Along the vaulted blue profound,
And emblematic of Thy race
We tread our mystic circle round.
Chorus. Shine upon us mighty God,
Raise this drooping world of ours;
Send from Thy divine abode
Cheering sun and fruitful showers.
In view of the survival elsewhere of Druidic chants and creeds which are unquestionably ancient, it is quite possible that in the above we have a genuine relic of prehistoric belief: that the ideas expressed were actually held might without difficulty be proved from many scattered and independent sources; that Cumberland has clung with extraordinary tenacity to certain ancient forms is sufficiently evident from the fact that even to-day the shepherds of the Borrowdale district tell their sheep in the old British numerals, yan, tyan, tethera, methera,[787] etc.
The most famous of all English apple orchards was the Avalon of Somerset which as we have seen was encircled by the little river Brue: with Avalon is indissolubly associated the miraculous Glastonbury Thorn, and that Avalon[788] was essentially British and an abri of King Bru or Cynbro is implied by its alternative title of Bride Hay or Bride Eye: not only is St. Brighid said to have resided at Avalon or the Apple Island, but among the relics long faithfully preserved there were the blessed Virgin’s scrip, necklace, distaff, and bell. The fact that the main streets of Avalon form a perfect cross may be connoted with Sir John Maundeville’s statement that while on his travels in the East he was shown certain apples: “which they call apples of Paradise, and they are very sweet and of good savour. And though you cut them in ever so many slices or parts across or end-wise, you will always find in the middle the figure of the holy cross.”[789] That Royston, near the site of “Heaven’s Walls,” was identified with the Rood, Rhoda, or Rose Cross is evident from the ancient forms of the name Crux Roies (1220), Croyrois (1263), and Villa de Cruce Rosia (1298): legend connects the place with a certain Lady Roese, “about whom nothing is known,” and probability may thus associate this mysterious Lady with Fair Rosamond or the Rose of the World. In the Middle Ages, The Garden of the Rose was merely another term for Eden, Paradise, Peter’s Orchard, or Heaven’s Walls, and the Lady of the Rose Garden was unquestionably the same as the Ruler of the Isles called Fortunate—