Fig. 359.—Mary, in an Oval Aureole, Intersected by Another, also Oval, but of smaller size. Miniature of the X. Cent. From Christian Iconography (Didron).
Tradition seems to have preserved the memory of the Virgin Mary as one of the Three Greek Moirae or Three Celtic Mairae or Spinners, for according to an apocryphal gospel Mary was one of the spinsters of the Temple Veil: “And the High priest said; choose for me by lot who shall spin the gold and the white and fine linen, and the blue and the scarlet, and the true purple. And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary, and she took them and went away to her house.”[695] The purple heart-shaped mulberry in Greek is moria, and the Athenian district known as Moria is supposed to have been so named from its similitude to a mulberry leaf. In Cornwall the scarlet-berried holly is known as Aunt Mary’s Tree, and as aunt in the West of England was a title applied in general to old women, it is evident that Aunt Mary of the Holly Tree must have been differentiated from the little Maid of Bethlehem. According to The Golden Legend St. Mary died at the age of seventy-two, a number of which the significance has been partially noted, and she was reputed to have been fifteen years of age when she gave birth to the Saviour of the World: the number fifteen is again connected with St. Mary in the miracle thus recorded of her early childhood: “And when the circle of three years was rolled round, and the time of her weaning was fulfilled, they brought the Virgin to the Temple of the Lord with offerings. Now there were round the temple according to the fifteen Psalms of Degrees, fifteen steps going up.”[696] Up these mystic fifteen steps we are told that the new-weaned child miraculously walked unaided.
The New Testament refers to three Marys; in the design overleaf the figure might well represent Fate, and that there was once a Great and a Little Mary is somewhat implied by the fact that in Jerusalem adjoining the church of St. Mary was “another church of St. Mary called the Little”:[697] that there was also at one time a White Mary and a Black Mary is indubitable from the numerous Black Virgins which still exist in continental churches. Even the glorious Diana of Ephesus was, as has been seen, at times represented as black: the name Ephesus, where the Magna Mater was pre-eminently worshipped, is radically Ephe, and that Godiva of Coventry was alternatively associated with night is clear from the fact that the Godiva procession at a village near Coventry included two Godivas, one white, the other black.[698]
Near King’s Cross, London, in the ward of Farendone, used to exist a spring known as Black Mary’s Hole: this name was popularly supposed to have originated from a negro woman who kept a black cow and used to draw water from the spring, but tradition also said that it was originally the Blessed Mary’s Well, and that this having fallen into disrepute at the time of the Reformation the less attractive cognomen was adopted.[699]
Fig. 360.—Engraving on Pebble, Montastruc, Bruniquel.
Fig. 361.—Dagger-handle in form of mammoth, Bruniquel.
From A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age (B.M.).]
The immense antiquity of human occupation of this site is indicated by the fact that opposite Black Mary’s Hole there was found at the end of the seventeenth century a pear-shaped flint instrument in the company of bones of some species of elephant: after lying unappreciated for many years the tool in question has since been recognised as a piece of human handiwork, and may fairly claim to be the first of its kind recorded in this or any other country.[700] That the contemporaries of the mammoth were no mean artists is proved by the Bruniquel objects—particularly the engraving on pebble—here illustrated: not only does the elephant figure on our prehistoric coinage, but it is also found carved on upwards of a hundred stones in Scotland and notably upon a broch at Brechin in Forfarshire. Such was the skill of the Brigantian flintworkers who were settled around Burlington or Bridlington (Yorkshire, anciently Deira) that they successfully fabricated small fish-hooks out of flint, a feat forcing one to endorse the dictum of T. Quiller Couch: “This is a matter not unconnected with our present subject, as the hand which fashioned so skilfully the barbed arrow-head of flint, and the polished hammer-axes may be fairly associated with a brain of high capabilities”.[701]