SACRED ISLES IN THE WEST, 145 



lotos. HoMKR places Calypso in Ogygia; but, according to' Apuleius^^) 

 Hyginus, and I believe Mela, Calypso lived in Aiaia, JEcea, the 

 Ay ay am, or Ayasa of the Purdn'as^ and nearer of course to Atlas and the 

 PFhite Island. 



'Siva, after sv^allowing the poison, as before related, went to Himdlaya^r 

 where he buried himself in the snow. There are many places of worship^ 

 dedicated to 'Siva, under that title ; but the original one is in the JVhite 

 Island. It is very doubtfuTj- whether" our ancestors knew any thing of 

 this churning, and of the deadly poison produced" by it, and of a deity 

 swallowing it up. In that ease, there was no such' a place in the White 

 Island. Yet I cannot resist the temptation ; and I am. inclined to beheve it 

 not altogether improbable, but that many of these idle legends originated: 

 in the west. If so, there might have been such- a place ; and it could not 

 have been far from Camalo-dunum. The poison, which 'Siva drank up, is 

 called, in Sanscrit, Cdla-^cuta, or the black lump or mole, because it re- 

 mained like a lump in 'Siva's throat, which looked like a ciita, a peak, also 

 a lump or mole. Cdla-cuta, in fVelsh, is T-du-man, or the black lump 

 or mole : and this was, according to Ptolemy, the name of a river in 

 England, now called the Black-water,- in Essex. It might have been 

 supposed once, that the black stinking mud of marshes and fens, and 

 more particularly that of the mosses, so baneful to Hving creatures, was 

 produced in consequence of this churning ; probably the emblem used to 

 signify some dreadful convulsion of nature in these parts. That such a 

 thing happened in the western ocean, is attested by tradition : and such 

 was its violence, and the dreadful consequences, which attended it, that 



(2) P. 20. 



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