Before the city stands a lofty mound,
In the mid plain, by open space enclos’d;
Men call it Batiaea; but the Gods
The tomb of swift Myrinna; muster’d there
The Trojans and Allies their troops array’d.[903]
Nothing is more certain than that with the exception of a negligible number of conscientious objectors, a chivalrous people would defend its Eyedun to the death, and that the last array against invaders would almost invariably occur in or around the local Sanctuarie or Perry dun.
It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as “the Fatherland”: the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: “At first,” says Mackenzie, “the Cretan Earth Mother was the culture deity who instructed mankind ... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation.”[904]
FOOTNOTES:
[820] Irish Folklore, p. 32.
[821] Irish Folklore, p.78