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It has been seen that Prydain—of whom it was claimed that before his coming there was little ordinance in these Islands save only a superiority of oppression—was the reputed child of King Aedd: Aedd was one of the titles of Hu, the first of our national Three Pillars, and he was probably identical with Aeddon, a name which, says Davies, “I think was a title of the god himself”: the priests of Hu were apparently termed Aeddons, whence like the Mountjoys of France we may assume they were the denizens of the Aeddon duns: inquiry will probably establish one of these sanctuaries at Haddington; at Addington (Domesday Edintone) in Kent there are the remains of one still standing. With the pagan Aeddons may be connoted the Celtic Saint Aidan, Æden, or Aiden, whose name is associated with Lindisfarne, also the St. Aidan, or Maidoc of Ferns, who among other prodigies is recorded as having driven to and from Rome in twenty-four hours. At Farn MacBride in Glencolumkille, there are some cromlechs which exactly resemble in plan the house of Lady Vera, or Birra, at New Grange:[878] at Evora, in Portugal, situated on bleak heathland, is a similar monument which Borrow described as the most perfect and beautiful of its kind he had ever seen: “It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something like the shape of scallop shells.... Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior in which was growing a small thorn tree.”[879] The scallop shell, like the cockle and all coquilles, was obviously an emblem of Evora, the Ovary, the Aber, the opening.
The Bona dea of Candia was represented with a headdress in the form of a cat; we shall connote this animal (German kater) with St. Caterina or Kate, the immaculate pure one, and it is not unnoteworthy that the Kentish Kit’s coty, near Maidstone, vide the photograph here reproduced, contains what might be a rude much-weathered image of the sacred cat, lioness, or kitten:[880] In Caledonia is a famous Cat[881] Stane, and the Duchess of Sutherland still bears the honorary title “Lady of the Cat”.[882] The word kitten resolves into Great Itten: the New Forest used to be known as the Forest of Ytene,[883] and I do not think that the great British Forest of Dean has any real connection with the supposition that the Danes may have taken up their residence there: Dean was almost a generic name for forest, and we meet with it from Arden to the Ardennes.[884]
For an explication of the word dawn Skeat observes: “see day”; it is, however, probable that dawn was the little or young Don or Adon. By the Welsh the constellation Cassiopeaia is known under the title of Don’s chair. That the Irish Don was Truth is probable from the statement “His blue dome (the sky) was an infallible weather-glass, whence its name the Hill of Truth”.[885]
According to the Edda,[886] a collection of traditions which have been assigned variously by scholars to Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles, the world was created by the sons of Bor, and in the beginning the gods built a citadel in Ida-plain and an age of universal innocence prevailed. Situated on Cockburn Law in Berwickshire—a wick or fortress of Ber upon which stands the largest of all the brochs—is a prehistoric circle known as Edina or Wodens Hall. The English name Edana or Edna, defined as meaning perfect happiness or rich gift, is stated to be a variant of Ida or Ada: in Hebrew the name Adah means beauty, and Ada, the lovely daughter of Adam, is probably Eda, the “passionately beloved”[887] Breaton princess of Hibernia, or Ma Ida of Tyburnia or Marylebone.
The Garden of Eden has somewhat unsuccessfully, I believe, been located in Mesopotamia: the Jews doubtless had their Edens even though Palestine is arid, and the authorities translate the name Adam as having meant red earth: according to early Rabbinical writers Adam was a giant; he touched the Arctic pole with one hand and the Antarctic with the other.[888] I have here noted but a handful of the innumerable Edens in Britain which includes five rivers of that name:[889] that the Lady of Britain was Prydain, Brython, or pure Athene, i.e., Wisdom, is a well-recognised tradition, for she is conventionally represented as Athene. In Greece the girl-name Theana meant Divine Intelligence,[890] and Ida was interpreted far seeing: in Troy the goddess of the city, which originally stood upon a dun hill, was Athene, and the innumerable owl-headed emblems found there by Schliemann were her sign: “Before the human form was adopted her (Athene’s) proper symbol was the Owl; a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness and refinement, of organic perception; its eyes being calculated to discern objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness; its ear to hear sounds distinctly when no other can perceive them at all, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease.”[891]
We have noted the existence of some exclusively British fairies known as Portunes: among the Latins Portunas was a name of Triton or Neptune: the Mother of the British Portunes might be termed Phortuna, or, as we should now write the word, Fortuna, and the stone circle at Goodaver in Cornwall might be described as a Wheel of Good Phortune: the Hebrew for fortune is gad, and it is probable that the famous Gadshill, near Rochester, was at one time a God’s Hill; from Kit’s Coty on the heights above Rochester it is stated that according to tradition a continuous series of stone monuments once extended to Addington where are still the remains of another coty or cromlech.
There are in England numerous Addingtons or Edintones, and at at least two of these are Druidic remains: the Kentish Addington, near Snodland and Kit’s Coty, is dedicated to St. Margaret, and the church itself is situated on a rise or dun. Half a mile from Bacton in Hereford is a small wood known as St. Margaret’s Park, and in the centre of this is a cruciform mound, its western arm on the highest ground, its eastern on the lowest: this cruciform mound was described in 1853 as being 15 feet at base,[892] a familiar figure which may be connoted with the statement in The Golden Legend that St. Margaret was fifteen years of age. In addition to the cruciform mount at St. Margaret’s Park, Bacton, there are further remains of archæologic interest: about 100 years ago nine large yew trees which were surrounding it—one of gigantic size—were felled to the ground, and my authority states that its venerable antiquity was evident from the decayed stumps of oaks still visible felled ages ago together with more recent ones.[893] In addition to the cross in this prehistoric Oak grove of the Lady Margaret there are three curious cavities, two of them circular, the third oval or egg-shaped: the ancient veneration for the oeuf, or egg, has degenerated to the Easter egg, and in Ireland the Dummy’s Hill,[894] associated with egg-trundling may, I think, be equated with Donna or the Dame.
The Cretan Britomart in Greek was understood to mean sweet maiden; in Welsh pryd meant precious, dear, fair, beautiful; Eda of Ireland was “passionately beloved,” and to the Britons the sweet maiden was inferentially Britannia, the new pure Athene, Ma Ida the Maid or Maiden whose character is summed up in the words prude, proud, pride, and pretty. In Ireland we may trace her as Meave, alias Queen Mab, and the headquarters of this Maiden were either at Tara or at Moytura: the latter written sometimes Magh Tuireadh, probably meant the plain of Troy, for there are still all the evidences here of a megalithic Troy town. The probabilities are that Stanton Drew in Somerset, like Drewsteignton in Devon, with which tradition connects St. Keyna, was another Dru stonetown for here are a cromlech, a logan stone, two circles, some traces of the Via Sacra or Druid Way and an ancient British camp: in Aberdeen there are circles at Tyrebagger, Dunadeer, and at Deer.