matter of origin has, indeed, been much under discussion, some inclining with him to a Jewish, others to a monkish, others to a pagan Celtic parentage. Miss Lina Eckenstein has reviewed the matter in her learned work, “ Comparative Studies of Nursery Rhymes," and she divides all the poems of this type into two classes," Chants of the Creed" (e.g., " The Catechisation "), and "Heathen Chants of the Creed" (e.g., all the English variants of "The Twelve Apostles "). "The analysis of these pieces," she writes, "renders it probable that they are all derived from an earlier prototype." This prototype is in her opinion a dialogue poem or rhyme that as a rule does not go beyond the number seven. Relics of these earliest dialogue poems linger in such nursery jingles as deal with numbers(" One-two, buckle my shoe"). My object is to show that "The Twelve Apostles "is pagan in origin and derives from a Celtic form. That Celtic form is the highest in development of the Heathen Chants of the Creed.

It was the young Hersart de la Villemarqué who, in the winter of 1844, came across a mysterious Breton folk-song in the parish of Nizon in Brittany. It was being taught to young Per Michelet by his mother, who spoke the local dialect of Cornouaille. Her lesson, says M. Hersart, was given "in order to strengthen the child's memory." The Druids very probably had originally sought to preserve their teachings in the form of mnemonic exercises, and had told people that such and such a piece of lore, if repeated in such and such a jingle, was "good for the memory." It has been conjectured that the song overheard in Nizon parish is one of those pagan poems, which the early missionaries in Gaul, following instructions given them by Gregory the Great, permitted the people to continue singing as being not contrary to the truths of Christianity. It is a relief to think that the old missionaries, as a rule the unconscious enemies of folk-lore, should have permitted the survival of a poem so steeped in paganism. For it is an exposition, or at least an enumeration, of the teachings of the mystic druids, to whom, as Cæsar avers, the youth of Gaul resorted in multitudes for instruction.

The first verse of this Armorican poem is in its pessimistic sublimity wholly different from the first verse of "The Catechisation." It differs similarly from the opening verse of the Latin form of the song, a kind of full-dress rendering of the vernacular, which Hersart was urged to hear, and accordingly heard, in the

village school of Kemper, not far from where he discovered the peasant mother teaching her son. The Latin version runs thus:

Question.-Dic mihi quid unus (bis).
Answer.-Unus est Deus,

Qui regnat in cœlis.

In the vernacular original the "One" is Death.

A Druid ("Ann

Drouiz "), who is teaching a child (“ Ar Map "), begins thus: The Druid.-Pretty one, white child of the Druid, pretty one!

Tell me what wouldst thou? What shall I sing thee? The Child.-Sing to me the division of the Number One, till I learn it to-day.

The Druid.-The Number One has no division. "Tis unique necessity-Death, Father of Sorrow-nothing before,

nothing after. Pretty one, white child of the Druid, answer me what wouldst thou? What shall I sing thee? It is curious to note that Death here plays such a principal part. Yet Taliesin, the bard, speaks of his three re-incarnations and gives support to Cæsar's contention that the Druids were believers in the transmigration of the soul, and that Death for them was not the sole necessity, with nothing before and after. Hence Hersart de la Villemarqué supposes that the Death here referred to is perhaps the same as the Roman Dis, god of the lower regions, or as Destiny, a prime deity of primitive peoples.

The quaint Isle of Wight version seems to be a kind of purblind compendium of the beautiful Druid verse.

What is your One O ?

When the one is left alone
No more he can be seen O.

The English song continues :

What is your Two O?

Two and two-the lily white boys,
Clothed all in green O.

But two ("two and two-the lily white boys ") in this English version is manifestly an allusion to the White Child, the Druid's pupil or disciple. As often happens in folksong, the adaptor or translator could not understand the drift of the original Druid verse, which nevertheless makes mention of two things—

"Two oxen," replies the Druid," harnessed to a shell; they drag it, they are about to die. Behold the marvel!"

The English adaptor or translator slurs this matter over with a pretty verse about lily white boys in allusion to the "White Child of the Druid," and to the pupils of the Druids, clad in green, the bardic colour. The two oxen have been explained as the two oxen of Hu-Gadarn, the patriarch of Druidism. The shell may be the mystic serpent's egg of druidic mythology.

It is noticeable that whereas the Bretons and Germans translated all the verses of the Druid's mystic teaching into good orthodox Catholicism, the Saxon or Englishman, whoever he may have been, translated seven of them into something like nonsense. Hence we may infer that he was not translating under Church influences. In the twelve verses of the poem there are as many as seven pieces of gibberish, and only five Christian allusions. One is even tempted to ask: could the main part of the English version be pre-Christian too?

Verse Five has involved a good deal of controversy, and we pass on to Verse Six of the Isle of Wight poem, which seems to contain a fragment of the original, though we have classed it among the nonsense verses.

What is your six O ?
Six, six-the weaver.

What is this weaver? Can he be " a weaver of spells?" Six in the Breton version is the number of magic and of medicine. The Druids were above all things magician-physicians-weavers of spells, like the medicine-men of the natives of to-day. Sir John Rhys calls them "a class of shamans or medicine-men."

"There are six little children of wax," says the Druid song, "vivified by the energy of the moon. If thou knowest not, I know. There are six medicinal plants in the little cauldron; the little dwarf mixes the decoction, his little finger in his mouth."

"There are six little children of wax "-this, according to Hersart, refers to the practice, known all the world over, of making waxen images of those upon whom it is desired that a spell shall be cast.

"There are six medicinal plants in the little cauldron," the Druid continues, in reference to the ancient druidic pharmacopoeia, the medicinal plants in which were a species of moss, henbane, samolus, vervaine, and mistletoe from an oak-tree, or in

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place of mistletoe (sacred likewise amongst the ancient Teutons and Norse) primroses (or cowslips) and trefoil, still reverenced in Ireland as shamrock. According to Breton bardic poetry, a pot, filled with a decoction of these plants, contains the brew of universal knowledge. The pot is watched by a dwarf, who licks up three drops of the mixture within it that have chanced to fall on his hand. Putting his finger in his mouth to lick off the drops, instantly he becomes the possessor of all the secrets of science. Hence the phrase: "The little dwarf mixes the decoction, his little finger in his mouth."

Verse seven deals with the mystic number, and refers to the seven suns and seven moons, with " the Hen," the Celtic Pleiades, as also the seven elements, with the "flour of the air" or the atoms. The English folk-song speaks only of “Seven stars in the sky," and makes no further comment on the number seven.

Eight, in the German, refers to the Eight Beatitudes, but in the Jewish version it is the eight days preceding circumcision, while in the English song it is rendered often in a manner quite meaningless. "The copies of this song," says Mr. Long, author of " The Dialect of the Isle of Wight " (1886), both "oral and written, were so excessively corrupt as to make it a matter of considerable difficulty to get at the original form of the verses. For example, verse 8 one copy gave it as 'Eight-the Gaberandrist'; and another Eight-the Cablerangers'; and only after some research was the real meaning discovered."

Eight-the eight archangels" is said to be the orthodox English version; but, is this correct?

The "Gaberandrist," a creature not to be found in Wright's "Dialect Dictionary," is perhaps the corrupted transcript of a phrase in the Druid version of Verse Nine, where the White Child says:

Sing me the series of the number nine,"

a line which in Armorican runs :

"Kan din 'euz a nao rann."

The italicised words may very well have been corrupted into "Gaberandrist by someone not very conversant with Celtic. And "Cableranger " may quite well be a variant of "Gaberandrist," though Dr. Jessop connects it with the Archangel Gabriel. It is noticeable that both words contain the syllable" rann," misspelt, and "rann " is the singular of " rannou," or series, the title

of the Celtic poem being “ Ar Rannou," "The Series," though this again has been disputed.

It is possible that at some remote period" the Gaberandrist was a known figure, coming from Cornwall, for the ballad is traced thither, perhaps to Exeter itself, which in the Middle Ages contained two separate populations, the one Cornish and Celticspeaking, the other West Saxon. He would be pointed at as the man who sang "The Series" or "The Series of the Druiz (Druid)," and he seems to have found his interpreter and translator in border countries, or in some town or village where bilinguals lived.

The English of "The Twelve Apostles " is not sufficiently archaic in form to suggest a very old English origin. But, on the other hand, it may have been modernized from time to time. Indeed, the Gaberandrist may have wandered in the far-off days of the Heptarchy.

But to return to our Druid. are eight winds that whistle;

"There

He says in verse eight : eight fires with the Fire of the Father, lit in the month of May on the Mount of War."

Fires are said to have been kept up by the Druids of Britain in certain of their sacred places, and the "Fire of the Father " is probably the fire of Bel Tan, Bel's fire, lit by the Irish Celts in May-time upon a mountain, in honour of the sun, that god of ancient worship.

"Eight heifers of the dazzling whiteness of sea-foam,” continues the poem, " browsing the grass of the deep island-eight heifers, white, and dedicate to the Lady."

The "deep island" is one of the truly Celtic touches which Matthew Arnold so admired. Verse nine is long and mystic. "There be nine little white hands on the table of space (or "on the threshing-floor ") near the Tower of Lezarmeur, and nine mothers who moan aloud. There be nine korrigan, who dance with flowers in their hair and raiment of white wool, around the fountain in the brightness of the full moon. There be the wild sow and her nine little pigs at the gate of the chateau, their lair, grunting and nosing (fouissant), nosing and grunting. Little one, little one, little one, run to the apple-tree! The old wild boar is about to give you a lesson !"

"Nine little white hands on the table of space (or more prosaically "the threshing-floor ") near the Tower of Lezarmeur,