We speak ironically to-day of our "Jehus," and the word _hack_ still survives: in Chaucer's time English carters encouraged their horses with the exclamation Heck![299] the Irish for _horse_ was _ech_, and the inscription beneath the effigy on Fig. 131, a Tarragonian coin, reads, according to Akerman, EKK. That the _hack_ was connected in idea with the oak is somewhat implied by a horse ornament in my possession, the eye or centre of which is represented by an oak corn or _ac_orn. In the North of England the elves seem to have been known as _hags_, for fairy rings are there known as _hag_ tracks. The word _hackney_ is identical with Boudicca's tribe the Ikeni, and it is believed that Cæsar's reference to the Cenimagni or Cenomagni refers to the Ikeni: whence it is probable that the Ikeni, like the Cantii, were worshippers of Invicta, the Great Hackney, the _Ceni Magna_ or Hackney Magna.
The water horse which figures overleaf may be connoted with the Scotch kelpie, which is radically _ek Elpi_ or _Elfi_: the kelpie or water horse of Scotch fairy lore is a ghastly spook, just as Alpa in Scandinavia is a ghoul and _Ephialtes_ in Albany or Scotland is a nightmare: but there must almost certainly have been a White Kelpie, for the Greeks held a national horse race which they termed the Calpe, and Calpe is the name of the mountain which forms the European side of the Pillars of Hercules. From the surnames Killbye and Gilbey one may perhaps deduce a tribe who were followers of _'K Alpe_ the _Great All Feeder_: that the kelpie was regarded as the fourfold feeder is obvious from the four most unnatural teats depicted on the Pixtil coin of Fig. 133.
[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Iberian. From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG. 132.--British. From Akerman.]
[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Channel Islands. From Barthelemy.]
The Welsh form of Alphin is Elphin, and the Cornish height known as Godolphin--whence the family name Godolphin--implies, like Robin Goodfellow, _Good Elphin_. With Elphin, Alban, and Hobany may be connected the Celtic Goddess Epona, "the tutelar deity of horses and probably originally a horse totem". To Epona may safely be assigned the word _pony_; Irish _poni_; Scotch _powney_, all of which the authorities connect with _pullus_, the Latin for _foal_: it is quite true there is a _p_ in both. We have already traced a connection between neighing, knowing, kenning, and cunning, and there is seemingly a further connection between Epona, the Goddess of Horses, and _opine_, for according to Plato the horse signified "reason and _opinion_ coursing about through natural things".[300]