THE TRADITION OF LONDON.

THE greatness of London has been recognised in various ways. It is accepted as one of the great cities of the world-one with Athens, Rome, and Paris. Its history is gradually being better understood; its position in history is gradually becoming unfolded. Its position in tradition, however, has not been investigated. I think this is worth examination, because tradition will always help us to understand history better in cases where they both exist side by side, while in cases where history fails tradition, properly treated, will supply some of the lost facts. It is in this wise that I venture to approach the tradition of London.

London has always earned the love of its citizens-at all events ever since that woful year A.D. 61, when, as recorded by Tacitus, the Roman general Suetonius left it to its fate in face of Boadicea's attack, and those who stayed behind' from attachment to the place' were massacred. Its climate, its wealth, its commercial greatness, its citizenship have always been the subject of encomium and satisfaction, and when we turn to tradition we find this same spirit in those who were not within the fold of its citizenship. Thus an old German legend begins with the verse

London, London is a fine town.'

Now, the first point to note about the tradition of London is that it begins from Welsh sources. We shall see the full significance of this presently, but it is obvious that we can at once make the suggestion that the tradition, if it is derived from ancient sources, from time immemorial, is capable of carrying us back to the Roman city of Lundinium Augusta, which there can be no doubt was of real significance and wonder to the Britons of the surrounding country. Nothing in its Anglo-Saxon history, nor in its medieval history, would specially appeal to the Celtic Britons. They were a scattered and a defeated people during this period. Everything in its Roman history would make this appeal; for they were then tribesmen with their native life not suppressed, an unconquered people in the sense that they fought for their own when Rome left them to themselves.

1 Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 235.

To the extent then that the tradition of London commences from Welsh sources we have a fixed period of history to make appeal to. The question is, Does the tradition itself confirm this appeal?

I think it does, and we will see how the proposition works out. The oldest recorded Welsh traditions come to us through the agency of the medieval romances. The historian and the antiquary of the eleventh century and later got hold of these traditions in their current version; but, not content with this form, worked them up to suit their conception of what Welsh history should be. This was not the work of the Celtic Britons, but of the Welsh scholars. They transformed things. All that was great in Britain was transferred to the Celtic Britons, represented by the Welsh. It was not the Romans who first built strong-walled cities, constructed bridges and roadways, and erected military strongholds. It was the Celts, before the arrival of the Romans, who were the stronger race.' The 'Mabinogion' story of Lludd illustrates this in the most pointed manner. Lludd, the eldest son of Beli the Great, succeeded his father in the kingdom of Britain. He rebuilt the walls of London and encompassed it about with numberless towers; and after that he bade the citizens build houses therein, such as no houses in the kingdom could equal. And, though he had many castles and cities, this one loved he more than any. And he dwelt therein most part of the year, and therefore was it called Caer Lludd, and at last Caer London. And after the stronger race came there it was called Lowdon or Lwndrys.' This is categorical enough, so categorical as to compare not only with the exact words of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia,' but with what Fitzstephen in the eleventh century said historically of early Norman London, when enumerating its towers, its houses, its beauty, the love of its citizens for it, even its name, Londres.

1

We gather from this two facts—namely, that the greatness of London in the eleventh century was so far in excess of any other English city as to cause then existing Welsh tradition of a far older date to be attached to it, and that its Welsh name (Caer Lûd or Lud's Fort) connects it with the Celtic god-name of Lludd. The exact significance of the first point we shall see later on. The second point must be investigated further at this stage.

Sir John Rhys has given us the clue. He points out that the Saxon name of Ludgate Hill makes it pretty certain that the incoming Saxons took over the name from a previously existing name, and he then connects this name with a Celtic god of the waters;

1 Mabinogion.

Lludd, worshipped at Lydney, on the Severn, and elsewhere,1 a worship which the Romans adopted into their own religion when they occupied London. But Sir John Rhys could have gone further if he had followed up his linguistic researches by researches into London tradition. At the top of Ludgate Hill stands the great cathedral church of St. Paul, always by tradition said to have been built upon the site of an ancient pagan temple. This tradition is borne out first by the archæologist, secondly by the folklorist. The discovery of a vast mass of stag-horns on the site of the cathedral itself by Sir Christopher Wren, and in 1830 the discovery of an altar inscribed to Diana in the immediate vicinity are the contributions by the archæologist. The ritual at old St. Paul's in Christian times and as late as the seventeenth century, together with a modern rite now actually obtaining, tells the story from the traditional side. Camden, the historian, describes as an eye-witness the ceremony of presenting a stag's head at the steps of the church by the priests in their sacerdotal robes and with garlands of flowers on their heads,' and Sir George Birdwood in the Athenæum' of April 11, 1908, records the custom of women rubbing their backs against a pilaster in the nave,' so that they should not die childless. Both these ceremonies are connected with the worship of Artemis or Diana, and it is not difficult to conclude that in these relics preserved by tradition we have evidence that the Romans, in taking over the cult of the Celtic god Lludd, attached it more closely to the worship of one of their own gods. Readers of Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough' know how he has unravelled the cult which obtained on the shores of the woodland lake of Nemi, where Diana Nemorensis-Diana of the Wood-was worshipped. If this Diana cult, or any portion of it, obtained in London, we have the necessary conditions. We have the parallel to the Nemi lake in the shallow lagoon which the waters of the Thames then produced, and we have the tree cult in a London tradition which Mr. A. B. Cook has rescued from the nursery rhyme

Upon Paul's steeple stands a tree,

Geoffrey of Monmouth's there shall be produced a

and which he rightly compares with Merlin prophecy, which sets forth that tree upon the Tower of London, which, having no more than three branches, shall overshadow the surface of the whole island with the breadth of its leaves.' If these scraps of tradition are indeed the

2

Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 129.

2 Folklore, xvii. 56.

last relics of a cult once obtaining in London we can only conclude that it belonged to the Romans of London, who, in the manner of the Romans everywhere, had worked it up by the amalgamation of a primitive native rite and worship with their own more developed system of mythology. All the fragments-stag sacrifice, childbearing rite, water rite, tree rite-connect with each other and go back to the same central worship. The actual details of London tradition therefore confirm what was expected from the fact that it arises from Welsh sources-namely, that it deals with the Lundinium Augusta of the Romans and not with later London.

Another Mabinogion tradition is equally instructive. It is that of Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, who in a miraculous fashion saved his people by commanding them to cut off his head and bear it even unto the White Mount in London, and bury it there, with the face towards France.' The journey was to take a long time, and wonderful things were to happen, from which mythologists have drawn wonderful conclusions. To me, however, we have here an instance of the savage head-hunting custom which the Celts of Britain are known to have practised, and which, therefore, indicates the period of the tradition to be when Celtic tribalism was still in force-namely, the period stretching down to the departure of the Romans from Britain. But there are two details in the tradition as it comes down to us which are of more importance to the study of London tradition, and equally with the head-hunting episode they appear to me to point to fact and not to myth. The first of these details is that Bendigeid Vran is said to have been 'the crowned king of this island' and that he was exalted from the crown of London.' The second is that Caswallawn, the son of Beli,' is stated to have been crowned king in London.'

Let us note further that this Mabinogion tradition equates exactly with statements in the laws of Howel D'ha, who says of the laws of Dyvnwal Moel Mud that they obtained before this, and before the crown of London, and the supremacy of this island, were seized by the Saxons,'1 and again that the saraad of the king of Aberfraw was three score and three pounds, his own royal tribute to the king of London.' 2 No doubt these statements must be taken as tradition instead of recorded history, but they are genuine tradition, not the tradition of an historical romancist. They preserve what must have been handed down by tradition from earlier times, and they were certified to by 'six men from each cymwd in the Ancient Laws of Wales (Venedotian code), i. 183.

2 Ibid. i. 235.

principality, the wisest in his dominion . . . four of them laics and two clerks.' That the tradition is founded on fact is confirmed in a curiously definite form, for there was a king of London, sub regulo Londoniæ, in 604, as the charters show, while the 'Heimskringla' saga preserves the same idea at a later date- London's king,' as Morris has translated it-an echo of which again was perhaps preserved in the cry of the Londoners when Prince John was being pressed to grant the commune that, 'come what may, the Londoners would have no king but their mayor.' 1

Now what can be made of this traditional connection of London with the kingship? It clearly belongs to the pre-Saxon period, and relates, I think, to the period when the Roman cities of Britain were standing side by side with the Celtic chieftains, or kings, in defence of the country against the incoming Saxons. Roman cities could not amalgamate with the tribal institutions of the Celts. They became allies. If a Roman soldier, Ambrosius or Artorius, became a successful general he also became a king of the Celtic Britons. If a Celtic chieftain, a Vortimer, became a successful general he also became an imperator of the cities. The chief magistrate of a great city was king of the city to the Welsh chiefs, and when we find it recorded of Arthur that he was crowned in three cities-Silchester, Caerleon, and London-we can recognise the independence of the different cities, who only recognised the king that they admitted. But London above them all stands out. The Merlin prophecy already quoted may be simply the estimate of its then position, indicating that London amongst British cities of Roman origin had secured to itself the best place in Welsh tradition.

If this is the right historical setting for this little group of London traditions we have secured the first stage in the proof that Welsh traditions of London refer us back to Roman London. We will now deal with another group of traditions.

This second group has not been played with by the mediæval romancists, but has been left untouched, except by the inevitable wear and tear of tradition, for the modern folklorist to discover. Sir John Rhys quotes two Welsh cave legends collected in the middle of the last century, in which a Welshman, walking over London Bridge with a hazel staff in his hand, was accosted by an Englishman, who informed him that the hazel stick grew on a spot beneath which vast treasures were stored. They journey in the one case to the cave of Craig-y-Dinas, in Glamorganshire, and in the second case to a

'Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 630.