Amid numerous hut circles at Llandudno is a rocking stone known as Cryd-Tudno, or the Cradle of Tudno. Who was the St. Tudno of Llandudno whose cradle or cot, like Kit’s Coty in Kent, has been thus preserved in folk-memory? The few facts related of him are manifestly fabulous, but the name itself seemingly preserves one of the numerous sites where the Almighty Child of Christmas Day was worshipped, and the no of Tudno may be connoted with new, Greek, neo, Danish, ny, allied to Sanscrit, no, hence new, “that which is now”.
At Llanamlleck in Wales there is a cromlech known as St. Illtyd’s House, near which is a rude upright stone known as Maen-Illtyd, or Illtyd-stone. We may connote this Illtyd with All-tyd or All Father, in which respect Illtyd corresponds with the Scandinavian Ilmatar, Almatar, or All Mother.
Fig. 86.—From Numismatique Ancienne.
It is told of Saint Illtyd that he befriended a hunted stag, and that like Semele, the wife of Jove, his wife was stricken with blindness for daring to approach too near him. The association of Illtyd with a stag is peculiarly significant in view of the fact that at Llandudno, leading to the cot or cradle of St. Tudno, are the remains of an avenue of standing stones called by a name which signifies “the High Road of the Deer”. The branching antlers of the deer being emblems of the dayspring, the rising or new sun, is a fact somewhat confirmatory of the supposition that the Cradle of Tudno was the shrine of the new or Rising Tud, and in all probability the High Road of the Deer was once the scene of some very curious ceremonies.
Many of our old churches even to-day contain in their lofts antlers which formed part of the wardrobe of the ancient mummers or guise dancers.
In the Ephesian coin herewith Diana—the divine Ana—the many-breasted Alma Mater, is depicted in the form of a pillar-palm tree between two stags. Among the golden treasures found by Schliemann at Mykenæ, were ornaments representing two stags on the top of a date palm tree with three fronds.[280] The date palm may be connoted with the ded pillar, and the triple-fronded date of Mykenæ with the trindod or drindod of Britain.
Assyrian Ornament. (Nimroud.)