Mist in spring is the source of wine,
Mist in summer is the source of heat,
Mist in autumn is the source of rain,
Mist in winter is the source of snow.
Maggie or Maisie being thus probably the Maid of the Mist, or Mistress of the Moisture, and there being no known etymology for fog, the unpopular Maggie Figgie who sat in her chair charming the spirits of the ocean, was perhaps the ill-omened Maggie Foggy.
It is a world-wide characteristic of the Earth Mother to appear anon as a baleful hag, anon as a lovely maid, and in all probability to “Maid Margaret that was so meeke and milde,” may be attributed the adjective meek. In London an ass, in Cockney parlance, is a moke; Christ was said to ride upon an ass as symbolic of his meekness, and as already noted Christ by the Gnostics was represented as ass-headed. The worship of the Golden Ass persisted in Europe until a comparatively late period; a jenny is a female moke, a jackass is the masculine of Jenny.
At St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall is a Jack the Giant-Killer’s Well. The French name Michelet means “little Michael,” and that Great Michael was Cain the Wandering One is implied by the tradition that St. Kayne visited St. Michael’s Mount, and conferred certain powers upon the stone seat or Kader Mighel situated so dizzily amid the crags. The orthodoxy of this St. Kayne—who appears again at Keynsham—was evidently more than suspect, and according to Norden “this Kayne is said to be a woman-saynte, but it better resembleth kayne, the devil who had the shape of a man”. At Keynsham St. Kayne is popularly supposed to have turned serpents into stone, and there is no doubt that his or her name was intimately associated with the serpent. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny are translated to mean vast, but in Cornish ken meant pity, and ken, cunning, and canny all imply knowledge and deep wisdom. In Welsh, cain means sun and also fair; candere, to glow, is, of course, connected with candescent, candid, and candour.
The seat on St. Michael’s Tower is the counterpart to Maggie Figgie’s Chair, which is near the village of St. Levan, and in the previous chapter it was seen that Levan or Elvan was a synonym for elban or Alban. The family name at St. Michael’s Mount is St. Levan, and the usual abode of Maggie Figgie is assigned to the adjacent village of St. Levan. The chief fact recorded of St. Levan is his cell shown at Bodellen, near which is his seat—a rock split in two. He is also associated with a chad fish, entitled “chuck child,” to account for which a ridiculous story has been concocted to the effect that St. Levan once caught a chad, which choked a child. Like the cod the chad was perhaps so named because of its amazing fecundity, and the term chuck child was probably once Jack, the child Michael, or the giant-killing Jack, whose well stands on St. Michael’s Mount. It is not improbable that “chuck,” like Jack, is an inflexion of Gog, and that it is an almost pure survival of the British uch uch or high high. The great festival of Gog and Magog in Cockaigne was unquestionably on Lord Mayor’s Show Day, and this used originally to fall—or rather the Lord Mayor was usually chosen—on Michaelmas Day.[224]
In addition to associating St. Levan with the chad or “chuck child,” legend also connects St. Levan with a woman named Johanna. W. C. Borlase observes that Carew calls him St. Siluan, and that this form is still retained in the euphonious name of an estate Selena. Selena was a title under which the Mother of Night, the consort of Cain, the Man in the Moon, was worshipped by the Greeks. With regard to the Sel of Selena or Silenus it will be seen as we proceed that silly, Seeley, etc., did not imply idiocy, but that silly, as in Scotland where it meant holy, and as in the German selig, primarily meant innocent. We speak to-day of “silly sheep”; in the Middle Ages Christ was termed the silly Babe, and the county of Suffolk still vaunts itself as Silly Suffolk. Silene or Selina would thus imply the Innocent or Holy Una: her counterpart Silenus was usually represented as a jovial, genial, and merry patriarch. Selenus, like Janus, was apparently the Old Father Christmas, and Selena or Cynthia seemingly the maiden Cain, Kayne, St. Kenna, or Jana.