LABYRINTH

Labyrinths are not unique to the Celts. They occur early on in south-eastern Europe, in the Aegean region, with the building of the Knossos labyrinth in about 1900 BC. This famously mazelike building was commemorated, long after it had fallen into ruins, by a maze symbol stamped on the coins of the classical city of Knossos, which was built right next to the remains of the Bronze Age labyrinth.

In the Bronze Age, the labyrinth was literally mazelike, with many different possible routes. In later times, the design was stricter, allowing only one route in, and one route out. A typical labyrinth design is compact, while allowing the longest possible linear path in from the outside to the center.

Labyrinths constantly reappear in different forms at different stages in the evolution of Celtic culture, and some of them are earlier than the Minoan labyrinths. The labyrinth as an idea is closely related to the knot: the line that winds all around a design. The difference is that in a knotwork design the line has no beginning and no end, while in a labyrinth there is, usually, a starting-point and a goal.

Both symbolize journeys. This might be a particular journey or adventure, or the overall journey of life itself Labyrinths therefore form a visual counterpart to the epic folk-tale, which often consists of a long and convoluted journey with episodes that repeat and double back on themselves. They may symbolize a journey of selfdiscovery too, a journey in to the center of the self and out again, and in this way the ancient symbol emerges as a Jungian archetype: a tool for self-exploration and self - healing.

The path representing a long and winding journey makes its first appearance in the Celtic west in the Neolithic passage grave art seen at Gavrinis in Brittany, Newgrange in Ireland, and Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales. These rock-cut mazes dating from 3,500-3,000 BC are asymmetrical.

Later, in the Bronze Age, from around 2000 BC onward, nearly symmetrical labyrinths appear. The classic design, similar to the Knossos maze but circular instead of square, was chipped onto the living rock near Tintagel.

These ancient formal designs themselves have ancestors. It is possible to see early forerunners of the labyrinth idea in the cup-and-ring marks seen on many naturally outcropping slabs of rock, especially in northern Britain. The marks at Old Bewick in Northumberland consist of concentric circles that are entered by winding paths with a cup at each end.

Labyrinths are also found among the Val Camonica rock carvings in northern Italy.

In the post-Roman, early medieval Celtic world, some knotwork designs were developed to turn them into labyrinths. Squared off, these could become decorative patterns for floor-tiles.

In the highest developments of Celtic art, reached in the early Middle Ages, and in purely decorative art again in the nineteenth century, knotwork and labyrinth converged. By this stage, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse interlace elements became impossible to distinguish; the arts and crafts of the different cultures spilled over into each other.

Labyrinths were adopted by the Christian Church, and occasionally large labyrinth pavements were laid out in tiles on church floors. The most spectacular one is in Chartres cathedral. It is based on a design made of 11 concentric circles and its path is exactly 666 feet (203m) long. This may be a joke on the part of the designer, as the number 666 is usually regarded as being associated with the Devil, the Great Beast, though apologists argue that it is a sacred number. The Chartres labyrinth has a six-petaled flower, hiding the Seal of Solomon. Curiously, the cathedral-builders in Britain did not include labyrinths in their designs, though there were plenty of mazes available in Britain that could have served as models.

The turf maze is a British invention. Sometimes they are called Troy Towns (Draytons) or the Walls of Troy or, in Wales, Caerdroia, the City of Troy Sometimes they are called Julian’s Bower, apparently after the Julius who was the son of Trojan Aeneas and burgh meaning town. The insistent connection with Troy is hard to explain. There was no legend of a labyrinth at Troy, as there was at Knossos. Another name given to the turf maze is Shepherd’s Race, which is selfexplanatory.

One of the biggest turf mazes is the one on the common at Saffron Walden in Essex. It is circular, 140 feet (43m) across and probably made in the fairly recent past. The maze at Wing in Rutland is apparently older; it stands close to an ancient burial mound. The very irregular turf maze at Pimperne in Dorset, Troy Town, was also fairly old. In 1686 John Aubrey described it as “much used by the young people on Holydaies and by ye School-boies.” Unfortunately it was plowed up and destroyed in 1730.

Julian’s Bower at Alkborough in Lincolnshire and Shepherd’s Race at Boughton Green in Northamptonshire were classic, symmetrical, circular mazes, and both 40 feet (12m) in diameter.

In the early nineteenth century, the people of Alkborough played games at Julian’s Bower on May Eve. One villager who was a youth at the time said that he had “an indefinite persuasion of something unseen and unknown co-operating with them” as they ran backward and forward along the paths to reach the center and then retraced their steps to get out again.

The Mizmaze is a nearly lost turf maze in Dorset; perhaps significantly, perhaps not, it lies exactly halfway between two great Iron Age hill towns of Maiden Castle and South Cadbury. It could be ancient, but it seems more likely to be medieval. Over the last 200 years, which was ironically a period of awakening antiquarian and archeological interest, the local people have stood by and watched the Mizmaze grow over and gradually disappear from view. John Hutchins, writing about the history of Dorset in the eighteenth century, described it as “a maze of circular form, about 30 paces in diameter, surrounded by a bank and ditch. The banks of which it is composed are set almost close together, and are somewhat more than one foot in width and about half a foot in height.”

A later edition of Hutchins’s History of Dorset, produced in the early nineteenth century, added:

Heretofore it was the custom for the young men of the village to scour out the trenches and pare the banks once in six or seven years, and the day appropriated for the purpose was passed in rustic merriment and festivity. But of late years, either through want of encouragement from the principal inhabitants, or from a less reverence for a curious piece of antiquity, this salutary work has been neglected, and there is at present great danger that, in the lapse of a few years, the traces of the several trenches or divisions will no longer be discernible, particularly in the centre, where the circle being shorter, and consequently more susceptible of injury, the banks have been trodden down by the numerous cattle that resort to the spot to enjoy the cool breeze in summer. In the year 1800 this common was inclosed, and the part on which the maze was formed, consisting of a small field, being in the possession of an individual who had taken no care to preserve this work of antiquity, it was almost obliterated.

Hutchins’s fears were fully justified. Only the hexagonal and feebly developed enclosing earthwork survives today. The Mizmaze itself has gone.