MILNER CREEK TOWER

Full view, March 2013

While we are still in Scarborough there is one other river that should not slip our attention, especially considering all the prior references we have seen to the colour red. That river is, of course, the Rouge — a waterway rich in historic relics, having indulged human settlement since palaeolithic times. Here, just within our municipal boundaries, we find everything from the Bead Hill archaeological site, home of a former Seneca village, to the numerous remains of more recent occupation with abandoned barns, crumbled walls, and toppled silos dotting this still mostly rural landscape. One also finds, if one dares to look along the river's more secluded reaches, not only the modest remnants of the Toronto Zoo's long decommissioned monorail line, but also the cyclopean ruins of a Canadian Northern rail bridge which once spanned the Rouge just beyond the foot of Littles Road.

 Ruins of the CNR bridge, 2013

The object of our immediate attention, however, is not (as we should by now expect) a ruin of such conventional pedigree. Indeed, in its current state it is likely not a "ruin," in the strictest sense, at all. Nor is it, for that matter, directly connected to the Rouge itself, but rather to a small sub-branch known as the Milner Creek (technically a branch of the Morningside Creek, which then shortly connects with the Rouge to the north). The very remoteness of this particular structure lends all the more mystery to its construction: a looming concrete monolith, standing some 20 feet tall over the terminus of a shrouded gully, into which the Milner Creek flows underground before emptying into the rest of the Rouge system on the other side of a steep ridge. Rectangular in shape, with an opening like a grated battlement starting halfway up the creek-facing side, this bizarre tower appears grossly out of proportion for any simple manhole or outfall (if indeed that's all that it is). Even more peculiar, the creek-bed itself leading up to the structure has been ornately tiled with bricks, looking almost like a decorative walkway — but for who's benefit, one must ask, in this quite inaccessible location?

Paved watercourses and elaborate water management structures are not, of course, unheard of in urban areas. One need only look further downstream, to the massive set of baffles and churn-blocks used in mitigating the flow of the Morningside Creek, to see such works in action. Whether there to control flooding, drainage, sanitation, or simply to enhance the otherwise utilitarian aesthetics of said apparatus for a public space, intriguing architectural features will often accompany a city's system of waterways. In certain cases, however, these features seem to exceed any purely functional or ornamental purpose (an overly-involved double outfall structure found along the Anewen Greenbelt in the East Don valley comes to mind, as do the sophisticated series of channels and culverts comprising the Burke Brook on its way from Sunnybrook to Lawrence Park). In other cases their very location or surroundings, recondite as they often are, can lend an air of awed solemnity to these strangely evocative constructions (one particular outfall, isolated in a clandestine pocket of Warden Woods, at once feeds a tiny spur of the Taylor Creek while, in certain transient moments, giving all the vague impressions of some ancient, arcane shrine — if not the dreadful portal to some tenebrous otherworld). Such is the essence of water, though, that any source or conduit thereof will naturally be seen with a certain primal reverence, and examples like those above are not too uncommon a sight for anyone with a keen, if somewhat fanciful eye. Yet even still, this Milner Creek tower quite literally stands above them all. In both location and construction it is utterly obscure. What meaning, then, might we attribute to this oddly haunting shaft?

View up the paved water course, 2013

Some toponymical significance is seemingly bestowed by the nearby occurrence of Water Tower Gate — although this name would appear more descriptive than explanatory, and likely refers to the even nearer Rouge Tank standpipe on Sheppard Avenue. Any combination of water and towers, though, would (at least at a cursory glance) usually be taken as symbolic of life, (re)birth, fertility, etc.; the latter with its obvious phallic connotations, and the former commonly representing nourishment, baptism, a flow of energy, or the primordial womb of chaos from which all things emerge. Both water (in the form of a fountain, or well) and the tower (specifically that proverbial "ivory tower" of the Song of Solomon) have also, as symbols of purity, long been associated with the Virgin Mary (and, hence, our "Madonna of the Don").

Aside from this, we should immediately recognize "Milner" as a cognate of "Milne," addressed earlier in relation to the Wilket Creek artefact. Moreover, we learn from the ONC that this particular variant of Miller is "commonest in Yorkshire, retaining the -n- of the Middle and Old English word." Revisiting, then, the subject of mythical mills — and, more pursuant to the name at hand, the millers who ran them — certain figures are now brought accordingly to mind. In Midgley Moor, West Yorkshire, there is a Chalcolithic cairn mound known as Miller's Grave which, though of unknown etymology, has earned associations with Much the Miller's Son, one of Robin Hood's original, if least renowned Merry Men. Although far from Sherwood Forest, and clearly predating the time of these famed outlaws, the association is nonetheless bolstered by this cairn's proximity to another megalith known locally as Robin Hood's Pennystone. Furthermore, we find the oddly-named Much cited amongst some of the earliest recorded ballads (Robin Hood and Queen Catherine, Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, etc.) as "Midge," which does come an arrow's-width close to "Midgley," it must be admitted. We may even find some unintended linkage through F.A. Leyland who, in editing the second edition of John Watson's 1775 The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax, attributed "Miller's Grave" not to Much, but to "one Lee, a miller," who "committed suicide in Mayroyd Mill near Hebden Bridge." We now recall Much's instrumental role in the Gest of Robyn Hode, a ballad which revolves around the indebted and forlorn knight Sir Richard at the Lee, with "Lee" generally thought to be a location somewhere in the nearby Peak District of northern England.

Keeping in mind Robin Hood's previously theorized linguistic connection to "red king" (as well as to "maiden-queen," and "the devil"), if we now turn to the ballad of Robin Hood and Allin a Dale, we find Much (here referred to as "Nick" the Miller's Son) is also key in bringing the titular harpist Allin into Robin's fold. This now evokes a certain ballad-cum-folktale of possible Northumbrian origin, known by various names, but first recorded in English as The Miller and the King's Daughter. While each version of this tale is slightly different, its core theme involves a fair maiden (often likened to a white swan) being thrown into a river by a jealous older sister and drowned. When her body eventually comes upon a mill it is taken up by a miller who then proceeds to fashion her bones into a harp which, when played, reveals the crime committed against her. We say this tale is "of possible Northumbrian origin" because, as the famed 19th century folklorist Francis James Child pointed out, similar tales appear across Scandinavia as well — a natural condition as we recall the strong cultural ties already noted between these two regions by way of the Danelaw.

Looking up the south face, 2013

From here we might briefly turn back to the topic of Robin Hood, though if only to pursue the remarkable fact that the infamous Miller of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is not only named Robin, but is also described as wearing a white cloak and hood, while having a beard "as red as a fox or a sow." With our eyes already cast towards Nordic York, though, let us return to that other miller so renowned in both English and Scandinavian lore, Hamlet (anglicized name of the quasi-historical Jutish prince Amlóði, variously transliterated as Amlodhi, Amblothæ, and Amleth) who, as we read in the introduction to Hamlet's Mill:

was identified, in the crude and vivid imagery of the Norse, by the ownership of a fabled mill which, in his own time, ground out peace and plenty. Later, in decaying times, it ground out salt, and now finally, having landed at the bottom of the sea, it is grinding rock and sand, creating a vast whirlpool, the Maelstrom (i.e., the grinding stream, from the verb mala, "to grind"), which is supposed to be a way to the land of the dead.

Aside from noting this swirling mixture of rock, sand, and water is already three-quarters of the way towards concrete, we might also note our tower's position over the Milner Creek's entry beneath the ground, which can't help but bring to mind those previously mentioned "lower rivers" of Hades, and all such streams that delve their own "way to the land of the dead." Indeed, water and the underworld are so commonly linked as to hardly require expounding. Having already made mention of the Styx et al., let us briefly note that the Sumerians had their Hubur, the Finns their Tuoni, and the Mayans their various rivers of Xibalba to navigate on course to their respective afterlives. The Romans, rather than some river, saw Lake Avernus as the gateway to Hades, while the ancient Egyptians sought eternal rest in the great reed marsh of Aaru, just beyond the mouth of the Nile. There is the Shinto land of Yomi, or the "Yellow Springs," the Zoroastrian bottomless well of Duzakh, and the Hindu realm of damnation, Naraka, which is said to lay beneath a vast ocean at the bottom of the universe, not unlike the great well, or Mímisbrunnr, said to lay at the roots of Norse cosmography. Likewise, souls and spirits of the dead have long been thought to sail for such phantom isles as Elysium, Avalon, and Annwn (note the resemblance to "Anewen" above), whereas mariners of today still hope to avoid any premature voyage to Davy Jones' Locker.

Furthermore, the abode of the Gaelic death god Donn — Tech Duinn — was commonly said to lay somewhere under the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland. We recall Donn from our discussion of the river Don and in relation to an episode from The Destruction of Dá Derga's (the Red God's) Hostel. We bring this legend to mind again in light of some recent scholarship from the University of Aberdeen (Collinson, 2011) which has proposed an etymological provenance from a minor character in this tale, Admlithi (one of the king of Erin's three jesters), to Hamlet (Amlóði) himself. This claim rests on a shared linguistic reference to "milling" or "grinding," supported by the names of the other two jesters (Mael and Mlithe), and further squared by a previous assumption that the name, in fact, arrived by the opposite way (from Norse to Irish) as the word for a trickster or fool (from the Old Norse ama + óðr, approaching something like "annoying madness"). We must note, however, that possibly the earliest reference to Hamlet occurs as an Old Frisian runic inscription, in the form of Amluþ, on an 8th century object known as the Westeremden Yew-stick, recalling the significance of yew to the names of both York and Toronto, as outlined earlier.

East face as seen from above, 2013

Returning to Donn, and the convoluted otherworld of Celtic mythology, we now observe that, aside from having some aforementioned relation to both Dá Derga and the god Dagda, he has also been linked with the underworld deity Midir; said to be (depending on the source) either the son or brother of Dagda, and either the father or brother of Donn (if not all one and the same entity). At first one sees in this name a close parallel to the aforementioned Mithra (especially considering such common alternate spellings as Mithr). To then mix Celt and Norse once more, we may also note the nominal similarity of Midir and Mímir, keeper of the above-cited Mímisbrunnr. While these names, perhaps, bear only a superficial affinity, consider that when Midir famously lost an eye, he had it restored by the healing god Dian Cecht, himself the keeper of a magical well. Meanwhile it was to Mímir that Odin sacrificed one of his eyes for a drink from the sacred Mímisbrunnr. If we now invoke the one-eyed swineherd Nár, mentioned shortly after Admlithi in the last room of Dá Derga's Hostel, or the one-eyed "red king" of diamonds in profile, or, yet even further, the "blindness" of "Cecil" above, we're left somewhat grasping at how to account for it all.

Add, then, to this mythic hodgepodge the Mímisbrunnr's position at the base of Yggdrasil, the great world-tree of Norse mythology. Conventional etymology has "Yggdrasil" arriving from yggr + drasill, meaning "Odin's horse" (with yggr, "terrible one" being a common pseudonym for the god). We might now reflect upon all of the previous associations with horses that we've seen (particularly with Mithra), but we might also consider that "Odin's horse," in this context, likely refers to a metaphorical gallows, recalling how Odin hanged himself from said tree, in yet another act of self-sacrifice, so as to gain knowledge of the runes. Here we might glance back to Miller's Grave, or our talk of Gallows Hill in relation to the mysterious waters of the Avoca pool and Yellow Creek ravine, with its Roxborough — "rooks fort" — pillars, suggesting the hallowed birds of both Odin and Mithra.

Such talk of runes and pillars suggest another etymology for this tree, though. While commonly assumed to be an ash, the German scholar Franz Rolf Schröder read "Yggdrasil" as "yew pillar," deriving its name from the Proto-Germanic *igwja ("yew tree") and the Indo-European *dher- ("firmness," "support"). This theory has been gaining support since Schröder first proposed it back in the 1930s, especially considering such facts as Yggdrasil often being described as an evergreen (which the ash is not), and an archaic term for the yew being "needle ash." Talk of rooks and pillars, meanwhile, brings us back to the tower itself. In the former case, one could conceivable argue that it bears some passing resemblance to the chess piece of the same name, noting, too, a few passing references to this game in previous sections (and perhaps adding that, in one legend, Midir was said to have won his mistress Etain in a chess match). In the latter case, we observe that the concept of some central pillar, axle, or tree — upon which everything is supported, and around which everything rotates — is key to the imagery of the cosmic mill. Continuing from the last passage of Hamlet's Mill quoted above, Santillana and von Dechend go on to say:

This imagery stands, as the evidence develops, for an astronomical process, the secular shifting of the sun through the signs of the zodiac which determines world-ages, each numbering thousands of years. Each age brings a World Era, a Twilight of the Gods. Great structures collapse; pillars topple which supported the great fabric; floods and cataclysms herald the shaping of the new world.

Here they are describing a phenomenon known to astronomers as the "lunisolar axial precession," otherwise known as the "precession of the equinoxes," or "precession of the equator." This refers to a cyclical change in the celestial orientation of the earth's poles, caused by a rotational wobble along its axis (symbolized by the pillar — and, perhaps, our tower?), over the course of approximately 25,920 years. Dividing this time-span by twelve, we then see the dawn of a new astrological age roughly every 2,160 years, and, of course, the death of another (symbolized by the broken, or fallen pillar — and, perhaps, by certain of our previous ruins?). Along with this polar realignment also comes a change in what is currently seen as this planet's "pole star" which, conveniently enough, brings us directly to our next site.