[CHAPTER VIII]
SCOURING THE WHITE HORSE
“Where one might look to find a legitimate national pride in the monuments of our forefathers there seems to be a perverse conspiracy to give the credit to anyone rather than to the Briton, and preferably to the Roman interloper. If any evidence at all be asked for, the chance finding of a coin or two, or of a handful of shivered pottery, is deemed enough. Such evidence is emphatically not enough.”—A. Hadrian Allcroft.
The owld White Harse wants zettin to rights,
And the Squire hev promised good cheer,
Zo we’ll gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape,
And a’ll last for many a year.
—Berkshire Ballad.
According to Gaelic mythology Brigit was the daughter of the supreme head of the Irish gods of Day, Life, and Light—whose name Dagda Mor, the authorities translate into Great Good Fire. Some accounts state there were three Brigits, but these three, like the three Gweneveres or Ginevras who were sometimes assigned to King Arthur, are evidently three aspects of the one and only Queen Vera, Queen Ever, or Queen Fair. Brigit’s husband was the celebrated Bress, after whom we are told every fair and beautiful thing in Ireland was entitled a “bress”.