Thy hand is violent, thou queen of war,
Girded with battle and enrobed with fear,
Thou sov’ran wealder of the wand of Doom,
The heavens and earth are under thy control.
There is very little doubt that the heroic Long Meg of Westminster was alternatively the Mary Ambree of old English ballad: in Ben Jonson’s time apparently any remarkable virago was entitled a Mary Ambree, and the name seems to have been particularly associated with Ghent.[751] As the word Ambree is radically bree, it is curious to find John of Gaunt, who is associated with Kensington, also associated with Carn Brea in Cornwall: here, old John of Gaunt is believed to have been the last of the giants, and to have lived in a castle on the top of Carn Brea, whence in one stride he could pass to a neighbouring town four miles distant. The Heraldic Chain of SSS was known as John of Gaunt’s chain: the symbol of SSS occurs frequently on Candian or Cretan monuments, and it is probable that John of Gaunt’s chain was originally Jupiter’s, or Brea’s chain.[752]
The name Ghent, Gand, or Gaunt may be connoted not only with Kent or Cantium, and Candia or Crete, but also with Dr. Lardner’s statement: “That the full moon was the chief feast among the ancient Spaniards is evident from the fact that Agandia or Astartia is the name for Sunday among the Basques”.
We have already seen that Cain was identified with “the Man in the Moon,” that cann was the Cornish for full moon, and we have connoted the fairy Kenna of Kensington with the New Moon: the old English cain, meaning fair or bright, is clearly connected with candid and candescent. Kenna is the saint to whom the village of Keynsham on the Somersetshire Avon is dedicated, and St. Kenna is said there to have lived in the heart of a wood. To the north of Kensington lies St. John’s Wood, and also the ancient seat named Caen or Ken Wood: this Ken Wood, which is on the heights of Highgate, and is higher than the summit of St. Paul’s, commands a panoramic view of the metropolis that can nowhere else be matched. Akin to the words ken, cunning, and canny, is the Christian name Conan which is interpreted as being Celtic for wisdom. The Celtic names Kean and Kenny—no doubt akin to Coyne—meant vast, and in Cornish ken meant pity. On the river Taff there is a Llangain of which the church is dedicated to St. Canna, and on the Welsh river Canna there is a Llanganna or Llangan: at Llandaff by Cardiff is Canon’s Park.
There is a celebrated well in Cornwall known as St Kean’s, St. Kayne’s, St. Keyne’s, or St. Kenna’s, and the supposed peculiarity of this fountain is that it confers mastery or chieftainship upon whichever of a newly-wedded couple first drinks at it after marriage. St. Kayne or St. Kenna is also said to have visited St. Michael’s Mount, and to have imparted the very same virtue to a stone seat situated dizzily on the height of the chapel tower: “whichever, man or wife, sits in this chair first shall rule through life”: this double tradition associating rule and mastery with St. Kayne makes it justifiable to equate the “Saint” with kyn, princess and with khan the great Han or King. There was a well at Chun Castle whose waters supposedly bestowed perpetual youth: can, meaning a drinking vessel, is the root of canal, channel, or kennel, meaning water course: we have already connoted the word demijohn or Dame Jeanne with the Cornish well termed Joan’s Pitcher, and this root is seemingly responsible for canopus, the Egyptian and Greek term for the human-headed type of vase as illustrated on page 301. A writer in Notes and Queries for 3rd January, 1852, quotes the following song sung by children in South Wales on New Year’s morning, i.e., 1st January, when carrying a can of water newly drawn from the well:—
Here we bring new water