Fig. 365.—Maya, the Hindoo Goddess, with a Cruciform Nimbus. Hindostan Iconography. From Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism (Inman, C. W.).
The authorities are slovenly content to equate Mary with Maria, Muire, Marion, etc., assigning all these variations without distinction to mara, or bitterness: with regard to Maria, however, it may be suspected that this form is more probably to be referred to Mother Rhea, and more radically to ma rhi, i.e., Mother Queen, Lady, or Princess. That the word was used as generic term for Good Mother or Pure Mother is implied by its almost universal employment: thus not only was Adonis said to be the son of Myrrha, but Hermes was likewise said to be the child of Maia or Myrrha. The Mother of the Siamese Saviour was entitled Maya Maria, i.e., the Great Mary; the Mother of Buddha was Maya; Maia was a Roman Flower goddess, and it is generally accepted that May, the month of the Flower goddess, is an Anglicised form of Maia.
The earliest known allusion to the morris dance occurs in the church records of Kingston-on-Thames, where the morris dancers used to dance in the parish church.[713] There are in Britain not less than forty or fifty Kingstons, three Kingsburys, four Kentons, seven Kingstons, one Kenstone, and four Kingstones: all these may have been the towns or seats of tribal Kings, but under what names were they known before Kings settled there? It is highly improbable that royal residences were planted in previously uninhabited spots, and it is more likely that our Kings were crowned and associated with already sacred sites where stood a royal and super-sacred stone analogous to the Scotch Johnstone. This was certainly the case at Kingston-on-Thames where there still stands in the market-place the holy stone on which our ancient Kings were crowned: near by is Canbury Park, and it would not surprise me if the original barrow or mound of Can were still standing there. The surname Lovekyn, which appears very prominently in Kingston records, may be connoted with the adjective kind, and it is probable that Moreford, the ancient name of Kingston-on-Thames, did not—as is supposed—mean big ford, but Amor or Mary ford. In Spain and Portugal (Iberia) the name Maria is bestowed indiscriminately upon men and women: that the same indistinction existed in connection with St. Marine may be inferred from the statement in The Golden Legend: “St. Marine was a noble virgin, and was one only daughter to her father who changed the habit of his daughter so that she seemed and was taken for his son and not a woman”.[714]
If the Mary of the Marigolds or “winking marybuds,” which “gin to ope their golden eyes,” was Mary or Big Eye, it may also be surmised that San Marino was the darling of the Mariners, and was the chief Mary-maid, Merro-maid or Mermaid: although the New Testament does not associate the Virgin Mary with mare the sea, amongst her titles are “Myrhh of the Sea,” “Lady of the Sea,” and “Star of the Sea”. At St. Mary’s in the Scillies, in the neighbourhood of Silver Street, is a castle known as Stella Maria: this castle is “built with salient angles resembling the rays of a star,” and Pelistry Bay on the opposite side of the islet was thus presumably sacred to Belle Istry, the Beautiful Istar or Star. It has often been supposed that Start Point was named after Astarte, and there is every probability that the various rivers Stour, including the Kentish Great Stour and Little Stour, were also attributed to Istar or Esther. The Greek version of the Book of Esther—a varient of Istar—contains the remarkable passage, “A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water”: in the neighbourhood of the Kentish Stour is Eastry; in Essex there is a Good Easter and a High Easter, and in Wilts and Somerset are Eastertowns. In England the sun was popularly supposed to dance at Eastertide, and in Britain alone is the Easter festival known under this name: the ancient Germans worshipped a Virgin-mother named Ostara, whose image was common in their consecrated forests.
What is described as the “camp” surrounding St. Albans is called the Oyster Hills, and amid the much water of the Thames Valley is an Osterley or Oesterley. On the Oyster Hills at St. Albans was an hospice for infirm women, dedicated to St. Mary de Pree, the word pree here being probably pre, the French for a meadow—but Verulam may have been pre land, for in ancient times it was known alternatively as Vrolan or Brolan.[715] The Oesterley or Oester meadow in the Thames Valley, sometimes written Awsterley, was obviously common ground, for when Sir Thomas Gresham enclosed it his new park palings were rudely torn down and burnt by the populace, much to the offence of Queen Elizabeth who was staying in the place at the time. Notwithstanding the royal displeasure, complaints were laid against Gresham “by sundry poor men for having enclosed certain common ground to the prejudice of the poor”.
Next Osterley is Brentford, where once stood “the Priory of the Holy Angels in the Marshlands”: other accounts state that this organisation was a “friary, hospital, or fraternity of the Nine holy orders of Angels”. With this holy Nine may be connoted the Nine Men’s Morrice and the favourite Mayday pageant of “the Nine Worthies”. As w and v were always interchangeable we may safely identify the “worthies” with the “virtues,” and I am unable to follow the official connection between worth and verse: there is no immediate or necessary relation between them. The Danish for worth is vorde, the Swedish is varda, and there is thus little doubt that worthy and virtue are one and the same word. In Love’s Labour’s Lost Constable Dull expresses his willingness to “make one in a dance or so, or I will play the tabor to the Worthies and let them dance the Hey”.
Osterley is on the river Brent, which sprang from a pond “vulgarly called Brown’s Well,”[716] whence it is probable that the Brent vulgarly derived its name from Oberon, the All Parent. Brentford was the capital of Middlesex; numerous pre-historic relics have been found there, and that it was a site of immemorial importance is testified by its ancient name of Breninford, supposed to mean King’s Road or Way. But brenen is the plural of bren—a Prince or King, and two fairy Princes or two fairy Kings were traditionally and proverbially associated with the place. In Cowper’s Task occur the lines:—
United yet divided twain at once
So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
Prior, in his Alma, refers to the two Kings as being “discreet and wise,” and it is probable that in Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, of which the scene is laid at Brentford, we have further scraps of genuine and authentic tradition. The Rehearsal introduces us to two true Kings and two usurpers: the true Kings who are represented as being very fond of one another come on to the stage hand-in-hand, and are generally seen smelling at one rose or one nosegay. Imagining themselves being plotted against, one says to the other:—