[CHAPTER XIII.]
ENGLISH EDENS
At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts being the artists who give colour to our days. Optimists and pessimists live in the same world, walk under the same sky, and observe the same facts. Sceptics and believers look up at the same great stars—the stars that shone in Eden, and will flash again in Paradise.—Dr. J. Fort Newton.
The name under which Jupiter was worshipped in Crete is not yet deciphered, but as we are told that the favourite abode of King Jou at Gnossus was on Mount Olympus where in its delightful recesses he held his court, and administered patriarchal justice; and as we are further told by Julius Firmicus that: “vainly the Cretans to this day adore the tumulus of Jou,” it is fairly obvious that, however many historic King Jou’s there may have been, the archetypal Jou was a lord of the tumulus or dun.
The ancient Irish were accustomed to call any hill or artificial mound under which lay vaults, a shee, which also is the generic term for fairy: similarly we have noted a connection between the term rath—or dun—and wraith. Although fairies were partial to banks, braes, purling brooks, brakes, and bracken, they particularly loved to congregate in duns or raths, and their rapid motions to and fro these headquarters were believed to create a noise “somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive”. I have little doubt that all hills, bryns, or barrows were regarded not only as bruen, or breasts, but as ethereal beehives, and the superstitions still associated with bees are evidence that bees themselves were once deemed sacred. There are upwards of a thousand localities in Ireland alone where the word rath, raw, rah, ray, or ra marks the site of a fairy rath,[820] and without going so far as to assert that every British -dun or -ton was a fairy dun or doun further investigation will probably establish an unsuspected multitude of Dunhills or Edens.
Fig. 444.—Birs Nimroud.
We have seen that in Ireland fern meant anciently anything good, and also in all probability fer en the Fires or Fairies: at the romantic hill of Cnock-Firinn or the Hill of firinn was supposed to dwell a fairy chief named Donn Firineach, i.e., Donn the Truthful or the Truthteller;[821] evidently, therefore, this Don was a counterpart and consort of Queen Vera, and as he is reputed to have come from Spain his name may be connoted with the Spanish don which, like the Phœnician adon, is a generic term meaning the lord. With “Generous Donn the King of Faery” may be connoted the Jewish Adonai, a plural form of Adon “lord” combined with the pronoun of the first person: when reading the Scriptures aloud the Jews rather than utter the super-sacred word Jhuh, substitute Adonai, and in Jewry Adonai is thus a title of the Supreme Being. Among the Phœnicians Adon or the lord was specially applied to the King of Heaven or the Sun and that sacred Nineveh was essentially a dunhill is evidenced by Fig. 444
With Adon may be connoted Adonis, the lovely son of Myrrha and Kinyras, whose name has been absorbed into English as meaning any marvellously well-favoured youth: prior to the festivals of Adonis it was customary to grow forced gardens in earthen or silver pots, and there would thus seem to have been a close connection in ideas between our English “whytepot queen” or maiden with the pyramid of silver, and with the symbolic Gardens of Adonis or Eden as grown in Phrygia and Egypt.
Skeat connotes the word maiden—which is an earlier form than maid—with the Cornish maw, a boy: if, however, we read ma as mother the word maiden becomes Mother Iden, and I have little doubt that the Maiden of mythology and English harvest-homes was the feminine Adonis. Adonis was hymned as the Shepherd of the Twinkling Stars; I have surmised that Long Meg of the seventy-two Daughters was the Mighty Maiden of the Stars, whence it is interesting to find Skeat connoting maiden with Anglo-Saxon magu, a kinsman: that Long Meg was the All Mother whence mag or mac came to mean child of has already been suggested. Not only does Long Meg of Cumberland stand upon Maiden Way, but there is in the same district a Maidenmoor probably like Maidenhead or Maidenheath, a heath or mead dedicated to the Maid. Our dictionaries define the name May as a contraction of either Mary or Margaret, i.e., Meg: in the immediate neighbourhood of Long Meg is another circle called Mayborough, of which the vallum or enclosure is composed of stones taken from the beds of the Eamount or Eden rivers; in the centre of Mayborough used to stand four magnificent monoliths probably representative of the four deacons or Good Kings who supported the Whytepot Queen.
There is a seat called St. Edans in Ireland close to Ferns where, as will be remembered, is St. Mogue’s Well: in Lincolnshire is a Maidenwell-cum-Farworth, and at Dorchester is a Haydon Hill in the close proximity of Forstone and Goodmanstone. That this Haydon was the Good Man is implied by the stupendous monument near by known as Mew Dun, Mai Dun, or Maiden Castle: this chef d’œuvre of prehistoric engineering, generally believed to be the greatest earthwork in Britain, is an oblong camp extending 1000 yards from east to west with a width of 500 yards, and it occupies an area of 120 acres:[822] entered by four gates the work itself is described as puzzling as a series of mazes, and to reach the interior one is compelled to pass through a labyrinth of defences. The name Dorchester suggests a Droia or Troy camp, and I have little doubt that the labyrinthine Maiden was a colossal Troy Town or Drayton. Among the many Draytons in England is a Drayton-Parslow, which suggests that it stood near or upon a Parr’s low or a Parr’s lea: out of great Barlow Street, Marylebone, leads Paradise Place and Paradise Passage: there is a Drayton Park at Highbury, and in the immediate proximity an Eden Grove and Paradise Road: there was a Troy Town where Kensington Palace now stands,[823] and in all likelihood there was another one at Drayton near Hanwell and Hounslow. That Hounslow once contained an onslow or ange hill seems to me more probable than that it was merely the “burial mound” of an imaginary Hund or Hunda: in Domesday Hounslow figures as Honeslow which may be connoted with Honeybourne at Evesham and Honeychurch in Devon. With regard to the latter it has been observed: “The connection between a church and honey is not very obvious, and this is probably Church of Huna”: the official explanation of “Honeybourne” is—“brook with honey sweet water,” but it is more probable that Queen Una was reputed to dwell there. That Una was not merely the creation of Spenser is evidenced from the fact that in Ireland “Una is often named by the peasantry as regent of the preternatural Sheog tribes”:[824] at St. Mary’s-in-the-Marsh, Thanet, is a Honeychild Manor and an Old Honeychild: with the Three White Balls at Iona it may be noted that on the summit of Hydon Heath (Surrey) is a place marked Hydon’s Ball.