Forlong - Rivers of Life

350
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
to us attached to Phalli, or Phallic-looking objects,—bells, though not the clappers,
being always feminine; on which account Christianity commonly dedicated bells to the
Hermaic demi-gods—Gabriel and St. Michael. I have some drawings of Bells too
indecent for the public eye; and travellers and antiquaries will remember a very improper
one in Christian Kolumbia—St. Fillans, which was very highly venerated up to
the end of the last century, and which is decorated, as already stated, with Phalli; 1
also many very gross scupltures on the old Roman ruins of Nismes, see drawings
opposite to pages 85 and 92 of Antiquities. 2 The ancient Egyptians, like modern
Turks, forbad the use of bells, as indecent female symbols, but Mr. Payne Knight 3
thinks that Priapus may be the same as briapouj—“the clamorous one,” B and P being
interchangeable; epiphets of similar meaning were continually applied both to Jupiter
and Bacchus; hence Priapic figures have bells as clamorous female attributes
attached to them. Hindoos, Greeks and Italians have continually worn bells,
especially in the worship of Bacchic and Solar gods. Small bell-like amulets are
constantly met with in connection with Phalli, Lunulæ, &c., see those in Plate XII. 2
and 3, found among very ancient European ruins. There is no mistaking the idea
from which sprang such “a charm” as No. 2. Bells did not become generally
connected with Christian worship till about 600, but about one hundred years after
this, they were indispensible, and were regularly baptized and named after great
persons, mostly women and saints.
As associated with women, bells became intimately connected with wells, fonts
and springs, especially warm or health-giving ones, because they were considered
highly feminine objects, not only in Asia and Southern Europe, but all over our
own Isles. The more gaseous and warm these were, the more they were sought out
and worshipped by pilgrims of both sexes, of all classes and creeds, and this with
fanatical perseverence from the earliest dawn of history. Christianity diligently and
for many centuries continued the adoration and these pilgrimages; merely from time
to time transofrming the old “Pagan” names (as she contemptuously called all
superstitions save her own) into words more suitable to her own stories, ideas and
saints; she adopted the dates of the unalterable Pagan-Solar Kaldendar. Of course
there is no more superstition or absurdity in making a pilgrimage to a lovely
grove or dell with its font and bell than to an old relic, bone, or tomb of a saint,
and many would even now prefer the Pagan’s taste. So we find that the early
Christian Church invested pilgrimages to wells with the highest ecclesiastical sanction.
Such stagnation and ignorance, however, could not continue, and EDUCATION—that
great impelling power which makes churches and faiths “move on”—began in the ninth
and tenth centuries to smile at the churches and their wells, as she has been lately smiling
at a great many other superstitions nearly as weak and foolish. Thus in the tenth and
1 Bishop Forbes in Proceedings of Soc. of Ants. for Scot., VIII., p. 265, and see p. 332 ante.
2 M. Menard’s Ants. of Nismes, Edited and Illustrated by M. Perrot. Nismes, 1831. [See also Knight
and Wright, Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c., plates XXV and XXVI.]
3 [Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, p. 97 (edn. of 1894).]