Nevertheless the Druid or Instructor runs through a sequence expounding three as the three Kingdoms of Merlin, five as the terrestrial zones, or the divisions of time, and six as “babes of wax quickened into life through the power of the moon”:[928] the moon which periodically wanes and waxes like a matron, was of course Diana, whence possibly the sixfold form of the dene or Dane holes.
In the Caucasus—the land of the Kimbry, don was a generic term for water and for river:[929] we have a river Dane in Cheshire, a river Dean in Nottinghamshire, a river Dean in Forfarshire, a river Dun in Lincolnshire, a river Dun in Ayrshire, and a river Don in Yorkshire, Aberdeen, and Antrim. There is a river Don in Normandy, and elsewhere in France there is a river Madon which is suggestive of the Madonna: the root of all these terms is seemingly Diane, Diana, or Dione, and it may reasonably be suggested that the dene or Dane holes of this country, like many other dens, were originally shrines dedicated to the prehistoric Madonna.
The fact that the subsidence at Modingham immediately filled up with water is presumptive evidence not only of a vast cavern, but also of a subterranean river, or perhaps a lake. That such spots were sacrosanct is implied by numerous references such as that quoted by Herbert wherein an Italian poet describes a visit of King Arthur to a small mount situated in a plain, and covered with stones: into that mount the King followed a hind he was chasing, tracking her through subterranean passages until he reached a cavern where “he saw the preparations for earthquakes and volcanic fires. He saw the flux and reflux of the sea.”
Thirteenth Century Window from Chartres.
Fig. 472.—From Christian Iconography (Didron).
Among the poems of Taliesin is one entitled The Spoils of Hades, wherein the mystic Arthur is figured as the retriever of a magic cauldron, no doubt the sun or else the pair dadeni, or cauldron of new birth: “It commences,” says Herbert, “with reference to the prison-sepulchre of Arthur describing in all six such sanctuaries; though I should rather say one such under six titles”. This mysterious six is suggestive of the sixfold dene holes, and that this six was for some reason associated with the Madonna is obvious from the Christian emblem here illustrated. According to the theories of the author of L’Antre des Nymphes, “the cave was considered in ancient times as the universal matrix from which the world and men, light and the heavenly bodies, alike have sprung, and the initiation into ancient mysteries always took place in a cave”. I have not read this work, and am unacquainted with the facts upon which M. Saintyves bases his conclusions: these, however, coincide precisely with my own. It will not escape the reader’s attention that Fig. 472 is taken from Chartres, the central site of Gaul, to which as Cæsar recorded the Druids annually congregated.
Layamon in his Brut recounts that Arthur took counsel with his knights on a spot exceeding fair, “beside the water that Albe was named”:[930] I am unable to trace any water now existing of that name which, however, is curiously reminiscent of Coleridge’s romantic Alph:—
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran