Ilkley Rocks

(soryy, I know that’s probably the worst pun I’ve ever used).

I wanted to write some more about the Verbeia Altar. Especially having read the excellent mythopoetic article on Verbeia as the Goddess of the Wharfe by the wonderfully named Gyrus. He’s also done a booklet, which can be purchased here.

For those who can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, Gyrus develops a long and rather wonderful theory working with the notion that Verbeia was the name of a local goddess of the Wharfe. He uses this to describe his own ’spiritual’ journey, admitting that the facts he has are limited, but drawing connections, pulling together ideas, and attempting to describe a living, breathing, conection between prehistorical artifacts and the ‘present’.

Those of us who spent a lot of our youth hanging out with thee Temple and various Chaos magicians will appreciate his skill at this not simply for nostalgic reasons!

But, anyway, the two artifacts Gyrus uses for his references to Verbeia are the Roman altar stone currently in the Parish Church and the famed Verbeia altar.

The former stone (See Gyrus’s article for an image), somewhat bizarrely labelled as Demeter in the Church, Gyrus suggests is an image of Verbeia herself, with the twin ’snakes’ actually the two rivers flanking the fort. Now, while this is an interesting idea, there are lots of other possibilities. This seems terribly specific to be honest. It would mean a Goddess for a very narrow part of the river.

But, does the identification of this altar with Verbeia hold good? And who was Verbeia herself? Gyrus has lots of suggestions but, being a boring (a)rationalist, I wanted to get to the bottom of the evidence. Where do we know about Verbeia from?

Well, it turns out to be only one source. An awfully narrow base for such heavy ideas to be built upon (not to mention the idea that Ilkley would actually have been called Verbeia after ‘its’ Goddess).

That one source is the Verbeia altar. THis altar was found under the steps of a house (according to Collyer/TUrner, quoting William Camden, who visited the town in 1582), and was inscribed…

Verbiae
Sacrum
Clodius
Fronto
D
Praef. Coh
II Lingon

Usually translated as ‘To Sacred Verbeia. Clodius Fronto, Prefect of Cohort, Second Lingones.

A copy can be seen in the Manor House Museum

However, and this is worth stressing, the original no longer exists. It was believed to have been transferred to Low Hall and then to Myddelton Lodge, where it was set up, but the inscription wore away. According to Collyer/Turner, a copy used to stand near the Old Bridge–but I’m not sure whether this copy is the one in the Museum (I would rather doubt it).

Now, we know that this altar existed. We have corroborating evidence through Fairfax who remembered it standing in water. However, our evidence as to the precise wording relies purely on Camden.

Which is rather surprising given the number of theories that have been built upon it. Camden himself imagined this as a votive altar, Whitaker invented a story about Fronto being saved from drowning and paying for the altar in gratitude. From this we have the notion that Verbeia was the actual name of the Brigantian town and the Roman Fort, that this was the name of the Romano-British Goddess of the river.

Which is certainly a little odd as we know that a variety of names such as Guerf, GUer, Hwerver and Hwerf were actually used by Britons and Saxons, none of which sound like Verbeia in any way (actually, the Guerf and Guer are only surmises), whatever Speight might have said. Verbeia seems to be Roman, not British–the British had their OWN names for the river.

So, we have one piece of evidence. But could Camden have mis-transcribed? Well, he was notoriously reliable in his history, so it seems unlikely. Yet, as a good ripperologist, I can’t help thinking of all the energy expended building theories based on one of Jack’s letters which supposedly said, in condemning the efforts of the Polis, “all your lees”, quickly taken to refer to spiritualist Robert Lees. ONly last year, with new analysis by Evans and Skinner, the original letter didn’t say ‘Lees’ at all, but ”tecs’ as in detectives. A problem with building theories on secondary sources. THough, in this case, we only have secondary sources…

Hmm, okay, it’s less likely when we’re talking about a stone inscription, yet, we don;t know how faded it was. And, if it said something else, how much of this energy would have been wasted?

Well, and how much would have been wasted if you just read Camden’s transcription in a different way? For, according to Collyer/Turner as shown above, the altar didn’t mention ‘Verbeia’, but Verbiae. Now, Camden and everyone else must be a better reader of Latin than I am, but I can’t help noting that verb/verbi was the Latin for ‘word’ as in ‘The Word’. A common Latin gravestone inscription of the xian era was verbi dei minister, minister of the word of God.

OKay, this is idle speculation, but if Camden got this inscription wrong by even a letter, and the original was ‘verbae’ or indeed most variations on something to do with ‘verb’ or ‘verbi’ what we’re actually talking about is something to do with ‘word’.

The sacred Word (of) Claudius Fronto, etc…

Or ‘The Holy Word’. Perhaps a sensible thing to mention on an altar?

Okay, like I say, I’m not promoting this as a solution, but just suggesting that its a massive house of cards built on a second (or third or fourth) hand account of an inscription that no longer exists, and might, just might, have said something slightly different.

None of this is to take away from Gyrus’s (wonder if he had a daughter?) wonderful article, which spins off in so many directions, it would take a bigger brain than mine to keep track. It’s just, in its own way, idle speculation on the nature of sources–both riparine and literary.