FIG. 20.-A prehistoric Matriarch of the Vans (?) of the Stone Age.
From a Hittite rock-sculpture near Smyrna.
(After Martin.1)
Note the primitive type with low forehead and eyebrow ridges.
Disclosing Van or "Fein" Origin of Irish Aborigines and of their Serpent-Worship of St. Brigid and of the Matrilinear Customs of the Irish and Picts.
"Two score days before the Flood,
Came Ceasair into Erin . . .
Ceasair, daughter of Bheata
The first woman Ban [Van ?] who came
To the Island of Ban-bha [Erin] before the Flood:"
KEATING'S Hist. of Ireland, 48-50.1
IN searching the Irish-Scot traditional records for references to Part-olon and his Phoenician invasion of Ireland, the relative historicity of a considerable part of the Irish tradition for the remoter pre-historic period, extending back to the Stone Age, becomes presumably apparent. Although the old tradition, as found in the Books of Ballymote, Lecan, Leinster, etc., is manifestly overlaid thickly with later legend and myth by the medieval Irish bards who compiled these books from older sources, and expanded them with many anachronisms and trivial conjectural details, introduced by uninformed later bards to explain fancied affinities on an etymological basis; nevertheless, we seem to find in these books a residual outline of consistent tradition, which appears to preserve some genuine memory of the remote prehistoric period. This enables us, in the new light of our discoveries in regard to Part-olon, to recover the outline of a seemingly genuine tradition for the prehistory of Erin and Alban, and for the first peopling of Erin in the hitherto dark prehistoric:
period of the later Stone Age, in the nomadic Hunting Stage of the early world before the institution of agriculture, marriage, and the settled life.1
Part-olon's invasion of Ireland (which, we have seen, occurred about 400 B.C.) is referred to in the Irish-Scot books as "the second" of the great traditional waves of immigration which flowed into that land.2 The first of these traditional waves of immigration into Old Erin, in so-called pre-diluvian times, is of especial interest and historical importance, as it seems to preserve a genuine memory of the first peopling of Ireland in the prehistoric Stone Age.
This first traditional migration of people into Erin is significantly stated in the Irish-Scot records, as cited in the heading, to have been led by a woman, Ceasair or Cesair. This tradition of a woman leader appears to me to afford the clue to the matrilinear custom (or parentage and succession through the mother and not through the father), which "Mother-right," according to the Irish and Pict Chronicles, prevailed in early Erin (see later). This custom is admittedly a vestige of the primitive Matriarchy, or rule by Mothers, which was, according to leading authorities, the earliest stage of the Family in primitive society, in the hunting stage of the Stone Age, when promiscuity prevailed in the primeval hordes before the institution of Fatherhood and Marriage (see Fig. 20 for archaic Hittite rock-sculpture of a matriarch).
This tradition, therefore, that the first immigrants to Ireland were led by a woman is in agreement with what leading scientific anthropologists have elicited in regard to primitive society, and is, therefore, probably a genuine tradition. It is also in keeping with the first occupation of Erin having occurred in the Neolithic or Late Stone Age period (a period usually stated to extend from about 10000 B.C. to about 1,500 B.C. or later), as is established by the archaeological evidence in Ireland. It is also in agreement with the physical type of the early aborigines of
Hibernia, as elicited by excavations, and of the bulk of the present-day population, who are mostly of the dark, smaller-statured, long narrow-headed "Iberian" or "Mediterranean" type (see Chapter XII.), as opposed to the element of the tall fair Aryans, the Irish "Scots" of Bede and other early writers, now presumably located mostly in Ulster.
The name of this first Matriarch of Erin "Ceasair," appears to be cognate with "Kvasir" of the Gothic Eddas, who was the "wise man" of the sacred magic jar or cauldron, and a hostage given by the Wans, Vans or "Fens" (presumably the "Fene" or "Fein" title of the early Irish) to the Goths.2 While the Matriarch of the Vans and priestess
of the cauldron, was herself the ''wise-woman" or wizardess and priestess of the Serpent and other demonist totemistic cults in primitive tunes-cults which survived into the modern world as witchcraft.
This Matriarch Ceasair, or Cesara, is reported to have landed with her horde at Dunn-m Barc or "The fort of the Barks or [Skin-] Boats,'' now Duna-mark in Bantry Bay on the south-west coast of Erin- the bay adjoining Part-olon's traditional landing place at Scene in Kenmare Bay. This name "Bantry Bay," means "Bay of the Shore of the Bans,"1 and is in series with "Fin-tragh Bay" or Bay of the Shore of the Fins further north, in which "Ban" or "Fin" appears to be an ethnic title of this matriarchist horde. The next neighbouring town on the east is Ban-don or "Town of the Bans," with a river of that name, which attests the great antiquity of that title; and to its north is Ban-teer, and further east along the south coast is Bann-ow River, and the Bann River in Wexford, which, we shall see, is associated with a stand made by the tribe of this matriarch against later invaders, and the Boinne or Boyne River on the east coast, admittedly named after the River-goddess "Boann," with the old Irish epic town of Finn-abair (or Fenn-or),2 and vast prehistoric dolmen tumuli at New Grange with intertwined Serpent symbols,3 all presumably belong to this same series of the Ban, Fen or Van horde, or its descendants.
Indeed, we find in Ptolemy's map of Ireland, drawn before 140 A. D., that the tribe inhabitating the south-west of Ireland, from Kerry, where Cesair landed, and extending through Cork to Waterford were still called by Ptolemy "Ioueoni-oi" 4 (i.e. "Weoni" or "Veoni," the Greeks having no W or V) which we shall see is a dialectic variant of "Wan," "Van" or "Ban." And the chief seat of Cesair's descendants at the epoch of Part-olon's invasion of Erin, and where he defeated these aborigines, was called "The plain of Itha,"
which was thus presumably so named after "The plain of Ida," which in the Gothic Eddas was the chief seat of the Van or Fen Matriarch and her Serpent-worshipping dark-complexioned dwarfs.
The name "Ban" or "Bean," by which this Irish Matriarch as well as her country is called,1 literally means in Irish "Fian," "female" or "woman," and is thus probably cognate with the matriarchist tribal title of Van or Wan and Fene; and its cognate is applied to the traditional aboriginal dwarf people of both Ireland and Alban, who were popularly associated in legends and myth with the Picts.2 It also seems to be the source of the later popular term "Fene" or "Fein" for those claiming to be aboriginal Irish. Those primitive Fenes, Fins or Bans appear, I think, to be clearly the primordial, aboriginal, dark dwarf race "Van" or "Fen" in the Gothic Edda Epics, who were the chief enemies of the Goths, in the solar cult of the latter. And, significantly, this primitive dark race of Van of "The plain of Ida" is called in the Eddas (which I have found to be truly historical records of the rise of the Aryans) "The Blue Legs,"2 implying that they painted their skins with blue pigment, which suggests that they were the primitive ancestors of the "Picts," as they now are seen to be.
This same "Van" or "Ban" people, moreover, were, as we shall see clearly, at least in the later Stone Age, the early aborigines of Alban or Britain. Their name survives widely in the many prehistoric earth-work defensive ramparts and ditches over the country, still known as "Wans' Ditch" or "Wans' Dyke"4 used synonymously with "Picts' Dyke."
This ancient ethnic name of "Wan" or "Ban" also survives broadcast in many places in Britain especially in the neighbourhood of these old Wan's Ditches and subterranean "Picts' Houses," and the so-called, though erroneously so, "Early Briton settlements."
Instances of the survival of such ancient "Van" and "Ban" names in Britain are cited below. In examining these series of the ethnic name "Van" in different dialects we shall see the dialectic equivalency of the labials B, P, F and V and the interchange of the latter with W, the OU or IOU of the Greeks, which are all dialectic variations in spelling the same name, well recognized by philologists.
[Instances of the survival of these "Van" and "Ban" ethnic names in Britain are seen in the following:-Wan-stead near Houndsditch east of London, Wands-worth, Fins-bury, Finchley, Banbury, with its legend of "an old woman," Wantage, Wainfleet on the Wash, Wensley, Winslow, Win-chester, the Venta or Vends of the Romans, Win-Chelsea, Windsor, Ventnor, Wendover, Windermere with Wans' Fell Pike, numerous Ban-tons, Bangor or "Circle of the Bans" on the Welsh coast, with so-called "Druid" circles and its namesake on Belfast Loch, and Ban-chory in Aberdeenshire with the same meaning and prehistoric "circles" and an early seat of the Picts.2 And there are several Roman station names at important pre-Roman towns and villages bearing the fore-name of "Vindo" and "Venta" in series with Pent-land as an ancient title for Mid-Scotland, surviving in the "Pent-land" Hills of Lothian, and in the "Pent-land" Frith for the sea-channel on the extreme north of Britain, which "Vent" and "Pent," we shall see, is in series with "Vindia" as an ancient title of a Western Van region in Asia Minor. (see Map).
In Wales the famous "Van Lake" was until lately a place of popular pilgrimage for the Welsh, and significantly it was sacred to a fairy Lady of the Lake,3 presumably a deified Van matriarch-priestess; and South Wales, in which it was situated, was called Vened-ocia or Vent-aria4 (the Gwynned of the Welsh), and the ancient Briton capital there, Caerleon, was called by the Romans "Venta Silurum"; and Gwent, i.e.,
"Went," was a title for the whole of Wales.1 And the, "Guenedota" or "Uenedota" of Ptolemy appears to be Cumbria.
In North Britain also, in Roman times, were many stations at pre-Roman towns bearing the prefix Vinda or Vindo, of which two were at the Tyne end of Hadrian's Wall, which is sometimes called locally "The Picts' Dyke," namely at Vindo-bala in the line of the wall, and Vindo-mora in its south and not far from the earth-works called "Early Briton settlements" in Northumbria. In Ptolemy's map, which from its practical accuracy remained the old navigating map up till about the fifteenth century, are several important Ban, Vin or Fin towns and peoples which have since lost that title. Thus inland from the Solway, a chief town of the Selgove (who, we have seen, were the "Siliks" or "Cilician Britons") was named "Bantorigon" (with the prefix Kar, i.e. Caer = "fort"). In the Frith of Clyde, or "Clota" of Ptolemy's map, Vindogara appears to have been the ancient name of Ayr or Ardrossan; and Vanduara was the name of Paisley, where the old local name for the Cart River on which it stands was Wendur (or Gwyndwr).2 Banatia was the chief town inland between the Clyde and Fife, and there are more than one Vinnovion. In modern times, besides the survival of several Ban-tons, Findon or Findhorn, several bays called Fintry, Loch Fin or Fyne, are the Pent-land Hills in the Lothians, centring at Pennicuick, and on the extreme north the "Pent-land Frith."]
These latter facts suggest that the whole of North Britain, from at least the Lothians to Caithness, if not the whole of Britain, had formerly been known as "The Land of the Pents, Venets, Bans, Fins or Vans." Indeed, as we shall see later, the old name for Ancient Britain as "Al-Ban" means probably "The Rocky Isle of the Van or Ban."
The "Finn-men" pygmies also, in their skin-boats, of Orkney and Shetland tradition and legend, who were the Peti (or "Picts") dwarfs whom Harold Fair-hair is said to have exterminated in Shetland, and who, according to local tradition, were the ancestors of the small dark element in the Shetland population,3 were obviously, I think, of this same prehistoric dwarf matriarchist race of Van or Fen, of whom Cesair in the later Stone Age led a horde from Alban into Bantry Bay and first peopled Ireland.
Similarly, stretching across the continent of Europe eastwards, I find traces of the prehistoric presence and presumable routes of migration for the east, of this primitive dark dwarf race of Vans or Fens by the tracks left by their old ethnic title in place, district and ethnic names, which have persisted many millenniums after the primeval sway of these primitive Van hordes had been swept away by countless later waves of new invading tribes of different race and higher culture who dominated these primitive people, but yet retained many of the old Van place-names containing that ethnic title.
An early and presumably the original chief centre of dispersion of the main horde of dwarf Vans in the Stone Age was, I find from a mass of evidence which cannot be detailed here, the shores of the inland sea or great Lake of Van in Armenia, on the west flank of Ararat at an elevation of 5,200 feet above the sea (see map and Fig. 21).
Lake Van, which is about twice as large as the Lake of Geneva, was traditionally the common head-water source of both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Mesopotamia, until separated by a prehistoric volcanic upheaval, and the local geological and topographical conformation of those regions
is in keeping with this tradition. The large town of Van and its lake thus stands on the old land-bridge connecting the three continents of Europe, Africa and Asia; for Asia Minor is west of the Caucasus, and in its flora and fauna, and also geologically, is part of Europe rather than Asia proper. Situated on the great immemorial trade-route running east and west between Europe and Asia, it was traversed by Xerxes and his famous Ten Thousand, and an actual inscription by that Persian emperor on his hasty return from the Grecian campaign and Hellespont in 480 B.C. is engraved on the citadel rock there, showing the directness of the route to Europe. And significantly the founding of the town of Van is ascribed by Armenian tradition to Semiramis, that is, the great legendary Queen-matriarch of prehistoric times. And this part of Eastern Asia Minor was a centre of the Matriarchist cult of the Mother-goddess and her "Galli" priestesses down to the Greco-Roman occupation.
These matriarchist aborigines of Van, disclosed to be presumably of the primitive stock of the pre-Aryan Fein, are called "Biani" in the cuneiform inscriptions of their Hittite rulers about the ninth century B.C. They are also called therein "The Children of Khaldis,"1 or "Children of the River"-which title we shall find, is apparently the source of the names "Chaldee," "Galatia" and "Kelt," and anthropologists find that primitive men distributed themselves along the river-banks, and were literally "Children of the River." These Van or Biam were clearly, I find, the "Pani" aborigines of the Indian Vedic hymns and epics who opposed the Early Aryans in establishing their higher solar religion before the departure of the eastern branch of the Aryans to India. They were possibly also, I think, the remote prehistoric originals of the "Fan" barbarians, as the Chinese still term generally the barbarous tribes on the western frontiers of the Celestial Empire, as far at least as Asia Minor.
In physical appearance the primitive Vans, as the "Pani" of the Vedas and epics, are described as "dark or
black-complexioned" and "demons of darkness" who lived with their cattle in caves. They were presumably of the smallish-statured, dark, long-headed "Dravidian" tribes of Indo-Persia, akin to the Iberian type, and represented by the present-day nomadic Yuruk and Gipsy tribes of Van and the adjoining region of Armenia, as opposed to the modern "Armenians" in that region, who are one of the intruding round-headed Semitic races which swept into Asia Minor in later times, making it a medley of diverse races.
The westward line of migration, in the Stone Age period, of these primitive hordes from this early centre at Lake Van, when scarcity of food and pressure of over-population set them "hunger-marching," appears to be indicated, I think, by a more or less continuous chain of their ethnic name left along the trail of their movements from Lake Van westward, through Asia Minor to the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and across Europe to Alban or Britain, (see map). This line of "Van" and "Khaldis" or "Galatia" names extends along the Upper Euphrates to the Halys Valley of Cappadocia, to Galatia and along the "Vindia" hills to Phrygia and the old "Phrygian Hellespont" and Bosphorus, and across those straits along the Danube to Vienna and Austrian Galicia to Fin-land and the southern shores of the Baltic and westwards to Iberia and Iberian Galicia and Gaul, and thence to the British Isles.
Remains of an interesting survival of the warrens of these primitive cave-dwelling Vans are found still tenanted at the present day, on this westward route at Venasa (modern Hassa) to the west of the crossing of the Halys River (Turkish, Kizil Irmak) and south west of Caesarea (or Kaisarie), in the south west of Cappadocia, on the ancient trade route to the sea through the Cilician Gates of the Taurus.2 Here in the great plain, studded with cliffs of soft dry volcanic rock, an area of "about fifty miles each way" is honeycombed with countless caves and subterranean branching burrows, resembling generally the "Picts' houses" and the so-called,
but wrongly so, "Early Briton settlements" found in Britain. These cave-dwellings and burrows in the Venasa district are still occupied to the present day by swarms of a nomadic people commonly known to Europeans as "The Troglodytes (or 'Cave-dwellers') of Cappadocia." These people live of choice in these old burrows, like conies. They are reported by travellers to be in appearance a race distinct from other modern races in Asia Minor, but have not yet been examined by anthropologists. From the name of their district "Venasa" and their cave-dwelling habits, they are presumably an isolated detachment of the primitive Van horde, which has become hemmed in and stranded by the passing tides of alien invaders which have swept over that land in later ages, from East and West. A recent visitor to these cave- dwellers, Mr. Childs,1 gives graphic descriptions of these people and their warrens, from which the following account of one of the burrows is extracted:-
"It, too, was honeycombed with passages and cells, of which some had been exposed by weathering as in the cliff. While I looked at this primitive dwelling, something moved in a hole close to the ground, and the head of a chubby brown-faced child appeared. It came out as much at home and unconscious of its surroundings as a slum-child in an alley; but on seeing me drew back out of sight with the startled manner and instant movement of a wild animal."2After such a picture of the subterranean lairs of the primitive Van in "The Land of the Hittites," we can better understand how the highly-civilized ruling Aryan race, the Hitto-Phoenicians, living in fine, timber-built houses above ground, should distinguish themselves from the lowly aboriginal cave-dwellers by the epithet "Mansion-dwellers"- Khilani or "Gyaolowonie."
The chain of Van names left by the various swarms of these Van hordes of hunters in their progress westwards from the Van Lake region of Asia Minor into Europe and up the Danube valley by Vienna and its "Vanii regnum" or "Kingdom of the Vans," and Wend-land of Germany to
Fin-land, and westwards to Vannes, the port of the Veneti in Brittany bordering Alban, seems evidenced by the following amongst other such names, ancient1 and modern, surviving even in regions where the dark Van dwarfish type is no longer prominent, or has been swept away (see map).
Vanand was the Greco-Roman name for the district between Van and the Upper Halys at Sivas.2 Vanota was at the crossing of the Halys near Caesareia on the border of Galatia, where St. Gregory wrote his twentieth epistle and noted that the name "Vanota" was not Greek, but native Galatian.3 In Galatia, Vindia on the old Hittite royal road to Ephesus and the Bosphorus,4 and Fanji.5 In Phrygia, Oinia or Vinia,6 and Panasios, and to the south Oionandos or Vinandos in Cilicia, Bindeos in Pisidia, and Pinara in Lycia.7 On the Hellespont, Banes with its lake on inner end (modern Bari),8 and Pionia in Troad on flank of Mount Ida on Sainnos River.9 On the Bosphorus, Pandicia or Pantichion, the first stage on ancient road from Rum (or Constantinople) to Asia Minor; and all in the traditional area of the Matriarchic Mother-cult and "Amazons."
Across Europe from the Hellespont and Bosphorus, up the Danube valley, the undoubted Van names in various dialectic forms are especially abundant. Wien or Vienna, the Vindo-bona of the Romans Nvith its "Vanii Regnum" or "Kingdom of the Vans" still preserves the name of its original settlers. To its south is Veni-bazar in Albania and in Roman times the Vennones and Pannonii tribes of the Vindelici race, which included the Briganti (i.e. Phrygian Vans), peopled the Upper Alpine Danube to the Rhine.10 North of Vienna along the Upper Danube was located the old Wend tribe, extending across Austrian Galicia and Bohemia to Eastern Germany, with several " Vend " place names, to the Baltic opposite Fin-land. And, regarding the latter name, it now appears possible that the modern stigma attaching to the name "Fin" may be owing to an old tradition based on the forgotten memory of the lowly origin and status of the race formerly bearing that name.11 The whole southern
coast of the Baltic from Sarmatia westwards to Denmark was occupied by the Venedae and Vindili tribes (with a sound bearing the name Venediicus).1 In Iberia also the Viana port on the Linia river and another Viana in the Eastern Pyrenees may possibly preserve this ethnic name. Similarly may the Vienne and Ventia on the Rhone, Vanesia in Aquitania, retain that name ; and clearly so Vannes, the capital of the Veneti of Brittany in Gaul, who gave Caesar so much trouble and who were tributaries or allies of the Britons. Their capital is significantly the site of vast prehistoric dolmens and menhirs, a class of funereal monuments which was prevalent amongst the later Vans or Feins and their descendants in the British Isles under Briton rule.
Into Alban, latterly called "Britain," these nomad hunting hordes of primitive Matriarchist "dwarfs" from Van probably began to penetrate before the end of the Old Stone Age, as the receding glaciers withdrew northwards from the south of what is now called England and uncovered new land. They appear to have been the small-statured prehistoric race whose long-headed skulls (see Fig. 22) are found in the ancient river-bed deposits and caves, associated with weapons and primitive "culture" of the Old Stone Age, and also in some of the long funereal "barrows" of the New Stone or Neolithic Age, which latter is generally held to have commenced in North-western Europe about 10000 B.C.
The first hordes of these Van "dwarfs" probably crossed from Gaul by the old land-bridge which still connected Alban with the continent. They appear to be presumably the oldest inhabitants of Alban (excluding the few stray earlier forms of taller and broader-browed man of whom traces have been found in the south of England in the older Stone Age period) and so may perhaps be practically regarded as the aborigines of Alban. Indeed, the name "Alban" seems to me possibly coined from their ethnic name Van, Bian or Ban, with the prefix Al, as Ail in Celtic means "Rock," cognate with Chaldee al, ili, ala "high mount"2 and English "hill"; so that "Al-Ban" might thus mean "The Rock (Isle) of the Ban or Van."3 It is this rocky
aspect of North Britain, at least, which impressed Scott in his well-known lines
"O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Land of the mountain and the flood."1
And "Alban" for long remained a popular title for Scotland, after "England" had replaced "Alban" or "Albion" for South Britain.
Many millenniums must have elapsed after their arrival in Alban, before the small herds of such primitive dwarf nomads filtered through the river-valleys of Alban and into the enlarging northern land left by the retiring glacial climate and rising beaches. And many more millenniums must have elapsed before such a rude land-people, under pressure from behind by succeeding waves of fresh herds from the continent, would venture to migrate to Ireland across the sea, which would however be narrower at that period. When ultimately hard pressed and hemmed in by enemy clans against a narrow sea-board, it is conceivable that a small horde of these Matriarchists, seeking escape from annihilation, may have ventured out to sea in their small skin-boats for refuge in outlying islands, and eventually reached Erin. And such were probably the circumtances, I think, under which the Matriarch Cesair and her herd reached Bantry Bay in Erin in the later Neolithic Age,2 where, safe from hostile pressure, they naturally would name that island "The Good Ban Land," (Ban-bha).
The first of these Ban or Van or Fene Matriarchs in Ireland, Cesair, presumably brought with her to Ban-try Bay or "The Bay of the Shore of the Bans," the two especially sacred fetishes of the Van Matriarchist Serpent-cult, the Magic Oracle Bowl or Witches' Cauldron (Coirean Dagdha or "Churn of Fire"3 of the Irish Celts), and Fal's Fiery Stone
(Lia Fail of the Irish Celts).1 These fetishes figure freely in the later Irish legends and myths, although they do not appear to be expressly mentioned until a later period, after Part-olon's invasion, when they are in the hands of a later branch of the same Serpent-cult people called "The tribe of the goddess Danu" (Tuatha de Danaan), who, significantly also are stated to have migrated to Ireland from Alban.
This tradition of the existence of these two Matriarchist Van fetishes amongst the prehistoric Feins in Ireland is of great importance for the origin of the prehistoric Serpent cult in Ireland, and it affords additional proof of the identity of the prehistoric Fein Matriarchist immigrants into Ireland with the prehistoric Matriarchist Van or Fen dwarfs of the Van district of Asia Minor, as described in the Gothic Eddas. These Gothic epics-which, after detailed analysis, I find to be truly historical Aryan records of the establishment of the First Civilization in the World-make frequent reference to the use of the Magic Oracle Bowl or Witches' Cauldron for divination as a special utensil of the Serpent-worshipping Matriarchists in Van and Asia Minor and Chaldea. This magic bowl was especially associated with Kvasir, the namesake of Cesair, as already noted. And Fal's Fiery Stone was the materialized thunderbolt of the Dragon serpent of Lightning, and the invincible magical weapon of Baldr, the son-consort and champion of the Van Matriarch in the Eddas; and his exploits therein as the champion of the Matriarch correspond generally with those of his namesake Fal in the Irish legends. This identity of the Irish Fal with the Van leader Baldr of the Eddas is further seen in the frequent title of the champion of the Irish Feins as "Balor of the Evil Eye." So intimately was Fal identified with the early Ireland of the Feins that Erin was called "Fal's Isle" (Inis Fall); and "Fal's Hill" was the title of the sacred hill at the ancient capital, Tara.
This early introduction of the Serpent-cult and its fetishes into Ireland in the Stone Age by these Matriarchist Vans now explains for the first time the real origin of the numerous traces of Serpent-cult in Ireland and Alban in prehistoric and early historic times-the many prehistoric sculptured stones carved with effigies of Serpents, the interlacing Serpent-coils as a decorative design on prehistoric stone monuments and on monuments of the Early Christian period, and the numerous references to Serpents and Dragons in Ireland and Alban in the early legends. It also explains the tradition that "St. Patrick-the-Cat" (or Khatti or Scot) banished Snakes from Ireland by the Cross, or in other words banished the old Matriarchist Serpent-worship by introducing there the Religion of the Cross in 433 A.D.
The later title also of "Brigid" (or "Bridget") for the female patron saint of the Irish and the Picts, which is usually supposed to have arisen with a more or less mythical Christian nun in Ireland, who is supposed to be buried in the same tomb as St. Patrick, is now seen to be obviously the transformed and chastened aboriginal old matriarch wizardess who in the Gothic Eddas is called Frigg, or Frigg-Ida, the "Mother of the Wolf of Fen" of the pre-Gothic or pre-Aryan aborigines of Van. Brigid is still given precedence as a "wise one" or wizardess over St. Patrick in the eleventh century "Prophecy of St. Berchan":-
"Erin shall not be without a wise one
After Bhrigde and St. Patrick."1
prehistoric monoliths and series of nine standing stones, called "Maiden" Stones or "The Nine Maidens," still standing in many parts of Ireland and Britain. These Maiden Stones symbolized the old Van Matriarchs, who are called "The Nine Mothers" in the Eddas, and who were afterwards idealized into Virgin Mothers and accorded divine honours by their Van votaries. And their idol-stones are often decorated with effigies of the Serpent.
This now appears to explain the prehistoric Van origin of the "Maiden Stones" of the pre-Aryan period, so numerous throughout the land; as, for instance, "The Maiden Stone" standing at the foot of Mt. Bennachie to the west of the Newton Stone, and also "The Serpent Stone" monolith with large sculptured Serpent, which stood not far from the site of the Newton Stone, and now placed alongside the latter. It also accounts for the first time for the frequency of the name "Bride" in early Christian Celtic Church names in Scottish Pict-land as well as Ireland, as "Kil-Bride" or "Church of Bride." It now becomes apparent that on the introduction of Christianity into Britain the old pagan Matriarchist goddess "Brigid" or "Bride" of the aborigines was for proselytizing purposes admitted into the Roman Catholic Church and canonized as a Christian saint, and appropriate legends regarding her invented.
The descendants of the Irish Matriarch Cesair and her horde appear to have been called Fomor, or Umor.1 This seems evidenced by the tradition that Cesair's was the first migration of people into Ireland and that the second was that of Part-olon, and that the latter was opposed by the ferocious tribe of "demons" called Fomor.
The tribal name "Fomor" has been attempted to be explained by conjectural Celtic etymologies variously as "Giants" and conflictingly as "Dwarfs under the Sea."2 "Fomor," I find, however, is obviously a dialectic variant of the name of a chief of a clan of the dwarf tribes of the Vans,
called in the Gothic Eddas "Baombur";1 and it is noteworthy that these dwarf tribes were of the race of "The Blue [painted] Legs,"2 that is, presumably, the primitive, painted Picts. It is probably a variant also of the name "Vimur" which occurs in the Eddas, as the name of the river-the Upper Euphrates, the modern "Murad" which separated the Van territory from that of the Goths, and the ford at which was the scene of battles between the Goths and the Vans,3 presumably the seat of Baombar and his tribe.
These Fomors, who opposed Part-olon on his landing in Ireland, are reported to have been ferocious "demons," and significantly they were led by an ogre and his Mother.4 This is clearly a memory of the Mother-Son joint rulership of Matriarchy, wherein the favourite son-paramour, who in the Eddas is called Baldr, was the champion of the Matriarch and her tribe for offensive and defensive purposes. This Fomor son-leader was called "The Footless,"5 which is a designation of the Serpent, and there are references to the Fomors and their allies having Serpents and Dragons as their defenders.6 Significantly also he is frequently called in the later records of the Fomors by the name of "Balor of the Evil Eye," which equates with the title Baldr, the son-champion of the earlier Van Matriarch, and the "Fal of the Fiery Stone" weapon.
That these Fomors of the primitive horde of dark, dwarfish "Khaldis" or Bans, Vans or Fens, under the Matriarch Cesair, who first peopled Erin in the Stone Age, were and continued to be the real aborigines of Ireland, and were the ancestors of the later "Fenes," seems evidenced by the fact that they appear and reappear in all the accounts of the invasions subsequent to Part-olon's invasion, as the resisters of the various intruding invaders. Their leader also
continued to bear the old Van champion's title of "Balor of the Evil Eye," in the legendary accounts of the later invasions. Thus he is made to oppose even so late an invasion as the fifth, by "The Tribe of the goddess Danu" with the Serpent-cult fetishes, which show them to be a later horde of the same common stock. This affinity indeed is evident, apart from the Serpent fetishes, by the name of their champion being "Lug," that is, "Loki," one of the Vans and the arch-enemy of the Goths in the Eddas and also called "The Wolf of Fen," (i.e., Van) and his fatal weapon in Ireland as "Lug" was significantly, as in the Eddas, a "Sling Stone."1
The old Matriarchist Serpentine-cult of Van appears to have persisted in Ireland, even when it was called "Scotia," as the popular cult of the Feins down to the epoch of St. Patrick in 433 A.D., notwithstanding the contemporary existence of Sun-worship amongst the ruling race of Scots, with their legendary solar heroes, Diarmait and Conn-the-Fighter-of-a-Hundred. The chief idol of Ireland which St. Patrick demolished by his Cross is described as "The Head [idol] of the Mound";2 and it is identified as the idol of Fal of the Fiery Stone,3 that is, the son-champion of the serpent-worshipping Matriarchist Fomors, "Balor of the Evil Eye."
These "Fomor" or Ban, Wan, Van, Fen or Fein aborigines of Ireland, dark, dwarfish "Iberians" who seem to have arrived in Erin from Albion in the late Stone Age, some time before 2000 B.C., now appear to have been presumably of the same race as the dwarfish aborigines of Albion, who were called by the Romans "Picts" or "The [Blue] Painted," and who, we know, were, like the Feins, of primitive Matrilinear and Matriarchist social constitution. And we have seen that the "Fomor" were presumably the prehistoric dwarfish "Baombur" aborigines of Van, who were described by the Aryan Gothic Eddas as of the race of "The Blue (Painted) Legs."
This now confronts us with the further great and hitherto unsolved problems: "Who were the Picts?" and "What was the relationship of the Picts to the aborigines of Alban, Albion or Britain?"- questions, the answers to which form an essential preliminary to the discovery of the date of the introduction of civilization into Britain, and of the racial agency by which that civilization was effected.
