suggests itself, namely, what interpretation one is to put on the presence of the attendant maidens, whether of Caer or Elen. Some, having regard to the number of St. Ursula's companions, would say that they mean the starry host of heaven, which goes away, so to say, with the dawn and appears again with the dusk. But another hypothesis is possible, and I venture to sketch it, chiefly as a means of connecting certain facts which are not altogether irrelevant. It is to the effect that the 11,000 companions of Ursula might be regarded as an exaggeration of a far smaller number, and that those making up the latter might be reckoned the priestesses in attendance on the dawn-goddess, herself the consort of the god represented in the Merlin story as imprisoned. The attendant damsels might then be compared with the virgin priestesses of the isle of Sein, described by Mela as capable of taking any animal form they chose. In the case of Caer and her train the form preferred seems to have been that of swans, while in other cases they are mostly described more vaguely as birds, as when the goddess Dechtere is mentioned escaping, together with her fifty maiden companions, from her brother's court in that form; but the coupling-chains[1] of silver or gold are seldom wanting. The corresponding Welsh superstition prefers the goose to the swan, and makes an approach to Mela's description of the maiden priestesses of Sein, in that it treats those who assume the anserine form as witches.[2] This dates from remote antiquity, as
