“Brecilicn etait une de ces forets sacrees qu’habitaient les pretresses du druidisme dans le Gaule; son nom et celui de sa vallee l’attesteraient a defaut d’autre temoignage; les noms de lieux sont les plus surs garans des evenemens passés.”—Cf. Notes on The Mabinogion (Everyman’s Library), p. 383-90.
[783] Mitton, G. E., Hampstead and Marylebone.
[784] Probably the Glamorganshire “Tabernae Amnis,” now Bont y Von.
[785] Fearbal or sometimes Fibal. The “Merry Devil” associated in popular tradition with Edmonton beyond Islington was known by the name of Peter Fabell: I think he was originally “the Angel,” and that the names Fearbal or Fabell meant Fairy or Fay Beautiful.
[786] “Morien,” Light of Britannia, p. 61.
[787] I am inclined to think that the eena deena dina dux of childrens’ games may be a similarly ancient survival.
[788] There was also an Aballo, now Avalon, in France: there is also near Dodona in Albania an Avlona or Valona. A correspondent of The Westminster Gazette points out that: “Valona is but a derivative of the Greek (both ancient and modern) Balanos. This is clearer still if you realise that the Greek b is (and no doubt in ancient days also was) pronounced like an English v: thus, valanos.”
[789] Travels in the East, p. 152.
[790] According to Malory: “Merlin made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship.”—Morte D’Arthur, Book xiv. 11.
[791] Fenner, W., Pasquils Palinodia, 1619.