Among other so-called monuments of the Brugh at Moytura recorded in the old annalists are “the Two Paps of the Morrigan,” “The Mound of the Morrigan,” i.e., the Mound of the Great Queen, also a “Bed of the Daughter of Forann”:[895] Forann herself was doubtless the Hag whose weirdly-sculptured chair exists at Lough Crew in Meath: Meath was esteemed the mid, middle, or midst, of Ireland, and here as we have seen existed the central stone at Birr. There is a celebrated Hag’s Bed at Fermoy, doubtless the same Hag as the “Old Woman of Beare,” whose seven periods of youth necessitated all who lived with her to die of old age: this Old Woman’s grandsons and great grandsons were, we are told, tribes and races, and in several stories she appears to the hero as a repulsive hag who suddenly transforms herself into a beautiful Maid. At Moytura—with which tradition intimately associates the Children of Don—is a cairn called to this day the “cairn of the One Man”: with this One Man we may connote Un Khan or Prester John, of whose mystic Kingdom so many marvellous legends circulated during the Middle Ages.
Among the miracles attributed to St. Patrick is one to the effect that by the commandment of God he “made in the earth a great circle with his staff”: this might be described as a byre, i.e., an enclosure or bower, and we may connote the word with the stone circle in Westmoreland, at Brackenbyr, i.e., the byre of Brecon, Brechin, or the Paragon? The husband of Idunn was entitled Brage, whose name inter alia meant King: Brage was the god of poetry and eloquence; a superfluity of prating, pride, and eloquence is nowadays termed brag.
The burial place of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and Columba the Mild, is alleged to be at Duno in Ulster: “In Duno,” says The Golden Legend, “these three be buried all in one sepulchre”: the word Duno is d’uno, the divine Uno, and the spot was no doubt an Eden of “the One Man”: Honeyman[896] is a fairly common English surname, and although this family may have been dealers in honey, it is more probable that they are descendants of the One Man’s ministers: in Friesland are megalithic Hunnebeds, or Giant’s Beds, and I have little doubt that the marvellously scooped stone at Hoy in the Hebrides[897]—the parallel of which existed in Egypt, the Land of the Eye—was originally a Hunne Bed or grotte des fees.
“Of Paradise,” says Maundeville, “I cannot speak for I have not been there”: nevertheless this traveller—who was not necessarily the arch liar of popular assumption—has recorded many artificial paradises which he was permitted to explore: the word paradise is the Persian pairidaeza, which means an enclosure, or place walled in: it is thus cognate with our park, and the first parks were probably sanctuaries of the divine Pair. Nowhere that I know of is the place-name Paradise[898] more persistent than in Thanet or Tanet, a name supposed by the authorities to be Celtic for fire: at the nose of the North Foreland old maps mark Faire Ness, and I have little doubt that Thanet, “by some called Athanaton and Thanaton,”[899] was originally sacred to Athene. In Suffolk is a Thingoe, which is understood to mean “how, or mound of the thing, or provincial assembly”: the chief Cantian thing or folkmoot was probably held at the Dane John at Cantuarbig or Durovernon; the word think implies that Athene was a personification of Reason or Holy Rhea, and the equivalence of the words remercie and thank, suggest that all dons, donatives, and donations were deemed to have come from the Madonna or Queen Mercy, to whom thanks or remerciements were rendered by the utterance of her name. In the North of England there are numerous places named Unthank, which seemingly is ancient Thank: the Deity is still thanked for meat, i.e., fare, or forage; free, according to Pearsall, “comes from an Aryan root meaning dear (whence also our word friend), and meant in old Teutonic times those who are dear to the head of the household—that is connected with him by ties of friendship, and not slaves, or in bondage”.[900] The word dear, French adore, connects tre or abode with Droia or Troy: yet the Sweet Maiden of Crete could at times show dour displeasure, and one of her best known representations is thus described: “The pose of the little figure is dignified and firm, the side face is even winning, but the eyes are fierce, and the outstretched hands holding the heads of the snakes are so tense and show such strength that we instinctively feel this was no person to be played with”.[901] The connection at Edanhall of The Maiden’s Step with Giant Torquin establishes a probability that the Maid or the Maiden was either the Troy Queen or the Eternal Queen, or dur queen, the hard Queen, at times a little dragon, oftener a dear Queen, i.e., Britomart, the Sweet Maiden, or Eda, the passionately beloved, the Adorée. “Bride, the gentle” is an epithet traditionally applied to St. Bride, St. Brigit, or St. Brig; in Welsh, brig and brigant mean tip top or summit, and these terms may be connoted with the Irish brig meaning pre-eminent power, influence, authority, and high esteem. At Chester, or Deva, there has been found an inscription to the “Nymph-Goddess Brig,” and at Berrens in Scotland has been found an altar to the Goddess of Brigantia, which exhibits a winged deity holding a spear in one hand, and a globe in the other.
In the British Museum is a coin lettered Cynethryth Regina: this lady, who is described as the widow of Offa, is portrayed “in long curls, behind head long cross”: assuredly there were numerous Queen Cynethryths, but the original Cynethryth was equally probably Queen Truth, and in view of the fact that the motto of Bardic Druidism was “the Truth against the world,” we may perhaps assume that the Druid was a follower of Truth or Troth.
In the opinion of the learned Borlase the sculpture illustrated on page 485 represents the six progressive orders of Druidism contemplating Truth, the younger men on the right viewing the Maiden draped in the garb of convention, the older ones on the left beholding her nude in her symbolic aspect as the feeder of two serpents: it is not improbable that Quendred, the miraculous light-bearing Mother of St. Dunstan, was a variant of the name Cynethryth, at times Queen Dread, at times Queen Truth.
Fig. 461.—Britannia, A.D. 1919.
By permission of the Proprietors of “Punch”.
The frequent discovery of coins—Roman and otherwise—within cromlechs such as Kit’s Coty and other sacred sites appears to me to prove nothing in respect of age, but rather a survival of the ancient superstition that the fairies possessed from time immemorial certain fields which could not be taken away or appropriated without gratifying the pixy proprietors by a piece of money:[902] the land-grabber is no novelty, nor seemingly is conscience money. That important battles occurred at such sites as Moytura and Braavalla is no argument that those fantastic Troy Towns or Drewsteigntons were, as Fergusson laboriously maintained, monuments to commemorate slaughter. According to Homer—