BRITOMARTIS  '(" sweet

maiden "), an old Cretan goddess, later identified with Artemis . According to Callimachus (Hymn to Diana, 1t o), She was a nymph, the daughter of 'Zeus and Cattle, 'ands a favourite companion of Artemis . ' "Being pttrstied by Mill, kited Crete, who was enamoured' of her, she sprang from a rock into 'the sea, but was saved from drowning by, falling into statle'fishermen's nets: Shewasafterwards made a goddess by Artemis under the name of Dictynna(StKrvov,'" a The Celtic language is still spoken in lower Brittany . Four dialects are pretty clearly marked (see the article CELT: Language, "Breton," p . 328) . Nowhere has the taste for marvellous legends been kept so green as in Brittany; and an entire folk-literature still flourishes there, as is manifested by the large number of folk-tales and folk-songs which have been collected net " ) . She was the patroness of hunters, fishermen and sailors, and also a goddess of birth and health . The centre of her worship was Cydonia, whence it extended. to Sparta and Aegina (where she was known as Aphaea) and the islands of the Mediterranean . By some she is considered to have been a moon-goddess, her flight from Minos and her leap into the sea signifying the revolution and disappearance of the moon (Pausanias ii . 30, iii . 14; Antoninus Liberalis 40) . BRITON-FERRY, a seaport in the mid-parliamentary division of Glamorganshire, Wales, on the eastern bank of the estuary of the Neath river in Swansea Bay, with stations on the Great Western and the Rhondda & Swansea Bay railways, being 194 M. by rail from London .

Pop. of

urban district (1901) 6993 . A tram-line connects it with Neath, 2 M. distant, and the Vale of Neath Canal (made in 1997) has its terminus here . The district was formerly celebrated for its scenery, but this has been considerably marred by industrial development which received its chief impetus from the construction in 1861 of a dock of 13 acres, the property of the Great Western Railway Company, and the ripening up about the same time of the mining districts of Glyncorrwg and Maesteg by means of the South Wales mineral railway, which connects them with the dock and supplies it with its chief export, coal . Steel and tinplates are manufactured here on a large scale . There are also iron-works and a foundry . The name La Brittone was given by the Norman settlers of the 12th century to its ferry across the estuary of the Neath (where Archbishop Baldwin and Giraldus crossed in 1188, and which is still used), but the Welsh name of the town from at least the 16th century has been Llansawel .