VANS & FOMOR ABORIGINES

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prehistoric monoliths and series of nine standing stones, called "Maiden " Maiden" Stones or Stones or "The Nine Maidens," still standing in many parts of Ireland and Britain. These Maiden Stones symbolized the old Van Matriarchs, who are called The Nine Mothers" in the Eddas, and who were afterwards idealized into Virgin Mothers and accorded divine honours by their Van votaries. And their idol-stones are often decorated with effigies of the Serpent.

This now appears to explain the prehistoric Van origin of the "Maiden Stones" of the pre-Aryan period, so numerous throughout the land; as, for instance, "The Maiden Stone" standing at the foot of Mt. Bennachie to the west of the Newton Stone, and also "The Serpent Stone" monolith with large sculptured Serpent, which stood not far from the site of the Newton Stone, and now placed alongside the latter. It also accounts for the first time for the frequency of the name "Bride" in early Christian Celtic Church names in Scottish Pict-land as well as Ireland, as Kil-Bride" or "Church of Bride." It now becomes apparent that on the introduction of Christianity into Britain the old pagan Matriarchist goddess "Brigid " or " Bride" of the aborigines was for proselytizing purposes admitted into the Roman Catholic Church and canonized as a Christian saint, and appropriate legends regarding her invented.

The descendants of the Irish Matriarch Cesair and her horde appear to have been called Fomor, or Umor. This seems evidenced by the tradition that Cesair's was the first migration of people into Ireland and that the second was that of Part-olon, and that the latter was opposed by the . ferocious tribe of "demons" called Fomor.

The tribal name "Fomor" has been attempted to be explained by conjectural Celtic etymologies variously as "Giants" and conflictingly as "Dwarfs under the Sea." "Fomor," I find, however, is obviously a dialectic variant of the name of a chief of a clan of the dwarf tribes of the Vans,

1 Also written Ughmor. K.H.I., 68., etc.; and see R.H.L., 583. The Fomors have been conflictingly called both "giants" and " dwarfs under the sea" by different Celtic scholars seeking conjecturally for a meaning of the name by means of modern Aryan-Celtic speech, but these meanings are admittedly mere guesses. See R.H.L., 591.

called in the Gothic Eddas "Baombur "; and it is noteworthy that these dwarf tribes were of the race of "The Blue [painted] Legs," that is, presumably, the primitive, painted Picts. It is probably a variant also of the name Vimur" which occurs in the Eddas as the name of the river-the Upper Euphrates, the modern "Murad "— which separated the Van territory from that of the Goths, and the ford at which was the scene of battles between the Goths and the Vans,' presumably the seat of Baombar and his tribe.

These Fomors, who opposed Part-olon on his landing in Ireland, are reported to have been ferocious "demons," and significantly they were led by an ogre and his Mother. This is clearly a memory of the Mother-Son joint rulership of Matriarchy, wherein the favourite son-paramour, who in the Eddas is called Baldr, was the champion of the Matriarch and her tribe for offensive and defensive purposes. This Fomor son-leader was called "The Footless," which is a designation of the Serpent, and there are references to the Fomors and their allies having Serpents and Dragons as their defenders. Significantly also he is frequently called in the later records of the Fomors by the name of " Balor of the Evil Eye," which equates with the title Baldr, the son-champion of the earlier Van Matriarch, and the "Fal of the Fiery Stone" weapon.

That these Fomors of the primitive horde of dark, dwarfish "Khaldis" or Bans, Vans or Fens, under the Matriarch Cesair, who first peopled Erin in the Stone Age, were and continued to be the real aborigines of Ireland, and were the ancestors of the later " Fenes," seems evidenced by the fact that they appear and reappear in all the accounts of the invasions subsequent to Part-olon's invasion, as the resisters of the various intruding invaders. Their leader also

1 Volo-spa Edda Codex Regius, p. i, 1. 24.

See previous references on p. 95.

"

Ed.N. 313. Farma-Tyr or Farma of the Arrow," a title of Wodan as the opponent of the Goths, may also be a dialectic variant of the same name Fomor."

K.H.I., 68, etc.

"The Footless "Cichol Gri cen Chos in text cited by R.H.L., 583. • R.H.L., 641.

BLUE PAINTED VANS OR FENS

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continued to bear the old Van champion's title of "Balor of the Evil Eye," in the legendary accounts of the later invasions. Thus he is made to oppose even so late an invasion as the fifth, by "The Tribe of the goddess Danu" with the Serpent-cult fetishes, which show them to be a later horde of the same common stock. This affinity indeed is evident, apart from the Serpent fetishes, by the name of their champion being "Lug," that is, “Loki," one of the Vans and the arch-enemy of the Goths in the Eddas and also called "The Wolf of Fen," (i.e., Van); and his fatal weapon in Ireland as " Lug" was significantly, as in the Eddas, a "Sling Stone."1

The old Matriarchist Serpentine-cult of Van appears to have persisted in Ireland, even when it was called " Scotia," as the popular cult of the Feins down to the epoch of St. Patrick in 433 A.D., notwithstanding the contemporary existence of Sun-worship amongst the ruling race of Scots, with their legendary solar heroes, Diarmait and Conn-the-Fighter-of a-Hundred. The chief idol of Ireland which St. Patrick demolished by his Cross is described as "The Head [idol] of the Mound"; and it is identified as the idol of Fal of the Fiery Stone, that is, the son-champion of the serpentworshipping Matriarchist Fomors, "Balor of the Evil Eye."

These "Fomor " or Ban, Wan, Van, Fen or Fein aborigines of Ireland, dark, dwarfish "Iberians" who seem to have arrived in Erin from Albion in the late Stone Age, some time before 2000 B.C., now appear to have been presumably of the same race as the dwarfish aborigines of Albion, who were called by the Romans "Picts" or "The [Blue] Painted," and who, we know, were, like the Feins, of primitive Matrilinear and Matriarchist social constitution. And we have seen that the "Fomor" were presumably the prehistoric dwarfish "Baombur" aborigines of Van, who were described by the Aryan Gothic Eddas as of the race of "The Blue (Painted) Legs."

1 R.H.L., 397.

⚫ Cenn Cruaich in Tri-partite Life of St. Patrick, and see R.H.L., 200. • R.H.L., 208.

This now confronts us with the further great and hitherto unsolved problems: "Who were the Picts?" and "What was the relationship of the Picts to the aborigines of Alban, Albion or Britain?"-questions, the answers to which form an essential preliminary to the discovery of the date of the introduction of civilization into Britain, and of the racial agency by which that civilization was effected.

FIG. 21A.-Sun-Eagle triumphs over Serpent of Death. From the reverse of a pre-Christian Cross at Mortlach (of St. Moloch), Banff, with "Resur recting Spirals" on face. See later.

(After Stuart I. pl. 14).

Note the serpent is of the British adder type.

WHO WERE THE PICTS?

Disclosing their Non-Aryan Racial Nature and Affinity with Matriarchist Van, Wan or Fian "Dwarfs," and as Aborigines of Britain in Stone Age.

"The Picts, a mysterious race whose origin no man knows."-Prof. R. S. RAIT, Hist. of Scotland, 1915, II.

"No craft they knew

With woven brick or jointed beam to pile

The sunward porch; but in the dark earth burrowed

And housed, like tiny ants in sunless caves." Prometheus Bound.'

The mysterious Picts, whose origin and affinities have hitherto baffled all enquiries, nevertheless require their racial relationship to the aborigines of Britain and to the Aryans to be elicited, if possible, as an essential preliminary to discovering the agency by which Civilization was first introduced into Britain and the date of that epoch-making event.

The "Picts" are not mentioned under that name by Cæsar, Tacitus, Ptolemy or other early Roman or Greek writer on Ancient Britain. This is presumably because, as we shall find, that that was not their proper name, but a nickname.

The "Picts" first appear in history under that name at the latter end of the third century A.D. as the chief inhabitants of Caledonia. They reappear in 360 A.D. as warlike barbarian

2

1 Æschylus, Prometheus Bound 11. 456-459, translated by J. S. Blackie, 195.

The name first appears in 296 A.D. in the oration of Eumenius to the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus, which says: "the Caledonians and other Picts 'Non dico Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas at paludes, etc." (Latin panegyrics. Inc. Constantino Augusto, c.7.).

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