The authorities think it possible that the river Idle--a tributary of the Trent--derived its name from being empty, vain, or useless; but it is more probable that this small stream was christened by the Idaeans, and that the resident Nymph or Fruitful Fairy was the idyll, or the idol, whom they idealised. It is not without significance that the starting point of the races at Uffington was Idles Bush: "As many as a dozen or more horses ran, and they started from Idle's Bush which wur a vine owld tharnin-tree in thay days--a very nice bush. They started from Idle's Bush as I tell 'ee sir, and raced up to the Rudge-way."[517] Doubtless there were also many other "Idles Bush's," perhaps at some time one in every Ideian town or neighbourhood: there is seemingly one notable survival at Ilstrye or _Ideles_tree, now Elstree near St. Albans. That the Idaean ideal was Athene is implied by the adjective _ethnic_. The word _ethic_ which means, "relating to morals," is connected by Skeat with _sitte_, the German for custom: there is, however, no seeming connection between German custom and the Idyllic.[518] The early followers of Britomart are universally described as an industrious and peaceful people who made their conquests in arts and commerce: to them not only was ascribed the discovery of iron and the working of it, but the Cretan treatment of bronze proves that the Idaeans were consummate bronzesmiths. In Crete, according to Sir Arthur Evans, "new and refined crafts were developed, some of them like inlaid metal-work unsurpassed in any age or country". That the Britons were expert blacksmiths is evident not merely from their chariot wheels, but also from the superb examples of bronze art-craft, found notably in the Thames. For the sum of one shilling the reader may obtain _A Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_, published by the British Museum, in which invaluable volume two wonderful examples of prehistoric ironmongery are illustrated in colour. One of these, a bronze shield discovered at Battersea, is rightly described by Romilly Allen, as "about the most beautiful surviving piece of late Celtic metal-work". The Celts, as this same authority observes, had already become expert workers in metal before the close of the Bronze Age; they could make beautiful hollow castings for the chapes of their sword sheaths; they could beat out bronze into thin plates and rivet them together sufficiently well to form water-tight cauldrons; they could ornament their circular bronze shields and golden diadems with repoussé patterns, consisting of corrugations and rows of raised bosses; and they were not unacquainted with the art of engraving on metal.[519]