Fig 418.—Adapted from the Salisbury Chapter Seal. From The Cross: Christian and Pagan (Brock, M.).
That Billing and the Ingles were connected with Barkshire, the county of the Vale of the White Horse or Brok, is implied by place-names such as Billingbare by Inglemeer Pond in the East, by Inkpen Beacon—originally Ingepenne or Hingepenne—in the South, and by Inglesham near Fearnham and Farringdon in the West. Near Inglemeer is Shinfield and slightly westward is Sunning, which must once have been a place of uncanny sanctity for “it is amazing that so inconsiderable a village should have been the See of eight Bishops translated afterwards to Sherborn and at last to Salisbury.”[763] The seal of Salisbury represents the Maiden of the Sun and Moon, and it is probable that the place-name Maidenhead, originally Madenheith, near Marlow (Domesday Merlawe—Mary low or hill?) did not, as Skeat so aggressively assumes, mean a hythe or landing place for maidens, but Maidenheath, a heath or mead sacred to the braw Maiden.
With the Farens and the Varenians may be connoted the Cornish village of Trevarren or the abode of Varren: this is in the parish of St. Columb, where Columba the Dove is commemorated not as a man but as a Virgin Martyr. Many, if not all, Cornish villages had their so-called “Sentry field” and the Broad Sanctuary at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, no doubt marks the site of some such sanctuary or city of refuge as will be considered in a following chapter. That St. Margaret the Meek or Long Meg was the Bride of the adjacent St. Peter is a reasonable inference, and it is probable that “Broad Sanctuary” was originally hers. According to The Golden Legend: “Margaret is Maid of a precious gem or ouche[764] that is named a Margaret. So the blessed Margaret was white by virginity, little by humility, and virtuous by operation. The virtue of this stone is said to be against effusion of blood, against passion of the heart, and to comfortation of the spirit.” I am unable to trace any immediate connection between St. Margaret and the Dove, but an original relation is implied by the epithets which are bestowed by the Gaels to St. Columbkille of Iona who is entitled “The Precious Gem,” “The Royal Bright Star,” “The Meek,” “The Wise,” and “The Divine Branch who was in the yoke of the Pure Mysteries of God”. These are titles older than the worthy monk whose biography was written by Adamnan: they belong to the archetypal Columba or Culver. There is a river Columb in Devonshire upon which stands the town of Cullompton: in Kent is Reculver once a Royal town of which “the root is unknown, but the present form has been influenced by old English culfre, culfer, a culver-dove or wood-pigeon”.
That St. Columba of Iona was both the White and the Black Culver is implied by his two names of Colum (dove) and Crimthain (wolf): that the great Night-dog or wolf was for some reason connected with the nutrix (vide the coin illustrated on [page 364], and the Etrurian Romulus and Remus legend) is obvious, apart from the significance of the word wolf which is radically olf. Columbas’ mother, we are told, was a certain royal Ethne, the eleventh in descent from Cathair Mor, a King of Leinster: Leinster was a stadr, ster, or place of the Laginenses, and that Columba was a personification of Young Lagin or the Little Holy King of Yule is implied (apart from much other evidence) in the story that one of his visitors “could by no means look upon his face, suffused as it was with a marvellous glow, and he immediately fled in great fear”.
Among the Gaels the Little Holy King of Tir an Og, or the Land of the Young, was Angus Og or Angus the youthful: when discussing Angus (excellent virtue) in connection with the ancient goose and the cain goose I was unaware that the Greek for goose is ken. In the far-away Hebrides the men, women, and children of Barra and South Uist (or Aust?) still hold to a primitive faith in St. Columba, St. Bride, or St. Mary, and as a shealing hymn they sing the following astonishingly beautiful folk-song:—
Thou, gentle Michael of the white steed,
Who subdued the Dragon of blood,
For love of God and the Son of Mary
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!