Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies, knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
In the neighbourhood of Bryanstone Square is Lissom Grove, a corruption of Lillestone Grove: here thus seemingly stood a stone sacred to the Lily or the All Holy, and the neighbouring church of St. Cyprian probably marks the local memory of a traditional sy brian, Sabrina, or dear little brownie.
Near Silchester, on the boundary line between Berks and Hants, is a large stone known as the Imp stone, and as this was formerly called the Nymph stone,[731] it is probable that in this instance the Imp stone was a contraction of Imper or Imber stone—the Imp being the Nymph of the amber-dropping hair. The Scandinavians believed that the steed of the Mother Goddess Nat produced from its mouth a froth, which consisted of honey-dew, and that from its bridle dropped the dews in the dales in the morning: the same idea attached to the steeds of the Valkyre, or War Maidens, from whose manes, when shaken, dew dropped into the deep dales, whence harvests among the people.[732]
Originally, imp meant a scion, a graft, or an offspring, a sprout, or sprig: sprig, spright, spirit, spirt, sprout, and sprack (an old English word meaning lively, perky, or pert), are all radically pr: in London the sparrow “was supposed to be the soul of a dead person”;[733] in Kent, a sparrow is termed a sprug, whence it would appear that this pert, perky, little bird was once a symbol of the sprightly sprout, sprite, or spirit.
Fig. 372.—Six-winged angel holding lance, wings crossed on breast, arrayed in robe and mantle. (From Didron.)
Stow mentions that the fair parish church of St. Michael called Paternoster when new built, was made a college of St. Spirit and St. Mary. All birds in general were symbols of St. Spirit, but more particularly the Columba or Culver,[734] which was pre-eminently the emblem of Great Holy Vere: we have already illustrated a half white, half black, six-winged representation of this sacred sign of simplicity and love, and the six-winged angel here reproduced is, doubtless, another expression of the far-spread idea:—