The Eye dun illustrated ante, [page 584], which is described as the strangest, most solitary, most prehistoric-looking of all our motes, is known as Trowdale Mote; St. Columba is associated with Tiree; he is also said to have been imprisoned at Tara, and to have written the book Durrow with his own hand: there is thus some ground for tracing the Mote, Maton, Maid or Maiden, alias St. Columba, to Droia or Troy. That the dove was pre-eminently a Cretan emblem is well known, and that all derrys or trees were sacred Troys or sanctuaries is further implied by the ancient meaning of the adjective terribilis, i.e., sacred: thus we find Westminster or Thorn Ey alluded to by old writers as a locus terribilis,[868] and it would seem that any awe-inspiring or awful spot was deemed terrible or sacred.
In the Celtic Calendar there figures a St. Maidoc or Aidan: Maidoc is maid high, and I am afraid St. Aidan was occasionally “a romping girl” or hoiden. One does not generally associate Pallas Athene with revelry, and it is difficult to connect with gaiety the grim example of Athene which the present proprietors of The Athenæum have adopted as their ideal; yet, says Plato, “Our virgin Lady, delighting in the sports of the dance, thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the festivals.” Hoiden or hoyden meant likewise a gypsy—a native of Egypt “the Land of the Eye”—and also a heathen: Athene, who was certainly a heathen maid, may be connoted with Idunn of Scandinavia, who keeps the apples which symbolise the ever-renewing and rejuvenating force of Nature.[869] Tradition persistently associates Eden with an apple, although Holy Writ contains nothing to warrant the connection: similarly tradition says that Eve had a daughter named Ada: as Idunn was said to be the daughter of Ivalde we may equate Idunn, the young and lovely apple-maid, with Ada or Ida, and Ivalde, her mother with the Old Wife, or Ive Old.[870] In an earlier chapter we connected Eve with happy, Hob, etc., and there is little doubt that Eve, “the Ivy Girl,” was the Greek Hebe who had the power of making old men young again, and filled the goblets of the gods with nectar.
Idunn, “the care-healing maid who understands the renewal of youth,” was, we are told, the youthful leader of the Idunns or fairies: in present-day Welsh edyn means a winged one, and ednyw a spirit or essence. It is said that from the manes of the horses of the Idunns dropped a celestial dew which filled the goblets and horns of the heroes in Odin’s hall; it is also said that the Idunns offer full goblets and horns to mortals, but that these, thankless, usually run away with the beaker after spilling its contents on the ground. There must be an intimate connection between the legend of the fair Idunns, and the fact that at the Caledonian Edenhall, on the river Eden, is preserved an ancient goblet known as The Luck of Edenhall:—
If this glass do break or fall
Farewell the luck of Edenhall.
The river Eden flows into the Solway Firth, possibly so named because the Westering Sun must daily have been seen to create a golden track or sun-way over the Solway waters. Ptolemy refers to Solway Firth as Ituna Estuarium, so that seemingly Eden or Ituna may be equated not only with the British rivers Ytene and Aeithon, but also with the Egyptian Aten. According to Prof. Petrie, the cult of Aten “does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth. The Sun is represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends in a hand which imparts life and power to the king and to all else. In the hymn to the Aten, the universal scope of this power is proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know, and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions while it is even more abstract and impersonal and may well rank as a scientific theism.”
Fig. 455.—British. From Evans
Egyptian literature tells of a King Pepi questing for the tree of life in company with the Morning Star carrying a spear of Sunbeams.
Thy rising is beautiful, O living Aton, Lord of Eternity,