Christianity has retained the memory of a St. Ursula and 11,000 virgins, but it has been a puzzle to hagiographers to account for the "11" or 11,000 so persistently associated with her. In his essay on the legend, Baring-Gould refers to it as being "generated out of worse than nothing," lamenting this and kindred stories. "Alas! too often they are but apples of Sodom, fair-cheeked, but containing the dust and ashes of heathenism". But the story of St. Ursula is essentially beautiful; moreover, it is essentially British. _The Golden Legend_ tells us that Ursula was a British princess, and Cornwall claims, with a probability of right, that she was Cornish. Her mother was named Daria, her cousin Adrian, and there is a clear memory of the Darian, Adrian, Droian, or Trojan games perpetrated in the incident which _The Golden Legend_ thus records: "By the counsel of the Queen the Virgins were gathered together from diverse realms, and she was leader of them, and at the last she suffered martyrdom with them. And then the condition made, all things were made ready. Then the Queen shewed her counsel to the Knights of her Company, and made them all to swear this new chivalry, and then began they to make diverse plays and games of battle as to run here and there, and feigned many manners of plays. And for all that they left not their purpose, and sometimes they returned from this play at midday, and sometimes unnethe at evensong time. And the barons and great lords assembled them to see the fair games and disports, and all had joy and pleasure in beholding them, and also marvel."[229] From this account it would appear that twice a day the followers of St. Ursula joyed themselves and the onlookers by a sacred ballet, which no doubt symbolised in its convolutions the ethereal Harmony and the ordered movements of the Stars. Her consort's name is given as Ethereus, whence Ursula herself must have been Etherea, the Ethereal maid, conceived in all likelihood at the idyllic island Doliche, Idea, Aeria, Candia, or Crete. The name Ursula means _bear_, and it was supposed that around the seven stars of Arcturus, the immovable Great Bear, all the lesser stars wheeled in an everlasting procession. Of this giant's wheel or marguerite, Margaret, or Peggie, was seemingly deemed to be the axle, _peg_, or Golden Eye, and this idea apparently underlies Homer:-- ... the axle of the Sky, The Bear revolving points his _Golden Eye_. Having quitted Britain, St. Ursula and her train of 11,000 maidens underwent various vicissitudes. Eventually circumstances took them to Cologne, whereupon, to quote _The Golden Legend_, "When the Huns saw them they began to run upon them with a great cry and araged like wolves on sheep, and slew all this great multitude".[230] From time to time the monks of Cologne have unearthed large deposits of children's bones which have piously been claimed to be authentic relics of the 11,000 martyrs.