Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/220

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204
II. THE ZEUS OF

in an eighth century charter of Æthilheard of Wessex,[1] is beyond all doubt a continuation of that in the Itinerary. That, however, does not quite decide the question of site, as there may have been not a few localities entitled to the same interesting appellation.


The God's Mounds, Fetishes and Symbols.

What, it may now be asked, can have been the meaning of calling the god by a name signifying the Chief of the Mound? The answer must depend a good deal on what was meant by the word which I have thus far rendered 'mound.' Now the Irish word cruach might mean a heap of anything, and it is attested in the more restricted sense of a rick of hay or the like; the Welsh crûg admits of much the same use, but it is especially employed in the case of artificial mounds or tumuli; and so it appears in a great many names of places, such as that of Crûg Hywel, Anglicized Crickhowel, the name of a village near Abergavenny, and the Wyddgrug, which seems to have meant the Burial Mound: the town so called is in Flintshire, and it is found formerly named Mons Altus,[2] modern English Mold. Let us now look at some of the synonymous terms: one of these is tommen, usual in North Wales, and well known as applied to a tumulus at Bala, which served till lately as the rallying-point of the great open-air services of the Calvinistic Methodists; but a more promising word is gorseᵭ, which while etymologically meaning any high station or position,

  1. Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus, No. lxxvi.
  2. The feature so called is said by Pennant to be partly natural and partly artificial: see his Tours in Wales (Carnarvon, 1883), i. 35-6.