Harold Bayley

At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts. Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars—the stars that shone in Eden, and will flash again in Paradise.—Dr. J. Fort Newton.

The name under which Jupiter was worshipped in Crete is not yet deciphered, but as we are told that the favourite abode of King Jou at Gnossus was on Mount Olympus where in its delightful recesses he held his court, and administered patriarchal justice; and as we are further told by Julius Firmicus that: “vainly the Cretans to this day adore the tumulus of Jou,” it is fairly obvious that, however many historic King Jou’s there may have been, the archetypal Jou was a lord of the tumulus or dun.

The ancient Irish were accustomed to call any hill or artificial mound under which lay vaults, a shee, which also is the generic term for fairy: similarly we have noted a connection between the term rath—or dun—and wraith. Although fairies were partial to banks, braes, purling brooks, brakes, and bracken, they particularly loved to congregate in duns or raths, and their rapid motions to and fro these headquarters were believed to create a noise “somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive”. I have little doubt that all hills, bryns, or barrows were regarded not only as bruen, or breasts, but as ethereal beehives, and the superstitions still associated with bees are evidence that bees themselves were once deemed sacred. There are upwards of a thousand localities in Ireland alone where the word rath, raw, rah, ray, or ra marks the site of a fairy rath,[820] and without going so far as to assert that every British -dun or -ton was a fairy dun or doun further investigation will probably establish an unsuspected multitude of Dunhills or Edens.

Fig. 444.—Birs Nimroud.

We have seen that in Ireland fern meant anciently anything good, and also in all probability fer en the Fires or Fairies: at the romantic hill of Cnock-Firinn or the Hill of firinn was supposed to dwell a fairy chief named Donn Firineach, i.e., Donn the Truthful or the Truthteller;[821] evidently, therefore, this Don was a counterpart and consort of Queen Vera, and as he is reputed to have come from Spain his name may be connoted with the Spanish don which, like the Phoenician adon, is a generic term meaning the lord. With “Generous Donn the King of Faery” may be connoted the Jewish Adonai, a plural form of Adon “lord” combined with the pronoun of the first person: when reading the Scriptures aloud the Jews rather than utter the super-sacred word Jhuh, substitute Adonai, and in Jewry Adonai is thus a title of the Supreme Being. Among the Phoenicians Adon or the lord was specially applied to the King of Heaven or the Sun and that sacred Nineveh was essentially a dunhill is evidenced by Fig. 444

With Adon may be connoted Adonis, the lovely son of Myrrha and Kinyras, whose name has been absorbed into English as meaning any marvellously well-favoured youth: prior to the festivals of Adonis it was customary to grow forced gardens in earthen or silver pots, and there would thus seem to have been a close connection in ideas between our English “whytepot queen” or maiden with the pyramid of silver, and with the symbolic Gardens of Adonis or Eden as grown in Phrygia and Egypt.

Skeat connotes the word maiden—which is an earlier form than maid—with the Cornish maw, a boy: if, however, we read ma as mother the word maiden becomes Mother Iden, and I have little doubt that the Maiden of mythology and English harvest-homes was the feminine Adonis. Adonis was hymned as the Shepherd of the Twinkling Stars; I have surmised that Long Meg of the seventy-two Daughters was the Mighty Maiden of the Stars, whence it is interesting to find Skeat connoting maiden with Anglo-Saxon magu, a kinsman: that Long Meg was the All Mother whence mag or mac came to mean child of has already been suggested. Not only does Long Meg of Cumberland stand upon Maiden Way, but there is in the same district a Maidenmoor probably like Maidenhead or Maidenheath, a heath or mead dedicated to the Maid. Our dictionaries define the name May as a contraction of either Mary or Margaret, i.e., Meg: in the immediate neighbourhood of Long Meg is another circle called Mayborough, of which the vallum or enclosure is composed of stones taken from the beds of the Eamount or Eden rivers; in the centre of Mayborough used to stand four magnificent monoliths probably representative of the four deacons or Good Kings who supported the Whytepot Queen.

There is a seat called St. Edans in Ireland close to Ferns where, as will be remembered, is St. Mogue’s Well: in Lincolnshire is a Maidenwell-cum-Farworth, and at Dorchester is a Haydon Hill in the close proximity of Forstone and Goodmanstone. That this Haydon was the Good Man is implied by the stupendous monument near by known as Mew Dun, Mai Dun, or Maiden Castle: this chef d’oeuvre of prehistoric engineering, generally believed to be the greatest earthwork in Britain, is an oblong camp extending 1000 yards from east to west with a width of 500 yards, and it occupies an area of 120 acres:[822] entered by four gates the work itself is described as puzzling as a series of mazes, and to reach the interior one is compelled to pass through a labyrinth of defences. The name Dorchester suggests a Droia or Troy camp, and I have little doubt that the labyrinthine Maiden was a colossal Troy Town or Drayton. Among the many Draytons in England is a Drayton-Parslow, which suggests that it stood near or upon a Parr’s low or a Parr’s lea: out of great Barlow Street, Marylebone, leads Paradise Place and Paradise Passage: there is a Drayton Park at Highbury, and in the immediate proximity an Eden Grove and Paradise Road: there was a Troy Town where Kensington Palace now stands,[823] and in all likelihood there was another one at Drayton near Hanwell and Hounslow. That Hounslow once contained an onslow or ange hill seems to me more probable than that it was merely the “burial mound” of an imaginary Hund or Hunda: in Domesday Hounslow figures as Honeslow which may be connoted with Honeybourne at Evesham and Honeychurch in Devon. With regard to the latter it has been observed: “The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of Huna”: the official explanation of “Honeybourne” is—“brook with honey sweet water,” but it is more probable that Queen Una was reputed to dwell there. That Una was not merely the creation of Spenser is evidenced from the fact that in Ireland “Una is often named by the peasantry as regent of the preternatural Sheog tribes”:[824] at St. Mary’s-in-the-Marsh, Thanet, is a Honeychild Manor and an Old Honeychild: with the Three White Balls at Iona it may be noted that on the summit of Hydon Heath (Surrey) is a place marked Hydon’s Ball.

At a distance of “about 110 yards” from Mayborough is another circle known as Arthur’s Round Table: a mile from Dunstable is a circular camp known as Maiden Bower, whence it is probable that Dunstable meant either Dun staple (market), or that the circular camp there was a “table” of “generous Donn”. That the term “Maiden” used here and elsewhere means maiden as we now understand it may be implied from the famous Maiden Stone in Scotland: this sculptured Longstone, now measuring 10 feet in height, bears upon it the mirror and comb which were essentially the emblems of the Mairymaid.

There is an eminence called Maiden Bower near Durham which figures alternatively as Dunholme; Durham is supposed to mean—“wild beast’s home or lair,” but I see no more reason to assign this ferocious origin to Durham than, say, to Dorchester or Doracestria: Ma, the mistress of Mount Ida, was like Britomart[825] esteemed to be the Mother of all beasts or brutes, and particularly of deer; Diana is generally represented with a deer, and the woody glens of many-crested Ida were indubitably a lair of forest brutes—

Thus Juno spoke, and to her throne return’d,

While they to spring-abounding Ida’s heights,

Wild nurse of forest beasts, pursued their way.[826]

Yorkshire, or Eboracum and the surrounding district, the habitat of the Brigantes, was known anciently as Deira: by the Romans Doracestria, or Dorchester was named Durnovaria upon which authority comments: “In the present name there is nothing which represents varia, so that it really seems to mean ‘fist camp’”; doubtless, fisticuffs, boxing-matches, and many other kind of Trojan game were once held at Doracestria as at every other Troy or Drayton.

King Priam, the Mystic King of Troy, is said to have had fifty sons and daughters: the same family is assigned not only to St. Brychan of Cambria, but also to King Ebor, or Ebrauc of York, whence in all probability the Brigantes who inhabited Yorkshire and Cumberland were followers of one and the same Priam, Prime, Broom, Brahm, or Brahma: the name Abraham or Ibrahim is defined as meaning “father of a multitude”. The Kentish Broom Park near Patrixbourne whereby is Hearts Delight, Maydeacon House, and Kingston is on Heden Downs, and immediately adjacent is a Dennehill and Denton: at Dunton Green, near Sevenoaks, the presence of a Mount Pleasant implies that this Dunton was an Eden Town.

There is an Edenkille, or Eden Church at Elgin, and at Dudley is a Haden Cross, supposed to have derived its title “from a family long resident here”: it would be preferable and more legitimate to assign this family name to the site and describe them as the “De Haden’s”. There is a Haddenham at Ely, and at Ely Place, Holborn, opposite St. Andrews, is Hatton Garden: I suggest that Sir Christopher Hatton, like the Hadens of Haden Cross, derived his name from his home, and not vice versa.

In the Hibernian county of Clare is an Eden Vale: Clare Market in London before being pulled down was in the parish of St. Clement Dane, here also stood Dane’s Inn, and within a stone’s throw is the church of St. Dunstan. The numerous St. Dunstans were probably once Dane stones, or Dun stanes, and the sprightly story of St. Dunstan seizing the nose of a female temptress with the tongs must be relegated to the Apocrypha. In the opinion of Sir Laurence Gomme the predominant cult in Roman London was undoubtedly that of Diana, for the evidence in favour of this goddess includes not only an altar, but other finds connected with her worship: Sir Laurence goes even further than this, stating his conviction that “Diana practically absorbed the religious expression of London”:[827] that London was a Lunadun has already been suggested.

It has always been strongly asserted by tradition that St. Paul’s occupies the site of a church of Diana: if this were so the Diana stones on the summit of Ludgate Hill would have balanced the Dun stones on the opposing bank of the river Fleet, or Bagnigge. We have seen that mam in Gaelic meant a gently sloping hill; the two dunhills rising from the river Fleet, or Bagnigge, were thus probably regarded like the Paps of Anu at Killarney, as twin breasts of the Maiden: there are parallel “Maiden Paps” near Berriedale (Caithness), others near Sunderland, and others at Roxburgh. According to Stow the famous cross at Cheapside was decorated with a statue of Diana, the goddess, to which the adjoining Cathedral had been formerly dedicated: prior to the Reformation, two jets of water—like the jets in Fig. 44 (p. 167)—prilled from Diana’s naked breast “but now decayed”.

By Claremarket and the church of St. Clement Dane stood Holywell Street, somewhat north of which was yet another well called—according to Stow—Dame Annis the Clear, and not far from it, but somewhat West, was also one other clear water called Perilous Pond. This “perilous” was probably once peri lass, i.e., perry lass, or pure lass, and the neighbouring Clerkenwell (although the city clerks or clerken may in all likelihood have congregated there on summer evenings), was once seemingly sacred to the same type of phairy as the Irish call a cluricanne.[828] The original Clerken, or Cluricanne, was in all probability the resplendent clarus, clear, shining, Glare King, or Glory King: but it is equally likely that the -ken of Clerken was the endearing diminutive kin, as in Lambkin. That St. Clare was adored by her disciples is clear from The Golden Legend, where among other interesting data we are told: “She was crowned with a crown right clear shining that the obscurity of the night was changed into clearness of midday”: we are further told that once upon a time as a certain friar was preaching in her presence: “a right fair child was to fore St. Clare, and abode there a great part of the sermon”. It is thus permissible to assume that this marvellous holy woman, whose doctrine shall “enlumine all the world,” was originally depicted in company of the customary Holy Child, or the Little Glory King.

The original Clerken Well stood in what is now named Ray Street, and quite close to it is Braynes Row; not far distant was Brown’s Wood.[829] The name Sinclair implies an order or a tribe of Sinclair followers, and that the St. Dunstan by St. Clement’s Dane and Claremarket was something more than a monk is obvious from the tradition that “Our Lord shewed miracles for him ere he was born”: the marvel in point is that on a certain Candlemas Day the candle of his Mother Quendred[830] miraculously burned full bright so that others came and lighted their tapers at the taper of St. Dunstan’s mother; the interpretation placed upon this marvel was that her unborn child should give light to all England by his holy living.[831]

Fig. 445.—Gaulish. From Akerman.

As recorded in The Golden Legend the life of poor St. Clare was one long dolorous great moan and sorrow: it is mentioned, however, that she had a sister Agnes and that these two sisters loved marvellously together. We may thus assume that the celestial twins were Ignis, fire and Clare, light: Agnes is the Latin for lamb, and this symbol of Innocence is among the two or three out of lost multitudes which have been preserved by the Christian Church. In the illustration herewith the lambkin, in conjunction with a star, appears upon a coin of the Gaulish people whose chief town was Agatha: its real name, according to Akerman, was Agatha Tyke, and its foundation has been attributed both to the Rhodians and the Phoceans. Agatha is Greek for good, and tyke meant fortune or good luck: the effigy is described as being a bare head of Diana to the right and without doubt Diana, or the divine Una, was typified both by ignis the fire, and by agnes the lamb: in India Agni is represented riding on a male agnes, and in Christian art the Deity was figured as a ram.

Fig. 446.—Agni.

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Fig. 447.—From Christian Iconography (Didron).

At the Cornish town of St. Enns, St. Anns, or St. Agnes, the name of St. Agnes—a paragon of maiden virtue—is coupled with a Giant Bolster, a mighty man who is said to have held possession of a neighbouring hill, sometimes known as Bury-anack: at the base of this hill exists a very interesting and undoubtedly most ancient earthwork known as “The Bolster”.[832] As Anak meant giant,[833] Bury Anack was seemingly the abri, brugh, bri, or fairy palace of this particular Anak, and if we spell Bolster with an e he emerges at once into Belstar, the Beautiful Star who is represented in association with Agnes on page 719: probably the maligned Bolster of Cornwall had another of his abris at Bellister Castle on the Tyne, now a crumbling mass of ruins.

Some accounts mention the Clerkenwell pool of Annis the Clear as being that of Agnes the Clear: opposite the famous Angel of this neighbourhood is Claremont Square, and about half a mile eastward is Shepherdess Walk; that the Shepherdess of this walk was Diane, i.e., Sinclair the counterpart of Adonis, the Shepherd of the twinkling stars, is somewhat implied by Peerless Street, which leads into Shepherdess Walk. Perilous Pool at Clerkenwell was sometimes known as Peerless Pool: it has been seen that the hags or fairies were associated with this Islington district which still contains a Paradise Passage, and of both “Perilous” and “Peerless” I think the correct reading should be peri lass; it will be remembered that the peris were quite familiar to England as evidenced by the feathery clouds or “perry dancers,” and the numerous Pre Stones and Perry Vales.[834] In Red Cross Street, Clerkenwell, are or were Deane’s Gardens; at Clarence Street, Islington, the name Danbury Street implies the existence either there or elsewhere of a Dan barrow.

Opposite Clare Market and the churches of St. Dunstan and St. Clement Dane is situated the Temple of which the circular church, situated in Tanfield Court,[835] is dedicated to St. Anne: St. Anne, the mother of St. Mary, is the patron saint of Brittany, where she has been identified with Ma or Cybele, the Magna Mater of Mount Ida; that Anna was the consort of Joachim or the Joy King I do not doubt, and in her aspect of a Fury or Black Virgin she was in all probability the oak-haunting Black Annis of Leicestershire: “there was one flabby eye in her head”. In view of the famous round church of St. Mary the Virgin it is permissible to speculate whether the “small circular hut of stone,” in which Black Mary of Black Mary’s Hole was reputed to have dwelt on the banks of the Fleet, Bagnigge or Holeburn (now Holborn) was or was not the original Eye dun of the Pixy, or Big Nikke.

The emblems associated with the Temple and its circular church are three; the Flying Horse or Pegasus; two men or twain riding on a single horse (probably the Two Kings) and the Agnus Dei: in the emblem herewith this last is standing on a dun whence are flowing the four rivers of Eden. The lamb was essentially an emblem of St. John who, in Art, is generally represented with it; whence it is significant that in Celtic the word for lamb is identical with the name Ion, the Welsh being oen, the Cornish oin, the Breton oan, the Gaelic uan, and the Manx eayn. That Sinjohn was always sunshine and the sheen, never apparently darkness, is implied by the Basque words egun meaning day, and Agandia or Astartea meaning Sunday. The Basque for God is jainco, the Ugrian was jen, and the Basque jain, meaning lord or master, is evidently synonymous with the Spanish don or donna.

Fig. 448.—Divine Lamb, with a Circular Nimbus, not Cruciform, Marked with the Monogram of Christ, and the A and O. Sculptured on a Sarcophagus in the Vatican. The earliest ages of Christianity. From Christian Iconography (Didron).]

In addition to St. Annes opposite St. Dunstans, and St. Clement Dane there is a church of St. Anne in Dean Street, Soho: Ann of Ireland was alternatively Danu, and it is clear from many evidences that the initial d or t was generally adjectival. The Cornish for down or dune is oon, and Duke was largely correct when he surmised in connection with St. Anne’s Hill, Avebury: “I cannot help thinking that from Diana and Dian were struck off the appellations Anna and Ann, and that the feriÆ, or festival of the goddess, was superseded by the fair, as now held, of the saint. I shall now be told that the fane of the hunting goddess would never have been seated on this high and bare hill, that the Romans would have given her a habitation amidst the woods and groves, but here Callimachus comes to my aid. In his beautiful Hymn on Diana he feigns her to entreat her father Jupiter, ‘also give me all hills and mountains’.”

Not only is Diana (Artemis) made to say “give me all hills and mountains,” but Callimachus continues, “for rarely will Artemis go down into the cities”: hence it is probable that all denes, duns, and downs were dedicated to Diana. In Armenia, Maundeville mentions having visited a city on a mountain seven miles high named Dayne which was founded by Noah; near by is the city of Any or Anni, in which he says were one thousand churches. Among the rock inscriptions here illustrated, which are attributed to the Jews when migrating across Sinai from Egypt, will be noticed the name Aine prefixed by a thau cross: the mountain rocks of the Sinai Peninsular bear thousands of illegible inscriptions which from time to time fall down—as illustrated—in the ravines; by some they are attributed to the race who built Petra.[836] I am unable to offer any suggestion as to how this Roman lettering Aine finds itself in so curious a milieu.

Speaking of the bleak moorlands of Penrith (the pen ruth?), where are found the monuments of Long Meg and of Mayborough, Fergusson testily observes: “No one will now probably be found seriously to maintain that the long stone row at Shap was a temple either of the Druids or of anyone else. At least if these ancient people thought a single or even a double row of widely-spaced stones stretching to a mile and a half across a bleak moor was a proper form for a place to worship in, they must have been differently constituted from ourselves[837].” Indubitably they were; and so too must have been the ancient Greeks: the far-famed Mount Cynthus, whence Apollo was called Cynthus, is described by travellers as “an ugly hill” which crosses the island of Delos obliquely; it is not even a mountain, but “properly speaking is nothing but a ridge of granite”. I am told that Glastonbury—the Avalon, the Apple Orchard, the Sacred Eden of an immeasurable antiquity—is disappointing, and that nowadays little of any interest is to be seen there. “Donn’s House,” the gorgeous bri or palace of generous Donn the King of Faery, is in reality no better than a line of sandhills in the Dingle Peninsula, Kerry; of the inspiring Tipperary I know nothing, but can sympathise with the prosaic Governor of the Isle of Man, who a century or so ago reported that practically every dun in Manxland was crowned with a cairn which seemed “nothing but the rubbish of Nature thrown into barren and unfruitful heaps”.

“Miserable churl” sang the wily, enigmatic Bird, whose advice to the rich villein has been previously quoted,[838] “when you held me fast in your rude hand easy was it to know that I was no larger than a sparrow or a finch, and weighed less than half an ounce. How then could a precious stone three ounces in weight be hid in my body? When he had spoken thus he took his flight, and from that hour the orchard knew him no more. With the ceasing of his song the leaves withered from the pine, the garden became a little dry dust and the fountain forgot to flow.”

Among the legends of the Middle Ages is one to the effect that Alexander, after conquering the whole world determined to find and compass Paradise. After strenuous navigation the envoys of the great King eventually arrived before a vast city circled by an impenetrable wall: for three days the emissaries sailed along this wall without discovering any entrance, but on the third day a small window was discerned whence one of the inhabitants put out his head, and blandly inquired the purpose of the expedition; on being informed the inhabitant, nowise perturbed, replied: “Cease to worry me with your threats but patiently await my return”. After a wait of two hours the denizen of Heaven reappeared at the window and handed the envoys a gem of wonderful brilliance and colour which in size and shape exactly reproduced the human eye[839]. Alexander, not being able to make head or tail of these remarkable occurrences, consulted in secret all the wisest of the Jews and Greeks but received no suitable explanation; eventually, however, he found an aged Jew who elucidated the mystery of the hidden Land by this explanation: “O King, the city you saw is the abode of souls freed from their bodies, placed by the Creator in an inaccessible position on the confines of the world. Here they await in peace and quiet the day of their judgment and resurrection, after which they shall reign forever with their Creator. These spirits, anxious for the salvation of humanity, and wishing to preserve your happiness, have destined this stone as a warning to you to curb the unseemly desires of your ambition. Remember that such insatiable desires merely end by enslaving a man, consuming him with cares and depriving him of all peace. Had you remained contented with the inheritance of your own kingdom you would have reigned in peace and tranquillity, but now, not even yet satisfied with the conquest of enormous foreign possessions and wealth, you are weighed down with cares and danger.”

The name of the aged Jew who furnished Alexander with this information is said to have been Papas, or Papias: Papas was an alternative name for the Phrygian Adonis, whence we may no doubt equate the old Adonis (i.e., Aidoneus, or Pluto?) with the Aged Jew, or the Wandering Jew. It has been seen that the legend of the Wandering Jew apparently originated at St. Albans: in France montjoy was a generic term for herald, and I have little doubt that these Mountjoys were originally so termed as being the denizens of some sacred Mount. There is a Mount Joy near Jerusalem, and there was certainly at least one in France: among the legends recorded in Layamon’s Brut is one relating to a Mont Giu and a wondrous Star: “From it came gleams terribly shining; the star is named in Latin, comet. Came from the star a gleam most fierce; at this gleam’s end was a dragon fair; from this dragon’s mouth came gleams enow! But twain there were mickle, unlike to the others; the one drew toward France, the other toward Ireland. The gleam that toward France drew, it was itself bright enow; to Munt-Giu was seen the marvellous token! The gleam that stretched right west, it was disposed in seven beams.”[840] It is probable that Chee Tor in the neighbourhood of Buxton, Bakewell,[841] and Haddon Hall, was once just as bogie a Mount as Munt-Giu: at Churchdown in Gloucester is a Chosen Hill, which apparently was sacred to Sen Cho, and this hill was presumably the original church of Down; all sorts of “silly traditions” are said to hang around this spot, and the natives ludicrously claim themselves to be “the Chosen” People.

Chee Tor at Buxton overlooks the river Wye, a name probably connected with eye, and with numerous Eamounts, Eytons, Eatons, Howdens, etc.: that Eton in Bucks was an Eye Dun is inferable from the ad montem ceremonies which used until recently to prevail at Salt Hill.[842] In British, hy or ea, as in Hy Breasil, Battersea, Chelsea, etc., meant an island, and the ideal Eden was usually conceived and constructed in island form: if a natural “Eye Town” were not available it was customary to construct an artificial one by running a trench around some natural or artificial barrow. The word eye also means a shoot, whence we speak of the eye of a potato, and the standard Eyedun seems always to have possessed an eye of eyes in the form either of a tree, a well, or a tower: it was not unusual to surmount the Beltan fire or Tan-Tad with a tree; the favourite phare tree was a fir tree, in Provence the Yule log was preferably a pear tree. It was anciently supposed that the earth was an island established upon the floods, and Homer preserves the belief of his time by referring to Oceanus as a river-stream:—

According to Josephus, the Garden of Eden “was watered by one river which ran round about the whole earth,[844] and was parted into four parts,” and this immemorial tradition was expressed upon the circular and sacred cakes of ancient nations which were the forerunners of our Good Friday’s Hot Cross Buns. Associated with the pagan Eucharists here illustrated[845] will be noted Eros—whose name is at the base of eucharist—also what seemingly is the Old Pater. In Egypt the cross cake was a hieroglyph for “civilised land,” and was composed of the richest materials including milk and honey, the familiar attributes of Canaan or the Promised Land. The remarkable earthwork cross at Banwell has no doubt some relation to the Alban cross on our Easter bun, Greek boun, and the so-termed Pixies’ Garden illustrated in Fig. 433(A), probably was once permeated by the same phairy imagination as perceived Paradise in the dusty “Walls of Heaven,” “Peter’s Orchard,” and “Johanna’s Garden”.

The name Piccadilly is assumed to have arisen because certain buns called piccadillies were there sold: the greater likelihood is that the bun took its title from Piccadilly. This curious place-name, which commemorates the memory of a Piccadilly Hall, is found elsewhere, and is probably cognate with Pixey lea, Poukelay, and the legend Pixtil, etc. Opposite Down Street, Piccadilly, or Mayfair, there are still standing in the Green Park the evidences of what may once have been tumuli or duns, and the Buckden Hill by St. Agnes’ Well in Hyde Park may, as is supposed, have been a den for bucks, or, as is not more improbable, a dun sacred to Big Adon:[846] leading to Buck Hill and St. Agnes’ Well there is still a pathway marked on the Ordnance map Budge Walk, an implication seemingly that Bougie, or Bogie, was not unknown in the district. We have connoted Rotten Row of Hyde Park with Rotten Row Tower near Alnwick: this latter is situated on Aidon Moor. By Down Street, Mayfair, is Hay Hill, at the foot of which flowed the Eye Brook, and this beck no doubt meandered past the modern Brick Street, and through the Brookfield in the Green Park where the fifteen joyful heydays of the Mayfair were once celebrated: whether the Eye Brook wandered through Eaton Square—the site of St. Peter’s Church—I do not know, nor can I trace whether or not the “Eatons” hereabout are merely entitled from Eaton Hall in the Dukeries. Each Eaton or island ton, certainly every sacred island, seems to have been deemed a “central boss of Ocean: that retreat a goddess holds,”[847] and this central boss appears to have been conceived indifferently or comprehensively as either a Cone, a Pyramid, a Beehive, or a Teat. Wyclif, in his translation of the Bible, refers to Jerusalem as “the totehill Zyon,” and there is little doubt that all teathills were originally cities or sites of peace: according to Cyprien Roberts: “The first basilicas, placed generally upon eminences, were called Domus ColumbÆ, dwellings of the dove, that is, of the Holy Ghost. They caught the first rays of the dawn, and the last beams of the setting sun.”[848] Everywhere in Britain the fays were popularly “gentle people,” “good neighbours,” and “men of peace”: a Scotch name for Fairy dun or High Altar of the Lord of the Mound used to be—sioth-dhunan, from sioth “peace,” and dun “a mound”: this name was derived from the practice of the Druids “who were wont occasionally to retire to green eminences to administer justice, establish peace, and compose differences between contending parties. As that venerable order taught a saogle hal, or World-beyond-the-present, their followers, when they were no more, fondly imagined that seats where they exercised a virtue so beneficial to mankind were still inhabited by them in their disembodied state”.[849]

In Cornwall there is a famous well at Truce which is legendarily connected with Druidism:[850] Irish tradition speaks of a famous Druid named Trosdan; St. Columba is associated with a St. Trosdan;[851] at St. Vigeans in Scotland there is a stone bearing an inscription which the authorities transcribe “Drosten,”[852] probably all the dwellers on the Truce duns were entitled Trosdan,[853] and it is not unlikely that the romantic Sir Patrise of Westminster was originally Father Truce. It has already been noted that treus was Cornish for cross, that children cross their fingers as a sign of fainits or truce, and there is very little doubt that cruciform earthworks, such as Shanid, and cruciform duns such as Hallicondane in Thanet were truce duns. The Tuatha de Danaan, or Children of Donn, who are supposed to have been the introducers of Druidism into Ireland, were said to have transformed into fairies, and the duns or raths of the Danaan are still denominated “gentle places”.[854] That the ancient belief in the existence of “gentle people” is still vivid, is demonstrated beyond question by the author of The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, who writes (1911): “The description of the Tuatha de Danaan in the ‘Dialogue of the Elders’ as ‘sprites or fairies with corporeal or material forms, but endued with immortality,’ would stand as an account of prevailing ideas as to the ‘good people‘ of to-day”.[855] The generous Donn, the King of Faery, is obviously Danu, or Anu, or Aine, the Irish goddess of prosperity and abundance, for we are told that well she used to cherish the circle of the gods.[856] At Knockainy, or the Hill of Ainy, Aine, whose name also occurs constantly on Gaulish inscriptions,[857] was until recent years worshipped by the peasants who rushed about carrying burning torches of hay: that Aine was Aincy, or dear little aine, is inferred by the alternative name of her dun Knockaincy: “Here,” says Mr. Westropp, “a cairn commemorates the cult of the goddess Aine, of the god-race of the Tuatha De Danaan. She was a water-spirit, and has been seen, half raised out of the water, combing her hair. She was a beautiful and gracious spirit, ‘the best-natured of women,’ and is crowned with meadow-sweet (spirÆa), to which she gave its sweet smell. She is a powerful tutelary spirit, protector of the sick, and connected with the moon, her hill being sickle-shaped, and men, before performing the ceremonies, used to look for the moon—whether visible or not—lest they should be unable to return.”[858] By St. Anne’s in Dean Street, Soho, is Dansey Yard, where probably dancing took place, and dins of every sort arose.

The original sanctuary at Westminster was evidently associated with a dunhill which seems to have long persisted for Loftie, in his History of Westminster, observes: “The hillock on which we stand is called Thorn Ey”.[859] Tothill Street, Westminster, marks the site of what was probably the teat hill of Sir Patrise: the tothills being centres of neighbourly intercourse a good deal of tittle-tattle doubtless occurred there, and from the toothills watchmen touted, the word tout[860] really meaning peer about or look out: “How beautiful on the Mounds are the feet of Him that bringeth tidings—that publisheth Peace”.[861] It has been supposed that certain of the Psalms of David were addressed not to the Jewish Jehovah, but to the Phoenician Adon or Adonis, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that these hymns of immemorial antiquity were first sung in some simple Eyedun similar to the wattled pyreum at Kildare, or that at Avalon or Bride Eye.

The oldest sanctuary in Palestine is a stone circle on the so-called Mount of God, and in Britain there is hardly a commanding eminence which is not crowned with a Carn or the evidences of a circle. The Cities of Refuge and the Horns of the Altar, so constantly mentioned in the Old Testament, may be connoted with the fact that in an island fort at Lough Gur, Limerick, were discovered “two ponderous horns of bronze,” which are now in the British Museum: it will be remembered that at Lough Gur is the finest example of Irish stone circles. But stone circles are probably much more modern than the reputed founding of St. Bride’s first monastery at Kildare. We are told that Bride the Gentle, the Mary of the Gael, who occasionally hanged her cloak upon a lingering sunbeam, had a great love of flowers, and that once upon a time when wending her way through a field of clover[862] she exclaimed, “Were this lovely plain my own how gladly would I offer it to the Lord of Heaven and Earth”. She then begged some sticks from a passing carter, staked and wattled them into a circle, and behold the Monastery was accomplished. The character of this simple edifice reminds one of “that structure neat,” to which Homer thus alludes:—

The circle of Mayborough originally contained two cairns which are suggestive of Andromache’s “turf-built cenotaph with altars twain”: the great bicycle within a monocycle at Avebury is trenched around, and the summit of the circumference is still growing thickly with “tangled thorns”. On the Wrekin there is a St. Hawthorn’s Well; of “Saint” Hawthorn nothing seems to be known, and I strongly suspect that he was originally a sacred thorn or monument bush. The first haies or hedges were probably the hawthorn or haw hedges around the sacred Eyes, and the original ha-has or sunk ditches were presumably the water trenches which surrounded the same jealously-guarded Eyes: and as ha-ha is also defined as “an old woman of surprising ugliness, a caution,” it may be suggested that the caretakers or beldames[864] of the awful Eyes were, like some of the vergers and charwomen of the present day, not usually comely.

The iris-form of the Eye was shown in the ground plan ante, page 534, and that this design was maintained even for ages after the first primitive Rock or Tower had given place to statelier edifices might be shown by many more evidences than the design here illustrated: the maton of this Trematon Castle was in all probability the same Maiden as the Shee of Maiden Castle, Maiden Paps, and the Maiden Stane. Trematon, in Cornwall, was the site of a Stannary Court, whence arose the proverbial localism “Trematon Law,” and there are peculiarities about the Castle which merit more than passing attention. Rising majestically amid the surrounding foliage the keep is described as standing on the summit of a conical mound: Baring-Gould characterises the aspect as being that of a pork pie, whence its windowless walls would seem to bear a resemblance to the massive masonry at Richborough. The Richborough walls now measure 10 feet 8 inches in thickness and nearly 30 feet in height; those at Trematon are stated as being 10 feet thick and 30 feet high. Like Maiden Castle at Dorchester, Trematon is of an oval form and it was formerly divided into apartments, but as there are no marks of windows they would appear to have been lighted from the top.[865] The gateway consisted of three strong arches, and the general arrangements would seem to have resembled those at Chun where, as will be noted, there were three outer chambers encircling about a dozen inner stalls. Chun is cyclopean unmortared stonework; Maiden Castle is earthwork; Richborough is supposedly Roman masonry: of Trematon little is known that may be deemed authentic, but it is generally believed to have been originally erected prior to the Conquest: as, however, the Anglo-Saxons were incapable of masonry it would seem that Trematon might be assigned to an antiquity not less than that of Richborough Castle which it so curiously parallels. With the various Maiden Lanes of King’s Cross, Covent Garden, and elsewhere may be connoted the Mutton Lane of Hackney, which was famous for a bun house which once rivalled that at Cheynes Walk, Chelsea: Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, is a continuation of Chandos Street, and it will probably prove that the surname Chandos is ultimately traceable to Jeanne douce. In Caledonia douce is not necessarily feminine, and the King John tradition, which unaccountably lingered around Canonbury,[866] may be connoted with the John Street and Mutton Hill of Clerkenwell. The sheep or mutton is the proper emblem of St. John, and perhaps the same King John may be further identified with the Goodman of the adjacent Goodman’s Fields. We have seen that in Caledonia the gudeman was the devil, whence it becomes interesting to find near Brown’s Wood, Islington, stood once a “Duval’s (vulgarly called Devil’s) Lane”.[867]

St. Columba alludes affectionately to—

The Eye dun illustrated ante, page 584, which is described as the strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric-looking of all our motes, is known as Trowdale Mote; St. Columba is associated with Tiree; he is also said to have been imprisoned at Tara, and to have written the book Durrow with his own hand: there is thus some ground for tracing the Mote, Maton, Maid or Maiden, alias St. Columba, to Droia or Troy. That the dove was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem is well known, and that all derrys or trees were sacred Troys or sanctuaries is further implied by the ancient meaning of the adjective terribilis, i.e., sacred: thus we find Westminster or Thorn Ey alluded to by old writers as a locus terribilis,[868] and it would seem that any awe-inspiring or awful spot was deemed terrible or sacred.

In the Celtic Calendar there figures a St. Maidoc or Aidan: Maidoc is maid high, and I am afraid St. Aidan was occasionally “a romping girl” or hoiden. One does not generally associate Pallas Athene with revelry, and it is difficult to connect with gaiety the grim example of Athene which the present proprietors of The AthenÆum have adopted as their ideal; yet, says Plato, “Our virgin Lady, delighting in the sports of the dance, thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the festivals.” Hoiden or hoyden meant likewise a gypsy—a native of Egypt “the Land of the Eye”—and also a heathen: Athene, who was certainly a heathen maid, may be connoted with Idunn of Scandinavia, who keeps the apples which symbolise the ever-renewing and rejuvenating force of Nature.[869] Tradition persistently associates Eden with an apple, although Holy Writ contains nothing to warrant the connection: similarly tradition says that Eve had a daughter named Ada: as Idunn was said to be the daughter of Ivalde we may equate Idunn, the young and lovely apple-maid, with Ada or Ida, and Ivalde, her mother with the Old Wife, or Ive Old.[870] In an earlier chapter we connected Eve with happy, Hob, etc., and there is little doubt that Eve, “the Ivy Girl,” was the Greek Hebe who had the power of making old men young again, and filled the goblets of the gods with nectar.

Idunn, “the care-healing maid who understands the renewal of youth,” was, we are told, the youthful leader of the Idunns or fairies: in present-day Welsh edyn means a winged one, and ednyw a spirit or essence. It is said that from the manes of the horses of the Idunns dropped a celestial dew which filled the goblets and horns of the heroes in Odin’s hall; it is also said that the Idunns offer full goblets and horns to mortals, but that these, thankless, usually run away with the beaker after spilling its contents on the ground. There must be an intimate connection between the legend of the fair Idunns, and the fact that at the Caledonian Edenhall, on the river Eden, is preserved an ancient goblet known as The Luck of Edenhall:—

The river Eden flows into the Solway Firth, possibly so named because the Westering Sun must daily have been seen to create a golden track or sun-way over the Solway waters. Ptolemy refers to Solway Firth as Ituna Estuarium, so that seemingly Eden or Ituna may be equated not only with the British rivers Ytene and Aeithon, but also with the Egyptian Aten. According to Prof. Petrie, the cult of Aten “does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth. The Sun is represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends in a hand which imparts life and power to the king and to all else. In the hymn to the Aten, the universal scope of this power is proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know, and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions while it is even more abstract and impersonal and may well rank as a scientific theism.”

Egyptian literature tells of a King Pepi questing for the tree of life in company with the Morning Star carrying a spear of Sunbeams.

Yet this resplendent Pair or Parent was also addressed by the Egyptians as the Sea on High and invoked—

The Maiden Morning Star or Stella Maris was imagined as refreshing the heart of King Pepi to life: “She purifies him, she cleanses him, he receives his provision from that which is in the Granary of the Great God, he is clothed by the Imperishable Stars.” The intimate connection between Candia and Egypt, the “Land of the Eye” is generally admitted, and as it is an etymological fact that the letters m and n are almost invariably interchangeable (indeed if language begins with voice and ends with voice it is impossible to suppose that two such similar sounds could have maintained their integrity), it is probable that Candia is radically related to Khem, which seemingly was the most ancient name for Egypt. The celebrated “Maiden Bower,” by Mount Pleasant, Dunstable, is believed to be the modern equivalent of magh din barr, pronounced mach dim barr, and it is decoded as magh, a level expanse, din, a hill or hill fortress, and barr, a summit: I note this derivation—which certainly cannot be applied to the Maiden Stane—as it equates din with dim, in which connection it is noteworthy that in France and Belgium Edinburgh becomes Edimbourg. In all probability therefore Adam, Master of Eden, was originally Adon or “the Lord,” and Notre Dame of France was equivalent to the Madonna of Italy.

In Caledonia the moothills were known alternatively as Domhills, and in the “Chanonry of Aberdeen” was a dun known as Donidon or Dunadon: doom still means fate or judgment; in Scots Law giving sentence was formerly called “passing the doeme”; the judge was denominated the Doomster, and the jury the Doomsmen. In the Isle of Man the judges are termed Deemsters, and in Scandinavia stone circles are known as Doom rings: the Hebrew Dan meant judgment, and the English Dinah[871] is interpreted as one who judges; in the Isle of Man the Laws are not legal until they have been proclaimed from the Tynwald Hill. That the Domhills of Britain have largely preserved their physical condition is no doubt due to the doom frequently inflicted on malefactors that they should carry thither a certain quantity of earth and deposit it.[872]

In Europe there are numerous megalithic monuments known popularly as “Adam’s Graves,” and near Draycott at Avebury the maps mark an Adam’s Grave. On the brow of a hill near Heddon (Northumberland) is a trough-like excavation in the solid rock known as the Giant’s Grave; there is a similar Giant’s Grave near Edenhall by Penrith, and a neighbouring chasm entitled The Maiden’s Step is popularly connected with Giant Torquin: this Torquin suggests Tarquin of Etruria, between which and Egypt there was as close if not a closer connection than that between Candia and Khem.

At Maidstone, originally Maidenstone, there is a Moat Park: in Egypt Mut was one of the names given to the Queen of Heaven, or Lady of the Sky: Mut was no doubt a variant of Maat, or Maht, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, for in the worship of the Egyptian Aton “Truth” occupied a pre-eminent position, and the capital of Ikhnaton, the most conspicuous of the Aton-worshipping kings, was called the “Seat of Truth”.

Surmounting the Maat here illustrated is a conspicuous feather which we have already connoted with feeder and fodder. Maat, the giver of provision from that which is in the granary of the Great God, is thus presumably allied with meat, also to mud,[873] or liquid earth. The word mud is not found in Anglo-Saxon, but is evidently the Phoenician mot, and it would be difficult for modern science to add very much to the prehistoric conception of the Phoenicians. According to their great historian Sancaniathon: “The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus. Out of this chaos was generated MÔt, which some call Ilus” (mud), “but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe.... And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced, and clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters.”[874] It is probable that Sancaniathon, the Phoenician sage to whom the above passage is attributed, was radically Iathon or Athene.

We have connoted the Egyptian sun-god Phra with Pharoah, or Peraa, who was undoubtedly the earthly representative of the same Fire or Phare as was worshipped by the Parsees, or Farsees of Persia: the Persian historians dilate with enthusiasm on the justice, wisdom, and glory of a fabulous Feridoon whose virtues acquired him the appellation of the Fortunate, and it is probable that this Feridoon was the Fair Idoon whose palace, like the Fairy Donn’s, was located on some humble fire dun, or peri down. The name Feridoon, or Ferdun (the Fortunate),[875] is translated as meaning paradisiacal: Ferdusi is etymologically equivalent to perdusi, which is no doubt the same word as paradise, and we can almost visualise the term feridoon transforming itself into fairy don. Nevertheless by one Parthian poet it was maintained—

In Germany, Frei or Frey meant a privileged place or sanctuary: in London such a sanctuary until recently existed around the church of St. Mary Offery, or Overy (now St. Saviours, Southwark), and in a subsequent chapter we shall consider certain local traditions which permit the equation of St. Mary Overy, and of the Brixton-Camberwell river Effra, with the Fairy Ovary of the Universe. The Gaelic and Welsh for an opening or mouth is aber, whence Aberdeen is held to mean the mouth of the Don: but at Lochaber or Loch Apor this interpretation cannot apply, and it is not improbable that Aberdeen on the river Don was primarily a Pictish Abri town—a Britain or Prydain. As the capital of Caledonia is Edinburgh or Dunedin, it may be suggested that the whole of Caledonia stern and wild was originally a Kille, or church of Don.

At Braavalla, in Osturgothland, there are remains of a marvellous “stone town,” whence we may assume that this site was originally a Braavalla, or abri valley: the chief of the Irish Barony of Barrymore who was entitled “The Barry” is said to have inhabited an enchanted brugh in one of the Nagles Hills. Near New Grange in Ireland there is a remarkable dolmen known locally as the house or tomb of Lady “Vera, or Birra”:[877] five miles distant is Bellingham, and I have little doubt that every fairy dun or fairy town, the supposed local home of Bellinga, the Lord Angel or the Beautiful Angel, was synonymously a “Britain”; that Briton and Barton are mere variants of the same word is evident from such place-names as Dumbarton, originally Dunbrettan.

It has been seen that Prydain—of whom it was claimed that before his coming there was little ordinance in these Islands save only a superiority of oppression—was the reputed child of King Aedd: Aedd was one of the titles of Hu, the first of our national Three Pillars, and he was probably identical with Aeddon, a name which, says Davies, “I think was a title of the god himself”: the priests of Hu were apparently termed Aeddons, whence like the Mountjoys of France we may assume they were the denizens of the Aeddon duns: inquiry will probably establish one of these sanctuaries at Haddington; at Addington (Domesday Edintone) in Kent there are the remains of one still standing. With the pagan Aeddons may be connoted the Celtic Saint Aidan, Æden, or Aiden, whose name is associated with Lindisfarne, also the St. Aidan, or Maidoc of Ferns, who among other prodigies is recorded as having driven to and from Rome in twenty-four hours. At Farn MacBride in Glencolumkille, there are some cromlechs which exactly resemble in plan the house of Lady Vera, or Birra, at New Grange:[878] at Evora, in Portugal, situated on bleak heathland, is a similar monument which Borrow described as the most perfect and beautiful of its kind he had ever seen: “It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something like the shape of scallop shells.... Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior in which was growing a small thorn tree.”[879] The scallop shell, like the cockle and all coquilles, was obviously an emblem of Evora, the Ovary, the Aber, the opening.

The Bona dea of Candia was represented with a headdress in the form of a cat; we shall connote this animal (German kater) with St. Caterina or Kate, the immaculate pure one, and it is not unnoteworthy that the Kentish Kit’s coty, near Maidstone, vide the photograph here reproduced, contains what might be a rude much-weathered image of the sacred cat, lioness, or kitten:[880] In Caledonia is a famous Cat[881] Stane, and the Duchess of Sutherland still bears the honorary title “Lady of the Cat”.[882] The word kitten resolves into Great Itten: the New Forest used to be known as the Forest of Ytene,[883] and I do not think that the great British Forest of Dean has any real connection with the supposition that the Danes may have taken up their residence there: Dean was almost a generic name for forest, and we meet with it from Arden to the Ardennes.[884]

For an explication of the word dawn Skeat observes: “see day”; it is, however, probable that dawn was the little or young Don or Adon. By the Welsh the constellation Cassiopeaia is known under the title of Don’s chair. That the Irish Don was Truth is probable from the statement “His blue dome (the sky) was an infallible weather-glass, whence its name the Hill of Truth”.[885]

According to the Edda,[886] a collection of traditions which have been assigned variously by scholars to Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles, the world was created by the sons of Bor, and in the beginning the gods built a citadel in Ida-plain and an age of universal innocence prevailed. Situated on Cockburn Law in Berwickshire—a wick or fortress of Ber upon which stands the largest of all the brochs—is a prehistoric circle known as Edina or Wodens Hall. The English name Edana or Edna, defined as meaning perfect happiness or rich gift, is stated to be a variant of Ida or Ada: in Hebrew the name Adah means beauty, and Ada, the lovely daughter of Adam, is probably Eda, the “passionately beloved”[887] Breaton princess of Hibernia, or Ma Ida of Tyburnia or Marylebone.

The Garden of Eden has somewhat unsuccessfully, I believe, been located in Mesopotamia: the Jews doubtless had their Edens even though Palestine is arid, and the authorities translate the name Adam as having meant red earth: according to early Rabbinical writers Adam was a giant; he touched the Arctic pole with one hand and the Antarctic with the other.[888] I have here noted but a handful of the innumerable Edens in Britain which includes five rivers of that name:[889] that the Lady of Britain was Prydain, Brython, or pure Athene, i.e., Wisdom, is a well-recognised tradition, for she is conventionally represented as Athene. In Greece the girl-name Theana meant Divine Intelligence,[890] and Ida was interpreted far seeing: in Troy the goddess of the city, which originally stood upon a dun hill, was Athene, and the innumerable owl-headed emblems found there by Schliemann were her sign: “Before the human form was adopted her (Athene’s) proper symbol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness and refinement, of organic perception; its eyes being calculated to discern objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness; its ear to hear sounds distinctly when no other can perceive them at all, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease.”[891]

We have noted the existence of some exclusively British fairies known as Portunes: among the Latins Portunas was a name of Triton or Neptune: the Mother of the British Portunes might be termed Phortuna, or, as we should now write the word, Fortuna, and the stone circle at Goodaver in Cornwall might be described as a Wheel of Good Phortune: the Hebrew for fortune is gad, and it is probable that the famous Gadshill, near Rochester, was at one time a God’s Hill; from Kit’s Coty on the heights above Rochester it is stated that according to tradition a continuous series of stone monuments once extended to Addington where are still the remains of another coty or cromlech.

There are in England numerous Addingtons or Edintones, and at at least two of these are Druidic remains: the Kentish Addington, near Snodland and Kit’s Coty, is dedicated to St. Margaret, and the church itself is situated on a rise or dun. Half a mile from Bacton in Hereford is a small wood known as St. Margaret’s Park, and in the centre of this is a cruciform mound, its western arm on the highest ground, its eastern on the lowest: this cruciform mound was described in 1853 as being 15 feet at base,[892] a familiar figure which may be connoted with the statement in The Golden Legend that St. Margaret was fifteen years of age. In addition to the cruciform mount at St. Margaret’s Park, Bacton, there are further remains of archÆologic interest: about 100 years ago nine large yew trees which were surrounding it—one of gigantic size—were felled to the ground, and my authority states that its venerable antiquity was evident from the decayed stumps of oaks still visible felled ages ago together with more recent ones.[893] In addition to the cross in this prehistoric Oak grove of the Lady Margaret there are three curious cavities, two of them circular, the third oval or egg-shaped: the ancient veneration for the oeuf, or egg, has degenerated to the Easter egg, and in Ireland the Dummy’s Hill,[894] associated with egg-trundling may, I think, be equated with Donna or the Dame.

The Cretan Britomart in Greek was understood to mean sweet maiden; in Welsh pryd meant precious, dear, fair, beautiful; Eda of Ireland was “passionately beloved,” and to the Britons the sweet maiden was inferentially Britannia, the new pure Athene, Ma Ida the Maid or Maiden whose character is summed up in the words prude, proud, pride, and pretty. In Ireland we may trace her as Meave, alias Queen Mab, and the headquarters of this Maiden were either at Tara or at Moytura: the latter written sometimes Magh Tuireadh, probably meant the plain of Troy, for there are still all the evidences here of a megalithic Troy town. The probabilities are that Stanton Drew in Somerset, like Drewsteignton in Devon, with which tradition connects St. Keyna, was another Dru stonetown for here are a cromlech, a logan stone, two circles, some traces of the Via Sacra or Druid Way and an ancient British camp: in Aberdeen there are circles at Tyrebagger, Dunadeer, and at Deer.

Among other so-called monuments of the Brugh at Moytura recorded in the old annalists are “the Two Paps of the Morrigan,” “The Mound of the Morrigan,” i.e., the Mound of the Great Queen, also a “Bed of the Daughter of Forann”:[895] Forann herself was doubtless the Hag whose weirdly-sculptured chair exists at Lough Crew in Meath: Meath was esteemed the mid, middle, or midst, of Ireland, and here as we have seen existed the central stone at Birr. There is a celebrated Hag’s Bed at Fermoy, doubtless the same Hag as the “Old Woman of Beare,” whose seven periods of youth necessitated all who lived with her to die of old age: this Old Woman’s grandsons and great grandsons were, we are told, tribes and races, and in several stories she appears to the hero as a repulsive hag who suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful Maid. At Moytura—with which tradition intimately associates the Children of Don—is a cairn called to this day the “cairn of the One Man”: with this One Man we may connote Un Khan or Prester John, of whose mystic Kingdom so many marvellous legends circulated during the Middle Ages.

Among the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is one to the effect that by the commandment of God he “made in the earth a great circle with his staff”: this might be described as a byre, i.e., an enclosure or bower, and we may connote the word with the stone circle in Westmoreland, at Brackenbyr, i.e., the byre of Brecon, Brechin, or the Paragon? The husband of Idunn was entitled Brage, whose name inter alia meant King: Brage was the god of poetry and eloquence; a superfluity of prating, pride, and eloquence is nowadays termed brag.

The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: “In Duno,” says The Golden Legend, “these three be buried all in one sepulchre”: the word Duno is d’uno, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of “the One Man”: Honeyman[896] is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man’s ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant’s Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]—the parallel of which existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye—was originally a Hunne Bed or grotte des fees.

“Of Paradise,” says Maundeville, “I cannot speak for I have not been there”: nevertheless this traveller—who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular assumption—has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the word paradise is the Persian pairidaeza, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with our park, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair. Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898] more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic for fire: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt that Thanet, “by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,”[899] was originally sacred to Athene. In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean “how, or mound of the thing, or provincial assembly”: the chief Cantian thing or folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the word think implies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the words remercie and thank, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name. In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked for meat, i.e., fare, or forage; free, according to Pearsall, “comes from an Aryan root meaning dear (whence also our word friend), and meant in old Teutonic times those who are dear to the head of the household—that is connected with him by ties of friendship, and not slaves, or in bondage”.[900] The word dear, French adore, connects tre or abode with Droia or Troy: yet the Sweet Maiden of Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: “The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with”.[901] The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden’s Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either the Troy Queen or the Eternal Queen, or dur queen, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener a dear Queen, i.e., Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the passionately beloved, the AdorÉe. “Bride, the gentle” is an epithet traditionally applied to St. Bride, St. Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh, brig and brigant mean tip top or summit, and these terms may be connoted with the Irish brig meaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem. At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the “Nymph-Goddess Brig,” and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the Goddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.

In the British Museum is a coin lettered Cynethryth Regina: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed “in long curls, behind head long cross”: assuredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was “the Truth against the world,” we may perhaps assume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.

In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture illustrated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.

Fig. 461.—Britannia, A.D. 1919.
By permission of the Proprietors of “Punch”.