DRACONTIUM or SERPENTINE TEMPLE and TEMPLAALAT

Specimen of an Etimological Vocabulary 

or Essay By Means of the Analitic Method

to Retrieve the Antient Celtic Specimen

Written by: John Cleland, in 1768

DRACONTIUM or SERPENTINE 

TEMPLE and TEMPLAALAT 

A The modern names of Dracontium and of Alta temple the one meaning simply a circle or church the other a winged circle were purely owing like so many others to such mistakes of ancient Words as arose from similarity of sound the rectifying of which throws on the antiquities of Britain a light that cannot be but satisfactory to those those who prefer the simplicity of truth to the marvellousness of falsity For the word Dracontium then there were two coinciding reasons First The circles or churches for they are syno rilmous were originally formed or built by the Druids Among their names for they had many was that of Drac or circle maker this also signisied a Dragon One reason this for the word Dracontium Another Such circles had commonly sanctuaries Lechs Cromlechs Meyns or Minsters belonging to them these were called Naids and with the particle tor annexed expressive of the precinct ground or verge of their influence this would give Naid tor Now Naidr signifying a snake can there be any thing forced in the presuming that as the Druid churches became exploded by Christianity the name of Snake temples as the more invidious or contumelious might supplant the real one of Sanctuary temples of The circle's representing the coil of a snake either in its outline or inward circular partitions I might adduce as a further reason but I think it rather too quaint too forced to be the principal cause though it might contribute to give still more foundation for the misnomer and help to fix it As to the Alata templa I take this to be obviously a mistake of the like nature
 The collegiate circles of the Alburys or Cant ah burys had collaterally to them a range or ranges of Heills or Halls both for the instruction of youth and the administration of justice These were called Heils or Halls thence our I Les of a church Thence in Gaul they were stiles Ailis wings a term conspired by some affinity of form answering to the Wilton of the Greeks and in time generalized to signify the out buildings of any fabric sacred or profane This was however not unlikely the origin of the Alata templa of the Druids and indeed of those of Christianity la these wings metaphorically given to the serpentine temples you have most probably the genuine origin of that absurd impersonation of them in the winged serpent dragons or griffins Cir effins a word expressing a snake temple especially too as in those temples it was of old customary to deposit consecrated treasures I would be loth to be too positive that Strabo did not mistake Lecbs or Cromlechs for the Latin Lacus and thence translated it and why not as well as some historians took the Celtic hatchets for ace tum vinegar A single rock unluckily fallen a cross a pathway on the Alps was enough to obstruct Hannibal's whole army this a few Celtic hatchets would clear away in a few instants which a thousand tons of vinegar acetum if he had had so much in his camp would hardly have effectuated in as many years As these Leeks then were Kit miens lap-ides custodies in every sense and in that quality not only safe guards of men but of treasures whether consecrated or deposited there for safety might not the word Lech by its found impose on Strabo a Greek Who can conceive that lakes were not more proper reservoirs for such than for treasure It is barely possible but very improbable that they were put to such an unexampled use
The lands on which the Leches or Asylums stood might-be sold by the Roman conquerors but Lakes were not commonly objects of property The great temple of Tho louse which Strabo mentions belonged doubtless to a Lech or Cromwell not to a Lake and was some such Minster as the other Mayans or Fanes of Britain or Gaul M Bourguet in his dissertation on the Etruscan alphabet p I c takes notice of an extremely rare Greek word Ext in the signification of Temple which he thinks may be the etimon of the Venetian Zecca or mint This rather comes from Z ick to strike a coin But if Exx in the sense of Temple or Fane dismisses its idiomatic tetminative and assumes the common Celtic prepositive or 1 it gives precisely our British Lech the import of a Cromlech itself the Fane or Meyn and giving the name of Temple to the whole precinct or Church Most of the Greek words on a fair analisis will be found purely Celtic The Druids or Dr acs were officially the guardians of such treasures Thence the antient siction of assigning the guard of precious things to Dragons In lhort the winged dragons and their uard ng treasures may very well take rank with the hippagnfHns with fairy dances in a ring on the green and TheThe N of the Greeks for a temple I take to have an origin though purely Celtic different from our word Nave or Nef to express the body of the church This rather derives from the connection of the circle or main spot to the Hoff or Hab the head Con hoff Con hab this was the with other productions of fancy and chimera most of them to be traced to such mistakes or childish play of words which have not been the less seriously believed in the times of barbarism and ignorance Naos for temple I take to be by a contraction frequent h the Greek and Latin languages to stand for Ketaws in which the Ken does not the less for its not being at all Greek enter into the composition of that language This is the case of many other monosillables of the elementary language
They are not Greek but they contribute to form the Greek The Celtic car for heart is not Greek but it forms KapJia Ks is one of the old Celtic words for bead in which sense it enters into Tivomo I ken or kenoiv know In Naos for Ke aof it means a head place If the reader mould here think I take an unwarrantable liberty in presuming the elliptic letters I offer to his own consideration the following examples Take the Latin words Nascor Watus Natura and the French Ne for born Analize them and you will sind that A cor being but a frequentative Atus a common idiomatic termination Atura the fame e the fame This reduces all these words to this single initial letter n which offers no sense Restore the two elliptic letters ge cut off by the usual tendency of languages to contraclion or to euphony you have gena cor genatus genatura gene in which gen the radical of generative of kind of beginning &c and of hundreds more gives a clear fense nor will it escape the reader that Ken head and Gen generative have so great an analogy as to be at bottom the fame word Nor is this the only word by many Notus in Latin has the fame origin as the Greek Tuoaxa of which only the sirst Iota is elliptic in rW t The postulate then of variation of the fame words stands incontestable Even in proper names where one would the least suspect it it is astonishingly great Alfred Galfred Aubrey Jeffrey Ambrose Alvarez and very possibly Abarii are at bottom all the same name though some of them preserve so little of the family likeness They all derive from Allury or Amlry headhead head sanctuary or altar piece collateral to this Nave were the I les or Wings the Heils or Halhi Such was the disposition of the Druidical collegiate churches which gave them the name of Alata There is if I mistake not the remains of a Druid serpentine temple in Westmorland called the Shap a contraction of The Ab the head Here be it observed that even the word Nef signisied antiently a serpent as if every thing had concurred to this denomination This head Hofs or Cove was specisically the place of the sacred Stone Lech or Meyn which was considered as the capital part of the whole precinct whether an Albury or a Cantalbury It is now represented by the altar piece and chancel And here I must entreat the reader's retrospect to page 52 where Conwont or Coffwont it is the fame word is represented in its true connection with theantient word Minster which I have so much reason to think it is so far from deducible from the Greek that on the contrary itself gave birth to that barbarous and false Hellenism And surely the more he considers the circumstance of convents having been so familiarly multi plied in Europe so very early after the prevalence of Christianity he will be the less ready to believe that monasteries could derive their original of living in the society of collegiate life from the example of the solitaries or hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt it is even a contradiclion in terms unless you will force the word w from single life allusively to celibacy a word never in that fense made use of in Greek where ay or a ytx Aril & was at once so much more expressive and so obvious to conception What likelihood is there that unless the conventual or collegiate life of the Druids had smoothed the way for the institution of Christian convents convents they should have all at once and in those countries especially where the Druids had confessedly the greatest or rather exclusive sway the notion of convents and that it should be so familiar as it appears to have been in the earliest ages of Christianity Besides which the distinction was always kept up between hermits and collegiates not only in the name but in the thing As to the Druid monks they formed a class apart which I have precedently explained But they offer to me here an opportunity of retrieving the lost fense of an antient British word which will greatly corroborate my proposition of the priority of Druid Minjlers to Christian Monasteries Its degree of weight or validity I submit to any judge of literature the severer the better You will sind that the modern Welsh make a promiscuous use of the words Corphlan and Myn went to express a church yard for which they are justly reprehended by the learned Dr Wotton the editor of Howell Dha's laws He proves very clearly from the text of the laws themselves compiled in or about the year 942 and probably the most of them much more antient that Mynwent and Corphlan have essentially different signisications Corphlan he makes very naturally come from Corph corpse and llan inclosure but as to Myn vent it is plain from his own showing that he Corflan & Corphlan apud hodiernos Wallos Corflant & Mynuaent pro cœmeterio vulgo usurpantur In Legibus dit ersa sunt Mynuuent suit Atrium Ecclefiii adjacent Corphlan exte rius suit Atrium interius illud undiquaque ambiens in quo Ca davera sepeliebantur Vide How Dha lib ii cap viii 6 Corphlan a Corph Corpus & Llan septum Myn voent dicitur quasi Monumentum Ccemeteria erant extra Atria ne corrupta ca davera sidelibus in ecclesia congregatis incommodo essent Sed hæc omnia acompluribus ab hinc feculis confysaSi indistintla sunt Wotton mistakes sanctuary precinct not content with impowering friars to go about the country to beg in their behalf they even indulged them the liberty of going about their own affairs beyond the sanctuary limits without fear of molestation from their prosecutors or from officers of justice provided that they carried with them some authenticated mark a bough of evergreen for example delivered to them by a Druid conventualist the producing which maintained their title to sanctuary though caught out of the lawful bounds It was a kind of day rule to them This testimonial was called Crair contractedly from Cir ayer the bough or warrant from the church or hallowed circle But when Christianity prevailed under the dispensation of which it was very natural for the ecclesiastics in their care for the prerogative of the church not to give up so material a one as the right of sanctuary they retained this privilege of Naid or sanctuary with no difference but that of substituting to the crair or bough the relicks of some saint which relicks however retained metonimically the antient name of Crair and Naid y Craireu was called the fro teclion of the relicks By these the antient Christianized Britons used to swear as they formerly did on the altar or the sacred bough instead of kissing the book as is now practised