Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/428

346 representations of her, or dedications to her. But Anne was the mother of the gods among the Celts, and the name was given to several notable women, as the mother of S. Samson, and the daughter of Vortimer, king of the Britons, mother of S. Wenn, who married Solomon, king of the Dumnonii; and a suppressed cult of the old goddess went on under the plea of being directed to these historic women, till the great explosion of devotion to Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin—known to us only through the apocryphal gospels.

Ane or Anne was the mythical mother of the Tuatha de Danan, the race found in our peninsula, in Scotland from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, and throughout Ireland, called by the classic writers Dumnonii. They were subdued in Ireland by the Gaels or Scots. Undoubtedly throughout Devon and Cornwall there must have been a cult of the great ancestress. She has given her name to the Paps of Ane in Kerry and to S. Anne's (Agnes') Head in Cornwall, and as surely the holy wells now attributed to S. Anne were formerly regarded as sacred fountains of the great mother of the race, whose first fathers were gods.

There is a rock at sea, reached at low tide, called Borough Island, on which is a little inn. It was formerly, judging by the name, a cliff fortress.

Ringmore, the adjoining parish to Bigbury, has a church and village nestling into a pleasant, wooded combe. The church has a small spire, and the basement serves as a porch. Anent this tower is a tale.

During the civil wars, a Mr. Lane was rector,