Domnu is a Goddess of southwest England - Cornwall. Yesterday I heard of her for the first time. The mother of the Dumnonii, the people who inhabited Cornwall and Devon from at least the Iron Age through the early Saxon period, her name means abyss or deep. The depictions of her I've found are all modern and interpret this as meaning deep sea. However, the people of Cornwall were miners. Hello, Poldark. Tin is one of key ingredients of bronze, and bronze age tin from Cornwall was traded throughout the ancient world. Thus, it has recently been suggested that Domnu is not a sea goddess. Rather, she is the goddess of the mines. (source).
And, apparently, the Goddess of the Mines interpretation has been suggested in the past as well.. I just found a reference to Domnu in a 1922 book, Ancient Man in Britain, by Donald Alexander Mackenzie.
Mackenzie writes, "Gold was found in this area ... and was no doubt worked in ancient times. Of special interest in this connection is the fact that it was part of the territory occupied by Damnonians, who appear to have been a metal-working people. Besides occupying the richest metal-yielding area in Scotland, the Damnonians were located in Devon and Cornwall, and in the east-midland and western parts of Ireland, in which gold, copper, and tin-stone were found as in south-western England. The Welsh Dyfneint (Devon) is supposed by some to be connected with a form of this tribal name. Another form in a Yarrow inscription is Dumnogeni. In Ireland Inber Domnann is the old name of Malahide Bay north of Dublin. Domnu, the genitive of which is Domnann, was the name of an ancient goddess. In the Irish manuscripts these people are referred to as Fir-domnann, and associated with the Fir-bolg (the men with sacks). A sack-carrying people are represented in Spanish rock paintings that date from the Azilian till early "Bronze Age" times. In an Irish manuscript which praises the fair and tall people, the Fir-bolg and Fir-domnann are included among the black-eyed and black-haired people, the descendants of slaves and churls, and "the promoters of discord among the people".
In a footnote he adds, "The Fir-domnann were known as "the men who used to deepen the earth", or "dig pits". Professor J. MacNeil in Labor Gabula, p. 119. They were thus called "Diggers" like the modern Australians. The name of the goddess referred to the depths (the Underworld). I t is probable she was the personification of the metal-yielding earth."
He continues, "The reference to "slaves" is of special interest because the lot of the working miners was in ancient days an extremely arduous one. In one of his collected records which describes the method "of the greatest antiquity" Diodorus Siculus (a.d. first century) tells how gold-miners, with lights bound on their foreheads, drove galleries into the rocks, the fragments of which were carried out by frail old men and boys. These were broken small by men in the prime of life. The pounded stone was then ground in handmills by women: three women to a mill and "to each of those who bear this lot, death is better than life". Afterwards the milled quartz was spread out on an inclined table. Men threw water on it, work it through their fingers, and dabbed it with sponges until the lighter matter was removed and the gold was left behind. The precious metal was placed in a clay crucible, which was kept heated for five days and five nights. It may be that the Scandinavian references to the nine maidens who turn the handle of the "world mill" which grinds out metal and soil, and the Celtic references to the nine maidens who are associated with the Celtic cauldron, survive from beliefs that reflected the habits and methods of the ancient metal workers."
I enjoyed learning about Domnu, as my grandfather had Cornish ancestry and died in an underground mine in 1967. I guess Domnu can't save them all. But I appreciate that she protected him as long as she could. The mine and miners in my painting are based on flash photography from 1892 or 1893 from the Blue Hills Mine in St Agnes, Cornwall. I originally painted Domnu in the outfit of a Bal maiden, based on a historical photo, but it wasn't right.
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