Seven howers in skirmish continued shee,
Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree?[760]
The sex of this braw Maiden was disguised under a knight’s panoply, and it was only when the fight was finished that her personality was revealed.
No captain of England; behold in your sight
Two breasts in my bosome, and therefore no knight,
No knight, sons of England, nor captain you see,
But a poor simple lass called Mary Ambree.
If the reader will turn back to the Virago coins illustrated ante, [p. 596], which I think represent Ked in the aspect of Hecate—the names are no doubt cognate—he will notice the pastoral crook of the little Shepherdess or Bishop of all souls, and there is little doubt that these figures depict what a Welsh Bard termed “the winged genius of the splendid crosier”.
Although Long Meg of Westminster was said to be a Virago, and was connected in popular opinion with “Bulloigne,” it is not unlikely that Bulloigne was a misconception of Bulinga; the ornamental water of what is now St. James’ Park is a reconstruction of what was originally known as Bulinga Fen, and in that swamp it is probable that Kitty-with-her-canstick, alias Belinga the Beautiful Angel, was supposed to dwell. The name Bolingbroke implies the existence somewhere of a Bolinga’s brook where Belle Inga might also probably have been seen “dancing to the cadence of the stream”; in Shropshire is an earthwork known as Billings Ring, and at Truro there is a Bolingey which is surmised to have meant “isle of the Bollings”. These Bollings were presumably related to the Billings of Billingsgate and elsewhere,[761] and the Bellinge or Billing families were almost certainly connected with Billing, the race-hero of the Angles and Varnians. According to Rydberg the celestial Billing “represents the evening and the glow of twilight, and he is ruler of those regions of the world where the divinities of light find rest and peace”: Billing was the divine defender of the Varnians or Varinians, which word, says Rydberg, “means ‘defenders’ and the protection here referred to can be none other than that given to the journeying divinities of light when they have reached the Western horizon”.[762]
