The connection between flies or mouches, and the elves or elven, seems to have been appreciated in the past, for _The Golden Legend_ likens the lost souls of Heaven, _i.e._, the elven of popular opinion, to flies: "By the divine dispensation they descend oft unto us in earth, as like it hath been shewn to some holy men. They fly about us as flies, they be innumerable, and like flies they fill the air without number."[241] Even to-day it is supposed that the spirits of holy wells appear occasionally in the form of flies, and there is little doubt that Beelzebub, the "Lord of flies," _alias_ Lucifer, whose name literally means "Light Bringer," was once innocuous and beautiful. In Cornwall flies seem to have been known as "Mother Margarets" (a fact of which I was unaware when equating _mouche_ with Michelet or Meg), for according to Miss Courtney, "Three hundred fathoms below the ground at Cook's Kitchen Mine, near Cambourne, swarms of flies may be heard buzzing, called by the men for some unknown reason 'Mother Margarets'".[242] Whether these subterranean "Mother Margarets" are peculiar to Cook's Kitchen Mine, and whether Cook has any relation to Gog and to the Cocinians who in deep caverns dwelt, I am unable to trace. That St. Michael was Lord of the Muckle and the Mickle, is supported in the statement that "he was prince of the synagogue of the Jews".[243] The word _synagogue_ is understood to have meant--a bringing together, a congregation; but this was evidently a secondary sense, due, perhaps, to the fact that the earliest synagogues were not held beneath a roof, but were congregations in sacred plains or hill-sides. It may reasonably be assumed that synagogues were prayer meetings in honour primarily of San Agog, St. Michael, or the Leader and Bringer together of all souls. By the Greeks the sobriquet Megale was applied to Juno the pomegranate--holding Mother of Millions, and the bird pre-eminently sacred to Juno was the Goose. The cackling of Juno's or Megale's sacred geese saved the Capitol, and the Goose of Michaelmas Day is seemingly that same sacred bird. In Scotland St. Michael's Day was associated with the payment of so-called cane geese, the word _cane_ or _kain_ here being supposed to be the Gaelic _cean_, which meant _head_, and its original sense, a duty paid by a tenant to his landlord in kind. The word _due_ is the same as _dieu_, and the association of St. Keyne with Michael renders it probable that the cane goose was primarily a _dieu_ offering or an offering to the Head King Cun, or Chun. Etymology would suggest that the cane goose was preferably a _gan_der.