Even in the time of the Romans, the Goose was sacred in Britain, and East and West it seems to have been an emblem of the Unseen Origin. In India, Brahma, the Breath of Life, was represented riding on a goose, and by the Egyptians the Sun was supposed to be a Golden Egg laid by the primeval Goose. The little yellow egg or _goose_berry was seemingly--judged by its otherwise inexplicable name--likened to the Golden Egg laid by Old Mother Goose. Among the symbols elsewhere dealt with were some representative of a goose from whose mouth a curious flame-like emission was emerging. I am still of the opinion that this was intended to depict the Fire or Breath of Life, and that the hissing habits of the Swan and Goose caused those birds to be elevated into the eminence as symbols of the Breath. The word _goose_ or _geese_ is radically _ghost_, which literally means spirit or breath; it is also the same as _cause_ with which may be connoted _chaos_. According to Irish mythology that which existed at the beginning was Chaos, the Father of Darkness or Night, subsequently came the Earth who produced the mountains, and the sea, and the sky.[244] [Illustration: Fig. 50.--From _Christian Iconography_ (Didron).] In this emblem here reproduced Chaos or Abyssus is figured as the youthful apex of a primeval peak; at the base are geese, and the creatures midway are evidently seals. The _seal_ is the silliest of gentle creatures, and being amphibious was probably the symbol of _Celi_, the Concealed One, whose name occurs so frequently in British Mythology. To _seal_ one's eyelids means to close them, and the blind old man named Lieven, who sat in the porch of St. Maurice's for eleven years, may be connoted with Homer the blind and wandering old Bard, who dwelt upon the rocky islet of Chios, query _chaos_? Among the Latins _Amor_ or Love was the oldest of the gods, being the child of Nox or Chaos: Love--"this senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid"[245]--is proverbially blind, and the words Amor, Amour, are probably not only Homer, but likewise St. Omer. The British (Welsh) form of Homer is Omyr: the authorship of Homer has always been a matter of perplexity, and the personality of the blind old bard of Chios will doubtless remain an enigma until such time as the individuality of "Old Moore," "Aunt Judy," and other pseudonyms is unravelled. It has always been the custom of story-tellers to attribute their legends to a fabulous origin, and the most famous collection of fairy-tales ever produced was published in France under the title _Contes de la Mere Oie_--"The Tales of Mother Goose". Goose is radically the same word as _gas_, a term which was coined by a Belgian chemist in 1644 from the Greek _chaos_: the Irish for swan is _geis_, and all the geese tribe are gassy birds which gasp.