The Town Hall at Hackney stands on a plot of ground known as Hackney Grove, and the neighbouring Mildmay Park and Mildmay Grove suggest a grove or sanctuary of the Mild May or Mary. That Pegasus was known familiarly in this district is implied by the White Horse Inn on Hackney Marshes and by its neighbour "The Flying Horse": Hackney neighbours Homerton, and that the national Hackney or _mare_ was Homer or Amour is obvious from Fig. 135, where a heart, the universal emblem of _amour_, is represented at its Hub, navel, or bogel. According to Sir John Evans the "principal characteristic" of Fig. 136 is "the heart-shaped figure between the forelegs of the horse, the meaning of which I am at a loss to discover":[302] but any yokel could have told Sir John the meaning of the heart or hearts which are still carved into tree trunks, and were rarely anything else than the emblems of Amor. The observant Londoner will not fail to notice particularly on May Day--the Mary or Mother Day--when our Cockney horses parade in much of their immemorial finery and pomp--that golden hearts, stringed in long sequences over the harness, are conspicuous among the half-moons, stars, and other prehistoric emblems of the Bona dea or pre-Christian Mary. Hackney includes the churches of St. Mary, St. Michael, and St. Jude: Jude is the same word as _good_, and the St. Jude of Scripture who was surnamed Thadee, and was said to be the son of Alpheus, is apparently Good Tadi or Daddy, _alias_ St. Alban the All Good, the Kaadman. St. Jude is also St. Chad, and there was a celebrated Chadwell[303] at the end of the Marylebone Road now known as St. Pancras or King's Cross: at King's Cross there is a locality still known as Alpha Place. At Hackney is a Gayhurst Road, which may imply an erstwhile hurst or wood of Gay or Jay, and "at the south end of Springfield Road there is a curious and interesting little hamlet lying on the water's edge. The streets are very steep, and some of them extremely narrow--mere passages like the wynds in Edinburgh."[304] This little hamlet is "encircled" by Mount Pleasant Lane, whence one may assume that the eminence itself was known at some time or other as Mount Pleasant. The "Mount Pleasant" at Hackney may be connoted with the more famous "Mount Pleasant" at Dun Ainy, Knock Ainy, or the Hill of Aine in Limerick. The "_pleasant_ hills" of Ireland were defined as "_ceremonial_ hills," and it was particularly on the night of All Hallows that the immemorial ceremonies were there observed. To this day Aine or Ana, a beautiful and gracious water-spirit, "the best-natured of women," is reverenced at Knockainy, and the legend persists that "Aine promised to save bloodshed if the hill were given to her till the end of the world".[305] That Mount Pleasant at Hackney or Hackoney was similarly dedicated to High Aine or Ana is an inference to which the facts seem clearly to point.