Crystal brows with blossoms.
There is a distant isle
Around which sea horses glisten:
A fair course against the white swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.
In Wales on 1st January children used to carry from door to door a holly-decked apple into which were fixed three twigs—presumably an emblem of the Apple Island or Island of Apollo, supported on the three sweet notes of the Awen or creative Word. Into this tripod apple were stuck oats:[786] the effigy of St. Bride which used to be carried from door to door consisted of a sheaf of oats; in Anglo-Saxon oat was ate, plural aten, and it is evident that oats were peculiarly identified with the Maiden.
In Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise there again enters the magic Silver Branch, with three golden apples on it: “Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded or women in childbed or folk in sickness would fall asleep, at the melody when that branch was shaken”. The Silver Branch which seems to have been sometimes that of the Apple, sometimes of the Whitethorn, corresponds to the mistletoe or Three-berried and Three-leaved Golden Bough: until recent years a bunch of Mistletoe or “All Heal”—the essential emblem of Yule—used to be ceremoniously elevated to the proclamation of a general pardon at York or Ebor: it is still the symbol of an affectionate cumber or gathering together of kinsmen. King Camber is said to have been the son of Brutus; he was therefore, seemingly, the young St. Nicholas or the Little Crowned King, and in Cumberland the original signification of the “All Heal” would appear to have been traditionally preserved. In Tales and Legends of the English Lakes Mr. Wilson Armistead records that many strange tales are still associated with the Druidic stones, and in the course of one of these alleged authentic stories he prints the following Invocation:—
1st Bard. Being great who reigns alone,
Veiled in clouds unseen unknown;
Centre of the vast profound,