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(d. 679) Aethelthryth/Ediltrudis/Audrey, Abess of Ely. This formidable daughter of King Anna of the East Angles became something of a professional virgin. She was married to Tondberht, and elderman, who died leaving her virgin. She was then married to King Egfrith of Northumbria who had agreed to her remaining a virgin but after twelve years requested that she sleep with him. She then founded the double monastery of Ely, leaving her husband. Fairs held in her honour led to the expression 'tawdry' after the cheap fairings sold there. She is depicted with two does who were said to have sustained the Ely community with their milk during a famine. Her feast-day is 23 June.
# 454
or Ethnea. Daughter of Balor; gives her love to Kian (Cian); gives birth to three sons; one son, Lugh; belongs to Finn's ancestry.
# 562
Finvarra, or Fin Bheara, the Irish fairy king who was also king of the dead, though he had a beautiful queen of his own, was amorous of mortal women, and any woman who was renowned for her beauty stood in special danger from him. Lady Wilde in her ANCIENT LEGENDS OF IRELAND tells of one Ethna the Bride who was said to be the most beautiful woman then in Ireland and who was not stolen by Finvarra. Ethna was newly married, and the young lord her husband was so proud of her beauty that he held festivities day after day. His castle was near the fairy hill which covered Finvarra's palace, but they had been long friends, and from time to time he set out offerings of wine to the fairy king, so he had no fear of him. Nevertheless one evening, as Ethna was floating through the dance, shining like moonlight in her silver dress, her hand slipped from her partner's and she fell to the ground in a swoon. Nothing would revive her, and they carried her to bed where she lay motionless. In the morning she seemed to revive, but would speak of nothing but a beautiful country which she had visited, and to which she longed to return. At night she sank deep again into sleep. Her old nurse was set to guard her, but in the silence of the night she too fell asleep, and when she woke at sunrise Ethna had gone. The whole castle was roused, and they searched high and low, but no sight, sound nor trace of her was to be found. It was clear that the fairies had some part in her disappearance, and the young lord rode off at top speed to Knock-Ma under which his friend Finvarra lived, to seek his counsel as to how to find her. When he reached the Rath he dismounted, and had begun to climb its slope when he heard voices above him in the air. 'Finvarra is happy now,' said one, 'when he has carried Ethna the Bride into his palace. Her husband will never see her again.' 'Yet he could win her back,' said another, 'if he could dig a deep hole down into the heart of the Rath and let the light of day into it; but he will never win his way down, for Finvarra is more powerful than any mortal man.' 'Yet I will conquer him,' thought the young lord; and he sent for workmen far and wide and they dug down into the hill, a deep, wide trench, so that when darkness fell they thought that their task was more than half done, and that they would reach Finvarra's palace by the next day. So they went to rest in high hopes. But next morning the trench was gone, and the grass grew over the hill as if it had never been disturbed. Then most men despaired, but the young lord had a brave heart, and he added more diggers to the many who were working, and that day they got even deeper than the day before, but the next morning all trace of their labour had disappeared. And the third morning it was the same again. Then the young lord was ready to die for grief, when he heard a voice in the air above him saying 'Sprinkle the earth with salt and your work will be safe.' Hope sprang up again in his heart, and he sent round and gathered salt from all his people, and that night they covered all the piles of earth with salt before they left them. Next morning their work had been untouched, and they set to work with a good heart, and before the day was over they were so near to Fairyland that when they put their ears to the clay they could hear fairy music, and voices speaking. And one voice said: 'Finvarra is sad now, for he knows that if one human spade cuts into his palace wall it will crumble into dust.' Another answered: 'But if the king sends Ethna back to her lord, we shall all be saved.' Then the voice of Finvarra rang out: 'Lay down your spades, men of earth, and at sunset Ethna shall return to her lord.' At that the lord told his men to stop digging, and at sunset he rode up to the mouth of the Glen, and Ethna came walking up the deep cleft, shining like silver, and he snatched her up to his horse's back and rode with her to his catle; but Finvarra had played him false, for when he carried her in she lay in his arms without speech or movement, and when they laid her on the bed she lay there like a waxen image and nothing would rouse her, so that they began to fear that she had eaten Fairy Food and that her soul had remained in Fairyland. One night as the lord was riding sadly home he heard the friendly voices in the air. And one said: 'It is a year and a day since Ethna came home to her lord, and still she lies motionless, for Finvarra has her soul with him still in his palace under Knock-Ma.' And the other answered: 'Yet her husband could win her back to mortal life if he undid the girdle round her waist and took out the fairy pin with which it is fastened. If he burned the girdle and sprinkled the ashes outside her door, and buried the pin in the earth, then her human soul would come back to her.' The young lord turned his horse, and rode back like lightning. With great difficulty he untangled the girdle and disengaged the fairy pin. He burnt the girdle and scattered the ashes outside the door. Still she never moved. Then he took the pin and buried it under a fairy thorn where no one would disturb it. When he came back, Ethna sat up in bed and stretched out her arms to him. She knew and remembered everything, except that the year she had spent in Fairyland was like the dream of a single night. Finvarra never troubled them again, and they lived out their mortal lives in great happiness.
They have long gone, but the deep cleft is still left in Knock-Ma, and is still called the Fairy Glen. Though Finvarra behaved with such treachery it is clear that there were more scupulous spirits among his people. Since Finvarra rules over the dead his story is very near to King Orfeo, the medieval version of ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE in which Pluto is called the King of the Fairies.
# 100 - 728
The tale of Ethné in full can be read in # 562 pp 142-145. (At the time of the coming of St. Patrick, Ethné would have been about fifteen hundred years of age. The Danaan folk grow up from childhood to maturity, but then they abide unaffected by the lapse of time).
# 562
(ah'ne in'goo va) Wife of CuChulain.
# 166
(ah'ne tav'fâda) Wife of Conn Cet Cathach.
# 166
Celts conquer Northern Italy from the Etruscans.
# 562
She was loved by Pelleas but did not reciprocate his feelings. Nimue made her fall in love with Pelleas by magic but also made Pelleas transfer his affections to her (Nimue). Ettard, now hated by Pelleas, died of love.
# 156 - 418
A variant form of the name Evdaf found in Mostyn MS 117.
# 156
According to Boece in his SCOTORUM HISTORIAE, a King of Scotland, ally of Mordred. He captured Guinevere who remained a prisoner of the Picts.
# 156 - 221
Just as the Furies were called 'The Eumenides', the 'Kindly Ones', so were the fairies called laudatory names by the country people. As Kirk says, 'These SITHS, or Fairies, they call SLEAGH MAITH, or the Good People, it would seem, to prevent the Dint of their ill Attempts, (for the Irish use to bless all they fear Harme of;)' E. B. Simpson in FOLK LORE IN LOWLAND SCOTLAND gives a list of some of these euphemisms. The invisible and alert fairies for the same reason were always mentioned with a honeyed tongue. The wily, knowing not where they might be lurking, were careful to call them 'the Good Neighbours', 'the honest folk', the little folk', the Gentry', 'the hill folk', and 'the forgetful people', the 'men of peace'. The folk-rhyme given by Chambers, quoted under ELVES, contains the fairies' own caution on the subject.
# 100 - 370 - 599
King of the Visigoths, AD 466-84. He was opposed by the Emperor Anthemius who counted Riothamus amongst his allies.
# 156
Seeds of freedom and culture in Europe kept alive by Celtica; diffusion of Celtic power in Mid-Europe. Celtic place-names in Europe; what it owes to Celts; western lands of Europe; dolmens found in Europe. See CELTIC.
# 562
The Duke of Cambenet who took part in the rebellion against Arthur at the beginning of his reign.
# 156 - 418
He was transformed into a dwarf by magic. Gawain had been told he would assume the shape of the next man he met. He met Evadeam and became a dwarf, while Evadeam regained his original shape. Eventually Gawain was turned back into his true form and Evadeam became a Knight of the Round Table.
# 156 - 604
The wife of the elder Bors. She was the mother of Lionel and the younger Bors. After her husband's death, she left her children to the care of Pharien and became a nun. She was the sister of Elaine, wife of Ban.
# 156 - 604
A King. See: SYRIA.
# 156
Son of Kradoc and father of Kynan in the Welsh maternal pedigree of Arthur found in BONEDD YR ARWR. Geoffrey calls him Octavius, Duke of Gwent; he subsequently became King of Britain. He was the uncle of Conan Meriadoc.
# 156
A king born in France in early times. He was sent to Rome as part of a tribute and afterwards went to Syria. He slew the governor's son and fled to Babylon where he aided King Tholomer and was rewarded with land. He became King of Sarras, and Joseph of Arimathea helped him to fight against Tholomer. Joseph then baptized him, giving him the name Mordrain. He remained alive with unhealed wounds, living only on the Sacred Host, until the knight who would obtain the Grail should come. He had two sons, Eliezer and Grimal. Evelake in origin may be Avalloch, father of Modron, mentioned in the TRIADS. Avalloch may have been a god with some association with apples.
# 156 - 418 - 434 - 604
In the maternal pedigree of Arthur provided by Gruffudd Hiraethog (sixteenth century), he is numbered amongst Arthur's ancestors.
# 156
One of the wizards who changed Blonde Esmerée into a serpent.
# 156
(eff-ROWG) Father of Peredur.
# 562
Farmer who befriends Fionuala and her brothers.
# 562
# 156: The sword given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake. Some sources suggest that Arthur gave it to Gawain. After Arthur's last battle he made Bedivere return it to the water where it was grasped by a hand and drawn under. Its scabbard prevented the wearer from loosing blood. When Gawain fought the magician Mabon over the fairy Marsique, she obtained the scabbard for him but it subsequently disappeared. The Welsh name for Excalibur was Caladvwlch, equating linguistically with Irish Caladbolg, the name of a sword borne by heroes in Irish legend, derived from CALAD (hard) and BOLG (lightning).
See CALIBURN, (and # 562: note p 224).
# 156 - 508 - 562
See: SEPARABLE SOUL.
The name of the Gaelic Sun-Goddess Sulis was related to SUIL, an eye. The same word meant a hole, like the 'eye' in a strap, or a whirlwind. SUILEATH meant 'wise, all-seeing, farsighted,' describing the Goddess whose eye saw every-where. Romans identified this wise Goddess with their own Minerva, the all-seeing Crone aspect of the Capitoline Triad Altars were set up in Roman Britain to 'Sul Minerva.'
# 701
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