Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/269

Rh Cadi in Wales, a country where, as far as I know, the ancient ritual of the witches was never suppressed.

The two-faced deity is of great importance and of great antiquity. I am indebted to Mr. Peake and Prof. Fleure for calling my attention to a two-faced deity of ancient Britain in the Roman period, and also to the reference in Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says, speaking of Cordelia, daughter of King Lear "in the third year thereafter he died and Aganippus died also, and Cordelia, now mistress of the helm of state in Britain, buried her father in a certain underground chamber which she had bidden to be made under the river Soar at Leicester. This underground chamber was founded in honour of the two-faced god Janus, and there, when the yearly celebration of the day came round, did all the workmen of the city set hand upon such work as they were about to be busied upon throughout the year." Cordelia, according to Geoffrey, died before the foundation of Rome by Romulus; in other words the tradition of the queen and the worship of the two-faced god date back to pre-Roman Britain.

The identification of this two-faced god with Janus and the statement that the Devil or God of the witches was also two-faced like Janus should be taken together. I am not prepared to prove that the worship of Janus continued down to the 17th century, but I would call your attention to the following points:

1. Janus or Dianus is the male form of Diana, with whom the witches were accused of riding through the air and following in the dance. Diana was always the female leader of the witches.

2. Janus was an ancient indigenous god of Northern Italy before the Romans came in. His city was a ruin, hoary with age, when Aeneas arrived in Italy.