Fig. 48.—Long Meg and her Daughters. From Our Ancient Monuments (Kains-Jackson).
The Parthenon, or Maiden’s House, at Athens was supported by fifteen pairs of columns; the number eighteen is twice nine, and in all probability stood for the divine twain, Meg and Mike, Michal and St. Michael. The duality of St. Michael which is portrayed in Fig. 200, page 363, was no doubt also symbolised by the two rocks, which, according to The Golden Legend, Michael removed and replaced by a single piece of stone of marble. A second apparition recorded of St. Michael states that the saint stood on a stone of marble, and anon, because the people had great penury and need of water, there flowed out so much water that unto this day they be sustained by the benefit thereof.[218] This is evidently the same miracle as that illustrated in Fig. 21, on [page 130], and in this connection it is noticeable that in the neighbourhood of Mickleham (Surrey) are Margery Hall, Mogadur, and Mug’s well.
Meg is a primitive form of Margaret, and in Art St. Margaret is always represented as the counterpart of St. Michael with a vanquished dragon at her feet. To account for this emblem the hagiographers relate that St. Margaret was swallowed by a dragon, but that the cross which she happened to be holding caused the creature to burst, whereupon St. Margaret emerged from its stomach unscathed.
There is a counterpart to Maggie Figgie’s chair at St. Michael’s Mount, but in the latter case “Kader Migell” was a hallowed site. “Who knows not Mighell’s Mount and chair, the pilgrims Holy vaunt?” According to Carew this original “chair,” outside the castle, was a bad seat in a craggy place, somewhat dangerous of access.
St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall used to be known as Dinsul, which the authorities suggest was dun sol, or the Sun Hill. Very probably this was so, and there is an equal probability that it meant also din seul, i.e., the hill of Le Seul or La Seule, the Solitary or Alone.[219] In the Old Testament Michal figures as the daughter of King Saul, which is curious in view of St. Michael’s Mount being named Dinseul. St. Michael’s in Brittany and St. Michael’s elsewhere are dedicated ad duas tumbas, which means the two tumuli or tumps.[220] At St. Albans, the sacred processions started from two tumps or toot hills, and it may be suggested these symbolised the two teats of the primeval parent. In Ireland at Killarney are two mounts now termed The Paps, but originally known as The Paps of Anu, i.e., the Irish Magna Mater. Similar “Paps” are common in other parts of Britain, and there is little doubt that mam, the Welsh for a gently rising hill, has an intimate relation to mammal or teat. The Toothills were where tout or all congregated together in convocation, and in all probability every toot hill originally represented the teat of Tad, or Dad, the Celtic tata, or daddy. Toot hills are alternatively known as moot hills, and this latter term may be connoted with maeth, the Welsh for nourishment: near Sunderland are two round-topped rocks named Maiden Paps.
Mickleham in Surrey is situated at the base of Tot Hill: Tothill Street at Westminster marks the locality of an historic toot hill standing in Tothill Fields, and at Westminster the memory of St. Margaret has seemingly survived in dual form—as the ecclesiastical St. Margaret whose church nestles up against the Abbey of St. Peter, and as the popular giantess Long Meg. This celebrated heroine “did not only pass all the rest of her country in the length of her proportion, but every limbe was so fit to her talnesse that she seemed the picture and shape of some tall man cast in a woman mould”. In times gone by a “huge” stone in the cloisters of Westminster used to be pointed out to visitors as the very gravestone of Long Meg,[221] and this “long, large, and entire” piece of rock may be connoted with the Megstone of the Fern Islands and the Long Meg of Cumberland. In 1635 there was published The Life of Long Meg of Westminster, containing the mad merry pranks she played in her lifetime, not only in performing sundry quarrels with divers ruffians about London, but also how valiantly she behaved herself in the “Warres of Bolloinge”.
This allusion to Bolloinge suggests that the chivalrous and intrepid Long Meg was famous at Bulloigne, and that the name of that place is cognate with Bellona, the Goddess of War. That the valiant St. Margaret was as unconquerable as Micah was invictus, may be judged from the sacred legend that the devil once appeared before her in the likeness of a man, whereupon, after a short parley, “she caught him by the head and threw him to the ground, and set her right foot on his neck saying: ‘Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman’. The devil then cried: ‘O Blessed Margaret, I am overcome’”.
As St. Michael was the Leader of All Angels, so St. Margaret was the Mother of All Children, and the circle of Long Meg was evidently a mighty delineation of the Marguerite, Marigold, or Daisy. The Celts, with their exquisite imagination, figured the daisy or marguerite as the symbol of innocence and the newly-born. There is a Celtic legend to the effect that every unborn babe taken from earth becomes a spirit which scatters down upon the earth some new and lovely flower to cheer its parents. “We have seen,” runs an Irish tale, “the infant you regret reclining on a light mist; it approached us, and shed on our fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, oh, Malvina! among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disc surrounded by silver leaves: a sweet tinge of crimson adorns its delicate rays; waved by a gentle wind we might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow, and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla. Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. It is called the flower of innocence; the flower of the new-born.”[222]
The Scotch form of Margaret is Maisie, and from the word muggy, meaning a warm, light mist, it would seem that Maisie or Maggy was the divinity of mists and moisture. It was widely supposed that the mists of Mother Earth, commingling with the beams of the Father Sun, were together the source of all juvenescence and life. According to Owen Morgan, “Ked’s influence from below was supposed to be exercised by exhalations, the breathings as it were of the Great Mother,”[223] and it is still a British belief that—