In Germany and Scandinavia the stone circles are known not as Merry Maidens, but as Adam’s Dances. Close to Troy Town on St. Agnes in the Scillies are two rocks known as Adam and Eve: these are described as nine feet high with a space about nine inches between them: “Here, too, is the Nag’s Head, which is the most curious rock to be met with on the islands; it has a remote resemblance to the head of a horse, and would seem to have been at one time an object of worship, being surrounded by a circle of stones”.[686]
On the lower slopes of Hellingy are the remains of a primitive village, and the foundations of many circular huts: among these foundations have been found a considerable quantity of crude pottery, and an ancient hand-mill which the authorities assign to about 2000 b.c. We have seen that the goddesses of Celtdom were known as the Mairæ, Matronæ, Matres, or Matræ (the mothers): further, that the Welsh for Mary is Fair, whence the assumption becomes pressing that the “Saint” Mary of the Scillies was primarily the Merry Fairy. The author of The English Language points out that in Old English merry meant originally no more than “agreeable, pleasing”. Heaven and Jerusalem were described by old poets as “merry” places; and the word had supposedly no more than this signification in the phrase “Merry England,” into which we read a more modern interpretation.[687] That the Scillies were permeated with the Fairy Faith is sufficiently obvious; at Hugh Town we find the ubiquitous Silver Street, and the neighbouring Holvear Hill was not improbably holy to Vera.
Near the Island of St. Helen’s is a group of rocks marked upon the map as Golden Ball Bar; near by is an islet named Foreman. The farthest sentinel of the Scillies is an islet named the Bishop, now famous to all sea-farers for its phare. It is quite certain that no human Bishop would ever have selected as his residence an abode so horribly exposed, whence it is more likely that the Bishop here commemorated was the Burnebishop or Boy Bishop whose ceremonies were maintained until recent years, notably and particularly at Cambrai. In England it is curious to find the Lady-bird or Burnie Bee equated with a Bishop, yet it was so; and hence the rhyme:—
Bishop, Bishop Burnebee, tell me when my wedding will be,
Fly to the east, fly to the west,
Fly to them that I love best.
In connection with the Island of St. Agnes it may be noted that ignis is the Latin for fire, whence it is possible that the islets, Big Smith and Little Smith, Burnt Island and Monglow, all had some relation to the Fieryman, Fairy Man, or Foreman: it is also possible that the neighbouring Camperdizil Point is connected with deiseul, the Scotch ejaculation, and with dazzle. Troy Town in St. Agnes is almost environed by Smith Sound, and this curious combination of names points seemingly to some connection between the Cambers and the metal smiths.[688]
It will be remembered that Agnes was a title of the Papesse Jeanne, who was said to have come from Engelheim or Angel’s Home: in Germany the Lady Bird used to be known as the Lady Mary’s Key-bearer, and exhorted to fly to Engelland: “Insect of Mary, fly away, fly away, to Engelland. Engelland is locked, its key is broken.”[689] Sometimes the invocation ran: “Gold chafer up and away to thy high storey to thy Mother Anne, who gives thee bread and cheese. ’Tis better than bitter death.”[690]
Thanks to an uncultured and tenacious love of Phairie, the keys of rural Engelland have not yet been broken, nor happily is Engelland locked. Our history books tell us of a splendid pun[691] perpetrated by a Bishop of many centuries ago: noticing some captured English children in the market-place at Rome, he woefully exclaimed that had they been baptised then would they have been non Angli sed angeli. Has this episcopal pleasantry been overrated? or was the good Bishop punning unconsciously deeper than he intended?