Chapter XIII: English Edens (2)

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 _Edin_tone) 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 Lindis_farne_, 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 _Por_tugal, 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 _kit_ten:[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 _kitt_en 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 Tri_ton_ or Nep_tune_: 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 Britan_nia_, 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 _Tyre_bagger, Dun_adeer_, and at Deer.

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.

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--

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

[822] Heath, F. R. and S., _Dorchester_, p. 40.

[823] Dorchester stands on the "Econ Way"

[824] _Irish Folklore_, p. 79.

[825] In _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, Mr. and Mrs. Hawes
remark that Browning's great monologue corresponds perfectly
with all we know of the Minoan goddess--

I shed in Hell o'er my pale people peace
On earth, I caring for the creatures guard
Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,
And every feathered mother's callow brood,
And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

[826] _Iliad_, xv., 175.

[827] _London_, p. 59.

[828] _Irish Folklore_, p. 34.

[829] Gomme, Sir L., _The Topography of London_, ii., 215.

[830] See Cynethryth _post_, p. 761.

[831] _Golden Legend_, iii., 188.

[832] Hunt, R., _Popular Romances of the West of England_, p. 73.

[833] Cf. Numbers xiii. 33.

[834] Adjacent to Perry Mount, Perrivale, Sydenham, are Adamsrill
road, Inglemere road, _Allen_by road, and _Ex_bury road.

[835] This Tanfield Court supposedly takes its name from an
individual named Tanfield. Wherever the original Tanfield was
it was doubtless the scene of many a bonfire or Beltan
similar to the joyous "Tan Tads," or "Fire Fathers" of
Brittany.

[836] _Cf_. Forster, Rev. C., _The One Primeval Language_, 1851.

[837] _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 131.

[838] "His feathers were all ruffled for he had been grossly
handled by a glove not of silk, but of wool, so he preened
and plumed himself carefully with his beak."

[839] _Folklore_, xxix., No. 3, p. 195.

[840] P. 165.

[841] At Bickley in Kent there is a _Shaw_field Park, which may be
connoted with the Bagshaw's Cavern at Buxton.

[842] By Chee Tor is Mon_sal_ Dale, and we may reasonably connote
_sal_ and "_salt_" with Silbury and Sol: into the waters of
the Solway Firth flows the river Eden or Ituna, and doubtless
the Edinburgh by Salisbury Crags is older than any Saxon
Edwin or Scandinavian Odin. (Since writing I find it was
originally named Dunedin, _cf._ Morris Jones, Sir G.,
_Taliesin_.)

[843] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.

[844] Chapter I.

[845] From an article by Dr. Paul Carus in _The Open Court_.

[846] The fine megalith now standing half a mile distant at "The
Den" was transported from Devonshire about a century ago--no
doubt with the idea of tripping some unwary archæologist.

[847] _Odyssey_, Book I., 67.

[848] _Cours d'Hieroglyphique Chretienne_, in _L'Universite
Catholique_, vol. vi., p. 266.

[849] _Cf._ Hazlitt, W. C., _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.

[850] Hunt, p. 328.

[851] Deer, near Aberdeen, is said to have derived its name from
_deur_, the Gaelic for _tear_, because St. Drostan shed tears
there. The monkish authority in the Book of Deer says:
"Drostan's tears came on parting with Columcille". Said
Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward".

[852] Fergusson, p. 273.

[853] The Tuttle family may similarly be assigned to one or other
of the innumerable Toothills.

[854] _Irish Folklore_, p. 31.

[855] Wentz, W. Y. Evans, p. 404.

[856] In Irish _aine_ means _circle_.

[857] Westropp, T. J., _Proc. of Royal Irish Academy_.

[858] _Cf._ _Folklore_, xxix., No. 2, p. 159.

[859] Quoted from Besant's _Westminster_.

[860] Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from
watermen touting there for fares.

[861] Ps. lii. 7.

[862] In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical
of the Persian triads.

[863] _Odyssey_, xiv., 12.

[864] Skeat comments upon the word _hag_ as "perhaps connected with
Anglo-Saxon _haga_, a hedge enclosure, but this is
uncertain": this authority's definition of a _ha-ha_ is as
follows: "Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.). From F. _haha_
an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of
an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one). The French word
also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a 'caution'."

The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I
question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met
an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or "unexpected
obstacles," Cæsar has recorded that "the bank also was
defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the
same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river":
if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon
this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his
wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far
finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.

[865] Stockdale, F. W. L., _Excursions Through Cornwall_, 1824, p.
116.

[866] Gomme, Sir L., _The Topography of London_, ii., 222.

[867] _Ibid._, ii., 216.

[868] Besant, W., _Westminster_, p. 20.

[869] Rydberg, _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 118.

[870] In the Kentish neighbourhood of Preston, Perry-court,
Perry-wood, Holly Hill, Brenley House, and Oversland is an
_Old Wives Lees_, and Britton Court Farm.

[871] A London cockney refers to his sweetheart as his _donah_.

[872] See "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), i., 286.

[873] The English moot hills are sometimes referred to as _mudes_
or _muds_, Johnson, W., _Byways_, p. 67.

[874] Quoted from Donnelly, I., _Ragnarok_.

[875] Moody, S., _What is Your Name?_ p. 266.

[876] Anon, _Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the
Assassins_.

[877] Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 231.

[878] Fergusson, p. 523.

[879] _Ibid._, p. 390.

[880] Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan's Hill, and in
close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall,
Pratling Street, and Bredhurst, _i.e._, Bred's Wood. That
Bred was _San Od_ is possibly implied by the adjacent
_Snod_hurst and _Snod_land. At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire,
Skeat thinks _Synods_ may have once been held. The Snodland
neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.

[881] The authorities assume that the _cat_ is here cath, the
Gaelic for _war_. It might equally well be _cad_, the Gaelic
for _holy_: in the East a _jehad_ is a Holy War.

[882] Lang, A., _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i., 72.

[883] _A New Description of England_, 1724.

[884] Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo,
and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons "cleared a space in
the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their
cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers
of trees. Such a collection of houses formed one of their
towns." _Din_ is the root of _dinas_, the Welsh word in
actual use for a _town_.

[885] Westropp, T. J., _Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy_, p.
165.

[886] With _Edda_, a general term for the rules and materials for
verse-making, may be connoted our _ode_.

[887] According to the original Irish of the story-teller,
translated and published for the first time in 1855, Conn,
the Consort of Eda, "was a puissant warrior, and no
individual was found able to compete with him either on land
or sea, or question his right to his conquest. The great King
of the West held uncontrolled sway from the island of Rathlin
to the mouth of the Shannon by sea, and as far as the
glittering length by land. The ancient King of the West,
whose name was Conn, was good as well as great, and
passionately loved by his people. His Queen (Eda) was a
Breaton (British) princess, and was equally beloved and
esteemed, because she was the great counterpart of the King
in every respect; for whatever good qualification was wanting
in the one, the other was certain to indemnify the omission.
It was plainly manifest that heaven approved of the career in
life of the virtuous couple; for during their reign the earth
produced exuberant crops, the trees fruit ninefold
commensurate with their usual bearing, the rivers, lakes and
surrounding sea teemed with abundance of choice fish, while
herds and flocks were unusually prolific, and kine and sheep
yielded such abundance of rich milk that they shed it in
torrents upon the pastures; and furrows and cavities were
filled with the pure lacteal produce of the dairy. All these
were blessings heaped by heaven upon the western districts of
Innes Fodhla, over which the benignant and just Conn swayed
his sceptre, in approbation of the course of government he
had marked out for his own guidance. It is needless to state
that the people who owned the authority of this great and
good sovereign were the happiest on the face of the wide
expanse of earth. It was during his reign, and that of his
son and successor, that Ireland acquired the title of the
'happy Isle of the West' among foreign nations. Con Mor and
his good Queen Eda reigned in great glory during many years."

[888] Wood, E. J., _Giants and Dwarfs_, p. 11. According to
Maundeville in Egypt "they find there also the apple-tree of
Adam which has a bite on one side".

[889] There is a conspicuously interesting group of names around
the river Eden in Sussex. At Edenbridge is Dencross, and in
close neighbourhood Ide Hill, Dane Hill, Paxhill Park, Brown
Knoll, St. Piers Farm, Hammerwood, Pippenford Park, Allen
Court, Lindfield, Londonderry, and Cinder Hill. With
Broadstone Warren and Pippinford Park it is noteworthy that
opposite St. Bride's Church, Ludgate Hill, is Poppins Court
and Shoe Lane: immediately adjacent is a Punch Tavern, whence
I think that Poppins was Punch and _Shoe_ was Judy. The gaudy
_popinjay_, at which our ancestors used to shoot, may well
have stood in Poppins Court: a representation of this
brilliant parrot or parrakeet is carved into one of the
modern buildings now occupying the site.

[890] Moody, S., _What is Your Name_? p. 257.

[891] Knight, R. Payne, _The Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and
Mythology_, p. 128.

[892] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), p. 270.

[893] "Archæologia" (from _The Gentleman's Magazine_), p. 270.

[894] "When I was a child I would no more have thought of going out
on Easter morning without a real Easter egg than I would have
thought of leaving my stocking unsuspended from the foot of
my bed on Christmas Eve. A few days before Easter I used to
go out to the park, where there were a great many whin
bushes, and gather whinblossoms, which I carried home to my
mother, who put two eggs in a tin, one for me and one for my
sister, and added the whinblossoms and water to them, and set
them to boil together until the eggs were hard and the shells
were stained a pretty brown hue.

"On Easter Monday my sister and I would carry our eggs to a
mound in the park called 'The Dummy's Hill,' and would trundle
them down the slope. All the boys and girls we knew used to
trundle their eggs on Easter Monday. We called it 'trundling'.
The egg-shell generally cracked during the operation of
'trundling,' and then the owner of it solemnly sat down and ate
the hard-boiled egg, which, of course, tasted very much better
than an egg eaten in the ordinary way. 'The Dummy's Hill' was
sadly soiled with egg-shells at the end of Easter Monday
morning.

"My uncle, who was a learned man, said that this custom of
'trundling' eggs was a survival of an old Druidical rite. It
seems to me to be queer that we in the North of Ireland should
still be practising that ancient ceremony when English children
should have completely forgotten it, and should think of an
Easter egg, not as a real thing laid by hens and related to the
ancient religion of these islands, but as a piece of
confectionery turned out by machinery and having no ancient
significance whatever."--Ervine, St. John, _The Daily
Chronicle_, 4th April, 1919.

[895] Fergusson, J., _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 191.

[896] The surname Honeywell found at Kingston implies either there
or somewhere a Honeywell. There are several St. Euny Wells in
Cornwall.

[897] It measures 36 feet x 18 feet 9 inches, see _ante_, p. 9.

[898] At Margate are Paradise Hill, Dane Park, Addington Street
leading to Dane Hill, and Fort Paragon: at Ramsgate is also a
Fort Paragon, and a four-crossed dun called Hallicondane.
There used to be a Paradise near Beachy (Bougie, or Biga Head
(?)): by Broadstairs or Bridestowe which contains a shrine to
St. Mary to which all passing vessels used to doff their
sails, is Bromstone, and a Dane Court by Fairfield, all of
which are in St. Peter's Parish. By the Sister Towers of
Reculver are Eddington, Love Street, Hawthorn Corner, and
Honey Hill: in Thanet, Paramour is a common surname. By
Minster is Mount Pleasant and Eden Farm: by Richborough is
Hoaden House and Paramore Street. To Reculver as to
Broadstairs passing mariners used customarily to doff their
sails:--

Great gods, whom Earth and Sea and Storms obey,
Breathe fair, and waft us smoothly o'er the main.
Fresh blows the breeze, and broader grows the bay,
And on the cliffs is seen Minerva's fane.
We furl the sails, and shoreward row amain
Eastward the harbour arches, scarce descried,
Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain,
Stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide.
Far back the temple stands and seems to shun the tide.

--_Æneid_, Bk. III., lxviii.

[899] _A New Description of England and Wales_, 1724, p. 84.

[900] _The English Language_, p. 141.

[901] Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, p. 123.

[902] Hazlitt, W. Carew, _Faiths and Folklore_, i., 222.

[903] _Iliad_, ii., 940.

[904] _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe_, pp. 70, 190. The
italics are mine.