¹ Certain high officials of the later Imperial Roman civil service received as part of their insignia a book of words called the I.iber Mandatorum; it has been suggested that the ceremonial (lights and incense) attaching to these magistrates and their insignia, passed on to the chief officers of the Christian church or their representatives and that subsequently the book of the New Law, the Gospels, being as it were in place of the secular instruments, came to be honoured with a like ceremonial.

² Mabinogi, mab-in-og-ee, accent on third syllable. Cf. note 5 to page 200 above. Maban, infant. Maponos the Celtic god equated with Apollo who equates in certain aspects with our Lord.

³ Rhiannon (rhee-an-non) is essentially a mother-figure, in fact the Great Mother, Ragantona. She gave birth to the Great Son; long penance was inflicted on her unjustly and the song of her celestial birds is still proverbial in Wales. Her lover was Arawn king of the Otherworld, though the whole motif is so very dislocated in the redaction of the myth surviving in the Mabinogion as to be unrecognizable.

⁴ Ein mam hawddgar, ein (ei as in height) mahm howthe-garr. ‘Our Mater Amabilis’, see the Welsh translation of the Litanies of Mary. Welshmen tell me that hawddgar equates very accurately with the Latin amabilis for hawddgar implies loveliness and comeliness together with a buxomness of spirit; meanings lost in our English translation ‘Mother most amiable’.

⁵ The Latin name Maria gives Mair in Welsh; approximately mah-eer pronounced as a monosyllable but with emphasis on the first vowel.

So that this form of this crucial name, connects us directly with the first introduction of our religion among the peoples of this island. For the Romano-British Latin-speaking provincials Mary would be Maria. But Meir (now spelt Mair) was the first vernacular form of the name of the Mother of God used when the Celtic language was devolving into Early Welsh, during the Roman Occupation. We English-speaking persons are familiar with Mair owing to the many place-names beginning with Llanfair—, i.e. ‘Mary’s Church’ or rather ‘Mary’s enclosure’ , or, best of all, the exact etymon,^c  ‘Maryland’. Cf. note 4 to page 185 above.