitants of Ockley or Aclea
in Surrey had “a custom here, time immemorial, of planting rose trees
in the graves, especially by the young men and maidens that have lost
their lovers, and the churchyard is now full of them”.[777] That “The
Walls of Heaven” by Royston was associated with roses is implied by
the name Royston, which was evidently a rose-town, for it figures in
old records as Crux Roies, Croyrois, and Villa de cruce Rosia. The
expression “God’s Acre” still survives, seemingly from that remote time
when St. Kit of Royston, the pre-Christian “God,” was worshipped at
innumerable Godshills, Godstones, Gaddesdens, and Goodacres.
 Fig. 421.—From The Age of the Saints
(Borlase, W. C.).
Tradition asserts that the abbey church of St. Peter’s at Westminster
occupies the site of a pagan temple to Apollo—the Etrurian form of
Apollo was Aplu, and there is no doubt that the sacred apple of the
Druids was the symbol of the “rubicund, radiant Elphin” or Apollo.
According to Malory, a certain Sir Patrise lies buried in Westminster,
and this knight came to his untoward end by eating an apple,
whereupon “suddenly he brast (burst)”:[778] from this parallel to the
story of St. Margaret erupting from a dragon it is probable that Sir
Patrise was the original patron of Westminster, or ancient Thorney
Eye. Patera was a generic title borne by the ministers at Apollo’s
shrines, and as glorious Apollo was certainly the Shine, it is more than
likely that Petersham Park at Sheen, where still stands a supposedly
Roman petra or altar-stone, was a park or enclosure sacred to Peter,
or, perhaps, to Patrise of the apple-bursting story.
The Romans applied the title Magonius to the Gaulish and British
Apollo; sometimes St. Patrick is mentioned as Magounus, and it is
probable that both these epithets are Latinised forms of the British
name Magon: the Druidic Magon who figures in the traditions of
Cumberland is in all probability the St. Mawgan whose church
neighbours that of the Maiden St. Columb in the Hundred of Pydar in
Cornwall.
One of the principal towns in Westmorland is Appleby, which was
known to the Romans as Abellaba: the Maiden Way of Westmorland
traverses Appleby, starting from a place called Kirkby Thore, and here
about 200 years ago was found the supposed “amulet or magical
spell,” illustrated in Fig. 422. The inscription upon the reverse is in
Runic characters, which some authorities have read as Thor Deus
Patrius; and if this be correct the effigy would seem to be that of the
solar Sir Patrise, for apparently the object in the right hand is an
apple: there is little doubt that the great Pater figures at Patterdale, at
Aspatria, and at the river Peterill, all of which are in this
neighbourhood, and in all probability the Holy Patrise or Aspatria was
represented by the culminating peak known as the “Old Man” of
Coniston.
Some experts read the legend on Fig. 422 as Thurgut Luetis, meaning
“the face or effigies of the God Thor”: according to others Thurgut
was the name of the moneyer or mintmaster; according to yet others
the coin was struck in honour of a Danish Admiral named Thurgut:
where there is such acute diversity of opinion it is permissible to
suggest that Thurgut—whose effigy is seemingly little suggestive of a
sea-dog—was originally the Three Good or the Three God, for the
figure’s sceptre is tipped by the three circles of Good Thought, Good
Deed, and Good Word. In Berkshire the country people, like the
Germans with their drei, say dree instead of three, and thus it may be
that the Apples Three, or the Apollos Three (for the ancients
recognised Three Apollos—the celestial, the terrestrial, and the
infernal) were worshipped at Appledre, or Appledore opposite
Barnstable, and at Appledur Comb or Appledurwell, a manor in the
parish of Godshill, Isle of Wight.
English “Appletons” are numerous, and at Derby is an Appletree which
was originally Appletrefelde: it is known that this Apple-Tree-Field
contained an apple-tree which was once the meeting place of the
Hundred or Shire division, and it is probable that
the two Apuldre’s of Devon served a similar public
use. As late as 1826 it was the custom, at Appleton
in Cheshire, “at the time of the wake to clip and
adorn an old hawthorn which till very lately stood in
the middle of the town. This ceremony is called the
bawming (dressing) of Appleton Thorn”.[779]
Doubtless Appleton Thorn was originally held in the
same estimation as the monument bushes of
Ireland, which are found for the most part in the
centre of road crossings. According to the
anonymous author of Irish Folklore,[780] these
ancient and solitary hawthorns are held in immense
veneration, and it would be considered profanation
to destroy them or even remove any of their Fig. 422.—From
branches: from these fairy and phooka-haunted A New
sites, a lady dressed in a long flowing white robe Description of
was often supposed to issue, and “the former England.
dapper elves are often seen hanging from or flitting
amongst their branches”. We have in an earlier chapter considered the
connection between spikes and spooks, and it is obvious that the
White Lady or Alpa of the white thorn or aubespine is the Banshee or
Good Woman Shee:—
She told them of the fairy-haunted land
Away the other side of Brittany,
Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea;
Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande,
Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
Where Merlin,[781] by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.
In the forest of Breceliande—doubtless part of the fairy Hy Breasil—
was a famed Fountain of Baranton or Berendon into which children
threw tribute to the invocation, “Laugh, then, fountain of Berendon,
and I will give thee a pin”.[782] The first pin was presumably a spine or
thorn; the first flower is the black-thorn; on 1st January (the first day
of the first month), people in the North of England used to construct a
blackthorn globe and stand hand in hand in a circle round the fire
chanting in a monotonous voice the words “Old Cider,” prolonging
each syllable to its utmost extent. I think that Old Cider must have
been Thurgut, and that in all probability the initial Ci was sy, the
ubiquitous endearing diminutive of pucksy, pixie, etc.
According to Maundeville, “white thorn hath many virtues; for he that
beareth a branch thereof upon him, no thunder nor tempest may hurt
him; and no evil spirit may enter in the house in which it is, or come
to the place that it is in”: Maundeville refers to this magic thorn as the
aubespine, which is possibly a corruption of alba thorn, or it may be of
Hob’s thorn. In modern French aube means the dawn.
We have seen that there are some grounds for surmising that Brawn
Street and Bryanstone Square (Marylebone) mark the site of a
Branstone or fairy stone, in which connection it may be noted that
until recently: “near this spot was a little cluster of cottages called
‘Apple Village’”:[783] in the same neighbourhood there are now
standing to-day a Paradise Place, a Paradise Passage, and Great
Barlow Street, which may quite possibly mark the site of an original
Bar low or Bar lea. Apple Village was situated in what was once the
Manor of Tyburn or Tyburnia: according to the “Confession” of St.
Patrick the saint’s grandfather came from “a village of Tabernia,”[784]
and it is probable that the Tyburn brook, upon the delta of which
stands St. Peter’s (Westminster), was originally named after the Good
Burn or Oberon of Bryanstone and the neighbouring Brawn Street. The
word tabernacle is traceable to the same roots as tavern, French
auberge, English inn.
Around the effigy of Thurgut will be noted either seven or eight M’s: in
mediæval symbolism the letter M stood usually for Mary; the parish
church of Bryanstone Square is dedicated to St. Mary, and we find the
Virgin very curiously associated with one or more apple-trees.
According to the author of St. Brighid and Her Times: “Bardism offers
nothing higher in zeal or deeper in doctrine than the Avallenan, or
Song of the Apple-trees, by the Caledonian Bard, Merddin Wyllt. He
describes his Avallenan as being one Apple-tree, the Avallen, but in
another sense it was 147 apple-trees, that is, mystically (taking the
sum of the digits, 1 4 7 equal 12), the sacred Druidic number. Thus in
his usual repeated description of the Avallen as one apple-tree, he
writes:—
Sweet apple-tree! tree of no rumour,
That growest by the stream, without overgrowing the circle.
Again, as 147 apple trees—
Seven sweet apple-trees, and seven score
Of equal age, equal height, equal length, equal bulk;
Out of the bosom of mercy they sprung up.
Again—
They who guard them are one curly-headed virgin.”
In fairy-tale the apple figures as the giver of rejuvenescence and new
life, in Celtic mythology it figures as the magic Silver Branch which
corresponds to Virgil’s Golden Bough. According to Irvine the word
bran meant not only the Druidical system, but was likewise applied to
individual Druids who were termed brans: I have already suggested
that this “purely mystical and magical name” is our modern brain;
according to all accounts the Druids were eminently men of brain,
whence it is possible that the fairy-tale “Voyage of Bran” and the
Voyage of St. Brandon were originally brainy inventions descriptive of
a mental voyage of which any average brain is still capable. The
Voyage of Bran relates how once upon a time Bran the son of
Fearbal[785] heard strange music behind him, and so entrancing were
the sounds that they lulled him into slumber: when he awoke there lay
by his side a branch of silver so resplendent with white blossom that it
was difficult to distinguish the flowers from the branch. With this fairy
talisman, which served not only as a passport but as food and drink,
and as a maker of music so soothing that mortals who heard it forgot
their woes and even ceased to grieve for their kinsmen whom the
Banshee had taken, Bran voyaged to the Islands called Fortunate,
wherein he perceived and heard many strange and beautiful things:—
 A branch of the Apple Tree from Emain
I bring like those one knows;
Twigs of white silver are on it,
Crystal brows with blossoms.

There is a distant isle

Around which sea horses glisten:
A fair course against the white swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.

In Wales on 1st January children used to carry from door to door a

holly-decked apple into which were fixed three twigs—presumably an
emblem of the Apple Island or Island of Apollo, supported on the
three sweet notes of the Awen or creative Word. Into this tripod apple
were stuck oats:[786] the effigy of St. Bride which used to be carried
from door to door consisted of a sheaf of oats; in Anglo-Saxon oat was
ate, plural aten, and it is evident that oats were peculiarly identified
with the Maiden.
In Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise there again enters the
magic Silver Branch, with three golden apples on it: “Delight and
amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for
men sore wounded or women in childbed or folk in sickness would fall
asleep, at the melody when that branch was shaken”. The Silver
Branch which seems to have been sometimes that of the Apple,
sometimes of the Whitethorn, corresponds to the mistletoe or Three-
berried and Three-leaved Golden Bough: until recent years a bunch of
Mistletoe or “All Heal”—the essential emblem of Yule—used to be
ceremoniously elevated to the proclamation of a general pardon at
York or Ebor: it is still the symbol of an affectionate cumber or
gathering together of kinsmen. King Camber is said to have been the
son of Brutus; he was therefore, seemingly, the young St. Nicholas or
the Little Crowned King, and in Cumberland the original signification of
the “All Heal” would appear to have been traditionally preserved. In
Tales and Legends of the English Lakes Mr. Wilson Armistead records
that many strange tales are still associated with the Druidic stones,
and in the course of one of these alleged authentic stories he prints
the following Invocation:—

1st Bard. Being great who reigns alone,

Veiled in clouds unseen unknown;
Centre of the vast profound,
Clouds of darkness close Thee round.

3rd Bard. Spirit who no birth has known,

Springing from Thyself alone,
We thy living emblem show
In the mystic mistletoe,
Springs and grows without a root,
Yields without flowers its fruit;
Seeks from earth no mother’s care,
Lives and blooms the child of air.

4th Bard. Thou dost Thy mystic circle trace

Along the vaulted blue profound,
And emblematic of Thy race
We tread our mystic circle round.

Chorus. Shine upon us mighty God,

Raise this drooping world of ours;
Send from Thy divine abode
Cheering sun and fruitful showers.

In view of the survival elsewhere of Druidic chants and creeds which

are unquestionably ancient, it is quite possible that in the above we
have a genuine relic of prehistoric belief: that the ideas expressed
were actually held might without difficulty be proved from many
scattered and independent sources; that Cumberland has clung with
extraordinary tenacity to certain ancient forms is sufficiently evident
from the fact that even to-day the shepherds of the Borrowdale district
tell their sheep in the old British numerals, yan, tyan, tethera,
methera,[787] etc.
The most famous of all English apple orchards was the Avalon of
Somerset which as we have seen was encircled by the little river Brue:
with Avalon is indissolubly associated the miraculous Glastonbury
Thorn, and that Avalon[788] was essentially British and an abri of King
Bru or Cynbro is implied by its alternative title of Bride Hay or Bride
Eye: not only is St. Brighid said to have resided at Avalon or the Apple
Island, but among the relics long faithfully preserved there were the
blessed Virgin’s scrip, necklace, distaff, and bell. The fact that the main
streets of Avalon form a perfect cross may be connoted with Sir John
Maundeville’s statement that while on his travels in the East he was
shown certain apples: “which they call apples of Paradise, and they
are very sweet and of good savour. And though you cut them in ever
so many slices or parts across or end-wise, you will always find in the
middle the figure of the holy cross.”[789] That Royston, near the site of
“Heaven’s Walls,” was identified with the Rood, Rhoda, or Rose Cross
is evident from the ancient forms of the name Crux Roies (1220),
Croyrois (1263), and Villa de Cruce Rosia (1298): legend connects the
place with a certain Lady Roese, “about whom nothing is known,” and
probability may thus associate this mysterious Lady with Fair
Rosamond or the Rose of the World. In the Middle Ages, The Garden
of the Rose was merely another term for Eden, Paradise, Peter’s
Orchard, or Heaven’s Walls, and the Lady of the Rose Garden was
unquestionably the same as the Ruler of the Isles called Fortunate—
—a Queen
So beautiful that with one single beam
Of her great beauty, all the country round
Is rendered shining.
Some accounts state that the bride of Oberon was known as
Esclairmond, a name which seemingly is one with eclair monde or
“Light of the World”.
 Figs. 423 and 424.—British. From
Akerman.
We have seen that the surroundings of the Dane John at Canterbury
are still known as Rodau’s Town: the coins of the Rhodian Greeks were
sometimes rotae or wheel crosses in the form of a rose, and there is
little doubt that our British rota coins were intended to represent
various conceptions of the Rose Garden, or Avalon, or the Apple
Orchard: using another simile the British poets preached the same
Ideal under the guise of the Round Table.[790] Fig. 179, (ante, p. 339)
represented a rose combined with four sprigs or sprouts, and in Fig.
423 (British) the intention of the rhoda is clearly indicated: on the
carved column illustrated on page 708 the rood is a rhoda, and my
suggestion in an earlier chapter that “Radipole road,” near London,
may have marked the site of a rood pole is somewhat strengthened by
the fact that Maypoles occasionally displayed St. George’s red rood or
the banner of England, and a white pennon or streamer emblazoned
with a red cross terminating like the blade of a sword. Occasionally the
poles were painted yellow and black in spiral lines, the original
intention no doubt being representative of Night and Day.
Alas poore Maypoles what should be the cause
That you were almost banished from the earth?
Who never were rebellious to the lawes,
Your greatest crime was harmless honest mirth,
What fell malignant spirit was there found
To cast your tall Pyramids to ground?
The same poet[791] deplores the gone-for-ever time when—
All the parish did in one combine
To mount the rod of peace, and none withstood
When no capritious constables disturb them,
Nor Justice of the peace did seek to curb them,
Nor peevish puritan in rayling sort,
Nor over-wise churchwarden spoyled the sport.
Overwise scholars have assumed that the Maypole was primarily and
merely a phallic emblem; it was, however, more generally the simple
symbol of justice and “the rod of peace”: rod, rood, and ruth are of
course variants of one and the same root.
Among, if not the prime of the May Day dances was one known
popularly as Sellingers Round: here probably the r is an interpolation,
and the immortal Sellinga was in all likelihood sel inga or the innocent
and happy Ange of Islington:—
To Islington and Hogsdon runnes the streame,
Of giddie people to eate cakes and creame.
At the famous “Angel” of Islington manorial courts were held
seemingly from a time immemorial: on a shop-front now facing it the
curious surname Uglow may be seen to-day, and in view of the
adjacent Agastone Road it is reasonable to assume that at Hogsdon,
now spelt Hoxton, stood once an Hexe or Hag stone, perhaps also that
the hill by the Angel was originally known as the ug low or Ug hill. We
have noted that fairy rings were occasionally termed hag tracks, and
that the Angel district was once associated with these evidences of the
fairies is seemingly implied by a correspondent who wrote to The
Gentleman’s Magazine in 1792 as follows: “Having noticed a query
relating to fairy rings having once been numerous in the meadow
between Islington and Canonbury, and whether there were any at this
time, and having never seen those extraordinary productions whether
of Nature or of animals, curiosity led me on a late fine day to visit the
above spot in search of them, but I was disappointed. There are none
there now; the meadow above mentioned is intersected by paths on
every side and trodden by man and beast.” Man and beast have since
converted these intersections into mean streets among which,
however, still stand Fairbank and Bookham Streets.
 Fig. 425.—From Christian
Iconography (Didron).
The Maypole was generally a sprout and was no doubt in this respect
a proper representative of the “blossoming tree” referred to in a Gaelic
Hymn in honour of St. Brighid—
Be extinguished in us
The flesh’s evil, affections
By this blossoming tree
This Mother of Christ.
The May Queen was invariably selected as the fairest and best
dispositioned of the village maidens, and before being “set in an
Arbour on a Holy Day” she was apparently carried on the shoulders of
four men or “deacons”:[792] assuredly these parochial deacons were
personages of local importance, and they may possibly account for the
place-name Maydeacon House which occurs at Patrixbourne, Kent, in
conjunction with Kingston, Heart’s Delight, Broome Park, and Barham.
The word deacon is Good King or Divine King: we have seen that four
kings figured frequently in the wheel of Fortune, and the ceremonious
carrying by four deacons was not merely an idle village sport for it
formed part of the ecclesiastical functions at the Vatican. An English
traveller of some centuries ago speaking of the Pope and his attendant
ceremonial, states that the representative of Peter was carried on the
back of four deacons “after the maner of carrying whytepot queenes
in Western May games”:[793] the “Whytepot Queen” was no doubt
representative of Dame Jeanne, the demijohn or Virgin, and the
counterpart to Janus or St. Peter.
One of what Camden would have dubbed the sour
kind of critics inquired in 1577: “What adoe make
our young men at the time of May? Do they not use
night-watchings to rob and steal yong trees out of
other men’s grounde, and bring them home into
their parish with minstrels playing before? And Fig. 426.—
when they have set it up they will deck it with Cretan. From
floures and garlands and dance around, men and Barthelemy.
women together most unseemly and intolerable as
I have proved before.” The scenes around the Maypole (“this stinckyng
idoll rather”) were unquestionably sparkled by a generous provision of
“ambrosia”:—
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
Or the grapes ecstatic juice,
Flushed with mirth and hope they burn.[794]
On that ever-memorable occasion at Stonehenge, when the Saxons
massacred their unsuspecting hosts, a Bard relates that—
The glad repository of the world was amply supplied.
Well did Eideol prepare at the spacious circle of the world
Harmony and gold and great horses and intoxicating mead.
The word mead implies that this celestial honey-brew was esteemed
to be the drink of the Maid; ale as we know was ceremoniously
brewed within churches, and was thus probably once a holy beverage
drunk on holy-days: the words beer and brew will account for
representations of the senior Selenus, as at times inebriate. The Fairy
Queen, occasionally the “Sorceress of the ebon Throne,” was
esteemed to be the “Mother of wildly-working dreams”; Matthew
Arnold happily describes the Celts as “drenched and intoxicated with
fairy dew,” and it seems to have a general tenet that the fairy people
in their festal glee were sometimes inebriated by ambrosia:—
From golden flowers of each hue,
Crystal white, or golden yellow,
Purple, violet, red or blue,
We drink the honey dew
Until we all get mellow,
Until we all get mellow.[795]
In the neighbourhood of Fair Head, Antrim, there is a whirlpool known
as Brecan’s Cauldron in connection with which one of St. Columba’s
miracles is recorded. That the Pure King or Paragon was also deemed
to be “that brewer” or the Brew King of the mystic cauldron, is evident
from the magic recipe of Taliesin, which includes among its alloy of
ingredients “to be mixed when there is a calm dew falling,” the liquor
that bees have collected, and resin (amber?) and pleasant, precious
silver, the ruddy gem and the grain from the ocean foam (the pearl or
margaret?):—
And primroses and herbs
And topmost sprigs of trees,
Truly there shall be a puryfying tree,
Fruitful in its increase.
Some of it let that brewer boil
Who is over the five-woods cauldron.
We have noted the five acres allotted to each Bard, five springs at
Avebury, five fields at Biddenden, “five wells” at Doddington, five
banners at the magic fountain of Berenton, and five fruits growing on
a holy tree: the mystic meaning attached to five rivers was in all
probability that which is thus stated in Cormac’s Adventure in the Land
of Promise: “The fountain which thou sawest with the five streams out
of it is the fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses
through which Knowledge is obtained. And no one will have
Knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and
out of the streams.” That Queen Wisdom was the Lady of the Isles
called Fortunate, is explicitly stated by the poet who tells us that there
not Fantasy but Reason ruled: he adds:—
All this is held a fable: but who first
Made and recited it, hath in this fable
Shadowed a truth.[796]
From the group of so-called Sun and Fire Symbols here reproduced, it
will be seen that the svastika or “Fare ye well” cross assumed
multifarious forms: in Thrace, the emblem was evidently known as the
embria, for there are in existence coins of the town of Mesembria,
whereon the legend Mesembria, meaning the (city of the) midday sun,
is figured by the syllable Mes, followed by the svastika as the
equivalent of Embria.[797]

Fig. 427.—Sun and Fire Symbols from

Denmark of the later Bronze Age. From
Symbolism of the East and West (Murray-
Aynsley).
The whirling bird-headed wheel on page 709 is a peculiarly interesting
example of the British rood, or rota of ruth; as also is No. 40 of Fig.
201 (ante, p. 364) where the peacock is transformed into a svastika:
the pear-shaped visage on the obverse of this coin may be connoted
with the Scotch word pearie, meaning a pear-shaped spinning-top,
and the seven ains or balls may be connoted with the statement of
Maundeville, that he was shown seven springs which gushed out from
a spot where once upon a time Jesus Christ had played with children.
No. 43 of the contemned sceattae (p. 364) evidently represents the
legendary Bird of Fire, which, together with the peacock and the
eagle, I have discussed elsewhere: this splendid and mysterious bird—
as those familiar with Russian ballet are aware—came nightly to an
apple-tree, but there is no reason to assume that the apple was its
only or peculiar nourishment. The Mystic Boughs illustrated on page
627 (Figs. 379 to 384) may well have been the mistletoe or any other
berried or fruit-bearing branch: in Fig. 397 (p. 635) the Maiden is
holding what is seemingly a three-leaved lily, doubtless corresponding
to the old English Judge’s bough or wand, now discontinued, and only
faintly remembered by a trifling nosegay.[798]
Symbolists are aware that in Christian and Pagan art, birds pecking at
either fruit or flowers denote the souls of the blessed feeding upon the
joys of Paradise: all winged things typified the Angels or celestial
Intelligences who were deemed to flash like birds through the air, and
the reader will not fail to note the angelic birds sitting in Queen Mary’s
tree (Fig. 425, p. 686).
There is a delicious story of a Little Bird in Irish folk-tale, and among
the literature of the Trouveres or Troubadours, there is A Lay of the
Little Bird which it is painful to curtail: it runs as follows: “Once upon a
time, more than a hundred years ago, there lived a rich villein whose
name I cannot now tell, who owned meadows and woods and waters,
and all things which go to the making of a rich man. His manor was so
fair and so delightsome that all the world did not contain its peer. My
true story would seem to you but idle fable if I set its beauty before
you, for verily I believe that never yet was built so strong a keep and
so gracious a tower. A river flowed around this fair domain, and
enclosed an orchard planted with all manner of fruitful trees. This
sweet fief was builded by a certain knight, whose heir sold it to a
villein; for thus pass baronies from hand to hand, and town and manor
change their master, always falling from bad to worse. The orchard
was fair beyond content. Herbs grew there of every fashion, more
than I am able to name. But at least I can tell you that so sweet was
the savour of roses and other flowers and simples, that sick persons,
borne within that garden in a litter, walked forth sound and well for
having passed the night in so lovely a place. Indeed, so smooth and
level was the sward, so tall the trees, so various the fruit, that the
cunning gardener must surely have been a magician, as appears by
certain infallible proofs.
“Now in the middle of this great orchard sprang a fountain of clear,
pure water. It boiled forth out of the ground, but was always colder
than any marble. Tall trees stood about the well, and their leafy
branches made a cool shadow there, even during the longest day of
summer heat. Not a ray of the sun fell within that spot, though it were
the month of May, so thick and close was the leafage. Of all these
trees the fairest and the most pleasant was a pine. To this pine came
a singing bird twice every day for ease of heart. Early in the morning
he came, when monks chant their matins, and again in the evening, a
little after vespers. He was smaller than a sparrow, but larger than a
wren, and he sang so sweetly that neither lark, nor nightingale, nor
blackbird, nay, nor siren even, was so grateful to the ear. He sang lays
and ballads, and the newest refrain of the minstrel and the spinner at
her wheel. Sweeter was his tune than harp or viol, and gayer than the
country dance. No man had heard so marvellous a thing; for such was
the virtue in his song that the saddest and the most dolent forgot to
grieve whilst he listened to the tune, love flowered sweetly in his
heart, and for a space he was rich and happy as any emperor or king,
though but a burgess of the city, or a villein of the field. Yea, if that
ditty had lasted 100 years, yet would he have stayed the century
through to listen to so lovely a song, for it gave to every man whilst
he hearkened, love, and riches, and his heart’s desire. But all the
beauty of the pleasaunce drew its being from the song of the bird; for
from his chant flowed love which gives its shadow to the tree, its
healing to the simple, and its colour to the flower. Without that song
the fountain would have ceased to spring, and the green garden
become a little dry dust, for in its sweetness lay all their virtue. The
villein, who was lord of this domain, walked every day within his
garden to hearken to the bird. On a certain morning he came to the
well to bathe his face in the cold spring, and the bird, hidden close
within the pine branches, poured out his full heart in a delightful lay,
from which rich profit might be drawn. ‘Listen,’ chanted the bird in his
own tongue, ‘listen to my voice, oh, knight, and clerk, and layman, ye
who concern yourselves with love, and suffer with its dolours: listen,
also, ye maidens, fair and coy and gracious, who seek first the gifts
and beauty of the world. I speak truth and do not lie. Closer should
you cleave to God than to any earthly lover, right willingly should you
seek His altar, more firmly should you hold to His commandment than
to any mortal’s pleasure. So you serve God and Love in such fashion,
no harm can come to any, for God and Love are one. God loves sense
and chivalry; and Love holds them not in despite. God hates pride and
false seeming; and Love loveth loyalty. God praiseth honour and
courtesy; and fair Love disdaineth them not. God lendeth His ear to
prayer; neither doth Love refuse it her heart. God granteth largesse to
the generous, but the grudging man, and the envious, the felon and
the wrathful, doth he abhor. But courtesy and honour, good sense and
loyalty, are the leal vassals of Love, and so you hold truly to them,
God and the beauty of the world shall be added to you besides. Thus
told the bird in his song’.”[799]
It is not necessary to relate here the ill-treatment suffered by the bird
which happily was full of guile, nor to describe its escape from the
untoward fate destined for it by the villein.
In Figs. 428 to 430 are three remarkable British coins all of which
seemingly represent a bird in song: it is not improbable that the idea
underlying these mystic forms is the same as what the Magi termed
the Honover or Word, which is thus described: “The instrument
employed by the Almighty, in giving an origin to these opposite
principles, as well as in every subsequent creative act, was His Word.
This sacred and mysterious agent, which in the Zendavesta is
frequently mentioned under the appellations Honover and I am, is
compared to those celestial birds which constantly keep watch over,
the welfare of nature. Its attributes are ineffable light, perfect activity,
unerring prescience. Its existence preceded the formation of all things
—it proceeds from the first eternal principal—it is the gift of God.”[800]
 Figs. 428 to 430.—British. From Evans.
The symbol of Hanover[801] was the White Horse and we have
considered the same connection at Hiniver in Sussex: it is also a widely
accepted verity that the White Horse—East and West—was the emblem
of pure Reason or Intelligence; the Persian word for good thought was
humanah, which is seemingly our humane, and if we read Honover as
ancient ver the term may be equated in idea with word or verbum. The
Rev. Professor Skeat derives the words human and humane from humus
the ground, whence the Latin homo, a man, literally, “a creature of
earth,” but this is a definition which the pagan would have
contemptuously set aside, for notwithstanding his perversity in bowing
down to wood and stone he believed himself to be a creature of the sun
and claimed: “my high descent from Jove Himself I boast”.
We have seen that Jove, Jupiter, or Jou was in all probability Father Joy,
and have suggested that the Wandering Jew was a personification of the
same idea: it has also been surmised that Elisha—one of the alternative
names of the Wanderer—meant radically Holy Jou: it is not improbable
that the Shah or Padishah of Persia was similarly the supposed
incarnation of this phairy père. The various well-authenticated
apparitions of the Jew are quite possibly due to impersonations of the
traditional figure, and two at least of these apparitions are mentioned as
occurring in England: in one case the old man claiming to be the
character wandered about ejaculating “Poor Joe alone”; in another “Poor
John alone alone”.[802] Both “Joe” and “John” are supposed by Brand to
be corruptions of “Jew”: the greater probability is that they were
genuine British titles of the traditional Wanderer.
The exclamation of “alone alone” may be connoted with the so-called
Allan apples which used to figure so prominently in Cornish festivities:
these Allan apples doubtless bore some relation to the Celtic St. Allan:
haleine means breath,[803] elan means fire or energy, and it is in further
keeping with St. Allan that his name is translated as having meant
cheerful.
The festival of the Allan apple was essentially a cheery proceeding: two
strips of wood were joined crosswise by a nail in the centre; at each of
the four ends was stuck a lighted candle with large and rosy apples hung
between. This construction was fastened to a beam or the ceiling of the
kitchen, then made to revolve rapidly, and the players whose object was
to catch the Allan apples in their mouths frequently instead had a taste
of the candles.[804] Obviously this whirling firewheel was an emblem of
Heol the Celtic Sun wheel, and as Newlyn is particularly mentioned as a
site of the festival, we may equate St. Newlyna of Newlyn with the
Noualen of Brittany, and further with the Goddess Nehellenia or New
Helen of London. Nehellenia has seemingly also been traced at Tadcaster
in Yorkshire where the local name Helen’s Ford is supposed to be a
corruption of the word Nehellenia:[805] Nelly, however, is no corruption
but a variant of Ellen. The Goddess Nehallenia is usually sculptured with
a hound by her side, and in her lap is a basket of fruits “symbolising the
fecundating power of the earth”.[806] In old English line meant to
fecundate or fertilise, and in Britain Allan may be considered as almost a
generic term for rivers—the all fertilisers—for it occurs in the varying
forms Allen, Alan, Alne, Ellen, Elan, Ilen, etc.: sometimes emphasis on
the second syllable wears off the preliminary vowel, whence the river-
names Len, Lyn, Leen, Lone, Lune, etc., are apparently traceable to the
same cause as leads us to use lone as an alternative form of the word
alone. The Extons Road, Jews Lane, and Paradise now found at King’s
Lynn point to the probability that King’s Lynn (Domesday Lena, 1100
Lun, 1314 Lenne[807]) was once a London and an Exton. The great red
letter day in Lynn used to be the festival of Candlemas, and on that
occasion the Mayor and Corporation attended by twelve decrepit old
men, and a band of music, formerly opened a so-called court of
Piepowder: on reference to the Cornish St. Allen it is agreeable to find
that this saint “was the founder of St. Allen’s Church in Powder”. This
Powder, sometimes written Pydar, is not shown on modern maps, but it
was the title for a district or Hundred in Cornwall which contains the
village of Par: it would appear to be almost a rule that the place-name
Peter should be closely associated with Allen, e.g., Peterhead in
Scotland, near Ellon, and Petrockstowe or Padstowe in Cornwall is near
Helland on the river Allan.

Fig. 431.—Sixteenth Century Printer’s

Ornament.
In the emblem herewith the alan or cheery old Pater is associated like
Nehelennia with the fruits of the earth, amongst which one may perhaps
recognise coddlins and other varieties of Allan apple.
The Cornish Allantide was celebrated on the night of Hallow’een, and as
Sir George Birdwood rightly remarks the English Arbor Day—if it be ever
resuscitated—should be fixed on the first of November or old “Apple
Fruit Day,” now All Hallows[808] or All Saint’s Day, the Christian substitute
for the Roman festival of Pomona; also of the first day of the Celtic Feast
of Shaman or Shony the Lord of Death. Shaman may in all probability be
equated with Joe alone, and Shony with poor John alone alone: Shony,
as has been seen, was an Hebridean ocean-deity, and the omniscient
Oannes or John of Sancaniathon, the Phœnician historian, lived half his
time in ocean: the Eros or Amoretto here illustrated from Kanauj may be
connoted with Minnussinchen or the little Sinjohn of Tartary.
With the apple orchard Pomona or of the Pierre,
Pere, or Pater Alone, the monocle and monarch
of the universe, may be connoted the far-famed
paradise of Prester or Presbyter John: this
mythical priest-king is rendered sometimes as
Preste Cuan, sometimes as Un Khan or John
King-Priest, and sometimes as Ken Khan: he was
clearly a personification of the King of Kings, and
his marvellous Kingdom, which streamed with
honey and was overflowing with milk, was
evidently none other than Paradise or the Land
of Heaven. “Mediæval credulity” believed that Fig. 432.—From
this so-called “Asiatic phanton,” in whose country Kanauj. From
stood the Fountain of Youth and many other Symbolism of the
marvels, was attended by seven kings, twelve East and West
archbishops, and 365 counts: the seventy-two (Aynsley, Mrs.
kings and their kingdoms said to be the Murray).
tributaries of Prester John may be connoted with
the seventy-two dodecans of the Egyptian and Assyrian Zodiac: these
seventy-two dodecans I have already connoted with the seventy-two
stones constituting the circle of Long Meg. Facing the throne of Prester
John—all of whose subjects were virtuous and happy—stood a wondrous
mirror in which he saw everything that passed in all his vast dominions.
The mirror or monocle of Prester John is obviously the speculum of
Thoth, Taut, or Doddy, and I suspect that the seventy-two dodecans of
the Egyptian and Chaldean Zodiac were the seventy-two Daddy Kings of
Un Khan’s Empire: none may take, nor touch, nor harm it—
For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old
He beholds it and Athene thy own sea-grey eyes behold.[809]
The first written record of Preste Cuan figures in the chronicles of the
Bishop of Freisingen (1145): the name Freisingen is radically singen: and
it is quite probable that the Bungen Strasse at Hamelyn identified with
the Pied Piper was actually the scene of a “Poor John, Alone, Alone,”
incident such as Brand thus describes: “I remember to have seen one of
these impostors some years ago in the North of England, who made a
very hermit-like appearance and went up and down the streets of
Newcastle with a long train of boys at his heels muttering, ‘Poor John
alone, alone!’ I thought he pronounced his name in a manner singularly
plaintive,”[810] we have seen that the Wandering Jew was first recorded
at St. Albans: the ancient name for Newcastle-on-Tyne—where he seems
to have made his last recorded appearance—was Pandon. With the
panshen or pope of Tartary may be connoted the probability that the
rosy Allan apple of Newlyn was a pippen: the parish of “Lynn or St.
Margaret,” not only includes the wards of Paradise and Jews Lane, but
we find there also an Albion Place, and the curious name Guanock;
modern Kings Lynn draws its water supply from a neighbouring Gay
wood.
In the year 1165 a mysterious letter circulated in Europe emanating, it
was claimed, from the great Preste Cuan, and setting forth the wonders
and magnificence of his Kingdom: this epistle was turned into verse,
sung all over Europe by the trouveres, and its claims to universal
dominion taken so seriously by Pope Alexander that this Pontiff or
Pontifex[811] published in 1177 a counter-blast in which he maintained
that the Christian professions of the mysterious Priest King were worse
than worthless, unless he submitted to the spiritual claims of the See of
Rome. There is little doubt that the popular Epistle of Prester John was
the wily concoction of the Gnostic Trouveres or Merry Andrews, and that
the unimaginative Pope who was so successfully stung into a reply, was
no wise inferior in perception to the scholars of recent date who have
located to their own satisfaction the mysterious Kingdom of Prester John
in Tartary, in Asia Minor, or in Abyssinia: by the same peremptory and
supercilious school of thought the Garden of Eden has been confidently
placed in Mesopotamia, and the Irish paradise of Hy Breasil, “not
unsuccessfully,” identified with Labrador.
The probability is that every community attributed the Kingdom of Un
Khan to its own immediate locality, and that like the land of the Pied
Piper it was popularly supposed to be joining the town and close at
hand. In the fifteenth century a hard-headed French traveller who had
evidently fallen into the hands of some whimsical mystic, recorded:
“There was also at Pera a Neapolitan, called Peter of Naples, with whom
I was acquainted. He said he was married in the country of Prester John,
and made many efforts to induce me to go thither with him. I
questioned him much respecting this country, and he told me many
things which I shall here insert, but I know not whether what he said be
the truth, and shall not therefore warrant any part of it.” Upon this
honeymoon the archæologist, Thomas Wright, comments: “The manner
in which our traveller here announces the relation of the Neapolitan
shows how little he believed it; and in this his usual good sense does not
forsake him. This recital is, in fact, but a tissue of absurd fables and
revolting marvels, undeserving to be quoted, although they may
generally be found in authors of those times. They are, therefore, here
omitted; most of them, however, will be found in the narrative of John
de Maundeville.”[812]
We have seen that the Wandering Jew was alternatively termed Magus,
a fact already connoted with the seventy-two stones of Long Meg, or
Maggie: it was said that Un Khan was sprung from the ancient race of
the Magi,[813] and I think that the solar circle at Shanagolden by Canons
Island Abbey, on the Shannon in the country of the Ganganoi, was an
abri of Ken Khan, Preste Cuan, or Un Khan.
The rath or dun of Shanid or Shenet, as illustrated ante, p. 55, has a pit
in its centre which, says Mr. Westropp, “I can only suppose to have been
the base of some timber structure”: whether this central structure was
originally a well, a tower, or a pole, it no doubt stood as a symbol of
either the Tower of Salvation, the Well of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge.
There is little doubt that this solar wheel or wheel of Good Fortune—
which as will be remembered was occasionally depicted with four
deacons or divine kings, a variant of the seventy-two dodecans—was
akin to what British Bardism alluded to as “the melodious quaternion of
Peter,” or “the quadrangular delight of Peter, the great choir of the
dominion”;[814] it was also akin to the design on the Trojan whorl which
Burnouf has described as “the four epochs (quarters) of the month or
year, and the holy sacrifice”.[815]
The English earthwork illustrated in Fig. 433 (A) is known by the name
of Pixie’s Garden, and its form is doubtless that of one among many
varieties of “the quadrangular delight of Peter”. A pixy is an elf or ouphe,
and the Pixie’s Garden of Uffculme Down (Devon) may be connoted in
idea with “Johanna’s Garden” at St. Levans: Johanna, as we have seen,
was associated with St. Levan (the home of Maggie Figgie), and in the
words of Miss Courtney: “Not far from the parish of St. Levan is a small
piece of ground—Johanna’s Garden—which is fuller of weeds than of
flowers”.[816] I suspect that Johanna, like Pope Joan of Engelheim and
Janicula, was the fabulous consort of Prester John or Un Khan.
Fig. 433.—From Earthwork of England (A.
Hadrian Allcroft).

Fig. 434.—From Symbolism of the East

and West (Aynsley, Mrs. Murray).
Fig. 433 (B) represents two diminutive earthworks which once existed on
Bray Down in Dorsetshire: these little Troytowns or variants of the
quadrangular delight of Peter may be connoted with the obverse design
of the Thorgut talisman found near Appleby and illustrated on page 675:
the two crescent moons may be connoted with two sickles still
remembered in Mona, and the twice-eight crescents surrounding Fig.
434 which is copied from a mosaic pavement found at Gubbio, Italy.
The Pixie’s Garden illustrated in Fig. 433 (A)
obviously consists of four T’s centred to one base
and the elaborate svastika, illustrated in Fig. 435,
is similarly distinguished by four concentric T’s.
The Kymbri or Cynbro customarily introduced the
figure of a T into the thatch of their huts, and it is
supposed that ty, the Welsh for a house or home,
originated from this custom. We have seen that
the Druids trained their super sacred oak tree Fig. 435.—From
(Hebrew allon) into the form of the T or Tau, The Word in the
which they inscribed Thau (ante, p. 393), and as Pattern (Watts,
ty in Celtic also meant good, the four T’s Mrs. G.F.).
surrounding the svastika of Fig. 435 would seem
to be an implication of all surrounding
beneficence, good luck, or all bien.
The Cynbro are believed to have made use of the T—Ezekiel’s mark of
election—as a magic preservative against fire and all other misfortunes,
whence it is remarkable to find that even within living memory at
Camberwell by Peckham near London, the chi-shaped or ogee-
shaped[817] angle irons, occasionally seen in old cottages, were believed
to have been inserted “in order to protect the house from fire as well as
from falling down”.[818]
 Fig. 436.—
Celtic Emblem.
From Myths of
Crete
(Mackenzie, D.
Figs. 437 and 438.—Mediæval
A.).
Papermarks. From Les Filigranes
(Briquet, C. M.).

Commenting upon Fig. 435, which is taken from a Celtic cross at Carew
in Wales, Mrs. G. F. Watts observes: “This symbol was used by British
Christians to signify the labyrinth or maze of life round which was
sometimes written the words “God leadeth”.[819] Among the Latin races
the Intreccia or Solomon’s Knot, which consists frequently of three
strands, is regarded as an emblem of the divine Being existent without
beginning and without end—an unbroken Unity: coiled often into the
serpentine form of an S it decorates Celtic crosses and not infrequently
into the centre of the maze is woven the svastika or Hammer of Thor.
The word Svastika is described by oriental scholars as being composed
of svasti and ka: according to the Dictionaries svasti means welfare,
health, prosperity, blessing, joy, happiness, and bliss: in one sense ka
(probably the chi [Greek: ch]) had the same meaning, but ka also meant
“The Who,” “The Inexplicable,” “The Unknown,” “The Chief God,” “The
Object of Worship,” “The Lord of Creatures,” “Water,” “The Mind or Soul
of the Universe”.
In southern France—the Land of the Troubadours—the Solomon’s Knot,
as illustrated in Fig. 438, is alternatively known as lacs d’amour, or the
knot of the Annunciation: this design consists, as will be noted, of a
svastika extended into a rose or maze, and a precisely similar emblem is
found in Albany. The title lacs d’amour or lakes of love, consociated with
the synonymous knot of the Annunciation, is seemingly further
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