28
The Presidential Address.
Every schoolboy knows the traditions connected with the
Druidical nature-worship, the sacred mistletoe on the sacred
oak, and on the surrounding groves of only less sacred apple
trees. I believe the apple to have been in cultivation ages
before AElfred took refuge in the marsh-surrounded so-called
"island" of Avalon, or apples. There was no doubt a
certain community of superstition among all the Aryan
nations. For instance, Taranis or Etirun was the British
form of the Scandinavian Thor, the thunderer, and the wor-
ship of oak, ash, hawthorn, and houseleek as sacred to him
probably dates from Celtic, and not merely from early English,
times. The Houseleek is not apparently wild anywhere
nearer than the valley of the Loire, though grown much as
with us in the North of Prance. The plant has several
Celtic names, quite unlike those used by the English,53 and
whilst in Druidical times there may well have been communi-
cation with France, this is perhaps less likely during the
pagan period of the English conquest.
We must not forget that between the paganism of pre-
Roman Celtic Britain and that of Hengist and Ercemvine
five centuries elapsed, during four of which the country was
under a government which, if mainly military, cannot have
existed, as it did, throughout the length and breadth of the
land without great influence upon the natural condition of the
country. An ear of Essex barley figures on the gold coin of
Cunobelin, or Cymbeline, of Camulodunum,54 before the
date of this change is unknown.....The great drain upon the wood-
lands, which charcoal furnaces entailed, led to legislative action for
their protection so early as 1543."—Topley, 'Geology of the Weald,'
pp. 332-3.
53 "Son introduction, en Angleterre, doit remonter a une epoque tres
ancienne, puisque les Gallois d l'ile d'Anglesea lui donnent quatre nonis
d'apparence celtique, du moins tres differents des noms saxons et latins,
et auxquels je ne trouve d'analogie eloignee que dans les langues slaves,
par exemple, Dislog (gallois), et Tschesnok dikoy (russe). Dans cette
derniere langue, dikoy signirle sauvage; mais le mot Tschesnok est un
nom propre."—DeCandolle, op. cit., p. 662.
51 These coins, one of which is figured, among other places, in 'The
Students' Hume,' p. 8, have been found at Colchester, Debden, Chester-
ford, Sandy (Bedfordshire), and Cambridge.—Akerman, 'Archaeologia,'
xxxiii.