The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

96 PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

This ancient ethnic name of ‘* Wan” or ‘‘ Ban” also survives broadcast in many places in mee especially in the neighbourhood of these old Wan’s Ditches and subterranean “ Picts’ Houses,”’ and the so-called, though erroneously so, “ Early Briton settlements.”

Instances of the survival of such ancient ‘‘ Van”’ and ‘Ban ”’ names in Britain are cited below. In examining these series of the ethnic name “‘ Van ”’ in different dialects we shall see the dialectic equivalency of the labials B, P, F and V, and the interchange of the latter with W, the OU or IOU of the Greeks, which are all dialectic variations in spelling the same name, well recognized by philologists.

[Instances of the survival of these ‘‘ Van”’ and ‘‘ Ban ”’ ethnic names in Britain are seen in the following :—Wan-stead near Houndsditch east of London, Wands-worth, Fins-bury, Finchley, Banbury, with its legend of “‘an old woman, e Wantage, Wainfleet on the Wash, Wensley, Winslow, Win- chester, the Venta or Vends of the Romans, Win- chelsea, Windsor, Ventnor, Wendover, Windermere with Wans’ Fell Pike, numerous Ban-tons, Bangor or ‘Circle of the Bans” on the Welsh coast, with so-called “ Druid ” circles and its namesake on Belfast Loch, and Banchory in Aberdeenshire with the same meaning and prehistoric “ circles ’ and an early seat of the Picts.2. And there are several Roman station names at important pre-Roman towns and villages bearing the fore-name of “ Vindo”’ and ‘“‘ Venta’ in series with Pent-land as an ancient title for Mid-Scotland, surviving in the “ Pent-land”’ Hills of Lothian, and in the “ Pent-land”’ Frith for the sea-channel on the extreme north of Britain, which “Vent” and “ Pent,” we shall see, is in series with “‘ Vindia ” as an ancient title of a Western Van region in Asia Minor. (see Map).

In Wales the famous “ Van Lake” was until lately a place of popular pilgrimage for the Welsh, and significantly it was sacred to a fairy Lady of the Lake,? presumably a deified Van matriarch-priestess ; and South Wales, in which it was situated, was called Vened-ocia or Vent-uria* (the Gwynned of the Welsh), and the ancient Briton capital there, Caerleon, was called by the Romans‘ Venta Silurum”’; and Gwent, 7.e.,

1 See also M.I.S., 295:

* The first Christian missionary to the Picts, St. Fernan, a disciple of Paladius, died here in 431 A.D.

3 RULL,, 422

*S.C.P., 153, as late as the twelfth century a.p.