S82 Notes on British and other Coins. By Miss Kussell. 



The rude drawing wliich looks like a caricature of the Crucifixion, and is 

 such an object of interest in Eome, is said to be a serious representation of 

 the Anubis-Christ of the Gnostics, the jackal-headed god represented as 

 crucified. I do not know if it has been noticed, that the Irish name of the 

 golden idol at Magh-Sleacht, the Cromcruach, means o-ooked stack. This 

 seems odd at first, but in fact idols of this shape and material are so weU 

 known, that somebody suggests that the wedge of gold found in Achan's 

 possession was a cone-idol. 



According to the present view, both races of Gaelic Celts used the 



elemental symbols. The Picts of the north of Ireland may not improbably 

 have been an overflow from Scotland, while the Scots may have colonised 

 Ireland direct from the Continent ; the Gael of the south of England I infer 

 were of the same race as the former. 



As to the Cymric, or half-Cymric races, it may be observed the Silures 



were probably the same people as the Selgovse of Scotland. I would scarce- 

 ly make them so Non- Aryan as Mr Skene does, but 1 have no doubt they 

 had a large mixture of the old dark race. Silure is evidently Sil-wyr, men 

 or warriors of the Sils ; Selwood Forest shows the real name, and Sul, or 

 Suli Minerva, at Bath, was probably a goddess of the same order as Brig- 

 antia — or ROMA herself, for that matter. It was the name of Bronsil, hill 

 of the Silures, west of the Malvern range, which suggested the point to me. 

 And on thinking whether Selgovae could not be reduced to the same. I 

 recollected that coof and ffuf are both in use in Scotch for fool or lout ; while 

 the vernacular English cove merely means " fellow," and ffoj' and grow have 

 been specialised to mean "smith" in the Celtic languages. The Anglo- 

 Saxon probably shows the older word in ffum, and ffom, for man. Gaffer 

 and gammer are the English masculine and feminine, while the Scotch 

 " cummer " and French " commfere "—nearly the same word — are probably 

 from the same origin. The derivation of " yeoman " is so unknown that it 

 has been connected with the extremely opposite French gamin, " street boy "; 

 goffe is also used for fool in French ; while " la gomme " is a French slang 

 expression for the masculine part of the fashionable world ; and in some of 

 the older Teutonic languages I see gwni and gomo meant hero. This last 

 form seems to show that the Latin " homo " is from the same root ! The 

 Scotch name Cowan, which has been somehow derived from Cu, dog, is of 

 course the same word. 



The likeness which has been traced between Sil and Sikel, the name of 



the old inhabitants of Sicily, is not satisfactory, unless the name of the rock 

 Scylla is a form of the latter. However, there are some old analogies, and 

 they are rather non -Aryan. Shila or Shela is one name by which the 

 Berbers of North Africa call themselves, and they seem to be the same people 

 who were there before the Romans colonissd the country. Further back, 

 Homer calls the dirty aborigines of Dodona (supposed to be Yanina) Selli, 

 and does not mention them as if they were Greeks. Whatever the name of 

 SelgovEe is, I think Solway is quite a separate word. Dr. Guest's etymology 

 for that is valuable and probable ; he says that in the Cymric of Brittany, 

 chal or shal means the rising tide. There is a Selcoth on the road between 

 St Mary's Loch and Moffat, which, if it is not a Saxon Sel-cot, holy house — 

 which I know no reason it should be — may have been on the frontier of the 



