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The legend says that St Egwin, the third bishop of Worchester, a Saxon who founded an abbey there in the eight century, was the victim of false accusations, and went to Rome to vindicate himself. He put fetters on his feet, locked them, and threw away the key into a pool of the Avon before setting out. While he was at Rome a salmon caught in the Tiber was being cooked by his attendants, when they found in the fish's maw the identical key, wherewith Egwin promptly unlocked his fetters. This miracle was naturally regarded by the Pope as a complete vindication, and the saint was sent home to England in honour. This is the story as it is told in the CHRONICLE of the abbey. William of Malmesbury says that the fish leapt on board the ship on the saint's voyage. After Egwin's return the shepherd Eoves came to him and of a vision of the Virgin, who had shown him the spot on which a new sanctuary was to be built in her honour. So the abbey was founded, and called Eovesham, or Evesham.
# 68
The ship symbol in the sepulchral art of Egyptian. Feet of Osiris, symbol of visitation. Ideas of immortality. Human sacrifices; abolished by Amasis I.
# 562
Arthur's hall, built by Gwlyddyn the carpenter.
# 156 - 346
According to the Welsh PEDWAR MARCHOG AR HUGAN LLYS ARTHUR, he was one of the Twenty-four Knights of Arthur's Court.
# 104 - 156
See: IGRAINE.
Eilian was the name of the golden-haired maidservant who used to spin with the Tylwyth Teg on moonlight nights and at last went to live with them. The tale - from CELTIC FOLKLORE by John Rhys - is told in full in MIDWIFE TO THE FAIRIES. It is a tale of particular interest, for not only does it widen the scope of the fairy midwife tale by showing that the patient to be attended was a human CAPTIVE IN FAIRYLAND and that the child to be anointed was half-human, but is also a variation of the story of the fairies as spinners and shows the importance they assigned to Golden Hair. It is of interest also that the field where Eilian was last seen was long called 'Eilian's Field' or 'The Maid's Meadow'.
# 100 - 554
The dead warriors who feasted with Odin in Valhalla. They were fed by a boar which endlessly replenished itself, and though they fought daily, if killed they were restored to life at the end of the day. In English mythology they are considered to be similar to the Wild Hunt.
# 454
Bard to King of Wee folk who allows himself to hint a little about a giant race oversea in a land called Ulster, to the Wee-king, Iubdan. He is immediately clapped into prison for his audacity, and gets free only by promising to go to the land of the mighty men, and bring evidence back. The story of his adventures in Fairyland is to be read in # 562 p 247 ff.
# 562
This name, a form of Helen, is borne by a number of people in Arthurian romance.
Husband of Boann. Tradition suggests that he was the original inhabitant and owner of Brugh na Boinne, which was subsequently given to Angus in perpetuity, because of his magical power over day and night.
# 96 - 416 - 454
Often confused with the alder, the elder tree had a separate letter in the druidic alphabet, RUIS (R), sacred to the Elder Goddess or Crone, the Caillech, who was Hel, queen of the underworld. Naturally, the elder became known as a witch tree. Spirits of the pagan dead, once called Helleder, were said to be imprisoned in elder wood. They would be transformed into avenging demons and would haunt and persecute anyone who cut down an elder tree to make furniture. Moreover, a man who fell asleep under an elder tree would have visions of Hel's underworld, which Christians converted into hell. Elder made witches' 'travel-broomsticks.' Yet the healing magic of Hel's tree was not entirely forgotten. Medieval folk believed that a wreath of elder leaves worn as a collar would cure every pain in the neck. See also: OLD LADY OF THE ELDER TREE.
# 489: Folklore holds that it is unlucky to use Elder wood for a child's cradle, which should always be made out of Birch for a new start and inception. In the Ogham calendar, the Elder rules the thirteenth month. This is, in fact, a short three-day period, a 'make-up' month, ending in Samhain, the last night of the year and known as Hallowe'en. The new year, on the1st November, and the month of the Birch follow on after. The Elder, with its distinctive, easily hollowed, pithy stems, is a tree of regeneration. It regrows damaged branches readily and it will root and grow rapidly from any part.
# 489 - 701
In the TAVOLA RITONDA, a witch who imprisoned Arthur. Tristan rescued him.
# 156 - 238
Jamieson's Northern Antiquities gives the story of the most famous of the Crodh Mara, the cow bred by the visit of a water-bull and of the farmer too mean for gratitude: The elf-bull is small, compared with earthly bulls, of a mousecolour; Mosted [crop-eared], with short corky horns; short in the legs; long, round, and slamp [supple] in the body, like a wild animal; with short, sleek, and glittering hair, like an otter; and supernaturally active and strong. They most frequently appear near the banks of rivers; eat much green corn in the night-time; and are only to be got rid of by, etc. etc. (certain spells which I have forgot). A certain farmer who lived by the banks of a river, had a cow that was never known to admit an earthly bull; but every year, in a certain day in the month of May, she regularly quitted her pasture, walked slowly along the banks of the river, till she came opposite to a small holm covered with bushes; then entered the river, and waded or swam to the holm, where she continued for a certain time, after which she again returned to her pasture. This went on for several years, and every year, after the usual time of gestation, she had a calf. They were all alike, mouse-coloured, mosted, with corky horns, round and long-bodied, grew to a good rise, and were remarkably docile, strong, and useful, and all ridgels. At last, one forenoon, about Martinmass, when the corn was all 'under thack and raip', as the farmer sat with his family by the ingleside, they began to talk about killing their Yule-Mart. 'Hawkie,' said the gudeman, 'is fat and sleek; she has had an easy life, and a good goe of it all her days, and has been a good cow to us; for she has filled the plough and all the stalls in the byre with the finest steers in this country side; and now I think we may afford to pick her old bones, and so she shall be the Mart.'
The words were scarcely uttered, when Hawkie, who was in the byre beyond the hallan, with her whole bairn-time, tyed by their thrammels to their stalls, walked out through the side of the byre with as much ease as if it had been made of brown paper; turned round on the midding-head; lowed once upon each of her calves; then set out, they following her in order, each according to his age, along the banks of the river; entered it; reached the holm; disappeared among the bushes; and neither she nor they were ever after seen or heard of. The farmer and his sons, who had with wonder and terror viewed this phenomenon from a distance, returned with heavy hearts to their house, and had little thought of Marts or merriments for that year.
# 100
(Eliabella) The mother of Tristan in Italian romance, presumably identical with Malory's Elisabeth.
# 156
In Italian romance, Tristan's mother and a cousin of Arthur. The latter had been at war with King Meliodas of Liones and Eliabella married Meliodas to cement peace between the two. See: MARK.
# 156
A knight with magical powers. He fell in love with Ysaive, a niece of Arthur. She was the wife of King Caradoc of Vannes and Nantes. He bewitched Caradoc into sleeping with a bitch, a sow and a mare, while he himself slept with Ysaive on whom he begot Caradoc Briefbras. The latter, discovering what had happened, informed King Caradoc of the truth. The enraged cuckold made Eliavres copulate with a bitch (by which he became the father of Guinalot), a sow (by which he became the father of Tortain) and a mare (by which he became the father of Lorigal).
# 156 - 272
A son of Pelles and an uncle of Galahad.
# 156
Giraldus Cambrensis in ITINERARIUM CAMBRIAE, the account of his journey through Wales in 1188, gives a remarkable narrative of a boy's visit to Fairyland, the translation of which by R.C.Hoare is included by Thomas Keightley in his FAIRY MYTHOLOGY. It contains so mush information in so short a space that it deserves to be included in full. It is one of the best of the early fairy anecdotes:
A short time before our days, a circumstance worthy of note occurred in these parts, which Elidurus, a priest, most strenuously affirmed had befallen himself. When he was a youth of twelve years, - since, as Solomon says, 'The root of learning is bitter, although the fruit is sweet,' - and was following his literary pursuits, in order to avoid the disipline and frequent stripes inflicted on him by his preceptor, he ran away, and concealed himself under the hollow bank of a river; and, after fasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pygmy stature appeared to him, saying, 'if you will come with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports.' Assenting, and rising up, he followed his guides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the abscence of the moon and stars. The boy was brought before the king, and introduced to him in the presence of the court: when, having examined him for a long time, he delivered him to his son, who was then a boy. These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned for their size. They were all fair-haired, with luxuriant hair falling over their shoulders, like that of women. They had horses proportioned to themselves, of the size of greyhounds. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up into messes with saffron. They never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies. They had no religious worship, being only, as it seems, strict lovers and reverers of truth. The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had first gone, sometimes by another; at first in company with others, and afterwards alone, and confided his secret only to his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature, and state of that people. Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the king's son the golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it to his mother in great haste; and when he reached the door of his father's house, but not unpursued, and was entering it in a great hurry, his foot stumbled on the treshold, and, falling down into the room where his mother was sitting, the two Pygmies seized the ball, which had dropped from his hand, and departed, spitting at and deriding the boy. On recovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year. Having been brought back by his friends and mother, and restored to his right way of thinking and his literary pursuits, he attained in process of time the rank of priesthood. Whenever David the Second, bishop of St David's, talked to him in his advanced state of life concerning this event, he could never relate the particulars without shedding tears. He had also a knowledge of the language of that nation, and used to recite words of it he had readily acquired in his younger days. These words, which the bishop often repeated to me, were very conformable to the Greek idiom. When they asked for water, they said, udor udorum, which signifies 'Bring water;' for Udor, in their language, as well as in the Greek, signifies water. When they want salt, they say, halgein udorum, 'Bring salt.' Salt is called a'ç in Greek, and Halen in British; for that language, from the lenght of time which the Britons (then called Trojans, and afterwards Britons from Brito, their leader) remained in Greece after the destruction of Troy, became, in many instances, similar to Greek.
# 100 - 250
See: ELIDOR AND THE GOLDEN BALL.
A King of Ireland.
# 156
The son of Evelake.
# 156
The son of a duke who was Arthur's uncle. Readers of some editions of Malory may think that Elis was the duke's name also, but this is due to a misprint in Caxton's original edition.
# 156 - 418
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