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In the gravels of Glasgow have been found stone tools belonging to the earliest known stage of human activity, and though many are broken, water-rolled and ice-scratched they still retain traces of their having been dressed to shape by hands not unskilled.
These “eagle beak” implements, and many relics of the later or Palæolithic Age, may be seen in the local collections, private and public, where there is also a splendid array of specimens of ancient though later craftsmanship. Most of them have been found in or near Glasgow. They comprise relics of the Azilian, the Neolithic, the Bronze, and the Early Iron Ages.
Except during several cold intervals, in face of which he gradually migrated to the south, to return again when the climate ameliorated, man has been active in the Glasgow area for a thousand centuries. In that long stretch of time he has witnessed some dozen land submergences and the same number of emergences, each pulsation occupying between eight and nine thousand years. These oscillations have been accompanied by slow, rhythmic changes in climate. As time went on the cold periods became gradually less severe and the pulsations of the terrestrial crust less ample.
Palæolithic man has seen the sea transgressing over the land and then retreating, and river beds rising and falling. He has watched with awe and eagerness the great mammalia striding across the meadows and through the woodlands. During those ages he has left strewn upon the terrain some thousands of his stone tools and weapons.
Among the more outstanding of the local Palæolithic treasures is a large stone 17 lbs. 7¼ ozs. in weight, sculptured elegantly to {2} the shape of a dying recumbent mammoth, and probably used as a “skull-crusher,” like the Moravian specimens; the thigh bone of a young rhinoceros anciently fashioned into a smoothing tool; and there is a beautiful female torso, affording evidence of the worship of the Goddess of Fertility on Clydeside during the Older Stone Age.
In and near the Clyde at Glasgow have been found some thirty single-log canoes, whole and fragmentary, and mostly of late prehistoric times—a fleet of early craft without parallel elsewhere, and forerunners of the stately Queen Mary. Shipbuilding is thus one of the oldest of the local crafts and has for some ten thousand years been concentrated on the Clyde.
It is scarcely possible to recover more than a few remnants of the languages spoken in very early times on Clydeside, though the names of places offer some clues.
Various prehistoric races arrived from time to time in this area and became merged in the older peoples, and there is apparently a stratigraphy to be detected in the various linguistic phenomena. The languages of Picts, Goidels, Brythons, and others, are but mixtures of more ancient tongues.
Glasgow is rich in places named after the Moon divinity, an association of ideas suggested by the bend in the Clyde. Apparently at different ages different names, but all expressing the same sense, were applied to this place, indicating prolonged periods during which lunar worship was carried on.
At Glasgow the lunar temple was placed on the rising ground nearest to the apex on the river’s bend and above the flood plain.
The chosen spot was a sun-gladdened, quiet corner in a small glen without defensive value. Its strength lay in its sanctity, which it long retained throughout thousands of years, though from about 700 to 1100 a.d. it was at a low ebb, when Govan, farther down river, seems to have predominated; but to give way later to a reconditioned Glasgow. {3}
The moon was termed Ur, Ara, Er; and Cu, Cua, Kai, Clu, Glo, expanded to Llud, Lug, Lach, Cluth; and Dry, Der, Dar, and Diarmid; and Denu, Dana, and Diana.
As evidence of the richness of moon nomenclature it may be recalled that the Egyptian Moon God (often mis-identified as a Solar God) had 70 titles, and many of these are found spread over a wide area of the ancient world.
The suffix in the word Glasgow, “gow or cu” and its variants, is said to signify “dog,” and also “smith,” but it was moreover one of the names given to the Moon Deity.
It may be recalled that the Celtic word “Glas” which prefixes “cu” to give the name Glasgow, means a soft, yet bright grey colour. It thus fairly well describes the mellow glow of the moon, so different from the blinding glare of the sun.
The name Cu occurs as that of the old British King Kai or Cai of the Moon dynasty, who was able (when invisible) to walk under the sea and yet did not have his torch extinguished.
He was of the race of Chu-Chulinn, son of Lugh. A personal name in Glasgow in 1180 a.d. was Gille-ma-Choi, the servant of Choi. It is possible that the remote ancestors of this man were priests of the local shrine.
It was Chu who played a game of ball with the Sun God. He is the Hua, the Hoa, the Kewe, Kywa, Ciwa, Kigwe or Cwick, all registered under the date of 8th February, which is also one of the days dedicated to Onchu and to Ernoc. It is a moon-day in the ancient stereotyped reckoning.
The identification of Hoe as Kentigern, Patron Saint of Glasgow, is indicated by Kirk-ma-hoe (Nithsdale) having been dedicated to Kentigern.
“Hoe” or “hoe og” occurs at Kilmahog (Callander) and is related {4} to 26th November, the day of the “Glowing Mass of Gold” referred to in the martyrologies, and a day of the full moon.
Glasgow locations with Cu in the name are Cowlairs and Cowcaddens, the ancient Kow-Caldennis or Cowcaldanys.
If Caldan be derived from Coillt, meaning a wood or cover, then Cowcaddens may probably be translated as “The Grove of the Moon Sanctuary.”
Calton (Caldton) is a name both in Glasgow and Edinburgh and may signify a wooded area, especially if hazels grow in it.
The importance of 13–14th January as a moon-season is testified by the festival on this day of Cres-Agonus—the syllable “cres” frequently occurs in the Celtic records where it signifies the moon. Ernan-o-Tigh-Ernain (Kentigern), and Orchu (My-Onchu or Mungo), who again is recorded as identical with T’Ernoc, the prefix being honorific, are also celebrated on this day. It was the 20th day of Yule. Round this date gathered the gods of the family of Lug. Some of these are Laidgen, Loichen and Laighne (or Laigne), all on 12th January; Lug or Lugeus on 14th January; and Ludgvan on 16th January.
They are accompanied by their kinsman Der or Diarmid on 15th January, and by Ernan (son of Coemhan) on 11th January, and by Cummein on 12th January. “Cam,” and its versions, mean “crescent.”
Ancient genealogical trees link up personalities of the moon race, as for instance Mae-Log of Llowes, son of Caw; and again Loth, Ur, Thenew and Kentigern are all akin.
The Moon God, Clot, gave his name to the river, the Clota or Clyde, because the stream at Glasgow made a magnificent sweep in its course, imitative of the new moon. He christened likewise the bend of the Nith near Dumfries as Lin-Cluden, and bestowed five of his names on locations which are there grouped closely together. {5}
In his title of Logie, he named Ard-Logie as the rising ground above the crook in the Ythan near Fyvie; and Car-Logie as the place on the Aberdeenshire Dee where the river makes a great loop.
The Calendric datings of Lug show that he was of the family of the Moon and was not a Sun-god as usually stated. His doings leave little doubt as to his identity. Having rested in his dark cavern, or as some think having hidden himself under the waters, yet carrying there his torch unextinguished, he at last emerged in the open. He stretched out his elbowed arm and his illumined hand over the sky. He thus, as a new re-born moon, bestowed blessings upon humanity. His coming they heralded with the thud of drums and the calls of curved trumpets, while tusked and crescent-horned beasts were offered to him; and these honours are still given to him in Africa and Asia.
To the Celt he was monarch of the outstretched “silver-hand” and was “Lug of the Long Arm.” His bow, like a curved golden thread, was spread against the dark heavens like the gliding and shining wings of a bird. He was the curved rim of Rom and Rem. He made the rivers to bend into his own shape and the shores of the seas and lochs to twist into bays, and so to encircle his sanctuaries. And this he did at Glasgow, the place of the glowing Cu, also termed the meadow river-bank of little Er and the Cambus of Logie (later Camlachie); and so at scores of other places which still carry his name, though often the title is contorted and its signification forgotten by the uninitiated.
The cells, the hills and the river-bends of Leu, Lug and Logie are numerous, and with his honorific tags of “Mo” in front and “og” behind, by means of which his Celtic admirers expressed their fondness for him, he may be recognised, for instance, in Mo-lua and Moluag; in Kil-ma-llow; in the various Kil-ma-luogs; in Knock-mi-lauk; in Kil-mo-low-ok; and in Ard-lui and Ard-logie.
So also, for example, have arisen Lydney, Ludlow and Ledbury, the Yorkshire Lodensburg now Londesbury, and the two Scottish Lugtons, and the Ayrshire Logh-Dune, now Loudoun. {6}
The most handsome of bays in Britain is perhaps that of Luce which resembles the crescent moon.
Under his shallow disguise of Gwyd (or Gwydion, a relative of Er or Erian or Arianhod) he gained repute as a Protean artist, for the moon has for ever been changing shape. He was the Celtic Vertumnus.
As Lug he gave his blessing to Lugdunum at Lyons in France; and the same title to the little hill called St. Paul’s, now the centre of London, above the apex of the circuitous course of the Thames, and associated with Lothbury and Ludgate.
Some other of his Glasgow titles may be observed in the place-names Con-dud, Kyn-claith and Red-claith.
As Ern, mentioned in the 8th century as “Son of Creisine,” he impressed his cognomen on the meadow at the sinuous twist of the Clyde at Glasgow now called Dalmarnock, that is Dal-ma-ern-ock. A few miles north of Glasgow Cathedral flow the rivers Kelvin and Endrick. On either of these is a sharp twist in the river-bed at Killernan (modernised into Killermont) on the Kelvin, and at Killearn on the Endrick.
These are shrines of Ern, chosen because of their topographical peculiarity. The root Er (or Ern) is indeed common; and may be seen in Ayr and Urr. It appears with equal clarity in the Glasgow name Bal-orn-ock.
Glasgow is recorded as Cathures, seemingly on grounds of euphony, an amendment of Caer-ures, the settlement of Ur or Er, who is referred to in other local titles. This variation in nomenclature is not uncommon. Cathcart, a suburb of Glasgow on the Cart River, I have heard called Caer-cart by the older inhabitants.
Some Glasgow place-names contain the syllable Der, Dry or Dar. It signifies not only the oak tree but the moon. The Druids, as {7} Drui and Dry, the moon priests and “sorcerers,” may have got their name from this source. It is given to river-bendings such as Durrington on the Avon, and, may be, Craigen-darroch on the Dee at Ballater.
A ridge at Glasgow, described as Drummothar in 1682 and 1785, may be Druim-mo-dir, “the ridge of the Moon Deity.” Of like genesis may be one of the oldest streets in Glasgow, the Dry-gait and the Pol-drait close to it. Bal-der-nock, close to Glasgow, seems to enshrine the same meaning.
Diarmid, kinsman of Der, is registered on 8th July, and on the following day there appears St. Onchu, that is Mo-Onchu or Mungo, who in the Celtic MS., the Leabhar Breac, is definitely equated with Kentigern.
Glasgow citizens have been cruel with their ancient artificial hillocks. At the top of the Drygait and just a stone’s throw from the Cathedral, was a huge mound called “The Grummel Knowe,” demolished in 1559 to surface roads.
It apparently consisted of soft material and was doubtless artificial, like another Glasgow mound, also now removed, at Govan, an early site of the highest importance with a rich assemblage of early sculpturings. The word “Grum” seems cognate with “Grim” or “Graham,” adjectives applied to the Antonine Wall.
“Grummell” may merely mean “Earth work,” and its knowe may have been the “Rath” referred to in the name of the trackway which led westwards from it, known as Rottenrow.
A third mound, now also dug away, may have been “The Mutehill,” recorded as having stood near the Briggait at Glasgow; but I have been unable to trace its history.
The western extension of the Drygait is Rottenrow (anciently Ratouneraw), to be analysed as Rath-na-era, which suggests the earth-work, or Rath, which was connected with Er, Era or Ra—{8}a moon appellation so often to be observed in other Glasgow place-names.
The “Cat” or “Chat” god was a Martian fighter who resisted defeat at eclipses. He seems to have given his name to many places in Scotland, and to the rocky eminence, now occupied by the Necropolis, opposite the Cathedral and across the little glen of the Molendinar Burn. This hill, I find, is marked on an early map as Dun-chattan; but there is no other evidence bearing upon it. This recalls the problem of the origin of the name Molendinar. Jocelyn, the 12th century biographer of St. Kentigern, who seems to have known the local topography, refers to “… ad locum nomine Mellingdenor …” The statement tends to show that Moledinar was the name not of a stream but of a place. Most likely it was applied to the hill which was also called Dunchattan, situated on the eastern bank of the stream at the Cathedral. Very probably, therefore, Molendinar had nothing to do with a mill (which association has so often been suggested) but signifies “The Height of Donor.”
A hill of the moon was probably Craig-Macht, on the north-east side of Ramshorn, and on the site of the new demolished Greyfriars Monastery.
From this place was proclaimed once a year at dusk on 6th July (the most sacred day of any in Glasgow), the peace of the Fair of Glasgow, which opened next morning. In the fixed prehistoric calendar a new moon arrived at this time.
The Cathedral of Glasgow was dedicated on this day over 700 years ago. It was the day of the Translation of Kentigern.
Everywhere on this day Moon Festivals took place—such as that of Der-Mor, and that of the Three Daughters of Ern. These maidens represented the three phases of full moon and the two crescents.
Comgall, another moon-god, had also three daughters. {9}
An analogue in the classics is that of Neptune’s son, Phorcus, whose three daughters possessed only one eye which each borrowed in turn. They were, of course, one and the same moon which has three main aspects.
Among emblems of moon-worship were a rounded bay, a river-loop, a staff with a hooked handle, and the crescentic horns or tusks of an animal, and at times the animal itself.
St. Machar (kinsman of T’Ernan and Kentigern) was ordered to build his shrine where he found a river making a bend like a bishop’s staff; and this he did where the Don assumes a crescent form, near where St. Machar’s now stands at Old Aberdeen.
St. Machar and St. Kentigern have their days, at a sacred moon season, on 12th and 13th January, respectively, and both have shrines at the bendings of rivers, and both are linked with Ern or Ernan.
The legend is that Machar had a brother who died and was restored to life. Somewhat similar tall stories are told of twin mythical characters who were of lunar descent. The aged and waning yet immortal one died and was re-born.
When Kentigern came to Glasgow he found two brothers guarding the grove. One, Tellyr, was unfriendly and died suddenly, but the survivor, Anguen, willingly allowed Kentigern to assume control. Like Romulus and Remus and other twins, so often the theme of classical and other legends, Machar and his brother deserve to become well established as moon gods.
St. Machar, whose fingers at night became illumined, was surnamed Mo-Cumma (“my crescent”) and was son of Fin-Choem (“the bright crescent”).
At temples of the moon were sacrificed tusked and horned animals, and such offerings continued after these sacred places became Christianised. {10}
The myth of the contention of two bulls is but an allegory of the two opposing crescents. It is related of the bull shrine near Ard-lui, Loch Lomond.
On the day of St. Brice (that is Breac, the speckled one, the moon’s face being spotted) was sacrificed a bull. This was on 13–14th November, a day of the full moon, the date of one of the celebrations of St. Kentigern.
Of equal fame with St. Kentigern was another descendant of Er, Mo-Eric (Mouric, Mael-Rui or Mael-Rubha), of the moon-days of 27th July, 27th August, and 8th September, to whom bulls were sacrificed in Scotland until 1656. He lived for some 29,000 days, as registered under 16th January; but other registers give his age more closely as 8o Sun Years, 3 months, and 16 (or, as the Irish records state, 19) days. This equates exactly with 993 months, that is, 82¾ moon-years.
Born on 3rd January, with the crescent moon in the formal calendar, he died on 21st April with the last waning moon.
The Neolithic philosopher and astronomer laid out the Glasgow area on a plan similar to that of a clock-face and like a gigantic spider’s web, but rigorously geometrical.
Its radii, usually set on a nineteenth divisional system (sub-divided at times into 38ths and 76ths), dictated the positions, and ran through loci, of prehistoric importance.
These lines were counted anti-clockwise, beginning at the south-going radius which corresponds with the position of the clock-hand which indicates six o’clock on a modern timepiece.
The 31st radius (on a dial of 38 radii) proceeds from the Cathedral to St. Enoch’s Square and passes in direct line through the centres of several sacred areas, usually made rectangular, and set cardinally and equidistantly. This radial line is one of many, but may be here specially noted as it recalls the story of St. Enoch, a Glasgow notability. {11}
The unit used was 20.425 feet and its multiples. The lunar monarchy of Loth and Ur (Urien) claimed as a member not only Kentigern, who in his day assumed the chieftainship of the clan as Cean-Tigh-Ern, but also his mother St. Enoch (already noted), surnamed St. Tennach, Denu, Tanu, Thenew. She was descended from the Mother Moon, Danu, whose tribe was the Tuatha de Danann, and, it would seem probable, far-off cousins of Diana. An immaculate mother and water-goddess, she gave birth to Kentigern in a crescent boat.
Her sanctuary, with its curative well, was situated in the present-day St. Enoch Square, which has always been a communal property. Through it ran the little stream called Glasgow Burn, and the spot was chosen because it lay at a vital locus within the spider’s web.
At this place, and drawn up into the little burn, was found a dugout canoe overwhelmed with flood silt. The boat contained among other relics a Neolithic or Bronze Age polished greenstone axe-blade. Its age lies within the period 6000 b.c. to 1000 b.c.
The “cups,” or small saucer-shaped hollows of the prehistoric “cup-and-ring” rock-carvings, are set out in the same fashion, though on a very small scale, as the groups of burial-mounds, earthworks and other prehistoric stations, which were often sacred places or shrines.
Both are arranged on the same geometric, time-registering spider’s web or dialling system. Several of these rock-carvings in Glasgow register the annular solar eclipse seen in that district in 2983 B.C., the day and hour being defined with exactitude.
At one of these—the Cleuch (Whitecraigs) rock-carving—I found, secreted under dense black humus in a natural fissure of the rock, a hard quartz punching tool which had apparently been used by the sculptor. {12}
The tool, like most other prehistoric artifacts, unless worn or broken, was found to have been shaped in conformity with certain standards of measure, the units being the same as those enshrined in the rock-carved designs.
The long measures of the prehistoric land survey, such as the distances along radii, can be correlated with the short measures to be detected in the small tools. The latter measures can be traced into the depths of the Paleolithic period. All, large and small, have an astronomical derivation.
Through their measurements even the oldest known tools betray a knowledge on the part of the tool-maker of a refined astronomy. The measures were based upon the movements of the celestial bodies. Man was not born yesterday.
Jocelyn, in his Life of St. Kentigern, written more than five centuries after the death of the Saint, states that the holy man used to sit on a mound called Gulath to dry his limbs after washing.
In the same sentence the biographer describes the episode of “one of the flock which came out from the washing unto Mount Gilead.” Jocelyn, or one of the earlier writers from whom he borrowed, has evidently used the name of St. Kentigern in the paraphrasing of an episode of Eastern origin.
The name Gulath cannot therefore interest Glasgow historians.
The name Kentigern being personally descriptive has not given a title to any location, though he was one of the greatest men of his day.
Kentigern being of the Lunar Dynasty, the “Head (Cean) of the House (Tigh or Tegh) of the Moon (Ern),” his age, given as 185 years, should be reckoned in lunar years. This period was probably chosen because it equated with 179½ sun years, the difference being only 4 days. The old astrologers were fond of equations of the periods of the heavenly bodies. {13}
Most of the “Life” of St. Kentigern is of little historical value. The biographer must have discarded much interesting material of the earlier “Lives,” no longer extant, from which he borrowed. Many of the incidents are well-known items in the stock-in-trade of the professional mediæval hagiographer, such as the fairy tale of the “Fish and Ring,” and the story of the untamed draught animals which brought the dead body of Fergus to Glasgow. Versions of this story, with appropriate local settings, occur in the “Lives” of no fewer than nine ancient holy men.
Kentigern, even after his turning to Christianity, may not have shaken off the belief held by his ancestral royal house as to its lunar origin. Even at this late day Science and Christianity have not yet robbed the Far Eastern monarchs of the fond belief in their divine derivation via the moon.
Glasgow was a stronghold of Paganism and it is known that after the first preaching of the new doctrines on Clydeside a relapse occurred.
Early Christian writings tell one little of the vicissitudes experienced by the older faith in its later stages, and one has accordingly to fall back upon evidence such as that afforded by place-names and by traditional references. The old astronomy, upon which was founded practically all very early sculpturings, architectural work and land surveys, explains many of the mysteries of early religions, legends, myths, and customs.
It enables one also to unfold the meaning of the long-lost secrets of Early Glasgow.
While the Lunar Deity ruled at Glasgow, farther down the river, at Dumbarton (the double-breasted rock), the cult of the Venusian Goddess supervened, and farther west (as at Greenock and Inch-Greine) the adoration of the Sun God seems to have been predominant.
The newly discovered sanctuary, still under examination, at Knappers, near Kilbowie, on the Boulevard west of Anniesland, Glasgow, is primarily a Solar Temple of the latest phase of the Stone Age. Its central part is circular and consists of timber posts {14} and serpentine earthen mounds, with many graves ranging from Neolithic times into the various phases of the Bronze Age.
The areas at Knappers and at Glasgow Cathedral have boundaries which delineate the shape of a pannier and are similar in that respect to prehistoric Sanctuaries elsewhere in Scotland and in England.
Ancient Architecture, Art, and Symbolism, and other archaeological manifestations, when logically interpreted, show that the conceptions of Immortality and Monotheism prevailed in Clydeside among the learned long before the advent of Christianity.
These doctrines, naturally fundamental and persistent throughout the millennia, were carried over from Paganism nearly 2000 years ago with scarcely a ripple of change.
The deep gulf so often pictured as lying between them resolves itself into a mere shallow undulation when one walks up to it with an observant eye.
The philosophers, of both old and new schools, postulated a Supreme Source of Power with His servants and deputies.
To the Pagan, the Moon-divinity was one of the two chief deputies. The ever-living moon, shown as two crescents, one waxing and one waning, and set back to back, I found in 1934 quite undisguised at Pompeii. The Pictish symbol-writer portrayed it also well over a thousand years ago; and throughout Clydeside it occurs on quite late tomb-stones—though often perhaps as a merely conventional emblem of Immortality, the lunar origin of which had become forgotten.