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

to4 PHUENICIAN ORIGIN OF BRITONS & SCOTS

aspect of North Britain, at least, which impressed Scott in his well-known lines :

“ © Caledonia! stern and wild, . Land of the mountain and the flood.” 4

And “ Alban” for long remained a popular title for Scotland, after “England” had replaced “‘ Alban” or “ Albion ’ for South Britain.

Many millenniums must have elapsed after their arrival in Alban, before the small herds of such primitive dwarf nomads filtered through the river-valleys of Alban and into the enlarging northern land left by the retiring glacial climate andrising beaches. And many more millenniums must have elapsed before such a rude land-people, under pressure from behind by succeeding waves of fresh herds from the continent, would venture to migrate to Ireland across the sea, which would however be narrower at that period. When ultimately hard pressed and hemmed in by enemy clans against a narrow sea-board, it is conceivable that a small horde of these Matriarchists, séeking escape from annihilation, may have ventured out to sea in their small skin-boats for refuge in outlying islands, and eventually reached Erin. And such were probably the circumstances, I think, under which the Matriarch Cesair and her herd reached Bantry Bay in Erin in the later Neolithic Age,? where, safe from hostile pressure, they naturally would name that island “ The Good Ban Land,’ (Ban-bha).

The first of these Ban or Van or Fene Matriarchs in Ireland, Cesair, presumably brought with her to Ban-try Bay or ‘“The Bay of the Shore of the Bans,” the two especially sacred fetishes of the Van Matriarchist Serpent-cult, the Magic Oracle Bowl or Witches’ Cauldron (Cotvean Dagdha or “ Churn of Fire’? of the Irish Celts), and Fal’s Fiery Stone

1 Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, vi, 2.

2 From the traditional landing place being on the south-west corner of Erin, it is possible that she and her herd started from Vannes on the western coast of Brittany or Lands End; but more probably from Wales.

%“ Dapeda "' is usually rendered “ the good hero,” from Celtic dag. “* good” but it seems to me more probably to be derived from daig “ fire, flame.”