Chapter Three: The Serpent’s Head
‘Tollers?!’
Tolkien looked up from where he had lain down on the mound a few minutes earlier. Lewis had crossed back over the road and was leant over the fence to the barrow field.
‘Come on, man. We’re in need of tea! What are you doing?’
‘You miss so much with your marching, Jack!’ Tolkien muttered, standing up somewhat awkwardly and replacing his hat.
Lewis’s already sunburned head turned away and he headed back over the road to the field opposite where Barfield was slowly walking in a wide circle, eyes to the ground. Tolkien reluctantly shouldered his pack, and descended from the barrow, turning back for a moment to bow to the bones of the unknown king whose tomb it had been, sweeping off his hat and uttering words of farewell.
A few yards from the road in the direction of another great barrow lay a flat circular expanse of ground, its short grass studded with a number of pristine concentric circles of short concrete posts of varying sizes.
‘This place,’ Barfield, who had been circling the posts, said as he approached the others ‘is the Sanctuary – it was excavated a couple of years back – and it seems that it was originally some kind of circular wooden structure – these concrete posts mark where the wooden poles once stood - and it was probably roofed. And then at some point it was all surrounded by a ring of sarsen stones… they’ve all gone now - destroyed by pious locals since the 1700’s though the antiquarian Stukeley drew them in a sketch he made here in the 1720’s…’
‘What was it, Baedeker Barfield – a temple?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield shrugged, digging around in his backpack. ’Possibly, or a mortuary-house, I think someone suggested – where the bodies of the dead were left to rot before they were put in the tombs, the long-barrows. But you know what Stukeley called it?! The hakpen, the snake’s head. It’s after this structure that the whole ridge from here to the horse seems to have been named. Now, with what you were saying earlier about the Old Religion, Tollers, and the defeat of the serpent cults…’
Lewis looked down at the rings of posts in un-characteristic silence; seemingly nonplussed. ‘I suppose this was just an empty field when we were last here.’ He said, looking at Barfield.
‘I guess so. We must have walked past here, but I don’t recall much about it – except the rain.’
‘Ha! And the ride back, do you remember?!’ Lewis laughed. ‘Hitching a lift to Marlborough on that cart?’
Barfield smiled with affection. ‘Yes, in the dark and the rain, and Harwood singing!’
Tolkien felt oddly touchy at their reminiscing; he had hardly known Lewis back then. I do hope this trip doesn’t turn into a nostalgic reverie for those two, he thought gruffly. He bristled at his own jealousy. Was it jealousy, though, he wondered? Yes, in part, but not for Lewis and his cronies; it was, perhaps, more sadness he had not been able to make such memories himself with those he should have been here with. But stoically he cast such thoughts from his mind.
‘So, I guess the ridge is the back of the snake and this hill that marks the end of the ridge is its head?’ Tolkien asked.
Barfield turned. ‘No. It heads north-west from here; Stukeley believed the whole of the Avebury monument was the serpent… it’s a serpent writ large in stone…’ Having found the volume he had been searching in his rucksack he opened it out on a folded-over page that showed an old black and white hand-drawn map; it was Stukeley’s plan of the monuments.
‘Tollers?!’
Tolkien looked up from where he had lain down on the mound a few minutes earlier. Lewis had crossed back over the road and was leant over the fence to the barrow field.
‘Come on, man. We’re in need of tea! What are you doing?’
‘You miss so much with your marching, Jack!’ Tolkien muttered, standing up somewhat awkwardly and replacing his hat.
Lewis’s already sunburned head turned away and he headed back over the road to the field opposite where Barfield was slowly walking in a wide circle, eyes to the ground. Tolkien reluctantly shouldered his pack, and descended from the barrow, turning back for a moment to bow to the bones of the unknown king whose tomb it had been, sweeping off his hat and uttering words of farewell.
A few yards from the road in the direction of another great barrow lay a flat circular expanse of ground, its short grass studded with a number of pristine concentric circles of short concrete posts of varying sizes.
‘This place,’ Barfield, who had been circling the posts, said as he approached the others ‘is the Sanctuary – it was excavated a couple of years back – and it seems that it was originally some kind of circular wooden structure – these concrete posts mark where the wooden poles once stood - and it was probably roofed. And then at some point it was all surrounded by a ring of sarsen stones… they’ve all gone now - destroyed by pious locals since the 1700’s though the antiquarian Stukeley drew them in a sketch he made here in the 1720’s…’
‘What was it, Baedeker Barfield – a temple?’ Lewis asked.
Barfield shrugged, digging around in his backpack. ’Possibly, or a mortuary-house, I think someone suggested – where the bodies of the dead were left to rot before they were put in the tombs, the long-barrows. But you know what Stukeley called it?! The hakpen, the snake’s head. It’s after this structure that the whole ridge from here to the horse seems to have been named. Now, with what you were saying earlier about the Old Religion, Tollers, and the defeat of the serpent cults…’
Lewis looked down at the rings of posts in un-characteristic silence; seemingly nonplussed. ‘I suppose this was just an empty field when we were last here.’ He said, looking at Barfield.
‘I guess so. We must have walked past here, but I don’t recall much about it – except the rain.’
‘Ha! And the ride back, do you remember?!’ Lewis laughed. ‘Hitching a lift to Marlborough on that cart?’
Barfield smiled with affection. ‘Yes, in the dark and the rain, and Harwood singing!’
Tolkien felt oddly touchy at their reminiscing; he had hardly known Lewis back then. I do hope this trip doesn’t turn into a nostalgic reverie for those two, he thought gruffly. He bristled at his own jealousy. Was it jealousy, though, he wondered? Yes, in part, but not for Lewis and his cronies; it was, perhaps, more sadness he had not been able to make such memories himself with those he should have been here with. But stoically he cast such thoughts from his mind.
‘So, I guess the ridge is the back of the snake and this hill that marks the end of the ridge is its head?’ Tolkien asked.
Barfield turned. ‘No. It heads north-west from here; Stukeley believed the whole of the Avebury monument was the serpent… it’s a serpent writ large in stone…’ Having found the volume he had been searching in his rucksack he opened it out on a folded-over page that showed an old black and white hand-drawn map; it was Stukeley’s plan of the monuments.
‘Look, here’s the head, where we are now, at Overton Hill’ he said, pointing at the right-hand side of the drawing to a circular feature, ‘…and then an avenue of stones, the beast’s neck, snakes its way to the main circle at the centre, in which two smaller stone circles are to be found… though each of them was as big as Stonehenge, which gives one some idea of just how huge the main circle is! Then the tail, if you will, is another avenue leaving the circle on its western side and heading towards Beckhampton. You have to admit it is rather snakelike. The naming of hakpen hill, then, is more than coincidental… it seems to support Stukeley’s theory.’
Tolkien looked up from the page. From their current viewpoint the main stone circle and village within was still obscured by the rise of what Stukeley’s plan called ‘Windmill hill’ to the northwest. Hakpen. But on what authority, Tolkien wondered, had it been so named, or just in Stukeley’s imagination?
‘And here’s where we’ll find the pub!’ Lewis said, pointing to the centre of the circle. ‘Fiendishly clever of them to build a pub right at the heart of the circle!’ He joked. ‘Obviously the avenues were for guiding them home on a dark nights when they were worse for wear with drink! How long until we get there? An hour? You know, I know it’s ten years on, but I really don’t recall much of this at all.’
‘Three-quarters of an hour, I would think.’ Barfield said. He looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s eleven already, too early for lunch, really. But there is a tea room down there beside the road near Silbury Hill’ he said, pointing to a flat topped rise just visible above the trees, ‘and we could perhaps stop there for tea and then eat properly at the pub later. We have all day.’
‘Well, you have the map and we’ll trust your judgement.’ Lewis said, not looking up from the plan.
Tolkien paused and looked up at the skylarks, his own choice would have been, as they were already at the so-called ‘serpent’s head’, to skip tea and continue down its throat into its belly down the Avenue, the route the people of Avebury would have no doubt taken four and a half thousand years earlier.
Lewis, still looking at the plan – pointed a nicotine stained finger at the central feature - a great domed hill with a flattened top, so perfect in its shape that it was quite obviously man-made. Then peering up from the plan to the western horizon saw the same flat-topped mound in the flesh, peeking over the intervening hills.
‘Rather a fitting start to our Coleridge homage, wouldn’t you say?’ Barfield said, ‘the great hill of Silbury - the stately pleasure dome in the valley of the sacred river Kennet,’ lifting lines from Coleridge’s poem. ‘It’s old – the Romans had to curve their otherwise straight road to Bath around it in order to avoid it.’
‘It’s always struck me as looking like a huge steamed pudding,’ remarked Lewis; ‘All this walking has made me hungry. Do you think there might be steak and kidney pudding at the Red Lion?’
‘Shall we climb it?’ Barfield said, ignoring Lewis’s comment.
Lewis looked at the steep sides of the hill and scratched at his chin in thought.
‘I’m in two minds. It would possibly be better, if we are to attempt the feat, to climb it now before the day gets too warm; but my stomach is disagreeing with me. Still, we could have a pot of tea and then decide.’
‘I climbed it myself years ago, before our last visit!’ The solicitor’s face lit up with a puckish smile. ‘And we danced on the summit!’
‘Why did they build it, Owen? Is it a tomb, like the Pyramids?’ Lewis asked.
‘No – no burial has been found, despite the local legends…’
‘Don’t mention legends, Barfield… we’ll never get our tea…see how Toller’s ears picked up like a hound?’ Jack quipped.
Tolkien held a match to his pipe and puffed away, grinning. ‘I already know them, Jack.’ He said through pipe-clenched teeth, ‘Despite crossing the county border this is still, you know, my neck of the woods mythologically speaking. A King Zel is supposed to be buried in the hill, on horseback, in golden armour…’
‘Golden armour, indeed!’ Jack mocked. ’There’s the mark of a modern myth, surely; gold armour would be practically useless against a bronze or iron blade.’
‘Unless the gold is a symbol for the sun?’ Suggested Barfield.
‘Perhaps. ‘ Lewis conceded. ‘What if Silbury were derived from the Roman Sol? The Hill of the Sun?’
He looked towards Tolkien, but the latter seemed deep in contemplation.
‘Possibly; that argument has merit….’ Tolkien answered, ‘but Sil is closer to the Welsh word for the sun, Sul…’ (he pronounced it, correctly, as ‘seel’) ‘…If, if, the Celtic place-name hakpen has survived here then why not Sul?’
It seemed strange in this beautiful English setting to hear the echoes of the old Celtic tongue now long driven from these Downs; it was almost as if such ancient places were reluctant to let them go, or perhaps the newcomers, bound by fear or superstition, had thought it unwise to change the names. It lent the place a feeling of timelessness; as if some relic of a dark pagan Celtic past had broken through the veneer of England, like a long buried celandine from an ancient forest floor pushing up through a lawn in spring, long after the trees of the forest had been cleared to make way for the garden. Words could be vehicles for such feelings; passports into a different reality, or worlds long passed, Tolkien had always thought.
As Tolkien looked across the landscape England faded as if into a mist; and an ancient place emerged; he stood no more on Overton hill, or Hakpen ridge facing towards Silbury – he stood on the head of the serpent temple gazing on the hill of the sun, in the heart of a land that bore other names, names now only remembered in legend: Ynys Prydein, the Isle of the Mighty; Clas Myrddin: Merlin’s enclosure; Logres; Albion …
The temple of the Dragon, he thought. Was it really possible or just the over-ripe imaginings of that antiquarian Stukeley - a man who had later claimed to be a druid and to have divined Biblical numbers in the measurements of Stonehenge? As he stood in thought the unsolicited image of a grinning dragon crossed, unwanted, into his consciousness. Smaug! How am I meant to forget my book, when all around I’m surrounded by dragons?! He thought, suddenly annoyed at the obtrusion of work, of deadlines, of editorial queries into his reverie. Be gone, foul slitherer and leave me be! In his mind he saw the hero of old, his bow drawn back, shooting at the heart of the dragon; the incoming heroes on their white steeds, come to crush the serpent of gods of the older religion and their worshippers, and take from them their land and their women. A couple of verses from his beloved Genesis welled up in his mind:
‘And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust thou shalt eat all the days of thy life: And I shall put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise they head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’
He ground his heel into the ground of the Hakpen, banishing Smaug from his thoughts, determined that no more would his book intrude on his holiday; a resolution that would stand no chance of remaining kept.
Tolkien looked up from the page. From their current viewpoint the main stone circle and village within was still obscured by the rise of what Stukeley’s plan called ‘Windmill hill’ to the northwest. Hakpen. But on what authority, Tolkien wondered, had it been so named, or just in Stukeley’s imagination?
‘And here’s where we’ll find the pub!’ Lewis said, pointing to the centre of the circle. ‘Fiendishly clever of them to build a pub right at the heart of the circle!’ He joked. ‘Obviously the avenues were for guiding them home on a dark nights when they were worse for wear with drink! How long until we get there? An hour? You know, I know it’s ten years on, but I really don’t recall much of this at all.’
‘Three-quarters of an hour, I would think.’ Barfield said. He looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s eleven already, too early for lunch, really. But there is a tea room down there beside the road near Silbury Hill’ he said, pointing to a flat topped rise just visible above the trees, ‘and we could perhaps stop there for tea and then eat properly at the pub later. We have all day.’
‘Well, you have the map and we’ll trust your judgement.’ Lewis said, not looking up from the plan.
Tolkien paused and looked up at the skylarks, his own choice would have been, as they were already at the so-called ‘serpent’s head’, to skip tea and continue down its throat into its belly down the Avenue, the route the people of Avebury would have no doubt taken four and a half thousand years earlier.
Lewis, still looking at the plan – pointed a nicotine stained finger at the central feature - a great domed hill with a flattened top, so perfect in its shape that it was quite obviously man-made. Then peering up from the plan to the western horizon saw the same flat-topped mound in the flesh, peeking over the intervening hills.
‘Rather a fitting start to our Coleridge homage, wouldn’t you say?’ Barfield said, ‘the great hill of Silbury - the stately pleasure dome in the valley of the sacred river Kennet,’ lifting lines from Coleridge’s poem. ‘It’s old – the Romans had to curve their otherwise straight road to Bath around it in order to avoid it.’
‘It’s always struck me as looking like a huge steamed pudding,’ remarked Lewis; ‘All this walking has made me hungry. Do you think there might be steak and kidney pudding at the Red Lion?’
‘Shall we climb it?’ Barfield said, ignoring Lewis’s comment.
Lewis looked at the steep sides of the hill and scratched at his chin in thought.
‘I’m in two minds. It would possibly be better, if we are to attempt the feat, to climb it now before the day gets too warm; but my stomach is disagreeing with me. Still, we could have a pot of tea and then decide.’
‘I climbed it myself years ago, before our last visit!’ The solicitor’s face lit up with a puckish smile. ‘And we danced on the summit!’
‘Why did they build it, Owen? Is it a tomb, like the Pyramids?’ Lewis asked.
‘No – no burial has been found, despite the local legends…’
‘Don’t mention legends, Barfield… we’ll never get our tea…see how Toller’s ears picked up like a hound?’ Jack quipped.
Tolkien held a match to his pipe and puffed away, grinning. ‘I already know them, Jack.’ He said through pipe-clenched teeth, ‘Despite crossing the county border this is still, you know, my neck of the woods mythologically speaking. A King Zel is supposed to be buried in the hill, on horseback, in golden armour…’
‘Golden armour, indeed!’ Jack mocked. ’There’s the mark of a modern myth, surely; gold armour would be practically useless against a bronze or iron blade.’
‘Unless the gold is a symbol for the sun?’ Suggested Barfield.
‘Perhaps. ‘ Lewis conceded. ‘What if Silbury were derived from the Roman Sol? The Hill of the Sun?’
He looked towards Tolkien, but the latter seemed deep in contemplation.
‘Possibly; that argument has merit….’ Tolkien answered, ‘but Sil is closer to the Welsh word for the sun, Sul…’ (he pronounced it, correctly, as ‘seel’) ‘…If, if, the Celtic place-name hakpen has survived here then why not Sul?’
It seemed strange in this beautiful English setting to hear the echoes of the old Celtic tongue now long driven from these Downs; it was almost as if such ancient places were reluctant to let them go, or perhaps the newcomers, bound by fear or superstition, had thought it unwise to change the names. It lent the place a feeling of timelessness; as if some relic of a dark pagan Celtic past had broken through the veneer of England, like a long buried celandine from an ancient forest floor pushing up through a lawn in spring, long after the trees of the forest had been cleared to make way for the garden. Words could be vehicles for such feelings; passports into a different reality, or worlds long passed, Tolkien had always thought.
As Tolkien looked across the landscape England faded as if into a mist; and an ancient place emerged; he stood no more on Overton hill, or Hakpen ridge facing towards Silbury – he stood on the head of the serpent temple gazing on the hill of the sun, in the heart of a land that bore other names, names now only remembered in legend: Ynys Prydein, the Isle of the Mighty; Clas Myrddin: Merlin’s enclosure; Logres; Albion …
The temple of the Dragon, he thought. Was it really possible or just the over-ripe imaginings of that antiquarian Stukeley - a man who had later claimed to be a druid and to have divined Biblical numbers in the measurements of Stonehenge? As he stood in thought the unsolicited image of a grinning dragon crossed, unwanted, into his consciousness. Smaug! How am I meant to forget my book, when all around I’m surrounded by dragons?! He thought, suddenly annoyed at the obtrusion of work, of deadlines, of editorial queries into his reverie. Be gone, foul slitherer and leave me be! In his mind he saw the hero of old, his bow drawn back, shooting at the heart of the dragon; the incoming heroes on their white steeds, come to crush the serpent of gods of the older religion and their worshippers, and take from them their land and their women. A couple of verses from his beloved Genesis welled up in his mind:
‘And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust thou shalt eat all the days of thy life: And I shall put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise they head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’
He ground his heel into the ground of the Hakpen, banishing Smaug from his thoughts, determined that no more would his book intrude on his holiday; a resolution that would stand no chance of remaining kept.