Allusions to a "Creator, the arranger and architect of the universe," as introduced in the older philosophy of the druidical system, are, apparently, thrown out here and in various parts of Taliesin as pearls to be sought after and examined, when patriarchal worship was paid originally to the Supreme Being under the name of Iau, Jah, Duw, Iôr, Esus, or Hesus. Thus did the Persians and Etruscans worship Diw and Esar, as also did the Latins their Deus or primary divinity.

To arrive at anything like a solution to this difficult problem, recourse must be had to extraneous combinations of conflicting principles, which, for distinction's sake, I shall briefly designate by the epithets eternal versus ex atomic, 'designed in opposition to accidental; God-worship in antagonism to hero-worship, or man deified; the Druidical or Pythagorean at variance with what is Epicurean, both in its tendency and results.

Now, in the first place, the expression Ynys Fel, as already hinted at, pre-supposes an antiquity immemoriably in advance of any recorded history, that is, in patriarchal centuries bordering on the flood, when the very name of Hellas was, as I have already hinted, an uncoined word to Hebrew, or Greek or Punic Gentile. The chaotic gap of the then worship is necessarily undocumentary. We must, therefore, descend in the scale of time, and analyse what we can get.

The term Bel must now attract our attention. It is either an appellative or a representative of the Deity. If the former idea be meant, traces of such divinely-alleged character will not be wanting in those regions of the east whence his worship took its rise, and where it was celebrated; if the latter acceptation be understood, and particeps nominis et Umbre, the difficulty will, perhaps, admit of a solution, even in the midst of nominal incumbrances.

Now, Bel, or Baal in the Hebrew and Phoenician languages, was originally deemed to have been the true God, the Supreme Lord, Owner, and Master of the Universe,'" dal Bòrea all A'ustro, dal mar Indo al Mauro." This noachidic interpretation, however, as regards the former, was discarded at a very early period, as only a trace of it is to be found in one of the minor prophets, till, in the lapse of ages, it altogether lost the savour of its divine essence, and gradually degenerated into a mere human lord, husband, or owner,' and was made to represent the sun, under the deification or beatification of an illustrious hero, and, eventually, 'the God of War,' which expression, under its synonymes of Beli and Bela in the Cimmerian and Hebrew languages of a still later date, came to signify havoc, war, or destruction,' in the former, and corruption, ravage, ruin,' in the latter.

In the cognate Armorican language, however, Bel (as Bal in the Punic or Beal of the Gaedhil or Gwyddel) still retains a very

slight adumbration of its former self in its actual signification of 'power, knowledge, and authority,' as in the phrase 'Dre he feli,' 'through or by his authority,' as well as in the Irish balg, a man of erudition.' In Brittany, it is even now adopted as an appellation for a priest, as Bel-eg-as I can personally attest, from a short residence in that interesting and hospitable country.

In the Septuagint version > Bel, or a Beal, is rendered by Hparλns, a term equivalent to one of the early Cimmerian celebrities of antiquity, surnamed indiscriminately Wrchol, Ourchol, Archol, Archles, from his prerogatives of wrch, 'high, elevated, distinguished,' or arch, chief, principal,' and ol or oll, 'all, whole, wholly,' and corresponding with the acoustic Phoenician form of 'Orcul, or Orc-ul, light of all.'

In reference, then, to this Archol, Wrchol, or Orcul, certain expressions, philologically inapplicable to those who claim him. either as an indigenous Syrian Orcul, or npakλns, will be found so intimately connected with the Cimmerian as to furnish us with another link of allied support and identification.

Given, the term Carcharian dog, to find a result. What did this expression signify in the fable, as propagated in Greece, respecting Hercules?

I refer sceptics to the Hellenic source, if any, of their own cherished and fabled predilections.

The modern Latino-Græcists, in their suicidal attempts at the root extraction of our term, seize at random upon kap or χαρ, the penultimate or antepenultimate of Kapxapos, from its meaningless resemblance to, and illogical deduction from a Hebrew word accidentally ending in r, with or without a correlative application.

Let us imagine the whole of the borrowed term to be dissyllabic or trisyllabic, as καρ, χαρος, οι καρχαρί Now, the os, being terminal and having no legs to stand upon,' must, of course, be thrown overboard. There remain then two syllables-kap and χαρ. Either the one or the other is slighted, as an unworthy and useless member of Greek, Hebrew, and Phoenician societies. Let car, gratia exempli, be ignored. Xap, then, is 'cut and dried' from the Hebrew Saw, called ger, and then the whole term is forced to be 'very cutting'; upon this the saw, being probably rusty from want of lingual oil, they accordingly render it' very rough and very rude': yea, after a while, it turned out very 'wicked,' in consequence of a further unfortunate deficiency of grease. The ger or saw eventually corroded, and then it became very 'snuppish as a hungry, half-fed dog would be apt to do, and metamorphosed itself into two, i. e., the one (take which ever syllable you like) became a silent, the other a noisy, an empty-headed academic, member of the Græcian house of representatives. But, unfortunately for the above sample of rooted wisdom, there is another

Hebrew ger, signifying 'a stranger,' which, as though by prophetic instinct, seems to estrange the garbled derivation altogether. What, then, is the interpretation?

The term, Cimmericè, is, naturally and simply, derived from carchar, a place of detention, confinement, a prison,'-the epithet of which is, consequently, 'detained, confined, imprisoned, entombed,' with other analagous expressions. But how is this sense acquired? Carchar, from the root of carch, having its elements in c-ar-ych, as c='dal neu gynnal'=' a keeping,' and r or ar='inward force,' and ych, a termination implying 'encircling' hence, it means an encircling safeguard,' litera de literâ, a confined state.

With the merits or demerits of the myth, fable, or conte de fées, I do not interfere in any way further than by transcribing the following statement from the annotations of Carne, Oxon: "Hercules," says the author, was fabled to have been, when shipwrecked, swallowed by a nтos, in whose belly he remained entombed three nights and escaped again alive. This monster is termed kapxapos kuwv, or 'the Carcharian dog of Triton,' which Bochart makes to be, not a whale, but a shark, the epithet having relation to its terrific jaws and teeth, and which is called 'laima,' from its voracious throat and monstrous swallow."

This passage requires a few words of comment.

The Cimmerian term for shark is môr-gi, or sea-dog, from môr and ci, also llamgi and tagci.

The lamia or laima is, Cimmericè, 'a generic animal,' one of the amphibious propellants, and characterised by means of legs, wings, or fins, from its its root of lam, ‘a stride, a creep, a skip, a slide.'

This propelling idea is perceived in llymread, a sandfish; in llamidydd, a vaulter, a porpoise; in Ulamur one who strides or steps; and in llymgi 'a sorry dog,' or lamiagi, a species of morgi, as above. Hence the Cimmerian and Hebrew verbs llyncu and levalong, or uyfalung acoustically, and y, to swallow, radically coincide.

Whether the prehistoric lamia, or môrgi, corresponds with the ‘squalus maximus' of modern nomenclature, I pretend not to divine; or whether, "as a basking shark, it lay, as Kolben informs us, on the surface of the water, as if to sun itself, and capable, from the immensity of its jaws and gullet to (lyncu or) swallow a full-dressed man; or whether it was a migratory fish." But of something else to be proved in the sequel I am not so doubtful, nor so sceptical. Bearing in mind the above, let us proceed.

"The singularity of this great animal is," says Carne, on the authority of certain naturalists, "that it has nothing of the fierce and voracious nature of the shark kind, and is so tame as to suffer itself to be approached, and even stroked. But it is equally

singular in this, that its food consists almost entirely, if not quite, of sea plants or marine vegetables. Linnæus says it feeds also on medusæ (genre de vers radieres) or stellated worms or spawn, but no remains of fish or of any devoured creatures have been discovered in the stomachs of the numbers that have been cut up, but only green stuff, the half-digested parts of Algae (and other apparently inanimate matters). Now this clearly is the likeliest fish ever discovered for the reception of a human being, through a divine impulse, unbitten and unharmed, and which would very gladly disgorge its unusual subject again for its own relief; and as the disposition of this monster is so bland, and its fare so entirely vegetable, the interior of this capacious dag would exactly agree with the prophet's description, The weed was bound about upon my head.'"

Now, it may be asked, What is the original idea conveyed in dag, or rather 572 27, dag gedol, as we find it expressed in the Hebrew text.

Dag, then, Cimmericè, signifies, primarily, 'what is produced, elongated by way of opening,' as a 'cavity, expanse of entrance, a throat, a gullet, a swallow,' as in the phrase, Y bwystfil a dagodd y creadur,' the beast swallowed, throttled, or entombed, the creature. The verb tag-u does not necessarily imply the act of bruising or emaciation.

Secondly, it signifies 'what is produced or effused as germ,' thrivable, as weed or stalks: hence the Hebrew, dagen, wheat, and, dagah, to fecundate like fish, as in Genesis, "Let them grow [thrive or fecundate] into a multitude"

Gedol signifies the terrible one, the monster, as cors-y-gedol in Merion, the swamp of the monster.

Bel will not allow me to prolong the application of the key any further. Let us, then, return to Baal.

At other periods Baal signified the idol of Oriental worship, and corresponded with Bali, of Hindoo mythology, as well as with the deity of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Tyrians, and Sidonians. Now let us, by collating Cimmerian, Hebrew, and Greek expressions in reference to morning and evening twilight, endeavor to discover other latent truths respecting Baal. The English version addresses the king of Ba-Bel as Lucifer, son of the morning, as, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations." Here the original Hebrew term hilel is rendered Ewodepos by the Septuagint; elsewhere, the Hebrew Beker is rendered morning,' and Shecher early dawn,' with εws as the sole correlative interpretation.

The term hilel may be derived from the Hebrew halel, to irradiate, to shine'; but the term, to be a light-bringing-compliment to King Bel, would be found possibly in hil, ‘an issue, a progeny,'

and el or ail, second -as thus systematically reflecting a peculiar honor on him by an imputed connection with the movements of the true, original hil, as hail-haul, the reflex of the primary luminary of the heavens.

Some of these nations worshipped the sun under this appellation; and others are alleged to have deified Nimrod as Baal, Bel, or Belus, a name supposed to have been generic among the the early kings of Chaldea and Babylon, as the Pharohs, Belins, or Cæsars of Egypt, Prydain, and Rome. Traces of this root are also discoverable in Hannibal, and Hasdrubal, of Carthage, and resolvable into 'grace of God' and 'help of God.'

With reference, however, to Phoenicia and Syria, this view of ultimate solar worship is substantiated by the statement of Herodian, as well as by the frequent occurrence and conjunction of both expressions (namely, Baal and the Sun, i. e,, Apollo or Bel) on "ancient Carthaginian coins and Palmyrean inscriptions." Hence it is evident that this worship has left deep traces of its existence throughout the Indo-European race, in the earlier ages of patriarchal life.

From the combined general character of Oriental and primeval western worship, as hastily sketched from above, it is therefore not highly impossible that Bel, or Baal, once signified the true Lord of the universe, and that his worship degenerated into a material element, whether of 'sun, moon, or stars.' Sanchoniathon, the Egyptian, who flourished about 1400 years before our era, that is, in the days of Joshua, son of Nun, states, as quoted by Eusebius, "That the Phoenicians in patriarchal times worshipped the sun as τον μονον Ουρανου κυριον, the only Lord of heaven, under the name of Bɛɛλrauer, whom, en passant, Eusebius affirms to be identical with the later prerogatives of the Greek Zevs or Latin Deus.

It is also averred that Baal-berith, or Belbrith, the Lord of Confederacy, or God of Treaties, corresponded with the functions or attributes of Zevç opкios, of Deus Fidius, or the faithful god.

"In the British Isles," also says a distinguished Celtic writer, "the worship of Beal was celebrated by fires kindled on the mountains. This worship has left deep traces in the popular traditions. The druids kindled fires on the cairn on the eve of the first of May in honour of Beal, Bealan (the sun): that day still retains in Ireland the name of La-Beal-teine, that is to say, the day of Beal's fire." The old Irish name of the year is Bealaine, now corrupted into Bliadhain, i. e., the circle of Belus, or the circle of the sun."

This usage is primarily accounted for by the rational, and in some respects excusable, if not natural notion, in the absence, neglect, or annihilation, ‘bien entendu,' of purer and more sacred principles, that the solar effulgence was the representative of