The Goddess Annis

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Annis, @NYS, {Blue-Hag}.
[to Whom the twenty-ninth day of May, day 149, is dedicated]

Geography/Culture: Celtic: British, Especially the Dane Hills, Leicestershire, where She had a bower.
Linguistic Note: the meaning given may be an epithet.
Description: The Blue Hag; Shapeshifting Crone Goddess of earth, the moon (perhaps especially the old moon) and death; She Who sucks the blood of children in Her scritch-owl form and hangs their skins on an oak to dry.
To Whom Sacred: oak; raven; hounds; scritch-owl; cat; hare; goat; net.
Festival: April 31 - May-eve hare-hunt (later transferred to Easter Monday).

Titles/Variants, etc:

Perhaps Christianised as Saint-Agnes, below.
Identified with Ana, the Malignant, below.
Her name may be cognate with Norse: Angrbotha.
Also called Black-Annis.
Also called Cat-Anna.
She is perhaps to be identified with Goda, Who also has a May-Eve festival.
Perhaps related to Tarannis, linked with Turan.
Perhaps to be identified with Danish Yngona, linked with Angrbotha.

Source: Graves WG 315, 370.

Agnes, @GNYS, Pure-One.
Alternate meanings: Holy-One, She-Who-is-Chaste, Gentleness, Gentle-One.

Geography/Culture: Christian. Roman.
Linguistic Note: from Medieval Latin agnes, hagnes, from Greek feminine hagne, 'holy, chaste'. Related words: hagiology, hagiography. Perhaps also hag, but this is more doubtful.
Description: Matron of young love.
Condemned to be outraged before execution for Her faith, Her honour was miraculously preserved, nor would the faggots burn after She was tied to the stake. She was finally dispatched by having Her head cut off.
To Whom Sacred: lamb (two lambs are blessed by the pope after having been presented at the altar--during the singing of the Agnus Dei, ('Lamb of God), on Her feast day by nuns from the convent of St. Agnes---and are then put out to pasture till shearing time; when shorn their wool is woven into the pallia); pallia (an ecclesiastical vestment in the Roman Catholic Church, originally peculiar to the pope); the number 13 (She was thirteen when martyred).
Festivals: January 20 - St. Agnes Eve; January 21 - Feast day. January 28 - (also given as Her feast date, may be Episcopalian).

Titles/Variants, etc:

Variant: Angness.
Christianised form of Annis.
Christian forename: Saint in glossary.

Source: Encyc Brit 13thv1 378; ibid v20 638.

Ana, 1N1, Queen.
Geography/Culture: Celtic: Irish.
Description: The Malignant; the Maleficent; Goddess of battles, fate and death.

Titles/Variants, etc:

Variant: Anan.
For Ana, the Beneficent, linked with Danu.
Leading person of Morrighan.
Identified with British Annis.

Source: Grave WG 370.

worked on: July 9, 1990; July 28, 1990; August 6, 1991; May 1995.
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