Tradition asserts that the abbey church of St. Peter’s at Westminster occupies the site of a pagan temple to Apollo—the Etrurian form of Apollo was Aplu, and there is no doubt that the sacred apple of the Druids was the symbol of the “rubicund, radiant Elphin” or Apollo. According to Malory, a certain Sir Patrise lies buried in Westminster, and this knight came to his untoward end by eating an apple, whereupon “suddenly he brast (burst)”:[778] from this parallel to the story of St. Margaret erupting from a dragon it is probable that Sir Patrise was the original patron of Westminster, or ancient Thorney Eye. Patera was a generic title borne by the ministers at Apollo’s shrines, and as glorious Apollo was certainly the Shine, it is more than likely that Petersham Park at Sheen, where still stands a supposedly Roman petra or altar-stone, was a park or enclosure sacred to Peter, or, perhaps, to Patrise of the apple-bursting story.
The Romans applied the title Magonius to the Gaulish and British Apollo; sometimes St. Patrick is mentioned as Magounus, and it is probable that both these epithets are Latinised forms of the British name Magon: the Druidic Magon who figures in the traditions of Cumberland is in all probability the St. Mawgan whose church neighbours that of the Maiden St. Columb in the Hundred of Pydar in Cornwall.
One of the principal towns in Westmorland is Appleby, which was known to the Romans as Abellaba: the Maiden Way of Westmorland traverses Appleby, starting from a place called Kirkby Thore, and here about 200 years ago was found the supposed “amulet or magical spell,” illustrated in Fig. 422. The inscription upon the reverse is in Runic characters, which some authorities have read as Thor Deus Patrius; and if this be correct the effigy would seem to be that of the solar Sir Patrise, for apparently the object in the right hand is an apple: there is little doubt that the great Pater figures at Patterdale, at Aspatria, and at the river Peterill, all of which are in this neighbourhood, and in all probability the Holy Patrise or Aspatria was represented by the culminating peak known as the “Old Man” of Coniston.
Some experts read the legend on Fig. 422 as Thurgut Luetis, meaning “the face or effigies of the God Thor”: according to others Thurgut was the name of the moneyer or mintmaster; according to yet others the coin was struck in honour of a Danish Admiral named Thurgut: where there is such acute diversity of opinion it is permissible to suggest that Thurgut—whose effigy is seemingly little suggestive of a sea-dog—was originally the Three Good or the Three God, for the figure’s sceptre is tipped by the three circles of Good Thought, Good Deed, and Good Word. In Berkshire the country people, like the Germans with their drei, say dree instead of three, and thus it may be that the Apples Three, or the Apollos Three (for the ancients recognised Three Apollos—the celestial, the terrestrial, and the infernal) were worshipped at Appledre, or Appledore opposite Barnstable, and at Appledur Comb or Appledurwell, a manor in the parish of Godshill, Isle of Wight.
Fig. 422.—From A New Description of England.
English “Appletons” are numerous, and at Derby is an Appletree which was originally Appletrefelde: it is known that this Apple-Tree-Field contained an apple-tree which was once the meeting place of the Hundred or Shire division, and it is probable that the two Apuldre’s of Devon served a similar public use. As late as 1826 it was the custom, at Appleton in Cheshire, “at the time of the wake to clip and adorn an old hawthorn which till very lately stood in the middle of the town. This ceremony is called the bawming (dressing) of Appleton Thorn”.[779] Doubtless Appleton Thorn was originally held in the same estimation as the monument bushes of Ireland, which are found for the most part in the centre of road crossings. According to the anonymous author of Irish Folklore,[780] these ancient and solitary hawthorns are held in immense veneration, and it would be considered profanation to destroy them or even remove any of their branches: from these fairy and phooka-haunted sites, a lady dressed in a long flowing white robe was often supposed to issue, and “the former dapper elves are often seen hanging from or flitting amongst their branches”. We have in an earlier chapter considered the connection between spikes and spooks, and it is obvious that the White Lady or Alpa of the white thorn or aubespine is the Banshee or Good Woman Shee:—
She told them of the fairy-haunted land
Away the other side of Brittany,
Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea;