CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BL 25.H62°i886""''""""-"'"^^ ^£™™ii!J|[!,±^.i?,'''9'" ^"^ growth of rel 3 1924 009 524 384 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924009524384 THE HIBBERT LECTUEES, 1886. THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1886. LECTURES ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION AS ILLUSTKATED BY CELTIC HEATHENDOM. JOHN EHYS, FELLOW OF JBStIS OOLLEOK, AND LAIE FELLOW OF MBRTON CULLlwOE ; FKOFESaOB OF OELTIO IN THE nHIVKESITY OF OXFORD. WILLIAMS AND NOKGATE 14, HENRIETTA STREET, CO VENT GARDEN, LONDON; And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBORGH. 1888. [AU Rights reserved.'] LONDON : PRINTED BY 0. 6KEEN AND EON, 178, STRAND. PREFACE. These Lectures were delivered in London and here, in the months of May and June, 1886 ; and it was intended that they should appear in the book market soon after. So I take this opportunity of publicly thanking the Hibbert Trustees for their forbearance, and of explaining the causes of the delay. The first and foremost was my ignorance, above all as to the magnitude of the task I vras undertaking ; and this ignorance pursued me into the arrangement of the Lectures, so that it had to be seriously modified more than once in the course of the work. Among other things, I found it necessary to make some sort of survey of the whole ground, and, in a word, to circumnavigate the whole subject before committing to type my ideas about any part of it. This led to my studying much that could not be included in this volume ; I was, however, allowed to deliver two lectures besides the six agreed upon. Those two, as I could not expect the Hibbert Trustees to have them printed, are to form part of a volume on the Arthurian Legend, which I hope soon to publish ; not to mention that I contemplate devoting a separate volume some day to the Dark Divinities of the Celts. It was necessary to go carefully into the questions raised by these and kindred subjects, and it all required time. But I may plead that the history of religion had never before been comprehensively studied from the Celtic point of view. Scarcely b VI PREFACE. any pioneer could have been so feeble in his efforts as not to have rendered material aid to any one who came after. The next cause of delay was the necessity I felt of writing the Lectures at a greater length than would occupy six hours in the delivery. It arose chiefly from the fact, that the Celtic litera- ture bearing on the history of Celtic paganism is so little known to the vast majority of English readers, that acquaintance with it could not be taken for granted. It remained for me, therefore, to give the substance of the sagas and epic tales in point at a length which has considerably increased the bulk of this volume. But it afforded many opportunities of making com- parisons, never made before, between Irish and "Welsh myths, comparisons which cannot but be of help in any future treatment of the subject, even though some of the more ambitious theories may prove untenable. I consider that event a certainty for several reasons, such as my innate liability to err, and the dis- covery of more GaUo-Eoman remains on the Continent, or the publication of more Irish manuscripts hitherto comparatively inaccessible. Still the attempt to draw a comprehensive picture of Celtic Heathendom seemed to be worth making, even though it should prove nothing but that there is a great mass of data at one's service. Those data are not, it is true, such as the student of Greek or Latin paganism is wont to handle; but, taking them as they offered themselves, I found that, far from having reasons to complain of their scarcity, the slowness of my progress was aggravated by an embarras de richesse. This is all the more striking as many of my English friends wondered, at first, what in the world I should find to occupy half-a-dozen Lectures. Having thus aUuded to the quantity of the materials sit my disposal, I woiild only add as to their nature, that a large pro- portion of them is of a philological order ; and I fear that I have PREFACE. Vll not always taken care enough to make it as easy to skip the etymological passages as the general reader could wish, at any rate if publishers and reviewers do not grossly exaggerate the requirements of his comfort. With regard to comparisons extend- ing beyond the Celtic group itself, most assistance has been derived from the ancient literature of Scandinavia. From one branch of the Aryan family, the Slavonic, I have been almost wholly unable to draw any help, as I found the existing works on the subject of old Slavonic religion and mythology either too antiquated or too brief to consult with advantage. This I regret all the more, as I do not believe that materials are wanting to illustrate the religious and mythic aspect of Slavonic history. After these remarks, it is needless to say that I have not attempted to discuss the early fortunes of Christianity among the Celts. That is a large subject worthy of being treated in a separate series of lectures by some one well versed in the mass of old literature devoted to the lives of the saints of Erinn and both Britains. Of course it is not pretended that anything connected with the history of religion among the Celts — or among the Teutons, if it comes to that — could vie in popularity with the pedigree of the last idol unearthed in the East,- or even with the discovery of a new way of spelling Nebuchadnezzar's name. Stm the Celtic field of research has a rapidly growing interest for scholars, who now regard it as one in which the investigator's labours are most certain to be crowned with brilliant results. 'The great attraction of Celtic philology consists in the very fact that every haul of the net, without exception, brings in a rich spoil.' So wrote a distinguished German scholar the other day ; and his words are true of Celtic philology in that wider sense of the term which would embrace not only the study of Celtic speech, but also of Celtic archaeology and history, of Celtic religion and folk-lore, of Celtic myth and saga. VIU PREFACE. I have reserved to the last the pleasant task of thanking the kind friends who have given me unstinted assistance in bringing this volume through the press. Foremost among them stands the well-known Celtic scholar, Whitley Stokes, through whose hands most of the sheets have passed. I am indebted to him for many valuable suggestions ; but neither he nor any one but myself is responsible for the errors or blunders which the accu- rate reader may find the book to contain. JOHN" EHYS. GwTNVA, Oxford, Christmas Eve, 1887. CONTENTS. Lecture T. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. PAQE Part I. 1 Mercury ......... 6 Apollo 20 Mars ......... S2 Part II. Mars (continued) 49 Jupiter . 64 Minerva ......... 73 Dis 77 Minor Divinities 99 Lecture II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. Part 1 107 Nuada of the Silver Hand 119 Nodens, NM and LlHd 125 Cormac, Conaire, Conchobar . . . . . .133 The Mac Oc and Merlin 144 Merlin Emrys and Maxen . . . . . .160 Part II. Camulos, Cumall and Nwyvre . . . . 176 Sites sacred to the Celtic Zeus 182 The God's Mounds, Fetishes and Symbols . . . 204 The God of Druidism .216 COI^TENTS, LECiaBB III. THE CULTUEE HERO. PASE Gwydion Son of D6n 236 The Culture Hero acquiring certain Animals for Man . 241 Poetry associated in its Origin with the Culture Hero . 250 Gwydion and other Names of the Culture Hero . . 270 Gwydion compared with Woden and Indra . . . 282 Lecture IV. THE CULTUEE HEEO (continued). Gwydion and Cairbre 305 Gwydion and Aitherne ...... 324 Pwylt and others visiting Hades 337 The Culture Hero and the Nine-night Week . . 360 Lecture V. THE SUN HEEO. Part I. Lieu and Lug 383 The widely spread'Cult of Lug ..... 409 Ciichulainn's Birth and Education . . . , .431 Some of Ciichulainn's Adventures .... 444 Ciichulainn and his Foes ...... 468 Part II. Kulhwch and Gwri of the Golden Hair . . 486 Core and Diarmait ....... 503 Diarmait's Home and Duben's Name . . . . 521 The Celtic Sun-hero and the Norse Balder . . . 529 Taliessin ......... 543 The Stratification of Solar Myths ..... 670 CONTENTS. XI Lecture VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEKOES. PAOK Irish Mythography on the Gods and their Foes . . 579 Greek and Norse Comparisons . . ... .610 The Distress of the Gods and the Sun Hero's Aid . 622 Celtic Accounts of the Aryan Deluge .... 641 The earliest" Creed of the Celts inferred . . . 669 ADDITIONS AND COKEECTIONS 675 INDEX OF NAMES AND OTHER WORDS . . 679 Lecture I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. PAET I. The inhabitants of ancient Gaul were tKe earliest Celts of -whose religion we possess any knowledge : the sources of our information are twofold, namely, the testimony of ancient authors and that of votive tablets or other epi- graphic monuments. Of the ancients who touch on Gaulish religion, Caesar, in his account of the Gallic War, may be regarded as far the most important for our purpose, partly because he wrote at a time when the process of assimilating the gods of Gaul to those of Italy was only beginning, and partly because he, who was pontiff at home, had opportunities of understanding like- wise much about Gaulish religion, not the least of which consisted in his having the druid Diviciacus as his con- stant companion and intimate friend throughout the war ; still there are many reasons for accepting Caesar's account of the Gaulish pantheon with great caution. His words, so far as they bear on the individuality and respective rank of what he considered to be the chief divinities of the Gauls, are to the following effect : ^ They worship Mercury, he says, above all others, and of him they have / ^ Bellum Gallicum (ed. Holder), yi. 17. B 2 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. very many images. Their traditions make Mm the inventor of all the arts and the patron of roads and journeys, and they think him the most powerful in the matter of acquir- ing money and in the transactions of commerce. After him, they worship Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva : of these they entertain much the same opinion as other nations, namely, that Apollo drives away diseases, that Minerva teaches the elements of the various trades and arts, that Jupiter rules over the sky, and that Mars has the direction of wars. Indeed, it is usual for them, as soon as they have resolved to engage in battle, to vow beforehand to Mars all the spoils they may take in the war ; so they sacrifice to him all the animals captured, and bring all the rest of the booty together to one spot. In many of their cities, heaps of these things may be seen piled up in their sacred places. Nor does it often happen that anybody so far disregards the traditional custom as to dare either to conceal any of the booty at home or carry away any of the booty set aside : in case such a crime is committed, the offender is tortured and most severely punished. Such is the purport of Caesar's words, and it will be well to see how far Gaulish epigraphy is found to corro- borate or correct them. Unfortunately for the study of Celtic religion and philology, few of the monuments of Gaul supply us with inscriptions in the national tongue ; and probably all of them, whether in Gaulish or in Latin, date after the advent of the Eoman conqueror and the- initiation of his policy of assimilating the gods of van- ■ quished Gaul with those of Eome. This policy took a very definite form under Augustus. He as pontifez max- imus united the religions of the Eoman world ; but the I. THE GATTLISH PANTHEON. 3 manner in which. Africa and the East were treated could not be recommended in the case of Gaul and Spain ; so, when he undertook to restore the position of the Lares and Penates, he included among them the Gaulish divinities, who were henceforth styled Augusti. The result in each instance was that the name of the Gaulish god came to be treated more or less as a mere epithet to that of the Eoman divinity, with which he began to be regarded as identical: thus the Gaulish Grannos became Apollo Grannus, and Belisama became Minerva Belisama, and so in other cases. Nay, the Eoman god not unfrequently seized on the attributes of the native one even to the extent of assuming his Gaulish costume and non-classical appearance, as is amply proved by the images extant in great numbers in France : among others. Mercury, instead of retaiuing the aspect given him by Italian art, appears often in a form which has been found to recall rather the beauty and artistic perfection of the Greek Apollo. The Eoman policy which reduced the Gaulish divinities to Lares Augusti did not stop at that poiut ; for the cult of the Eoman gods as such had been introduced, and, as it established itself over the country, it brought with it also that of Mithras, Cybele, and other non-Italian gods and goddesses to whom the Eoman pantheon opened its doors. Further, it is found that the worship of the Eoman and quasi-Eoman divinities was conducted under the superintendence of men of good birth, who bore the title of pontiffs, augurs or flamens ; but those in charge of the cult of the Gaulish Lares Augusti were usually freedmen, who bore the designation of Seviri Augusti, and had to discharge their office free of expense to the state. In a word, the Gaulish gods and goddesses were reduced b2 4 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. iu rank and forced, so to say, to become more or less Eoman ; but tbey were not banisbed or in any way pro- scribed.^ To come to tbe monuments, I may say tbat they are to be found in the local museums of France, Switzerland, and portions of neighbouring lands formerly or still occupied by the Celts: they are moreover numerous, and the accounts of them are to be sought up and down the voluminous transactions of some scores of provincial societies, whose publications are not always easy to con- sult. So I find that, in the absence of a complete corpus of the ancient inscriptions of France, I cannot do better than set out from one district, the monuments of which, as far, at least, as concerns the subject of this lecture, have been laid before the public in a manageable form by competent archaeologists. The district I have chosen is that which was occupied in Eoman times by the Gaulish state of the AUobroges. It lay mostly on the eastern side of the Ehone, stretching from that river to the Alps, and from the Lake of Geneva to the Isfere. To this must be added a certain tract on the other bank of the Ehone as also probably belonging to the AUobroges, and cover- ing at least most of the present department of the Ehone.^ The metropolis of the AUobroges was the city of Yienna, now called Yienne : their country consisted in part of some of the most fertile land in Gaul, and in part of very I. ^ For the substance of these remarks I am indebted to an excellent article by M. Florian Vallentin, entitled, Les Dieux de la Cite des AUobroges, in tbe Revue Celtique, Vol. iv. 1 — 36, to -wbioh I shall have frequently to refer in this lecture. ^ Vallentin, ibid. p. 1 ; see also Desjardins, Geogra;pMe historique et administrative de la Guide romaine, ii. 351. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 6 mountainous regions. The Allobroges were Celts, though their name means ' those of another march or district : ' they were so called doubtless by some of their Celtic neighbours, but the name which they gave themselves is unknown. The peoples on the eastern bank of the Ehone formed a confederation, at the head of which stood the Allobroges, so that they may be said to have had the control of the navigation of that river and of the impor- tant traffic carried on by means of it. The AUobrogic confederation formed in its turn a member of the larger one headed by the Arvemi.^ Lastly, my principal autho- rities for the inscriptions found in the country of the Allobroges are Allmer's collection of the inscriptions of Vienne,2 and a succinct account of the gods of the Allo- broges by the late M. Florian Vallentin, one of the best known archaeologists of the south of Trance. MEECtrRT is the god with whom the monuments lead one to begin, and the first inscription to which I would call your atten- tion was found among some Eoman ruins near the village of Beaucroissant in the department of the Isfere, and it is said to have read : Mercuric Aug(usto) Artaio Sacr(um) Sex(tus) Geminius Cupitus, ex voto.^ The place of find- ing is recorded to have been once called Artay, though the name is unknown there now ; but the names Artas 1 Vallentin, Rev. Celtique, iv. 1, 2. " Inscriptions antiques et du Moyen Age de Vienna en Daupliine, consisting of six octavo volumes of letter-press description of them, supplemented by a quarto one of plates, published at Vienne in the year 1875. * AUmer, iij. 112; Vallentin, Rev. Celtique, iv. 17. 6 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. and Artay occur near Yienne and Grenoble, This hardly enables one, however, to decide whether the god gave his name to one or more of these places, or the reverse was the case ; but one is inclined to the former view by the occurrence oiArtio as the name of a goddess in an inscrip- tion in the museum at Berne,^ for one can hardly be wrong in associating with Artio's name such a Celtic word as the Welsh dr ' plough-land' ; whence it would seem by no means improbable, that Mercurius Artaius was the Gallo- Eoman title of the god called Mercurius CuUor in an inscription from Wtirtemberg.^ This would serve to show that Mercury was associated by the Gauls with agricul- ture, especially ploughing. The next inscription to be mentioned was found at Hiferes, also in the department of the Isfere, and the first portion of it reads: Aug(usto) Sacr(um) Deo Mercurio Yictori Magniaco Yeilauno.^ Here the god is styled 'August,' as in the other instance, but the less usual epithet of victor is added, which is to be noticed, as he was no mere Mercury in the Latin sense. Then follow in the inscription two words of Gaulish origin, of which Magniaco would seem to be the name of a place, though it must be admitted to lack the support to be expected from the identification of its modern form as the name of a spot in the neighbourhood. The other, Veilauno, even though it should not prove a misreading of Ybllavno, ^ Mommsen, Inscriptiones Helveticae (in Vol. x. of the MUilieilungen der Antiq. Gesellschaft in Ziincli), No. 215 ; Rev. Gelt. iv. loc. cit. 2 Brambach's Corjnts Insc. Rhenanarum, No. 1591. 3 AUmer, iii. 191, pi. 38-8 ; Rev. Celt. iv. 16. There seems to bo some doubt as to whether Magniaco or Macniaco is the correct reading : Allmer gives both without remarking on the discrepancy. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 7 cannot but be regarded as practically identical with it : compare such, names as Cassivellaunos, which meant the king or ruler of the hanse or league, and Catuvellauni, of the same import as Caturiges ; both peoples being wont, as it would seem, to boast themselves lords of battle or war-kings. It is after the analogy of such compounds that the GauKsh element in the Hiferes inscription is to be read ; that is to say, it makes one compound epithet, Magniaco-veUaunos^ meaning, as it may provisionally be rendered, king or ruler of Magniacon or Magniacum, in allusion to some place with which the god's name was associated. Besides the two foregoing inscriptions in honour of a distinctly Gaulish Mercury, there is monumental evidence that there were temples dedicated to the god at no less than twenty-six different spots ^ in the country of the AUobroges. Some of the twenty-six very possibly be- longed to the Greco-Eoman Mercury of an imported cult ; ^ The Gauls, like the modern Celts, had no objection to compound terms, and they even used foreign elements in such place-names as Augustonemetum, the grove of Augustus ; Gaesarodunum, Caesar's for- tress ; and Juliomagus, the field of Julius. Some of their personal names were quite as long : witness Conconnetodumnos, Veriugodumnos and Vercassivellaunos. These and the like must have seemed cum- brous to the Romans ; and Englishmen of the present day profess to be amused with German compound terms, forgetting that they are usually the shortest way of expressing what is meant, and that few languages form compounds more readily or complicately than their own, though the longer terms are never written as single words : take, for example, such instances as * university examinations,' ' university exa- mination-papers,' ' London, Chatham and Dover Eailway,' or ' London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company.' It is only an accident — doubtless an inseparable accident of perversity — that English gram- marians usually conceal the fact of the composition. ^ See them enumerated by M. Vallentin in the Rev. Gelt. iv. 15. 8 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. but the majority may perhaps be assumed to have been those of the native divinity. So far, then, the monuments agree with the purport of Caesar's words in regard to Mercury ; and if we now go beyond the boundaries of the AUobrogic state, we shall find them strongly supported both by the distribu- tion of the inscriptions and the number of the statuettes of the god: the latter prove in some instances of very considerable metallic value — such, for example, as the massive silver Mercury dug up in the gardens of the Luxembourg. M. Gaidoz, in his far too brief account of the religion of the Gauls, speaks of the univer- sality of the worship of Mercury among the Gauls, and calls attention to the number of place-names which bear evidence to it.^ He mentions the following, but the list might be enlarged : Montmercure, Mercosur, Mercoiray, Mercoire, Mercoiset, Mercuer, Mercurette, Mercurey, Mercurie, Mercurot, Mercury. Several such names occur on AUobrogic ground, and the department of the Puy de Dome, so named from the late Latin word podium, a hill or mountain, contains another podium or puy J known as the Puy de Mercoeur ; and this last desig- nation, accommodated to the habits of another dialect, yields Montmercure, the name of another place. This completes M. Gaidoz' s list,^ and I would call special attention to the last two as it is noticed that the Gaulish ^ Esquisse de la Religion des Oauluis (Paris, 1879), p. 10. ' A somewhat shorter one was given by M. Mowat in the Rev. Archeologique (1875), Vol. xxix. p. 34, where he gives a reason for connecting the place-name Montmartre with the god, a view also taken by M. Gaidoz. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 9 Mercury greatly affected high ground and conspicuous positions. Thus it is supposed that there was a temple dedicated to Mercury on Montmartre : it is known that he had one on Mont du Chat,^ near the blue lake of the Bourget, in the land of the AUobroges ; another on Mont de S^ne, in the Cote d'Or; and a third of considerable importance on the Donon, one of the more elevated heights of the Vosges.^ But far the most celebrated one remains to be mentioned: it stood on the summit of the Puy de Dome, in Auvergne, and its foundations are said to prove it to have been an extensive and costly building. It was in fact the great temple of the Arverni; and for it was probably destined the colossal Mercury in bronze, stated by Pliny in his Historia Naturalis, xxxiv. 18, to have been made by the Greek artist Zenodorus for the Gaulish state of the Arverni. It stood 120 feet high, and the work took ten years to accomplish.^ The expense connected with the worship was probably borne by the cities of Gaul in common, and the fame of the temple lasted to the time of Gregory of Tours ; for he relates in his Historia Francorum, i. 32, how it was destroyed by Chrocus, king of the Alamanni, which according to the historian happened in the time of Valerian and Gallien.* A fragmentary inscription dis- covered on the spot happens to have been set up by certaia negotiator es or men of business, and it serves to 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 15. ^ JoUois, Memoires sur quelques AnUquitis remarquables du Departe- ment des Vosges (Paris, 1843), p. 126, &c. ^ Bev. Gelt. iv. 15 and ii. 426 ; Bulletin Monumental, 1875, p. 557, et seq. * See also Mowat in the Rev. Arch'. (1875), Vol. xxix. 31. 10 I. THE GAULISH PANTHBON. show that one of the names under wMch the god received honour there, was that of Merourius Aryernus.^ The focus of his cult has to be sought in Auvergne, but we find from votive tablets that he was also known in Bavaria, in some districts of Ehenish Prussia, and on the banks of the Meuse in the Netherlands.^ With these must be ranked an inscription at Bittburg, in Ehenish Prussia, to — ^Deo Mercur(io) Yassocaleti.^ But to understand the term Vassocaleti, it would be well to study carefully Gregory's words in the passage already alluded to. He, a native of Auvergne, seems to have been well acquainted with the ruins on the Puy de Dome, and the following is his account of them : Veniens vero [Chroeus] Arvemos, delubrum illud, quod Gallica lingua Yasso Galate vocant, iacendit, diruit atque subvertit. Miro enim opere factum fait atque firmatum. Cuius paries duplex erat, ab intus enim de minuto lapide, a f oris vero quadris sculptis fabricatum fuit. Habuit enim paries ille crassitudinem pedes triginta. Intrinsecus vero mar- more ac museo variatum erat. Pavimentum quoque eedes marmore stratum, desuper vero plumbo tectum.* Ifow ^ Rev, Gelt. ii. 426, iv. 15 j Rev. des Sac. savantes (1875), Yol. i. p. 249. '■^ Brambach, Nos. 256, 257, 593, 1741, 2029 add. p. xxvii. ^ Kuhn's Beitrmge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung, iij. 169; Brambach, No. 835 ; Rev. Arch. (1875), Vol. xxx. pp. 367, 368, where M. Mowat corrects Brambach's VAaso-CALETi into Vassooalbti. In the same article, p. 361, he gives facsimiles of the readings of the corresponding form in the chief manuscripts of Gregory's text. * Gregorii Turonensis Opera, Historia Francorum (contained in Monumenta Oermaniae Historica), Lib. i. c. 32, where the reading preferred by the editors begins with Veniens vero Arvernus, &c., but A 1 reads Arvemos. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 11 there seems to be no sufficient reason to sever the Vasso Galate of the manuscripts of Gregory from the Vasso- caleti of the Ehenish inscription.^ One should rather correct the former according to the latter, and then the whole becomes intelligible in the light of Gregory's description of the Gaulish temple. For caM proves to be the genitive of the adjective which is in modern "Welsh cakd, 'hard,' in older Welsh cakt, Irish cahth of the same meaning. The other part of the Gaulish term vasso is to be equated with the Welsh word ffwas,^ 'mansion or palace; Irish foss, 'a staying or rest,' of the same origin as the Greek Ho-tv, 'town or city;' Sanskrit vastu, 'a seat or place,' vas, 'to dwell or remain;' Eng. was, were. So Vasso-calet must have meant the hard mansion or hard palace ; perhaps one should rather say the hard temple, since it is believed that the Gaulish noun survived in the old French vas, which meant a chapel, church, temple or cloister. As to the build- ing being called hard, one has only to recall what Gregory has left on record concerning its walls of thirty feet in thickness and the solid nature of the structure generally. Lastly, I should construe Mercurius Vassocaleti some- what in a Celtic fashion, as meaning ' Mercury of the ^ ETen those who preferred doing so would have to explain Vasso Galate as meaning the Gaulish temple, and to refer it probably to the same edifice. ^ Much conjecture has been wasted on this term, especially by writers aware only of a Welsh word gwas, meaning a young man or servant, Gaulish vassos (as in Dagovassus), and not of gwas, meaning a palace or mansion, which alone is the one here in point. 12 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. Yasso-calet,'^ or the god who dwelt in that temple. Be that so or not, the Yasso-calet was a very remarkable temple ; and what is still more remarkable perhaps is, that the god should have been known by the name of this Arvernian temple of his so far away as Bittburg on the Khine, But besides the fragmentary inscription already noticed as found on the Buy de Dome, a complete inscription has been dug up there which supplies us with still another way of designating the god. It is said to read: Num(ini) Aug(usto) et Deo Mercurio Dumiati, Matutinius Yictorinus D(ono) D(edit).2 Now the name of the mountain, Buy de Dome, or as it is called by the inhabitants of the district simply le Bourn, and the epithet Dumias or Dumiates given to the god whose temple adorned the top of it, cannot well be 1 This is according to a rule still obtaining in Welsh, as when we say Ivan Hirnant, ' Evan of Long-brook,' or Tudur Penllyn, ' Tudor of Penllyn,' in both of which the place-name is to be construed as a genitive ; and we have an instance from a time before the case-endings were dropped, in a bilingual inscription from Brecknockshire, which reads Maccutreni Saliciduni, ' (the Stone of) Maccutreni of Salicidu- non' (Ehys, Lectures on Welsh Phil. p. 382). Then as to the com- pound Vasso-calet, one has to compare the Welsh treatment of permanent epithets. Thus we say Maelgwn Fychan, 'M. Vaughan or M. the Little,' while a little Maelgwn, to whom the adjective was not constantly applied, would be Maelgwn hychan, ' little Maelgwn.' Put back into an early form, the latter would be Maglocunos Mecanos, while the former would be Maglocuno-Mccanos ; and it is in this way that I would explain the Gaulish Vasso-ealeti as a compound in the genitive case. Compare the Irish genitive na Grmb-riladi, in the Bh. of the Dun, 99 & ; it was the name of the king of Ulster's palace, and literally meant the Eed Branch, a designation, however, of uncertain connotation. One may also probably compare the Ogmic genitive Neta-Ttrenalugos, with tt iai later th, and a neta which is in my opinion not a genitive. 2 Rev. des Soc. sav. Vol. i. (1875), p. 250; Rev. Celt ii. 426. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 13 supposed unconnected, and the question arises as to tlie nature of the connection between them. Now Dome or Doum is here probably a Celtic word, and it could in that case hardly be doubted that it should be referred to the same origin as the Irish word duma, 'a tumulus or mound of any kind ; ' ^ but the Irish duma means an early Celtic form, dumjo-s or dumjo-n, and this stem dumjo we seem to have exactly in Dumiati. The Gaulish word as applied to the mountain may have simply meant the top or sum- mit, in which case the epithet of the god would refer to him as the divinity of the top of the Puy; but other explanations are possible, though I do not think it neces- sary to detain you with an examination of them. So much as to the god's epithets; but none of the AUobrogic monuments seem to supply us with any of his Gaulish names, while a curious inscription referring to him comes from Thornbury on the Swale, in York- shire, where no name or epithet is given : he is described simply as the discoverer of roads and paths. The words are: Deo qui vias et semitas commentus est.^ There is, however, no great difficulty in identifying him under a Gaulish name. He was called Ogmios, or at any rate that was one of his principal names, and under that we have a very curious account of his attributes from the pen of Lucian, a chatty Greek, who wrote and travelled in the second century of our era. His words are to the ^ Cormac's Glossary, translated by O'Donovan and edited by Stokes (Calcutta, 1868), p. 40; Meyer's Ventry Harbour (Oxford, 1885), x. 87; O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, i. pp. dcxxxvij, dcxxxix. ^ The Berlin Corpus Inser. Latinarum, Vol. vii. (Inscr. Britanniae Latinae, edited by Hiibner), No. 271. 14 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. following effect, and though they treat him as Heracles, you will at once see that he was no Heracles in the classic sense of that name : The Celts, he says, call Heracles in the language of their country Ogmios, and they make yery strange representations of the god. "With them he is an extremely old man, with a bald forehead and his few remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life : in fact, you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But although he is of this description, he is, nevertheless, attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in his right hand ; he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out : in these respects he is quite Heracles.^ It struck me, then, that the Celts took such liberties with the ap- pearance of Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harassed most of the western peoples. I have not yet, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make ; and although they are dragged on by such weak ties, they never try to run away, though they could * In fact, the god's equipment shows that a determined effort had been made to get him up in the classical way. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 15 easily do it ; nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the reverse : they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising him who leads them, pressing on one and all, and slack- ening their chains in their eagerness to proceed : in fact, they look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to tell you : the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the cords, since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue, and represented the people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at these things, and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by speaking good Greek — a man who was quite a philosopher, I take it, in local matters- said to me. Stranger, I will tell yoii the secret of the paintiug, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power of speech to be Hermes, as you Greeks do, but we represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the power of words is wont to show its per- fection in the aged ; for your poets are no doubt right when they say that the thoughts of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators 16 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. speak witli a voice of the delicacy of the Hly, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom ;i for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles, the power of speech, draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no reason to wonder, as you must be aware of the close connection between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him by this latter being pierced ; for I remember, said he, learning while among you some comic iambics, to the effect that all chattering fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, are his utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind ; and you too say that words have wings. Thus far the Celt. According to this account, Ogmios, or the Gaulish Heracles, was the personification of what the Greeks understood by Adyos : he was the god of speech and all that conduced to make speech a powerful agency — elo- quence and wisdom, the craft of Hermes, and the varied experience of the travelled old man who had seen many peoples and visited many lands. Now if we wished to discover the equivalent of Ogmjos in the languages of the 1 I am not quite sure tliat I comprehend this allusion to the lily; but here is the original for those who may object to being led astray : kol ol dyoprjTai twv Tp(o(av rrjv oVa rijy Xtipioetrcrav affyiacriv evavdrj Tiva' Xeipia, yap KaA,€tTat, ei.' ye p,kjj,vqp,ai, to. avOi]. The whole prolalia is No. 7 (pp. 23 — 25) in Bekker's edition, and No. 55 (pp. 598 — 600) in Dindorf 's ; extracts from it will also be found in Zeuss's Grammatica Celiica, edited by Ebel, pp. 1, 2. I. THE GAITLISH PANTHEON. 17 Celts of the British Islands, we should have to suppose the word submitted to the operation of phonetic processes suggested by other words in their respective vocabularies : thus, according to Old Irish phonology, the j would go and the word must appear as Ogma, as indeed it does, while in Welsh the changes implied would be rather greater : thus it would first become Ogmijos with j, sounded like English y in the word yes, liable to be modified into d, or the sound of th in the English word this ; moreover, the case-termination must go, and if the word happened to have survived among the Welsh glosses of the 9th century, it would have been found written 'ogmid' or * ogmid.' The next stage would be represented with m softened to v and g to gh, sounded like g in the softest pronunciation of the German word sagen, and soon elided altogether, just as sagen not unfrequently becomes saen in colloquial German, with as little or less trace of the guttural consonant left as in the English equivalent say. The use of the word is first attested in the Black Book of Carmarthen, a Welsh manuscript of the 12th. century, and the spelling has since then varied, according to the ortho- graphy adopted, from ouit, owit, ouyd, ovyd to ofydd, which is the present orthography, the pronunciation being ap- proximately 'oviid,' with its second vowel nearly like a German m. The exact meaning of the word in the earliest passages where it occurs is not easy to fix ; but that of ' one skilled or versed in anything, a teacher or leader,' would suit them aU.^ Later, the duties of an ' ovyd' were said to be *to improve and multiply knowledge;' and it is now the name of one of the three kinds of graduates or professors 1 Rhys's Lectvres, pp. 293—295. C 18 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON". recognized by the Eistedvod, the other two being bards and druids. Thus if I presented myself as a candidate for a degree without having any claims to be considered a bard or a druid, I should, in case I was not plucked by the presiding druid and his bardic assessors, assume the degree of ' ovyd,' together with a Welsh proper name. In Welsh the equivalent of the Gaulish word Ogmios has always remained an appellative; but not so in Irish, where Ogma figures as the name of one of the Tuatha D^ Danann, as the gods of the Goidelic pantheon are collectively called in Irish. Nor is this all : he is signalized in Irish mythology as the inventor of writing, that is to say of the Ogam alphabet; for Ogma being much skilled in dialects and in poetry, it was he, we are told,^ who in- vented the Ogam to provide signs for secret speech only known to the learned, and designed to be kept from the vulgar and poor of the nation. The motive attributed to Ogma is an invention of a comparatively late age, for there was nothing cryptic about the Ogam alphabet ; but the allusion to Ogma's skill in poetry and dialects is important, especially as there was not only a mode of writing called Ogam, but also a kind of pedantic jargon which bore that name.^ Now Irish legend will have it that the Ogam was so called from the name of Ogma, which is etymologically impossible; so we are left to conclude from the relation in which the words 1 Mr. M. Atkinson (quoting from the Irish MS. called the Book of Ballymote), in the Kilkenny Journal of the Royal Hist, and Arch. Ass. of Ireland, for 1874, p. 207; see also my Lectures on W. Phil. p. 293. 2 O'Donovan, Irish Grammar, p. xlviij ; also the Rev. Celt. vii. 369-74, where the true nature of a large part of the Ogmic jargon has been explained for the first time by Thurneysen. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 19 stand to one another, that Ogma was so called from Ogam or that with which he had to do. Supposing that the latter word, the meaning of which is only a matter of inference, signified a letter or a written character, then Ogma would mean he who had to do with writing — the inventor, let us say, of writing ; but that is inadmissible, as the Celts probably had no knowledge of writing when the god was first called Ogmios. So we have to look for the key to the meaning of the word Ogam in the direction of spoken rather than of written language. In Scotland, Ogmic writing does not appear to have become known till it was nearly going out of use in Ireland ; so one is not surprised to find that in Scotch Gaelic the word Ogam, which is there written oidheam, had no technical meaning, its ordinary significations being that of 'a notion of anything, an idea, inference, meaning, hint ;' to which are to be added that of a ' book or pamphlet,' which it is atlso said to have had.^ We have probably cognate words in the Greek oy/*os, ' any straight line, a furrow, a swathe in reaping, a path or orbit ;' Sanskrit ajma-s, ' a course, run, expedition ;' ajman, which had the meaning of the cognate Latin agmen, as when employed in speaking of waters, of boatmen's oars, and of speech.^ The various conditions of the problem of fixing the meaning attached to the word Ogam, and the word standing in the same order of priority to Ogmios in Gaulish as Ogam does to Ogma in Irish, seem best satisfied by supposing the com- mon noun to have meant a round or train of words, fluent speech or ready utterance. This harmonizes well with 1 Oram. Geltica, p. 2 ; Ehys, Lectures, p. 298. 2 Bohtlingk and Eoth's Sanskrit Dictionary, s. v. ajma, ajman, c2 20 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. the sketcli of Ogmios as the old man Heracles of the Gauls, whose talk and ready wit charmed his hearers. Lucian's picture enables one to portray to oneself the wrinkled, sun-burnt face of the travelled old man, who poured forth the stream of his irresistible eloquence, while his eye flashed with delight and kindly interest. Lucian says that he turned towards his willing captives with a smiling face, and we have the same touch preserved in the Irish legend, when it calls the hero Ogma Grian- ainech^ or Ogma of the Shining Countenance.^ The combining of the attributes of Heracles and Hermes in one personage, which puzzled the Greek traveller, was no passing whim of the Gauls. The view taken of the god by the Celts was even more comprehensive, for we find him in Ireland wearing not only the character of inventor of the Ogam alphabet, but also that of champion of the Tuatha Dd Danann. Apollo. This god is placed before us by Caesar simply in the character of a repeller of diseases — Appollinem morbos depellere — and not in that of the sun-god he was believed by the Greeks to be. Nevertheless, it will be seen as we proceed that some of the Gaulish divinities, equated with him on certain of the monuments of Gaul and other parts of the Celtic world, appear to lay a just claim to be regarded as forms of the sun-god. But to come to the monuments themselves, an altar found at a place near Annecy in Haute Savoie testifies . to the worship of a ^ Tlie Kilkenny Journal for 1874, p. 229, and my Lectures on Welsh Phil. p. 293, where I have rendered Ch-ian-ainech — less correctly, as I now think — ' sun-faced.' I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 21 Gaulish Apollo called Yirotutes or Yirotlis. The inscrip- tion is imperfect, and now reads only : ^ ApoUini Yirotuti T. Eutil(ius) Buricus. We have no further information about this god, and it is unfortunate that the interpreta- tion of his Gaulish name or epithet is a matter of mere conjecture. It seems, however, pretty evident that it is a compound of which the first part viro may be the Gaulish equivalent of the Latin verus, Welsh gwir, Irish fir, 'true,' or else of Latin vir, Welsh gwr, 0. Irish fer, ' a man.' The preference, if given to the latter, would suggest that the epithet may have meant man-healing or man-protecting, and thus one might be led to expect in the second element of the name of the god a Gaulish word related in point of origin and meaning to the Latin tutor, 'protector or defender;' but the vocabulary of modern Celts fails to render us any aid in this matter : all that can be said is, that there is no evidence that such a word as we want did not exist in Gaulish. Beyond the boundaries of the AUobroges, the Gaulish Apollo appears to have been known all over the Celtic world, and he bore several names, of which the most important were Maponos, Grannos and Toutiorix. Three inscriptions^ in honour of Apollo Maponos have been discovered in the north of England, and in one of them, found near Ainstable, in Cumberland, he is called Deus Maponus, without any allusion to Apollo, Fortunately the name Maponos offers no difficulty : it is the same word as the old Welsh mapon, now maion, ' boy or male child,' which occurs, for example, in a Welsh poem in the Book of Taliessin, a manuscript of the 13th century: 1 Eev. Celt. iv. 25. ^ Hiibner, Nos. 218, 332, 1345. 22 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. it is there applied to the infant Jesus in a passage describ- ing the coming of the Magi to him at Bethlehem.^ Thus it seems certain that some of the Celts worshipped an Apollo whom they described as an infant, and this is borne out by a group of inscriptions at the other extremity of the Celtic world of antiquity : I allude to the ancient province of Dacia, and especially Carlsburg and its neigh- bourhood, in Transylvania, where we find him styled ^ Deus Bonus Puer Posphorus Apollo Pythius, Bonus Puer Posphorus or Bonus Deus Puer Posphorus. Our Maponos is in all probability the Bonus Puer attested by these inscriptions. We come now to the name Grannos : it occurs in the districts formerly inhabited by Belgic tribes and in the basin of the Ehine. Grannos is probably to be referred to the same origin as the Sanskrit verb ffhar, ' to glow, burn, shine ; ' ghrna, ghrni, ' heat, glow, sunshine,' Lithuanian s'ereti, 'to, glow,' English gleam: in point of form, Grannos would exactly correspond to the Sanskrit word ghrna-s abeady mentioned, but the former had probably the force of an adjective, conveying much the same meaning as the posphorus, ' light-bringing,' in the Dacian inscriptions. Nor indeed does the correspondence between them end here ; for we find that an inscription from the neighbourhood of Horburg, in the Haut-Bhin, calls the god Apollo Grannus Mogounus? But the inter- pretation of the word Mogounus compels me to trouble you with some more glottological details, which I will * See Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 174. 2 The Berlin Corpus, iii. Nos. 1130, 1132, 1133, 1136, 1137, 1138. s Brambach, No. 1915, I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 23 put as briefly as possible : in the first place, we clearly have in Mogounus, from which is deriyed by one or two further steps the well-known place-name Moguntiacum^ from the shorter form of which, Moguntia or Mogontia^ are derived its modem representatives, French Mayence and German Mainz. The origiaal Gaulish comes doubtless from the same source as the Irish /or-mac^, 'increase,' tor-mag or tor-mach^ ' increase, the act of adding to ; ' Latin magnus, 'great;' German mogen, macht ; English may, might and main. But words of this origin vary widely in point of meaning in the different Aryan languages, and one group of them supplies expression for the idea of a youth who is growing or has just grown to the might and vigour of manhood : sometimes a transition from this meaning takes place to that of a boy or young man as a servant or slave, much as in the case of TTdtSiov becoming the French and English page, or the Welsh gwas, 'young man,' used mostly now in the sense of servant. The words in point from the stem mag are such as the Gothic magu, ' boy,' mavi (for magvi\ 'girl;' the old Irish mug (genitive moga\ 'servant or slave;' "Welsh meu-dwy, 'a hermit,' literally servus Dei; Cornish maw, 'a lad or servant;' Breton maoiies, 'a woman.' Kindred words are also copious in the Aryan languages of the East, but their divergence of meaning is very remarkable : thus Sanskrit, dweUing on another kind of increase of strength or importance, presents us with a vocable magha, meaning ' a gift or reward,' and maghavan, which means 'freely giving, a giver,' said especially of one who rewards priests and minstrels with offerings : the same two words existed also in Zend, but in that language they retained a more ancient 24 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. meaning, maga being used in the sense of size or mag- nitude, and magavan in that of a young man who is grown up but not married, a bachelor. This brings me back to Mogoums, since magavan corresponds with it letter for letter excepting only the declension; and this difference is probably due to Mogoums being only known to us as used in a Latin inscription. Whatever maybe thought of this conjecture, the analogy of the words we hare just examiaed brings us round again to much the same idea which we found underlying the word Maponos, namely, that of a boy or youth; and I have very little doubt in my mind that Apollo Grannus Mogounus expressed very closely the same meaning which we found rendered by the words Puer Posphorus Apollo in the Dacian inscriptions which have already been refer- red to. As the dispenser of light and warmth, Apollo made himself the repeller of disease, and it is quite in keeping with this that the god is found to have been not infrequently associated with spots celebrated for their mineral or warm springs, such as Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen, the Eoman name of which was Aqnse Granni. Several other places derive their name from him, such as Graux, in the Vosges, where an inscription^ in his honoiir was discovered ; and as the stream called Eaux Graunnes,^ which receives the hot waters of Plombiferes in the Yosges ; and as Granheim, near Mengen, in Wiir- temberg, a spot in or near which another tablet^ to Gran- nos was found. Lastly, Dion Cassius tells us, Ixxvii. 15, ^ Rev. Gelt. iv. 134 ; Mem. de la Soc. royale des Antiguaires de France (1823), v. p. xxii. 2 Rev. Celt. iv. 144. ^ The Berlin Corpus, iii. No. 5861. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 25 how Gramms was invoked as the equal of Aesculapius and Serapis by Caracalla. Apollo Grannos as a god of medicinal springs cannot be severed from the Apollo Borvo of an inscription^ at Bourbonne-les-Bains, in the Haute-Marne, which reads Deo Apollini Borvoni et Damonae, &c. The monuments show the name to have had several forms: Borvo and Bormo are said to be attested in central France, Bormanus in Provence, and Bormanicus in Spain ;2 while the god's associate is in some instances called Bormana. Thus, to return to the land of the AUobroges, one inscription at Aix-les-Bains, in Savoie, has been read : Cn. Eppius (?) Cuticus Bor. u(t) v(overat) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito) ; and another: M. Licin(ius) Euso Borm. u(t) v(overat) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito). In both of these it would be natural to regard Bor and Borm as standing for Bor- mano, unless the preference were to be given in one or both to the female divinity, in which case the full form would be Bormanae. For it is certain at any rate that in another part of the Allobrogie land this goddess had a temple, namely, at Saint- Yulbaz, formerly called Saint- Bourbaz, near Belley, in the Ain, where an altar reads : Bormanae Aug(ustae) sacr(um) Capri(i) Atratinus (et) Sabinian(us) d(e) s(uo) d(ant).^ The two, Bormanus and Bormana, were worshipped at Aix-en-Diois, in the department of the Drome; while atBourbon-Lancy (Saone- et-Loire) the pair bore the names Bormo and Damona, as well as Borvo and Damona, as at Bourbonne-les-Bains.* ^ Greppo's Eaux thermdles ou minerales de la Gaule (Paris, 1846), p. 29. 2 Vallentin, Rev. Gelt. iv. 446. ^ Ibid. iv. 6, 9. * Greppo, p. 56. 26 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. Among other places, the god has left his name to Bour- bon -I'Archambault, in the department of the AUier, whence the Bourbons derive theirs. The exact relation between the kindred forms Borvo and Bormo, together with Bormanus and Bormana, is not very clear ; but it is Borvo, and not Bormo, that is re-echoed by the' French Bourbon, Bourhonne ; and it is Borvo that has its reflex in the vocabulary of the Celts of modern times : I allude to the Welsh berw, 'a boiling,' herwi, 'to boil;' Irish herhaim, *I boil, cook, smelt,' which are of the same origin as the Latin fervere and fervere, ' to boil or to be boiling hot.' It does not appear why the Gaulish word was Borvo rather than Bervo, but there can be no serious doubt as to the close kinship of the words mentioned, or the fact that the god received his name in allusion to the hot springs over the bubbling volume of which he was supposed to preside. Whether he was originally identical with the Gaulish Apollo it is impossible to say, but even in case he was, he comes before us in most of the inscriptions considerably disengaged from the GauUsh Apollo, as may be gathered from his having a distinct associate Bormana or Damona. But, on the other hand, a passage in one of the Panegyrics of Eumenius is supposed to refer to the hot springs of Bourbon-Lancy : the author would seem to treat Apollo as the chief divinity of the place, and he describes him as punishing perjury by means of the boiling streams,^ though the monuments found referring there to Borvo or Bormo make no allu- sion to Apollo's own name. ^ Eum&nii Panegyricus Constantino Dictus, xxi, xxij (in Migne's Patrologiu, viij ; see col. 637-8); Greppo, pp. 51, 62; Rev. Celt. iv. 144. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON, 27 Having said so much of tlie Gaulish Apollo, it would hardly be fair to pass in silence over the female divinity associated with him. Her name was Sirona, sometimes lisped into Dirona, and a monument now in the museum at Munich gives a bas-relief representation of her and Apollo Grannos.i The latter holds a very large lyre in his left hand, and what may have been a plectrum in the other, while on another face of the stone stands Sirona in a long dress : she has the general appearance of one of the class of Gaulish divinities called Mothers or Matrons: in her left hand she has a bunch of fruit, and in her right some ears of corn, which she is holding up. What rela- tion she bore to the god we are nowhere told ; but there is nothing to suggest that she was his wife, even if his names Maponus and Mogounus did not tend to render such a supposition inadmissible, which I think they do. She was probably regarded as his mother, and she was certainly capable of being treated independently; for there are monuments in honour of her alone. One of these last is surmounted with her bust in bas-relief, and the face seems to bear the appearance of extreme old age. The sculptor can hardly have considered her the wife of Apollo Maponus, nor need he have represented her so aged even as his mother. He had probably a reason for doing so, and this brings me back to her name. It will be seen that, if we discard the ending common to it with such Gaulish names as Epona, Divona, Matrona and the like, we have remaining only the syllable sir, which one cannot help interpreting in the light of the Irish sir, Welsh Mr, both of which mean long ; it would thus seem 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 137—139. 28 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. that the name Sirona referred to the goddess as one who was held to be aged and long-lived. This may be corro- borated by a related Irish name, Siorna Saoghlach,i men- tioned in the mythic history of Ireland: the epithet Saoghlach means long-lived, but it was probably added on as an after-thought, for Siorna may have already conveyed the same meaning ; at any rate, Siorna may be regarded, according to the ordinary rules of Irish phonology, as representing an early Celtic form, Sironjos. The person called Siorna is said to have been engaged in the govern- ment of Ireland for a century and a half ; and his entire lifetime may be reckoned as considerably longer. I venture accordingly to regard Siorna' s name as glossed by Saoghlach or long-lived, and to treat the goddess Sirona' s name in a similar manner. Thus we seem to have in the Celtic Apollo and Sirona the ever-young sun- god and an old goddess : the pair invite comparison with the young Apollo of the Greeks and his mother Leto ; but Greek mythology sheds no decided light on the aged- ness of the mother as represented by Gaulish remains. The same remark applies to what I take to be the equi- valents in "Welsh mythology, of which a word must now be said ; for it has already been mentioned that Maponos is in Welsh mabon ; but it should be added that it also occurs as a proper name in the Welsh story of Kulhwch and Olwen ; to be more correct, one should say that the proper name was Mahon mah Modron or ' Mabon son of 1 See The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland- [compiled, in the 17th century, by the Four Masters, and edited by O'Donovan (second edi- tion, Dublin, 1856), a work which wiU briefly be referred to as the 'Four Masters' in the rest of this volume], A.M. 4003, 4019, 4020, 4169, 4178. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 29 Modron.' The latter was the mother's name, and is a word of the same origin as the Latin matrona, though it would have sounded in early Celtic matrona, which, as the name of the river in France now called, by a short- ened form of the word, the Marne, was its pronuncia- tion. One cannot help suspecting that in Mabon and Modron — ^the father's name is never mentioned — we have the exact equivalents of Grannos and Sirona, and one's curiosity is at once roused to inquire what "Welsh litera- ture has to say about the former. We are, however, doomed in part to disappointment : the few allusions to Modron are so obscure that they have not yet succeeded in teaching us anything definite as to her attributes ; but the story of Kulhwch tells us the following things about her son. He was a great hunter, who had a wonderful hound, and rode on a steed swift as a wave of the sea : when he was three nights old he was stolen from between his mother and the wall, no one knew whither : number- less ages later, it was ascertained by Arthur that he was in a stone prison at Gloucester, uttering heartrending groans and undergoing treatment with which Apollo's bondage in the house of Admetus could not compare in severity : Arthur and his men succeeded in releasing him to engage in the mythic hunt of Twrch Trwyth that could not take place without him : ^ and lastly, he distin- guished himself by riding into the waters of the Bristol Channel after Twrch Trwyth and despoiling him of one of his trinkets.^ ^ The Text of the Mabinogion, &c., from the Red Booh of Hergest, edited by Ehys & Evans (Oxford, 1887), pp. 124, 131-2. [This text will hereafter be referred to as R. B. Mab.] Guest's Mabinogion, ij. 287-8, 300-1. 2 B. B. Mab. p. 141 ; Guest, ii. 315. 30 I. THE GAULISH PAKTHEON. The third epithet of the god which has been mentioned was that of Toutiorix, which occurs in an inscription at Wiesbaden containing the datives Apollini Toutiorigi} That neighbourhood, you will notice, is also celebrated for its waters, and the interest attaching to the word Toutiorix is out of all proportion to its single occurrence. It can only mean king of the people, which as applied to the god reminds one of the role of Apollo in the history of the Hellenic race, that gave him the titles of leader and founder — dpx'jyeTijs, ktkttjjs, otVto-Tijs. The name Toutiorix, for which one would have expected Toutorix, has its modern representative in the "Welsh Tudri, old Welsh Tutri: it is also well known among Teutonic nations from the time of Strabo, who gives it as AevSd/ji^, while Byzan- tine authors preferred QivUpixo^ or 9£o8epix°«J and Latiu writers supply us with Theodoricus, whence the form usual in English books, Theodoric, which comes pretty near the Anglo-Saxon spelling Theodric. The corre- sponding High German is Dietrich, so well known as that of Dietrich of Bern, where Bern is the German for Verona. Now the great historical Teuton of this name was a remarkable king of the Ostrogoths, and conqueror of Italy in the 5th century : Yerona was one of his head- quarters. But it is found that with his history so much unhistorical matter has been incorporated, that modem authors usually distinguish between the historical man as Theodoric the Great, and a mythical personage to whom the name Dietrich von Bern is left. Many attempts have been made to disentangle the legends from the his- Brambach, No. 1529. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 31 torical portions of the story of the Teutonic conqueror ;i but it has never been satisfactorily shown why such and such mythic stories should haye attached themselves to this particular man. The inscription alluded to yields the key : the historical Teuton bore one of the names of the Graulish Apollo, and the eventual confusion of myth and history was thereby made easy. This is borne out by the general similarity between the mythic statements made about Dietrich and what is known in Celtic lite- rature about Celtic sun-gods. Among other things may be mentioned his riding, like Mabon, into the sea after an enemy, who was only enabled to escape by the inter- vention of a mermaid, who was his ancestress. As one of Dietrich's solar peculiarities may probably be men- tioned his breathing fire whenever he was made angry ; and, like more than one of the Celtic sun-heroes, he is made to fight with giants and all manner of wild beasts. One of the localities associated with his story is the well- known Drachenf els above Bonn ; nor is it beside the mark to mention that Verona was the name not only of a city in Italy, but also one of the ancient names of Bonn,^ a town which is, like Wiesbaden, situated in the neigh- bourhood of the Ehine. It has puzzled historians that Theodoric, the grandest figure in the history of the migration of the Teutonic peoples, should appear ^ One of the most recent -writers on this subject is "Wilhelm Miiller, in his Mythologie der deutschen Heldensage (Heilbronn, 1886), pp. 148 — 189 ; and a succinct account of the original literature embodying the Dietrich legend will be found in Karl Meyer's Dietrichssage (Basle, 1868), pp. 4—9. ^ W. Miiller, p. 186 ; Jahrhiicher des Vereins von AUerthums/reun- den im Rheinlande, i. 12 — 21, xiij. 1. 32 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. in the Nibelungen Lied, not as a great king and con- queror on his own account, but merely as a faithful squire of the terrible Attila, whose empire had in fact crumbled into dust before the birth of Theodoric.i But from the mythological point of view, the subordinate position ascribed to Theodoric is quite correct, and it serves to show how profoundly the man's history has been influenced by the legend of the Celtic god. Mars. The next god to be mentioned in the order adopted by Caesar is Mars ; and an inscription at Chougny, near Geneva, equates with him a Gaulish god called Caturix. It reads thus: Marti Catur(igi) sacr(um), pro salut(e) et incolumitate D. Yal(erii) Am(a)ti, Sex. Cr(is)pin(ius) Nigrinus v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito).2 This form of the god's name is-rendered certain by that of an in- scription at Stuttgardt in Wtirtemberg, in which Marti Caturigi^ is written in full, and by a third instance, namely, one found in the neighbourhood of Tverdon ia Switzerland.* The word Caturix is a compound, meaning the king of war or lord of battle, from catu, which is in Welsh cad, and in Irish cath, ' a battle,' and rlz, ' a king,' in Welsh rhi and in Irish ri, genitive riff : the cognates of both words are so familiar that I need not enumerate them. The plural Caturiges was the well-known name 1 See Hodgkin's Itcdy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1885), iij. 341. ^ Rev. Celt. iv. 10 ; Mommsen, Ima. Helvet. No. 70 ; Allmer, iij. 255. s Brambach, No. 1588. * De Bonstetten, Receuil d'Antiquites suisses (Berne, 1855), pp. 35, 37. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEOK. 33 of a Gaulish, people ; and, transferred to their town, it is now continued in the abbreviated form of Charges. The Teutonic name of the same etymology was common as that of a man, and in fact is still so : witness the Anglo- Saxon Heaftoric, the modern German Hedrich, and other variations of the same compound. Another AUobrogic inscription gives the Gaulish Mars another name : an altar found at Culoz, near Belley, in the department of Ain reads : ]S'(umini) Aug(usto), Deo Marti Segomoni Dunati, Cassia Saturnina ex vot(o), v(otum) s(oluit) l(ibens) m(erito).^ Segomo is known to us by other inscriptions at Arinthod^ in the Jura, at Contes^ near Nice, at Lyons, ^ and at Nuits in the Cote d'Or. The god's name is found also in Ireland; for with the word netta (in later Irish nia^^ genitive niath or niadh, 'a champion or warrior'), it forms the per- sonal name Netta- Segamonas, which may be rendered Propugnatoris Segomonis, ' (of) Segomo's Champion.' It was a kind of name very congenial to ancient Irish ideas, and it occurs in three ^ distinct Ogam inscriptions in the ^ Rev. Celt. iv. 11; Rev. ArcMologique (1802), ix. 315. ^ Rev. Celt. iv. 11; Monnier, Annuaire du Jura for 1852, plate 1, whicli I have not been able to consult. 8 Mem. de la Soe. des Ant. de France (1850), xx. 58-9. * Gruter, Iviii. 5. ' Ehys, Lectures, p. 395 ; Stokes, Celtic Declension, which appeared first in Vol xi. of Bezzenberger's Beitrmge (Gottingen, 1886), p. 87. * Nevertheless, the name is not given by Brash in his book on Tlie Ogam inscribed Monuments of the Gaedldl ; but by correctly reading Brash's copies I had detected it in the case of the kStradbally inscrip- tion (Brash, p. 254, pi. xxxv), and of one of those at Ardmore (Brash, p. 247). In 1883 I had the pleasure of seeing, by inspection of the stones, that my readings were correct, and also of finding Netas{egam)- onas in an inscription at Seskinan (Brash, p. 262). D 34 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. county of Waterford; it is also to be found in lists of the early kings of Erinn.'^ TKe exact signification of the god's name Segomo is not easy to fix : it may have meant the strong one, the holder or upholder, the defender or protector, or else the victorious one that overpowers and conquers : all one can feel certain about is, that the word is derived from the root segh or sagh, ' to hold, restrain, withstand, overpower,' from which such words come as the Greek ^x'", ' I bold or have,' etrxov, i'a-xw, 'ix"P°'^> and the like, also the Gothic sigis and the German sieg^ ' victory.' It is clear, however, that such a name would suit the god, whether viewed more especially as the chief of the gods or as a mighty and victorious warrior. Let us now return to Segomo's epithet Dunates. Here again uncertainty must prevail, whether the word be derived or not from the name of a place ; but no archseolo- gist has, so far as I know, been able to identify any place- name in point: so we are at liberty to interpret the epithet in another way and to refer it to the same origin as the dunum, Gaulish dunon^ of such names as Augustodunum or Autun and Lugdunum or Lyons. This dun- is of the same etymology as the familiar English word town and the German saun^ ' a hedge or field-fence ;' but its long vowel was probably pronounced as it is in modern French; for the Welsh equivalent is din^ ' a fortress or stronghold,' whence dinas, ' a fortress, town or city.' The Irish is dun, of the same meaning, but of a different declension ; but 1 Nia Se-gamain in the Book of Fenagh, edited by Prof. Hennessy (Dublin, 1875), p. 29, and simply Nia at p. 56 ; the Four Masters, A.M. 4881, 4887, 4990, write Nia Sedhamain (dative) and Niadh Sedhamain (genitive). The older and more correct forms would be, genitive Segamon or Segaman, dative Segamain, unless there was an optional 0-stem. 1. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 35 Irish has further a derived verb dunaim, ' I shut or bar- ricade,' and dunad, ' a camp, an army.' Hence it would seem that Segomo Dunates meant either Segomo the sur- rounder and defender, or else Segomo as the god who presided over the stronghold, the camp and the army, that is to say, a Gaulish Mars Castrensis. Lastly, two inscriptions at Bouhy,i in the department of the Nifevre, are dedicated to Mars Bolvinnus, and one of them to Marti Bolvinno et Duna{ti). This is a considerable dis- tance from the place of finding the AUobrogic inscription ; so that if the name is to be regarded as a topical epithet of the god, it must refer to some celebrated temple of his, like that of Mercury on the Puy de Dome ; but as no such temple has been heard of, the probability is strengthened that Dunates is to be interpreted in one of the ways suggested. Mention has already been made of Segomo Cuntinus^ connected with Conte; there was also a Mars Yintius, who was worshipped at Yence, near Nice, and who gave the former place its name : this is proved by an inscription found on the spot, mentioning Marti Vintio. Vintius, in Gaulish Vintjos, must have meant 'relating to the wind^ as it is of the same origin as the English word, the Welsh gwynt^ Latin ventus ; but, more exactly, Vintjos is an adjective from ventos, which was probably the Gaulish word for wind, and from Ventjos was pro- duced by a modulation of the vowel the attested form. It is remarkable that the Welsh gwynt, wind, is the exact 1 Rev. Cdt. iv. 12; Congrh Arch, de France, 1873, p. 245. Can Bouhy and Bolvinnus be of the same origin ? ^ Rev. Celt. iv. 12 j Mem. de la Soc. des Ant. de France (1850), XX. 59. d2 36 I. THE GAULISH PAKTHEON. equivalent, not of the simpler noun meaning wind, but of the adjective denoting the wind-god. Several reasons might be adduced why the wind should be associated with the war-god ; among others, it might be suggested that all violent gales that commit general havoc and destruction might not unnaturally be referred to the agency of the god of war. But the wind is not always destructive, not always adverse ; it is sometimes the fair breeze for which the mariner whistles. So it happens that Yintios, associated with fair wind, is found identified with Pollux, a god propitious to sailors. This is attested by an Allobrogic inscription^ on an altar at Seyssel, in Haute- Savoie, reading : Deo Vintio PoUuci, Cn. Terentius, Bil- lonis fil(ius) Terentianus, ex voto. Another, in which Vintius stands alone, was found in the Yigne des Idoles, near the castle of Hauteville ^ in the same department, and reads : Aug(usto) Vin(tio) sacr(um), T. Yalerius ( ) Crispinus, sacer Yinti pr8ef(ectus) Pag(i) Dia( ) gedem d(at). The navigation of the Ehone at the pre- sent day begins at Seyssel, and in Eoman times the mariners of that river formed a powerful and influential body which had its head-quarters at Lyons : one old inscription describes it as a splendidissimum corpus.^ It is probable that the god Yintios had many temples and altars in that neighbourhood, and the site of one of them is marked out by the name Yence or Yens, borne by a hill near Seyssel, at whose foot stands now a chapel dedicated to the Yirgin, who is in great esteem among the boatmen of the Ehone : their ancestors doubtless 1 Rev. Gelt. iv. 23 ; Allmer, iii. 243. "^ Rev. Gelt. ib. ; Allmer, ii. 345. 3 Rev. Gelt. iv. 24. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 37 worshipped and supplicated Yintios on the same spot. The curious instance we have here of a Gaulish god being, so to say, split up into two Latin ones, throws some light on the treatment which the Gaulish deities experienced under the influence of Eome. For we are under no necessity to suppose with M. Vallentini that the Gaulish mind regarded the Yintios at Nice as a sepa- rate and distinct deity from the Seyssel one. The Gaulish wind-god was more probably one, whether the wind he granted at a particular moment happened to be fair or foul. There was a mythological reason for associating the wind with the Celtic war-god, as will be seen later : hence the difficulty in renderiag his personality in the terms of Latin theology. So long as it was a question of the wind as a violent or malignant agency, the equa- tion of Yintios with Mars would doubtless fit ; but when the wind was favourable to the mariner, then Mars was probably thought out of place, which led to the prefer- ence for Pollux. The names and epithets borne by the Celtic war-god beyond the limits of the Allobrogic land are too numerous to be discussed one by one here, and I will only call your attention to a few of them. Several inscriptions in honour of Mars Cocidius'^ have been found in this country ; but the meaning of the word Cocidius is unknown, as well as that of a related form Cocosus,^ which also occurs. A more transparent epithet is Belatucadrus, given the god on monuments also found here.* This is a Celtic compound 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 25. « Hiibner, Nos. 286, 643, 886, 9U, 977. ^ Gaidoz, Esquiisse, 10. « Hiibner, Nos. 294, 333, 369, 74.5, 873, 934, 935. Belatucadrus ends with a word to be identified with the "Welsh cadr, ' powerful. 38 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. meaning handsome in the slaughter or mighty to kill. The epithet was doubtless meant as a flattering one, acceptable to the god in his character of warrior and slaughterer of his worshippers' enemies. The next to be mentioned is Camulos, which I hesitate to call an epithet, as it is not a compound and possibly not an adjective, but a noun, and one of the god's strong, robust;' Breton caer, formerly cazr, 'beautiful, fine, magnifi- cent :' so the whole word means fine or powerful at the kind of action indicated by the vocable belatu, which has the appearance of being a verbal noun. "We have the stem bel (mutated into fel and pronounced vel) in the Welsh word for war, namely, rhyfel; it is also added to oer, 'cold,' to make oerfel, 'cold weather,' or cold as productive of inconvenience and harm. Again, we have it in ufel, ' fire or conflagra- tion,' Irish Sibell, dihel, which meant a spark, fire or heat, and was applied, for instance, to the summer heat that drives cattle to stand in pools ; the other element in these words is the Celtic reflex of the first syllable of the Greek avm or of the Latin uro, 'I burn.' Irish supplies us with a strong verb from the stem hel, as in bebla (for he-hela), 'mortuus est,' atlail, 'interit,' atiel, 'peiibo.' A cor- responding Welsh compound has yielded a derivative adfeilio, 'to decay or fall into ruins ; ' but the Irish verb had as its base bel, mean- ing ' to die,' while belatu implies a derivative verb from a theme bela, associated probably with a modified meaning, namely, the causative one of killing or slaying ; and an instance of it occurs in Welsh in a poem in the Book of Taliessin, where reference is made to the cattle of the Egyptians killed by the fifth plague or the grievous murrain spoken of in the Book of Exodus, ix. 1—7. See Skene, ii. 171, where the form used is belsit, which would seem to mean 'had been killed.' Having found a strong verb bel, we ought to be able to identify it in some of the kindred languages : now the Aryan combination gv becomes b in Celtic, while in the Teutonic languages it would be hardened into cw or qu ; so we look in them for a verb beginning with quel or cwel to correspond to our Celtic bel, and we readily find it, without going out of this country, in the Anglo-Saxon verb cioelan, ' to die or perish,' from which was formed a causative cwellan or eivelian, ' to slay or cause to perish,' represented by the modern English verb to kill. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 39 proper names, like Segomo. An inscription recording the building of a temple for Mars Camulus has been met with in the neighbourhood of Dusseldorf,i and others are known elsewhere ^ on the Continent, while one is preserved in a museum at Glasgow.^ It is right to say that most of the Eoman inscriptions found in this island may be the outcome of the piety of continental Celts, so that the gods in whose honour they were set up were not necessarily worshipped by the natives of Britain ; but even here we have evidence of the popularity of Camulos in the name of the capital of the Trinovantes, which was Camulodunon, or the stronghold of Camulos.* The meaning of the god's name is regarded as unknown, but a very safe conjecture may be made on that point ; for though there is a scarcity of Celtic words to explain it, there can be little doubt that it is to be equated with the Old Saxon himil and the German word himmel^ heaven or sky, which etymologists refer to a stem, hem^ Aryan kam, inferred to mean * curv- ing, vaulting or covering over.' Among other words from this origin have been reckoned the Greek Kajxapa.^^ ^ Brambach, 164. ^ At Eome : see the Berlin Corpus, vi. No. 46 ; and a Gamulo Viro- manduo is reported from Auvergne in the Rev. des Soc. sav. (1875), i. 251. s Hiibner, 1103. * What is the meaning of the word in the post-Eoman personal names Gamelorigi from Pembrokeshire, and Gamuloris, Gamulorigho, from Anglesey ? For some notes on them, see my Lectures, pp. 364, 400. The name Gamulogenus, which Caesar (Bell. Gall. vii. 57, 59, 62) gives the defender of Paris against the legions of Eome, would mean the descendant of Camulos, and similarly Gamulognata. ^ On the difficulties of this etymology, see Kluge's Mym. Worter- huch des deutschen Sprache, s.v. Himmel. 40 r. THE GAULISH PANTHE01, gen. Ato's (for At/ds); Latin Jou- or Ju[-pHer), gen. Diovis, Jovis ; A.-Saxon Tiu, gen. Tiwes in Tiwesdceg, ' Tuesday ;' O. H. Ger. Ziu, gen. Ziwes ; 0. Norse T'§r, gen. T^s, as in T-^sdagr, ' Tuesday,' ace. and dat. T?^; Welsh duw,"^ 'a god, God,' dieu (as in tri-dieu, 'three days') and dieuoed, 'days.' ^ These numbered articles are chiefly meant for reference, so the general reader may pass them by and resume his perusal at p. 118. 2 The Old "Welsh diu, in Cormac's Glossary and in the Juvencus Codex (see Stokes in Kuhn's Beitrcege, iv. 407), only differs probably in spel- ling from duw, which is written dim and dicv in the Black Book, while the word for day, cited in No. 2, occurs as dyv in Byv Merehir, ' on THE INSULAR CELTS. 117 2. Divo : — Skr. diva, neut. ' heaven, day,' as in naktan- divam, ' by night and by day ;' Greek e^-Stos (for -Si/bs), ' at noon, in the open air ;' Latin li-duum, * the space of two days,' tri-duum, 'the space of three days;' Welsh dyw, adverbial, as in he-dyw, ' to-day,' dyw Llun (now Dywllun and even Dwyllun), ' on Monday,' and dyw lau (now in N. "Wales Difia' and Dufia^\ ' on Thursday.' 3. Dives : — Skr. divasa, mas. and neut. ' heaven, day,' from a stem divas; Greek Stei for St/es in eiSidvos, 'calm, sheltered,' eiSiea-Tepo^, evSiea-TaTos, usod as comp. and sup. of eSSioi • Lat. Dies-piter (for Dives-piter), ' Jupiter.' 4. Divio, divia: — Skr. divya, 'heavenly, divine;' Greek Sios (for 8t/ios), of the same meaning ; Lat. dio (for divio) in sub dio, ' under the open sky.' ' 5. Devo, deva : — Skr. deva, ' godlike, divine,' mas. ' a god ;' Lat. divus, ' godlike,' contracted into deus, ' a god,' like oleum for olivum; Lithuanian deva-s, ' God ;' Gaulish devo-s, in such names as Devo-gnata, with which compare such Greek names as Ato-yevijs; Irish dia, 'a god, God,' gen. dei (for devi") ; Welsh doiu, duiu (now dwyf or dwy\ as in Gwas Duiu, a man's name meaning ' God's servant,' dwywol, dwyfol, 'divine,' and meu-dwy, 'a hermit,' lite- rally ' Servus Dei.' 6. Devia : — Skr. devl, ' a goddess ;' Lith. deve, ' a god- dess ;' Welsh doiu or duiu (now dwyf and mostly dwy), as in Dubr-Duin, Dyfrdwyfox Dyfrdwy, 'the river Dee,' Wednesday,' and Dyv lev, 'on Thursday' (Skene, ii. 16). The diphthong uw in duw is probably to be compared with that in uwd, ' porridge,' Breton idt, Irish ith, all of the same origin as the Latin j»'22s, 'broth,' Skr. yu, yauti, ' draws, harnesses, connects or mixes,' Lith. jauti, ' aquam ferviJam supra infundere,' Lett. yaw^, 'to stir dough or soup.' 118 'II. THE ZEUS OF literally ' the Water of the Goddess ;' Irish d6^ ' a god- dess,' gen. dee, dei, de, dea, dae,^ ace. de. 7. More distantly related but still of the same origin are such words as the Latin dies, ' a day ;' Welsh dyd, the same ; Irish in-diu, ' to-day.' Now the question must sooner or later present itself, what did the words Zeus, Dyaus, and their congeners, originally mean? Two answers at least are given, of which the one is, that they meant the heavens or the sky. The other view is that the truer meaning of the word Dyaus, for instance, would be ' the bright or the shining one,' since it is derived from the root div or dyu, ' to shine, to lighten ; ' and that it was this activity of shining and illuminating the world which was embodied in the name. This is corroborated in the main by the recent researches of M. Gaidoz, who finds that the wheel-symbol is to be understood as an image of the sun,^ and that the warrior- like Jupiter — that is the Gaulish god whom I should treat as a Eoman Mars and Jupiter in one — was originally the god of the sun, who by extension became that of the heavens, and otherwise acquired attributes which made the ancient Eomans regard him as their good Father in Heaven.^ But his name, which has been interpreted to mean the shining or bright one, has not invariably ceased to be an appellative. Thus in Old Norse, where it was Tyr, it was by no means confined to him : it remained more or less of an appellative, as may be inferred from compounds such as Sig-^r,^ 'the god of victory,' which ' Of these, de and dei are also unfortunately forms of the genitive of the masculine dia, ' god.' 2 Etibdes, p. 8. 3 ii3_ p 93_ 4 (jorpus Poet. Bor. i. 50, 79. THE INSULAR CELTS, 119 probably meant, at least in the first instance, Ti^r himself. It occurs also in the case of "Woden, when he is called Farma-t'^r'^ and Hanga-t'ijr^ or the God of the Gallows, and Gauta-t'ljr^ or the God of the Gauts ; and in that of Thor when he is termed Eeidi-tyr,* or the Car-god; nor is tivar^ 'gods,' to be left out of the reckoning. The Welsh duw means any god, except when used in the monotheistic Christian sense, and there is every reason to believe that it and its earlier forms, unlike Tyr^ Zeus or Dyaus, never acquired the force of a proper name, even to the same extent as the Norse equivalent; and this is just as if Greek Christians had consecrated the word Zeijs to Christian uses instead of 5eos. In their lan- guage, however, that could not be, since the former had become the name of a special pagan deity, and ceased ages before the Christian era to be an appellative or generic name ; but in the Celtic languages, where this was not the case, Christianity was free to appropriate such a word as duw for its own uses. NUADA OP THE SiLVEB HaND. From the remarks already made, it will have been seen that we must cast about us for other means, than the mere name, to discover the insular Celt's god who should be identified with Zeus. Now in Irish and "Welsh literature, the great figures of Celtic mythology usually assume the character of kings of Britain and of the sister- island respectively, and most of the myths of the modern Celts are to be found manipulated so as to form the 1 Corpus Poet Bar. i. 253, ii. 462. ^ jb. ii.. 75, 462. 3 lb. i. 262. * lb. ii. 17, 464. 120 11. THE ZEUS OP opening chapters of what has been usually regarded as the early history of the British Isles. This is especially the case with Ireland, and there we meet with the divinity we are in quest of, bearing the Irish name of Nuada^ genitive Nmdat, and acting as the king of a mythical colony that took possession of Erinn in very early times : it is commonly known as Tuatha De Danann (p. 89), forming a group made up of the gods and god- desses believed in by the ancient Goidel. The oldest account of their origin tells us that they came from Hea- ven ; 1 but as the Celtic mind was in the habit of regard- ing darkness and death as preceding light and life,^ the invaders from Heaven are said to have found the island already peopled by a race called the Fir Bolg or Bag Men, together with their hideous and horrid allies. These were in due time attacked and defeated by the new-comers ; but in one of the conflicts, Nuada, king of the latter, had his right arm cut off, which was all the more serious, as it constituted a blemish incompatible with the Goidelic idea of a king. So he had to retire from the kingship ; but a clever man at his court made him a silver hand, which another perfected so that it was finally endowed with motion in every joint, with the result that Nuada, after a retirement of seven years, was allowed to resume the office of king, and was from that time forth known as Nuada Argetldm^ that is to say, Nuada of the SUver Hand. With this may be compared the following story of Tiu the Tyr of Old Norse literature : Loki was the father of mis- chief and of a brood of monsters, of which Fenri's Wolf 1 Bk. of the Dun, 16&. ^ Compare Caesar's, words, vi. 18. THE INSULAR CELTS. 121 was one. Thi^ latter had escaped killing at tlie hands of the Anses because they were loth to pollute them with his blood ; but he was found to grow so fast, and the things foreboded of him were of such a terrible nature, that they became alarmed and proceeded to tie the Wolf ; but he shook off the bonds with ease. They then had a magic rope made, which the "Wolf, suspecting treachery, would not let them fasten him with, till one of their number became bail by placing his hand in the beast's mouth whilst he was being bound. Tj^r was the brave one who came forward to do so, and the bonds proving effective, the Wolf bit off the god's hand on the spot ; nor do we read of his being provided with an artificial hand, as was the case with the Irish Nuada, or of his being healed, as the corresponding Greek story which describes the conflict between Zeus and his monster antagonist Typho would suggest.^ For Zeus, after plying Typho with his thunder- bolt without the desired result, engaged him at close quarters with a sickle, which Typho wrested from the god and used against him : it was then that Zeus lost the use not only of one hand but of both, for his foe cut out the tendons of his hands and feet and carried him away on his shoulders, a helpless mass, to be thrown into a cave, while the muscles were hidden away in the charge of a dragon. Hermes, however, came, and with his usual cleverness stole them and restored them to their proper places in the god's frame, who then recovered his strength and at last overcame Typho. The stories, you will see, differ con- siderably, but they are sufficiently similar to make it in the highest degree probable that the Irish Nuada is to be ^ See Apollodorus, i. 6, 3, 122 II. THE ZETJS OP equated with. Tiu and Zeus : in other words, Nuada may safely be regarded as a Celtic Zeus or Jupiter. Add to this that in case a god has several names, their existence tends to lead him to he regarded as so many distinct divinities, and this tendency can beyond doubt be proved in the history of Nuada : for besides the Nuada to whom my remarks were thus far intended to apply, Irish legendary history had other Nuadas to show, such as Nuada Derg, or the Eed; but what proves his virtual identity with the Celtic Mars-Jupiter, is the fact, that the sun hero Eogan Mor (p. 91) is called Mog Nuadat:^ ' Nuada's Slave.' Then there was also a Nuada Finnfdil and a Nuada NecM. Now Nuada of the Silver Hand is said to have landed in Erinn A.M. S303, while Nuada Finnfdil is made to begin his reign A.M. 4199, and Nuada Necht is connected with Leinster in A.M. 5089. So disposed, they would seem to have been placed at a safe distance from one another ; but the artificial nature of the arrangement betrays itself in various ways : thus it can hardly be an accident that the king who superseded Nuada of the Silver Hand, when he lost his natural hand, should have borne the same unusual name Bres, as the one who succeeded Nuada Einnfail some 900 years later.^ But let us try to force the vocables Finnfail and Necht to disclose their history. The latter looks as if it had a derivative in the well-known name Nechta or Nechtan, borne, among others, by a remarkable king of the Picts of Scotland at the begin- ning of the 8th century, and by the mythic owner of 1 O'Curry's Magh Leana, pp. 2 — 5, also p. xxii. 2 The Four Masters, A. M. 3304, 4238. THE INSULAR CELTS. 123 a fairy precinct, now called Trinity Well, into which one could not gaze with impunity, and from which the river Boyne first burst forth, in pursuit of a lady who had insulted it.^ In point of phonological equivalence, the syllable necht exactly renders in Irish the nept of Keptune's name. One cannot say, however, whether they should be regarded as of the same meaning and origin ; nor does this matter for our purpose, since Irish itself has kindred words to show.^ Whether you associate Necht with Neptune or with the other words, it may be pre- sumed to connect Nuada Necht with the world of waters. As to the other name, Nuada Finnfdil, it would seem literally to have meant Nuada of Pinnfal, that is, Nuada of the White Fdl. But what did fdl mean? One attested signification of the word was that of a wall or enclosure; and according to this interpretation Kuada Finnfail might be interpreted to mean Nuada of the White Wall, which might be regarded as referring to the sky or the heavens in somewhat the same way as names like Camulos, Nwyvre and others to be discussed in the course of this lecture. Now /«?, ' a wall,' is in Welsh gwawP of the same import ; but Welsh has also a gwawl meaning radiance or light ; and I am inclined to think that the Irish fdl in the compound Flnnfdl had that ^ Blc. ofLeimter, 191a; MS. (formerly Lord Asbburnham's) Z). iv. 2, in the library of the Eoyal Ir. Academy, fol. Zld; Booh of Rights, p. 9, ed.'s note. ^ For instance, the verb nigim, ' lavo,' negar, ' lavitur^ and other forms (see Stokes' Goidelica, p. 133) of the same origin as the Greek vl("os ; ^ not to mention how nea r the idea of Pluto, 1 Preller in Pauly.'s Real-Encyd. s. v. Jupiter (Vol. iv. 588). k2 132 II, THE ZETJS OF or nXovTuv, as a god associated with, wealth, comes to that of Zeis ttAowios.i Similarly with regard to the sea, Zeus is sometimes spoken of interfering with it,^ and Posidon occasionally bears the designation of Zevs 'EvaAios ; but the original identity of Posidon with Zeus is even more strikingly shown in the case of Zeis oif/iios, or the giver of the fair winds desired by the mariner. His temple was not unfrequently built on a headland looking over the sea ; somewhat like that of Nodens as regards the estuary of the Severn. A celebrated image of the headland Zeus, the controller of wind and weather, was brought from Macedon to the Capitol in Eome, where it was known as Jupiter Imperator.^ Here should also be mentioned Zeis d.iro/3aTi^pios, or the Zeus who protected the voyager's landings. It is thus clear that the pro- vinces of Zeus and Posidon cannot be wholly separated, and they betray traces of a stage when a well-defined department of activity had not as yet been entrusted to the latter god.* Much the same remark applies in the case of some of the sons of Zeus, whose functions originally belonged to an undifferentiated Zeus. For instance, Ares looks like a personality developed out of the warlike aspect of Zeus's character, since his attri- butes coincide mostly with those of Zeis dpehs. This was, however, only one of Zeus's epithets which had regard to him as a god of war: as leader he was Zeis dy^Tap; as possessed of great strength he was 'seivw ; as a helper in the conflict he was 'Er^o-tos ; and as giver of triumph T/ooTraios, not to mention the fact that the Zeus of the 1 Preller's Gr. Mythol. (third ed.) i. 117. 2 lb. i. 123, note 5. » lb. i. 126. * Pauly, iv. 588. THE INSULAR CELTS. 133 Carians was equipped with a battle-axe and clad in the complete armour of a hoplite/ whicli calls to mind the Zeus of the Gauls, their Mars- Jupiter, as one might ven- ture to term him (p. 48). It is needless to say that the Roman Mars was in no sense a mere counterpart of the Greek Ares, but rather a sort of duplicate of Jupiter, owing his existence alongside of the greater god to the composite character of the ancient Eoman community. Mars shared with Jupiter the title of father, and such epithets as Loucetius or bright, while the chief honours of a successful campaign belonged to Jupiter alone ; the spolia opima were his, and Mars came only second. But to step again on Greek ground, the pre-classic Zeus, with whom one should compare the Nodens of the earliest Celtic period, may be described in almost the same terms which were used of the latter : he was sovereign of gods and men, the giver of wealth and prosperity, the supreme arbiter of the fortunes of war, and lord both of land and sea. By what steps the Zeus of the Celts came to be especially associated with the sea by some of their num- ber, will appear more clearly in a later portion of this lecture. COEMAC, CONAIRE, CONCHOBAE. Though Nuada under his various names has detained us long, he is by no means the only representative in Irish literature of the Mars-Jupiter of the Celts. As one of the most remarkable personages of this origin, may be mentioned Cormac mac Airt, grandson of Conn the Hun- dred-fighter : he is regarded as having reigned at Tara in the third century, and his story may contain some 1 Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 111-12. 134 II. THE ZEUS OF slight admixture of history. His reign is represented as one of remarkable prosperity,^ and he himself as exceed- ing 'all his predecessors in magnificence, munificence, wisdom and learning, as also in military achievements.' ^ So great was his reputation for legal knowledge, that a well-known book of Irish law has been attributed to him.3 One version of his history as king of Erinn repre- sents him driven from his throne by an enemy called Fergus the Black-toothed, but enabled afterwards, like Nuada, to recover the sovereignty,* Another, however, found in an older manuscript, ^ but not necessarily an older account, describes his court at Tara invaded by a cham- pion called Aengus of the Poisoned Spear, whose brother had lost his daughter to a son of Cormac's called Cellach. Aengus slew Cellach between his father and the wall, and in so doing put out one of the king's eyes. This Aengus was a Plutonic prince associated with a historical people called the D^isi, which probably means that he was a god specially worshipped by them. Be that as it may, his deed of violence is represented as the beginning of a revolt against Cormac. In the war which followed, Aengus fell at the head of the D^isi, who were then driven out of their land by Cormac's son Cairbre and his sons. On the other hand, Cormac himself had to quit the office of king on losing his eye, so that he lived some time in the neighbourhood of Tara and helped his son 1 Tlie BTc. of Ballymote, quoted by O'Curry in his Manners, &c., ij. 18. 2 O'Curry, ibid. ^ The Book of Acaill, forming Vol. iij. of the Senrhus Mor; see also O'Curry, ij. 27. * O'Curry, ij. 13940. « The Bk. of tlie Dun, 536, 54a. THE INSTJLAE CELTS. 135 and successor with his counsel until he was, according to one account, killed by demons,^ In any case he is not described in these stories as restored again to his throne ; but the blemish incompatible with kingship is brought into relief in his person as in that of Nuada. A description of Cormac's person on the occasion of his entering a great assembly in state, tells us that the equal of his form had never been seen, except that of Conaire the Great, of Conchobar son of Nessa, or of Aengus son of the Dagda.^ It is remarkable that the ancient writer should mention these three, as they are adumbrations of the same god as Cormac. Thus I may here say, without anticipating the remarks to be presently made on the Aengus to whom I have alluded, that he was the constant aider and protector of the sun -hero Diarmait,^ while Conaire was the subject of one of the most famous epic stories in Irish literature. The plot* centres in Conaire's tragic death, which is brought about by the fairies of Erinn, through the instrumentality of outlaws coming from the sea and following the lead of a sort of cyclops called Ingc^l, said to have been a big, rough, horrid, monster with only one eye, which was, however, wider than an ox-hide, blacker than the back of a beetle, and provided with no less than three pupils.^ The death of 1 Bk. of the Dun, 506. * O'Curry, from the Bk. of Bcdlymoie, ij. 18. * See passim, The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, now available in an excellent edition published by the See. for the Preserv. of the Ir. Language (Dublin, 1881). * The oldest version is given in the Bk. of the Dun, 83 a — 99 a, but it is incomplete. 5 Bk. of the Dun, 8i0. 136 II. THE ZEUS OF Conaire at his hands is one of the Celtic renderings of the story which in its Greek form describes the treatment of Zeus by Typho. In another cycle of stories, which may be called Ulto- nian, the Celtic Zeus finds his representative in Conchobar mac Nessa, or Conor son of Nessa, king of Ulster, who cannot be dismissed quite so briefly as the others. As in Cormac's case, a highly coloured picture is drawn of his reign, which the Euhemerists synchronize with the time of Christ, boldly fixing the Ultonian king's death on the day of the Crucifixion.^ His death was occasioned by a ball, with which he had been wounded in the skull years before, and which the surgeons of the court had never ventured to extract : it had been made, according to a savage practice, of the brains of a fallen foe called Mesgegra, by mixing it with lime. There was a prophecy that Mesgegra would avenge himself on the Ultonians, and a champion of Conchobar's enemies, called C6t, having surreptitiously got possession of the ball thus made of Mesgegra's brain, found an opportunity of hurl- ing it at the Ultonian king's head, with the result already mentioned. Both Cdt and Mesgegra belonged to the mythological party of darkness and death, and here we have them helping to produce an Ultonian parallel to Cormac losing one of his eyes, and Nuada one of his hands, especially as the ball was in Conchobar's head for years before it caused his death, and partly disabled him all that time, as he had to abstain from all violent exercise 1 This part of the story and what immediately follows will be found summarized in O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 275, &o. See also the original, printed (from the Bk. of Ldnster, 123 & — 1246) with a literal transla- tion, pp. 636 — 643. THE INSULAR CELTS. 137 or excitement. But the early history of Oonchobar is still more interesting, as it contains one of the Goidelic versions of the story which in its Greek form relates how Cronus was driven from power by his son Zeus. Conchobar's mother's name was N'essa, after whom he was called Conch obar mac Nessa. She was a warlike virago with a strange history ; but who the father was is not quite certain : according to some accounts, he was a great Ulster druid or magician called Cathbad; but according to others, he was a monarch called Fachtna Fathach or the Poetic, who died when Conchobar was a child. The king of Ulster at the time, Fergus mac E<5ig, feU passionately in love with Kessa, and made proposals of marriage to her ; but she would only listen to him on the condition that he should hand over to her boy Conchobar the sovereignty of Ulster for the space of one year. Fergus consented, and Nessa made things so pleasant for the Ulster nobles during the year, that at its close they declined to restore Fergus to the kingship. He thereupon made war on Conchobar, but as he proved unsuccessful he had to submit. He remained some years in Ulster, in the course of which Conchobar married a daughter of the king who reigned over Erum at Tara. She bore the name of Medb, and she had a will of her own; for, becoming soon tired of Conchobar, she left him, and we read of her afterwards as the wife of a prince called Ailill. They are styled respectively king and queen of Connaught. As to Fergus, he undertook to reconcile Conchobar to the return of certain exiles known as the Sons of Usnech, whose misfortunes form the subject of a well-known Irish tale ; but Conchobar behaving treach- erously towards them, Fergus and all his followers went 138 II. THE ZEUS OF into exile ; and here it may be mentioned in passing that Fergus had, some time before departing from Ulster, acted as foster-father and tutor to the son of a sister of Concho- bar's : this was Cdchulainn, who, as the greatest of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle, will have to be referred to repeatedly as we go on. Fergus and his adherents, while in exile, were hospitably receiyed by Ailill and Medb. This completes the part of the story which is here in point, and it requires one or two remarks. In the first place, Ailill has various descents ascribed him, or else Medb must have married two Ailills in succession, which is the view sometimes adopted ; but that is of no great consequence. The name Ailill seems to be the Irish equivalent of the Welsh ellyll, ' an elf or demon,' and Medb's AilUl belongs to a race which is always found ranged against the Tuatha D^ Danann.^ Medb herself, married first to Conchobar and then to Ailill, is to be classed with what I may, in default of a better term, designate goddesses of the dawn and dusk, who are found at one time consorting with bright beings and at another with dark ones. They also commonly associate themselves with water ; thus Medb, after the death of her husband Ailill at the hands of an Ulster hero called Conall Cernach, one of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle of stories, dwelt in an island in Loch Kee, on the east side of which ^ It is right, however, to say that an Ailill Knd, ' Ailill the White or Fair,' belongs to the opposite race, as his wife Flidais is carried away by Fergus, at the end of a series of tragic events forming the subject of a well-known story introductory to the epic tale of the Tain, of which more anon. See the Bk. ofLeinster, 247a — 248 a; also O'Curry's Manners, &c., iii. 338-9. THE INSULAR CELTS. 139 there waa a spring where she bathed herself every morn- ing : there she was at last killed by the avenging hand of one of Conchobar's sons.^ To this may be added that Conchobar, when he lost Medb, married a sister of hers named Eithne, who is fabled to have given her name to a river in Westmeath, called after her Eithne, Anglicized into Inny.^ But there were two other sisters of Medb, severally mentioned as Conchobar's wives, namely, Clothru of Inis Clothrann, or Clothru's Isle, in Loch Eee,^ and Mugain, who is perhaps most commonly spoken of as Conchobar's queen.* In Fergus, usually called Fergus mac Eoig after his mother,^ we have a kind of good- natured Cronus of gigantic proportions, endowed with the strength of 700 ordinary men,^ wielding a sword of fairy make, which extended itself to the dimensions of a rainbow whenever he chose to use it.^ Nevertheless, he could not prevail over Conchobar, so he thought it best to leave the kingdom. Fergus' relationship to Conchobar differed from that of Cronus to Zeus, in that he was not Conchobar's father but his uncle.^ ^ O'Curry's Manners, &c., ij. 290-1; but see also the Bk. ofLeinster, 1246, 125 a, where the story differs considerably from the version given by O'Curry from another source. 2 O'Curry, ib. p. 290. ^ Bh. of Ldnster, 125a. * Windisch's Ir. Texte, pp. 255, 258, 259, et passim, 5 O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 483. ^ Bk. ofLeinster, 1066. This Fergus is, my thologically speaking, to be identified probably with the Black-toothed Fergus of the story of Cormac : see p. 134. ^ Ib. 1026. 8 Fergus was son of Eoss the Eed, who was the father of Fachtna Fathach, said to be the father of Conchobar : see Bk. ofLeinster, 27 b, ,1026; also O'Curry, p. 483. 140 II. THE ZEUS OF Given Conchobar king of the TJltonians, his runaway wife queen of Connaught, and the exile Fergus enjoying more than hospitality at her court, we have the relative positions of some of the principal forces marshalled in the greatest epic story of the Irish, that which their literary men most endeavoured to elaborate. It purports to describe the events of an expedition by Ailill and Medb, with their numerous allies, to the kingdom of Ulster. Their chief object is said to have been the pos- session of a marvellous bull, called the Black of Ciiailnge, from the district in which he grazed. Cuailnge is in modern Irish Cuailghe, Anglicized Cooley^ the name of a mountainous part of the county of Louth : ^ ancient Ulster extended to the Boyne, and sometimes even further south- wards.2 The story serves as the centre around which other stories cluster, and the whole is known as the Tain or ' Driving' of the Kine of Cooley.^ Ailill and Medb made use of Fergus on the Tdin as the captain of the vanguard of their army, he being acquainted with the district they wished to reach ; and they arrived there during the cou- vade^ of the Ultonians, when none of their heroes could stir, excepting Cuchulainn, who accordingly had to face * BJc. of Bights, p. 21, O'Donovan's note. ^ O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 269. ^ It is called in Irish Tdin Bo Cuailnge, or simply in Tdin, literally ' the Driving' away of the cattle in question. The fragment of the tale in the BTc. of the Dun occupies fol. 55 a — 82 &, and in the Bh. of Leinster it takes up much more space, namely, fol. 536 — 104&, but neither is that complete. For references to other manuscripts of it, analyses and abstracts, see M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's Essai d'un Cata- logue de la Littirature epique de I'lrlande (Paris, 1883), pp. 214 — 216. * For an account of this strange custom, see Tylor's Researches into the Early Historij of Mankind, pp. 289 — 297. THE INSULAR CELTS. 141 the invaders single-handed. The principal part of the Tdin describes the astounding feats of valour performed by him, and it forms the Irish counterpart to the Greek story of Heracles defending the gods of Olympus by despatching their foes for them vrith his iuvincible arrows. Conchobar, though he showed himself capable on occa- sions of being, like Zeus, unscrupulous and cruel, is described as an exemplary king of th6 heroic period. His palace was considered a model of magnificence and comfort — a view, however, to be accepted in a strictly relative sense, as may be inferred from the fact that the sleeping arrangements for the king and his adult sister Dechtere disclose the most awkward feature of modern over-crowding.^ The king's own life at home shaped itself into a routine which divided the day-time into three parts ; ^ and his administration of his kingdom is treated as a pattern of what kingly rule should be. He is even represented as a reformer of the administration of justice, in that he had put an end to the exclusive right of the poet-seers to give judgment. The chief seer of Ulster had died, so goes the story, ^ and the succes- sion to his office was contested by his son and an older man of the same profession : the two argued their claims at great length with much eloquence, and even settled the case to their own satisfaction; but the king and his nobles understood naught of their abstruse and obscure language ; so that when it was over, the former determined, with a pardonable weakness for what he ^ Bk. of the Dun, 1286; Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 139. " Bk. of the Dun, 59 a. 3 It will be found in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 45-6, 383, and in his Manners, &c., iij. 316. 142 II. THE ZEUS OE could understand, that the seers and poets should no longer arrogate to themselves the right to administer justice. Conchobar's time was one of great prosperity for his people, and he is himself styled Cathbuadach^ or victorious in war/ though he is more than once found overcome by his enemies, like Zeus by Typho. Thus on one occasion a battle took place between the Ulto- nians and a prince called Eogan mac Durthacht,^ who more than once in Conchobar's history appears as the representative of darkness and treachery: the Ultoniaus were beaten, Conchobar was left on the field, and night supervened. The king's life was only saved by the coming of Ciichulainn, who found him exhausted and almost wholly covered over with earth. He dug him out, procured food for him and took him home to the court.^ On another occasion the Ultonians were pursuing Ailill and Medb with their forces, when Ailill's charioteer, called Ferloga, concealed himself in the heather, whence he sprang on Conchobar's chariot and seized hold of the king's neck from behind; nor did he loosen his grasp imtil the latter had promised to ransom himself. "When Ferloga specified his demand, it proved to be merely that Conchobar should take him to his capital and bid the un- ^ Bit. of the Dun, 1286j also 124 a, where the Irish word occurs abbreviated in the MS. to each, first explained by Zimmer in his Keltisclie Studien (Berlin, 1881), i. 38-9. 2 DurthacM, for which Dairthechta also occurs (see Windisch, s. v.), is probably of the same origin as the reduplicate dorufheihaig, ' deper- didit,' Gram. Celt p. 448 (incorrectly rendered celebravit at p. 351), and Stokes' Ooidelica, pp. 4, 14; so that Mac DurthacM would seem to have had much the same meaning as the name of another character of the same class : I mean Mac Cuill, ' Son of Perdition or Destruction.' 3 Bk. of the Dun, 596, 60a. THE INSULAR CELTS. 143 married women and maidens of Ulster sing around him every evening a rhyme, the burden of which was ' Fer- loga, my sweetheart.' ^ The mythological meaning of this insult to the heroes of Ulster is not quite evident ; but after a time Ferloga was sent home to the west with a present consisting of Conchobar's two steeds richly caparisoned in gold.^ Lastly, whatever elements of a historical nature have been absorbed by the Conchobar legend, his well-defined position as a king of Ulster becomes at once obscured when one begins to look a little more closely into the so-called early history of Ireland. Thus it speaks of another Conchobar, known as Conchohar Ahrad-ruad, ' Conchobar of the Eed Eyebrows,' who alone has been admitted to a place in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, compiled by the Four Masters in the earlier part of the 17th century. In that work he is repre- sented as reigning over Erinn six years before the Incarnation, and dying at the hands of a son of Lugaid,^ a contemporary of Cdchulainn, son of Conchobar mac Nessa's sister, Dechtere : so that the time of this Conchobar, king of Erinn, coincides, roughly speaking, with that of the king of Ulster of the same name, and I have very little doubt that the two were originally one, a view corroborated by the fact that Conchobar is by no means a common name in the remoter portions of ^ Bk. of Leinder, Wia; Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 106; and O'Curry's Manners, iij. 372. 2 This looks as if Ferloga, though called Ailill's charioteer, should be a sun-god ; and the name Fer-loga meaning the ' Man of Lug or lug,' a word to be discussed later, would seem to point in the same direction. 3 Four Masters, A. M. 5192. 144 11. THE ZEUS OP Irish pedigrees, which are here quite in point, as they make both Conohobars grandsons of one and the same Eoss the Eed.i Conchobar was doubtless not a man; his sister Dechtere, the mother of Cuohulainn, is called a goddess ; 2 and the scribe of an old story in the Book of the Dun is obliged, in spite of his Euhemerism, to remark in passing that Conchobar was a dia talmaide^^ or terres- trial god, of the Ultonians of his time. He is, in short, to be regarded as holding, in the Ultonian cycle, a place analogous to that of Nuada and Lltid in the cycles to which they belong. The Mac 6c and Merlin. In respect of his partially acknowledged divinity, Conchobar differs from Cormac mac Airt, who is treated throughout as a mere man. The next to be mentioned is Aengus,* who, on the other hand, is never treated as a historical character : he is described as son of the god called Dagda the Great, and the goddess Boann,^ from 1 The Four Masters liad not the courage to make Conchobar mac Nessa a historical character, but they call the other Conchobar the son of Finn File, 'Finn the Poet or Seer' (A.M. 5192), in whom we seem to have the same son of Eoss the Red that is called I'achtna the Poetic, as the reputed father of Conchobar mac Nessa. ^ Bk. of Leinster, 123 &, where Cdchulainn is called mc dea dechtiri, ' of (the) son of (the) goddess Dechtire.' ^ Bk. of the Dun, 1016; Fled Bricrenn, in Windisch's Ir. Texte, p. 259. * Here, as elsewhere, there is some difficulty as to which form of the name to choose : the modern Irish spelling is Aonghus, while Aen^us is older ; but older still is Oengus, while Oingus, or Oinguss, would be the oldest to be found in manuscripts. * Boann, also Boand, genitive Boinne or Boinde, was the name of the lady pursued by the Boyne : see p. 123. THE INSULAR CELTS. 145 whom the river Boyne takes its name. The younger god, fully described, was 'Aengus son of the (two) Young Ones.' 1 What this exactly meant is not clear ; for though his parents as immortals might perhaps be regarded as ever young, no reference is made, so far as I know, to the youthfulness of either : on the contrary, the Dagda is represented both as old and old-fashioned, fond of porridge, and generally a good subject for comic treat- ment.2 Aengus is also called In Mac Oc, ' the Young Son,' possibly 'the Young Fellow,' which is in harmony with the stories extant about his youthful beauty and personal attractions ; as, for example, when he once on a time appeared to king Cormac and gave him prophetic answers to his questions about the future : on that occa- sion he carried a musical instrument, and he is usually described much devoted to music of an irresistible nature. The Mac Oc's foster-father was Mider, king of the Fairies, whose wife was Etdin, another dawn-goddess; but a fragmentary story ^ represents a rival of hers succeeding by her wiles and magic arts in severing her from Mider. "When her husband lost her, she was found in great misery by the Mac Oc, who had her clad in purple and placed in a glass grianan or sun-bower, where she fed on fragrance and the bloom of odoriferous flowers. One of the most curious things in this very curious story is the ^ In Irish Oengus mac ind Oc, or merely Mac ind dc, a name which probably belonged to a lost pedigree of the god, differing from the one ordinarily given. 2 See the British Museum MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 666; also Dr. Sul- livan's introductory volume to O'Curry's Manners, &c., pp. dcxxxix, dcxl. 3 Bk. of the Dun, p. 129; Windisch, pp. 130—132. L 146 II. THE ZEUS OF statement, that, -when the Mac 6c travelled, he carried the glass grianan about with him, and slept in it at night in order to attend on Etdin while awaiting the return of her former health and vigour. Once more Etdin's rival succeeded in separating her from her protector and in reducing her to a condition of great wretchedness, prior to her entering on a new state of existence. The role of protecting a dawn-goddess is ascribed to the Mac Oc in another story, ^ where she appears under the name of Grainne, daughter of Cormac mac Airt, and the Mac Oc is called Aengus. Grainne declines to wed Einn, the counterpart of the Welsh god Gwyn, king of the fairies and the dead; but she elopes with Diarmait, a solar hero who was Aengus' foster-son; and when Diarmait and Grainne found themselves hard pressed by Einn and his men in pursuit, Aengus repeatedly aided them by throwing his magic mantle around Grainne and carrying her away unobserved by Einn. Here the mantle answers the purpose of the more cumbrous glass grianan. The latter, however, is of prime importance from a mythological point of view, as it seems to be a sort of picture of the expanse of the heavens lit up by the light of the sun ; and m the Mac Oc, going about with this glass structure, we have a representation of the Aryan Zeus in his original character of god of the sun and daylight. Now if the Mac Oc be regarded as a Goi- delic Zeus, the Dagda should be a Cronus, and that is corroborated by the peculiar relations in which the two Irish gods are placed with regard to one another. For 1 The Pursiiit of Diannuid and Grainne, already alluded to : see note, p. 135. THE INSULAR CELTS. 147 as Cronus is disinherited by his youngest son Zeus, so is the Dagda by his Young Son the Mac 6c, excepting that it is brought about in Irish mythology, not by war, but by craft. The story is recorded that the Dagda, as king of the Tuatha Dd Danann, allotted them their respective habitations, but that in so doing he happened to forget the Mac Oc, who presently called on his father to claim his inheritance. The Dagda replied that he had none left, at which his son naturally grumbled, and asked to be allowed to stay at the Dagda's palace till night. The Dagda assented ; but at the end of the allotted time he told his son to go. The son replied that he had been granted day and night, which was the sum of all exist- ence. So he stayed on in the palace of his father, who had to move out^ to seek a home elsewhere. This scene doubtless belonged originally to Irish mythology before any Celts had settled in Ireland, but the story came to be localized in due time in that country, thus associating the name of the Mac Oc with one of the abodes of the happy departed. How this was brought about may be gathered from the following facts. The Tuatha Dd Danann were regarded, nobody knows how early, as one of the races inhabiting Erinn, so that upon the arrival of the Sons of Mile, or the mythic race from which most of the human dwellers in the island are regarded as derived, a great battle took ^ See the Bk. of Leinster, pp. 246 &, 247 a. According to a story summarized from the Bk. of Fermoy by Dr. Todd in the E. Irish Academy's Irish MSB. Series, i. 46, the dispossessed owner was not the Dagda but Elcmar, foster-father to the Mac 6c, who expelled him ■with the aid of the magic arts of Manann^n mac Lir. See also M, d'A. de Jubainville'a Cycle Mythol. pp. 276—282. l2 148 II. THE ZEUS OF place between tliem at Tailltinn, situated bet-ween Kells and Navan in the present county of Meatb.^ The gods, defeated, -withdrew from the ken of the invaders, forming themselves into an invisible world of their own. They retreated into the hills and mounds of Erinn ; so tradition associates them especially with the burial mounds and cemeteries of the country. A very remarkable group of these dot the banks of the Boyne : take, for example, the burial remains of Newgrange, in Meath ; of Knowth, near Slane, in the same county, and only, separated by the river from the ancient cemetery of Eos na Eigh ; of Dowth, near Drogheda; and of Drogheda itself — all of which appear to have been plundered by the Norsemen in the ninth century.^ Add to these the Brugh of the Boyne, the home of the Dagda, which he lost to his crafty son the Mac Oc, known thenceforth as the Aengus of the Brugh.3 Euhemeristic tradition came to represent the Dagda and his sons as buried there, and pointed to the Sid^ or Eairy Mound, of the Brugh, as covering their resting-place. The older account, hbwever, which relates how the Mac Oc got possession of it, says nothmg about it as a cemetery; in fact it describes it as an admirable place, more accurately speaking as an admirable land, a 1 Four Masters, A. M. 3500, & ed.'s note, p. 22. 2 lb. A. D. 861, & ed.'s notes. 8 lb. A. M. 3450, & note ; Petrie's Round Towers of Ireland, in tbe Transactions of the R. Irish Academy, xx. 100-1 ; also O'Cnrry, iij. 122, 362. It may here be explained, that the word hrugh, in older spelling hrug or Irud, is usually translated a 'palace.' The one in question was on the Boyne, at 5roac?-Boyne Bridge, near Slane, in the county of Meath. THE INSULAE CELTS. 149 term which betrays the usual identification^ of the fairy- mound with the nether world to which it formed the entrance. Admirable, it says, is that land; there are three trees there always bearing fruit; there is one pig there always alive, and another pig always ready cooked ; and there is a vessel there full of excellent ale.^ Nobody who is familiar with the literature of ancient Erinn requires to be told that this description is an expression of the old Irish idea of the Land of the Blessed. So the myth placing the Dagda at the head of the departed, simply happy on fruit and pork and ale, is the coun- terpart, and a very ancient one, of the Greek story of Cronus, vanquished and driven from power, wandering to the Isles of the Blessed, there to reign over them and share the functions of Ehadamanthus. The Irish idea of the Dagda as a Goidelic Cronus, ruling over an Elysium with which a sepulchral mound was associated, nay even confounded, contributed possibly to the formation of the story that all the Tuatha D6 Danann, beaten in battle, withdrew into the hills and mounds of Erinn; but be that as it may, this latter belief in its turn put an end to the singularity of the Dagda's position by making that of the other gods much like his. Further, the transfer- ence to his new sphere in Erinn of the incident of his replacement by his son, had the mythologically strange effect of making into a king of the dead in nether dusk the Mac Oc, who should have been the youthful Zeus, of ^ It was here helped by confounding brug, as applied to the Mac Oc's 'house' (Bk. of t/ie Dun, 51&), with some form of bruig, for an earlier mymg (see Windisch, s. v.) of the same origin as the English Marches, Ger. mark, "Welsh bro, ' a land or district,' Gaulish Allo6?-og'es (p. 5). 2 Bk. of Leinster, 246 a. 150 II. THE ZEUS OF the Goidelic -world, rejoicing in the translucent expanse of the heavens as his crystal bower. A somewhat similar localizing of mythic personages is observable in connection with the ancient stone strong- holds of the west. One of the most remarkable stands in the island of Arann, off the coast of Galway : it is not known when or by whom its cyclopean walls were built, but it is called Dun Aengus, after an Aengus son of Timor, ^ a father otherwise obscure. Now we read of a lady called Maistiu, daughter to this Aengus, acting as embroideress to the other Aengus;^ and it is by no means improbable that the Dagda's Son of the one set of stories was Timor's Son of the other, whence it would follow that Aengus's daughter who embroidered for him might be regarded as corresponding to Zeus's daughter Athene, who excelled in the same kind of work. The story of Aengus, son of TImdr, associates him with a mythic people called the Fir Bolg, and brings him and the Clann Tlmdir^ from Scotland; they obtained land in Meath from the king of Erinn, but finding his yoke too heavy, they escaped to the west, when Aengus and his household settled in Arann. The meaning of this myth will readily be seen by comparing it with its "Welsh counterpart, to which we are now coming. But before dismissing the Mac Oc, it may be worth while mentioning ^ O'Curry's Manners, &c., ij. 122, iij. 5, 74, 122 ; and there appears to have been a tale, now unknown, about the Destruction of Diin Oen- gusa (in modern Irish D-dn Aonghms), the Fortress of Aengus : see M. d'A. de Jubainville's Ensai d'un Catalogue, p. 244. ^ BTc. of Lecan, fol. 233a, b, quoted by O'Curry, iij. 122. ' Some more references to Aengus and the other sons of Timor wiU be found in O'Donovan's note to the Four Masters, A.D. 1599 (p. 2104), and O'Curry's Battle of Magh Leana, p. 157. THE INSULAR CELTS. 151 that he, like Zeus, figures iu love adventures, and Irish literature contains many allusions to him, some of which remain unexplained, such as one which speaks of the four kisses of Aengus of the Brugh of the Boyne, that were converted by him into ' birds which haunted the youths of Erinn.' '^ The counterpart of Aengus in Welsh is to be found, I think, in Myrdin, better known in English as Merlin, and in Ambrosius called in "Welsh Emrys or Emrys Wledig^ that is to say Prince Emrys or Ambrose the Gwledig. In Nennius' Historia Brittonum we find him brought as a child before old king Yortigern in the neighbourhood of Snowdon, where he was trying to build a great fortress for himself and his household. Emrys then gave his name as Ambrosius, and, though a mere child, he confounded Yortigern's magicians and fright- ened the old king to leave him the fortress, together with all the western portion of the island.^ The former was thenceforth called Dinas Emrys, the Town of Ambrosius, a name still borne by a hill -spur near Bedgelert in Carnarvonshire. Now this Ambrosius is otherwise iden- tified with the king Emrys, who was brother to Uthr, or Uther as he is called in English : ^ the former is called in Latin Aurelius Ambrosius, in whom we seem to have a historical man, while the latter is to be identified with the god of the Wonderful Head mentioned in the last lecture (pp. 94 — 97). But the Emrys whom Nennius brings before Yortigern is the Myrdin or Merlin of other 1 O'Curry, p. 478. 2 San-Marte, Gildas et Nennius, pp. 53 — 55. ^ Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. San-Maite, pp. 78-9, &o. 152 II. THE ZEUS OE versions^ of the story. So a distinction of persons has been sometimes made, according to which there was a prophet Merlin and a prince Emrys : even this was not found sufficient, for some have subdivided Merlin into three, to wit, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin CaMonius, and Merlin 8ylvaticus. In order to approach the original con- ception our course is clear: we must give all the attributes of Emrys and the Merlins to one Merlin Emrys ; but this is only theoretically clear, as the process is disturbed by the historical element introduced in the person of Aurelius Ambrosius, who may possibly be regarded as in a sense responsible for some of the chief difficulties in our way, looked at from a mythological point of view. We should, however, not be far wrong in treating Merlin Emrys as an adumbration of a personage who was at once a king and warrior, a great magician and prophet, in a word a Zeus of Brythonio paganism. But if Merlin Emrys be a Brythonic Zeus, then Yortigern ought to be a Brythonic Cronus; and this is, to say the least of it, in harmony with the evidence of Yortigern's name, which means a supreme lord or over-king, corresponding to the position of Cronus before he was driven from power. The Mac Oc is represented as the Dagda's son, which cannot be paralleled by any of the accounts of Merlin Emrys' birth ; but this may be one of the results of the disturbing iafluence of the historical element. On a third point we are more for- tunate : the Dagda and Cronus, supplanted by their respective sons, go to preside over the departed; and the parallel extends to Yortigern. For, when leaving 1 Such as Geoffrey's, pp. 90—101. THE INSULAR CELTS. 153 his kingdom to Merlin Emrys, lie proceeded to the north, -a part of the island supposed at one time to have been the abode of the dead, a notion attested by so late an author as the Greek writer Procopius in the 6th century. Further, the district in the north to which Vortigern is made to go is called Grwynnwesi^ a derivative used probably as the plural of Gwynwas, which would mean the White or Blissful Abode. The compound, analysed into Gwas Gwyn,^ of the same meaning, occurs in another story, which represents a solar hero, called Caswallawn son of Beli, going in pursuit of his mistress, Fflur daughter of Mygnach the Dwarf, who was carried away by the Eomans, according to one account to Eome, and according to another to Gwasgwyn. He recovered her after a great battle with the Eomans, who, to avenge their defeat, afterwards invaded Briiain under Julius Caesar : ^ another reference to the same mythic expedition of Caswallawn's makes him and his host settle permanently in Gwasgwyn.* Now Caswallawn belongs to Welsh mythology, but his name happens to be the same as that of the historical man Cassivellaunus of Caesar's narrative, and Gwasgwyn, ^ San-Marte, in his Oildas et Nennius, p. 55, adopts the reading Guunnesi, but there are diverse others all consistent with an original Guennuessi, which may also have had the shortened form Gunnuessi. ^ Compare the use of gwas in speaking of an abode or mansion in Heaven in the Bk. of Taliessin, Skene, ij. 110; see also p. 11 above. Probably the Gwysmeuryc of the Welsh version of Geoffrey, ij. 1946, derives its gioys from a very different origin, as the Latin version has Westimaria, p. 57, and Westmarialanda, p. 66. 3 The Triads, i. 53, 77, ii. 58, iii. 102 : see also San-Marte's Geoffrey, p. 253, note. « lb. i. 40, ii. 5. 154 II. THE ZEUS OF in the stories mentioned, originally meant Gwas Gwyn, the White Mansion, the mythical abode of the happy dead ; hut it was misinterpreted to refer to Gaseony, which came to be known in Welsh as Gwasgwyn?- It is to this mythic land of the White Mansion or Blissful Abode, whither the sun-god's bride had been hurried away by a rival, that the boy Merlin Emrys drove the aged and uxorious monarch once correctly styled Vortigern or supreme king. It may here be remarked that Yortigem resembled Cronus more closely in point of character than did the Dagda, whose name appears to stand for an earlier Dago- devos, meaning the ' good god,'^ in reference probably to the goodnatured disposition usually ascribed him in his last sphere of activity ; but no description of the corre- sponding portion of Yortigern's career has reached us, while we know that previous to his expulsion from his realm his reputation for cruelty and treachery was such that he was hated of his subjects. The crowning crime of his reign was his alliance with the enemies of his country and his marrying Ehonwen,^ ' White -mane,' daughter of one of their two leaders, known by the simi- larly equine names, Hengist and Horsa. This has to some extent to be regarded as history, for the confound- ing of Aurelius Ambrosius, who was probably engaged in opposing German invasions, with a mythic Ambrosius ^ Gwasgwyn also meant in Welsh a kind of horse for which Gaseony was formerly famous. 2 For Dagda the decompounded Dagan also occurs : see the Bk. of Leinster, 245 6. 3 The form Roioen, or Rowenna, was obtained by a very easy mis- reading of Rouenn, or Romienn, Geoffrey, pp. 84, 86. THE INSULAR CELTS. 155 in the person of Merlin Emrys, would bring in, as its natural complement, the explanation that the king, fabled to have been driven from power, deserved it because of his alliance with the invader ; but it fails to account for the original truculence of Yortigern's character, which, looking at the Greek story of Cronus, I take to be part and parcel of the ancient myth. It would be impossible, within the compass of these remarks, to touch, however slightly, on the many ques- tions which the mention of Merlin must suggest to your minds ; but before we have done with him, let us see in what form the crystal bower of the Mac Oc appears in his story, First, then, and foremost may be mentioned the legend which represents him going with his suite of nine bards into the sea in a Glass. House, after which nothing more was ever heard of either him or them.^ But another story appears to have placed the Glass House in Bardsey,^ which probably derives its name from Merlin as the bard and prophet par excellence ; and we read that Merlin took with him into the Glass House the thirteen treasures^ of Britain, including among them such rarities as Arthur's tartan that rendered its wearer invisible, Gwydno's inexhaustible basket, and other articles of equally fabulous virtues. Further, a Welsh poet* of the 15th century tells us that 1 Triads, iij. 10. 2 The Brytlion for 1860, pp. 372-3; the Greal (London, 1805), p. 188. * Enumerated in the Brython, loe. cit. ; also in Guest's Mah. ij. 354. * leuan Djfi, quoted by Morris in his Celtic Remains, s. v. Enfti, p. 170, where the author gravely disposes of the great enchanter as follows : ' This house of glass, it seems, was the museum where they 156 II. THE ZEUS OF the reason wliy Merlin entered the Glass House was in order to please his leman. This tallies with the account, in the romances, of Merlin's final disappearance ; the per- son whom Merlin loved is called the Lady of the Lake, to whom he is represented as disclosing the secrets of his magic art ; but she would not rest satisfied until she had the means of detaining him for evermore. Merlin must teach her how she might imprison a man by enchant- ment alone in ' a tour with-outen walles, or with-oute eny closure.' He, understanding what it meant, declined for a while to consent; but her winning ways proved irresistible, for he showed her at length how to make 'a place feire and couenable,' so contrived by art and by cunning that it might never be undone, and that he and she ' should be there in joy and in solace.' So one day when they were going hand in hand through the forest of Br^cilien, they found a 'bussh that was feire and high of white hawthorne full of floures,' and beneath that bush they sat them down in the shade. He fell asleep with his head on the lady's lap ; but as soon as she found him fast asleep, she arose and gave effect to the feat of magic she had learned : she * made a cerne with hir wymple all a-boute the bussh and all a-boute Merlin, and be-gan hir enchauntementz soche as Merlin hadde hir taught, and made the cerne ix tymes, and ix tymes hir enchauntementes.' When he woke he looked around ' and hym semed he was in the feirest tour of the worlde, and the moste stronge.' He could not issue thence, but the Lady of the Lake promised to spend the greater part kept their curiosities to be seen by everybody, but not handled ; and it is probable Myrddin, who is said to live in it, was the keeper of their museum at that time.' THE INSULAR CELTS. 157 of every day with, him, as she could go in and out at will. Such is a summary of the story,^ to which should be added that when Merlin had been missed at Arthur's court and several knights had gone in search of him, one of them, as he was passing through the forest of Brdcilien, heard a groaning close by him ; so he looked up and down, 'and nothinge he saugh, but as it hadde ben a smoke of myste in the eyre that myght not passe oute.' Merlin then, speaking out of the smoke of mist to the knight, explained to him how he came to be thus impri- soned, adding that no one should any more address him, save his mistress alone, since the knight would never be able to find the spot again.^ Another story places the scene in another forest. Lastly, Merlin's prison is repre- sented as a sepulchre of marvellous beauty, in which his leman has by magic arts entombed him alive,^ a view partially reflected by old Welsh poetry in that it makes Merlin 'the man who speaks from the grave,' where he is consulted with deference and respect by Gwendyd, who is, moreover, not associated with his interment : they address one another as brother and sister,* which recalls the romance that represents the Lady of the Lake always a virgin, as regarded the enchanter, who doted on her charms. According to another legend, of Breton origin, ^ ^ See the Early English Text Society's edition oi Merlin (1865 — 1869), pp. 680-lj and Southey's Introd. to his ed. oi Kyng Arthur, &c. (London, 1817), pp. xlv — xlviij, quoted in Guest's Mat. i. 216 — 218. ^ E. Eng. T. Society's Merlin, pp. 692-3 ; Southey's Introd. p. xlviij. ^ Southey's notes to his Kyng Arthur, ij. 463 — 468 ; Guest, i. 219. * Red BooTt of Merged, see Skene, ij. 234, and i. 462 — 478 et seg. * Southey's Introd. p. xlviij, where he refers to Anne Plumptre as his authority. He meant, I find, her Narrative of a Three Tears' Residence in France, &c. (London, 1810), iij. 187. 158 II. THE ZEUS OF Jiis mistress chose to enclose him in a tree, but nobody- knows where, though it is sometimes surmised to have been on a little island, off the Bee du Eaz, called Sein, which is fabled to have been also the scene of his birth. Tennyson describes Merlin's prison as ' an oak, so hollow huge and old It look'd a tower of ruin'd masonwork.' This deviates greatly from the original myth, but it retains one important feature : it makes Merlin immortal. He may pine away like Tithonus, but he is a god,^ who cannot die ; his living spirit abides with his dead body, an idea which Ariosto expresses with ghastly vividness in the words — ' Col corpo morto il vivo spirto alberga." Similarly, the fact of the Lady of the Lake being represented coming every day to solace Merlin in his loneliness, is in thorough harmony with the mytho- logical notion that made the dawn-goddess sometimes ally herself with the sun-god and sometimes with one of his dusky rivals. The same remark applies with even more force to the descriptions of Merlin's abode as a house of glass, as a bush of white thorns laden with bloom, as a sort of smoke of mist in the air, or as ' a clos .... nother of Iren, ne stiell, ne tymbir, ne of ston, but .... of the aire with-oute eiiy othir thinge be enchaunte- mente so stronge, that it may neuer be vn-don while the worlde endureth.' ^ These pictures vie with, one another 1 Is it possible that we owe Merlin's name or surname of Ambrusius to some pedant who had Merlin's divinity in view ? 2 Orlando Furioso, canto iij. 11; Guest, i. 219. 3 Merlin, p. 693. THE INSULAR CELTS. 159 in transparent truthfulness to the original scene in nature, with the sun as the centre of a vast expanse of light, which moves with him as he hastens towards the west. Even when at length one saw in Merlin but a magician, and in his pellucid prison but a work of magic, the answer to the question, what had become of him and it, continued to be one which the storehouse of nature-myths had supplied. "Where could Merlin have gone but whither the sun goes to rest at night, into the dark sea, into an isle surrounded by the waves of the west, or into the dusk of an impenetrable forest ? So it came about that legend sends Merlin to sea in his house of glass never more to be heard of, or dimly moors him in the haze of Bardsey, or else it leaves him bound by the spells of his own magic in a lonely spot in the sombre forest^ of Brdcilien, where Breton story gives him a material prison in a tomb, at the end of the Yal des F^es, hard by the babbling fountain of Baranton, so beloved of the muse of romance. For me, however, the other stories which leave Merlin in an isle off the Welsh or the Armoric coast have more interest just now, as they help more than anything else to explain, how the Zeus of the Celts could become so intimately associated with the sea as we found him to be under the names Llud, Nud, Nodens. 1 The Brython for 1861, p. 341, mentions an Anglesey legend, recorded by Lewis Morris, which represented Merlin living in a wild spot in a forest, with his sister keeping house for him. He was a great magician, but whoever wished to consult him must offer him drink, as he never remained any time in the same place without drink. What the interpretation of this curious statement may be, I know not for certain ; but compare the libation funnel in the floor of the temple of Kodens. 160 ii. the zeus of Merlin Emets and Maxen. This is all corroborated by the name of Merlin, ■which is in Welsh Myrdyn, and by its association with Car- marthen, in Welsh ' Caer Yyrdin,' ' Myrdin's Caer or Fortress-.' On the other hand, it is a matter of no doubt that here Myrdin is the regular and correct form of the ancient Brythonic name of the place, namely, Moridunon, which meant a sea-fort, and correctly described the spot, in that it is reached by the tides in the Towy. Thus we have Myrdin as the name of the enchanter and as that of the town, which is to be explained by an acci- dent of Welsh, my conjecture beiag that the two names were distinguished, in an earlier stage of the language, by a difference of termination. We have only to take Moridunon as given by Ptolemy,^ and to suppose a derivative of a common form made from it, and we have Moridunjos^ which might mean ' him of Moridunon or the sea-fort.' Taken in reference to Carmarthen, it would explain the legend which makes the prophet a native, under peculiar circumstances, of that town; but taken in connection with his mythic home and prison, it suits his abode in Bardsey or the Armoric isle of Sein, where he was also believed to have been born; 1 Geographia, ed. C. Miiller (Paris, 1883), lib. ij. cap. 3, 12 (i. p. 101). As the name of another town south or east of the Severn sea, it reads in the Antonine Itinerary Moriduno and Mariduno, and Parthey prints' Mwriduno: see his ed. pp. 231, 234. 2 As a parallel to Moridunjos shortened into 'Myrdin,' I may mention the Gaulish toovtiovs (p. 46), which we have in "Welsh in the epithet of Morgant Ttid in the romance of Gereint and Enid (R. B. Mah. pp. 261, 286-7). Morgant was the great physician of Arthur's court ; can tud have originally meant a public leech or the medicine man of the state 1 THE INSULAR CELTS. 161 and as pedantry has had a hand in naming him, we may render Merlinus Ambrosius into English as ' the Divine or Immortal One of the Stronghold of the Sea.' Car- marthen enters into another legend which represents that town built by a princess called Elen Liiydawg, or Elen Mistress of a Host : that is but another way of describing the Lady of the Lake constructing a house of glass or some still more pellucid material to be Merlin's prison. It is also remarkable that Elen is represented as causing to be built the highest fortress in Arvon, wherein we seem to have a reference to Dinas Emrys, the spot from which Merlin Emrys expelled Vortigern. The Elen I have referred to is a personage of no merely incidental interest, and her story is essential to the theory of the identity of Aengus the Mac 6c with our Merlin Emrys. The name Elen still belongs to mythology in Wales : thus in Arvon, for instance, Arian- rhod (p. 90) is said to have had three sisters who lived with her in her castle in the sea. They were named Gweii or Gwennan, Maelan and Elen ; ^ all appear, like Arian- rhod, to have belonged to the class of goddesses asso- ciated with the dawn. So also with an Elen said by Geoffrey to have been ravished on Mont St. Michel by the Spanish giant to whom a passing reference has already been made (p. 91). That incident is to be interpreted to mean the dawn passing into the gloaming, and finally losing itself in the darkness of night, a view corroborated by the fact that she is treated as sister of ^ See my Fairy Tales in the Gymmrodor, vi. 1 62-3. In Arvon the mythic name Elen becomes, according to rule, Elan ; while the ordinary name Ellen, much used in Wales, is pronounced in Arvon Elin, when- ever E'linor, of which it is a shortened form, is not preferred. M 162 II. THE ZEUS OF a solar knight of Arthur's court, called Howel : ^ this last name means able to see or easy to be seen, that is to say, conspicuous, a fitting designation, whichever meaning you take, for a sun hero. But to return to Elen Liiydawg : she is the heroine of an old Welsh saga known as the Dream of Maxen the Gwledig. The following is an abstract of it : ^ — Maxen was emperor of Eome and the handsomest of men, as well as the wisest, with whom none of his predecessors might compare. One day he and his courtiers went forth to hunt, and in the course of the day he sat himself down to rest, while his chamberlains protected him from the scorching rays of the sun with their shields. Beneath that shelter he slept, and he dreamt that he was travelling over hill and dale, across rich lands and fine countries until at length he reached a sea-coast. Then he crossed the sea in a magnificent ship and landed in a great city in an island, which he traversed from the one shore till he was in sight of the other : there we find him in a district remarkable for its precipitous mountains and lofty cliffs, from which he could descry an isle in front of him, sur- rounded by the sea. He stayed not his course until he reached the mouth of a river, where he found a castle with open gates. He walked in, and there beheld a fair hall built of stones precious and brilliant, and roofed with shingles of gold. To pass by a great deal more gold and silver and other precious things, Maxen found ^ Howel is the colloquial pronunciation of what would, in book- "Welah, be Hywel: compare the note on Owein, p. 63. 2 B. B. Mah. pp. 82—92 j Guest, iij. 276—290 j but I have also made use of a copy by Mr. J. Gwenogvryn Evans of th& fragment in the Hengwrt. MS. numbered 54. THE INSULAR CELTS. 163 in tlie hall four persons, namely, two youths playing at chess : they were the sons of the lord of the castle, who was a venerable, gray-haired man, sitting in an ivory chair adorned with the images of two eagles of ruddy gold. He had bracelets of gold on his arms and many a ring glittered on his fingers: a massive gold torque adorned his neck, while a frontlet of the same precious metal served to restrain his locks. Hard by sat his daughter in a chair of ruddy gold, and her beauty was so transcendent, that it would be no more easy to look at her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays are most irresistible. She was clad in white silk, fastened on her breast with brooches of ruddy gold, and over it she wore a surcoat of golden satin, while her head was adorned with a golden frontlet set with rubies and gems, alternating with pearls and imperial stones. The narrator closes his description of the damsel by giving her a girdle of gold and by declaring her altogether the fairest of the race. She rose to meet Maxen, who embraced her and sat with her in her chair. At this point the dream was suddenly broken off by the rest- lessness of the horses and the hounds, and the creaking of the shields rubbing against each other, which woke the emperor a bewildered man. Eeluctantly and sadly he moved, at the advice of his men, towards home ; for he could think of nothing but the fair maiden in gold. In fact there was no joint in his body or even as much as the hollow of one of his nails which had not become charged with her love. When his courtiers sat at table to eat or drink, he would not join them, and when they went to hear song and entertainment, he would not go, or, in a word, do anything for a whole week but sleep as M 2 164 II. XHE ZEUS or often as the maiden slept, whom he beheld in his dreams. When he was awake she was not present to him, nor had he any idea where in the world she was. This went on till at last one of his nobles contrived to let him know, that his conduct in neglecting his men and his duties was the cause of growing discontent. Thereupon he summoned before him the wise men of Eome and told them the state of mind in which he was. Their advice was that messengers should be sent on a three years' quest to the three parts of the world, as they calculated that the expectation of good news would help to sustain him. But at the end of the first year the messengers returned unsuccessful, which made Maxen sad; so other messengers were sent forth to search another third of the world. They returned at the end of their year, like the others, unsuccessful. Maxen, now in despair, took the advice of one of his courtiers and resorted to the forest where he had first dreamt of the maiden. When the glade was reached, he was able to give his messengers a start in the right direction. They went on and on, identifying the country they traversed with the emperor's description of his march day by day, until at last they reached the rugged district of Snowdon, and beheld Mona lying in front of them flat in the sea. They proceeded a little further and entered a castle where Carnarvon now stands, and there beheld the hall roofed with gold : they walked in and found Kynan and Adeon playing at chess, while their father Eudav, son of Karadawg, sat in his chair of ivory, with his daughter Elen seated near him. They saluted her as empress of Eome, and proceeded to explain the meaning of an act she deemed so strange. She listened courteously, but THE INSULAR CELTS. 165 declined to go with them, thinking it more appropriate that the emperor should come in person to fetch her. In due time he reached Britain, which he conquered from Beli the Great and his sons; then he proceeded to visit Elen and her father, and it was during his stay- here, after the marriage, that Elen had Carmarthen built and the stronghold in Eryri, The story adds Caerleon to them, but distinguishes the unnamed Snowdon city as the favourite abode of her and her husband. The next thing she undertook was to employ the hosts at her command in the construction of roads between the three towns, which she had caused to be built in part payment of her maiden-fee. But Maxen remained here so many years that the Komans made an emperor in his stead. So at length he and Elen, and her two brothers and their hosts, set out for Eome, which they had to besiege and take by storm. Maxen was now reinstated in power, and he allowed his brothers-in-law and their hosts to settle wherever they chose; so Adeon and his men came back to Britain, while Kynan and his reduced Brittany and settled there. Such is a summary of this curious story, which sounds far too native to have originally had a Boman emperor for its hero. Whose place, then, has Maxen usurped in it, you may ask. I have no hesitation in suggesting that it was that of Emrys, and I think I can assign at least one of the reasons why Maxen the Gwledig took the place of Emrys the G-wledig. The heroine is called Elen Liiydawg, that is, Elen mistress and owner of a host, or the Elen who made expeditions with a host ; but I take her host to have been of a mythical nature, and the 166 II. THE ZEUS OF Triads 1 treat it as one of the Three Silver Hosts led out of Britain, leaving it a prey to its foes : in fact, Elen's host is virtually to be equated with St. Ursula's host of 11,000 virgins, whom the Euhemerists wish to treat as brides intended for Maximus and his men. These virgins may be compared with the smaller suite of the heroine of an Irish romance to be mentioned shortly; but for those who tried to translate myth into history, they were hosts of armed men ; so it became necessary to face the question, who the tyrant was who led those troops abroad, and the choice very naturally fell on Maximus, the Maxen of the Welsh Dream with which you are now acquainted. For history speaks^ of his revolt in Britain, of his landing on the continent with the troops he could muster here, of his success in acquiring possession of Gaul and Spain, of the flight and death of the Emperor Gratian in the year 383. This, I take it, together with national vanity, was the cause that led to the substitution of Maxen for Emrys, and it supplies the key to a puzzle in the Wennian Genealogies,^ which make Maxen descend from Constantino the Great : this was because Emrys is commonly represented as the son of Constantine. 1 i. 40 = ij. 5. ^ See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1881), iij. 358 — 362. Gibbon is seldom detected napping, but I cannot help finding somewliat too much of the myth in his statement about Maximus (p. 360), that ' the youth of the island crowded to his standard, and he invaded Gaul with a fleet and army which were long afterwards remembered as the emigration of a considerable part of the British nation.' 3 The British Museum MS. Harl. 3859, fol. 193ft; see also the Annales Camhrioi, Preface, p. x. THE INSULAR CELTS. 167 The narrator of the Dream of Maxen remarks, in con- nection with the mention of Elen ordering the roads to be made from one town to another, that they were there- fore called the roads of Elen Liiydawg : this is still the case, as it is not imusual to find a mountain track in Wales termed Fford Elen, 'Elen's Eoad,' or Sarn Elen,i 'Elen's Causeway;' and there is a certain poetic pro- priety in associating the primitive paths and roads of the country with this vagrant goddess of dawn and dusk. Similarly, Nennius' account of the British auxiliaries of Maximus has a mythic tone about it, which is worth noticing. ' The seventh emperor,' he says, ' who reigned in Britain was Maximianus,^ the man who went with all the soldiers of the Brythons from Britain, and killed Gratian king of the Eomans; and he held the govern- ment of the whole of Europe, and would not allow the soldiers who had gone with him to return to Britain to their wives, their children and their possessions ; but he gave them numerous tracts of country from the lake on the top of Mons Jovis as far as the city which is called 1 Our charlatans pretend, of course, that it is Helen and not Elen. At Carnarvon the Helen mania is so acute, that a place not far off, called Coed Alun ever since the 14th century {R. B. Mob. p. 63), runs the risk of having its name permanently transmogrified into Coed Helen. ^ See Nennius and Gildas, § 27 (p. 44), where our Maxen is called Maximianus, while Maximus is the name given his predecessor. There is considerable confusion as to these names, and the shortened form Maxen points, though somewhat irregularly, to a Maxentiiis as its starting-point ; but in the ISTennian Genealogy I have just referred to, I read the MS. abbreviation as Maxim, which points unmistakably to a Maximus. But neither Maxen nor Maxim, be it noticed, is to be treated as a genuine "Welsh form : both come from pedants and are faulty in point of phonology. 168 II. THE ZEUS OF Cantguic and as far as Cruc Oehidient, that is to say, the Western Mound. These are the Armoric Brythons, and they have never returned hither to this day.' The Cumulus Occidentalis alluded to sounds mythic enough to figure in the same sort of stories as the forest of Br^cilien or the isle of Sein ; not to mention that the choice of Brittany as the seat of the discharged auxiliaries may have been from the first dictated, at least in part, by mythology. For the Welsh for Brittany is Llydaw,'^ a name which may have originally meant an abode of the dead, a light in which almost any land situated on the other shore would seem to have appeared to the Celts of antiquity. Be that as it may, I have tried to reinstate Emrys or Myrdin Emrys in the place usurped by Maxen. From this it would follow, among other things, that he was the conqueror of this country from the chthonian divinity Beli the Great, which derives unexpected confirmation from a hitherto unexplained Triad, i. 1, which states that Britain's first name, before it was inhabited, was Clas Myrdin, or Merlin's Close. In this Triad, which must be the echo of an ancient notion, the pellucid walls confining Merlin become, by a touch of the pencil of the mythic muse, co-extensive with the utmost limits of our island home. Here may be compared Erinn when called the Island of Fdl^ which suggests the possibility that the double meaning of 'wall' and 'light' attaching to its Welsh equivalent gwawl (pp. 123-4) has helped to give the Merlin myth the form in which we know it. But let ^ One of the tarns on Snowdon, several of which have very uncanny associations, is called Llyn Llydaw, or the Lake of Llydaw. What can the meaning of the name have buen 1 THE INSULAR CELTS. 169 me now bring your attention back to the dreams about the dawn-goddess Elen, and the conjecture that the real dreamer was not Maxen but Merlin Emrys; for I am persuaded that you will not fail to recognize a more primitive version of the same story in the following Irish tale, called the Vision of Aengus : ^ — One night Aengus the Mac Oc dreamt that he saw at his bedside a maiden the most beautiful in Erinn : he made a move to take hold of her, but she vanished he knew not whither. He remained in his bed till the morning, but he was in an evil plight on account of the maiden leaving him without vouchsafing him a word, and he tasted no food that day. The next night the same lovely form appeared again at his bedside, and this time she played on the sweetest of musical instruments. The effect on him was much the same as before, and he fasted that day also. This went on for a whole year, and he became the victim of love; but he told nobody what ailed him. The physicians of Erinn were called in, and one of them at length guessed by his face what he was suffering from : he bade his mother Boann be sent for to hear her son's confession. She came and he told her his story. She then sent for the Dagda his father, to whom she explained that their son was the victim of a wasting sickness arising from unrequited love, which was considered a fatal disease in ancient Erinn. The Dagda was in bad humour and declared he could do nothing, which was promptly contradicted ; for he was told that as he was the king of the Side, that is of the gods and fairies 1 Published in thei?ew. Celtique, iii. 342—350, from the Egerton MS. 1782 at the British Museum, by Dr. Ed. Mtiller. See also M. d'A. de Jubainville's Cycle Myth. pp. 282-9. 170 11. THE ZEUS OF of Erinn, he might send word to Bodb the Eed, king of the fairies of Munster, to use his great knowledge of the fairy settlements of Erinn to discover the maiden that haunted the Mac Oc's dreams. Aengus had now been ill two years, and Bodb required a year for the search, but he proved successful before the year was out ; so he came with the news to the Dagda and took the Mao 6c to see if he could recognize the lady. The Mac Oc did so the moment he descried her, among her thrice fifty maiden companions. These, we are told, were joined two and two together by silver chains, and their mistress towered head and shoulders above the rest. Her name was Caerabar, or more shortly Caer, daughter of Etal Anbual, of the fairy settlement of Uaman in the land of Connaught. She wore a silver collar round her neck and a chain of burnished gold. Aengus was grieved that he had not the power to take her away; so he returned home, and the Dagda was advised to seek the aid of Ailill and Medb, the king and queen of the western kingdom. But Caer's father declining to answer the summons that he should appear before them, an attack was made on his residence, when he himself was taken and brought before Ailill and Medb. He then explained to them that he had no power over his daughter, who with her companions changed their forms every other year into those of birds. In fact, he added that on the first day of the ensuing winter they would appear as 150 swans on Loch hel draecon occruit cliach^ or the Lake of (the) mouths of (the) Dragons, near Cliach's Crowd. Peace was accordingly made with Etal, and Aengus betook him to the shore of the lake on the day mentioned. Eecognizing Caer in the form of a swan, he called to her THE INSULAR CELTS. 171 and said, < Come to speak to me, Caer.' ' "Who calls me ?' was the reply. 'Aengus calls thee,' he said. 'I will come,' said she, 'provided I obtain that thou wilt on thy honour make for the lake after me.' ' I will,' said he. She accordingly came to him, whereupon he placed his two hands on her ; then they flew off in the form of a pair -of swans and they went thrice round the lake. They afterwards took their flight to the Brugh of the Boyne, where they made such enchanting music that it plunged everybody in a deep sleep, which lasted three days and three nights. Caer remained at the Brugh of the Boyne as the Mac Oc's consort. Here must be added one or two extracts from the Irish manuscript, of the 14th century, called the Speckled Book : the flrst runs, in the words of O'Curry's transla- tion, as follows ;! "It is in the reign of Flann Cinaidh \_Ginach, or 'the voracious'] that the Eowing- wheel, and the Broom out of Fanaid, and the Fiery Bolt, shall come. Cliach was the harper of Smirdubh Mac Smdil, king of the three Eosses of Sliabh Bdn [in Connaeht]. Cliach set out on one occasion to seek the hand iu mar- riage of one of the daughters of Bodhbh Derg, of the [fairy] palace of Femhen [in Tipperary]. He continued a whole year playing his harp, on the outside of the palace, without being able to approach nearer to Bodhbh, so great was his [necromantic] power ; nor did he make 1 The italics and the parentheses are O'Curry's, whose rendering, though not quite accurate or without one ' bull,' wUl do for my pur- pose : see his MS. Materials, pp. 426-7, 632-3, and the original in the Lebar Brecc or Speckled Book, fol. 242 & ; the reference is to the lithographed facsimile published by the E. Irish Academy, Dublin, 1876. See also the Bit, of Lainster, 161)a. 172 II. THE ZEUS OF any impression on the daughter. However, lie continued to play on until the ground burst under his feet, and the lake which is on the top of the mountain sprang up in the spot : that is Loch Bel SeadP One of the previous names of the lake was Loch Crotta CUach, or the Lake of Cliach's Harps, as O'Ourry renders it ; but the instru- ment was a crowd, not a harp, and its bulging shape may have helped to give a part of a hill a highly descriptive name. The passage goes on as follows to explain the name Loch B^l Sdad :^" Coerabar hoeth, the daughter of Etal Anhuail of the fairy mansions of Connacht, was a beautiful and powerfully gifted maiden. She had three times fifty • ladies in her train. They were all transformed every year^ into three times fifty beautiful birds, and/restored to their natural shape the next year. These birds were chained in couples by chains of silver. One bird among them was the most beautiful of the world's birds, having a necklace of red gold on her neck, with three times fifty chains depending from it, each chain terminating in a ball of gold. During their transformation into birds, they always remained on Loch Crotta CUach [that is, the Lake of Cliach's Harps], wherefore the people who saw them were in the habit of saying : ' Many is the Bead [that is, a gem, a jewel, or other precious article] at the mouth of Loch Crotta this day.' And hence it is called Loch B^l S^ad [or the Lake of the Jewel Mouth]. It was called also Loch Bel Dragain [or the Dragon-Mouth Lake]; because Ternog's nurse caught a fiery dragon in the shape of a salmon, and St. Fursa induced her to throw it into Loch Bel Bead. And it is ^ The original means 'every second year.' THE INSULAR CELTS. 173 that dragon that will come in the festival of St. John, near the end of the world, in the reign of Flann Cinaidh. And it is of it and out of it shall grow the Fiery Bolt which will kill three-fourths of the people of the world, men and women, boys and girls, and cattle, as far as the Mediterranean Sea eastwards. And it is on that account it is called the Dragon-Mouth Lake." How closely the story of Aengus and Caer, which in some respects recalls that of Leda and the Swan, cor- responds to the Welsh Dream, I leave you to judge ; further, the Irish prophecy reminds one to a certain extent of the event termed in Norse literature, the Doom of the Powers ; but the reference to the Dragon should be examined in the light of the conjecture that the Welsh Elen's northern stronghold occupied the site of Dinas Emrys, where Llud in a previous age had imprisoned the dragons that disturbed the peace of his dominions. Welsh story lays it to Vortigern's charge as one of his great crimes that he disturbed them, whereby he brought calamity on his unfortunate country, which was destined to be free from oppression and safe against the sword of the foreigner so long as the dragons continued securely encisted in the subterranean lake in the fastness of Snowdon. Lastly, Caer's 150 companions with their silver chains supply an explanation of the name Elen Liiydawg, that is Elen of the Host : her maiden attendants were her host, and it becomes also clear why her expedition in company with her husband is spoken of as the de- parture of one of the three Silver Hosts of the Isle of Britain ; for the silver was not of the common terrestrial kind, but the ancient metal of a Celtic myth. How- ever, this is no answer to the further question which 174 II. THE ZEUS OP suggests itself, namely, what interpretation one is to put on the presence of the attendant maidens, whether of Caer or Elen. Some, having regard to the number of St. Ursula's companions, would say that they mean the starry host of heaven, which goes away, so to say, with the dawn and appears again with the dusk. But another hypothesis is possible, and I venture to sketch it, chiefly as a means of connecting certain facts which are not altogether irrelevant. It is to the effect that the 11,000 companions of "Ursula might be regarded as an exaggeration of a far smaller number, and that those making up the latter might be reckoned the priestesses in attendance on the dawn-goddess, herself the consort of the god represented in the Merlin story as imprisoned. The attendant damsels might then be compared with the virgin priestesses of the isle of Sein, described by Mela as capable of taking any animal form they chose. In the case of Caer and her train the form preferred seems to have been that of swans, while in other cases they are mostly described more vaguely as birds, as when the goddess Dechtere is mentioned escaping, together with her fifty maiden companions, from her brother's court in that form; but the coupling-chains^ of silver or gold are seldom wanting. The corresponding Welsh superstition prefers the goose to the swan, and makes an approach to Mela's description of the maiden priestesses of Sein, in that it treats those who assume the anserine form as witches.^ This dates from remote antiquity, as 1 See Windisch, pp. 136-7, 143-4, 207. 2 I take the following from the MS. of a Welsh essay on the folk- lore of Carnarvonshire, written by Mr. E. Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, for a competition at the Eistedvod held at Carnarvon in August, 1 880, ( THE INSULAR CELTS, 175 it readily explains why the flesh of the goose was tapu to the Brythons of Caesar's time : leporem et gallinam et anserem gustare fas non putant. Nor is it irrelevant to add, that the goose was sacred in ancient Kome to Jupiter's consort Juno. and printed since in the American newspaper called the Drych : ' It was an evil omen,' he says, ' to see geese on a lake at night ] those likewise must be witches, and especially in case the time was the first Thursday night of the lunar month.' My wife has also a distinct recollection of the same belief prevailing in Arvon when she was a child, and of the importance attached to the first Thursday night (of the moon). This is all the more deserving of mention, perhaps, as Thursday is in "Welsh ' Dyd lau,' that is to say Jeudi, or Jove's Day. Lecture II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. PAKT II. Camtjlos, Cumall and I^wyvee. Let me now touch, on a question which ought perhaps to have been dealt with at an earlier stage : how could the Aryan Jupiter have acquired the comprehensive cha- racter which has just been ascribed, in the early stages of their history, to Nodens, together with the other Celtic gods to be identified with him, and to Zeus ? It has not, so far as I know, been minutely studied from this point of view ; but M. Gaidoz has devoted to the Koman Jupiter some general remarks, which are highly relevant and deserving of being given at greater length than was done in the passing reference already made to them (p. 55). According to him,^ the god of light and the sun became the god of the heavens by extension, and he points out certain traces of an ancient notion which ascribed the phenomenon of thunder to the sun : more correctly speak- ing, the lightning may have been represented as a spark from the fiery body of the sun ; but the god that occa- sioned the lightning might also be said to cause both the thunder and the rain that usually followed : in fact, 1 Etudes, pp. 88—90, 93. II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. 177 there are even now nations, such, as the Samoans,^ that directly attribute rain to the sun. In other words, the sun is the king of the heavens, as poets have so often told us ; and even when one does not feel the immediate effect of his power, one supposes his presence behind the clouds that conceal him. The confusion between the sun-god and the sky-god is frequent in mythology, as it would seem to be in nattire itself. Once one believes in the existence over our heads of a god in the sky, that is to say, of a man with more than human power, it is easy at one time to fancy there several gods, relations of one another, rivals or enemies, and at another to attribute all atmospheric phenomena to one and the same god, one's good father in the heavens — all that depends on the subjective disposition of man ; so the variety of his opinions, and, therefore, of his conceptions, must be understood in relation to epochs and surroundings in which his beliefs have not been reduced to the immutable regularity of dogmas. Such are the views entertained by M. Gaidoz ; but how the sun should have been thought a great hunter and warrior, needs no remark ; and how a god of this origin should become likewise that of the sea and the nether world, is a form of the question which did not come in M. Gaidoz's way to discuss. It admits, however, of being readily answered in the same spirit as the other forms of it ; for the sun is seen to sink to the world beneath the horizon every evening, and to rise thence in the morning, so that he might be said to pass half his time in the lower world* Eor the inhabitants of 1 Turner's Samoa, p. 331. N 178 II. THE ZEUS OF a maritime laijd this could not fail to present itself in a still more vivid light : lie would be seen to rise from the ocean in the morning to career over the waves and to deal slaughter among his enemies, the shades of night and the clouds that would hide his face from man ; while at the end of the day the converse phenomenon would present itself in the splendours of his setting in the billows of the west. All these remarks must be taken for what they are worth, as an attempt to show how it is conceivable that a divinity originally a god of light and the sun should come by degrees to have the character of a Eoman Jupiter or of a Celtic Nodens. The theory of the extension whereby a divinity originally a sun-god became also that of the heavens, has, as already explained, its etymological complement in the interpretation of his name Zeiis or Jove as the Bright or Shining One, together with the fact that the word remained also an appellative applicable to the sky or the open air. Now, though the Celtic god is not known to us under any form of this name of double import, we seem to detect him under names of other origin, but agreeing with that of Zeus or Jove in connoting sky or atmosphere ; one should rather say that sky or atmosphere is otherwise their only signification. To one or two of them I would now call your attention : the most important is the Camulus of the inscriptions alluded to in the first lecture. In Camulus — in early Celtic probably Camulos — we seem to have, as was then suggested, the Celtic equivalent of the German himmel and its congeners ; the Irish form was Cumall, the name of the father of Finn, who fills a great place ia Irish THE INStJlAtl CELTS. 179 legend and is usually called Finn mac Cumaill, or Finn son of Cumall : the latter was the king- warrior of Erinn.^ Now the name of one of the Welsh equivalents of Finn mac Cumaill is Gwyn mab Nlid, or Gwyn son of N"ud ; and in both finn and gwyn we have the ordinary words for white or fair, and both personages so called were celebrated as great hunters, while Gwyn is usually known to the Welsh as the king of the Fairies and the other world generally. The designations Finn mac Cumaill and Gwyn mab Nud would seem to oppose Cumall and N'ud to, or equate them with, one another. Further, the story of Kulhwch and Olwen mentions Gwyn son of Nud with two other Gwyns, called respec- tively the son of Esni and the son of Nwyvre ; ^ but the composition of the lists of names in that piece is such as to allow of our supposing Gwyn son of Nud, and Gwyn son of Nwyvre, to have been really only one : Esni is a name otherwise unknown to me ; but Nwyvre is the Welsh for the atmosphere, or the space in which the clouds float above the earth ; and in the designation Gwyn son of Nwyvre, we seem to have the exact rendering of Finn son of Cumall. The story also associates with Gwyn son of Nwyvre, a certain Fflam mab Nwyvre^ whose name would mean Flame son of Atmosphere : he is probably to be identified with the personage otherwise called in the same story Fflewdur Fflam Wledic,^ or Prince Ffleudur ^ See Fotha Catha Cnucha in the Rev. Gelt. ij. 89 ; Bk. of the Dmiy 4:2 a. ^ a. B. Mab. p. 106 : Lady Charlotte Guest's edition omits these two Gwyns both in the text and the translation : see ij. 205, 259. 3 B. B. Mab. p. 107 ; Guest, ij. 261. * B. B. Mab. p. 106 j Guest, ij. 259. N 2 180 II. THE ZEUS OF Fflam, and also Ffleudor mah JSTaf, or Ffleudor son of N av ; ^ while the Triads (i. 15 = ij. 26 = iij. 114) seem to speak of the same personage as Ffleudur Fflam son of Godo ; but Godo is not known to have any other meaning than that of a cover, shelter or roof ; and ia this kind of word, used as a proper name, we seem to have a synonym of Nwy vre or Sky in the sense of OvpavSs and Yaruna. Nwyvre is also mentioned in another Triad (i. 40 = ij. 5), which alludes to an expedition to Gaul under the leadership of Gwenwynwyn and Gwanar, sons of Lliaw son of Hwyvre and of Axianrhod their mother. "With the reference to Ffleudor son of Nav, may be mentioned an allusion in the same story to a Gwenwynwyn son of JVato,^ to be corrected doubtless into iVw ; for there is a third passage in point which describes Gwenwynwyn as Arthur's rhyswr or huntsman, and calls him the son of Nav Gyssevin,* which means 'first or original lord.' Thus it is not improbable that in spite of the Lliaw or Lliaws of the Triads, Nwyvre was the same personage who is here called Nav Gyssevin. It is, however, a matter of some doubt whether the names Nav Gyssevin and Nwyvre or Godo referred to the ■Celtic Zeus in the first instance, and not rather to a for- gotten Uranus or Hymi, whose name also meant the sky, considered as a cover, a darkening cover (p. 115). The same doubt would likewise attach to the ancient name Camulos and the Irish Cumall. On the other hand, it is not to be believed that a cosmic giant subjected to the treatment 1 R. B. Mah. p. 110; Guest, ij. 265. The MS. reads ^encZor. 2 R. B. Mob. p. 107; Guest, ij. 259 : the MS. has na6, while the other, R. B. Mah. p. 110, is naf. 2 R. B. Mob. p. 108 ; Guest, ij. 262. !rHE INSULAR CELTS. 181 of TJranus or Hymi could figure as the Celtic Zeus ; so we should, in the case suggested, be left to suppose that the precarious personality of the former had been early forgotten, and that his names had come to be treated as mere synonyms of those of the god whom one may, for brevity's sake, call the Celtic Zeus or Mars-Jupiter. Hence the confusion that was likely to follow, as, for example, when Welsh Niid: and Irish Nuada are found to occur in the pedigree of Gwyn and Finn respec- tively. It is worthy of a passing remark that we have a glimpse of somewhat similar confusion in the East, where Dyaus and Varuna look, from our western point of view, just as if they had exchanged places. Thus it is Dyaus, the namesake, so to say, of Zeus, that his son Indra severs from Prithivi or Earth, and it is he that is usually consigned to insignificance and oblivion; while it is Varuna, the namesake of Uranus, that assumes the role of a supreme god, the upholder of the universe, and the preserver of order both physical and moral. It is right, however, to say that another view is possible, namely, that the Aryans of the pro-ethnic period used the prototypes of the names Zeus and Uranus loosely, without settling which was to be Zeus and which Uranus, and that their descendants decided their respective appli- cation independently of one another, and in such a way that he who was called Zeus by one branch of the family was called Uranus by another. But on the whole it seems safer to regard the usage as fixed for all in the earlier stage, and to treat the difference to which reference has just been made as of later growth, the result, in fact, of the synonymity of the two sets of names. 182 ii. the zeus of Sites Sacred to the Celtic Zetjs. By way of recapitulating the burden of these last remarks, one may on the whole say that the supreme god of the ancient Aryans was originally designated, not the Sky or Heaven, but the Bright Being, a name known in Greek as Zew, genitire Aids, and its congeners, which, while recalling the idea of sky, heaven or atmo- sphere, referred to him, in the first instance, as the great light and sun of the world of the early Aryans (p. 116). This harmonizes with the fact that Zeus was represented as haunting the elevated points of the countries inhabited by the Hellenic race, whether one regard the highest ground in Greek cities, which was usually crowned with his temple, or the loftiest mountains in their lands, the summits of which were also sacred to him. It might, however, be urged that it was but natural for the high esteem in which the god was held to find its expression in the placing of his image or fane on a site physically high, and especially in the case of him whom the wor- shipper thought supreme. It might be added in the same direction that this haunting the heights was not peculiar to him or any special kind of divinity, seeing that the Welsh god of the dead, Gwyn ab Nud, displayed the same predilection for high ground, and that in Gaul a god of a very different nature, the Gaulish Mercury, had his temples crowning the Puy de Dome, the Donon and other elevations in that country. Still it may be doubted whether this way of looking at the matter could lead us to the true and original reason for associating Zeus with the mountain-tops and the pure ether in which he was supposed to dwell in his celestial city on the THE INSULAE CELTS. 183 summit of Olympus in Thessaly, that land whieh was the home of the Greeks before they spread further souths ■wards. The choice of the god's seat of superiority, over- looking the landscape below, would certainly seem to have been dictated, at least in part, by his solar origin and connection with the sky. There on the mountain- top he was supposed to rule the weather : there the clouds gathered themselves together before making their descent on the plains below; thence the flashes of the god's lightning burst forth at one time, and thither the mists might be seen at another lazily creeping. Such were the phenomena which the ancient Greeks associated with Zeus, and a richly mythical poem in the Welsh language refers to the Celtic Zeus as the blazer of the mountain-top.^ Further, the views of the Greeks and the Celts as to the method of procuring rain from the god, when the earth suffered from excessive drought, will be seen from the following instances to have coincided to a remarkable extent : I allude to the Lycsean mountain in Arcadia, the top of which was sacred to Zeus and stood so high that the greater part of the Peloponnese was to be seen from it.^ Now there was a story current to the efiect that it was on that Peloponnesian height that the god had spent his childhood, and that once in times in the distant past an Arcadian king had there sacrificed his child on his altar. "Within the sacred enclosure the god's presence was always believed to shine so that nothing there could cast a shadow, and on the same mountain there bubbled ^ Bk. of Taliessin, xlviij. : see Skene, ij. 203. 2 Teubner's Pausanias (ed. Schubart), ij. 153 (Arcadica, viij. 38, 7). 184 II. THE ZEUS OP a sacred spring to whicli the priest went in times of great drought to procure rain. This he effected by touching the water in the holy well with a branch of oak; a vapour would then be seen to arise from it and go on forming till the country round had been blessed with the wished-for showers.^ The means adopted to get the god to grant rain were borrowed from the arsenal of ancient magic, which relied to a great extent on a sort of association of ideas, solemn mimicry of the action wished for being regarded as forcing the god whom the worshipper intended to influence, to put forth the activity desired. "With the sacred Arcadian well I would now compare a Breton one to which recourse is had with the same object : I allude to the Fountain of Baranton in the forest of Br^cUien, so famous in the romances. Thither the people of the country resorted in the early Middle Ages ; when they wanted rain, they would take up the tankard always at hand and throw some of the water from the spring on a slab near it. Eain would then fall in abundance, and one romancer^ makes this the means of bringing on a terrific storm of thunder and lightning. Now the water, on the brink of which fairies loved to disport themselves, issued near the perron or tomb in which Merlin had been incarcerated, and the whole was overshadowed by a mighty tree.^ This is all the more to the point, since the enchanter as the youth Merlin Ambrosius expelling the old duke Vortigern from 1 Teubner's Pausanias, ij. 152 {Arcadica, viij. 38, 4) j Preller's Ch, Myth? i. 100-2. =* Huon de Mery (ed. Tarb^, Eheims, 1851), pp. 126-7, quoted in Guest's Mob. i. 220. 3 Guest's Mah. note, i. 219—224. THE INSULAR CELTS. 185 his own, is one of the Brythonic equivalents, as ah-eady suggested, of the Mac 6c driving his father the Dagda from his house and home, and young Zeus banishing his father Cronus (pp. 147, 151). So we should pro- bably be right in assuming the spring, the tomb, the slab and the tree, to have all belonged to the Celtic Zeus, and that it was he who was originally supposed to give the rain, and to cause the storm of thunder and lightning. An incident of the same kind is related in connection with the story of Owein ab TJrien : he was told that, in order to make the Black Knight he desired to encounter come forth to fight with him, he should go to a spot where a large tree overshadowed a well, hard by which lay a marble slab with a silver tankard fastened to it. Owein finds the place, takes up the silver tankard, and dashes water from it with such effect on the slab that it brings on a fearful hail-storm, which strips the tree of all its foliage, and causes wide-spread devastation in the domains of the Black Knight, ^ who in consequence thereof rides forth to avenge himself on the intruder. Lastly may be mentioned the case of the Snowdonian tarn Dulyn or Black Lake, of which we have an account, published in the year 1805, to the following efiecti^ ' There lies in Snowdon Mountain a lake called Dulyn, in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous rocks: the lake is exceedingly black, and its fish are loathsome, having large heads and small bodies. No wild swan or duck or any kind of bird has ever been seen to light on it, as is their wont on every other Snow- 1 R. B. Mail. pp. 167-9, 171-2; Guest, i. 47-9, 53-4. 2 The Brythoii, for 1859, p. 88; Guest's Mab. note, i 226; The Greal for 1805, p. 285, where an authority is quoted from the year 1721. 186 II. THE ZEUS OF doniaa lake. In this same lake there is a row of stepping- stones extending into it; and if any one steps on the stones and throws water so as to wet the furthest stone of the series, which is called the Eed Altar, it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it is hot weather.' This helps us to understand the others ; for the fact of the furthest stone being called the Eed Altar, even supposing it to have been naturally red, which is not suggested, leaves us the word allawr, ' altar,' which cannot be explained except on the suppo- sition, that the slab in the other stories was originally an altar on which to sacrifice to the god. What the sacrifices consisted of, we cannot tell ; but it is not impro- bable that the victims were now and then human, espe- cially in times of great distress or national calamity : in the Celtic instances, the water was thrown on the god's altar instead of being touched with the sacred twig of oak as in Arcadia, when rain was the object of the cere- mony. One at least of these sacred spots retains to this day some of its ancient prestige, namely, the Fountain of Baranton : it is true that it is no longer regarded with the awe which made one of the romancers speak of it as la perilleuse fontaine;'^ for owing to its mineral nature, and the bubbling of its water when a bit of iron or copper is thrown into it, little children amuse themselves, we are told by M. de Yillemarqud, by dropping pins into it, whilst addressing it in the most familiar manner, Ris done, fontaine de Berendon. But it still retains its pluvial importance; for in seasons of drought the inhabitants 1 Guest's Mai. note, i. 220. THE INSULAR (CELTS. 187 of the surrounding parishes, we are told, go to it in pro- cession, headed by their five great banners and theit priests ringing bells and chanting psalms. On arriving, the rector of the canton dips the foot of the cross in the water, and it is sure to rain within a week's time.^ This ingenious compromise between Christ and Merlin has probably no exact parallel in this country : we have no bannered processions to the temenos of an effete Jupiter : we have rain-prayers instead. There is an Irish tale which is worth citing here, as it gives a somewhat detailed account of a spot sacred to a god, to be identified probably with the subject of this lecture. It relates to an adventure which happened to Diarmait or Dermot, a well-known hero of Goidelic romance, of whom much is said in Irish legend and romance. Diarmait and Finn mac Cumaill once on a time set out in search of certain of the latter's men who had been carried away by a wizard chief, and they sailed together towards the west till they came near a steep clifi which seemed to reach to the clouds. Leaving Finn and his party below, Diarmait undertook to climb the cliff and search the island, and after incredible perils and exertions he found himself on the top. "He now looked inland" — to give the story in the words of Dr. Joyce ^ — " and saw a beautiful country spread out before him : — ^a lovely, flowery plain straight in front, bordered with pleasant hills, and shaded with ^ lb. i. 225, where Lady Ch. Guest quotes from Villemarqu^'s charming account of his Visite au Tombeau de Merlin, in the Revue de Paris, Vol. xli. pp. 47 — 58. ^ Old Celtic Romances, translated from the Gaelic (London, 1879), pp. 246—259, 266. 188 Hi THE ZEUS OP groves of many kinds of trees. It was enough to banish all care and sadness from one's heart to view this country, and to listen to the warbling of the birds, the humming of the bees among the flowers, the rustling of the wind through the trees, and the pleasant voices of the streams and waterfalls. Making no delay, Diarmait set out to walk across the plain. He had not been long walking when he saw, right before him, a great tree laden with fruit, overtopping all the other trees of the plain. It was surrounded at a little distance by a circle of pillar- stones; and one stone, taller than the others, stood, in the centre near the tree. Beside this pillar-stone was a spring well, with a large, round pool as clear as crystal ; and the water bubbled up in the centre, and flowed away towards the middle of the plain in a slender stream^ Diarmait was glad when he saw the well ; for he was hot and thirsty after climbing up the cliff. He stooped down to take a drink; but before his lips touched the water, he heard the heavy tread of a body of warriors, and the loud clank of arms, as if a whole host were com- ing straight down on him. He sprang to his feet and looked round ; but the noise ceased in an instant, and he could see nothing. After a little while he stooped again to drink; and again, before he had wetted his lips, he heard the very same sounds, nearer and louder than before. A second time he leaped to his feet ; and still he saw no one. He knew not what to think of this; and as he stood wondering and perplexed, he happened to cast his eyes on the tall pillar- stone that stood on the brink of the well ; and he saw on its top a large, beautiful drinking-horn, chased with gold and enamelled with precious stones. ' Now surely,' said Diarmait, ' 1 have THE INSULAR CELTS. 189 been doing wrong ; it is, no doubt, one of the virtues of this well, that it will not let any one drink of its waters except from the drinking-horn.' So he took down the horn, dipped it into the well, and drank without hindrance, till he had slaked his thirst. Scarcely had he taken the horn from his lips, when he saw a tall gruagach^ coming towards him from the east, clad in a complete suit of mail, and fully armed with shield and helmet, sword and spear. A beautiful scarlet mantle hung over his armour, fastened at his throat by a golden brooch ; and a broad circlet of sparkling gold was bended ia front across his forehead, to confine his yellow hair, and keep it from being blown about by the wind. As he came nearer, he increased his pace, moving with great strides ; and Diar- mait now observed that he looked very wrathful. He offered no greeting, and showed not the least courtesy ; but addressed Diarmait in a rough, angry voice — ' Surely, Diarmait O'Duibne, Erinn of the green plains should be wide enough for you ; and it contains abundance of clear, sweet water in its crystal springs and green -bordered streams, from which you might have drunk your fill. But you have come into my island without my leave, and you have taken my drinking-horn, and have drunk from my weU ; and this spot you shaU never leave till you have given me satisfaction for the insult.'" Then began a duel which lasted all day ; but when the evening came, the gruagach suddenly sprang outside the range of ^ The word gruagach is usually supposed to mean a long-haired crea- ture, and it is commonly applied to a giant or any kind of uncanny fellow, for instance, in the stories in Campbell's Popular Tales uf the West Highlands ; but it is also employed of a female : see Campbell, i. 23-4. 190 11, THE ZEUS OF Diarmait's sword, and with a great bound leaped into the well: down he went, leaving his antagonist wondering at his disappearance and smarting from his wounds. Diarmait then walked towards the end of a great forest that stretched from the mountain to the plain, and, espy- ing a herd of speckled deer, he killed one of them ; then he lit a fire and cooked a part of the deer's flesh, which, together with some draughts of clear water from the drinking-horn, formed his supper. He slept soundly, and his breakfast was of the same description as his previous meal. When he had done, he went to the well and found the gruagach there awaiting him : he was more wroth than the first day, as he now complained that Diarmait had hunted on his land and killed some of his speckled deer ; so they fought as before and with the same result, that the gruagach disappeared at dusk into the well. This scene repeated itself each day till the evening of the fourth, when Diarmait, finding his antagonist draw- ing towards the well, threw his arms round him, and both sank into the well. At length they reached the bottom in Tir fa Tonn, or the Land beneath the Billow, and the gruagach, disengaging himself, left Diarmait alone in a strange land, where, however, he fell in with the grua- gacKs brother, who complained that he had been disin- herited by the gruagach, or the Knight of the Fountain as he called him. So Diarmait allied himself with the former, and they made war on the Knight of the Foun- tain, who was ultimately routed and slain by the hero of the tale. A story of which Diarmait was a principal figure required him: of course to be victorious in his contests, and this applied with special force to one in which the THE INSULAR CELTS. 191 romancer could make his hero right a wrong. On the other hand, the Knight of the Fountain taking possession of his brother's kingdom is to be regarded as a yersion of the disinheritance of the Dagda by his son the Mac Oc ; and the story comes pretty near a Welsh one, the hero of which is called Pwyll, who is made, as related in the Mabinogion,i to rid Arawn Head of Hades of a troublesome neighbour. This last would seem practically analogous to the Knight of the Fountain in the Irish story, and he bore the name Havgan or Summer-white, which may be viewed as a corroboration of the conjecture here offered. In the tree and the sacred spring one cannot help recognizing an early specimen of the holy wells still so numerous in Ireland; and as to the richly adorned horn, which in the story of Diarmait takes the place of the silver tankard in that of Owein, we have a reference to the custom of providing wells, probably only holy ones, with vessels mentioned in Cormac's Glossary. From an article there devoted to the word dna,^ we learn that it was the name for small vessels at the wells under 'the strict laws,' that they were most usually of silver and intended for the weary to drink from, and that they served the kings of the country as a test of the respect in which the law of the land was held. This allusion to the weary drinking and the kings testing their subjects dates probably from a time when the original signification of the vessels had been forgotten : it was doubtless of a religious nature. The circle of pillar-stones in the sacred island invaded 1 R. B. Mcth. pp. 1—7; Guest, i. 37—46. '^ The Stokes-O'Donovan edition, p. 7. 192 11. THE ZEUS OF by Diarmait may, in the light of other allusions, be in- ferred to have represented the gods honoured there. Thus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,^ Merlin, on being asked to assist with his advice in the matter of building Stonehenge, said that the best thing to do would be to bring to this country the pillar-stones called the Choir of the Giants, that stood on a spot in Ireland described in the Latin text as Killaraus Mons, and to set them up here in the order in which they stood there. With the enchanter's marvellous aid, that was done, and Stonehenge came soon into being. This story proves, among other interesting things, that formerly a circle of stones like that of Stonehenge or like a portion of it, was well known to exist in Ireland ; and its site can hardly have been other than the Hill of Usnech, which plays a great role in Irish legend. It stood in the parish of Elillare,^ in the barony of Eathconrath, in the county of Westmeath. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the five provinces into which Ireland used to be divided, when Meath was reckoned one of them, uses the following words with regard to the Hill of Usnech : ' Et earn [Hiberniam] vacuam invenientes, in quinque portiones sequales inter se diviserunt: quarum capita in lapide quodam conveniunt apud Mediam juxta castrum de Kilair, qui lapis et umbilicus Hibemise dicitur, quasi in medio et medituUio terrse positus.' ^ The stone is described as 1 Sans-Marte's ed. pp. 108-9, 361. 2 Four Masters, A.D. 507, editor's note. ^ Topographia Hibernice, Dist. iij. c. 4. Giraldus himself recognized no connection between the stone and the Giants' Choir : in fact, he speaks in another passage, Dist. ij. c. 18, of the latter and the story about Merlin removing it to this country, and states that it was in THE INSULAR CELTS. 193 a very large oiie,i and it is believed to have been cursed by St. Patrick on account of the pagan worship there ; or, more correctly speaking, the stones of Usnech — for there were more than one — became so accursed owing to that saint's malediction, that they never failed to prove the ruin of any structure into which they happened to be built : in fact, a bad stone ui a building was prover- bially said to be one of the stones of Usnech cursed by St. Patrick.2 This I mention by the way : what I wish to call your attention to, is, the reason Merlin is represented giving, for fetching those stones from so far, namely, that they were endowed with various vir- tues, especially for healing: the giants of old had, he said, ordaiaed that bodily ailments might be healed by bathiQg the patient in the water in which the stones had first been bathed, or by the application of herbs dipped in the same holy bath. This would seem to point in particular to those of the Stonehenge stones which geo- logists have hitherto failed to recognize as belonging to the rocks of the district ; and the idea of washing them, and the virtues thereby imparted by them to the water, presumably implies that the stones were regarded as divine or as the seats of divine power : compare the story ^ of St. David splitting the capstone of the Maen Ketti cromlech ia Gower, in order, as we are told, to Kildarensi planitie, non procul a cadro Nasensi, where one might see it in his day. To me, however, the two stories appear to have been originally one, the error having arisen from the place-names Killare and Kildare. ^ See Camhrensis Eversus (Dublin, 1848), editor's note, i. 416. ^ Acta Sanctorum, March 17, Vol. ij. p. 561. 3 lolo MSS. pp. 83, 473. 194 II. THE ZEUS OP prove to the people that it was not divine. It is not improbable that many of the stone circles one meets with in this country were similarly sacred, and used at times for some such a purpose as that specified in the case of the alleged prototype of Stonehenge. We cannot leave this point without alluding to the question, whose temple Stonehenge was, or whose it chiefly was. After giving it all the attention I can, I have .come to the conclusion that we cannot do better than foUow the story of Geoffrey, which makes Stone- henge the work of Merlin Emrys, commanded by another Emrys, which I interpret to mean that the temple belonged to the Celtic Zeus, whose later legendary self we have in Merlia. It would be in vain to look for any direct argument for or against such an hypothesis : one can only say that it suits the facts of the case, and helps to understand others of a somewhat similar nature. What sort of a temple could have been more appropriate for the primary god of light and of the luminous heavens than a spacious, open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge ? Nor do I see any objection to the old idea that Stonehenge was the original of the famous temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, the stories about which were based in the first instance most likely on the journal of Pytheas' travels.^ In spite of the fabulous element introduced, one cannot help seeing that the northern island, which was as large as Sicily and situated opposite the mouth of a mighty river, must have ^ The version here chiefly referred to is that to he found in the Bibliotheca of Diodorus Siculus, ij. cap. 47, where Hecatseus of Abdeni is quoted as one of the writer's authorities. See also Elton's Oriyiiis of English Hidonj, pp. 88-9, 426. THE INSULAR CELTS. 195 been Britain. The inhabitants, we are told, were much devoted to the worship of Apollo, whence it was inferred that his mother Latona was a native of the island: it contained a magnificent temple for her son, and a circular shrine whose walls were adorned with votive oflferings. Further, the kings of the city containing the temple and the overseers of the latter were the Boreads, who took up the government in succession, according to their tribes. The citizens gave themselves up to music, harping and chanting in honour of the Sun-god, who was every nineteenth year wont himself to appear about the time of the vernal equinox, and to go on harping and dancing in the sky until the rising of the Pleiades. To interpret this in connection with Stonehenge, we are not obliged to lay any stress on the guess which recognized in the Boreadae the Celtic bards ; and we have only to substitute for Apollo a native divinity of light. No one would fit better than the Celtic Zeus ; nor is it likely to have been an accident that his temple should be without a roof : it had probably been thought appropriate that it should receive unrestrained the rays of the god's presence, and stand, as a Eoman might literally say, suh Jove. After all, it is a matter of no great importance whether Stonehenge was or was not the Hyperborean temple about which the Greek writers of antiquity romanced ; for there were in the British Islands other stone circles which would suit the story nearly as well. I need not mention instances still in existence ; but I wish to call your attention for a moment to a temple elsewhere, which is only known to us from the pages of antiquity. Allusion has been made to the Breton isle of Sein (p. 158) as one of the scenes of Merlin's birth and of his imprisonment at o2 196 II. THE ZEUS OP the last; but the mythological reputation of the spot is of no modern date, for Pomponius Mela, who calls the island Sena, speaks of it as follows: 'Sena, in the Britannic Sea, opposite the coast of the Osismi, is famous for its oracle of a Gaulish god, whose priestesses, living in the holiness of perpetual virginity, are said to be nine in number. They call them Gallizenae, and they believe them to be endowed with extraordinary gifts, to rouse the sea and the wind by their incantations, to turn them- selves into whatsoever animal form they may choose, to cure diseases which among others are incurable, to know what is to come and to foretell it. They are, however, devoted to the service of voyagers only who have set out on no other errand than to consult them.' ^ Mela says nothing about the divinity's temple ; but all the islands on the coast of Brittany had their religious associations, and one of these spots, more to the south than Sein, was spoken of by Posidonius, a Greek who travelled in the first century B.C. Strabo and others who made use of his narrative speak of it as possessed by the women of the Namnites,'^ whose name probably survives in that of Nantes on the Loire. These Namnite women are repre- sented as priestesses of a god whom ancient authors iden- tified with Bacchus, on account solely, as it would seem, of the noisy and orgiastic nature of the cult to which 1 De Ghorographia, ed. Parthey, iij. cap. 6. The best MSS. read GalHzenas vacant, which one is tempted to emendate into Galli Senas vocant ; but it is open to doubt. 2 The readings of this name vary: Meineke in his edition of Strabo, iv. 4, 6, reads rois tC>v 'EafivirZv ywaf/cas ; while Dionysius Periegetes, Orbis Descriptio (Miiller's Geog. Gr. Minores, ij. 140), line 571, has a.ya.vZv 'Afivirdav ; but it is highly probable that the people meant" were those whom Caesar, iij. 9, calls Namnites. THE INSULAR CELTS. 197 they devoted themselves : the rest of the account is very curious, and states that the women used to pay visits to the men on the mainland, but that no man dnrst place his foot on the island. The god worshipped there had a temple which was roofed, but it was the custom of the priestesses to unroof it once a year; it must, however, be roofed again before sunset. So each of the women came to the work bringing on her shoulders a burden of the requisite materials, and in case any one allowed her burden to fall to the ground, she was instantly torn to pieces by her companions, who carried her mangled remains round the temple with jubilant exultation until the jlame of their fury burnt itself out. It so happened, we are farther told, that each succeeding year saw the horrid scene repeated. Several things in these ancient accounts of the Armoric isles are deserving of special notice : take, for example, the one last mentioned : there we have a covered temple or sanctuary of some kind, which it was thought neces- sary to unroof once a year. This clearly implies that originally it had no roof but the sky, as in the case of Stonehenge and other stone circles. Further, in the case of the nine priestesses of the isle of Sein, we find that they were believed to possess the power of disturbing the sea and raising storms, a notion which postulates as its complement a belief, that the god to whose cult they devoted themselves had the control of the elements, espe- cially the wind and the wave ; and this exactly fits the Celtic Zeus, with his tendency in Brythonic mythology to become a sea-god. The same remark might be made as to the nine's gift of prophecy : in a word, the Gaulish oracle in the isle of Sein, spoken of by Mela, need not be 198 II. THE ZEUS OF supposed other than that of the great prophet Merlin, who prophesied from his prison to the knight from Arthur's court (p. 157). It is worthy of note that this kind of paganism died hard in the islands on the Armoric coast: in fact, it lasted, in spite of Church and State, down to the time of the Norsemen's ravages. For the Eddie poems called the Helgi Lays, which Dr. Yigfusson has shown to refer, among other localities, to the island of Guernsey,^ allude to such sibyls as Mela mentions. In the flytiag in one of these lays, one of the characters taunts another in words which have been rendered as follows : ^ ' Thou wert a sibyl in Guernsey, Deceitful hag, setting lies together.' They are also called ' Bearsark brides in Hlessey,' who injured the rover's boat, and were represented by him as 'hardly women.' ^ But other passages in the Helgi Lays describe them very differently as ' mysterious half- human half-supernatural "Walcyries, riding through the air in groups of nine, acting as guardian-angels to sailors, who come to heal wounded wickings, and who have the knowledge of dreams, the power of stilling as well as of raising tempests.' * Such notions as these are distributed by the modern Celt between mermaids,^ who have most of the characteristics of the Helgi sibyls, and witches, who, as pictured by "Welsh superstition, strongly remind 1 See Vigfusson and Powell's Sigfred-Armimus, &c. (Oxford, 1886), pp. 28—36. - 2 lb. p. 32. 3 Gorjius Poet. Bor. i. 121. * Sigfred-Arminius, &c. p. 33. 5 For some Welsh ideas about mermaids, see my Fairy Tahs' in the Gymmrodor, v. 86 — 92, 119. THE INSULAE CELTS. 199 one of the nine priestesses of Sein in the pages of Mela. The witch can not only raise storms and cause disease, but also reverse both processes ; and she is also remark- able on account of her capacity to take other forms than her own, the favourite one being that of the hare. The faculty of turning oneself into a hare at will is regarded as hereditary in certain families in Wales ; ^ but it is con- fined, as the theory here suggested would lead one to expect, to the women of those families, none of their male relatives being ever supposed capable of any such a change of their nature. The witch-hare differs in several respects from an ordinary hare : among other things, it cannot be successfully hunted except with a jet black greyhound without a white hair in his coat. The blackness of the hound is suggestive, and still more so is the leporine form selected by the witch, for the hare stands foremost among the animals whose flesh was, according to Caesar,^ tabooed by the Celts of this country in his day. Perhaps one would not be wrong ia regarding it as an animal sacred to the Celtic Zeus or to his associate ; and it would be in harmony with the account given by Dio Cassius^ of Boudicca, queen of the Eceni, who, while exhorting her subjects to rise against the rule of Eome, let loose a '■ My nurse belonged to one of these families, and was supposed to possess its hereditary characteristics ; but in my boyhood few people of my acquaintance in Cardiganshire believed in this superstition : it was only a sort of joke. There is, however, a valley in the neigh- bourhood of Snowdon, whither I have been warned not to go to ques- tion the inhabitants on the subject of witch-hares. For certain other superstitions about the hare, see Elton, pp. 297-8, and Pennant's Tours in Wales (Carnarvon, 1883), iij. 164. 2 Bell Gall. v. 12. ^ Historia Romana (Tauchnitz ed.), Ixij. Nero, 6, n. 200 II. THE ZEUS OP hare, and thanked the goddess Andraste as soon as she saw the course taken by the frightened beast to be one of good omen : the address put into her mouth further represents her praying to Andraste^ for victory, salvation and liberty. Nothing is otherwise known of this goddess; so that we are at liberty provisionally to regard her name as one of those borne by the associate of the Celtic Zeus as god of war and victory. After this digression, I wish to return to the question of stone circles, and to call your attention to a Goidelic instance which shows a certain advance in point of art. In this, the rude stones give way to images, more or less; richly adorned, of the gods they were supposed to repre- sent. In the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, one reads as follows : " Thereafter went Patrick over the water to Mag Slecht, a place wherein was the chief idol of Ireland, to wit, Cenn Cruaich, covered with gold and silver, and twelve other idols about it, covered with brass. When Patrick saw the idol from the water whose name is Guth-ard (i.e. elevated its voice) and when he drew nigh unto the idol, he raised his hand to put Jesus' crozier upon it and did not reach [it], but it bowed west- wards to turn on its right side, for its face was from the south, to wit, to Tara. And the trace of the crozier abides on its left side still, and yet the crozier moved not from Patrick's hand. And the earth swallowed the twelve other images as far as their heads, and they are 1 On the difficulties of identifying this name with the modern Welsh Andras, pronounced Andros in Arvon and Anglesey, see the Eev. D. Silvan Evans's Dictionary of the Welsh Language, s. v. Andras and Aiiras. THE INSULAR CELTS. 201 thus in sign of the miracle, and he cursed the demon, and banished him to hell." ^ This legend is contained in a version of St. Patrick's Life attributed to St. Eleranus,^ who is said to have lived in the seventh century ; but ■whatever the date of the life, it would seem that, by the writer's time, the pagan sanctuary had been so long falling into decay, that of the lesser idols only their heads were to be then seen above ground, and that the idol of Cenn Cruaich, which meant the Head or Chief of the Mound, was slowly hastening to its fall, whence the story of its having had an invisible blow dealt it by St. Patrick. This is also, possibly, the explanation of another name sometimes given to the chief idol, namely, that of Cromm Cruaich, ' the Crooked or Bent One of the Mound,' in reference merely to the attitude of the image in the later days of its decadence. In some verses of difficult interpretation in the Book of Leinster,^ a manuscript of the beginning of the twelfth century, Cromm Cruaich has applied to him the adjective crin, which usually means withered and ready to fall, as in the case of a tree which the sap has left. The verses I allude to were written to explain the meaning of the name of the place called Mag Slecht, but they tell us further that the ancient Irish used to sacrifice there the first-born * The translation is by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Rev. Gelt. i. 260 ; another version will be found in O'Curry's MS. Materials, pp. 538-9 ; and a variety of references are given by M. d'A. de Jubainville in his Oyde, pp. 106-8. * For references to Colgan and others with regard to the ancient authors of lives of St. Patrick, see T. Duffus Hardy's Descriptive Catalogtie (Eolls edition, 1862), I. i. pp. 64-5. 3 Fol. 213 & of the facsimile. 202 II. THE ZETJS OP of their children and of their flocks,^ in order to secure power and peace in all their tribes, and to obtain milk and com for the support of their families. The place, Mag Slecht, was, we are told, so called from the kneeling and other more violent acts of adoration through which the people went before the god : it is ascertained ^ to have been near the village of Ballymagauran, in the barony of TuUyhaw, in the county of Cavan; and St. Patrick is said to have built there a church called Domh- nach M6r,3 the name of which is worth a passing remark. The adjective mor, ' great,' was added to distinguish it from other churches called Domhnach : this word is no other than the Latin* dominicum, 'a church or edifice sacred to the Lord,' borrowed, and it can hardly be regarded as an accident that the edifice to supersede the sanctuary of the chief of the Goidelic pantheon should have been called after the Lord and Head of the Christian religion. It would, however, be hazardous to conclude as much regarding all the localities in Ireland now marked by churches bearing this name of Domhnach.^ Be that as it may, there is on record a place-name which bears evidence to the worship of the heathen god in the centre of ancient Britaiu. For if we turn the ^ O'Conor's Bibliotheca Manuscripta Stowensu (Buckingham, 1818), i. 40-1, and his Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores (Buckingham, 1814), Vol. I. (proleg. i.) pp. xxii, xxiii j also the Four Masters, A.M. 3656, note by O'Donovan ; and M. d'Arhois de JubainvUle, loc. cit. ^ Four Masters, ibid. ^ Four Masters, ibid. ^ Domhnach has also become the regular word for Sunday, tbat is Dies Dominicus, ' the Lord's Day,' French Dimanche. 5 No less than twenty such figure in the index to The Martyr ology of Donegal (Dublin, 1864). THE INSULAR CELTS. 203 Irish Cenn Cruaich, * Chief of the Mound,' into its etymo- logical equivalents, in modern Welsh we have Pew Crug^ which was written formerly Penn Cruc, while at a much earlier date, when the language still retained its case- endings, it must have had the form Pennos Cruci, or else that of a compound Pennocruci.^ This last, as the basis of an adjective relating to the god so-called, would yield the forms Pennoerucjo-s, Pennocrucja, Pen- nocrucjo-n ; and the last mentioned, the neuter, actually occurs, namely. Latinized into Pennocrucium, which would accordingly seem to have meant a place associated with the god who was called Chief of the Mound, that is to say, a spot devoted to his worship. The station called Pennocrucium in the Itinerary of Antoninus^ has been variously identified with Stretton and Penkridge, in Staffordshire ; and the name Penkridge^ written Pencrik, ^ This would in its turn admit of two translations, according as one took^ew to mean the top or end (in the physical sense) of the mound, or else the top, in the metaphorical sense of head or chief ; and so far as I know, Pen Crug or Pencrug as a modern Welsh place-name means nothing more than the Top of the Mound, the Mound's End, or the like. ^ This compound is like Vassocaleti (see note, p. 12), except that the qualifying element is a genitive and not an adjective ; but this way of compounding words would seem to have fallen early out of fashion hoth in Welsh and in Irish, where we should otherwise have had Cenn Chruaich, and not Cenn Cruaich. Neta{-Ttrenalugos) has been mentioned at p. 12, but considerable irregularity prevails with regard to its later equivalent, nom. nia, gen. niad, as, for instance, in the case of the name Gairbre Nia-fer, Cairbre Champion of Men ; for the nominative nia is found used for the crude form, which should be niad : thus La two passages cited in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 507, 513, Nia-fer has to be construed as a genitive, while the B7c. of Leinder, 161 &, has Nia-fer as a dative. 3 Parthey and Finder's edition, pp. 224, 368. 204 il. THE ZEUS OF in an eightli century charter of ^thilheard of Wessex,i is beyond all doubt a continuation of that in the Itinerary. That, however, does not quite decide the question of site, as there may have been not a few localities entitled to the same interesting appellation. The God's Moxjnds, Fetishes and Symbols. What, it may now be asked, can have been the mean- ing of calling the god by a name signifying the Chief of the Mound ? The answer must depend a good deal on what was meant by the word which I have thus far rendered 'mound.' Now the Irish word cruach might mean a heap of anything, and it is attested in the more restricted sense of a rick of hay or the like ; the Welsh crug admits of much the same use, but it is especially employed in the case of artificial mounds or tumuli ; and so it appears in a great many names of places, such as that of Crug Hywel, Anglicized Crickhowel, the name of a village near Abergavenny, and the Wyddgrug, which seems to have meant the Burial Mound : the town so called is in Flintshire, and it is found formerly named Mons Altus,^ modern English Mold. Let us now look at some of the synonymous terms : one of these is tommen, usual in North Wales, and well known as applied to a tumulus at Bala, which served till lately as the rallying- point of the great open-air services of the Calvinistic Methodists ; but a more promising word is gorsed, which while etymologically meaning any high station or position, ^ Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus, No. Ixxvi. ^ The feature so called is said by Pennant to be partly natural and partly artificial : see his Tours in Wales (Carnarvon, 1883), i. 35-6. THE INSULAR CELTS. 205 and used in the Welsh literature of tlie Middle Ages in tlie sense of a mound or tumulus, caime to be the word for a throne or a judgment -seat: it may also mean a court or tribunal, and Pen yr Orsed, ' the Gorged Top or Hill,' is not an uncommon name of conspicuous posi- tions in certain parts of the Principality. Some of the ancient gorseds continued long in story to be the seats of supernatural power: take, for example, that known as the gorsed of Arberth, in South "Wales, of which it is said in the Mabinogi of Pwyll Prince of Dyved,^ that no one ever ascended it without receiving wounds and bodily harm, or witnessing some kind of miracle, which the tale bears out by relating how Pwyll repeatedly went up on the gorsed, and how very strange adventures befel him, all of which began from the gorsed. Similarly, wonderful things are related as happening in Irish story to kings of Tara who chanced to ascend the gorsed^ of that city in the early morning; in one instance, it is related^ that Conn the Hundred-fighter, having done so, happened to tread on a stone, which there- upon screamed all over the land. This was followed by a thick fog, out of which rode a fairy prince, who led Conn away to his residence to be informed of the future 1 R. B. Mah. p. 8 ; Guest, iij. 46. ^ The Irish term used in the story of Echaid Airem {Bh. of the Dun, p. 130&) is sosta, the plural oi sossad, 'a station or seat;' but in the story of Conn about to be mentioned in the text, it is ri-rdith, ' a royal rath or fortification ; ' for sometimes the rdths, as may still be seen in Ireland, consisted of earth heaped up over rooms previously formed, a kind of work which an outsider still fancies he can trace at Dover, and more fortresses than one on the Rhine. 3 See O'Curry in his MS. Mat. p. 618, quoting MS. Harl. 5280 (p. 119) in the British Museum. 206 II. THE ZEUS or history of Ireland, and to be told tlie length of his reign and the names of his successors for many centuries after- wards. This stone, of which something must now be said, was the so-called Lia Fdil, or Stone of Fal, and Irish legend speaks of it as one of the four precious things brought to Ireland by the Tuatha 'Di Danaan : it was one of its properties that, wherever it was taken, a Goidel of Milesian descent, like Conn, would be sovereign there, and at Tara it gave a scream^ under every king whom it recognized in the sovereignty. From the pos- session of the warlike descendants of Conn, it is supposed by some 2 to have been traced to Scone, the capital of the kingdom of Alban, where Edward I. found it in such esteem that he thought it worth his while to have it brought to the EngUsh capital;^ and the stone from Scone is beKeved, as you know, to be now in the Coro- nation chair at Westminster Abbey. But its removal to England was not the end of the beliefs attached to it ; in fact, Irish and Scotch historians saw them verified anew when the throne of England came to be occupied by the Stuarts, who were supposed to be descended from Goidelic ancestors of Milesian race. In the name of the Lia Fdil, sometimes called the Stone of Destiny, the word Edl is probably to be treated as in the case of Inis Fdil ' the Island of Fal,' where I take the word to have meant light, and to have referred to the god in his early identi- fication with the sun. In other words, the Lia Fail 1 Irish Nennius (Dublin, 1848), pp. 200-1. 2 O'Curry was not one of them : see his MS. Mat. p. 480. 3 Keating's History of Ireland (Dublin, 1880), p. 7; Skene's Clmm. of the Picts and Scots, pp. 196-7, 266, 280, 333, 335; O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 618—621. THE INSULAE CELTS. 207 was a fetish connected with his worship ; and however one looks at it, one cannot regard it as singular in the religious world of the Aryans. Witness the stone swal- lowed by Cronus under the impression that it was his child Zeus, and set up afterwards by the latter at Delphi. " It was not a large stone," says Andrew Lang,^ inter- preting Pausanias, who saw it, "and the Delphians used to anoint it with oil and wrap it up in wool on feast-days. All Greek temples," he goes on to say, " had their fetish- stones, and each stone had its legend." But not only was the Irish fetish called the Stone of Fdl, but it was first heard of in Erinn at Temair Fdil^ ' the Temair of Fdl,' that is to say, the ancient capital, the site of which is known as Tara Hill, in the present county of Meath. There were in Ireland several other places called Temair^ genitive Temrach (Anglicized Tara), and the name may be guessed to have had some such signification as that of a height or an acropolis ; but the Tara par excellence may be assumed to have been one of the oldest and most important centres of the warlike Celts who conquered the country, and it would not bo surprising if it had occurred to them to call it after their chief divinity, who was both god of war and of light, and one of whose names, recalling him in the latter character, was, as it is here contended, the Fal in question. Temair Fail, or Fal's Tara, would thus have meant Fal's Hill or Height; and one may compare the case of a warlike people of this country, who called their capital Camulo- ^ Custom and Myth, p. 52 ; Pausauias, x. 24. 2 O'Curry, MS. Mat. p. 479; Book of RigJds (ed. O'Donovan), p. 56; Boole of Fenagh (ej. Hennessy), pp. 322-3. 208 II. THE ZETJS OF dunon or the Acropolis of Camulos, with the name of which that of Fdl's Tara may perhaps, mythologically speaking, be equated. These scattered facts, which I have tried to connect with one another, not only suggest that Nuada Finnfdil, or the Goidelic Nodens, was the same divinity as Fdl, and the latter as Cenn Cruaich ; but they further go to prove a connection between his cult and the high places, which, whether artificial or natural, agree, so far as con- cerns the object in view, with the selection in Greece and Eome of elevated positions for the temple of Zeus and Jupiter. It would agree even more closely with the custom, still practised by the Parliament of the Isle of Man, of promulgating the laws made by it from an artificial mound called the Tynwald, which was done at Midsummer under the Old Style, but now on the 5th of July, a date of no institutional significance. It is in this light, perhaps, that one should chiefly regard the cruach or ' gorsed ' sacred to the Celtic god and his asses- sors : in other words, the Irish probably assembled on Mag Sleeht, for example, not only to worship Cenn Cruaich, but also to hold their courts under the sanction of the chief of the nation's gods, much as the English House of Lords pays homage to Christianity by opening its proceedings with a public prayer. But one need not leave Celtic ground to look for an instance more pagan and far more in point : I allude to the gorsed or court under the authority of which the Eistedvod is held as a sort of session, as its name indicates, for letters and music. The gorsed is held in the open air, a circle of stones being formed, with a stone bigger than the others in the middle ; the proceedings are opened with prayer THE INSULAR CELTS. 209 by the presiding druid as lie is called; afterwards lie goes on to admit to degrees the candidates recommended by persons technically competent to do so. When all the business is over, the company goes in a procession to the building fixed for holding the Eistedvod, which it is necessary to have announced at a gorsed held a year at least previously. As regards the gorsed itself, the rule is "that it be held in a conspicuous place within sight and hearing of the country and the lord in authority, and that it be face to face with the sun and the eye of light, as there is no power to hold a gorsed under cover or at night, but only where and as long as the sun is visible in the heavens." ^ In the absence of documentary evidence bearing on the history of the gorsed, we have to judge of it as we find it, and it is remarkable that everything connected with it seems to suggest that it is but a continuation of a court of which the Celtic Zeus was originally regarded as the spiritual president : wit- ness the circle of stones, the importance attached to the sun and the eye of light, and also the nature of the prayer pronounced by the officiating druid. There are several versions^ of it, and, though not one of them is 1 The original is printed in the lolo MSS. p. 50, from the manu- scripts of Llewelyn Sion, who died in the year 1616. ^ Four of these versions are to be found in the lolo MS. pp. 79, 80, 469-70, and the one breathing the purest pantheism is there ascribed to the ancient poet Talhaearn ; it runs thus : ' Oh God ! grant strength ; And from strength, discretion ; And from discretion, knowledge ; And from knowledge, the right ; And from the right, the love of it ; And from that love, love for all things ; And in love for all things, the love of God.' P 210 II. THE ZEUS OF probably early in the form in wbicb we have it, the fact of their containing nothing distinctively Christian is all the more remarkable, and it favours the belief in the antiquity of their origin. I may explain that in the remarks to which the name Cenn Cruaich has here given rise, the Celtic Zeus or Mars-Jupiter has been regarded as standing before us in his character of a god of light and the sun, but that at a very early stage in his history, his attributes expanded themselves to such an extent that he ceased to be in any very strict sense of the term a sun-god : other sun-gods of a far simpler and narrower nature grew up, and one of them appears in the story of Conn and the Stone of rdl. For at the same time that the name Fal seems to have referred to the more ancient god of light, the fairy prince (p. 205) who disclosed the future history of his country to Conn is stated to have been called Lug,^ who as a sun-god occupies a distinguished place in Irish legend. When the connection of the other god with light had been forgotten, the name of Lug as a sun-god was still familiar, and the story shaped itself accordingly. The observations made in reference to the term Fdl as a name of the god would be incomplete without some allusion to the mythical creation known as Roth Fail, or Fdl's Wheel, and Roth Rdmach, or the Wheel with Paddles.2 It is said to have been made by Simon Magus, 1 O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 618, wTiere the ancient text calls him Jjug mac Edlend mic [sic] Tigliernmais. Edlend was his mother's name. 2 O'Curry in his MS. Mat. pp. 385, 401-3, 423, speaks of it as a 'Eowing Wheel;' and at p. 428 he calls it also an 'Oar Wheel,' which is likewise correct enough, since rdmach means ' provided with rdma,' which signified both oars and shovels or spades (the Gymmrodor, THE INSULAR CELTS. 211 assisted by Mog Euith, a celebrated Irish druid from the island of Yalencia, who, having learned all the druidism or magic that could be learned in these islands, went with his daughter to take lessons from Simon Magus, in whose contest with St. Peter he is represented taking a part. The Wheel was to enable Simon to sail in the air ; but it met with an accident, and Mog Euith's daughter brought certain fragments of it to Ireland, one of which she fixed as the rock or pillar-stone of Cndm- choill, a place near Tipperary, the name of which has been Anglicized into Cleghile. The stone was believed to produce blindness if looked at, and death if touched.^ But there were other versions which made the coming of the Wheel a great calamity, not only to Ireland, but to a great portion of the west of Europe : it became a recognized element in so-called prophecies of calamities to overcome Erinn. Thus in one called the Ecstasy of St. Moling, the Wheel is represented as destined to come followed by a dreadful scourge which was to destroy three-fourths of the people as far as the Tyrrhene Sea (p. 173), in the reign of a king Flann Grinach of Durlas.^ Another extravagant prophecy, vainly attributed to St. Columba, made the Wheel into an enormous ship con- taining a fabulous number of warriors, and sailing over sea and land with equal ease; but it was fated to be vij. 65; Senchus M6r, iij. 204, 210); and the reference implied in the adjective must have been to the paddles or float-boards of an under- shot water-wheel. ^ O'Curry, MS. Mat. pp. 402-3 ; Irish Nmnius, pp. 264-5 (also editor's note with references to Duald Mac Firbis's MS. in the Lib. of the Eoyal Irish Academy, and to the Bk. of Lecan, fol. 133); Stokes- O'Donovan ed. of Oormac, p. 74. ' O'Curry, MS. Mat. pp. 402-3. p2 212 II. THE ZEUS OF wrecked on the pillar-stone of Cleghile, and the warriors would all be cut off in the reign of Flann Ciothach.^ Eor a reason not assigned, Cleghile appears to have been fixed upon as the terminus for the course of the Wheel, which is called in such legends the Roth Rdmach; but the allusion to Cleghile enables one to recognize a refer- ence to the same thing in Cormac's Glossary, namely, under the word Foi, which is explained to have meant the place called Cndmchoill, ' Cleghile.' So far as it can be translated without context as it stands, the passage represents the druid Mog Euith saying that somebody or something would perish because the Roth Fdil would come as far as the king of Durlas west of Foi, i.e. west of Cnamchoill.2 I am not aware that the Wheel is called Roth Fdil anywhere else ; the passage in the Glossary, however, proves the identity of the Roth Fdil with the Roth R'amach. But what, you will ask, does all this mean, and espe- cially the introduction of Simon Magus ? The appear- ance of Simon on Celtic ground is not very difficult to 1 O'Curry, loc. cit. ^ See the Stokes-O'Donovan ed. of Cormac, p. 74, and Stokes' Old Irish Glossaries, p. 20, where the passage, which is partly Latin and partly Irish, reads : ' Item Mog Ruith peribit quod Roth Fdil perveniet dicens cori Durluis find iar Foi . i. iar Cndmchaill.' Here dicens refers to the sentence beginning with perihit, which is used in Irish fashion for pe)-iturum esse, and the whole is introduced as an instance of the occur- rence of the name Foi. I translate accordingly : 'Also Mog Ruith saying, that it (he or she) will perish because Roth Fdil will come to the king of fair Durlas [Thurles] west of Foi, that is, west of Cn4mchoill.' The place called Thurles is not west of Cleghile, though the king of Thurles may at any given time have been ; Durlas was, however, not an un- common place-name, so it is not certain that the one now called Thurles was intended. THE INSULAR CELTS. 213 explain. He was known to the early Church as a noto- rious opponent of the apostles, and his name became identified with all that was pagan and anti-christian : thus the ancient druidic tonsure usual among the clergy of the British Church till the latter half of the eighth century, and among those of the Irish Church not quite so late, was probably a druidic tonsure continued : at any rate, it was described by those who had adopted the Roman tonsure as that of Simon Magus.^ As to Ireland in particular, all the fiercest opposition there to Chris- tianity is described as headed by the druids, who com- peted with Patrick and other saints in working miracles. So it would be natural enough for Christian writers to liken the chief druids of Ireland to Simon, especially seeing that when they used the Latin tongue the native word drui, ' druid,' had to be rendered by magus, ' a magician.' Vice versa, Simon Magus became in Irish Simon Drui, or Simon the Druid : ^ nay, he was at last claimed as an Irish ancestor, ^ and as such he appears as Simeon Breo, or Simeon the Freckled, son of Stam or Stariath, of the family of Nemid, and as ancestor of the Fir Bolg, who, owing to Simon's eastern origin, are made ^ Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, &c. i. 112, 113; Eeeves, Adam- nan's Vita OolumbcB, note, p. 350; Stokes's Goidelica (luondon, 1872), pp. 86, 91 ; Ehys, Celtic Britaiifi, p. 74. ^ Blc. of the Dun, p. 79 a, where mention is made of a garment which had found its way to Ireland, though originally made by Simdn Drui for Dair [Darius?], king of the Eomans ; see Ehys, Gelt. Brit."^, p. 71, for reference to the name in the T. C. D. MS. (of O'Mulcoury's Glos- sary), H. 2, 16, col. 116 ; and Ir. Nennius, p. 265, for a reference to it in the E. Ir. Ac. MS. (of Duald Mac Firbis), p. 535, and the Bk. of Lecan, fol. 133. 2 O'Curry, Manners, &c. ij. 213. 214 II. THE ZEUS OP to come from the East on one of the motiveless wander- ings so common in the legendary history of Ireland.^ Now the prophecies about the Wheel appear to have consisted partly of an ancient Irish belief in a mythic wheel and a mythic ship,^ and partly of Christian tales about Simon Magus, such as the one about his flying in the air, or ascending like Elijah in a fiery chariot, in order to show his superiority over Peter and Paul;^ but his brief aerial success contrasts most markedly with the ease with which Irish druids, and Mog Euith in parti- cular, are described soaring in the air by means of a simple pair of wings,* put on or off at pleasure like an ordinary article of dress. So here no room is left for the clumsy expedient of a wheel, and we have to look for that in another direction — the one, in fact, indicated by the name Roth Fail, which may be rendered the Wheel of Light, and regarded as probably referring in the first instance to the disk of the sun : I said, ' in the first instance,' as one has only to glance at M. Gaidoz's account of the symbolism of the wheel to see how capable it was of modification, as, for example, when it took the form of a winged disk or even of a cross.^ The importance attached to the place called Cndmchoill, ' Cleghile,' which translated would mean the Forest of * Bk. of the Dun, p. 16 &; Keating's Hist, of Ireland, pp. 90-7. ^ Melmine, ij. 134, 159; Gaidoz, Etudes, pp. 99, 100. ^ Amohius, ij. 12 (in Migne's Patrologia, v. 827-9); St. Ambrose, Hexaem. iv. 8 (Migne, xiv. 205) ; Maximus Taurinensis, Homil. Ixxii. ci. (Migne, Ivii. 405-6, 488-90) ; and for more authorities, see Herzog's Redl-Encyklopddie, s.v. Simon, Yol. xiv. 252. * O'Curry's Manners, &c. ii. 214, 215, ' Etudes, pp. 49, 68, & passim. THE INSULAR CELTS. 215 (the) Bones or Bone--wood, is not to be understood without ampler data than we have ; but it looks as though the spot had been another Mag Slecht adorned with another and ruder figure of Cenn Criiaich, covered with gold and credited with glory exposed to no vulgar gaze but fenced around by the solitude of a sacred forest, like one which figures in the history of ancient Prussia. ^ Lastly, we have another proof of the existence in ancient Ireland of a wheel myth in the name Mog Ruith of the druid involved in the stories occupyiag our atten- tion at present. It meant Servus Rotae, or the Slave of the Wheel, and most probably of no other wheel than the one here in question, the Roth Fail or "Wheel of Light. Personal names formed. in this analytic fashion, so familiar to Semitic scholars in such instances as Abdiel, ' Servant of El,' Ahdallah, ' Servant of Allah,' and the Uke, are not unusual in Irish ; and they not unfrequently involve a god's name, as in the case of Mog Nuadat, ' Servus Nodentis,'' and Mog Neit or Slave of Ndt, this last being a name of the Goidelie god of war, as we are told in Cormac's Glossary.^ The habit of forming proper names of men in this way is probably of pre-Celtic origin in Ireland ; but it was continued in Christian times with the aid of the words mael, 'bald, tonsured,' and gille^ 'boy, servant-boy,' as in Maelpadraic, rendered into Latin as Calvus Patricii,^ or the Tonsured Slave of Patrick, still current as Mulpatrick ; Maelmuiri, ^ Marianus,'' or the Tonsured Slave of Mary ; and Gillecrist, ' Christ's Servant,' curtailed into Gilchrist; Gillecomded, '■Servus 1 Voigt's GescMchte Preussens (Beilin, 1827), i. 599—614. 2 Stokes-O'Don. s.v. Neit, p. 122. 3 Nigra, Reliquie Celtiche, p. 19 ; Khys, Gelt. Britain, pp. 73, 262. 216 II. THE ZEUS OF Domini,'' or the Servant of the Lord, and many more. Should these guesses prove "well founded, it would follow that the Roth Fail had a well-defined place in Irish theo- logy long before any such a name as that of Mog Euith could have come into existence; and it is also to be observed that the attempt to replace its name. Roth Fail, by a later designation meaning the Eowing or Paddle Wheel, corroborates, so far as it goes, the opinion here advanced as to the relative antiquity of the belief in the Wheel. The God oe Detjidism. Eeference has been made in this lecture several times to a tree overshadowing the sacred well of the god, and to the slab hard by. Others might be added; and I would call your attention to the well-known type of Irish holy-well overshadowed by a tree whose branches are loaded with such votive offerings as bits of cloth ; not to mention that at the spot where the pious visitor there makes his cross are to be found other gifts, contaiaing among them, as I have seen more than once, coins of the present day. The placing of offerings, however humble, among the branches of the tree had probably the same meaning as the hanging up in the like manner by the ancient Gauls and Germans of the heads of the animals sacrificed to the gods. The subject has been treated in his thorough way by Jacob Grimm in his well-known work on Teutonic Mythology, where he has brought toge- ther many allusions to the trees marking the holy places of his race in old times.^ Especially deserving of men- tion is the evergreen tree with wide-spreading branches 1 Deutsche MythK i. 53—71. THE INSULAR CELTS. 217 said to have stood in close proximity to the temple of the gods in the ancient town of Upsala,i and the mythic tree called Glass, described as standing with leaves of gold before the hall of Sig-tyr, or the Norse Zeus of Victory.2 On the whole, the oak would seem to have been the tree far the most closely associated with the supreme god of the Aryans. Thus in ancient Greece the mighty growth of the oak was regarded as symbolic of him.^ Not only was it a twig of oak that was used in the Greek ceremony of rain-making, but several cele- brated oaks sacred to Zeus are alluded to ia Greek and Eoman literature : suflS.ce it to recall the Trojan oak famed in the Iliad, and the words of Yirgil in the Georgics, iij. 332, &c. : ' Sicubi magna Jovis antique robore quercus Ingentes tendat ramos.' There were also at Dodona, one of the most ancient Greek seats of the Zeus worship, sacred oaks, the mur- muriag of the wind among whose branches and leaves was watched and treated as oracular ; * and sometimes the oak was something more than a tree merely sacred to the god or marking out the place of his abode : it was itself regarded as the seat of his divinity, as in the case of Zeus TQy6s or (fnjyovaios also at Dodona,^ of which Silius Italicus says, iij. 691: 'Arbor numen habet coliturque tepentibus aris.' In the Celtic instances alluded to, no predilection for ^ Voigt (quoting Schol. to Adam of Bremen, 233), i. 580. 2 Corpus Poet. Bar. i. 79. ^ Preller in Pauly's Beal-Enr.ykl. s.v. Jupiter, p. 590. < lb. p. 604. ^ Overbeck's Kunstmyth, i. 4; 218 11, THE ZETJS OP the oak seems to suggest itself; but if we go back to the ancient Gauls, their preference for it is placed beyond all doubt. Witness Pliny's well-known account of the druids in his Natural History^ xvi, 95; the whole pas- sage is so much to the point that I cannot help quoting it at full length: " Nor is the admiration of Gaulish lands in this matter to be passed over in silence : the druids, for so they call their magicians, have nothing which they hold more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only it be an oak \j-obur]. But apart from that, they select groves of oak, and they perform no sacred rite without leaves from that tree, so that the druids may be regarded as even deriving from it their name interpreted as Greek. Tor they believe what- ever grows on these trees to be actually sent from heaven, and to form a mark in each instance of a tree selected by the god himself. That is, however, very rarely to be met with, and when it is found it is sought with much religious ceremony. They do this especially at the time of the sixth moon, the luminary which marks the begirming of their months and their years, and after the tree has passed the thirtieth year of its age, because of its having even then plenty of vigour, though not half the size to which it may grow. Addressing it in their language as the universal healer, and taking care to have sacrifices and banquets prepared with the correct ceremony beneath the tree, they bring to the spot two white bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. The priest, clad in a white robe, climbs the tree, and with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe : it is caught in a white cloth. Then at length they sacrifice the victims, with a prayer that god may make his own gift benefit THE INSULAR CELTS. 219 those to whom he has given it. They believe that drink- ing of a potion prepared from it gives fecundity to barren animals, and that it is a remedy against all poison." Add to this important passage the statement of Maxi- mus Tyrius to the effect that the Celts worshipped Zeus, and that the Celtic ayaA/ia or image of the god was a lofty oak,i and that the name of the Galatian place of assembly in Asia Minor, as given by Strabo,^ was ApvviiJ.tTov or the sacred Oak-grove. The words of Maxi- mus Tyrius might, according to Jacob Grimm, have been applied to the Teutons also and all nations originally related to them;^ he establishes his opinion as regards the former, and briefly alludes to some of the latter, and among them to the Lithuanian branch as represented by the ancient inhabitants of Prussia. Their place of greatest holiness was a spot called Eomove, in a meadow where a high and mighty oak afforded shelter against rain and the heat of the summer sun. Here, in niches cut in the sacred tree, were placed images of their three principal gods, and of these the chief was placed in the middle between the two others. His name was Perkunos, and he was reckoned the god of thunder, of rain, and other atmospheric phenomena. He was also the giver of health and the helper of those who suffered from disease. The water of the lakes held sacred to him was considered to possess remedial virtues, and so were the ashes of the perpetual fire kept up before the sacred oak. The priest who happened to let that fire go out atoned for his negligence with his life, and the sacrifices made 1 Dissert, viij. (Eeiske's ed. i. 142). * Meineke's (Teubner) edition, xii. 5, 1 (Vol. ii. p. 796). ^ Deutsche Myth*, i. 55 at sec^. 220 II. THE ZEUS OF to Perkunos and his two assessors not unfrequently con- sisted of human victims.^ Now Perkunos was, under slightly modified forms of the name, worshipped by all the Litu-Slavio nations, and it would be interesting to ascertain his exact mythological position, but that is not a very easy matter. Grimm saw in the name Perkunos a form related to the Norse Fjorgynn, genitive Fjorgvins, of the same origin as the Gothic fairguni, 'mountain,' Anglo-Saxon firgen of the same meaning ; and he has suggested the possibility that Fjorgynn was an ancient name for Thor, whom it would suit well enough as a thunderer to be designated a god of the mountains or dweller on the heights ; or else that the Goths may have preferred it, in the form of Fairguneis, to Thor's more usual designation. But, on the other hand, the Teutonic god corresponding to Zeus had even more right to be called the god of the mountain -tops. May not the right solution be that PerJcunos and its congeners represent the Gothic name of Thor, borrowed and given by the Litu-Slaves to a god of their own, who was the counterpart of Zeus rather than of Thor, though resem- bling the latter in his having the attribute of thunder ? That borrowing by somebody took place in the matter of the name is proved by the related word Porguini, cited by Grimm as the name of the Mordvinian thunder-god.^ There have also been futile attempts to connect the name of Perkunos with that of the Hindu god of rain and thunder, Parjanya, who would seem to have been a form or aspect of Dyaus, whose son he was sometimes called.^ 1 Voigt, i. 582. 2 lb. i. 143 . gee also iij. 64. ^ For a comprehensive account of Parjanya, see an article by Biihler in Benfey's Orient und Occident, i. 214-29. THE INSULAR CELTS, 221 Whatever the origin of the name of the god Perkunos may prove to have been, the priesthood, devoted to the holy place of which he was the chief divinity is described as forming one of the most despotic hierarchies the world has ever seen; and its head is represented enjoying absolute power and seclusion more impenetrable than could probably be secured by the most influential druid among the Celts. For to read of the priests connected with the holy forest of Eomove in ancient Prussia un- avoidably leads one to this comparison, and reminds one in a striking manner of what is told us in the classics about the druids of Gaul, and in a later literature about those of Ireland. Seeing the importance of sacred trees in the ancient cult of the chief god of the Aryans of Europe, and the preference evinced for the oak as the tree fittest to be his emblem or even the residence of his divinity, I am inclined to regard the old etymology of the word druid as being, roughly speaking, the correct one. Pliny, alluding to the druids' predilection for groves of oak, adds the words : ut inde appellati quoque interpreta- tione Graeca possint Druidae videri} The necessity he seems to have been under of interpreting the term by refer- ence to the Greek word S/aCs, ' an oak,' was probably what made him express himself so hesitatingly. Had he pos- sessed knowledge enough of the Gaulish language, he would have seen that it supplied an explanation which rendered it needless to have recourse to Greek, namely, in the native word dru, which we have in Drunemeton, or the sacred Oak-grove, given by Strabo as the name of the place of assembly of the Galatians. In fact, one has, 1 Hist. Nat. xvi. 95 j Diefeubach, p. 314. 222 II. THE ZEUS OF if I am not mistaken, been sceptic with regard to this etymology, not so much on phonological grounds as from failing exactly to see how the oak could have given its name to such a famous organization as the druidic one must he admitted to have been. But the parallels just indicated as showing the importance of the sacred tree in the worship of Zeus and the gods representing him among nations other than the Greek one, help to throw some light on this point. According to the etymology here alluded to, the druids would be the priests of the god associated or identified with the oak ; that is, as we are told, the god who seemed to those who were familiar with the pagan theology of the Greeks, to stand in the same position in Gaulish theology that Zeus did in the former. This harmonizes thoroughly with all that is known about the druids. On the one hand, Zeus was the source of all divination : ^ the rustling of the wind in. the leaves of the sacred oaks at Dodona, the voices of the doves, and the bubbling of the spring near the sacred oak, were all held to be oracular ; and even in the case of the cele- brated oracle of the Pythian Apollo at Delphi, the latter was no more than the tt/ooc^^ttjs or mouthpiece, so to say, of Zeus. On the other hand, one may sum up the im- pressions of ancient authors as to the druids by describ- ing them as magicians who were medicine-men, priests, and teachers of the young. This applies more especially to Gaul, but their characteristics appear to have been much the same in Ireland — in both they were above all things magicians ; for we have Pliny's express state- 1 Preller in Pauly's Real-Encyld. s. v. Jupiter, iv. 60i. THE INSULAR CELTS. 223 ment that the name which the Gauls gave their magi- cians was that of druids; and Irish literature teaches us the like lesson ^ as to the kindred Irish term, as already instanced in the case of Simon Magus, called in Irish Simon Drui But let us examine the druids a little more closely on Irieh ground. Now Ciichulainn, whose name has already been mentioned (p. 138), was educated at the school of which Cathbad a druid was the master; but what the latter's teaching mostly consisted of we know not ; incidentally we find that he told his pupils of lucky and unlucky days. One morning, for instance, he in- formed an elder pupil that the day then beginning would be a lucky one for anybody who should take arms on it for the first time, which Ciichulainn overhearing, at once carried out, to the surprise of his teacher and the king, both of whom he outwitted in the matter.^ To be able to make the declaration ascribed to the druid would seem to imply that he began the day with augury or some other kind of divination. Years later, when Ciichulainn was asked as to his education, he is represented enume- rating among the advantages he had enjoyed, that of having been taught by Cathbad the druid, which had, he said, made him a master of inquiry in the arts of the god of druidism or magic, and rendered him skilled in all that was excellent in visions. With regard to this latter statement, suffice it to say that the druids were always ready to interpret a dream, which was pro- bably done according to canons they had elaborated for their use. What interests one most is, the remarkable ^ Celtic Britain'^, pp. 71-2. ^ Book of the Dun, 61a, 616; Book of Leinster, 646— 65&. 224 II. THE ZEUS OP allusion contained in the term d4 druidechta^ ' of the god of druidism,' which doubtless meant the divinity with whom the druids as magicians had to do, and with whose aid they practised their magical arts. We are unfor- tunately not told the name of the god ; but it is natural to suppose that it was the chief of the Goid«lic pantheon, and this is practically settled by the kind of miracles which the druids are usually represented as able to per- form with most success, in their competition with the early saints engaged in the task of Christianizing Ireland. These miracles may be described as mostly atmospheric, consisting of such feats as bringing on a heavy snow, palpable darkness, or a great storm, such as the one by means of which a druid tried to effect the shipwreck of St. Columba on Loch Ness in Scotland.^ The reason, I may observe in passing, why the druids are such familiar figures in Irish literature, at any rate as compared with the literatures of Wales and Brittany, is that the Goidel's faith in druidism was never suddenly undermined ; for in the saints he only saw more powerful druids than those he had previously known, and Christ took the posi- tion in his eyes of the druid ko-t e^oxrjv.^ Irish druidism absorbed a certain amount of Christianity ; and it would be a problem of considerable dif&culty to fix on the point where it ceased to be druidism, and from which onwards it could be said to be Christianity in any restricted sense of that term. Though druidism is far harder to discover in the oldest literature of the Welsh, it is possible there to recognize 1 Eeeves' Adamnan's Vita S. Golumhae, ij. 34 (pp. 148-50). 2 See Eeeves' note on Magi, ibid. pp. 73-4. THE INSULAR CELTS. 225 the Welsh counterpart of the Groidelic god of Druidism, namely, in Math ab Mathonwy, also called Math Hen, or M. the Ancient. Besides the meagre references ^ to him in Welsh poetry, one of the Mabinogion takes its name from him.2 There he is described as king of Gwyned or Venedotia, with his head-quarters at a place called Caer Dathal, supposed to haye been the fortified hill-top now known as Pen y Gaer, or the Hill of the Fortress, on the eastern side of the Conwy, a short distance from the ferry and railway-station of Tal y Cavn, as you go from Llandudno to Bettws y Coed, in Carnarvonshire. Among other characteristics. Math shared with Welsh fairies and demons the peculiarity of hearing, without fail and without regard to the distance, every sound of speech that reached the air;^ and as the Greek Zeus was the source of divination, so Math is named the first and foremost of the three great magicians of Welsh mythology,* in which respect he is to be compared with Merlin and the Mac Oc. Moreover, he taught his magic arts to Gwydion ab Don, the Culture Hero, with whose assistance he was able, for example, to create a woman out of flowers;^ and, roughly speaking, his relations with Gwydion resembled those of Zeus with Heracles and Prometheus, except that Math was never guilty of the unscrupulous and cruel conduct not infrequently ascribed to Zeus. But, in fact, no negative praise of 1 Skene's Four Am. Blcs. of Wales, ij. U2 (i. 281), 147 (i. 269), 303 (i. 286), where Matheu should be Math Hen. 2 R. B. Mab. pp. 58—81 ; Guest, iij. 217-51. 8 R. B. Mob. p. 60 J Guest, iij. 219. * Triads, i. 32 = ij. 20 = iij. 90. 5 R. B. Mah. p. 73 j Guest, iij. 239. Q 226 II. THE ZEUS OF the kind could render justice to Math's good qualities, among which, the Mahinogi enables one to recognize a calm and complete freedom from the feelings of jealousy and revenge, and a supreme regard — lacking in Merlin and the Mac 6c — ^for justice and right, leading him to punish the wrong-doer and indemnify the injured with a certainty of power and purpose no one durst oppose.^ For various reasons it is not pretended that Math could compare with the Zeus of the Odyssey at his best ; but he may be distiuctly pronounced the high- est ideal, as regards the sense of justice and equity, that can be associated with the heathen element in "Welsh literature. Since Celts and Teutons have been repeatedly com- pared with one another in these lectures, the subject of druidism may be supposed to offer an inviting occasion to do so once more ; but the result proves in some mea- sure not so much a similarity as a contrast, and that a contrast which may be said to maintain itself to a certain extent to this very day. The Celts had their druids to attend to religious matters and even a good deal more, while the Teutons had no such a highly developed order of men. It is true the Teutons had their priests and even their priestesses; but religious functions were, it may be supposed, not so exclusively discharged by them as by the druids among their neighbours. The Teutonic chiefs and kings could on occasion act also as priests. Take, for example, the Norsemen as late as the time of King Hdcon in the tenth century : they had priests to take charge of the temples, but any family or individual 1 lb. passim, but see more especially pp. 65, 67; Guest, iij. 227, 230. THE INSULAR CELTS. 227 might have a high place for the gods, and at the great festivals he who made the feast and was chief had to hallow the toast and all the meat of the sacrifice/ a state of partial independence of a priestly order probably not to be found where the druid was in power among the Celts. The same comparative independence of the hierarchy of the Koman Church was no inconsiderable factor in bringing about the Protestant secession in Ger- many ; while in England the King was always very sen- sitive in respect of any papal interference, and made himself in the person of the second Tudor formally the Head of the Church within the realm ; so our Queen is at this moment declared supreme over all British courts, not only civil but ecclesiastical ; and, acting through her Ministers, she appoints to the highest oflfices in the Church. That is the one side of the picture, with the Queen head of one of the two Churches recognized by the State; while the other side displays the Celt in a State of chronic revolt from both the State Churches, and in the attitude either of an adherent of the Church of Eome, as in Ireland, or of a dissenter, as in Cornwall, Wales and the Gaelic districts of Scotland. Such a difference of temper is often regretted, but nobody can deny its existence ; and whatever explanation of details the history of many centuries has to offer, the contrast may be said to be as great now as it was in the time of Julius Caesar. But evident as is its persistence, its origin is by no means easy to define. On the one hand, it may be said that the Celts, who delivered reli- gious matters over to their druids, that is, to their 1 Vigfusson and Powell in the Corpus, i. 404, 407. q2 228 11. THE ZEUS or magicians and medicine-men acting as priests, showted themselves proner to superstition and lent themselves more readily to spiritual thraldom; but, on the other hand, some of the modern students of institutions would probably tell us that a community where the chiefs dis- charged both civil and religious functions was on a lower level of civilization and culture than one in which they belonged respectively to different persons. This might be said doubtless to apply to the Celts and the Teutons of Caesar's time, since the former were more advanced in culture than the latter, owing, if to nothing else, to their standing in closer connection with the centres of Mediterranean civilization. In ancient Eome, the differentiation alluded to was greatly advanced by the abolition of the office of king and the transference of his civil functions to the consuls, his religious duties being left to one who continued to be called king, that is to say, the Rex Sacrorum. The Teutonic nations might, perhaps, have in their own way and their own time effected a complete differentiation of state and religion ; but the fact that they have not gone further than they have in that direction, would seem to be somehow con- nected with the state of political development they had reached when their institutions came under the influence of Christianity; and their comparative independence of a priesthood having been then, as it were, stereotyped, may be taken as the historical antecedent of the whole- some intolerance they have on many subsequent occasions evinced in the matter of priestly rule. This manner of reasoning would, however, presuppose Celts and Teutons to be of the same race, which would be doubtless true of their common origin in so far as they THE INSULAR CELTS. 229 are both Aryan ; but both families may be supposed to have largely absorbed other elements and thereby become more or less mixed. Such is doubtless the case with South Germany, where the bulk of the population still adhere to the Church of Eome, and such it is in most Celtic lands ; nor is it irrelevant to note that druidism would seem to have been most powerful in those districts where a pre-Celtic population may naturally be conjec- tured to have survived in the greatest numbers, namely, in the west of Gaul, in the west of Britain, and in Ire- land. That could not, however, afford an adequate foundation for the sweeping generalizations often made with regard to the Celts of the present day, that, as compared with nations of the Teutonic stock, they are naturally and essentially superstitious and fanatic, only fit to be ridden by priest or preacher, even where the parson has just been thrown off. Such a belief may prove as unfounded as another lately shattered, namely, that our Celts were incapable of advance in their political ideas ; for it has come to this, that they are now hated of Jute and Saxon for entertaining views which Jute and Saxon, rightly or wrongly, hold to be too advanced. In matters of reKgion and dogma, a Celt can undoubtedly go, for better or for worse, as far as a Teuton : witness the case of the ancient Brythonic heresiarch, Morien,^ 1 The Welsh account of Morien as a heretic will be found in the Mo MSS. pp. 42-3, 420-1. The oldest attested form of the name Morien is Morgen, which must have meant Sea-born or Offspring of the Sea, whence he was called Pelagius j but Morgen is not to be con- fused with the modern name Morgan, the old form of which was Mar- cant, though the error has the sanction of the translators of the Book of Common Prayer, who have made the 'Pelagians' of Article IX. into Morganiaid, or ' Morgans.' 230 11. THE ZEUS OF better known as Pelagius, and that of the Gallic Cett Voltaire, one of the founders of freedom of thought arid of the forerunners of the Eevolution in France ; or, do come to our own day, take that of Eenan, than whom no one can be said to write with wider sympathies and more fascination of frankness as regards matters of religion and theology, whatever you may think of the correctness of his views, or be found to dwell with more fondness on his Celtic origin and Breton boyhood. These are after all, yon might say, but individual cases, which is not to be denied. Bnt I could, if time allowed, produce a larger though humbler witness from my native county of Cardigan: I allude to a small community which has been ia existence there for the last century and a quarter or more. There in an agricultural tract between the rivers Aeron and Teivi, the ordinary beliefs of Trinitarian Christians have passed into those known as Unitarian. Now it is believed by the inhabitants of the country round this Black Spot, as they call it, that Unitarian theology can have no attraction for the reli- gious mind: stUl that theology has deeply and firmly taken root there. The Black Spot is a quiet rural dis- trict without a town or even a village of any large size. The small farmers and farm-labourers of Llandyssul, thoughtful and intelligent men as they are, cannot in any sense be reckoned Eenans or Yoltaires; and the question inevitably thrusts itself upon us, why should a creed believed to have no charm for the mass of men, and views verging, if I am not mistaken, on extreme scepticism, exercise a decided sway over their minds? Let those answer who believe the Celt essentially a superstitious fanatic. Of the merits or demerits of Uni- THE INSULAR CELTS. 231 iarianism I say of course nothing, lest the Calvinism of my early training should proye to have made me inca- pable of forming an impartial estimate ; and I need scarcely add, that I am quite willing to leave the conflict of the creeds to be decided by the inexorable logic of natural selection, feeling confident, as I do, that the fittest of them and best calculated to meet the wants of man will survive. It is right, however, to say that we are not compelled to account for the fact, that druidism seems to have been most flourishing in the western parts of the Celtic world of Caesar's time, wholly by postulating a mixture of race to which it may have been more congenial than to the thoroughbred Aryan Celt : the explanation may partly be, that in the more progressive parts of southern Gaul, the neighbourhood of the Ehone and the Eoman province, the palmy days of druidism were even then over. In Ireland, for instance, druidism and the kingship went hand in hand ; nor is it improbable that it was the same in Gaul, so that when the one fell, the other suffered to some extent likewise. It would thus seem probable that druidism had here and there begun to lose a good deal of its power and influence during the revolutions, which had resulted in the abolition of the ancient king- ship in most of the more important Gaulish communities mentioned by Caesar. This would be the political side of the question ; but it had also a more purely religious aspect, and there was a cause at work the action of which cannot have tended to the greater glory of druidism: I allude to the change which must have come over Gaulish paganism some time or other, and the outward efiect of which was to make the Gaulish Mercury or 232 II. THE ZEUS OF culture-god practically the head and chief of the Gaulish pantheon. Here, again, it is worth the while to compare Celts and Teutons together : in the next lecture it will be attempted to show that the Teutonic counterpart of the GauKsh Mercury and culture-god was Woden ; and it is interesting to find that in this matter both families of nations, as represented by the Gauls and the Norsemen respectively, proceeded on the same lines, in that they made the culture hero paramount over the old gods. Even ia the far east, the same thing is to be noticed in the case of Indra becoming the head of the Hindu pantheon, and, as it is put in the Eig Veda, sending the other gods away like (shrivelled -up) old men.^ It is gratifying to come upon such traces of progress in the theology of our early ancestors, whether Celts or Teutons ; and still more so to think that in the practice of their heathen religion it meant the establishment, probably, of a milder worship, making in some small degree for humanity and greater regard for human life. The older cult of the divinity that was par excellence the god of druidism, with its direst horrors, would probably have left in the hands of the druids despotic power, which the spread of the worship of the Culture hero or Man-god may be supposed to have indirectly tended to lessen. That is, however, but an inference, and the data only amount to negative evidence to the effect, that the sacri- fice of human victims to the Gaulish Mercury is unknown, while the contrary is the case as regards the older divi- nities, Teutates, Esus and Taranis. This would seem like- wise to apply to the Scandinavian Woden, as contrasted J Max Muller's Hib. Lectures, p. 280. THE INSTJIAE CELTS. 233 with the more old-fashioned god Thor : i the former, we are told in one of the Eddie poems, owned all the gentle- folk that fall in fight, but Thor the thrall-kind, which would seem to refer to an ancient custom of sacrificing thralls on Thor's altar.2 This last is described in a well- known passage which speaks of a place called Thors- ness ; and, in its allusion to the blood, it reminds one of the Snowdonian stone called the Eed Altar. "There," says the writer, "is still to be seen the doom-ring wherein men were doomed to sacrifice. Inside the ring stands Thor's stone, whereon those men, who were kept for the sacrifice, had their backs broken, and the blood is still to be seen on the stone." ^ As to Woden, those who fell in battle were regarded as belongmg to him, but it may be doubted that men were sacrificed by the Old N'orsemen to him in the literal and ceremonial sense in which they were to Thor. Were one inclined to draw a parallel in the spirit of Casaubon or Bishops Lowth and Horsley, one might point to the rise of the figure of the Man- god in Celtic and Teutonic heathendom, as helping to introduce a cult less given to the shedding of human blood than that which went before ; and with it one might compare the worship of a very different kind of Man-god who abolished for Christians all the blood sacrifices in which the Jewish 1 It is right, however, to note that with the ancient Germans human sacrifices to their Mercury were, according to Tacitus, not unusual; see his Germania, ix. ^ Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 120. Criminals also of the worst kind were sacrificed to Thor : see the same work, i. 410. ^ See the Eyrlyggia Saga, cited by Vigfusson and Powell in the Corpus, i. 409, where they call attention, by way of comparison, to the Blood-stones in the Fiji Islands. 234 II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. religion, like most other ancient cults, took no small delight in spite of the reforming voice of an Isaiah. It is better, however, to abide on the safer ground of con- fronting one Aryan religion with another; and in this instance one may contrast the direction which progress took in the theology of our ancestors with that which it followed in Greece and Italy, where Zeus or Jove, ethe- realized and expanded like his namesake the heavens, was able to hold his own, though it must be confessed that he came near having a formidable rival, not in any one of the older divinities, but in Heracles, a god whom Greek theology regarded as by birth a mortal. In this matter at least, Celts, Teutons and Hindus take a respect- able position in the comparison with Greeks and Eomans, when, unlike the latter, some of them proceeded to raise to the highest seat in their pantheon the representative of the intellectual aspect of man's nature, and the expo- nent, however narrow and inadequate, of the striving of human reason to conquer all things and surmount all diflB.culties by dint of genius and persistent ejffort. Lectuee III. THE CULTUEE HERO. The great difficulty in studying the religion and mythology of the ancient Celts, is to bridge oyer the gulf of ages dividing the literature of the Celtic nations of the present day from the narrative of the writers of antiquity and the testimony of the stones. But that a few slender lines of connection can be thrown across, has been shown in the case of Nodens ; and I now pro- pose to make a similar attempt in that of a very different figure in the Celtic pantheon. It is but sparingly that the literature of the Goidel speaks of a god or goddess as such, and this applies still more emphatically to that of the Brython. That is, however, but an accident of the medium, so to say, through which our information about Celtic paganism has reached us: the gods have, in "the course of the transmission of the legends about them through Christian channels, been reduced to the status of men playing parts, more or less heroic, in a mythic history. So it is only by careful comparison that one is enabled to find that such and such a hero of our stories was, in the pagan period, such and such a god. Let me call your attention to one of the kind, who, in the Mabinogion, bears the name 236 III. THE CXTLTTJEE HERO. GwTDioN Son or Don. He is intimately associated with the district in North "Wales, which is somewhat loosely termed Arvon.^ In order to place Gwydion's character in a clear light, I venture to give you an abstract of one or two connected tales about him, contained in the Mabinogi, bearing the name of his uncle and tutor Math,^ who was mentioned in the last lecture (p. 225), as having his head-quarters in the Arvonian district with which the name of Gwydion was also connected. The first story relates how Gwydion thrice thwarted his mistress, Arianrhod, with regard to a son of theirs whom she wished to disown. Gwydion had the boy reared at Dinas Dintte, a town or fortress now represented by a huge mound, into which the sea, not far from the western entrance into the Menai Straits, is fast eating its way : the site seems to have been turned to use by the Eomans. But be that as it may, a short dis- tance thence, one is shown a spot where the waves break on a rock visible only at low water. It is the supposed remains of Caer Arianrhod, or Arianrhod's Castle, which local legend affirms to have subsided owing to the wicked- ness of its occupants. Well, Gwydion one day took his boy with him to visit his mother, who had not seen him since his birth ; she was disgusted to find that his father had had him reared, as she was desirous of passing for a virtuous maid : so she laid the boy under a destiny that he was never to have a name tiU she gave him one her- 1 It is the country looking towards the sea hetween the Conwy and the Eivl Mountains, or the Eivals, as they are sometimes called hy Englishmen ; but the coast from the Conwy to Bangor or thereabouts used to be called Arttechwed, and not included in Arvon. 2 B. B. Mob. pp. 70—81 ; Guest, iij. 233-51. III. THE CULTURE HEKO. 237 self, intending that he should ever be nameless. Gwydion went his way, declaritig that the boy should have a name nevertheless ; so one day some time afterwards, he took the lad with him for a walk on the sea-shore. There, by dint of magic, in which he was an adept, he converted some sedges and sea-weeds into a ship fully rigged out with sails and everything requisite for a vessel ; and by another effort of his art he transformed himself and the lad into cordwainers. They moored beneath the walls of Arianrhod's castle, where it was soon announced to the lady that there lay hard by a vessel, with a man and a boy on board busily engaged in fashioning shoes of the most exquisite Cordovan leather anybody had ever seen. She sent to have a pair made for her ; but when the shoes came to be tried on, they proved too large, so that others were ordered. These latter were as much too small; so the cordwainer would work no more for her without measuring her foot himself. She came down to the vessel ; and when she had got on board and expressed her surprise that he could not make a shoe according to measure, a wren lighted on the ship, and the lad took his aim and so cleverly hit it that Arianrhod laughed aloud and exclaimed, that it was with a steady hand^ ^ This is a guess at the meaning required by the context ; but the real signification of the adjective gyffes or (in its dictionary form) cyffes has not been ascertained : it must be analysed cyf-hes, otherwise one cannot account for the ff, and in that case the syllable hes may possibly be a word of the same origin as hyd, ' length,' and the whole word cyffes might be conjectured to have had the meaning of 'long.' "We should then interpret Llaio-gyffes to mean Longi-manus, as in the case of Llew's Goidelic counterpart, Lug Ldm-fada. It is scarcely necessary to add that ftew, 'lion,' is entirely out of place here, as the older form of the name was Lieu, the etymological equivalent of iMg and the 238 III. THE CULTURE HERO. (ttawgyffes) the lion (ftew) hit the wren. Gwydion quickly declared himself pleased with her utterance, and said that the boy's name should thenceforth be Llew Llawgyffes. Of course Arianrhod's dainty foot was left unmeasured, while the ship and its belongings returned into their former elements. Arianrhod was wroth beyond measure, and laid the boy under another destiny, namely, that he was never to wear arms till she put them on him with her own hands. His father declared that it would not avail her ; so when he found . young Llew begin- ning to become an idler for want of arms, he took him out some distance ; and then they came back on horse- back in the guise of bards from South Wales. They announced themselves at Arianrhod's gate, and were admitted to receive the most hearty welcome and good cheer. In the evening, when eating was over, Arianrhod conversed with Gwydion respecting story and history : the Mabinogi adds, ' And he, Gwydion, was a good his- torian.' When it was time, they went to sleep ; but Gwydion got up very early in the morning and betook him to his magic arts. By daybreak the whole country- side was in commotion ; and it was not long ere Arian- rhod and her handmaid knocked at Gwydion's door, which was opened by the younger bard : she had come to tell them in what a plight they were, as the sea could not be seen for ships, and as invaders were landing in all directions. Gwydion told her to have the gates of the castle secured, and to bring arms for him and his fellow-bard. That was done at once; and while the Gaulish. Lugus, Lugoves : it probably meant light, and referred to the sun-god. Ill, THE CULTURE HERO. 239 handmaid helped G-vvydionto put on his arms, Arianrhod herself put arms on the younger man. When she had done, Gwydion asked if his Mend had been completely equipped; she answered that he had, whereupon she was told that there would be no further need of the arms, since the hostile fleet and forces had disappeared. Her anger then was greater than the other time; and she laid the boy under another destiny, to the effect that he should haye no wife of the race then inhabiting the earth. Gwydion went away somewhat disconcerted at this, and journeyed to his uncle, the master magician M^th, com- plaining bitterly of Arianrhod. They resolved to fashion a woman out of flowers to be Llew's wife : they called her Blodeued,^ a name which meant flowers in a collec- tive sense. She was the fairest of the women of her time ; nor was she less faithless than the most notorious of those utilized by poets to point a moral or adorn an epic. She fell in love with another prince, who advised her to ascertain from Llew in what way he could be killed. She found out at length that it could only be done if a bath were made for him beneath a thatched roof in the open air, and if he stood with one foot on the side of the bath and the other on the back of a he-goat : if he were wounded in that position, it would be his death. 1 Another account of her origin is given by the poet D. ab Gwilym, ■who makes her daughter of March ab Meirchionj see poem clxxxiii. p. 365 of the (London) edition of 1789. She is more commonly called Blodeuwed, which may be explained as Antho-eides or Flower-like : this, as the more generally intelligible, is probably the later of the two. The name translated is that of Fflur, Caswallawn's leman (p. 153) ; but whether Fflur, directly represents flSs, floris, ' flower, blossom,' or Flora, the name of an Italian goddess of no better morals than Blodeued, is not easy to decide, as fflur occurs in the sense of Uoom. 240 III. THE CTTLTURE HERO. By simulating innocent curiosity and concern for his safety, slie succeeded in persuading Mm to go to the bath and place himself in the perilous position, when her paramour, lying in wait, cast a spear at him, the head of which remained in his body, whereupon Llew uttered an unearthly cry and flew off in the form of an eagle. When Gwydion heard of it, his grief was incon- solable, and he wandered all over the country for many a weary day in search of his son. At length he came to a place near the Lakes of Nanttte, where he saw in the branches of an oak a wretched eagle, whose flesh kept falling from him to the ground. He guessed that it was Llew, and sang an englyn to him, whereupon the eagle descended to a lower branch: he sang a second englyn, and a third, with the result that the bird alighted at last on his lap. He touched Llew with his wand, when he assumed his former shape, excepting that there was nothing of him left but skin and bones. When Llew recovered, Gwydion and he proceeded to avenge his wrongs : his murderer had to place himself in the position in which Llew was when he was killed ; and so Goronwy Pevr, for that was the name of Blodeued's paramour, died by Llew's unerring spear, while she herself was subjected to a terrible punishment by Gwydion, who overtook her as she was making for the recesses of a dark lake. It is known, however, that there once existed another and older version of the story,, which placed the scene in the skies, and connected the stars in the Milky Way with Gwydion' s hurried pursuit of the erring wife.^ The more common account, given in the ' See Lewis Morris' Celtic Remains, p. 231, s. v. Gtoydion. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 241 Mabinogi, explains that the punishment which he in- flicted on her was to strike her with his wand into an owl, whence it is, we are told, that all other birds hate the owl and permit her to come out only at night. Popular superstition, it may be added on the other hand, gives expression to the feeling of Blodeued in her changed condition : she takes delight in spiting the fair sex of which she was once the fairest, by beginning early in the evening to proclaim from the churchyard yew to the villagers of Glamorgan the tripping in their midst of some unwary maid.i With the fate of Blodeued, doomed by the touch of Gwydion's wand to sleep her days away as an owl, may be compared the Norse account of Sigrdrifa, sometimes identified with Brynhild, punished by "Woden for bringing about the death of a hero favour- ably regarded by him : Woden, we are told, touched the helmed maid with his wand of sleep and she forthwith fell into a slumber, the pale spells of which she had no power of her own to cast ofO,^ The Culture Heed acquiring certain Animals for Man. The Mabinogi of M^th gives another curious tale about Gwydion: the south-western portion of Wales, ^ For this I am indebted to a prize essay on the Folk-lore of Glamorgan at the Aberdare Eistedvod in 1885 : Mr. Thomas Evans, the author, writes as follows : " When an owl was heard hooting early in the night from the yew-tree in our village churchyards, it was looked upon as a sure sign that some unmarried girl of the village had forsaken the path of chastity. There are even now in some places persons who maintain the trustworthiness of this sign (p. 166 of the MS., which, I believe, has not yet been published). 2 Gurjjus Poet. Bor. i. 158. R 242 III. THE CULTURE HERO. including the counties of Pembroke and parts of those of Cardigan and Carmartlien, used to be called Dyved, from its ancient inhabitants the Demetse. Now it had come to Gwydion's knowledge that the king of Dyved, who was called Pryderi, son of Pwyll Head of Hades, had been presented from Hades with a species of ani- mals never before met with in this country, namely, holm, that is to say, swine ; and Gwydion resolved to bring some of them into Gwyneft or his own Yenedotian country, in North Wales. He set out, accordingly, to ask for some of the swine ; but he did not expect his errand to be an easy one. He had, however, full confi- dence in his own powers ; for when Mi,th hinted that he might be refused the swine, his answer was, ' I am not a bad hand at a bargain : I shall not come without the swine.' So he and eleven followers, all disguised as bards from North Wales, presented themselves in due time at the court of Pryderi, on the banks of the river Teivi. They met with an excellent reception; and on the evening of the first day, Pryderi suggested that one of the young men in Gwydion's suite should tell a tale or relate a history — I use both words, because the Mabinogi, touched by no nice discrimination born of the bolder wisdom of a later age, makes no distinction between story and history, between story-tellers and historians.^ Gwydion replied in the following words: 'It is a custom of ours that the chief professional of the company should recite the first night we come to a 1 This will, however, scarcely be treated as irrefragable evidence of antiquity by any one who has thought of the number of the stories which historians still allow to count as history. More than one instance has been noticed in these lectures. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 243 great man's house : I will tell a story willingly.' The Mabinogi thereupon remarks as follows : ' Now Gwydion was the best story-teller in the world ; and he entertained the court that night with amusing entertainments and history, so that he was admired of everybody in the court, and so that Pryderi was delighted to converse with him.' By and by, when Grwydion had charmed the king with his eloquence, he said he wondered whether another would be likely to transact his business with him better than he should himself, to which the king replied, that it was not at all probable, adding words to the effect, that his was an excellent tongue. Pryderi, on beiag told Gwydion's errand, said that he was bound by an engage- ment with his people to part with none of the swine until they had bred double their number in his kingdom. Gwydion asked him not to give him a refusal that eve- ning ; and retired unsuccessful but not disheartened. By the morning, Gwydion produced by magic twelve steeds, fitted out with saddles and bridles mounted with gold wherever iron might have been expected, and twelve jet black white-breasted greyhounds with collars and leashes such as no one could tell, that they were not likewise made of gold. These Gwydion offered to Pryderi in exchange for some of his swine, urging that he would be thereby freed from his engagement to his country neither to sell nor to give the swine away for nothing. Pryderi and his nobles were tempted by the splendour of the gift, and Gwydion set off with the swiae as hur- riedly as he could, for the charm would only last twenty- four hours, when the horses and the hounds would again become the fungus out of which they had been made. Gwydion and his men barely succeeded in reaching the e2 244 in. THE CULTURE HEEO. strongholds of Arvon ere Pryderi and Hs army arrived in pursuit of them; but the war that ensued proved most disastrous to the Demetians, and those of them who regaiaed their country returned without their arras and without their king, who was slaiu by Gwydion iu single combat at the ford called the Yelenryd, between Portmadoc and Maen Twrog: in fact, Maen Twrog^ is mentioned as the spot where he was buried. Now Gwydion's obtaining some of the swine of the Head of Hades is alluded to in the Book of Taliessin,^ a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in a manner imply- ing that it was considered a great achievement on his part ; and the story must have formed part of a tradition pretending to trace some or all of the domestic animals to Hades, whence they were brought by fraud or force by the benefactor of the human race. But the story of the swine does not stand alone : in the great collection of Welsh manuscripts published by Owen Jones (Myvyr) and his friends, under the title of the Myvyrian Archaio- hgy of Wales, on the first day of this century, a few verses occur, i. 167, which are attributed to Gwydion, and they are prefaced in words to the following effect : " These are the englyns sung on the occasion of the battle of Godeu, which others call the battle of Achren. It was fought on account of a white roebuck and a puppy, which were of Hades — Amathaon son of Don had caught them. Therefore Amathaon son of Don fought with Aiawn king of Hades, and there was in the engagement [on the side of Hades] a man who could not 1 R. B. Mab. p. 64, where the MS. has Tyuawe instead of Tyryawc, so printed in Guest's Mab. iij. 196. 2 Skene, ij. 158. III. THE CUITTTKE HERO. 245 be vanquished unless his name could be discovered; while there was a woman on the other side, called Achren, whose name was to be found out before her side could be vanquished. Gwydion son of Don guessed the man's name and sang the two following englyns." They are the verses alluded to, and they embody Gwydion's guess as to the man's name, which he- discovered to be Br^n ; and as Bran, which means ' a crow,' is one of the appel- lations of the terrene god, he may be supposed to have been a principal in the conflict, that is to say, he was probably the king of Hades himself. So the woman called Achren is either to be altogether discarded, or else to be ranged, as appears more probable, on Bran's side ; for Gwydion's first verse, iu spite of the obscurity of its language, seems to give the woman's name as Olgen, which, if correct, proves that she was among his adver- saries, and that the author of the note in the My vyrian misunderstood the text, a thing by no means to be won- dered at.^ The struggle is called in the Triads ^ one of the Three Frivolous Battles, as it is said to have been fought on account of a bitch, a roe and a lapwiag, at the expense of 71,000 lives. Dogs and deer are animals useful to man in different degrees and different ways, 1 The anonymous note in the Myvyrian is couched in language which is inaccurate, not to say illiterate ; but it is doubtless to be regarded as the echo of an ancient myth, though it must be accepted with cau- tion : thus the words relating to the woman called Achren cannot pass unchallenged. They appear to come as we have them from somebody who thought the symmetry of the quarrel required them ; but nothing could be more mistaken ; for it was a peculiarity of the terrene beings, from their king down to the tiniest of Welsh fairies, to conceal their names. ''' i. 47 = iij. 50. 246 III. THE CULTURE HERO. but the introduction of the lapwing is remarkable. But to call the battle a frivolous one shows, as regarded from my point of view, that the original account of it had been forgotten; and the lapwing may have been thrown in by way of emphasisiing the frivolity alluded to. Possibly one should take a different view, and regard the lapwing, called in Welsh cornicyll, from corn ' a horn,' as sacred to, or in some way associated with, the terrene god, whom the Gauls represented with the antlers of a stag ; and the same may have been the cause, partly or wholly, of iatroduciag here an animal of the deer kind. But that does not touch the statement in the Mabinogi of M^th, that before Pryderi had swine sent him from Hades, none had ever been heard of here before. It is worth while noticing that the pig is believed to have been one of the first animals to be domesticated, the first of all being probably the dog ; and the story of the latter is to be foimd at length in Irish literature, with the important substitution of Albion for Hades and lapdog for dog : thus in Cormac's Glossary^ we read that in the time of Cairbre Muse "no lapdog had come into the land of Erinn, and the Britons commanded that no lapdog should be given to the Gael on solicitation or by free wiU, for gratitude or friendship, Now at this time the law among the Britons was. Every criminal for his crime such as hredks the law. There was a beautiful lap- dog iu the possession of a friend of Cairbre Muse in Britain, and Cairbre got it from him [thus]. Once as Cairbre (went) to his house, he was made welcome to 1 Stokes-O'DoQovan, pp. 111-12, s.v. Mug-eime. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 247 everything save the lapdog. Cairbre Muse had a won- derful Skene, around the haft whereof was adornment of silver and gold. It was a precious jewel. Cairbre put much grease about it and rubbed fat meat to its haft, and afterwards left it before the lapdog. The lapdog began and continued to gnaw the haft till morning, and hurt the knife, so that it was not beautiful. On the morrow Cairbre made great complaint of this, and was sorry for it, and demanded justice for it of his friend. ' That is fair, indeed : I will pay for the trespass,' said he. 'I will not take aught,' says Cairbre, 'save what is in the law of Britain, namely, every animal for his crime.'' The lapdog was therefore given to Cairbre, and the name, i. e. Mug-eime [slave of a haft] clung to it, from mug 'a slave' [and eim 'a haft'], because it was given on account of the skene. The lapdog (being a bitch) was then with young. Ailill Flann the Little was then king over Munster, and Cormac, grandson of Conn, at Tara ; and the three took to wrangling, and to demand and contend for the lapdog; and the way in which the matter was settled between the three of them was this, that the dog should abide for a certain time in the house of each. The dog afterwards littered, and each of them took a pup of her litter, and in this wise descends every lapdog in Ireland still." The Irish sub- stitution, for such I take it to be, of lapdog for dog, and Britain for the Sid or Fairy-land, in this tale, go both to show that the original signification of the story had been forgotten ; but other traces of the Goidel's indebted- ness to the terrene powers are to be found in the story of Echaid Airem, or Eochy the Ploughman, which cannot, however, be gone into at this point. 248 III. THE CULTUEE HERO. To return to the battle of Godeu ; it is one frequently- mentioned LU "Welsh poetry, especially in the Book of Taliessin. The poet pretends to have been present at all the great events which have taken place from the beginning of the world, and he says in Poem xiv.^ that he was with Llew and Gwydion in the battle ia question ; but in another poem, usually known by the title of the Harryings of Hades, ^ the poet speaks of himself accom- panying Arthur on board his ship Prydwen to a variety of places — more correctly speaking, perhaps, to one and the same mythical region spoken of under a variety of names. Here we have the exploits of Gwydion and Arthur overlapping : thus one of the expeditions was to Caer Wydyr, or Glass Portress, and to a Caer Ochren, or Castle of Ochren, in which we have a name to be identi- fied probably with the Achren already mentioned (p. 245): in fact, the allusion seems to be to the same battle in which Gwydion is said to have guessed Bran's name. The poem opens with the usual tribute to Christianity, which not unfreqnently begins and ends the Welsh poems most replete with heathen lore, and then it plunges into what proves to be a reference to Gwydion and Arthur. The first stanza is to the following effect : ' The Lord, I adore him, princely sovereign, Whose sway is over earth's strand extended. Stout vi^as the prison of Gweir in Caer Sidi, Through the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi : Before him no one entered thereinto. The heavy dark chain held the faithful youth. And while Hell was spoiled, he grievously sang, And thenceforth till doom he remains a bard. 1 Skene, i. 151 2 Poem XXX. : see Skene, ij. 181. III. THE CULTURE HEUO. 249 Thrice Prydwen's freight went we to Caer Sidi, Thence but seven did we regain our country.' Tte same couplet, slightly modified to suit the rhyme, closes the remaining six stanzas of the poem, with the exception of the last, which ends with a short prayer ; and we know from another poem^ in the same manuscript that Caer Sidi was in a mythical country beneath the waves of the sea. Pryderi and his father Pwyll Head of Hades have already been mentioned, though it is not evident who was meant by their apostle or messenger ; but it may be guessed that it was the porter of Hades. His masters, however, could not be expected to have treated Gweir with tenderness in case he should prove to have been Gwydion ; and here it may be asked why Gweir should be supposed to have been Gwydion, Now Gweir son of Gweiryoed occurs in one of the Triads, where he is called one of the Three Paramount Prisoners of the Isle of Britain, the other two being Llud^ and Mabon (p. 28), both gods of the pagan Celts ; and we seem to be warranted in assuming Gweir to have been of similar rank. But it is right to mention, as an instance of Arthur's intrusion, that, in spite of the triadic arrangement, his name is here added as that of a fourth and greater prisoner than the other three. The triad referred to is found in one of the collections in the Eed Book of Hergest, a Jesus College manuscript of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; but it occurs in a brief and presumably old form in an earlier group in 1 No. xiv. : see Skene, ij. 155, i. 276. 2 ij. 49 : see also E. B. Mah. p. 131; the other versions have Lhjr, Triads, i. 50, iij. 61. 250 III. THE CTJLTUEE HERO. the same manuscript, wliere,^ instead of Gweir son of Gweiryoed, -we read Geir son of Geiryoed^ and the pro- bable identity of Geir with Gwydion will appear when the etymology of the latter name comes to be discussed later. Poetry associated in its Origin with the Cxjlture Hero. One of the most remarkable things in the Taliessin poem just cited, is the statement that, in consequence of what he went through in his captivity, Geir should for ever continue a bard or poet ; but traces of a some- what similar notion meet one in the once prevalent belief, that if a man spent a night on the Merioneth mountain, where the giant Idrys was thought to have ' Triads, ij. 7j R.B. Mab. p. 300. ^ The difference is of importance, and the reading Geir is supported by the other versions {Triads, i. 50, iij. 61) in which the name is men- tioned. The genuineness of the latter has in its favour the fact that they say nothing about Arthur, while they describe the personage here iu question as Geir son of Geiryon, lord of Geirionyd, a locality whose name survives in connection with the Lake of Geirionyd, whose waters fall from Gwydion's country into the Conwy a little below Llanrwst. Thus the earlier Triad in the Eed Book and all the other published versions of the Triads read Geir, while the later Triad in the Red Book and the verse in the Taliessin poem, which may be regarded as of about the same age, probably, as the portion of the Red Book in which the Triads occur, give us Gweir : which then is to bo regarded as having the prior claim ? The probability is decidedly in favour of Geir, which, as meaning ' word,' and otherwise unknown as a proper name, may readily be supposed to have been replaced by the better known personal name Gweir; I should, however, not discard the latter, but rather regard both Geir and Gweir as referring to the same. Geiryoed was pronounced, as in modern Welsh, Geirioed; similarly the Gweiryoed of the Triads was Gweirioed. Add to this that the old forms Gweir and Geir become later Gwair and Gair. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 251 Ms cader or seat, one would descend in the morning a bard or a madman ; wliile on Snowdon tlie place to pass the night with a view to the same result was the hollow underneath the huge block called the Black Stone of the Ardu, near the Black Tarn of the Ardu. It is some- times assumed that the exposure chiefly constituted the ordeal, but that yiew is untenable ia the case of the latter sheltered position; while the dismal tarn of the Ardu was formerly believed to be haunted by a race of fairies,^ and the word Ardu,^ < black,' found elsewhere applied to the terrene god, suggests that the hardship consisted ia passing a night in the society of him and his fairies. These last, regarded from the popular point of view, may be said to delight chiefly in music and dancing, while instances are also mentioned of their expressing themselves in verse and of their joining to sing stanzas of poetry in a sort of chorus.^ But in Irish literature, poetry is even more explicitly associated with them, as, for example, in a curious story published by 0' Curry,* to the following effect: ''Finn observed a favourite warrior of his company, named Gael O'Neamh- ain, coming towards him, and when he had come to Finn's presence, he asked him where he had come from. Gael answered that he had come from Brugh in the north (that is the fairy mansion of Brugh, on the Boyne). 1 Ehys in the Cymmrodor, iv. 180. ^ Book of Taliessin, poem xlviij. (Skene, ij. 203). ^ Ehys in the Cymmrodor, v. 127. * MS. Mat. pp. 308-9 : the poem referred to is translated at pp. 309-11, and the Irish text and the rest of the story, from the BooJc of Lismore, fol. 206. b. a, is given at pp. 594-7. 252 III. THE CULTURE HERO. What -was your business there? said Finn. To speak to my nurse, Muirn, the daughter of Derg, said Cael. About what? said Finn. Concerning Cred^, the daughter of Cairbr^, king of Kerry \_Ciaraighe Luachrd], said Cael. Do you know, said Finn, that she is the greatest deceiver [flirt, coquette] among all the women of Erinn ; that there is scarcely a precious gem in all Erinn that she has not obtained as a token of love; and that she has not yet accepted the hand of any of her admirers ? I know it, said Cael; but do you know the conditions on which she would accept a husband ? I do, said Finn : whoever is so gifted in the art of poetry as to write a poem descriptive of her mansion and its rich furniture, will receive her hand. Good, - said Cael ; I have with the aid of my nurse composed such a poem ; and if you will accompany me, I will now repair to her court and present it to her." They went there, and the sequel relates that Crede was so charmed with Cael's genius that she gave him her hand and left off her life of flirtation. O' Curry also gives the substance of a story which may be regarded as the Irish parallel to Gweir's cap- tivity, of which Welsh literature tells us so little : it even relates what happened to the captive ; or, to be more accurate, the meaning of the original incident having been clean forgotten, no captive or prisoner figures in 0' Curry's version, but only a poet who failed to meet with due hospitality. It will be remembered that Nuada of the Silver Hand had lost his hand and arm in a con- flict with the mythic race of the Fir Bolg or the Bag- men, and that on account of that blemish he had to give up his throne, when it was taken possession of by Bres Ill, THE CULTURE HEEO. 253 (pp. 120, 122). Now this Bres^ belonged by race to the terrene or submarine folk called the Fomori, more or less closely associated with the Fir Bolg, though Irish legend usually tries to distinguish them. We are told that while Bres was in power, " a certain poet and satirist named Cairbr^, the son of the poetess Etan, visited the king's court; but in place of being received with the accustomed respect, the poet was sent, it appears, to a small dark chamber, without fire, furniture, or bed, where he was served with three small cakes of dry bread only, on a very small and mean table. This treatment," O'Curry goes on to say, " was in gross violation of public law, and could not fail to excite the strongest feeling. The poet accordingly arose on the next morning, full of discontent and bitterness, and left the court not only without the usual professional compliments, but even pronouncing a bitter and withering satire on his host. This was the first satire ever, it is said, written in Erinn ; and although such an insult to a poet, and the public expression of his indignation in consequence, would fall very far short of penetrating the quick feelings of the nobiUty or royalty of these times (so different are the customs of ancient and modern honour ),2 still it was suffi- cient in those early days to excite the sympathy of the whole body of the Tuatha D^ Danann, chiefs and people." ^ The result was that Bres had to escape and seek the aid of his kinsmen the Fomori : the Tuatha D^ Danaan came and fought a great battle with them, in which the Fomori ''■ Tlie later spelling is Breas, and some have attempted to base a distinction of persons on that unstable foundation. 2 'Curry's Lectures were published in 1860. 3 MS. Mat. pp. 248-9. 254 III. THE CULTURE HERO. were defeated and their great captains killed. So goes the story as related by O'Curry, and no one knew Irish literature better than he, but one can no longer follow him in treating this as history. Without the aid, how- ever, of the meagre allusions in Welsh poetry and prose, we should have been groping about in vain for the mean- ing of such a myth. Grwydion, as Gweir, let us say, goes to Caer Sidi beneath the waves of the sea, and Cairbre visits the court of the Fomorian king Bres, of submarine origin. The Welsh hero becomes a bard — originally the story made him probably the first bard of Welsh legend — as the result of the treatment dealt out to him there; while Cairbre gives utterance to the first satire composed in Erinn, which comes to the same thing, as the first efEort of the Celtic muse was pre- sumably of the nature of a magic spell, which, according to Irish belief, was irresistible, and productive, among other effects, of immediate blotches on the face of him against whom it was pronounced : in this instance it was the means of hurriedly driving from his throne the Fomorian, whose treatment of Cairbre is to be ascribed to jealousy rather than contempt for the poet's art; for Bres is doubtless to be identified with the personage of that name said to be the son of Brigit goddess of poetry (p. 75), and of Elathan king of the Fomori.^ In both versions the individual efforts of the man of poetry was followed by the coming of his friends, to harry Hades, according to the Welsh account, and to overthrow the Fomori, according to the Irish one. With Cairbre, poet and satirist, is doubtless to be identified a Cairbre ^ Bk. of Leinster, 187 c. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 255 known as the possessor of a wonderful crowd or Celtic banjo, in wMch there was a so-called chord of science, which, tuned by Cairbre's hand, left him in ignorance of no secret from the rising of the sun that day to the setting thereof: his crowd told him everything.^ One may further venture to identify with Cairbre, poet and musician, Cairbre, the father of the poetic lady Crede, to whom allusion has just been made. As Gwydion was king of a part of "Wales, so this Cairbre was king of Kerry; and above all is he probably to be identified with Cairbre Muse, who figures in the story of the Dog and the Skene, in which we found a parallel to Gwydion cheating Pryderi son of Pwyll Head of Hades, in the matter of his swine. That this Cairbre corresponds to Gwydion and may even be equated with him, will appear still more probable when we come to compare their families with one another. Suffice it for the present to say, that many Munster houses traced their descent back to Cairbre Muse, and that many districts in the south-west of Ireland are called after his name or some one of his various surnames ^ to this day. Nor, lastly, is the Cairbre who was mentioned in the story of Lomna's Head (p. 98) to be overlooked; for his relations with the Luignian wife of Finn seem beyond doubt to 1 O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 250-1. ^ O'Donovan, Book of Rights, pp. 42, 45, 48, 83 ; Four Masters, A.D. 165, 186. The name Cairbre, Cairpre, Coirpri and Corpri, ibr it is found spelled in these and other ways, was not an uncommon one ; but its etymology is obscure, nor is it evident whether it was in use before it was given to the counterpart of Gwydion. In Welsh it was Oorbre, which occurs in the Black Book : see Skene, ij. 29. 256 Iir. THE CULTURE HERO.' form part of an older and more complete account of the culture hero. To return to the Welsh poem on the harrying of Hades, among the things which the spoilers found there was the cauldron of the Head of Hades ; and we are told of it that it had a ridge of pearls round its brim, that voices issued from it, that it was kept boiling by the breath of nine maidens, and that it was a discriminating vessel, which would not cook food for a coward, a peculiarity to be compared with the knack of refusing to cook during the narration of an untrue story, which was supposed to characterize the food in the fairy palace of Mananndn mac Lir.^ The invaders left the cauldron in the hands of one of their number, for it was in all probability the chief object of their incursion into the realm of Hades. All this would have been very puzzling had not "Welsh litera- ture preserved other references to the mysterious vessel. The Mabinogi of Branwen speaks^ of a cauldron which a giant called Llassar had brought up out of a lake in Ireland and given to Bran son of Llyr : one of its pro- perties was, that a dead warrior thrown into it would be alive and well by the next morning, but unable to speak. This was a use it was put to in the war which Br§,n waged later in Ireland, and on account of this property which it was supposed to have, it is occasionally referred to as Pair Dadeni^^ or the Cauldron of Eegeneration, Now the names both of Br^n and Llassar connect the cauldron with Hades, and on Irish ground we meet with 1 Ossianic Soe. Trans, iij. 221-9. 2 R. B. Mob. pp. 31-2, 39, 40; Guest, iij. 110-1, 123-4. 3 D. ab Gwilym, poem cxxxviij. (London, 1789, p. 276). III. THE CULTURE HERO. 267 its like as the cauldron of the Dagda, -whicli was one of the treasures of the Tuatha Dd Danaan : it was called the Undry/ as it was neyer empty, and it was so discreet that each one had out of it what was in proportion to his merit. No company ever rose from it unsatisfied, and the legend concerning it is that the Tuatha D6 Danaan had brought it from a mythical place called Murias,^ in which we have a reference doubtless to some locality beneath the sea (in Irish muir), like Caer Sidi in Talies- sin's poems : it was probably one of the objects of their seven years' sojourn in the country called Dobar and lardohar^^ or 'Water' and 'Behind Water.' The Welsh poem already cited is not the only one in the Book of Taliessin which refers to the harrying of Hades by Gwydion : I would now refer to another, in which Grwydion is mentioned by that name. The poem is entitled Kat Godeu, or the Battle of Godeu, which, interpreted, appears to mean the Battle of Trees; and accordingly various trees and shrubs are described as taking part in the fightiag; and the whole idea challenges comparison with that of the Battle of the Birds in the popular tales of the West Highlands.* Taliessin pretends, after his wont, to have been present in the fray, and to 1 Irish Caire Ainsic, 'the Undry Cauldron :' see the Stokes-O'Dono- van ed. of Gormac, p. 45 ; also O'Donovan's Battle of Magh Rath (Dublin, 1842), pp. 50-3, where, besides the Dagda's, other cauldrons are mentioned of similar virtues. 2 Keating's History of Ireland (Dublin, 1880), p. 117. 3 Ibid. p. 112; OTlaherty's Ogygia, i. 12. * Campbell, i. 25, et seq. S 258 III. THE CULTURE HERO. have taken no mean part in it : he boasts to the following efEeot : ^ " I am not a man not to sing : I have sung since I was little ; I sang in the battle of Godeu of the foliage, In front of Britain's gwledig. I pierced in their midst the chargers Of the fleets of ... . I pierced the heast of the great gem, Which had a hundred heads. And a formidable batallion Under the root of its tongue. Another batallion there is In the back of its head. A gaping black toad There is with a hundred claws. A crested snake of many colours — A hundred souls by reason of sin Are tormented in its flesh. I have been in the fort of Nevenhyr Where hurried grass and trees ; There men of arts made music, There men of battle made haste. A resurrection for the Brythons Was made by Gwydion : They had called on Neivon, On Christ from .... To the end He might rescue them, The Supreme who had made them. To them the Lord responded Both in words and in the elements : ' Fashion kingly trees Into hosts under his lead. And frustrate Peblic Of the ignoble fight hand to hand.'" The reference to a person called Peblic is obscure to me; but besides the expedient of converting a forest, with 1 Skene, ij. 138, and i 277-8. III. THE CTJLTIIRE HERO. 259 its various kinds of trees, shrubs and grasses, into an army by enchantment, we have a reference, probably in the resurrection effected for the Brythons by G-wydion, to his having secured the Head of Hades' Cauldron of Eegeneration, and to its use by Gwydion to resuscitate his fallen friends. Before the poet makes the trees begin to fight, with the alder foremost in the fray, he indulges in some score of lines which are too obscure for me to offer you a translation : this is the more unfortunate as he iutroduces a woman into his narrative, and her inter- vention, as I learn from other sources, was probably of the essence of the story. But a more transparent refer- ence to her will be found in the Irish poem which is now to be introduced for comparison with the "Welsh one. St. Patrick, trying to convert Loegaire mac N^ill, king of Ireland, was told by the latter that he would not believe unless he called up Ciichulaian from the dead : this was done, but the unwilling convert cherished doubts as to his identity, and said that he must speak to him ; so Cuchulainn was called up again, and he improved the opportunity to bid the king believe in God and St. Patrick ; but, said that curious king, if it be Cuchu- laian., let him discourse of his great deeds. I should premise that Cuchulainn was the most celebrated of the heroes known to Irish story, but that he does not cor- respond exactly to Gwydion, as he combines, roughly speaking, the role in Irish story which should answer to that both of Gwydion and of his son Llew in Welsh. But more of this elsewhere : for the present let it suffice to say that Cdchulainn complied with the king's wish, and the poem put into his mouth describes, among other things, his expedition to the stronghold of Scath, in the S.2 260 in. THE CULTURE HERO. land of Scatli : tlie term Bcath means shadow or shade, and is of the same origin as the English word. His story runs thus : ^ "A journey I made, Loegaire, When I went to the land of Scath ; There was the fort of Scath with its look of iron — I laid hands upon it. Seven walls there were around this city ; Hateful was its stronghold : An iron palisade there was on each wall, On which seven heads were biding ; Doors of iron there were on every side ; No serious defences against women. I struck them with my foot, So that they fell into fragments. A pit there was in the fort, That belonged to the king, as they say ; Ten serpents burst forth Over its brim^ — it was a deed ! Thereupon I ran at them. Though the throng was huge, And reduced them to bits Between my two fists. There was a house full of toads. That were let loose upon us, Sharp and beaked beasts That clave to my snout. Ugly dragon-like monsters Were sent against us ; 1 The text occupies folios 113 — 115 in the Book of the Dun, and it has been published, with a translation and notes, by Mr. O'Beirne Crow, in the Journal of the Kilkenny Arch. Society for 1870-1, pp. 371 — 448. Important corrections will be found in Stokes' Remarks on the Celtic Additions to Curtius' Greek Etymology, &c. (Calcutta, 1875), pp. 55-7. ^ Somewhat similar adventures are related of Connall Cernach in the story called Tain B6 Frdich : see the Bk. of Leinster, 252 a, and the whole story as published with a translation by O'Beirne Crow in the E. Ir. Academy's Irish MS. Series, i. 136 — 171. III. THE CXTLTUEE HEEO. 261 Strong were their witcheries, Though they .... After this I ran at them, When .... I ground them in small pieces Between my two palms. There was a cauldron in that fort : It was the calf of the three cows, Thirty joints of meat in its gullet Were not its charge. Much gold and silver was there in it, Splendid was the find : That cauldron was given [to us] By the daughter of the king. The three cows we took them away, They swam the sea : There was of gold a load for two men. To each of them on her neck. When we went on the ocean That was vast by the north, The crew of my coracle was drowned By the cruel tempest. After this I brought, Though it was a sharp danger, Nine men on each of my hands And thirty on my head ; Eight on my two sides Clung to my body. It is thus I swam the sea Untn I was in haven." This curious poem tells us whj so few of those who invaded Hades returned : they were overwhelmed by a cruel squall on the vast sea in the north. The previous "Welsh poem reduces the survivors to seven, but Ciichu- lainn makes them sixty-four, while the sundry attempts of Irish history to give what appeared a more rational form to the story has reduced them to exactly thirty — 262 III, THE CULTURE HERO. the crew, as they would say, of one boat that escaped. According to Keating,^ who wrote his History of Ireland out of materials such as were accessible in that country in his time, certain of the Fomori called More and Conaing^ held Ireland under a grievous tribute: they had built themselves a stronghold called Tor Conaing, 'Conaing's Tower,' in Torinis, or Tower Island, now better known as Tory Island, off the coast of Donegal ; and that spot served them as a rendezvous for their preda- tory fleets. At length the children of Nemed, who were then the inhabitants of Ireland, mustered 30,000 armed men by sea, with as many by land, and succeeded in demolishing Conaing's Tower and slaying its owner; but More arriving with reinforcements, another battle ensued, in which the combatants, busied in the fray, allowed the sea to overwhelm them so completely that on the Fomorian side only More and a few followers escaped, while the surviving children of IsTemed con- sisted of only thirty strong men, the crew of a single boat. One of the chief men of the thirty is mentioned as bearing the name lobath son of Beothach, who should be the counterpart of Ciichulainn, or more likely of Gwydion; but nothing is known further about him, except that he is represented as being grandson of a faith or vates called larbhoinel.^ The Four Masters undertook in their Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland to date the event they caU the Demolition of Conann's Tower, and to fix on the year I Pp. 87—91. ^ He is also called Gonann or Oonand, as in the £k. of Leinster, 127 a. ^ Also called (in the genitive) lardonel, namely, in the BJc. of the Dun, fol. 16 6, where, hpweyer, the name of lobath is not mentioned. III. THE CULTURE HERO, 263 3066 A.M. But the most curious account of this mythic event occurs in the stories associated with the name of Nennius. The whole paragraph in point is worth citing, as it enumerates briefly the legendary colonizations of Erinn, beginning with the customary Bartholomew, whose name in this connection has always elicited more ques- tions than answers. After him comes Nemed and his race, and then the three sons of the Miles Hispaniae, whence the so-called Milesian Irish; and it is by this race, and not by the children of Nemed that Conaing's Tower was destroyed, according to Nennius. His words are to the following effect : " Latest of all came the Scotti from the coasts of Spain to Erinn ; but the first to come was Partholomaeus, with a thousand followers, both men and women, and they increased to four thousand souls ; and a mortality came upon them in which they all perished in one week, so that not even a single one of them remained. The second to come to Erinn was Nimeth, son of a certain Agnomen, who is said to have been on sea for a year and a half, and to have at last made land in Erinn, when his ships had been wrecked : he remained there for many years, but taking again to the sea with his men, he returned to Spain. Afterwards came the three sons of a certain soldier from Spain, having with them thirty keels and their thirty consorts in each keel, and they abode there for the space of one year. Afterwards they beheld a glass tower in the middle of the sea, and they used to see men on the tower, to whom they sought to speak, but they never used to be answered ; so with one accord they hastened to attack the tower, with all their keels and all their women, except one keel which suffered 264 III, THE CULTURE HERO. from shipwreck, and in wliicli there were thirty men and as many women. Now the other vessels sailed to the attack on the tower, and whilst all were stepping on the shore around the tower, the sea orerwhelmed them, so that they were drowned. Not one of them escaped ; and it is from the family in the keel left behind on account of its having been wrecked, the whole of Erinn has been filled with people to this day." ^ The more a tale of this kind is touched up by historians, the less it appears what is called ' a cock-and-bull story,' and- there can be no doubt that, on the whole, the Ciichu- lainn verses come much nearer the original than the prose versions mentioned. Still that associated with the name of Nennius supplies two most important omissions in the former : it calls the stronghold a glass tower, which was doubtless the glass fort to which Taliessin extends Arthur's fame ; and in the next place it states that the guardians of the glass tower would not answer the Milesians, which has also its counterpart in Taliessin's words, when he says : ^ ' Beyond the Glass Fort, Arthur's valour they had not seen ; Three score hundreds stood on the waU : It was hard to converse with their watchman.' What, it may be asked, is the meaning of stories like these about expeditions into a country in or beneath the sea to steal the cauldron of the king, to carry away the cows that supplied milk for it, and the other treasures to be found there ? Let it sufiice for the present that I should somewhat vaguely indicate their origin. The Celts, ^ For the original, see San-Marte's Nennius et Gildas, § 13 (pp. 34-6). ^ For the text, see Skene, ij. 182. III. THE CULTURE HEEO. 265 in common probably with all other peoples of Aryan race, regarded all tbeir domestic comforts as derived by them from their ancestors in the forgotten past, that is to say, from the departed. They seem, therefore, to have reasoned that there must be a land of untold wealth and bliss somewhere in the nether world inhabited by their dead ancestors ; and the further inference would be that the things which they most valued themselves in life had been procured from the rulers of that nether world through force or fraud by some great benefactor of the human race ; for it seldom seems to have entered their thoughts that the powers below would give up anything for nothing. This is illustrated over and over again in the fairy tales of the Celts, when they represent persons who have lived on the most friendly terms with the fairies, trying, when returning to their friends in this world, to smuggle into it some of the wealth of the country visited by them under-ground : they always fail in their object, and only succeed in rousing the indigna- tion of the fairies. The same thing might be illustrated from the beliefs of other nations at considerable length ; but I will only adduce as instance a Maori tale, which represents a woman who visited her dead relatives trying to bring back with her some sweet potatoes, a most im- portant article of food to the aborigines of New Zealand. The story is told by Dr. Tylor,i to the effect that the narrator of it had a servant named Te Wharewera, who related to him that " an aunt of this man [Te Wharewera] died in a solitary hut near the banks of Lake Eotorua. Being a lady of rank she was left in her hut, the door ^ In his Primitive Culture, ij. 50-2, from the SGCond ed. of Short- land's Traditions of New Zealand, p. 150. 266 III. THE CULTURE HERO. and windows were made fast, and the dwelling was abandoned, as her death, had made it tapu. But a day or two after, Te Wharewera with some others paddling in a canoe near the place at early morning saw a figure on the shore beckoning to them. It was the aunt come to life again, but weak and cold and famished. When suflficiently restored by their timely help, she told her story. LeaviQg her body, her spirit had taken flight toward the North Cape, and arrived at the entrance of Eeigna. There, holding on by the stem of the creeping akeake-plant, she descended the precipice, and found herself on the sandy beach of a river. Looking round, she espied in the distance an enormous bird, taller than a man, coming towards her with rapid strides. This ter- rible object so frightened her, that her first thought was to try to return up the steep cliff ; but seeing an old man paddling a small canoe towards her she ran to meet him, and so escaped the bird. When she had been safely ferried across, she asked the old Charon, mentioning the name of her family, where the spirits of her kindred dwelt. Following the path the old man pointed out, she was surprised to find it just such a path as she had been used to on earth ; the aspect of the country, the trees, shrubs, and plants were all familiar to her. She reached the village, and among the crowd assembled there she found her father and many near relations; they saluted her, and welcomed her with the wailing chant which Maoris always address to people met after long absence. But when her father had asked about his living relatives, and especially about her own child, he told her she must go back to earth, for no one was left to take care of his grandchild. By his orders she refused to touch III. THE CULTURE HERO. 267 the food that the dead people offered her, and in spite of their efforts to detain her, her father got her safely into the canoe, crossed with her, and parting gave her from under his cloak two enormous sweet potatoes to plant at home for his grandchild's especial eating. But as she began to climb the precipice again, two pursuing infant spirits pulled her back, and she only escaped by flinging the roots at them, which they stopped to eat, while she scaled the rock by help of the akeake-stem, till she reached the earth and flew back to where she had left her body." So much for the Maori story ; but the jealousy of the powers below is sometimes got oyer, as in the case of a mortal who has been of service to a fairy, and has as a recompence some of his treasure given to him; and there are, as we need scarcely say, some important myths, Welsh and Irish, which represent the heroes of them conferring a benefit on one of the powers of Hades, and coming away with goodwill from that country, and in possession of some of its treasure and wealth. But they must be passed by, as I have not yet done with the cauldron stories, especially those which give it a spiritual or intellectual aspect. "Welsh literature has preserved some references in point, such as one in a Taliessin poem^ to the effect that three muses had emerged from Giant Ogyrven's cauldron. But Ogyrven seems to be one of the names of the terrene god, so that Ogyrven's cauldron should be no other probably than that which we have found ascribed to the Head of Hades. Tiirther, by another kind of treatment, the elements of poetry and ^ Skene, ij. 156, i. 260. 268 III. THE CULTURE HERO, knowledge came to be themselves called ogyrvens, wliicli applied, among other things, to the letters of the alphabet, as will be seen from the following extract from a manu- script supposed to date from the end of the fifteenth century : " The three elements of a letter are / | \, since it is of the presence of one or other of the three a letter con- sists ; they are three beams of light, and it is of them are formed the sixteen ogyrvens, that is, the sixteen letters. There belong also to another art seven [score] and seven ogyrvens, which are no other than the symbols of the rank of the seven score and seven words in the parentage of the "Welsh language, and it is from them all other words are derived." ^ As to the /|\, they form the component parts of such letters as those of the Ogam, the "Welsh bardic letters, and the Eunic alphabets, which were made up of straight lines fitted for cutting on slips of wood ; but more obscurity surrounds the seven score and seven ogyrvens alluded to ; they were probably not very definitely fixed in point of number, and they are doubtless to be identified with the exactly seven score ogyrvens said to be in awen, 'poesy or muse.' This statement, in a context connecting the ogyrvens with Hades, occurs in another Taliessin poem,^ which, while obscure throughout and relating in part probably to alchemy, bears the curious title of Angar Kyfyndawt, or Steam of Combination, and contains a reference to cauldrons made to boil without the aid of fire. Treated as a personality, Ogyrven appears as the father of poetry : thus Kyndelw, a poet of the twelfth century, calls himself 1 Ibid. ij. 324 (note by Mr. Silvan Evans); Ebys, Lectures on Welsh Phil pp. 302—305. 2 Skene, ij. 132. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 269 'a bard of the bards of Ogyrven;'! and Cuhelyn, another "Welsh poet, begins two of his poems, as they appear in a manuscript of the twelfth century called the Black Book of Carmarthen, with a formula which makes Zerridwen, the goddess still supposed to be invoked by "Welsh bards in the undertakings of their art, to be the offspring of Ogyrven.2 But it is not easy precisely to see how the name of Ogyrven came to mean any element of poetry, art or science; it is remarkable, however, that another Taliessin poem^ makes the terrene god, under the name TIthr Ben, or "Wonderful Head, say of himself, not only that he was bard, harper, piper and crowder, but ' seven score professionals' all in one, which is doubtless another account of the seven score ogyrvens. The difficulty of this mystery was disposed of by the euhemerist of the Mabinogi of Branwen by simply making Bran, whose marvellous head was the subject of some remarks in the first lecture (pp. 78, 97), carry on his own shoulders the musicians * of his court, when he waded through the waters to Ireland. Ogyrven has Kerridwen associated with him, not only by Cuhelyn, but also by Kyndelw, in a poem already mentioned; she is, however, best known in connection with her Cauldron of Sciences, from which, together with its owner herself, the wisdom and know- ledge of Taliessin were supposed to be derived. ^ Myv. Archaiology, i. 230. ^ Skene, ij. 5, 6. 3 lb. ij. 203-4. ■* R. B. Mob. p. 35 : the original reads, Ac yna ykerddys ef ac aoed ogerd arSest ar y geuyn ehun. This was too much for the translator in the Guest edition, who has extracted from it the statement, " Then he proceeded with what provisions he had on his own back : " see Guest's Mah. iij. 117. 270 HI. THE CULTURE HERO. GWYDION AND OTHER NaMES OF THE CULTURE HeRO. Even Taliessin, the most extravagant in his pretensions of all Celtic hards, acknowledged one who took precedence over him, and that was Gweir, whom we have found called also Geir, and whom Taliessia is made to describe as the first to go into Caer Sidi, where he underwent captivity which resulted iu his being a bard for ever afterwards. The name Geir has been provisionally claimed as one of Gwydion's, and he is now to be considered imder another and a third name. A line occurs iu a TaHessin poem^ where Gwydion is called Gwydion 8eon tewdor, where Seon tewdor is probably to be taken as standiug in grammatical apposition to Gwydion. To dis- pose of tewdor J suffice it to say that iu the "Welsh ortho- graphy of the present day it would be written tewddor, meaning literally thick-door, but used poetically here in the sense of stout defence or strong protection : that is to say, the poet regarded Seon as a strong protection or one that gave it, and the word is applied ia another of these poems 2 to the gwledig Cuneda. But our interest centres in the vocable Seon; it occurs also in another poem,^ where mention is made of the planets in the fol- lowing verses : ' Seith seren yssyd. ' Seven stars are there seitlinawn dofyd. Of the seven gifts of the Lord ; Seon sywedyd. Seon the philosopher, A wyr eu defnyd.' He knows their nature.' Here Seon is seen in the character of a philosopher or man of science, who knows the nature or substance, lite- 1 Skein, ij. 199. 2 jb ij. 201. » lb. ij. 162. Ill, THE CT7LTUEE HERO. 271 rally tlie timbering or material, of tlie planets. The next reference to be mentioned is to a Taliessia poem called tbe Ale Song,^ -where we have the following couplet : • Ef kyrch kerdoryon. ' It they seek, the artists Se syberw Seon.' Of Se Seon the Stately.' The bards have suffered enormously from thirst for ages unaumbered, and the pronoun here probably stands for the cwrw or ale they desired ; but the passage is interest- ing as promiscuously describing poets and musicians of all descriptions as the artists of Se Seon, and as recording the simpler form of the name Seon : compare Nav Neivion, March MeircMon and the like, not forgetting an instance in the case of the very god in question, namely, that of Gwyd Gwydion^ to be mentioned presently. There was a place in North Wales called Caer Seon or Seion, that is to say, Seon's Town or Fortress, and it was probably no other than that which the Eomans called Segontium, the site of which is now occupied by the town of Carnarvon. This appears from a poem printed in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, i. 476, and supposed to date from the thirteenth century or the earlier part of the succeeding one. It alludes to Maelgwn and his court coming from ' Tir Mab Don Dued,' or the side of the Son of Don's Land, whereby Mona was meant, to Caer Seion; and the story goes that Maelgwn, who took a delight in fomenting the natural rivalry existing between the poets and the musicians of his court, ordered them all to swim across, which they did, with the result of rendering the strings on which the latter depended 1 Skene, ij. 167. ^ Compound forms also occur, namely, in Gynwyd Gynwydion. 272 III. THK CULTURE HERO. for the effect of their art useless to them, to the great satisfaction of the poets, who could sing as -well as ever when once they got on land. No other part of the Menai would suit the story so well as that near Carnarvon. Further, a dialogue^ is given in the Black Book between Taliessin and the lord of the Dinas or stronghold, the remains of which give its name to a railway-station between Carnarvon and Dinas Dintte, or the Fortress of Llew and Gwydion. Taliessin is asked the whence and whither of his journey ; to which he is made to reply, as it stands in this manuscript of the twelfth century, that he was coming from Caer Seon from fighting with Jews, and that he was going to Llew and Gwydion's Town. The reference to the Jews is probably the result of somebody's mistaking Caer Seon for Sion or Jerusalem : the poem in its original form had probably no reference to the Jews, and Caer Seon doubtless meant Segontium. 8e^ Seon or Seion, point back to stems Se^- and Seffon-, and there is little room for doubt that the name Segontium^ 1 Skene, ij. 57. ^ Besides the "Welsh name Caer Seon, and the other which we know only in its Latin form of Segontium, this last was naturalized in Welsh, probably at an early date, as Segeint, whence Cair Segeint in the British Museum MS. Harl. 3859, fol. 195a.- it is also mentioned by Nennius. Segeint is regularly formed from Segontium, and is also regularly reduced in later Welsh into Seint and Sein, which occurs as the name of the river washing the base of Edward's Castle at Carnarvon, its mouth being termed Aler Sein, and the town Kaer Aber Sein, ia Maxeris Dream {R. B. Mab. pp. 87-8). In fact, this vocable in one of its forms is indispensable to the explanation of the name Carnarvon itself, which is in Welsh Caer yn Arfon, meaning literally, ' a castle in Arvon,' not even the castle in Arvon ; but the key is not far to seek : the full name occurs in the MaMnogi of Branwen (B. B. Mab. p. 34) as Kaer Seint yn Arvon, or 'the Castle of Seint in Arvon.' Seint in III. THE CTJLTUEE HERO. 273 itself is formed from that of the god. Further, not only was there a people in the south of this island called Segontiaei, who were of those who sent ambassadors to Caesar;! but an inscription which has been taken to connect them with Silchester has been found there and discovered to have been a dedication Deo- Her{culi-'] Saegon .... It is not certain what the dative of the god's name was in full ; but probably Saegono, or Saegoni, pos- sibly a participial Saegonti. The stone is no longer to be found ; but the way in which it has been described by those who saw it, makes it difficult to read Segontiaco or Segontiacorum, as though the god derived his name from that of the people called Segontiaei. This leaves the conjecture that would connect the Segontiaei of Caesar with the town of Silchester much as it was before, since it is natural to suppose, that the god in question would occupy a place of honour in the pantheon of a people calling itself or its chief city after him. The weakness of the assumption lies in the probable fact, that more than one town, more than one people, took its name from the god ; and the more popular and general his cult is found to have been, the more clearly that weakness is seen. But it is a question of no immediate interest here, as the fact not to be lost sight of is rather the identifica- tion of Saegon-, or Seon, with Hercules. Now there was a remarkable Gaulish god, and a tho- roughly Celtic one, whom we have distinct evidence for modern "Welsh becomes Saint, so that the river is now Afon Saint, while a late Kymrioizing of the Latin Segontium has yielded a much less correct Welsh form Seiont, which, as far as I know, is only to be found in books or in the modern names of houses in the town. ^ Caesar, v. 21. T 274 III. THE CULTURE HERO. identifying with Hercules, that is to say, so far as one may speak of identification at all in such a case. He was, you will remember, called Ogmios, and, according to Lucian's account of him, he was the personification of speech and all that conduced to make speech a powerful agency ; but we found reasons for identifying him also with Hermes and Mercury, and moreover with the deo, qui vias et semitas commentus est. His counterpart in Irish was pointed out in that of Ogma (p. 17), the inventor of a kind of learned jargon and of a kind of writing, both of which were indifEerently called offam. On the other hand, the Welsh word corresponding ety- mologically to Ogmios and Ogma^ is ovyd, which has remained an appellative, meaning a leader or teacher (p. 17) ; and the Welsh and Irish accounts of the origin of writing are accordingly not the same. They may, however, be regarded as supplementing one another. Thus the term ogyrven for a letter of the alphabet con- nects writing with the terrene god, but without telling us through whose instrumentality the knowledge of the art of writing was first brought from him to man. The Irish legend, on the other hand, makes the divine ovyd or Ogma the inventor of writing ; but it does not let us into the secret of the origia of his knowledge, except indirectly by making him the son of Elatha king of the Pomori, or dwellers of the world beneath the sea ; and to this placing of Gwydion over against Ogma as sub- stantially the same person, the mythic pedigrees oppose no serious obstacle. For Gwydion is called son of Don, and her husband is inferred to have been Beli the Great, the god of death and darkness (pp. 90-1) ; so that here Beli fills the place ascribed in Irish to Elatha, and Don III. THE CULTURE HERO. 275 that ascribed to Brigit, mother of Bres and goddess of poetry (p. 74), all things being supposed to derive their origin from the powers of the nether world, the arts and sciences included. The story about Elatha intro- ducing himself to her who was to be Bres's mother is, that he came out of the sea, whither he returned, having left her a ring which he had on his hand; and Bres their son, when driven from his throne by Nuada on his return to power with a silver hand (p. 120), was pro- vided with the ring, and enabled by means of it to make his way to the fairy land inhabited by the Fomori, where he found his father and his people holding a great assem- bly on Mag Mor, or the Great Plain, one of the names commonly associated with the geography of the nether world. Bres's business was to enlist the Fomori on his side against the Tuatha Dd Danann. This story^ has been reduced to sober history by Prof. 0' Curry and others ; but I wish to point out before proceeding fur- ther, that as Ogyrven's name came in Welsh to mean a letter of the alphabet and other elements, so that of Elatha is found used as an appellative in the sense of science, art or artistic work, especially literary composi- tions.2 Nor did this stand alone in Irish ; for one finds that a certain kind of poetic composition was called etan, which is homophonous with the name of the poetess Etan, 1 Given at length in tlie British Museum MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 53 h ; for O'Curry's version of it, see the passages in his MS. Mat. pp. 248-9, already referred to at p. 253. ^ For references, see Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 521, s.v. elatha ; Stokes's Calendar of Oengus, p. cclvi ; also d'A. de JubainviUe's Cycle Myth. p. 306. The word seems to have been decliued in two ways, Elatha, gen. Elathan, and Elathan, gen. Elathain. t2 276 III. THE CULTURE HERO. to be identified, probably, with Brigit, goddess of poetry : Cairbre, the first satirist in Erinn, is distinguished as son of Etan. The name Elatha or Elathan, for both forms occur, may possibly have referred to eloquence and wisdom; and in that case the personage so called may be compared with the king of Hades under his Welsh name of Arawn, which likewise referred to speech and wisdom. The "Welsh Arawn is styled one of the Three counselling Knights of Arthur's Court, ^ and is possibly to be recognized under the slightly different name Alawn, given to one of the three originators of bardism.2 Gwydion's name must next be considered : it can only be derived from a root of the form vit, vot or vet ; and of these the only one found to satisfy all the conditions is vet, which in old Welsh must become \_g]wet, liable to be reduced in the later stages of the language to \_g~\wed^^ as 1 Triads, i. 86 = iij. 116. s Triads, iij. 58; Mo MSS. pp. 48, 428. The other name, Arawn, is derived from the same source as the Welsh term araith, ' an oration or speech,' a word represented in Irish by airecht or oirecht, which bears the secondary signification of an assembly : Irish public meet- ings appear to have never lacked oratory and declamation. See, for instance, O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 20, 53, and MS. Mat. pp. 383-4, where references are made to a suit pleaded before the king of Ulster in such eloquent and unintelligible language that he deprived the poets of their right to be the expounders of the laws of the realm, as they had been till then. ^ In a ninth century manuscript (Skene, ij. 2) we meet with a word of this origin written guetid, pronounced gwetid, which meant either 'a say' or 'a sayer,' and in South Wales a verb gwe'yd (for gwedyd), ' to say,' is much used: take, for instance, gwed, 'die;' gwedtvch, 'dicite;' gviedais, ' dixi.' But in North Wales and generally in Welsh literature the preference is given to the same verb with the prefix dy, for an older do, the Celtic equivalent of the English to. Thus dywedijd III. THE CULTURE HEKO. 277 in gwedyd, 'to say.' A modification of the same stem gives us tlie gwyd in Gwydion^ and a third form is exem- (reduced also to dyioe'yd, d'we'yd, and even d'e'yd) means ' to say, saying;' dywed, 'die;' dywedaf, 'dicam;' dyfyd (North Welsh for dywyd), ' dicet ;' dywawd, also dywod and (now in North Wales) dywad, ' dixit.' The umlaut y in dyfyd {dywyd) is caused by the semi-vowel •which once followed, as in Grwyd (Skene, ij, 135) or still follows as in Gwydion (with the i pronounced like English y in j/es). The effects of the semi-vowel are perceptible in other words, especially verbs, such as gwyl, ' videbit,' from gioel-ed, ' to see,' or saif, ' stabit,' from sef-yll, ' to stand :' for some remarks on this subject see my Lectures, pp. 116-18. With regard to Gwyd, it is right to notice that Welsh has another word gwyd, ' vice,' which is, in fact, the Latin word vitium naturalized ; but the line, 'Aches gvyd gwydion,' in the Taliessin line referred to, could only mean ' the land of Gwydion's vice,' which would be utterly at variance with Taliessin's usual tone with regard to Gwydion ; so I have no doubt that it should be rendered 'the land of Gwyd Gwydion.' Unless the form Crwyd was called into existence to accompany the other, they may be treated as standing for an ancient nominative Vetjo and genitive Vetjonos respectively. In dywawt or dywawd, ' dixit,' we have an ablaut or by-vowel in the diphthong aw, representing an early a which remains written a in Irish words. Similarly from Welsh rhed, 'run,' we have gwa-^ed, ' suc-currere,' Irish fo-reth- of the same meaning ; but the old perfect was gwa-rawt, Insh fo-rdith for *vo-rdt-e. This recourse to a different vowel in the perfect was formerly fully recognized in Celtic grammar, but it probably never had the impor- tance which is attached to it in the economy of the Teutonic verb, as, for example, in the English, give, gave, ride, rode, bear, bare, and see, saw. Celtic verbs of the class in question had two stems, one with e and the other with a; and I wish to call attention to the fact that there were also nouns cognate with both the one and the other. Thus in the case of the Welsh rhed-, ' run,' we have not only rhedeg, ' the act of running,' but also rhaiod, ' a course, path or orbit :' similarly from the other verb we have, beside guctid already instanced, a word gwawt, now gwawd, 'a poem or song,' and in modern Welsh more usually 'a satire or a sarcastic remark.' The Irish equivalent was faath otfdth, ' a learning or study of the poet's art' (Cormac, s.Y.faaih), whence fditsine, 'prophecy,' and probably Fdfhach, the name of the poet of the Eir Bolg. But Irish had besides this a related word faith, 278 III. THE CULTURE HEEO. plified by gwawd, a "Welsh term for poetry, but now restricted to satire and sarcasm. Among the cognate words may be mentioned the Irish fdith, ' a prophet or poet,' Latin vdtes, Old Norse odr, 'mind, soul, song;' also Odenn or Odinn, English Woden, and wood, ' mad,' German wuth, ' rage.' The appearance in close connection of words relating to poetry and prophecy on the one hand, and to madness and possession on the other, is just what would be expected by the student of anthropology familiar with ' a prophet or poet,' to which the "Welsh has no etymological equivalent, since it would have sounded gwawt, gwawd, like the word meaning 'a satire;' but it existed in Gaulish and was probably todtis or vdtis, as Strabo, iv. 4, 4, has placed on record the nominative plural in the form of ova.Tei's. Now Latin, though not possessing exact parallels in such verbal forms as venio, veni, or ago, egi, matches fdith and wdtis exactly in vowel and declension with its noun vdtes, ' a poet and prophet.' The following classification will render intelligible at a glance what I mean — the hypothetical forms have an asterisk prefixed to them : 1. Stems with e, of the consonantal declension : Irish, *Fethiu, *Fethenn; Welsh, Gwyd, Gwydion; Latin, *Vetio, *Vetionis. 2. Stems with a: (1) of the declension : Ir. Jdth, ' learning j' "Welsh, gwawd, 'poem, satire;' Lat. *vdtum (= vaticinum); the German is louth, 'rage,' toge- ther with the adjective, which was in Gothic vods, ' 6at/ioi'tfd/;i£vos, SaifiovLo-Oeis.' Add to these the 0. Norse 6d-r, ' mad, frantic ;' A.-Saxon wod, 'mad;' Mod. English wood; Broad Scotch wud 01 wuth, 'mad, distracted.' (2) Of the / declension : Ir. fdith, ' poet ;' Gaulish wdtis, 'poet;' Lat. vdtes, 'poet;' 0. Norse dd-r, genitive 6dar, 'mind, wit, soul, sense, spirit, song, poetry.' (3) Derivatives of the declen- sion : Ir. Elathan (a form of the name of the Fomorian king, husband of the goddess of poetry), in case it be for El-fdthan (with el of the same origin as eol in eolus, 'knowledge,' the vowel variation being produced by the accent, as in heothu, 'life,' genitive Je^Aad) ; "Welsh *ChjJodan; Lat. *vdtanus; 0. Norse, Oden-n, genitive Oden-s; A. -Sax. W6de7i, gen. Woden-es, perpetuated in Wednes-d&y. The relation between Gwydion and Woden did not escape Grimm : see his Deutsche Myth.^ pp. xxiij, 124, 296, 342. III. THE CULTtJEE HEEO. 279 the habits of nations who are wont to regard idiots and maniacs as inspired persons, a view which can also be studied now and then in our own country. In the case of the Celts we see this idea in the superstition as to the hardship which a man should undergo on Cader Idris or Snowdon in order to be inspired as a bard ; but he might become a madman, that is to say, the inspira- tion might prove difEerent from that of the bard. Per- haps the distinction is not old enough to be considered ; at any rate, we have an instance of the idiot of the family playing the part of a prophet in the Irish story concerning the formation of Lough Neagh.^ Moreover, the idea of inspired raving is familiar to the reader of the classics : take, for example, the Sibyl whom Yergil in the ^neid calls a sanctissima vates, and of whom he gives an un- lovely picture, vi. 46 — 51 : ' Cui talia fanti Ante fores subito non vultus, non color unus, Non comtae mansere comae ; sed pectus anhelum, Et rabie fera corda tument ; majorque videri, Nee mortale sonans ; afflata est numine quando Jam propiore dei.' And a little later, vi. 77—80 : ' At Phoebi nondum patiens, immanis in antro Bacchatur vates, magnum si pectore possit Excussisse deum ; tanto magis ills fatigat Os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo.' To return to the words which I have begun to discuss, the idea underlying them all was that of saying or utter- ing, and secondarily perhaps of singing, chanting or muttering, whether as a poet or as a raving madman. So Gwyd Gwydion might be rendered Say of Saying, or Say 1 Book of the Dun, 39 5; Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. lOO-l. 280 in. THD CULTURE HERO. son of Saying, with. wMeli his name, Geir son of Geiryoed, (p. 250) is palpably identical, as it means Word son of Words ; but if a name relating to his power of utterance and eloquence, and amounting to calling him vates or prophet, became Gwydion, it could surprise nobody if the same kind of name were found given to one of them who were reckoned pre-eminent in this respect, namely, the mythic beings of the nether world. Such a name we seem to have, in fact, in that of the king of the Fomori, called Elathan, which, according to the surmises already made, conveyed probably some such an idea as that of speaking, vaticinating or soothsaying, and might be compared to a certain extent with that of the much- saying connoted by the Greek name noAv<^)7/ios. In fact, the Cyclops, so-called, may be regarded as a being here in point, since Gwydion and Woden bear a striking resemblance to Odysseus; and though the view here suggested of the character of Polyphemus had probably ceased to be familiar to the Greek mind before the Odyssey was composed, still that most charming of epics says enough about him and his country to leave one in no doubt that in Polyphemus we have, at least in point of origin, one of the potentates of the nether world. All about his wisdom and knowledge had been forgotten, and the only reminiscence of that aspect of his character is to be found in the retention of the name Polyphemus or the Much-saying. It is hardly necessary to remark that to a people in a low stage of culture such, a name would mean very much more than it would to us ; they would not be inclined quite so much, to contrast words with things as to regard them as being themselves things; and the antithesis, so trite and sterile in such authors of ni. THE CULTURE HERO. 281 antiquity as Thucydides, between A.dyos and epyov, word and deed, is one of the growths of an age beginning to devote itself to philosophy and conceited moralizings over the hoUowness of human nature. Pormulse of words have always been the backbone of magic as well as the means, in most religious systems, of moving the gods to accede to the worshipper's prayer : in ancient Erinn the words of the satirist were believed to raise hideous blotches on the face of him who happened to be the object of them, and the Gaulish euhemerist who under- took to enlighten Lucian was content to believe Ogmios to have performed the labours of Heracles, without the grosser club and bow, by the irresistible force of his charms of speech. The two names Gwydion and Geir point, as we have seen, distinctly to the character of their bearer as a per- sonification of speech or eloquence, while it would appear that his other name of Se or Seon (for Segon-) must have referred directly and originally to him in respect of his strength or power, and recalled labours like those of Heracles. For these forms are doubtless of the same origin as the name of the war-god Segomo ; but in the face of the German word sieg, ' victory,' and its cognates, we should perhaps treat them as meaning more exactly a god of victory, in a word the Mercurius Victor of an inscription in Gaul. The remarkable thing, however, is that under the name of 8e or Seon here in question, Gwydion is only referred to as a philosopher or astro- nomer and patron of artists and professional men, which looks as though force and victory, in his case, were chiefly to be explained somewhat in the way the native guide of Lucian represented to him, that the labours of 282 IIL THE CULTURE HERO. Heracles were performed by tlie charm of speech rather than by the force of arms. But we seem to be again led back to the latter by the name Gweir which we found alternating with Geir; for it probably meant manly : at any rate, that is the natural inference from the fact that it is a derivative from an earlier form of gwr, the Welsh equivalent in sense and etymology of the old Irish fer and the Latin vir. Another of his names of this origin is probably to be detected in Gwron, which means a great man or hero, and is given as the name of the third of the three originators of bardism.^ GWTDION COMPARED WITH WoDEN AND InDRA. If it were asked why the foregoing names should be assumed to have referred to one and the same person or character, it might be answered that there is no a priori objection to construing them in the contrary sense, since, on the one hand, a mythical personage may under favourable circumstances attract tales originally said of 1 See the Triads, iij. 58. Welsh, gwr stands for an earlier gwer, which, with the Irish fer, points to an early nominative veros, geni- tive veri, represented in Irish Ogmic inscriptions by viri, later Irish fir. In Gaulish an adjective verjos was formed from ver-, but the semi- vowel caused it to assume the form virios, as in Voretu-virius, i. e. son of Voretoveros ( = Welsh Gwaredwr, ' Salvator') : compare Vijitjos (Welsh gwynt, ' wind') from ventos. Welsh could, however, have other forms, and verjos might either become veirjos, which would be our Gheeir, or virjos, which would now be Gwyr ; in one instance both forms happen to occur ; I refer to a mythic personage mentioned in the Triads (i. 30 = ij. 56 = iij. 101) as Dattwyr Daftben and Daft- weir Daftben, not to mention a third derivative Daftwaran also applied to him : the former two names would in their early forms be Dallo- verjos Dallopennos, which would seem to mean Blind-head (son) of Blind-man. III. THE CULTURE HEEO. 283 another, while, on the other, the acquisition by him of several names would tend to split him up into as many- individuals. Some reasons have already beeh given for looking at the Welsh names referred to from the latter point of view rather than from the former ; but there is a more comprehensive one, and that is the argument to be derived from a comparison with the mythology of other branches of the Aryan family, that Gwydion, or whatever name you choose to give him, was a complete and complex character familiar to our remote ancestors, before they could as yet be called Celts, or before those of the English could be called Teutons, that is to say, at a time when the Aryans had not passed out of their pro- ethnic period. For our immediate purposes the question reduces itself to that of the identification of Gwydion with the "Woden of Teutonic peoples. The name Woden is referred^ to the same origin as the Latin word vates by Fick, Vigfusson and others ; further, it is impossible to sever the licish.fdith, ' a prophet or poet,' from vates on the one hand, and from the Welsh gwawd^ ' poetry, poem, satire,' on the other; and with all three the name of the Welsh Gwydion is probably closely connected. It remains, then, to be seen how far the legends about Gwydion and Woden coincide on particular points, such as the following : ^ i. Their family relations. 1. Gwydion's mother was Don, of whom very little is ^ By Fick in his Vergleichendes Worterbnch der indogermanischen Sprachen^, iij. 308, and by Vigfusson in the Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. civ; see also the Academy for Jan. 1885, p. 46. ^ Excursus i. § 2, in the Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. civ, ij. 458-63 :, the references ai'e, where not specified, to that excursus. 284 III. THE CULTURE HERO. known, and Ms father is inferred to have been Beli', of whom nearly as little can be said to be known. Woden was the son of Bestla and Bor, still less known as to their origin. 2. Gwydion had a mistress called Arianrhod, whose name meant Silver -wheel: she dwelt in her castle in the sea. She remained a maiden and wished to pass for a virgin, whence her indignation at finding her son living. Woden (as Gylfe) had a leman called Gefjon, a word which occurs as a name for the sea, and she had associated with her a 'diiip rodul,'^ to be interpreted alius rotulus or deep-sinking wheel : she leda maiden's life like Arianrhod, and she changed into oxen the sons she bore Woden. 3. Gwydion had a son Llew, whose death was no less peculiar than that of Woden's son Balder ; and the grief of Gwydion was very great, like Woden's : both fathers wandered far and wide until they discovered each his son, who was afterwards to be recalled to this life. ij. Their character as warriors. Gwydion was a successful general ; he was Heracles, and he was Seon or Segon-, ' the victorious : ' he fought a single combat with fatal effect to his adversary, who was, however, said to have been overcome by Gwydion's magic. Woden was called sire or lord of hosts, lord of spears, father of victory or battle, and he was the wielder of the magic spear Gungnir. iij. Their creative power. Gwydion, with the aid of his uncle M&th, made a beau- tiful woman out of flowers. ^ Corpus Poet, Bor. ij. 8. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 285 "Woden and his fellow-gods made, among other crea- tions, a man and a woman out of trees, and called them Ash and Embla respectively. iv. Their wisdom. 1. Gwydion was the cleverest person ever heard of by Taliessin, who reckoned himself no poor judge in such a matter ; and, as described by Lucian under the name of Ogmios, he was the god of eloquence and the wisdom thereto appertaining. Woden is hymned in early I^orse poems as the sage of the powers and the charmer of the gods. 2. Gwydion' s Gaulish name Ogmios referred possibly to his association with ways and paths : he was probably the divinity attested by a monument in this country as the god qui vias et semitas commentus est, while in Gaul he as the Celtic Mercury was held to have been, accord- ing to Caesar, viarum atque itinerum dux. Woden is called Way-wont or Traveller, and the like names. 3. Gwydion was a consummate magician, and he is found among those who consult the sorcerers of Arianrhod.^ Woden was taunted with acquiring his wisdom by magic, with sitting under waterfalls and conversing with the dead. 4. Gwydion (as Gweir) acquired his gifts of poetry and music from the nether world : he visited the submarine city of Caer Sidi, where he underwent vile treatment at the hands of the Head of Hades ; but thenceforth he was for ever a bard, and poets and musicians are the artists of Gwydion under the name Seen. Woden submitted himself to a course of prolonged 1 Bk. of Taliessin, Skene, ij. 159. 286 III. THE CULTURE HERO. privation and pain, of long fastings and strange penances, in order to get his wisdom : according to another account, he pledged one of his eyes to Sokk-mimi, the Giant of the Abyss, for a draught of the deep well of wisdom : poetry is ' the billows of Woden's breast' and ' the stream of the lip-beard of Woden.' 5. Gwydion eats and drinks with Arianrhod, and they converse of stories and histories in her castle, now ridden over by the billows of the Irish Sea. Woden and Saga the seeress drink joyously out of golden cups at her abode of Sunk-bench, over which the cold waves ever murmur.^ 6. Gwydion's favourite disguise was to take the form of a bard, for which he was fitted as being the best historian or story-teller in the world. Woden figures in story as a cowled, one-eyed, long- bearded old sage, who tells king Olaf tales of days long gone by. V. Their Promethean role. 1. Gwydion, with his brother Amaethon the farmer, procures from the powers terrene the animals useful to man, such as the dog, the pig, and others. No corresponding myth about Woden seems to be extant. 2. Gwydion and his friends harry Hades in order to secure its king's cauldron, which was one of the mystic vessels out of which voices issued and the inspiration of wisdom and poetry. One of Woden's most striking adventures was his journey in quest of the holy draught from giant Sup- ' Vigfusson and Powell, Coiyics Poet. Boreale, i. 70. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 287 tung's daughter: the draught was otherwise called the Dwarfs' Cup, the Dwarfs' Ship, and other curious names symbolic of thought, wisdom, and especially the inspira- tion of poetry. 3. Gwydion obtained the boons which he conferred on man mostly by force or by craft from the powers terrene, with whom he dealt in an utterly unscrupulous fashion. Woden procured the precious draught which was to be a gift and joy for men by wiliness, Ulysses -like patience, and even perjury, as when he became the guileful lover of Gundfled, daughter of Suptung the giant, who owned the holy drink, in order to steal the latter, which he did successfully.^ From these and similar items of agreement between their stories, together with the close kinship of their names, one seems to be fully warranted in regarding Gwydion and Woden respectively as Celtic and Teutonic representatives of one and the same hero, belonging to a time anterior to the separation of the Celts and the Teutons. It has already been hinted how Gwydion as Ogmios was both Heracles and Hermes when translated into a classical form ; while Yigf usson and Powell have suggested comparisons between Woden and both Ulysses and Prometheus, 2 and they are undoubtedly well war- ranted in so doing. Prometheus, on the one hand, gets fire for the comfort of man ; while, on the other, Gwydion procures certain breeds of animals for his use, as well as the gift of poetry and wisdom for the benefit of his mind ; and Woden undergoes indescribable danger and hardship 1 Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 23. ^ lb. i. civ, ij. 460. 288 III. THE CULTURE HERO. in order to secure a draught of the precious drink. Nor does th.e parallel end there, or with the fact that in all three cases the benefactor of man had to undergo dire punishment for what he had done. It extends to details ; for Prometheus, like Woden and Gwydion, created human beings, and it was only with the friendly aid of Athene that he got access to heaven to steal the fire he conferred on them. And in spite of the highly respectable cha- racter usually ascribed to the grey-eyed goddess, the scandal found its way into Greek literature, that Pro- metheus' relations with her were somewhat like those of Woden with Gundfled, and that it was for his amours with the divine spinster that he was so terribly punished by her father Zeus.^ Here, however, the similarity is somewhat more concentrated than between Gwydion, Woden and Ulysses, where it is found to extend to the general character of the chief figures in the stories and to some of the incidents associated with them, as, for exam- ple, the tale of Ulysses visiting the island of Polyphemus and his journey to the nether world. But in all pro- bability the parallel appeared still more striking to the pagans of Italy and Greece in the first and second cen- turies ; this, at any rate, is the inference I should draw from a passage in the third chapter of the Germania of Tacitus, in which he states that the Germans had tradi- tions about a Hercules of their own, whom they hymned above all other mighty men of valour in the songs which , they used to sing when about to engage in battle, and that it was the notion of some, that Ulysses, borne, in the course of the wanderings ascribed to him in story, 1 See the Scholiast on Apollonius' Arg. ij. 1249; Servius, Com. in Vergil. Eel. vi. 43. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 289 to the sea that washed the shores of Germany, visited that country. They went on to specify that Ascibur- gium,! a town on the banks of the Ehine, which existed in the historian's time, had been established and named by Ulysses. The evidence offered to Tacitus for these beliefs was, that an altar had formerly been found at Asci- burgium consecrated to Ulysses, to whose name was added that of his father Laertes ; and that monuments and tombs were still extant in Greek characters on the confines of Germany and of Eaetia. Now Ascibur- gium should mean Ash-burgh or Ash-town; and the natural conclusion from the name is that the native legend represented Woden, here called Ulysses, placing the man Ash whom he created at Ash-burgh, and giving it that name. When Eomans, acquainted with the reli- gion and mythology of their own country and those of Greece, began to inquire about the gods of the Germans, it may be supposed that they found much the same diffi- culty with regard to Woden as they did in the case of Ogmios. The accounts they heard of him made some equate him with Hercules, while they reminded others of Ulysses beyond all question. In other words, the Hercules and Ulysses of the Germania represented one and the same Teutonic god or hero, who was no other than Woden. According to this interpretation of the historian's words, the ancient Germans had poems about h im which constituted at once the story of the labours of the Teutonic Hercules and a rude sort of Odyssey : what a vista of lost literature this discloses to the gaze 1 It is supposed to be represented by Asburg, or else to have stood near Essenberg. U 290 III. THE CITLTUEB HERO. of the student of the early history of a great race ! With regard to the altar bearing the names of Ulysses and his father Laertes, which gives the story the air of the exact- ness that proves too much, it is to be observed that the "words of Tacitus do not compel us to suppose that his informant mentioned the name Laertes or had ever heard it : this may be of the writer's own supplying. But even granting that Tacitus' s informant asserted that he had with his own eyes read the names of both Ulysses and Laertes on an altar in the Ehine-land, such a state- ment would not in the least surprise any one who is familiar with the startling results obtained by untraiued or careless readers from ancient but intelligible inscrip- tions of the most commonplace kind ; and it would still be evidence to the occurrence there of altars dedicated to a god who resembled Ulysses. It is considerably more difficult to understand the mention of Greek inscriptions on the confines of Germany and Eaetia, as it can hardly be supposed to refer to an occasional tomb- stone raised over a Greek serving in the legions of Eome ; while epigraphy has nothing more nearly in point to show than the inscriptions in southern Gaul composed in the Gaulish language but written in Greek letters. So it would seem as though Tacitus or his informant had to a certain extent confounded Gaulish and Greek. "With regard to Woden and his Celtic counterpart, it would probably have been somewhat hard to draw a sharp line between them, as they may have been wor- shipped under practically identical names in the districts where Germany and Gaul were contermiuous : thus the Gaulish name prevailing there may have been the one corresponding to Welsh Se or Seon, the Silchester Saegon-, III. THE CULTTJEE HERO. 291 to which the Teutonic languages would answer with a name beginning with Seg-, as in those of Arminius' family, such as Segimundus, Segestis and the like, his own name being possibly an early form of that which is now written in German Siegfried. In such a case the Segi- nomenclature of the ruling Cherusci may, perhaps, have had reference not so much to sieg or victory in the abstract, as to a god bearing a name derived from his attributes as a victor.^ It is needless to say that Heracles, Odysseus and Prometheus, by no means exhaust the list of Greek equivalents, so to say, to Gwydion- Woden; we have another in Orpheus, with his marvellous music — his visit to Hades and his all but successful attempt to recover his Eurydice are well known. Still more striking is the likeness between Jason and Woden, as any one may perceive who will take the trouble to study together the story of Jason with Medea, and that of Woden with Gundfled ; also the way he disposed of the iron warriors that sprang from the ground in a formidable crop, as compared with the expedient adopted by Woden to get rid of the nine hay-mowing slaves of the giant Suptung, ^ Solinus mentions Caledonia or the north, of this island as a distant coast visited by the wandering figure of Ulysses. Prima fade there is nothing improbable in the notion implied, that Eomans who had visited the north of Britain had found worshipped there a hero or god who reminded them of Ulysses ; but the words of Solinus lose most of their weight from the fact that he regarded Ulysses' visit as demonstrated by the occurrence there of an altar dedicated to him in Greek writing. The passage looks like an inaccurate and confused reproduction of the words in the Germania ; but, be that as it may, there is hardly room to doubt that strangers from the Mediterranean found in vogue in Celtic and Teutonic lands the cult of a god, in whom they sometimes recognized Hercules or Heracles, and sometimes Ulysses or Odysseus. u2 292 III. THE CULTURE HERO. when lie was plotting to get a draught of the precious mead of which the latter was the owner. Jason, at the bidding of Medea, threw a stone among the armed sons of the dragon's teeth, and they fought for it — nobody tells us why — until they all fell by one another's hands ; while in the case of "Woden the stone was a marvellous hone, with which he had sharpened the scythes of Suptung's men with such satisfactory results that each of them was anxious to possess such a treasure, and Woden, consenting to part with it, threw it up into the air, whereupon a scramble followed in which each of the mowers swung his scythe about his fellow's neck.^ The Jason myth and those which mythologists are wont to connect with it bring us face to face with a most fasci- nating and difficult question of origin ;2 but we may pass it by for the present and proceed to inquire whether the religion and mythology of any other Aryan people afford any kind of parallel to Gwydion and Woden. Without much trouble we come across what we want in Sanskrit literature. The god to whom I wish to direct your special attention is Indra : it is needless here to trouble you with extracts from the Eig-Yeda, speaking of him as a supreme divinity of the Indian pantheon ; it is nevertheless noteworthy that Indra was not sup- posed to be one of the uncreated gods, but one who had been born, one who had obtained his position by sacrifice and prayer. Yedic scholars are wont to take for granted that Indra was, like most of the ancient gods of the Vedas, a personification of something in nature; they 1 Vigfusson and Powell, i. 465. 'i See Lang's chapter on A far-travelled Tale in his Custom and Myth, pp. 87 & seq. III. THE CULTURE HEEO. 293 are, however, obliged to admit that in his case the per- sonification is more thorough, and that, while the other anthropomorphic divinities were ever and anon Liable to be confounded with the elements of which they were personifications, Indra was subject to nothing analogous, his personality being, as they would say, far more fixed, far more profoundly modified and transformed by the anthropomorphism to which they assume it to have been subjected: in other words, Indra was far more human than the elemental gods, and, in fact, so much so that no one has been able to say with any great probability what he was originally a personification of. In a word, the evidence, such as I have been able to find adduced, leaves the personification resting on no solid foundation, it being, to say the least of it, just as probable that, in point of origin and history, Indra should be regarded as a deified man. The following things concerning him are worth no- ticing by way of comparison with Gwydion and Woden : 1. As the Norsemen of the Wicking period fixed their gaze on the warlike side of Woden's character, so, accord- ing to one of the most recent expounders of Vedic reli- gion, Indra was above all things the warrior-god of the Aryans of India. ^ His spoils are for men, and it is on their behalf that he fights.^ He is metaphorically a wall ^ I refer to M. Bergaigne and his work entitled La Religion Vedique d'aprhs les Hymnes du 'Rig-Veda (Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Jitudes: Paris, 1878, 1883), i. p. xvi. 2 Ibid. ij. 172, 178 {Rig-Veda, i. 55, 5, vij. 32, U, vij. 32, 17, viij. 45, 13, Tiij. 45, 40-1, x. 120, 4). 294 in. THE CULTURE HEEO. of defence, and he is a castle,^ just as Gwydion was a thick door of protection. 2. With regard to wisdom and poetry he is the most sagacious of the wise^ and the most skilled in song;^ he is called an old friend of the poets,* and he is not unfre- quently associated with an ancient race of singers known by the name of Aiigiras;^ he has assumed the inspira- tion of prophets,^ and he can take all forms through his magic power;'' lastly, he gives his friends faithful gui- dance,^ like Ogmios or Mercury. 3. Daylight and rain are among the chief boons con- ferred on man by Indra ; so he is described as recovering from the dark powers the dawns and the rains, ^ which in Sanskrit phraseology are called the cows : ^*^ in other terms, he is said to split open the sides of the mountain in order to bring forth the cows from their stone prison, to overthrow the mountain or to dissolve it for the same purpose.^^ It is right, however, to call attention to the ^ See Big-Veda, viij. 69, 7; also p. 188 of the Journal of the Ame- rican Oriental Society for 1882-5, in which a long and elaborate paper has been published on Indra in the Rig- Veda, by Dr. E. D. Perry. 2 Perry, p. 196 (Big- Veda, x. 112, 9). 3 lb. (Rig-Veda, i. 100, 4). * lb. p. 188 (Big-Veda, vi. 18, 5, vi. 21. 5, 8). 5 Bergaigne, i. 150 (Big-Veda, x. 108, 8), ij. 175, 183; Perry, pp. 140-1 (Rig-Veda, i 62, 3, i. 83, 4, iv. 16, 8). « Perry, p. 196 (Rig-Veda, iij. 36, 5). 7 lb. (Rig-Veda, iij. 53, 8, vi. 47, 18). « lb. p. 189 (Rig-Veda, v. 31, 8). 8 Bergaigne, i. pp. xvi, xviii. lo lb. ij. 179. " lb. ij. 180 (Big-Veda, v. 30, 4, vi. 17, 5, vi. 43, 3, viij. 45, 30, X. 112, 8). III. THE CULTtJEE HERO, 295 fact that Indra is not said to raia in the sense in which Parjanya, or Zeus and Jupiter, were said to rainj^ and the etymology which was supposed to proye his name to haye made him a pluvial diyinity has been superseded by a better one which has nothing to do with rain.^ But to return to Indra's gifts, it is not to be supposed that the cows he acquired for his worshippers were always of the nature here suggested ; for he is celebrated in some of the hymns as the giyer of cows, horses and women.^ One of the chief differences between Indra and Gwydion- Woden is that Indra's other boons have to be constantly conquered afresh from the powers of darkness, who as often carry them away. In the case of light, for example, the conflict repeats itself every day, as it is Indra who brings the dawn back and makes the sun rise,* This necessary intervention of Indra to make the sun rise recalls the habit, which Europeans ascribe to the Pueblo Indians, of sending their sun-priest to salute the morning-star and the dawn, and to get the sun up, an event not expected to happen in case he be not duly invoked.^ And it is a well-known fact that the Aztecs ^ Bergaigne, ij. 184-5. ^ See Bezzenberger in his Beitrmge, i. 342, where he points out the correspondence between Sanskrit indra, Zend andra (iiidra), and the Teutonic stem (antra-) from which he derives 0. H. Ger. anirisc, entriic, ' autiquus, vetustus ;' M. H. Ger. entrisch, ' old ;' Upper Ger. Dialects enterisch, enzerisch, ' ungeheuer, seltsam.' He would trace the stem suggested to a simpler one postulated by the A. -Saxon word ent, 'a giant,' and the 0. H. Ger. adjective entisc, andisc, of the same meaning as antrisc. ^ Bergaigne, ij. 177-9 (Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 16 & saepe). * lb. i. p. xvi, ij. 187-8. 5 Dr. E. B. Tylor tells me that he has witnessed this ceremony at Zuni ; but he adds that until one has got an exact translation of the 296 III. THE CULTURE HERO. thought that the rising of the sun at the end of the cycle which they called the Sheaf of Years was an open ques- tion ; so they proceeded by means of human sacrifice to persuade him to do so as before.^ Indra's principal weapon in aU his conflicts with the dark powers is his thunder- bolt,2 but he is also very materially aided by his wor- shippers' prayers,^ and in some of his most difficult undertakings he has associated with him Brahmanaspati, the lord of prayer,* and likewise the Angiras.^ He breaks open the enemies' gates by the spell of song ;^ and the importance of the worshipper's prayers to the Hindu god in his conflicts with the dark powers is the Hindu equivalent to the Adyos, eloquence and wisdom, which enable the Gaulish Ogmios to accomplish the labours of Heracles. 4. Another of the things which Indra acquires by conquest from the dark powers is the soma,^ the drink of the gods, which in Sanskrit literature holds a place similar to nectar and ambrosia in Greek mythology. It is a sort of water of life, which, among many other won- derful qualities belonging to it, makes the sick well and gives the blind his sight ; it prolongs life ^ and is a means of rejuvenescence generally, which calls to mind the prayer formulae, it would be unsafe to say that tlie proceeding is exactly what strangers have supposed it to be. 1 Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875), iij. 393-6. 2 Perry, p. 138 {Rig-Veda, v. 31, 4, &c.). s Bergaigne, ij. 235. * Perry, pp. 165-6 {Rig-Veda, viij. 85, 15). 5 lb. pp. 141, 143 {Rig-Veda, iv. 16, 8). " Bergaigne, ij. 312 {Rig-Veda, vi. 35, 5). 7 lb. ij. 195 {Rig-Veda, i. 32, 12, iij. 36, 8, iij. 44, 5, vi. 44, 23), 8 lb. i. 152 {Rig-Veda, viij. 61, 17, viij. 68, 2). Ill, THE CULTURE HEEO. 297 Welsh Cauldron of Eegeneration. The rishis or the sages of Sanskrit tradition carry it in their hearts,^ while Indra makes rishis, wise men or poets, of those who have drank of it; and it is said to untie the poet's tongue.2 The Hindu divinities in the highest heaven quaff soma with Yama, the god of the dead, under a tree with large leaves.^ The soma is theirs, and they made it for themselves,* but it was brought to this world by an eagle, ^ which reminds one of Woden, after drinkirig the giant Suptung's mead, flying away as an eagle, whence poetry was called by the Norsemen the billows of Woden's breast and other names of the like nature ; on the other hand, the soma from the sacrifices is said to be carried aloft to Indra by an eagle.^ More usually the one of the dark powers, who conceals the soma coveted by Indra is Tvashtar, a sort of Dis and Yulcan in one. Indra overpowers him in his own house and drinks his soma,^ though Tvashtar was sometimes reckoned Indra' s own father : ^ this has a kind of parallel in Gwydion's con- 1 Bergaigne, i. 149 {Rig-Veda, x. 32, 9). 2 lb. i. 150 {Rig-Veda, i. 87, 5, iij. 43, 5). 3 lb. i. 86, 90 {Rig-Veda, x. 135. 1, 7). * lb. i. 149 {Rig-Veda, ix. 18, 3, ix. 78, 4, ix. 85, 2, ix. 109, 15). 6 rb. i. 199 {Rig-Veda, iv. 26, 6), i. 173 {Rig-Veda, viii. 84, 3, ix. 86, 24, ix. 87, 6, ix. 89, 2). « Perry, p. 165 {Rig-Veda, i. 80, 2, i. 93, 6, iv. 26, 5, vi. 20, 6) : the Sanskrit word is gyena, which Dr. Perry renders by 'falcon' and M. Bergaigne by ' aigle,' while the definition in the Petersburg Dic- tionary is 'der grdsste und starkste Eaubvogel; Adler; auch Falke oder Habicht.' '■ Bergaigne, i. 158 {Rig-Veda, i. 84, 15), iij. 58, 59 {Rig-Veda, iij. 48, 4, iv. 18, 3; see also iv. 18, 11); Perry, pp. 148, 149, 177. 8 lb. iij. 58-9 {Rig-Veda, ij. 17, 6, iij. 48, 4). 298 III. THE CTJLITJEE HEKO. duct towards his uncle Math and his virgin footholder, in that the latter is outraged by one of Gwydion's brothers with Gwydion's active intervention.^ Another account makes Indra's mother give him the soma to drinkj^ wherein one may perhaps see a faint correspond- ence between the story of Woden and Gundfled at the mead-giant's house. But a far closer parallel is to be detected in a story ^ in the Eamayana, relating how Indra assumed the garb of his tutor and seduced the latter' s wife, for which he cursed Indra to undergo, not the agonies of Prometheus, but a nameless punishment to be compared rather with that inflicted on Gwydion by Math. It is right to say that the poet of the Eama- yana simply makes Indra revoltingly lewd, and knows of no palliation for his crime such as that suggested by the motive of Woden in his conduct towards Gundfled ; but, apart from this story, one may be said to find in all three cases of Gwydion, Woden and Indra, the same remarkable unscrupulousness with regard to the other powers, who are treated as the avaricious and jealous owners of boons which they wish to keep to themselves. In Norse poetry the stealing of the precious mead is spiritualized into a story of the origin of poetry and wisdom, and the Welsh tradition makes the cauldron of the Head of Hades a vessel whence the muses and their inspiration ascend; while Yedic literature clings rather to the more original idea of an intoxicating drink, in that it loves to. dwell on Indra's excessive fondness of 1 B. B. Mob. pp. 63-5 ; Guest, iij. 224-7. 2 Bergaigne, ij. 165, iij. 58 {Big-Veda, iij. 48, 2), 104. 5 Bamayana, ed. A. von Sclilegel (Bonn, 1829, 1838), Book i. chap, xlviij. III. THE CULTURE HEEO. 299 soma, and on its power to stimulate and strengthen him to fight the powers of darkness. He is accordingly- entreated with prayerful vehemence to make himself tipsy on soma,^ and, with the taste characteristic of the hymning sages of the Eig-Veda, he is eyen termed a cask of soma.2 5. Indra is the giver of women, ^ and he provides an aged friend of his with a young wife.* Moreover, he rejuvenates old maids, ^ and rescues from death the child of the maiden who had from shame done away with it, and which the ants were gnawing,^ a curious parallel to Gwydion's providing his son Llew with a wife, and especially to his saving his life at his birth and rearing him to the intense disgust of his maiden mother, Arian- rhod. 6. Indra is sometimes said to be the father of both the Sun and the Dawn,^ while the Sun is also treated as the husband and lover of the Dawn.^ But Indra is more than once described making war on the Dawn, who is then called a wicked woma;n; he chases her, and with his thunderbolt smashes her chariot, which remains wrecked near one of the rivers of Heaven, and she herself rushes headlong from the height of that realm.^ The meaning of all this is not considered very 1 Perry, p. 165. ^ n,. p_ 173 {Eig-Veda, vi. 69, 2). 3 Ik p. 187 {Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 16). * lb. p. 189 {Rig-Veda, i. 51, 13). ^ lb. p. 190 {Rig-Veda, iv. 19, 7). 6 lb. {Rig-Veda, ij. 15, 7, iv. 19, 9). 7 Bergaigne, ij. 188, 191 {Rig-Veda, iij. 31, 15, iij. 32, 8). 8 lb. ij. 2 {Big-Veda, i. 92, 11, i. 115, 2, vij. 76, 3), 14. 9 lb. ij. 192, 193 {Rig-Veda, iv. 30, 8—11; also ij. 15, 6, x. 73, 6, X. 138, 5). 300 III. THE CULTURE HERO. clear, but a reference to the slowness of the Dawn^ is supposed to supply the key to it : in other words, the Dawn was dallying too long with one of the powers of night, an interpretation which is favoured by the fact that the verses preceding one of the passages in question mention Indra taking the Sun from them in order that he might be seen of men.^ If this view be approximately correct, we have in it a remarkable parallel to the story of Blodeued : Llew the sun-god was Gwydion's son, and Gwydion had created Blodeued, a personification of the Dawn and the Gloaming, to be his son's wife ; but one day when Llew was away, his wife was visited in the evening by a stranger, who made love to her and with whom she compassed her husband's death. This was followed, as you will remember, by Gwydion bringing Llew back to this life to avenge his sufferings. The wicked woman fled in terror before Gwydion, until her maidens fell into a lake and she herself was converted by the touch of Gwydion' s wand into an owl; but according to another story, ^ the one here in point, it was across the heavens that Gwydion chased her, when he left the landmarks of the Milky Way to indicate the course of his march when he was engaged in the pursuit. Such are some of the points of similarity between Indra and Gwydion- Woden ; and some of the differences between their stories have also been indicated : the recur- rence of Indra' s help to man is, as already suggested, not emphasized in the case of his European counterpart ; and the prayers of his worshippers stand in his case in 1 Bergaigne, ij. 193 {Rig-Veda, ij. 15, 6, v. 79, 9). 2 lb. ij. 192 {Rig-Veda, iv. 30, 3—6). ^ Morris' Celtic Remains, p. 231, s.v. Gwydion. III. THE CULTURE HERO, 301 the place of the Ao'yos of Ogmios. It is probable, how- ever, that he owes certain of his attributes to his having assumed some of those of an ancient storm-god Trita,^ or perhaps of Dyaus ; and among them may be reckoned the thunderbolt. Above all, one has to bear in mind the distortion which the Hindu side of the picture has under- gone in consequence of the removal of the abode of the dead from the nether world to the most distant heaven. But when it is considered what a far cry it is from the shores of the Baltic to the land of the Five Elvers, how long it must have taken our kindred to reach it, and how largely their blood had by that time been mixed with that of other races, it is a matter of surprise that Sanskrit literature yields so many points of contact between Indra and Gwydion-Woden. Some of them are brought into prominence in the following verses^ from the Eig-Yeda, with which these remarks may be closed (i. 53. 2, 5, 6) : ' Thou art the giver of horses, In- dra, thou art the giver of cows, the giver of com, the strong lord of wealth : the old guide of man, dis- appointing no desires, a friend to friends. . . .' 'Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of manifold de- light and splendour. Let us rejoice in the blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of offspring, gives us cows first and horses.' ' Du, Indra, schenkest Rosse, schenk- est Rinder auoh, du schenkest Korn und hist des Gutes starker Herr, Beschenkst die Manner, schmalerst ihre Wunsche nie, ein Freund den Freunden. . . .' ' Lass Reiohthum, Indra, lass erlang- en Lahung uns, sehr glanzende Qenusse,himmelstreb- ende, Und Huld der Gotter, die den Man- nern Kraft verleiht und reich zuerst an Rindem und an Rossen ist.' 1 Perry, pp. 142-6. 2 The English translation is from Max Miiller's Chips, i. 31-2, and the German one from Grassmann's Rig- Veda Uebersetzt, ij. pp. 57-8. 302 III. THE CULTURE HERO. ' These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave ! these were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake of the poet, the saoriflcer, thou struckest down irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.' 'Dich haben diese Tranke, diese Kraftiger, die Soma's dich berauscht, o Fiirst, im Vritrakampf, Als du dem Sanger, der die Streu bereitete, zehntausend Feinde schlugest ohne Widerstand.' The inference to be drawn from the foregoing com- parisons is, that the Aryan nations before their separation cherished a belief in a hero or god to whom they owed all their comforts in life : it was he that made the Sun shine and the Dawn keep her time; and it was to him they looked for the weather they wanted. The first breeds of animals useful to man, whether domestic or wild, were believed to have been obtained by him through craft or violence from the jealous powers who wished to keep them from the human race. They traced probably to the same origin the fire that served to cook their food, and the intoxicating drink which they knew as a stimu- lant and a source of inspiration. But their benefactor was believed to have undergone unspeakable hardship in his quest of the boons he conferred on their kin, and that for a time the jealous powers were able to wreak their wrath on him for his goodwill to man. It was probably this goodwill that constituted the gravamen of his crime, and not the crafty and unscrupulous way in which he had gone to work ; for that was calculated in certain stages of civilization to call forth admiration rather than the contrary, while the habit of imagining both gods and demons to be jealous of the human race is familiar to all in the literatures of various ancient nations. Among others, that of the Greeks has already been alluded to in this connection more than once ; but III. THE CULTTJEE HERO. 303 nowhere, perhaps, is the criminality of human progress more ostentatiously recognized than in the Latin classics. Witness the quaint conservatism ascribed by Horace to the gods, Odes, i. 3, where it is hinted that he who first entrusted his frail bark to the waves committed a sin against their majesty, that they had meant the sea to keep men apart and not to be a highway of intercourse : ' Nequicquam deus aliiscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si tamen impiae Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada.' But I may be charged with forgetting the most remark^ able parallel of all, to wit, that in the Hebrew Scriptures, where, instead of the intoxicating soma, or the draught from the deep well of wisdom, or the cauldron of science and regeneration, we are told of a tree with a knowledge-giving crop of forbidden fruit, whereof it was a crime for man to taste, while he who induced him to commit it, is represented as a reptile, as a serpent to have his head bruised. This would, however, involve the discussion of Semitic questions, the settling of which is neither within my competence nor in any way essen- tial to the understanding of the history of Ajyan religion. Let it suffice that the course of that history is intelligible in itself ; that it is, on the whole, a history of progress ; and that, so far as we have been able to study it in these lectures, it may briefly be summed up thus : some of the Celts of antiquity, as also of the Teutons and the Hindus, avenged themselves in their own time on the narrowness of the divine creatures of their ancestors' imagination by 304 III. THE CULTURE HEEO. thrusting them aside to make room at the head of their respective pantheons for Ogmios and Gwydion, for Woden and Indra, as divinities more adequately representative of man and the aspirations of his being. Lecture IV. THE CULTURE HERO. (continued.) The wliole ground, so far as concerns the Culture Hero of the Celts, has now been in a sense rapidly traversed, in order that you may see at a glance the Tiew advocated ; but in so doing, a great many data had, for fear of over- loading the discourse, to be passed over in silence. Thus, for example, the story of the birth of Llew has been omitted ; but it will be convenient, for the sake of com- parison, to give it before proceeding any further. GWTDION AJSTD CaIEBRB. The Laws of Wales speak of an officer of the court, who was called the troediog, or the foot-holder, one of whose duties, according to the Yenedotian version, was to hold the king's feet in his lap from the time he took his seat at table to the moment when he retired to rest.^ He had also to discharge the more delicate function of scratching his majesty's person whenever the royal skin happened to itch. Now M^th ab Mathonwy used to have ^ Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (London, 1841), Vol. i. l)k. i. chap, xxxiv. Conaire M6r (p. 135), monarch of Erinn, had also a foot-holder: see O'Curry, iij. 143. X 306 IV. THE CULTUKE HERO. a lady to act as his foot-holder, and she must be a virgin. This office was filled by a most lovely damsel whose name was Goewyn ; but while M^th was away in the war with the men of Dyved (p. 244), she was outraged by Gil- vaethwy son of Don, with his brother Grwydion's con- nivance. M^th, whose conduct is always represented as just and righteous, indemnified Goewyn by making her his queen, while he punished Gwydion and his brother by changing them iato deer, wild boars and wolves, forms which they had for three successive years. When the term of their punishment was completed, M^th changed them back into their own shapes, and admitted them again to his court. He next asked Gwydion to recommend him a duly qualified foot-holder, and Gwydion brought his own mistress to M^th, namely, Arianrhod, daughter of Miith's sister Don, whereupon Mi,th addressed her as follows : ' Ha, damsel, art thou the maiden ?' ' I know not, Lord, other than that I am,' was the reply ; at which M^th took up his magic wand and bent it, saying, ' Step over this, and I shall know if thou art the maiden.' That, I ought to state, is Lady Charlotte Guest's translation ;^ but to do justice to the sense of the original, 2 one has to substitute both times for the words 'the maiden,' the words ' a virgin.' To continue the story, Arianrhod complied with Math's request, and left behind her a fine chubby, yellow-haired boy, at whose screaming she made for the door, near which she left a smaller form ; but before anybody caught a second sight of the latter, Gwydion had wrapped it in a sheet of satin, and con- cealed it in a chest at the foot of his bed. Mi,th took 1 Guest's Mah. iij. 231. 2 _h. B. Mai. p. 68. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 307 the chubby boy and had him christened ; but no sooner was he christened, the story goes on to say, than he made for the sea ; and no sooner was he in the sea than he acquired the nature thereof, for he swam as well as the best fish in its waters, wherefore he was called Dylan son of the Wave : no wave ever broke under him. The rest of his story is compressed into the single statement that his death was caused by a blow dealt by his uncle the smith, Govannon son of Don. To return to Gwydion : he heard one morning as he lay awake in his bed a low sound issuing from the chest at the foot of it ; getting up quickly, he opened the chest, and, as he did so, he there beheld a little boy swaying his arms about from the folds of the satin sheet and scattering it. He took the child in his arms, and made for a town where he knew of a nurse and engaged her. The boy was in her charge for a year, in the course of which he attained to such a size as would have been surprising even if he had been two years old ; and in the second year he was a big lad able to come to the court by himself. Gwydion took notice of him, and the boy became fonder of him than of anybody else. He was afterwards brought up at the court ^ until he was four ; and at that age it would have been a wonder, the story tells us, to find a boy of eight as big as he was. One day, when he was out walking with his father, the latter took him to Arianrhod's castle. What then happened, owing to her disgust at 1 At first sight this looks as if it meant Math's court in the neigh- bourhood of the Conwy, but the drift of the story is best understood by supposing the court meant to have been Gwydion's own court, which was probably at Dinas Dintte or at Caer Seon (p. 271). It was doubtless some place nearer to Caer Arianrhod than Math's court. x2 308 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. finding her cHld alive, has been told elsewhere (p. 236) : but she is not represented as making any allusion to bis brother, who had made the sea his habitat. Such is the story of Llew's birth and early years, as given in the Mabinogi of MS,th ab Mathonwy, where alone it occurs ; and it puts us in a position to do justice to the parallel between Gwydion and Cairbre Muse, toge- ther with the other Cairbres whose identity with him has been suggested. For Cairbre Muse, like Gwydion, had two sons by his sister. Her name was Duben, and theirs were Core and Cormac respectively. The children were twins, and the story of their birth is no less strange than that of Dylan and Llew, for one of them was found to have nipped off his brother's ears before his birth. The crime of their parents caused the crops to fail, which, according to the idea prevalent in ancient Ireland, was its natural result,^ and Cairbre was obliged to confess his guilt to the nobles of his realm, who, when the children ^ Ehys, CelUa Sritain, p. 64 ; but to the references there given may be added traces of the same belief among the Welsh. Take, for instance, the following couplet from a prophecy of evil days, in the 12th century MS. called the Black Booh of Carmarthen : 'An hit ni hluitinet a Mr diev. Ariev enwir edwi fruytlieu.' ' We shall have years and long days With false kings (and) failing fruit-crops.' The second ' and' rests on an emendation suggested by the metre, and if one omit it the rendering will be, 'With false kings (causes) of failing fruit-crops,' as the grammatical relation of the words might then be represented thus : 'With false kings of withering of fruits.' The original is given (with a serious misprint) by Skene, ij. 23, and trans- lated, i. 485, as follows : ' To us there will be years and long days. And iniquitous rulers, and the blasting of fruit.' IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 309 ■were bom, ordered them to be burnt, that the incest might not remain in the land. ' Give me,' said Cairbre's druid, * that Corc^ there, that I may place him outside Erinn, so that the incest may not be within it.' Core was given to the druid, and the latter, with his wife, whose name was B6i, took him to an island. They had a white cow with red ears, and an ablution was performed by them every morning on Core, placed on the cow's back ; so in a year's time to the day the cow sprang away from them into the sea, and she became a rock in it ; to wit, the heathenism of the boy had entered into her. Bo Bui, or Boi's Cow, is the name of the rock, and Inis Bui, or Boi's Isle, that of the island. The boy was afterwards brought back into Erimi. Such is the story ^ how Core was purged of the virulence of his original sin, and the scene is one of the three islets called the Bull, the Cow and the Calf, not far from Dursey Island, in the gulf called Kenmare Kiver. Now I have only to reproduce, word for word, as it occurs in the Book of Leinster, the account of another 1 Core means croppy or cropped : in this instance the name refers to the bearer's ears, and the verb used as to the action of his brother maiming him is ro-chorc. The correctness of this interpretation is borne out by a passage in the Bodley MS. Laud 610, fol. 98*', where we read of a boy called Core or Conall Core hidden under the hearth, where fire dropping on him burnt off one of his ears (? both), and caused him to be named or surnamed Gore. The original runs thus : ' Foluigi amac foantellug fontalam .... Bruinnith intene forsin mac conloisc ahd isde bacorc core mac luigtAig.' 2 Bk. of the Dun, 54a; see also O'Curry's Magh Lena, p. 28, note, where he calls the druid Dinioch. That is probably the word dineeh, which I have ventured to render by ' ablution,' on the supposition that it is the same word as the Welsh dlneu, ' the act of pouring or shedding a lic^uid.' 310 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. Cairbre, whom Irisli historians treat as distinct from Cairbre Muse, in order to enable the reader to see that they are mistaken, and that the two Cairbres were originally one and the same character. There are several important reasons for giving the story as there related : ^ it is part of a longer tract concerning an Irish triad of men said to have spoken as soon as they were born. The one here in point was called Morann son of Cairbre Cinnchait. The following is the reason why he spoke : all the offspring of the privileged classes in Erinn were killed by the Cairbre alluded to ; for he belonged to the Peasant Tribes, and he seized the sovereignty of Erinn by force. And his reign was bad ; for the corn would have only one grain in each ear, the holly but one berry, and the oak but one acorn in his time. Three sons were born to this Cairbre, and they [or rather two of them] were drowned together by his orders; for it appeared that they were monsters, because they were born helmeted. The same thing was attempted in the case of the third son : two of the king's men were charged to go with him to throw him into the billow's mouths. But as soon as they cast the boy from them into the sea, the billow broke his helmet, so that they beheld his face on its ridge. It is then he spoke, saying, ' Rough is wave.' They hastened to him and lifted him up. * Do not lift me,' said he : ' Cold is wind.' ' What shall we do with the boy?' said one of the men. 'We shall do thus,' said the other : ' we shaU leave him in a box on the top of the stone of the smith's door — that is 1 Bk. of Leinster, 1266; see also Prof. Atkinson's analysis of the tale in the Introduction, p. 31. IV. THE CTJLTUEE HERO. 311 Mden's, the smith, of the king — and we shall keep watch over the child to see whether the smith will take to it.' When the latter came forth from his house he saw the child in the box, and he proceeded to carry it into the house. ' Light a candle, wife,' said he, ' that this find I have made may be seen.' A candle was then brought him, and then Morann [speaking for the third time] said, ' Bright is candle.' The child was brought up by Mden as his own. The two men aforesaid, however, knew that it was not his. Once on a time afterwards, Cairbre went to drink beer in Mden's house, and just when they found the drinking most agreeable, the child went from lap to lap until he went on Cairbre's. ' The lad takes to me: whose is the boy?' said Cairbre, with a heavy sigh. The child's mother, that is, Cairbre's wife, heaved another sigh. ' What is the matter with you,' said Mden ; ' is it envy that seizes you ? Though the boy be dear to me, and though he be my son, I had rather he were yours, on account of the love you bear me, and because you have need of him.' ' That, however, does not help us,' said Cairbre. 'Good now,' said the two men afore -mentioned; 'the reward of one who would bring thee a child lite that would be good.' ' That it would be,' said Cairbre ; ' I should give him its weight in silver and one-third its weight in gold ; but it is useless to talk, as you are but uttering idle words.' ' But as we are on this subject of the boy,' said the two men, ' let the bargain be made binding on thee.' The bargain is accordingly bound on him, and no sooner was that done than the two men went to him and placed the boy in his bosom; they proved to him that he was his. ' That is the boy,' said they, ' whom we took from thee 312 IV. THE CULTUEE HEEO. to be drowned, and we did so and so with Mm.' 'AH that is true,' said the smith. It is therefore the boy was called the son of Mo en ; and these are the three first sentences that Morann spoke immediately after his birth, namely, Eough is wave. Cold is wind, and Bright is candle. Morann afterwards took the office of chief judge of Erinn, and his father Cairbre died. And he sent his son to Feradaeh Finn Fechtnach,^ in the land of Alban, to invite him to the sovereignty of Erinn ; for he had fled before Cairbre over the sea to escape death at his hands. He came at Morann's invitation and took the sovereignty of Erinn, while Morann occupied the office of chief brehon or judge. Here the story abruptly ends, owing to the loss of a leaf in the manuscript. But elsewhere the Peasant Tribes are represented inviting all the nobles of Erinn to a great banquet, at which they murder them and make Cairbre their king : the scene is associated with Mag Cro, or the Field of Blood, near Knockmaa, in the county of Galway, and the whole is usually regarded as the echo of a great political revolution in Ireland during the first decades of the Christian era. Further, the attempt to convert the myth into history has long since been much aggravated by a notion that we have the Atecotti of the Eoman history of Britain in the Peasant Tribes of Erinn, because the Irish which that term is meant to render was Aithech TuathaP- But the story admits of a very different inter- pretation : Cairbre, as we take it, was originally one of 1 Elsewhere described as one of the heroes of Ulster : see O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 95. 2 See %\\^ Four Masters, A.D. 9, 10, also 14 and O'Donovan's notes; likewise the editor's Introduction to O'Curry's Manners, pp. xxiv — xxxi. IV. THE CULTUEB HERO. 313 the names of tlie Culture Hero, whose attacks were directed against the avaricious powers of Hades ; but the great burial-places of pagan Ireland, near the head-quarters of its princes, brought Hades very near to this world. So it comes about that Cairbre, instead of being made to take a long journey to the nether world, as one might have been led by the story of Gwydion to expect, finds his foes in Erinn itself. But in spite of this shifting of the scene to this upper world, the parallel between Cairbre and Gwydion is preserved, one might say, to a nicety. Gwydion gains his victory over the powers of Hades, a deified man over the gods; so Cairbre diff'ers from those whom he vanquishes by a correspondiag infe- riority of race, he being of ignoble descent, while they are described as of the noble and princely lineage of Mile.^ We must not leave this story without noticing the addition to Cairbre' s name of the term Cinnchait^ consist- ing of the genitive of Cenncait, meaning Cat's Head, which also occurs as Caitchenn^ ' Cat-headed.' ^ As a rule, 1 According, however, to another account, Cairbre was the son of a king of Lochlann : see O'Curry, p. 264. ^ The Four Masters, A.D. 10, have Cairpre Cinncait, while under A.D. 14 they speak of him as Cairhre Caitcend. The Booh of Fenagh (ed. Hennessy) has Gairpre Caitchenn at p. 34, and Cairpre cinn cait (with Gairpre in the nom. case) at p. 56. Cairbre's name happens to occur mostly in the genitive, so that it might be supposed that the genitive Ginnchait was merely in apposition to it ; but O'Curry, who was well read in such matters, treats it as Cairbr^ Ginn-Cait in his Lectures on the MS. Materials ; and a passage in the Bh. of Leinster, 129 a, has Corpri Chindchaitt, where Gorpri is not itself genitive. The verse runs thus : 'L^nri corpri c^iradcAaitt cAriiaid. osiw temraig tailc towdbiiaire ; c6ic hliadan arat/i asiwraiMd. ec atbatA athaiV moraiwd.' 314 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. ho-wever, it is the representatives of darkness that are pictured as deformed about the head and ears, as in the case of Core and the drowned brothers of Morann, together with many others. There would be nothing surprising in making Cairbre the Culture Hero a son of dark parents, just as Gwydion is son of Don, the goddess of death (p. 91), and this would explain the use of the genitive in Cairbre Cinnchait., which would mean that Cairbre was the son of Cenncait, just as the son of Duben is briefly called Core Duihne. This view derives some confirmation from the principal name in the following story: the original, of which it is an abstract, has the interest of being one written down in Tory Island in 1835, by the Irish scholar and antiquary O'Donovan, from the dictation of Shane O'Dugan, whose ancestors are said to have been living there in St. Columba's time:^ In days of yore there were three brothers called Gavida, Mac Samthairm and Mac Kiueely, living on the coast of Donegal, opposite Tory Island, which was so called from its tors or prominent rocks. Gavida was a distinguished smith who had his forge at Drumnatinnfe (Fire-ridge), while Mac Kineely was lord of the district around, com- prising what is now the parishes of Eath-Finan and Tullaghobegly, and he possessed such a valuable grey cow that attempts were always beiug made to steal her from him. At the same time Tory Island was the head- quarters of a notorious robber called Balor, who had one eye in the middle of his forehead and another in the back of his head ; this latter, by its foul distorted looks and its venomous rays and glances, would strike one dead, so 1 The Four Masters, A.M. 3330, editor's note (i. 18—21). IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 315 he used to cover it unless lie -wished to petrify his foes ; and even to this day an evil or overlooking eye is called by the Irish Baler's eye. Once on a time his druid revealed to Balor that he should die by the hands of a grandson of his ; and as he had only one child, a young daughter called Ethnea, he made sure against any future danger by having her shut up on a lofty and almost inaccessible height called Tor More, or the big tor, at the eastern extremity of the island. There she was guarded by twelve matrons, who were never to mention the other sex to her. Balor went on with his robberies, and he was clever enough at last to steal Mac Kineely's grey cow. He transformed himself for the purpose into a red- headed lad, and told Mac Samthainn, who happened to be holding the grey cow by a halter, that he had over- heard his brothers at the forge agreeing to use his steel for their own swords, whereupon Mac Samthainn asked the foxy lad to take the halter, while he went to the forge in a towering passion. The next sight Mac Kineely had of his cow was to see her with Balor in the middle of the sound. Mac Kineely learnt from a druid that the cow could not be recovered till Balor had been killed, as he would, in order to keep her, never shut the basilisk eye; but Mac Kineely had a fairy friend who told him how Balor was to be brought to his fall. This lady, called Biroge of the Mountain, took Mac Kineely dressed as a woman through the air to the Tor More, and asked shelter for a lady she had just rescued from the hands of a cruel tyrant. The twelve matrons could not think of disobliging the banshee, and she in her turn put them all to sleep as fairies can ; but when they woke they found that Biroge and her prot^g^e 316 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. were gone. The matrons tried to persuade their ward that it was but a dream; but the fair Ethnea knew better, and in due time she gave birth to three boys together. Balor was furious on findiug this out, and had the three boys wrapped in a sheet and sent out to be drowned in a certain whirlpool which he indicated ; but before the boat had reached the spot, the pin fell out of the sheet, and the eldest-born baby tumbled into the sea. The two others were taken to the whirlpool, while the previous one was picked up by the banshee and taken to its father Mac Kineely, and he gave it to his brother Gavida to foster and bring up a smith, a great profession in those days. Balor, finding out that Mac Kineely was the father of his grandchildren, who, he was pleased to think, were all three at the bottom of the sea, crossed with a party of his followers to the maialand, and took Mac Kineely out to a large white stone, and thereon chopped his head oflf. The warm blood gushed forth and penetrated the white stone to its very centre ; and there it remains to speak of the cruel deed and to give its name of Clock Chinnfhaolaidh, ' Kineely's Stone,' to a district comprising two parishes. Balor pursued his life of depredation more boldly than before ; but in the course of years, Lug, for that was the name of the son of Mac Kineely and Ethnea, grew up to be a most excellent smith and to learn his own history : he was observed to gaze frequently at the blood-red veins in the white stone, and to be subject to fits of suUenness and gloom. He bided his opportunity, for Balor was again in the habit of frequenting Gavida's forge ; and one day, when Lug's uncle was absent, Balor came and was foolish enough to boast of his victory over Mac Kineely years before. Lug IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 317 worked for him and watched his movements : presently he took out of the fire a glowing rod of iron, which he adroitly thrust into Balor's evil eye, and out through his skull on the other side. This was at the forge at Drum- natinnfe, though others will have it that the scene of Balor's death was at Cnoc na fola, or the Bloody Fore- land. Such is the modern version of a very ancient story, in which one cannot help seeing that Lug, saved from drowning with his anonymous brothers, and brought up by Gavida the smith, his father's brother, is the same person as Morann, rescued from drowning with his mon- ster brothers, and brought up as the son of Moen the king's smith. The parallel between the two stories may be drawn still closer if one take into account that Cairbre may be inferred to have been the brother of Mden. It seems to be fairly established by the fact that Cairbre, in the person of the satirist of that name, who disturbs the reign of the Fomorian tyrant Bres, is called the son of Etan the poetess (p. 253); and that M6en the seer, in whom we doubtless have Moen the smith, as every great smith was chiefly famous for his spells and divination, is also called Moen son of Etan.^ It occurs, be it noticed, in the legend showing how by cunning and craft Cairbre — there called Cairbre Muse — got the first lapdog from Britain (p. 246). The story ends with the statement that after the dog died, its bare skull was one day shown by a 1 In Cormac's Glossary in the Three Irish Glossaries, ed. by Stokes, p. 30, and the Stokes-O'Donovan translation of Cormac's Glossary, p. 112, the genitive is Edaine, of Eddin or Etdin ; but in the Bodleian fragment, Laud 610, also ed. by Stokes, it is EtncB, the gen. probably of Etan, while the Bk. of the Dun, 38 b, has Etan, gen. Etaine. 318 IV. THE CULTUEE HEEO. ■wag to a seer and poet, to see if the latter could find whose it was, and that, by a process of divination familiar to him, he discovered that it was the skull of the dog imported by Cairbre. That the seer should have been no other than Mden son of Etan, looks quite an accident. In reality it was probably nothing of the kind, and it just serves to show how the legends centring around Cairbre's name must have originally hanged together. This is not all ; for the father's name in the one story was Cairbre Cinnchait, or C. (son) of Cat's Head, while in the other he was Mac Kineely^ or Son of Wolf's Head. This parallel between Cenn-cait and Cenn-faelad or Kineely can hardly be considered an accidental coincidence of no significance, but rather a result of the original identity of the two tales ; and it may be surmised that in an older version of the Donegal one, Mac Kineely's full name was Carpri mac Cinnfaelad, or C. mac Kineely. Looked at from another point of view, Mac Kineely and his brother Gavida just exactly match Gwydion and his brother Govannon. Gwydion was the principal cha- racter and father of Llew ; so Mac Kineely was lord of the country round his home and father of Lug, who will be shown later to have been the counterpart of Llew^ in ^ In later Irish orthography, Mac Cinnfhaoladh, ' the Son of Cennfhaoladh,' or, as it was written in mediaeval Irish, Gennfaelad, which meant Fael's Head j hvAfael is explained to signify a wolf, Rev. Celt. iv. 415. That fdelad was the genitive of fdel is proved by the occurrence of the accusative as foelaid in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, i. pp. 45, 114. Oenncait occurs independently in Clochan Chinn- chait, where the Gilla Dacker lands, Joyce, pp. 272, 417. 2 Treating the Welsh Beli as the consort of D6n (p. 90), and regarding Irish Balor as well as Irish Bile as etymologically related IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 319 more than one respect. Govannon, or Govynnion as he is also called, was the great smith of Welsh story, and we have his counterpart in Gavida, who would probably, had we got the myth in an ancient form, have appeared under the name Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, the exact equivalent of the Welsh Govynion, and the name of the great smith of the Tuatha D^ Danann. But in fact it would be more accurate to say that his name does occur in the story ; for though the cow is said to have been Mac Kineely's, its name, as given to O'Donovan, was Glas Gaivkn, which he rightly corrects into Glas Gaivnen, that is, in later Irish spelling, Glas Gaihhnenn, ' Goib- niu' s Grey or Brindled (Cow):' practically, then, the legend gives the smith two names — one the direct repre- sentative of the ancient Goibniu, and the other, Gavida, of a more obscure origin. Lastly, Amaethon, the Cul- ture Hero of Welsh agriculture, might at first sight seem to be here duly represented by Mac Samthainn, who takes charge of Mac Kineely's cow while the latter steps into his brother's forge. But as we have no further information about Mac Samthainn, the parallel must be acknowledged to Beli, we may put the pedigrees of Llew and Lug side by side as follows : Don (wife of Beli). I Arianrhod (mistress of Gwydion I brother of Govannon the smith). Llew (the Solar Hero). Geithlenn, of which the nominative should be Geithliu (for an older Ceithniu, gen. Ceithnenri), was possibly another name of Danu or Dona, Welsh D6n ; and it is probably after her that Inis Geithlenn, or Ceith- liu's Isle, that is, Enniskillen, a town on Lough Erne, has been called ; but see M. d'A. de Jubainville's Gyde, p. 222, Geithlenn (wife of Balor), I Eithne (mistress of Mac Kineely I brother of Gavida the smith). Lug (the Solar Hero). 320 IT. THE CXILTUEE HERO. to be, to say the least of it, very faintly drawn ; and it is possible that we should rather recognize in Mac Sam- thainn the herdsman's dog ; for the name seems to claim kinship with the Irish word samthach, ' a haft or hilt,' also ' an axe with a long handle ; ' so that one may pro- bably translate it ' the Boy of the Haft,' and compare the name of the dog introduced to Erinn by Cairbre Muse's craft, which was Mug-eime, or ' the Slave of the Haft.' The story, as you will remember, explains how the dog came, in acquiring it, into Cairbre's possession (p. 247). The coincidence is so striking that I cannot help thinking that we have here traces of another version of the story of Cairbre Muse and the dog he imported into Erinn. The old one, somewhat perversely, makes the animal into a lapdog ; while the modern story is probably more faith- ful to the original in that it suggests a dog useful to the herdsman.^ From the foregoing stories and those mentioned in 1 The name Mac Samtliaiiin explains how in time the story-tellers got into the way of interpreting it to mean a man, a brother in fact to Mac Kineely, as the somewhat indefinite signification of the word mac was favourable to the error. For though it is commonly rendered ' son' in pedigrees, it means no more than ' boy,' and the genitive fol- lowing it need be no parent's name : thus a student was called Mao Legind, 'Boy of Eeading;' and there was an old name, Mac Naue, which Adamndn (Ft^a 8. Columbae, ed. Eeeves, Prcef. p. ij. 9) rendered Filius Navis, but it meant more nearly ' Boy of the Ship or Ship-boy.' Still more to the point is the name of Diarmait's favourite hound, Mac an ChuiU, usually rendered ' Son of the Hazel,' but it would be more exactly ' Boy of the Hazel,' in spite of which the pronoun used for the name is si, 'she' {Pursuit, ij. 43, § 41). The vocabulary of the Celtic languages will be searched in vain for a word for son or daughter as distinguished from boy or girl, a fact of no little negative importance when weighed along with Caesar's ugly account of the menage of the ancient Britons (v. 14). IV. THE CFLTTJEB HEKO. 321 connection with Gwydion, it is evident that Cairbre was one of the principal names of the Mercury of the ancient Irish ; but the epic, so to say, in which he played the leading part has only come down to us in fragments appropriated by different tribes, though they are hardly more disconnected and inconsistent than one would natu- rally expect ia such a case. In the first place, Cairbre is, as it were, split up iuto a number of brothers, mostly to meet the exigencies of tribal genealogies. Foremost among them stands Cairbre Muse, from whose descendants at least six different districts in Munster were called Muscraige, Anglicized Muscry or Muskerry?- The next in importance was Cairbre Niafer, or C. the Champion of Men, and that significant designation^ reminds one of the Culture Hero under his name Ogma, who was repre- sented as the champion of the Tuatha Dd Danann. Cairbre Niafer was monarch of Erinn and dwelt at Tara of the Kings, ^ and he was father of Ere, who survived him at Tara* to figure in the story of Ciichulainn. This Cairbre is mentioned as one of the avengers of his father Conaii'e (p. 135), and it was iu his reign that the Fir Bolg were ^ See p. 255, above; also the BJc. of Rights, p. 42, note. 2 The scribe of the story of the Deisi in the Bk. of the Dun, 54a, calls him Corpri Niad, which should mean Cairbre ' of Champions,' or 'of (the) Champion.' ^ See a poem by a poet called O'Hartagan in the Bk. of Leinster, 161a, 1615; also O'Curry's edition of it in his MS. Materials, pp. 514-6. This clashes with other supposed facts, and it has been repre- sented that Cairbre was only king of Leinster, and that he lived, not at Tara of the Kings, but at another Tara : see O'Curry, ibid. p. 507, and O'Donovan's note to his Battle of Magh Rath, p. 138; but there is no mistaking O'Hartagan's meaning. * Windisch, p. 212 ; O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 199. T 322 lY. THE CULTURE HERO. driven westwards to the islands including Arann.^ The third brother is called Cairbre Eigfota, who is described as assisting his brothers to avenge their father f but he is chiefly known as the ancestor of the Ddl Riada, ' the division or tribe of Eiada,' better known as the Dalriad Scots of Antrim and Alban, Riada and Rigfota being the same name, which Beeda wrote Reuda? These three Cairbres are usually mentioned together as the sons of Conaire;* but sometimes a fourth, Cairbre Baiscinn, is added to them; and from him were supposed to be derived the Corco Baiscinn, a people in the south-west of the pre- sent county of Clare. ^ Probably Cairbre, king of Kerry and father of the poetess Crede (p. 252), should be added to our Cairbres ; and identification with the Culture Hero has been suggested in the case of the harpist Cairbre, who had the so-called chord of knowledge in his lyre (p. 255). The meaning also of the reign of the tyrant Bres the Tomorian being disturbed by the Cairbre who ^ See a poem by Mao Liag in the Ek. of Leinster, 152a, 152b, and O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 122-3. ^ Bk. of the Dun, 5ia. ^ Historia Ecdesiastica, i. 1, where it is not quite evident whether Bseda left out the consonants gf as being both silent even in his time, or subsequent etymologists have thrust them into a word where they had no business. Cairbre Eigfota would mean Cairbre of the long elle or fore-arm, but this spelling does not appear to occur in connection with the name of the Dalriad Scots. * But there were doubtless plenty of accounts inconsistent with this. For instance, Cairbre Mafer is made son of Roa Ruad, or E. the Eed, and brother to Ailill the husband of Medb, and to Finn of Ailinn : see the passages cited in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 483, 513, 515 ; also the pedigrees in the BTc. of Leinster, fol. 31 la. 5 O'Donovan's note to the Bk. of Rights, p. 48, and to the Topo- graphical Poems, p. Ixxi, note 616. IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. 323 composed the first satire in Erinn has been indicated (p. 253). It now only remains to be said that the great Culture Hero who bore the name of Cairbre was doubt- less placed on a level with the gods, and this seems to be the meaning of the fact that Cairbre occurs in a triad of the poets of the Tuatha D^ Danann.^ This is brought into still greater relief in a poetic version of an oath iu the epic story of the Tdin (p. 140) as told in the Book of Leinster, where Medb is represented urging a famous champion called Fer-diad to undertake a duel against her mighty enemy Cxichulainn. Fer-diad, wishing to feel certain that Medb's promises would be faithfully kept to his race in case he fell ia the contest, says that it is not enough for him to have the pledging by sun and moon, by earth and sea, which seems to have constituted the ordinary oath; he must have the fulfilment bound on six sureties and no less : the queen concedes it readily in the following order : ^ Cid domnal na charpat. na mkmku dn airgne gidiat lucht na bairddne rotfiatsu gid acht fonasc latt ar morand. madaill latt a chomall naisc carpri mfn manand. isnaisc ar damacc. Though it be Domnal in his chariot, Or Niaman of noble slaughter, Tho' they be the folk of the bardism. Thou shalt have them notwithstanding. Thine (shaU. be) a bond on Morann, If thou would'st have its fulfilment, Bind Cairbre the smooth of Man ; And bind our two sons. Which of the sons of Medb the two were to whom allusion is made, it woidd perhaps be difficult to say, as she had many ; but Cairbre and Morann come before them, and after the more dread divinities of the deep and of death, who, according to the Celtic notion, were 1 Mac Firbis, quoted by O'Curry, pp. 217, 573. 2 Bk. ofLeinster, 816; O'Curry, iij. 418-9. t2 324 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. the patrons of poetry and bardism. Why Cairbre should here be called smooth is not very clear, unless it be in reference to his manners and speech, supposing them to have been such as those of Gwydion would lead one to expect.^ The obscurity of the allusions is a matter of no great importance ; and what one has rather to notice is, that the names of Morann and Cairbre go together in the oath, just as those of Llew and Gwydion are insepa- rable in Welsh literature. Nay, one may go further and point, as will be done later, to distinct traces of the two corresponding divinities ia the ancient inscriptions of Gaul and the Celtic portion of the Iberian peninsula. GWTDION AND AlTHERNE. The next group of tales to be mentioned gives us, for comparison with Gwydion and others, a remarkable TJlto- nian poet called Aitherne, who belonged to Conchobar mac Nessa's court at a time when the TJltonians are represented enjoying such prosperity and power that they were occasionally much puzzled how to find an excuse for invading and plundering their neighbours; but, when no other means of fomenting a respectable quarrel could be found, the poets and bards might be safely entrusted to do the work ; for " it was customary," to quote Prof. O'Curry's words,^ " for distinguished poets and bards (who were also the philosophers, lawyers, ^ The local reference is still more obscure, since, besides the Isle of Man and a district of Man in Scotland, which is partly represented by Clackmannan, there was a Diin Manann, or Fort of Man, somewhere in the territory of Fermoy in the county of Cork : see O'Donovan, Topographical Poems, pp. 102-3, notes 544-6 ; and the Bk. of Rights, p. 82, note. 2 Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, p. 265. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 325 and most educated men of their day) to pass from one province into another, at pleasure, on a circuit, as it may- be called, of visits among the kings, chiefs, and nobles of the country; and, on these occasions, they used to receive rich gifts, in return for the learning they communicated, and the poems in which they sounded the praises of their patrons or the condemnation of their enemies. Some- times the poet's visit bore also a diplomatic character ; and he was often, with diplomatic astuteness, sent, by direction of his own provincial king, into another pro- vince, with which some cause of quarrel was sought at the moment. On such occasions he was instructed not to be satisfied with any gifts or presents that might be offered to him, and even to couch his refusals in language so insolent and sarcastic as to provoke expulsion if not personal chastisement. And, whenever matters proceeded so far, then he returned to his master, and to him trans- ferred the indignities and injuries received by himself, and publicly called on him, as a matter of personal honour, to resent them. And thus, on occasions where no real cause of dispute or complaint had previously existed, an ambitious or contentious king or chief found means, in those days just as in our own, to pick what public opinion regarded as an honourable quarrel with his neighbour." To these words of O'Curry's I should add, that the rules of hospitality and honour with regard to the poets in ancient Erian forbade the refusal to them of anything, whatsoever it might be, they chose to ask for ; and this was now and then made the means of embarrassing an enemy. Thus, on the day of Ciichulainn's death, his cunning foes sent a poet to ask him for his spear ^ when 1 Rev. Cell: iij. 177—180. 326 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. the owner had most need of it himself. Not daring to refuse, he presented it in a way that proved instantly fatal to the recipient ; but even so, it hastened Ciichu- lainn's fall. Now Conehobar chose as his emissary to pick quarrels with his neighbours the poet Aitheme, who is represented as notoriously the most unreasonable and avaricious of men ; but it is to be remembered that his story, treated, of course, as a narration of facts, comes to us from the Book of Leinster, written by the scribes of the hereditary foes of Ulster. So it has to be dis- counted very considerably in so far as regards the poet's private character ; and I think you will, as we proceed, see that it does not belong to history, but that Conehobar and Aitherne are Irish reflexes of M^th and Gwydion, when the latter (pp. 243-6) got possession by stealth or cunning of certain animals from Hades. Having premised this much, one may proceed to make an abstract of Aitherne's story .^ He first made for the northern part of Connaught, where nothing is recorded of him. He then proceeded to the court of a king called Echaid mac Luchtai, near the Shannon. This king was one-eyed ; so the only gift that would satisfy Aitheme was the king's eye, and the latter, pulling it out at once, gave it him. His servant then led the king to the bank of the lake that was hard by, and thereia he washed the blood from his face. Hence the lake, so goes the story, was named Loch Dergdeirc^ or Eed- eye's Lake. In consideration of the value Echaid attached to his honour, 1 Bh. of Leinster, 114 S — 117a; see the whole story, edited with a translation by Stokes, in the Rev. Gelt. viij. 47 — 63. ^ It is now more briefly called Loch Derg, and it is situated above Killaloe on the Shannon. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 327 in tliat lie gave Ms only eye to save it, Heaven is said to have given Mm thenceforth, two eyes instead of the one he had parted with. He is, moreover, mentioned as one of the great judges of early Ireland ; and if one is right in treating this tragic story as having been distorted by the quasi-historical treatment it met at the hands of the euhemerists of Leinster, there is no difficulty in seeing that we have in this Echaid some such a representative, for example, of the world of darkness and death as Balor of the Evil Eye, and one of his names may be inferred to have been Dergderc, or He of the Eed Eye, whose abode was associated with the lake. Looking at it in this light, and presuming the sympathy of the Irish narrator to have been, for the reason already suggested, transferred to the wrong side, one may regard his story as a blurred version of the same original, which, in the ingenious hands of the poet of the Odyssey, speaks of Odysseus blinding the single eye of Polyphemus. From the Shannon, Aitheme makes his way to the court of Tigerna, king of Munster, where he insists on a monstrous demand of a different nature. Thence he pro- ceeds to South Leinster, where he was met by the king and the nobles of the country, who offered to give him the most handsome presents, provided only he abstained from entering their territory; but he paid no heed to their request. When, in the course of his progress, he sat with the king and his nobles in an assembly at a place called Ard Brestine, near TuUow, in the county of Carlow, he said that the only thing that would satisfy him was to have the finest treasure there. They could not divine what it was, and their distress was exceedingly great ; but an accident delivered them out of their straits, 328 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. for there chanced to be, on the outskirts of the multitude, a young man showing off his horse; and in wheeling round, the animal's hind hoofs cast a big sod into the air, which came down on the king's lap. Before anybody else could look at it, he espied in it a brooch, containing, as the story has it, no less than fourscore ounces of red gold. He bade Aitherne guess what he had in his lap, to which the poet promptly replied in rhyme, that he had the brooch that had served to fasten Maine mac Dur- thacht's cloak, adding that this was the very thing he wanted, as Maine was his mother's brother, and it was he that had buried the brooch there after the defeat and slaughter of the Ultonians by the men of Leinster in a battle on that spot. Now with regard to this story, it is to be observed, in the first place, that the name of the king of South Leinster was Fergus Fairge, that is to say, Fergus Ocean or of (the) Ocean, which sufficiently explains his non-historical character ; for not only does the name Fergus take -us back to Fergus Mac Eoig (p. 139), but the world of waters and that of darkness are persistently associated with one another in Celtic mythology; and it looks natural to find that Lugaid^ was his son, who, so far as concerns the Solar Hero, is the personification of darkness and evil. But we are not altogether left to rely on these indications as to the real scene of the story, namely Hades ; for in Maine's brooch we have a counterpart of Woden's ring, Draupnir or Dropper, which, as will be mentioned when we come to speak more in detail of the story of the summer Sun-god, he placed on Balder's funeral pile, whereby it found its 1 O'Curry, pp. 465, i72. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 329 way witli Balder to Hell. It was afterwards returned as a token by Balder to his father when the latter sent his son Hermodr to Hell to ask for Balder's release : Balder was not allowed to go back with Hermodr, but he gave his brother his father's gold ring to carry home again : it had the peculiarity, that every ninth night it dropped eight others like itself.i Thus it symbolized the ancient week, and its recovery by Woden its owner must mean the restoration of the regular vicissitude of day and night. , Aitherne, having got the brooch, went on to the court of the king of North Leinster, which was at Naas, on the Liffey. There he was not satisfied with the rich presents given him, but he insisted on sharing the queen's love, and in leading captive to Ulster 150 of the chief ladies of Leinster, with 700 red-eared white cows. The poet and the Leinster men did not, we are told, bless one another when they parted ; and no sooner had the former crossed the boundary into his own country, than the latter, released from the obligations of hospitality, pursued him and rescued their wives and daughters. They further forced him and the Ultonian army that arrived to protect him to fortify themselves on Howth Head, near Dublin, where they underwent a siege for some days. Finally, the Ulster braves sallied forth and routed the men of Leinster, and their king, overtaken on the banks of the Liffey, was beheaded by Conall Cemach.^ But it would be useless to attempt to interpret this story bit by bit ; suffice it to say that Conall Cernach, or C. the Victorious, 1 Corpus Poet. Bar. i. 114. ^ Bh. of Leinster, 116ft, 117a: compare iZe% Celt. iij. 182-5. 330 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. is to be regarded as a sun-liero, and the Leinster king's name was Mesgegra mac Datho, that he was the owner of a fabulous pig, and his brother Mesroida of a kind of Cerberus, which cannot be discussed at this point. There is nothing historical about them, and if one wash out the colouring given to the story by the Leinster story-tellers, we have the outlines left us of a picture which was originally that of the conflicts of the Culture Hero and his friends with the powers of darkness ; but it must be confessed it can only be recognized in the light reflected on it by the cognate pictures of Gwydion and Woden. It may seem strange that not only Connaught and the west should be made to stand for Hades, but also Leinster. This latter appears, however, to have been so treated in other stories, as may be seen from the relations between the Ultonian court at Emain Macha and the Leinster court at Naas on the LifEey; as, for example, in the story of Conchobar and Medb, in which Naas is made the head-quarters of AlLQI, whose wife Medb became after deserting Conchobar, her former husband. AiliU is, so to say, divided between Connaught and Leinster after his marriage with Medb, who possessed Connaught as her inheritance from her mother.^ It is from their capital in the west that AiliU and Medb set out on the Tain (p. 140) ; but the former's portion of the army on that occasion consisted of a force from Leinster called the Gailidm, whose superiority over the rest of the troops 1 B7e. of Leinster, 536; O'Curry, p. 282. Their capital in tLe west was Cruachan Ai, a place near Belanagare, in the county of Eoscom- mon, where the remains of the earthen forts distinguishing the site go by the name of Eath Croghan : see the Bk. of Bights, O'Donovan's note, p. 20. IV. THE CULTUEB HEEO. 331 SO excited Ms wife's jealousy that she wished to have them all massacred: instead of that she was, however, only allowed to have them dispersed among the other batallions,^ The narrative permits it to be seen that the superiority of the Gailioin is merely an interpretation of the magic arts ascribed to them j^ and this is in harmony with the fact that Irish legend makes the Gailioin a part of an early invasion of Erinn, to whose share Leinster fell, where they ranged themselves always against the Tuatha D^ Danann, or the race of the gods. Similarly, Leinster, no less than Connaught and the west, appears to represent Hades in the story of Aitheme. This view of Aitherne's doings is not a little counte- nanced by a strange story told in the Book of Leinster about Aitherne's notorious churlishness. In that manu- script^ it follows those of which an abstract has just been given, and it is so curious that I venture to give a literal translation of it as follows : "Aitheme the Im- portunate, son of Ferchertne, he is the most inhospi- table man that dwelt in Erinn. He went to Mider of Bri Leith and took the cranes of denial and churlishness away from him surreptitiously ; that is, with a view to refusal and churlishness, that no man of the men of Erinn should visit his house for hospitality or mendi- cancy. *Do not come, not come,' says the first crane. ' Get away,' says her mate. * [Go] past the house, past the house,' says the third crane. Any man of the men of Erinn who shoidd see them would not betake himself to 1 Bk. of the Dun, 566, 58 a; see also O'Curry's remarks on them in his Manners, &c. ij. 259-61. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 57a. ^ 117a, 117&. 332 IV. THE CtJLTTJEE HERO. Ms engagement to fight that day. He (Aitherne) never devoured his full meal in a place where one should see him. He proceeded, therefore, [one day] to take with him a cooked pig and a pot of mead, in order that he might eat his fill all alone. And he set in order before him the pig and the pot of mead, when he beheld a man coming towards him. ' Thou wouldst do [it] all alone,' said the stranger, whilst he took the pig and the pot away from him. 'What is thy name?' said Aitherne. ' Nothing very grand,' said he : ' Sethor. ethor. otJior. sele. dele, dreng gerce. mec gerlusce. ger ger. dir dir issed moainmse.' Sethor, ethor, othor, sele, dele, dreng gerce. Son of Gerlusce, sharp sharp, right right, that is my name. Aitherne neither got the pig nor was he able to make rhymes to the satire. It is evident that it was one come from Grod to take away the pig ; for Aitherne was not stingy from that hour forth." From this little story one may gather, among other things, that Aitherne, unable to master on the spur of the moment metrical skill enough to manipulate the name of the angel in possession of the pig and the pot of mead, was powerless to curse him : it had to be done according to the rules of the poetic art, and the form of words was of course all-important. But let us come to the birds : Aitherne got them for the purposes of denial and stingi- ness, crimes treated in a version of the Vision of Adamnan as characteristic of a very bad class of men, who undergo punishment in Hell in the company of ' thieves and liars, and folk of treachery and blasphemy, and robbers, and raiders, and false-judging brehons, and folk of contention, and witches, and slanderers, men who mark themselves IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 333 to the devil, and readers wlio preach heresy.' ^ But what, you may ask, had the three cranes to do with denial and stinginess? Directly, perhaps, they had nothing to do with them ; but it is suggested that they were stolen by Aitherne to keep people away from his house. They answered that purpose by reason of their association with Mider, who was one of the kings of the fairies and the other world, which nobody would willingly visit. In other words, they were birds of evil omen, and so much so that no warrior who chanced to see them would proceed on his way to battle that day in spite of his having bound himself to go. I should hesitate to extract any more meaning out of the story, especially as one does not read that Mider was reckoned notorious for his churlishness ; and if it were asked why the crane should be associated with Mider, we should give the question rather the form, Why a triad of cranes ? Even then I could not pretend to answer it ; but one might, perhaps, venture to point out that they are not impro- bably of the same origin as the three cranes perched on the back of the bull on the Paris monument, to which attention was called in the first of these lectures (p. 86). In "Welsh they would seem to be matched by the three living things stolen by Amaethon son of Don from Hades, a plover, a bitch and a roe, for which Gwydion and he fought with Arawn the king of that country, and beat him in one of the Three Frivolous Battles at the expense of 71,000 lives (p. 245). Here the Welsh story, with its three different kinds of creatures, is possibly less original than the Irish one, with its three cranes or herons ; and, 1 Stokes' Fis Adamndin (Simla, 1870), pp. 14, 15 j and Windisoh, pp. 187-8; also s.v. diuUaim (p. 485). 334 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. to be more exact, the Welsli version may have compressed into a triad the stories of several thefts from Hades, so that one would be left to compare the bird alone with the cranes of the Irish tale. One of the accounts of Arthur killing the infernal giant residing on Mont S. Michel (p. 91), represents three baleful birds turning his spits for the giant ; but another makes them into three maidens forced to cook for him.^ One is tempted to interpret the association of the three with the terrene powers as a reference to their supposed wisdom and knowledge ex- tending over time in its three divisions of future, present and past; and the 'come,' 'go' and 'past' of the cranes' cries readily lend themselves to such an explanation. We might perhaps go so far as to bring the three maidens into comparison with the Noms or three weird sisters of Norse mythology, and even with other threes in our mythologies. Be that as it may, one may venture to hint that the story of Aitheme stealing Mider's cranes was the echo of a more ancient story with a far deeper meaning ; one, in fact, which represented him procuring knowledge and wisdom from the powers of the nether world by stealth. But the Leinster euhemerist was bound, so to say, to construe everything relating to Aitheme in pejorem partem. You might now be left to think the best of Aitheme in his reformed character ; but one cannot dismiss him without giving the tale of his death. Irish story 1 See Thornton's Morte Arthure, ed. by Perry for the E. Eng. Text Society (London, 1865), p. 31, line 1029 : 'Thre balefuUe hirdez his brochez they turne;' and "Wright's Malory, i. 176-7: 'Three damosels turning three broches whereon was broached twelve young children late borne, like young birds.' IV. THE CULTXTRE HEEO. 335 represents Concliobar marrying several times (p. 139), and one of the ladies given to him as consort was called Derdriu, whose name Macpherson has made into Darthula. Her birth had been attended with prophecies that she would have a somewhat Helen-like history ; so some of Conchobar's nobles advised that the ill-starred child should not be reared ; but the king would have none of that advice, and he ordered rather that she should be brought up to be his own wife. So when she had grown up a young woman of unsurpassed beauty, the king took her to wife. But she fell in love with one of the sons of Usnech, and they, to avoid the wrath of Conchobar, took her out of his kingdom ; but when they had been years in exile in different parts of Erinn, and lastly in Britain, they longed to return to their country, and Fergus mac Edig undertook on their behalf to conciliate the king, and he thought that he had succeeded (p. 137) ; but no sooner had the sons of TJsnech reached Emain than they were cruelly murdered by Eogan mac Durthacht, which he did as the price of peace with Conchobar. Fergus himself left Ulster to go as an exile to Connaught, while Conchobar obtained possession of Derdriu for the second time, though he knew that she by that time hated him with all her heart. One day it entered his head to ask her whom she most hated to see. The answer was, 'Thee and Eogan mac Durthacht.' 'Good,' said the king, ' thou shalt be a year with Eogan.' Then he took her out in his chariot in order to hand her over to the latter ; but on the way she put an end to herself in the most tragic manner.^ Conchobar after that event was 1 Windisch, pp. 81-2. 336 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. observed to be sad, and a search, was accordingly made for a beautiful maiden to take the place of the unfortunate Derdriu. Such a one was found, and married by the king with due solemnity and state. Her name was Luain, and two sons of Aitherne, who, like their father, were poets, came to her to seek the rich presents it was usual to give to men of their profession; but on seeing her they fell in love with her, and as she would lend no ear to their passion, they, together with their father Aitherne, satirized her so virulently that her face became covered with blotches, as the result of their potent incan- tations. This drove her back distracted to her father's house, where she died of grief. The men of Ulster, at the iustigation of the king, who was furious at what had been done by the poets, killed Aitherne with his whole family, and levelled his house with the ground. Such is the story of Aitherne' s end;^ and it comes very close to that of Gwydion and Goewyn (p. 305) in the "Welsh Mabiaogi of Mi,th. Here Conchobar, though not por- trayed so noble a character, takes the place of Mt,th, and the former's young and beautiful wife that of Goewyn, Mglth's virgia foot-holder. But instead of Aitherne and his two sons, we have in the Welsh tale Gwydion and his brother Gilvaethwy, who had a passion for Goewyn, and was enabled by the scheming of Gwydion to execute his purpose. In the next place, Math marries the out- raged Goewyn — Luain is married earlier in the Irish sequence — and he then proceeds to punish Gwydion and his brother, where one notices that the euhemerist has laid 1 O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 373-4, where he bases his summary on the original in the B7c. of Ballymote and another DuhHn manu- script which unfortunately I have not yet seen. IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. 337 his hand more heavily on the Irish narrative than on the "Welsh one. For, while Conchobar and his Ultonians annihilate Aitheme and his house, M^th only punishes the two brothers by transforming them into beasts for three years, at the end of which he restores them to their previous form and position. Lastly, the two stories agree as to the motive or, more correctly speaking, the lack of adequate motive, attributed to Gwydion and Aitherne in their lawless conduct towards Groewyn and Luain respec- tively. In this particular, both stories, together with that of Cairbre with Finn's Luignian wife (p. 98), may justly be suspected of having undergone serious distortion or blurring : the original myth, I doubt not, supplied some such an intelligible motive as that attributed to Woden in his guileful treatment of Gundfled (p. 288) the mead- giant's daughter, or such a one as may be detected in the scandal whispered about Prometheus and Zeus's daughter Athene. PwTLL AND Others visiting Hades. There remain to be noticed in this lecture certain tales which show a general similarity to that of Gwydion and those that are inseparable from it, namely, in that they turn mostly on the dealings, whether hostile or friendly, of their respective heroes with the powers of the other world. It is, however, to be premised, that owing to a blending, especially common on Irish ground, of the characteristics of the Culture Hero with those of the Sun Hero, and to another source of complication to be touched on later, some of the tales I refer to ought in strictness to find their places elsewhere in these lectures ; but the arrangement about to be here followed has in its 338 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. favour the desirability of keeping tliem with those which they otherwise most closely resemble, and of facilitating reference to them later as occasion may arise. One may begin with the story of Pwyft Prince of Dyved, other- wise known as Pwytt Head of Hades, who has hitherto been treated exclusively in the latter capacity. He forms the subject of one of our Welsh stories,^ but it is too long to be reproduced here word for word. The follow- ing extract will suffice for the present purpose. Pwytt set out one day from his court at Arberth, near the Teivi, to hunt in the valley of the Cuch, a tributary of the Teivi, which divides Pembrokeshire from Carmarthen- shire. When the morning of the following day was still young, the horn was blown and the dogs were let loose under the wood which filled the Cuch valley, and Pwytt, following after them, soon found himself separated from his friends. Presently he heard a pack that was not his coming towards him, and just as his own dogs were reaching an open place in the forest, he beheld a stag before the strange pack, and they met him, and in pass- ing threw him down. After he had got on his feet again and wondered for an instant at the colour of the hounds that had just gone past, he went after them, and came up with them just as they had killed the stag. He then proceeded to drive them away, and to lure his own dogs to the stag ; but whilst he was thus engaged, the owner of the strange pack arrived on a big horse of a dismal grey colour : he had a huntsman's horn hanging from his neck, and he was clad in a hunting-dress of a kind of grey cloth. 'Ah, prince,' said he, 'I know who thou 1 R. B. Mah. pp. 1—253 Guest, iij. 37—71. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 339 art, and I will not salute thee.' *In that case,' said Pwytt, ' perhaps thy dignity is such that thou shouldst not. ' By my faith,' said he, ' it is not the dignity of my rank that prevents me.' ' AJi, prince,' said Pwylt, ' what else?' 'By my faith,' said he, 'it is thy bad manners and ungentlemanly conduct.' 'What ungentlemanly conduct, priace,' said Pwytt, ' hast thou seen me guilty of ?' 'I have never seen a man guilty of more ungentle- manly conduct than to drive away from the stag the dogs that had killed him, and to lure thy own dogs to him : that,' said he, ' I call ungentlemanly conduct ; and though I avenge myself not on thee, by my faith I shall cause thee disgrace exceeding the value of a hundred stags.' *Ah, prince,' said Pwytt, 'if I have done wrong I will purchase thy good- will,' ' In what way,' said he, 'wilt thou purchase it ? ' ' According to thy rank,' said Pwytt : ' I know not who thou art.' ' I am,' said he, ' a crowned kiag iu the country from which I come.' ' Lord,' said Pwytt, ' good day to thee, and what country is it from which thou comest?' 'From Hades,' said he; 'I am Arawn king of Hades.' ' Lord,' said Pwytt, ' how can I obtain thy good-will?' 'This is how thou shalt,' said Arawn: 'one whose territory is over against mine is always making war on me, and that is Havgan, a king of Hades. In return for ridding me of that scourge, which thou canst easily do, shalt thou have my good- will.' 'That will I do gladly,' said Pwytt; 'and do thou tell me in what way I may succeed.' ' I will make a strong covenant,' said Arawn, ' with thee ; and this is what I shall do : I shall set thee in my place in Hades, and give thee the most beautiful woman thou hast ever seen to sleep with thee every night. Thou shalt have z2 340 IV. THE CTJLTUEB HERO. my form and shape, so that no valet, no officer, or any- body else who has ever been in my suite, should know- that it is not I. That,' said he, ' is to last till this time to-morrow twelvemonth, when this spot is to be our meeting-place.' 'But,' said Pwytt, 'though I remain there a year, what certainty have I of engaging him thou speakest of?' 'This night twelvemonth,' said Arawn, 'I have an appointment to meet him in the ford; be thou there in my form, and from one blow thou shouldst give, he will not recover; and though he should ask thee to give him another blow, give it not, however much he may implore thee : no matter how many I should give him, he would be as well as ever the next morning.' After this arrangement between the two, Arawn showed Pwyft the way to his court in Hades, and then hastened in Pwytt's form to Arberth to rule over Dyved. Pwytl was successful in his doings : he gave Havgan his mortal wound, and annexed his kingdom to that of Arawn, whom he then hastened to meet in the glade in the valley of the Cuch. Pwyti returned to his kingdom to find that it had been governed better than usual that year. Arawn likewise was pleased with what Pwytt had done, and to find that not even the queen had dis- covered his absence, though she unintentionally let him know that she could not understand why he had slept every night during the year with his face turned away towards the outside of the bed. Arawn then told her all about his absence, and both wondered greatly at the exceeding fidelity^ with which Pwytt had kept his cove- 1 This is quaintly put in the original, but without the slightest impropriety of speech ; and as the whole story turns on it, I cannot imitate Lady Charlotte Guest when she omits it in toto in her trans- IV. THE CULTTJEE HERO. 341 nant. In fact, this proved the means of stamping the friendship between Pwytt and Arawn with the seal of endurance ; and afterwards, the one used to send the other presents of what he most thought would rejoice his friend's heart, such as horses, greyhounds and falcons; to which may be added from another tale that the same relation of friendliness continued between Arawn and Pwyti's son Pryderi, who got from Hades the swine that Gwydion coveted. Thus Pwytt and Pryderi were able to get by friendship from the powers below what Gwydion was only able to procure by craft and to retain by force of arms. But of the two ways of procuring boons from Hades, the one in Gwydion's story is proba- bly the older, with this difference : Pwytt, whose name means sense, intelligence, deliberation, is in the one tale the counterpart of Gwydion in the other ; so, likewise, is Pryderi that of Gwydion's son Llew. When, how- ever, these heroes of parallel myths are brought into contact with one another, a complication arises, which the Mabinogi indicates in a sense when it states, that when Pwytt made it known that he had ruled Hades for a year and reduced the two kingdoms to one, his title of Pwytt Prince of Dy ved came to be superseded by that of Pwytt Head of Hades. So when Pryderi meets Gwydion, we have to treat the former just as if he had always been one of the dark powers, and such is the role one has to assign him elsewhere; but it raises a question of con- siderable difficulty, which I cannot solve. Let us now turn to some of the Irish stories that cor- respond in a manner to that of Pwytt's doings in Hades. lation (Vol. iij. pp. i2 and 45), which makes the tale consequently unintelligible. 342 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. The first to claim our attention relates to Cuchnlainn's relations with Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword, king of an Irish Hades or Elysium.^ His wife's name is given as Liban, and she had a sister Fand, who had been deserted by her husband Mananndn mac Lir. Fand fell in love with Cuehulainn on account of his fame, and she and her sister the queen tried to iaduce Oiichulainn to visit them in Labraid's Isle ; but it was all in vain, until Labraid appealed to him to come on a certain day to his aid against his enemies, the chief of whom are called Senach the Demoniac, Echaid of Eol, and Eogan of Inber : at last Ciichulainn was induced to drive forth in his scythed chariot to the assistance of Labraid. Cuehulainn, when he arrived in Labraid's kingdom, would have made short work of the enemy, if Labraid himself had not intervened to put a stop to the slaughter, but for no more evident reason than that it was forbidden Pwytt to inflict more than one blow on Havgan. Just as Arawn promised Pwytt the handsomest woman he had ever seen as his consort, so the reward held out to Ciichulainn for descend- ing to assist Labraid was the hand^ of his sister-in-law Fand, who in consequence came away with Ciichulainn to Erinn. The next story to be mentioned relates also to Ciichulainn visiting Hades, but it differs from the foregoing in several important respects, besides introduc- ing us to another set of names. It is to the effect^ that 1 The story is printed in Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 205 — 227, from the Bk. of the Dun, pp. 43 — 50 : for O'Curry's translation, see the Atlantis for 1858. 2 Windisch, Ir. Texte, p. 209. 5 It will be found, accompanied with a translation into German, in Stokes & Windisch's Irische Texte (Leipsic, 1884), pp. 173 — 209. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 343 a prince of the Hy-Many in Connanglit, having been triumphed over by Ciichulainn, left to the latter as a sort of a souvenir of himself a ' destiny' that he, Ciichulainn, should enjoy no rest or peace till he discovered what had taken the three Sons of Ddel Dermait out of their country. Ciichulainn could find no one at the court of Conchobar to answer this strange question, which made him utterly restless, and proved well-nigh fatal to the king of Alban's son. This prince was accidentally met by Ciichulainn as he was landing to proceed on business to the king of Ulster's court : a mistake made by him brought on him Ciichulainn's fury, but he craved for mercy, which he obtained with the question, whether he knew what had taken the Sons of Doel Dermait out of their country. The prince replied- that he could not tell, but that if Ciichulainn would step into his boat he would set it sailing towards a land where he should get the mystery cleared up. This was agreed to, and Ciichulainn took with him two friends, Lugaid and Loeg, while he gave the king of Alban's son his little spear, with an ogam on it which he cut for him at the time : he was to take it with him and to seat himself in Ciichulainn's seat at the court of Ulster, and we hear no more about him. The boat brought Ciichulainn to the neighbourhood of Hades, to a very beautiful island surrounded by a wall of silver and a palisade of bronze. Here Ciichulainn was heartily welcomed on account of his friends Lugaid and Loeg. In answer to his question about the Sons of Ddel Der- mait, he was told he should presently find it all out, as he would be directed to the next island, which was iuhabited by the daughter of D6el Dermait and her husband : the name of the former was Achtlann, and of 344 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. the latter Condla Coel Corrbacc, When tliey reached this second island, they found Condla lying across it from east to west, and sending a mighty wave over the face of the deep every time he breathed. Achtlann accompanied Cuchulainn and his friends to a third island, where they were to find the Sons of Ddel Dermait. This at last was Hades, and it seems to have been ruled by two giants, called respectively Coirpre Cundail, brother to the Chil- dren of D(5el Dermait's father, and Echaid Glas or the Grey : these two were always at war with one another, like Arawn and Havgan in the Mabinogi of Pwytl. On his way to Coirpre's court, Cuchulainn was so irritated by the impertinence of one of his drudges that it drove him to commit an act of violence ; and the news of it made Coirpre challenge Cuchulainn to fight, which they did the rest of the day. At last the giant was compelled to surrender, and he hospitably entertained Cuchulainn that night, lending him his daughter and relating the history of the Children of Ddel Dermait. On the morrow Coirpre was challenged to do battle with Echaid Glas, his hostile neighbour ; so he and Cuchulainn proceeded to a place of torture called the Glenn, and it was not long ere Cuchulainn engaged Echaid. It was so difficult, however, to reach his person that Cuchulainn had to perch himself on the brim of his shield, whence Echaid repeatedly blew him off into the sea. At last Cuchulainn bethought him of an expedient whereby he was wounded from above and instantly killed. No sooner had this been done than the three Sons of Doel Dermait, and the other wretched creatures kept in bondage by Echaid Glas, flocked together to bathe in his blood, whereupon they were healed of all their ailments and IV. THE CULTUBE HERO.. 345 enabled to return to their own land. In passing, it may be suggested that the Sons of Ddel Dermait, which means the Beetle of Forgetfulness,i were personifications of the divisions of the day, as will be seen from compari- son with Welsh stories to be mentioned by and by, con- taining clear references to the twenty-four hours personi- fied ; and it is worth while to recall here the fact men- tioned in another lecture, that the 'twenty-four,' as we term them, were divided by the Irish into day and night, and the former subdivided by. Conchobar into three parts : these may be considered the three Sons of D6el Dermait whom Cuchulainn fetches, while there was no question of doing so with their sister: she stands for the night. But to pursue Cuchulainn' s story further : he was loaded with treasure, given him when he left, by Coirpre Cun- dail, who was now, like Arawn, rid of his rival; and when he reached the king of Ulster's court he found his rations of ale and food duly served as usual. I mention this, as it touches on a part of the story which had been blurred and forgotten, namely that relating to the owner of the boat used by Cuchulainn, He is repre- sented as the son of the king of Alban or Albion ; but we have found Alban in the story of Cairbre Muse and the dog, where the Welsh myth would lead one to expect Hades, and not Britain (p. 246) ; and if one assume the same substitution to have been made here, the boat that took Cuchulainn to his destination and brought him back would stand comparison with the little ship of bronze ^ ^ The name may be compared with the Norse oininnis Tiegri, or the Heron of Forgetfulness, said to hover over hanqiiets and to steal away the minds of men : see Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poet. Bur. i. 23. 2 Windisch, Irlsche Texte, p. 210. 346 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. th.at ferried passengers across to Labraid's Isle. Further, the allusion to Cuchulainn's finding his rations served as usual at the court, seems to mean that his seat had been occupied during the days of his absence in quest of the Sons of Doel Dermait; and the story of Pwytt suggests the explanation that it had been all the while filled by the son of the king of Alban as Cuchulainn's substitute, bearing the personal semblance of Cuchulainn so com- pletely that the absence of the real Cuchulainn was not discovered by his comrades : this was probably the virtue of the ogam which Cuchulainn wrote on the little spear the prince was to carry with him to Conchobar's court at Emain. That the tale was at one time more explicit with regard to Cuchulainn's substitute, is rendered certain by the terms in which he ordered the prince from Alban to go to the court : they are to the effect that he was to go and occupy Cuchulainn's seat at Emain Macha till he returned.^ Finally, as to the geography of Ciichulahm's voyage, the two first islands he reaches are not exactly Hades, but they are near it, especially the one occupied Iby C. C. Corrbaco and Achtlann his wife ; for not only does this latter name betray itself by its likeness to TaHes- sin's Ochren and the Achren^ with which the latter has 1 Windisch gives them thus : Erich co ro hi im shuidhi-se ind Emain Madia corris, and translates, Mach dich auf, his dass es an meinem Sitze in Emain Macha ist, dass du ankommst (pp. 178, 196). But I take them literally to mean, 'Arise, so that thou be in my seat at Emain Macha until I come.' 2 This would require us to correct the spelling Achtlann to Acclann; possibly, however, the Irish name is to be treated as correct and as the equivalent of what appears in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen as Adhlem (for Aethlen ?), said to have followed Twrch Trwyth into the sea to be never heard of afterwards : see the R. B. Mah. pp. 125, 141. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 347 already been compared (p. 248), but Corrbacc is unmis- takably to be identified with. Welsh Kyrvach, the sons of Gwawrdur Kyrvach from the confines of Hell^ being among the strange personages enumerated in the story of Eulhwch. and Olwen. All tbe visits of Ciicbulainn to Hades were not of the same description as the one just mentioned. In the one previously detailed he proceeded more like Gwydion than Pwytt, and obtained tbe king's cauldron from the hand of the king's daughter. The same poem (p. 261) from which that was taken also relates bow he invaded and conquered Lochlann, laying it under a heavy tribute of gold and silver. But all these tales agree in making the visitor to Hades obtain, whether by force or friendship, some- what of the property of the powers of that country. There are, however, other tales which difEer in their treatment of this matter, especially a Welsh one which makes the invader of Hades kill its king and marry his widow. I allude to the story of Owein son of Urien. This I must now introduce, in order partly to be able to refer to it later, and partly to compare it with the story of Diar- mait's expedition to Tir fa Tonn, or the Land beneath the Billow, and also to show how it agrees in some respects with the story of Cuchulainn's quest of Ddel Dermait's three Sons. The following is an abstract of it : ^ Kei son of Kynyr, Owein son of Urien, Kynon son of Elydno, and others of the knights of Arthur's court, were sitting together at Carleon, when it became Kynon' s turn to entertain his comrades with a story. So he related 1 R. B. Mah. p. 106 ; Guest, ij. 259. 2 R. B. Mah. pp. 162-92 j for Lady Charlotte Guest's translation, see her Uab. i. 39—84. 348 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. one about himself, showing how he, when young and curious, came across a fine valley with a stately castle in it, where he was hospitably received. When he had been refreshed with food and drink, his host made the usual inquiries ; and he was told by Kynon that he was a knight travelling in quest of adventure, where- upon his host said he could tell him where he might find more than enough, but that he should be sorry to be the means of bringing him into trouble. This only made Kynon more curious and restless. At last his host was prevailed upon to give him proper directions how to find the place he had in view, which he did by telling him to go into the forest he had come through the pre- vious day, and to proceed until he found a branch road on his right. "Follow that road," said he, " until thou comest to a large open field with a mound on it with a big black man, no smaller than two of the men of this world, sitting on the top of the mound. He has but one foot, and only one eye in the centre of his forehead ; and he has an iron staff which, as thou wilt perceive, there is no couple of men in the world who would not find it a load. He is not unkind, though he is ugly; he is the keeper of that forest, and thou wilt see a thousand wild beasts grazing around him. Ask him the way thence .... and he will point out to thee the road to take so as to find what thou art in quest of." Early on the morrow Kynon set out on his journey, and he found the Black Man just as his host had told him, except that he seemed to be far bigger, and that the wild animals around him appeared to be three times as many as he had been told : he guessed also that the iron rod would be a load for four warriors, and not two as he had been given to understand. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 349 Kynon asked the Black Fellow what his power over the animals might be. " I will show it thee, little man," said he ; while he took the iron stafE in his hand and struck a great blow with it at a stag, so that he gave a loud bell. At that bell there flocked together so many animals that they were as numerous as the stars in the sky, and that it was hard for Kynon to find room to stand on the plain with them, including as they did among them ser- pents and vipers and various kinds of beasts. The Black Man looked at them and told them to go to graze : they lowered their heads and made obeisance to him, like men doing homage to their liege lord. Then the Black Fellow said to Kynon, " Seest thou, little man, the power I have over the animals ?" Then Kynon asked him the way, and was treated rudely by him ; nevertheless, he inquired about his business, and when he had been answered he said to him, " Take the road at the end, and proceed up- hill until thou reachest the top ; from there thou wilt behold a strath resembling a large valley, and in the middle of the strath thou wilt see a large tree whose foliage is greener than the greenest fir-tree. Beneath that tree there is a fountain ; close to the fountain there is a marble slab; and on the marble there is a silver tankard fastened by a silver chain, so that they cannot be sepa- rated. Take the tankard and throw its full of the water over the slab. Then thou wilt hear a great thunder, and it will seem to thee to make earth and sky tremble. After the thunder will come a cold shower, and with difficulty wilt thou live through the shower ; it will be one of hail, and afterwards the weather will be fair again ; but thou wilt not find a single leaf left on the tree by the shower. Then a flight of birds will come and light on the tree : 350 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. thou hast never heard in thy country such good music as they will make ; but when the music is most enter- taining, thou wilt hear a sighing and a wailing coming along the valley towards thee. Thereupon thou wilt behold on a jet-black charger a knight clad in jet-black satin, with a flag of jet-black silk on his spear, making for thee as fast as he can. In case thou fleest, he will overtake thee; and in case thou awaitest him, he will leave thee a pedestrian instead of a rider. Shouldst thou not find trouble there, thou needest not seek any as long as thou livest ?" The story goes on to relate how all hap- pened to Kynon just as the Black "Woodward had told him, and how the knight overthrew him and took away his horse : he had to trudge back on foot as best he could past the Black Woodward, whose mockery made him all but melt with shame ; and when he finished the story at Arthur's court, Kynon was willing to admit that no man ever confessed to a more shameful adven- ture ; but it stirred up Owein son of Urien to seek the place, and to try a duel with the Black Knight of the Fountain. So it was not long ere he stole away from Arthur's court, and took the path described by Kynon : in due time he reached the fountain, and the Black Knight came forth in his anger and fought with Owein ; but ere long he perceived that he had received a mortal wound from Owein, and he turned and fled towards his castle. Owein pursued so closely, that, while the owner was admitted, he found himself caught between two heavy doors, one of which was let down behind him, so that it cut his horse in two close to his spurs. While in this evil plight, he saw through a crevice an auburn- Jiaired, cui'ly-headed maiden, with a diadem of gold on IV. THE CULTUEE HEUO. 351 her head, coming towards the gate: she asked him to open it, which he said he should be only to glad to do if he could. The lady was a dear Mend of the Black Knight's wife, and her name was Elunet, shortened always in this tale to Lunet, Tennyson's Lynette in his Idylls of the King. "We are not told how she knew Owein, but in the conversation which ensued she ex- pressed the highest opinion of his gallantry, and gave him a sort of Gryges' ring to make him invisible, and to enable him to get free when the Black Knight's men should come to fetch him for execution. He used it as he was directed, and Lunet kept him in concealment until the Black Knight had expired and his funeral was over. Now the holding of the Black Knight's dominions depended on successfully holding the Fountain, and no one could do that but one of Arthur's knights ; so Lunet pre- tended to go to Arthur's court and in due time to return with one of them. The widow at once detected that neither Lunet nor Owein had travelled far that day, and she elicited the confession from her friend that Owein was the man who had killed the Black Knight of the Fountain, It was then urged that Owein was of all men the most fitted to hold the Fountain, and nolens volens she had to give him her hand. He stayed there with her three years. By that time, Arthur's longing for Owein had grown so grievous that he and his knights set out in quest of Owein. Suspecting that it was Kynon's story that had led him to leave the court, they came to the Fountain; and in time they found Owein out, and were feasted by him for three months at his castle. Then Arthur departed, and sent to ask the Lady of the Fountain, Owein's wife, if she would permit him 352 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. to take Owein with him in order to show him for three months to the nobles of Britain. Much against her will, she gave her permission ; but Owein, finding himself once more among his fellows, forgot his wife, and remained there, not three months, but three years, until, in fact, a strange maiden, on a horse caparisoned with gold, rode one day into the hall of Arthiir's court. She went right up to Owein and took away the ring that was on his hand, saying, ' Thus is done to a deceiver, a false traitor, for a disgrace to thy beard.' She then rode away, and his former adventure came back to Owein's mind. This made him sad, and he left the society of men to live with wild beasts ; but it would take me too long to relate how he was restored to his former life, how he rescued a lion from a serpent, and how the former followed him ever after as his faithful ally. At last Lunet brought Owein back to his wife, the Lady of the Fountain ; and when he came away he brought her with him to Arthur's court, and she was his wife as long as she Uved. So ends the tale; but it recommences by telling us how Owein one day went to the castle of a robber knight called the Du Trmvs, or the Perverse Black One. The owner was at the time not in his castle; and Owein found there twenty-four of the finest women one had ever seen, but they were in rags and extreme wretchedness. They had come there, they said, each with her husband, and at first they were hospitably and kindly treated, but later they were made drunk and stripped of their cloth- ing, of their gold, and of their silver ; while their hus- bands were murdered and their horses taken away. They pointed out to him where the corpses of their husbands and many others were heaped together; and IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. 353 they lamented his coming among them, as they had no doubt about his fate. Owein then went out and fell in with the Perverse Black Fellow himself; they fought, and Owein bound the robber with his hands behind him. The latter said that it was prophesied that Owein was to overcome him, and he asked for mercy, which was granted by Owein on condition that his castle was in future to be a hospice. But Owein took away with him to Arthur's court the twenty-four ladies, with their horses, their apparel, and all the treasure they had when they were robbed. "With regard to this episode, it is a matter of consider- able doubt where it should stand in the story: as the lion has no part in it,^ one should possibly regard it as connected with Owein's first stay with his wife m the Earldom of the Fountain, and not with his second visit to the same. But in any case the doubt seems to attach exclusively to the sequence of the story, while the descrip- tion of the castle of the Perverse Black Fellow and Owein's triumph over him, together with the release of the twenty-four matrons, has the air of being genuinely ancient. For the Perverse Black Eobber, whose castle may be inferred to have been not very far from the dominions of the Lady of the Fountain, corresponds in this tale to the giants against whom Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword was aided by Cuchulainn ; but, above all, he forms the counterpart of Echaid Glas, whom Cuchu- lainn is made to kiU in order to release the three Sons ^ This is in contradiction to the sentences which introduce the Per- verse Black One ; but they form a clumsy anticipation of the account of Owein's contest with him, and they are practically contradicted by it : I refer to p. 191, and to Lady Charlotte's translation, i. 82. 2 A 354 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. of Ddel Dermait. The latter probably represent, as al- ready suggested, the tripartite day of the ancient Goidels ; in Welsh, they are three brothers slaia every day by the Avanc of the Lake,^ and brought to life again dur- ing the night ; while we recognize them in. a later form in the imprisoned ladies released by Owein, whose num- ber, twenty-four, can hardly be mistaken as relating to the hours of the day, viewed as always passing away into the world of oblivion and darkness. If one were to press the story of Pwytt and Arawn as a parallel through- out, one would have to set the Perverse Black Eobber over agaiast Havgan or Summer-white, which forms a diflS.culty. There is also another difference, namely, that Pwyti: wins his title of Head of Hades in a friendly way, while Owein gets possession of the Black Knight of the Fountain's dominions by killing him and marrying his widow. The Black Knight was probably no other than Arawn ; for we detect a reference to this transaction in the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth, when he repre- sents Arawn succeeded by Owein in the kingship of Alban or Scotland : ^ it is needless here to dwell on the ancient idea which made of the northern part of this island a sort of Hades and abode of the departed. The meaning to be attached to Owein' s releasing the twenty-four ladies, and Ciichulainn's bringing back to their country the three Sons of Doel Dermait, together with the liberation and healing of a swarm of other captives at his coming to the dominions of Echaid Glas, has just been suggested. The same kind of libei;ation 1 R. B. Mob. pp. 223-6 ; Guest, i. 342-6. 2 xi. 1, where Arawn is called Auguselus ; see also Myv. Arch. ij. 354. IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. 355 of captives^ ■will be found to figure also in the Arthurian romances in various forms, as, for example, in the account of Arthur's intervention between Gwyn and Gwythur ; and it forms a feature of the story which begins with Diarmait's visit to the Land beneath the Billow, and which was brought under your notice in the first lecture (p. 187). That narrative ends with an account of both Finn (as Culture Hero) and Dermait (as Sun Hero) sailing towards the west to recover their friends that had been carried away by a fairy giant on the sharp- ridged back of his monster steed. The realms of Faery and the other world generally had a variety of names in Irish legend ; but the isle in which Finn and Diarmait found their friends, is called the Land of Promise ; and another of the names belongiag to the same mythic geography was that of Lochlann, which, like the "Welsh Llychlyn, before it came to mean the home of the Norse- men, denoted a mysterious country in the lochs or the sea. I mention this, because I wish to close this group of tales with another about Diarmait : it relates how he attacked a giant who was the guardian of the berries of a certain divine rowan or quicken-tree which grew in the midst of a wood, wherein no one durst hunt, called Dubhros, or Black Forest, in the country of the Hy Fiach- rach, in the present county of Sligo; but though the scene is laid this time within Erinn itself, the giant was of Loch- lann, and his name was Searbhan, which may be inter- preted to mean the Bitter or Sour One. The story is to ^ I hope to return to this in my treatment of the Arthurian Legend : for the present it -will suffice to refer to M. Gaston Paris' aUusion to the captives, in the Romania, xsij. 476-7, 479. 2a2 356 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. the following effect : ^ Once on a time the Tuatha Dd Danann played a game of hurley against the Fdni on the plain near the Lake of Leia of the Crooked Teeth, that is to say, the Lakes of Killarney. The game was continued three days and three nights without either side succeeding in winning a single goal from the other ; and when the Tuatha D6 Danann saw that they could not prevail, they went away and journeyed northwards in a body. Their food during the contest and duriag their journey afterwards consisted of crimson nuts, arbutus apples and scarlet quicken-berries, which they had brought from the Land of Promise. These fruits were gifted with many secret virtues, and their owners were careful that neither apple nor nut should touch the soil of Erinn; but in passing through Dubhros they dropped a quicken- berry without observing it. Prom the berry there grew up a tree which had the virtues of the quicken-tree grow- ing in fairy-land, for all the berries on it had many virtues : every one of them had in it the exhilaration of wine and the satisfying of old mead ; and whoever should eat three of them, would, though he had completed his hundredth year, return to the age of thirty. When the Tuatha D4 Danann heard of that tree in Dubhros and of its many virtues, they wished nobody but themselves to eat of the fruit ; so they sent Searbhan of Lochlann to guard it, that no man might approach the tree. Searbhan was a giant of the race of the wicked Cain ; he was burly and strong, with heavy bones, a large thick nose, crooked teeth, and a single broad fiery 1 Pursuit of Diarmuid, &c. ij. §§ 11, 13 — 18 : I have freely used iii this abstract Dr. Joyce's wording in his Old Celt. Rom. pp. 313 — 322. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 357 eye in the middle of his black forehead. He was armed with a great club, tied by a chain to an iron girdle round his body, and he was such a magician that he could not be killed by fire, by water, or by weapons of war : there was only one way of overcoming him, and that was by giving him three blows of his own club. By day he watched at the foot of the tree, and at night he slept in a hut he had made him aloft in its branches. He did not allow the F^ni to hunt ia the neighbourhood, so that it was a wilderness for many miles around the tree. Therefore Diarmait, when pursued by Fiun, took refuge there; this he did with the giant's surly permission, provided only he did not eat of the berries of the quicken-tree. But Grairme, Diarmait' s wife, hearing of the berries, was seii;ed with a longing desire for them ; knowing the danger, she concealed her desire as long as she could, until, in. fact, she thought she must die unless she got some of the forbidden fruit. So Diarmait, fearing danger to her, went, much against his inclination, to ask for some of the berries. The giant's reply was a brutal negative. " I swear," quoth he, " were it [even] that thou shouldst have no children but that birth [now] in her womb, and were there but Grainne of the race of Cormac the son of Art, and were I sure that she should perish in bearing that child, that she should never taste one berry of those berries." ^ Diarmait replied, that, as he did not wish to deal treacherously by him, the giant must understand that he had no intention of going his way without them; a duel then began, which soon ended in Diarmait' s killing the 1 This is from the Pursuit of Diarmuid, &c., as translated by the Irish scholar, Mr. Standish H. O'Grady, ij. § 15. 358 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. giant with his own club, and taking a quantity of the for- bidden berries to his wife and to certain others who had asked for some. Such is the story of the berries, in which the brief allusion to the crimson nuts forming part of the food of the Tuatha Dd Danann, seems to refer to the same mysterious fruit that used to fall from the niae hazels into the secret well and to be devoured by the Salmon of Knowledge, to be mentioned in a later lecture. At this point we are not so much interested in the crimson nuts as ia the scarlet berries of the fairy rowan : both kinds of fruit formed part of the sustenance of the gods, according to Goidelic notions ; and the description which has been quoted of the berries makes them a sort of Celtic counterpart to the soma-plant of Hindu mytho- logy. I said ' Celtic,' but it would perhaps be more accurate to say ' Celtic and Teutonic ; ' for not only the Celts, but some also of the Teutons, have been in the habit of attaching great importance to the rowan or roan tree, and regardiag it as a preservative against the malignant influence of witches and all things uncanny. The English name^ appears to be of Scandinavian origin, the Old Norse being reynir, Danish ronne, Swedish ronn ; and the old Norsemen treated the tree as holy and sacred to Thor, to whom it was fabled to have been of great service when he clutched its branches once on a time in 1 The rowan is also called mountain-asli, though it is no kind of ash ; and as to its other name, there is a lack of evidence that the quicken or quick-beam of old English meant the rowan. The "Welsh for rowan is in hooks cerddin, singular cerddinen ; hut the pronuncia- tion familiar to me is cerdin, cerdinen, and even cerdingen ; and the berries are called in Welsh criafol. The Irish name of the tree is caerthann, which corresponds in its consonants to cerdin, not to cerddin; but the etymology of these words offers more than one difficulty. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 359 crossing a stream. Moreover, the Swede of modern times believes the rowan a safeguard against witchcraft, and likes to have on board his ship something or other made of its wood, to protect him against tempests and the demons of the water world.i All this only renders more conspicuous the question of the origin of the importance and sacredness of the rowan : I mention it in the hope that somebody else may answer it, for I do not pretend to be able to do so, or to regard the Eddie explanation, to which allusion has been made, as giving us the real key. Possibly the inaccessible rocks on which the tree is not unfrequently found to grow, and the conspicuous colour of its berries, may have counted for something ; but that something falls decidedly short of a solution of the ques- tion. One kind of answer that would meet the case, provided it be countenanced by facts, may be briefly indicated, namely, that the berries of the rowan were used in some early period in the brewing of an intoxicat- ing drink, or, better still, of the first intoxicating drink ever known to the Teuto-Celtic Aryans, Such a use would render the belief intelligible, that they formed part of the sustenance of the gods, and that the latter kept them jealously for themselves until they were baffled in their purpose by some benefactor of man who placed them within the reach of his race. It is needless to repeat here the somewhat parallel conjectures (p. 296), that the many virtues ascribed to the soma in Hindu religion, and the Norse account of the acquisition for man of the gift of poetry by "Woden, agree in postulating as their ultimate explanation some kind of food or drink ^ See Grimm's Deutsche Myth.* ij. 1016 ; and Vigfusson's Icelandic- Eng. Die. s. v. reynir. 360 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. calculated to intoxicate and exhilarate those who partook of it. The Culture Hero and the Nine-night Week. As allusion has more than once been made to an ancient reckoning of nine nights to a week, a word must now he said in explanation of that term. The Celts reckoned Dis the father of all, and regarded darkness and death as taking precedence oyer light and life ; so in their computation of time they began with night and win- ter, ^ and not with daylight and summer. The Teutons reckoned similarly, and probably for the same mytho- logical reason.^ In ancient Italy we have a trace of the same idea in the Eoman habit of considering the calends of every month sacred to Janus, one of the undoubted counterparts of the Celtic Dis ; and especially was this the case with the winter month called after Janus, of which the calends and the ninth day, that is to say, the first day of the two first nine-night weeks of January, were sacred to that god. Further, we know that the Celts must have formerly reckoned not only the night with which the week or any period began, but also the night with which it ended. "Witness such Celtic terms as the Welsh word wythnos, ' a week,' which literally means ' an eight- ^ This is probably the key to reckoning years as winters, of which we have instances in Med. Welsh literature, as when Kulhwch's horse is described as 'four winters' old {R. B. Mah. p. 102). The habit appears to have been also English and Gothic, not to mention that it is Icelandic to this day. ^ The words of Tacitus, in his Germania, chapter xi., are worth quoting : Nee dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant, sic consfitvunt, sic condicunt : nox ducere diem iiidetur. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 361 night,' where an Englisliman might use 'sennight;' similarly, a fortnight is in Welsh pythewnos, ' a fifteen- night,' and the Irish coicthiges (genitive coicthigisi), of the same meaning, is also derived from the name of the fifteenth numeral in its Irish form : compare the French huitaine and quinsaine respectively.^ This way of count- ing, then, was the same as that usual in music, where a third is said to consist of two tones, or whatever the description of the intervals in any given case may happen to be ; so a nine-night week would contain only eight days or eight portions of daylight, and that was, I believe, the ancient week of the Aryans, at least of the Aryans of "Western Europe. In Italy we have traces of it in the Eoman nundince or markets held every ninth day : the word is supposed to represent an older and longer form, novendince, from the ninth numeral ; and it happens that nundince, in a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, 1 A curious instance of this way of reckoning occurs in the Isle of Man, where the oath administered to the deemster since the revestment in 1765, makes the six days of creation in the hook of Genesis into six days and seven nights. It runs thus : ' By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God hath miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I, A B, do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy or malice, execute the laws of this isle justly, betwixt our sovereign lady the Queen and her subjects within this isle, and betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.' So stands the oath in Harrison's Records of the Tynwald, &c. (Douglas, 1871), p. 37 j but it has been the practice of late years to make 'the six days and seven nights' into 'six days and nights ;' and I have heard it characterized as an unwarranted innovation. This curious oath otherwise reminds one of old Irish oaths, with their invo- cation of the sun, the moon, the earth and the elements. 362 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. is explained by means of the Brythonie word nouitiou^ wMeh would, ia modern "Welsh, be newidiau, the plural of newid, 'change, exchange, barter.' This last is in its turn derived, like the Latin term just mentioned, from the ninth numeral, which is written in modern Breton and Welsh nao and naw respectively. It would thus seem that we have traces here of markets or fairs on the ninth day as an institution common to the Celts and the Italians of antiquity. It might, however, be objected that the Brythons had merely adopted it from the Eomans ; but, over and above this, there is Irish evidence to which the objection will not apply, for the Irish term etymologically equivalent to nundince occurs in the form noinden or noenden,^ explained to have meant an assembly,^ and a compound ard-noenden, ' a great — literally ' a high' — assembly,' with which com- pare the term ' high festival' in English. Whether the assemblies to which this term would apply recurred regu- larly, and what the interval might be, I know not ; but we have practically irrefragable evidence that the simple term noinden meant just half the duration of the niue- 1 It occurs in the Bodley MS. Auri. F. iv. 32, fol 1h, among the Glosses on Eutychius, which are now reckoned old Breton rather than old Welsh : see Stokes' edition of them in the Trans, of the {London) Phil. Society for 1860-1, p. 233 ; also the Gram. Celtica^ p. 1054. ^ See O'Davoren's Glossary in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries (London, 1862), p. 108; also the Berichte der K. Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissen- schaften {Phil.-Hist. Classe), 1884, p. 336, where Windisch has ren- dered Celtic scholars the service of puhlishing (with a translation) two versions of the story accounting for the Ultonian couvade. * Such is the meaning in a line in the Bk. of the Dun, 81 h, where in ndindin seems to mean the denach or fair at which the men of Ulster used to meet. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 363 night week, that is to say, five nights and four days, which is given as the length of the Ultonian couvade} This was called cess noinden JJlad, which, if we call noinden a week, would mean ' (the) Ulster men's sickness or iudisposition of a week,' or, as one would put it in English, 'the Ulster men's week of sickness;' and it was more briefly termed either cess noinden, '(the) sickness of (the) week,' that is to say, ' (the) week's sickness,' or noinden TJlad, ' the Ultonians' week' — a term, however, which did not necessarily refer to the couvade.^ It is not clear to me what the original meaning of the word noinden was, whether a heterogeneous nine consisting of five nights and four days, or a uniform reckoning, say one of nine nights. In the latter case, one might be tempted to regard the word as the Latin nundince bor- rowed ; 3 but in any case the Irish could not be said to have borrowed anything beyond the word, inasmuch as the reckoning by nines was clearly more in vogue in Ireland than in Italy as represented in the classics. In fact, the favourite expression for a small number of days in Irish 1 Windisch, ibid. pp. 342, 344, 347, 339, where it is stated that the noinden lasted either five days and four nights, or four days and five nights. The narrator of the first version {Bk. of Leirister, 125 V) was in doubt ; and that of the other (British Museum MS. Harl. 5280) omitted altogether the right reckoning, namely, four days and five nights. The old account was doubtless five nights and four days ; but the later scribes, failing to see why the nights should be mentioned first, may readily be supposed to have introduced the alternative ex- planation. ^ Noinden Ulad is applied, for instance, to the raiding into the other provinces, which was arranged at a feast given to Conchobar and his braves by one of their number called Bricriu : see Stokes and Windisch's Jrische Texte, pp. 174, 188. ^ Windisch, ibid. p. 336, is inclined to this view. 364 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. literature is exactly the length of the nine-night week, the term used being nSmad, genitive feminine nomaide, ' (the) ninth (night),' as in co cend nomaide, ' till the end of (a) ninth,' that is to say, to the end of the nine-night week. This is continued in Welsh with the incorrect substitution of day for night, for the favourite Welsh period is naw diwrnod, or nine days ; as in fact it is in certain cases in English likewise, as when one speaks of * the nine days' wonder.' From this point of view, the Germans are more correct with the space of acht tage, or eight days, to which they colloquially give a decided preference. What, it may be asked in passing, should have led anybody to fix on a week of nine nights and eight days as a unit of time ? It would be useless to demand an answer from the moon, and one should rather look at the fingers on one's hands : the half of a nine-night week would be the Irish noinden of five nights and four days ; that is to say, a hand of nights, if you reckon the nights alone, as the ancient Celts must have done; and just as a third in music added to another third yields not a sixth but a fifth, so two hands of nights reduced to one sum make not ten nights but nine. But why the two hands should have been preferred as a unit to the single hand, I cannot say, though it may be guessed that the latter was too short a reckoning to be as useful as the longer one. The nine-night reckoning of eight days to the week could not, of course, be made in any way to coincide with the months as measured by the moon ; but that cannot be urged as an objection. In fact, the more hopeless the discrepancy appeared, the more room it gave for the interference of the professional man, one of the IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 365 strongholds of whose influence was doubtless the ancient calendar. Thus we find among the Taliessin-like boasts of Amorgin, the seer and poet of the Milesian invaders of Erinn, the challenge who but he could tell them the age of the moon.^ But to return to the practice of counting on the fingers, we have evidence of it elsewhere among the Aryans, and I need, for instance, only remind you of the Greek word ire/ijrafoij 'I count, reckon or cast up,' or, still better, of an old Norse word connoting the applica- tion of finger-counting to time : I allude to fimt, a legal term derived from the fifth numeral, which was in old Norse fimm. The former meant a summoning to a court of law with five days' notice, all Norse notices of the kind being given for either five days or some small multiple of five days. At first this would seem as if five days had been an incorrect translation of an older habit of giving notices of five nights, that is to say of four days, which would yield a welcome equivalent to the Irish noinden ; but that can hardly be, for the Norsemen gave five days' notice, exclusive of the day of serving the summons, so that in Christian times no summons would be served on a Tuesday, as no court sat on Sundays.^ Thus the shortest notice intended by the law would, in term of nights, be either six or seven, and not five. There is, however, no lack of allusions in Norse mytho- logy to the nine-night week. Among the most remark- able, Heimdal's nine maiden -mothers have been men- tioned as symbolic of time under its weekly aspects (p. 85), and Woden's gold ring Draupnir, regarded as 1 Bk. of Lbimter, 12 b. "^ For this and further details relating to the fimt, see Vigfusson's Dictionary under that word. 366 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. matclied in the Irish legend of Aitherne by Maine's gold brooch. But that is not all ; for Draupnir was said to drop eight rings like itself every ninth night, and this, interpreted in reference to the nine-night week, means that the ninth night was regarded as containing the other eight : it was the limit and boundary, so to say, of that space of time. This idea is reflected in a remarkable way in Irish mythology, as will be seen from the following details. When Christian missionaries made the Irish familiar with the Eastern week of seven days, they taught them its Latin name septimana ; and this word, treated by the Irish in their own way, became sechtmain, genitive secht- maine — a word seemingly beginning with secht, the Irish for septem or seven, and suggesting, therefore, the ques- tion, 'seven of what?' The answer was Secht Maini, seven persons bearing the name Maine or Mane.^ How they came to acquire the personal form will appear pre- sently ; but what the Maini were pictured to be in Irish mythology, we learn from the fact that the single one in the story of Aitherne is termed son of Durthacht, ^ For the first idea of this treatment I am indebted to Mr. Plummer. I use Maine or Mane in the singular, and Maini or Mani in the plural. The former rhymes with haili in the Tribes and Customs of the Hy-Many, ed. O'Donovan (Dublin, 1843), p. 13 ; and in the BTc. of Leinster, 256 a, with the same word written hali, which now means ' a place,' but originally ' an enclosed place,' as in the lolly of Anglo- Irish local names like Ballymote, Ballyadams, and many more. It is a loan-word not to be severed from the English bailey, as in the Old Bailey, or Vetus BalKum, of York as well as London. It was intro- duced (probably by the Normans) to South Wales, and is used to this day in Glamorgan in the form beili for the enclosure at the back of a farm-house. See Du Cange under Bdllium, to which he gives three meanings : ' propugnaculi species, seu locus palis munitus et circum- septusj' also 'custodia, career, quia locus munitus.' IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 367 whose name we have already met with. (p. 142), and that the group is usually treated as the offspring of Ailill and Medb. Accordingly, the brothers always fight against the sun-hero Cuchulainn on the Tain.^ Similarly, in another story, that of the death of Conaire Mor (p. 135), they figure as the haughtiest of the exiles following the lead of the cyclops Ingcdl on the occasion of his landing in Erinn in the night.^ While the Latin word septimana, and the Irish sechtmain made out of it, seemed to fix the number of the Maini at seven, the early Christians of Ireland must have treated the new week after the ana- logy of the old ; that is to say, they reckoned it, not as seven days, but as eight nights, as the Welsh have also done ; and the discrepancy arising from the habit of speaking of seven Maini, when they reckoned them eight, has led to curious results ; for instance, in the Book of the Dun. The scribe of that manuscript, at the begin- ning of the twelfth century or a little earlier, can have had no idea that the Maini had anything to do with the week ; but he gives us, more or less faithfully, the stories of previous generations when that must have been no secret. The following are the Maini in the order and with the surnames given to them by him in the Tain : (1) Maine Mathremailj or M. like his Mother; (2) Maine Athremail, or M. like his Father; (3) Maine Morgor, or M. very Dutiful ; (4) Maine Mingor, or M. little Duti- ful ; (5) Maine m6 Epert, or M. greater than Said ; 1 See the Tain, passim ; tut the list of the Maini occurs near the beginning, Bk. of the Dun, 566. 2 The story is called Togail Bruden Da Derga, or the Destruction of the Hostel of Da Derga, where Conaire lodged on the night of his murder ; the list of the Maini comes, ibid. 84 h. 368 IV. THE CULTURE HERO, (6) Maine Milscothach^ or M. of Honey - bloom ;^ (7) Maine Andde, the meaning of whose surname I cannot find ; (8) Maine cotageib Ule, or M. that contains them All. This last name has called forth from the scribe of the Tdin the explanation that the Maine bearing it par- took of the form of his mother Medb and of his father Ailill, together with the nobility and dignity of both combined in his own person; but it fails to meet the words used, which are to the effect that the last Maine contained or comprehended all the others. One cannot help seeing in it a case corresponding to that of Woden's ring, which dropped eight others like itself: the last Maine contains all the others, as being the boundary and limit within which the week was comprised. The only other Maine calling for a remark is that called Maine mo Epert, which I interpret, with some difiB.dence, to have meant a Maine that was greater than was said, or greater than uttering the name would imply; this is favoured by its being set in the fifth place ; for the fifth night would just mark the end of the first noinden, or half of the nine-night week; and in regarding the week as made up of two noindens, this fifth night would have to be reckoned twice over,^ namely, as the end of the one noinden and the beginning of the other. That, I think, is the explanation of the description of this middle Maine. ^ The scribe identified Nos. 5 and 6 ; but the group remains eight in the Bruden, also in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, II. ij. 225, where Milscothach is Milhel, ' Honey-mouth.' 2 This is the sort of reckoning, probably, which, applied by the Greeks to the last day of the month, gave rise to the term 'ivq koX via, ' old and new.' Compare the Irish ' full week between two dige,' or termini (?), in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, II. ij. 211, 219. IV. THE CTTLTITRE HERO, 369 Tlie importance of this conjecture consists in the fact that, in case it prove well founded, it would make the name of the fifth Maine such that it can have only be- longed to the older week of nine nights, and not to the new one of eight. Later in the Tain we come across a second treatment of the Maini, for it makes them amount to seven after Cuchulainn had slain one of them. ^ They appear on another occasion on the western bank of a ford that had been running blood for a week ; and on the day they show themselves there, Cuchulainn parades himself on the opposite bank in his Oenach clothes, that is to say, those va. which he would go to the Oenach or Irish ayopa. His enemies crowd to the river-bank to behold him ; and the women, including the queen, climb on the men's shoulders to catch a glimpse of him.^ The appearance of the Maini together in this story probably means the end of the week, and the coming round of the day for the market or the fair and the meetings, political and other, which took place then : this is signalized in the Tdin by Ciichulainn wearing his gala dress and paus- ing for a while from harassing the enemy's camp. In the story of Conaire the Maini are dealt with in a third way, differing from both treatments in the TAiti; for here^ Maine mo Epert is placed at the end, even after the Maine that contained all the others, as though the scribe meant 1 Bk. of the Dun, 64 h. ^ Bit. of the Dun, 74 6; Ehys's Celtic Britain, p. 65. ^ Bk. of the Dun, 84 h, where the passage giving their names runs thus: Batdr awd iarsira fiallacfe b^tar liallcAu .1. uii. mai'c aWella jj medba .7 mane for cacA fir dib ./ foraiwrn for cac/i mani /. i. niani at/tremail.y m. miihremail .7 m. mingox.j m. m6rgor./ .m. and(5o .7 m. milscotacA .m. cotageib uli .7 m. &s/m6 epe7-t. 2b 370 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. the reader to construe mo epert to mean that this Maine was one over and above the proper reckoning of secht (or seven) Maini, with which he had begun the allusion to them. If that was his idea,^ I should be inclined to think that he was mistaken, and that Maine mo Epert's name is to be explained by reference to the nine-night week, and the habit of reckoning it as two noindens or half-weeks of five nights each.^ The Welsh treatment of the new week closely resem- bled that already mentioned as Irish ; but as the Welsh did not borrow the Latin term, they called it wythnos, that is to say, ' a (period of) eight nights.' This week of nominally eight nights and seven days might be said to consist of seven and a half days, in our sense of the word day of twenty-four hours ; and in this form we have a most remarkable reference to it in one of the Welsh Triads, which I must now mention, as it incidentally discloses a trace of the older week. The triad in question, i. 93 = ij. 11, speaks of the Three Horse-loads of the Isle of Britain, one of which it describes as borne by Du Moro^ or the Black of Moro, the horse of Elidyr Mwynvawr, 1 This, however, could not be said of the scribe of the T4in in the Bk. of Leinst&r, who mentions, at 55 a, Mane Condam6epert last, though his group consists, owing probably to his carelessness, of only six, no mention being made of M. And6e or M, Milsoothach. ^ Possibly other nines in Irish myths are to be similarly explained by means of the ancient week, such as the nine chariots always required by Medb on the Tdin {Bk. of the Dun, 566), and the nine doors of the palace called Bruden Da Derga (ib. 916), in which Conaire was slain. It may likewise be that the four winged kisses of Aengus, that haunted the youths of Erinn (p. 151), were but the four intervals of daylight in the Goidelic half-week. 2 In the Red Boole version (see R. B. Mob. p. 300), this horse is called Du y Moroed, ' the Black One of the Seas ;' but the older and IV. THE CULTTTRE HERO. 371 said to have carried seven and a half persons on his back from Penllech in the l!^orth to Penllech in Mona : they were, to wit, Elidyr and his wife Eurgein; Gwyn da Gyued, or White the good Drink-mate, and Gwyn da Eeimatji a designation of doubtful interpretation ; My- nach Nawmon, Elidyr's counsellor ; Petrylew Vynestyr, his cup-bearer ; Aranuagyl, his servant ; and Albeinwyn, his cook, who swam with his hands on the horse's crupper: it was he that was reckoned the half -man in the load. It would take too much of our time to discuss all the questions which this curious passage suggests, and I shaU only make a remark on one or two of the names. Petrylew Vynestyr means a minister or servant whose name was Petrylew, and this last might be interpreted to mean him of the four lights.^ Petrylew was therefore the fifth night in the reckoning, that is to say, the last night of the first noinden or half -week, as that would be the one preceded by four intervals of daylight. The cook reckoned as the half -person was the night with which the week began, though the triad in its present form contemplates this as occupying the last place ; originally, less transparent name is Du Moro, as in the oldest copy of the Triads {Hengwrt MS. 54, p. 53), or Du March Moro Oeruedawe, ' Black, the Horse of Moro Oervedawc,' in the story of Kulhwch {R. B. Mah. p. 124), where the rider of the beast is no other than Gwyn ab Nud. The Welsh Moro, Moroed, and the French Morois, are probably names of the same mythic place as the Irish Murias, whence the Tuatha D6 Danann brought the Undry Cauldron of the Dagda (p. 257) ; the name Mureif, borne by a district in the north, given to Urien, also belongs here, as I hope to show in my Arthurian Legend. ^ I guess it to stand for an older reading Keimat : the name would then mean ' G. the good Comrade.' 2 Petrylew is the reading of the Red Booh; most of the other MSS. have Prydelaw, Prydelw, or the like, which I cannot explain. 2b2 372 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. however, that place must have been reserved for another. No less than three of the names seem to refer to the nights of the week as the time for eating and carousing ; but one seems to reflect the idea that night cools the head and gives room for deliberation and good counsel : I allude to Mynach Nawmon, where Mynach is the "Welsh for 'monk,' and Nawmon is a word partly derived from naw, the Welsh for ' nine ;' while the remainder of the word Nawmon challenges comparison with the Irish Maine, so that Nawmon might be interpreted to mean a Maine who was in some way nine or possessed of some ninely attribute. This, it will be seen, takes us back beyond the seven and a half of the later week to the nineness, so to say, of the more ancient one. The Christian week as a period of eight nights is also represented in the Arthurian romances, namely, by the eight officers of Arthur's court who acted as his porters and watchmen : they are said to have divided the year between them, and seven of them served as the subordinates of one of their number, who bore a name which suggests comparison between him and the Maine that contained the others, for he was Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, 'Brave Grey of the Great Grip.'^ So Celtic mythology probably indulged in a two-fold treatment of the ancient week : it was made either the basis of nine distinct personifications of a more or less uni- form character, or else of a single personification with the attribute of nine in some way attaching to it. Of the former, one may give as an iastance the nine porters at 1 R. B. Mob. p. 245 ; Guest, ij. 6 ; but in two other passages {R. B. Mob. pp. 103, 138; Guest, ij. 254, 312) he and his make only five, representing the half-week. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 373 the nine gates of the dark being described as Yspadaden Pencawr, 'Hawthorn chief of Giants,' in the story of Kulhwch and 01wen;i also the Nine Witches of Glou- cester, -who, like the brothers Maini, were aided in their ravages by their father and mother: it was, however, all in vain, as they were vanquished by the hero Peredur, who afterwards completed his military education under the care of one of their number.^ We have the same idea, with the malignity of the witches replaced by the teaching of the muses, incorporated in the nine maidens who feed with their breath the fire beneath the Cauldron of the Head of Hades (p. 266), which is matched in Irish by the nine sacred hazels growing over the Well of Wis- dom. The other treatment is reserved for Maine mac Durthacht, who is not mentioned in company with any brothers of his : he was the owner of the brooch on which Aitheme set such value, and in that brooch some ninely characteristic like that of Woden's Draupnir may be supposed to have resided. Moreover, the manner in which Maine son of AiHU is mentioned by himself in the Tdin epic,^ would suggest that under that name the myth originally contemplated but one personage, who was only multiplied into seven or eight under the influence of the Christian week and its Latin name, the Maine of the older treatment being made into a Maine said to contaia all the others. Irish literature makes mention of other Maini, one of whom was styled Maine the Great, and also Maine Muineamon, or M, of the Kich Neck, as 0' Curry has suggested, the surname being explained by 1 E. B. Mob. p. 118; Guest, ij. 277. 2 R. B. Mob. pp. 210-1 ; Guest, i. 323 ; see also i. 369. 3 See more especially pp. 666, 67 a, 6flo!, of the Bk. of the Dun. 374 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. a statement that he was the first king of Erinn to have torques of gold made for -wearing round the neck, which is in Irish muin ; ^ in this reference to the gold torques or collars, we have probably the echo of a myth like that of Maine mac Durthacht's brooch. Further, Maine Mdr was the mythic ancestor of the Hy-Many,^ whose priuce was caught by Ciichulainn, on whom he avenged himself by adjuring him to find what had happened to the Sons of Ddel Dermait, a quest which involved the sun-hero in a visit to the other world. The name of Cdchulainn's captive was Echaid Eond, or E. of (the) Chains, so called from a seven-ounce chain or thread of gold which formed part of his head-gear.^ This may be regarded as another of the treasures associated with the Maini : we have thus no less than three, a brooch, a torque, and a chain, all perhaps origioally characterized by the number nine in the tales to which they belonged. One more Maine may be mentioned: he is called Maine son of Niall of the Nine Hostages.* Niall is fabled to have reigned over Ireland in the fifth century of our era, and to have con- quered Britain, Prance and other lands ; so his is a great name in Irish pedigrees, but it is probably altogether mythic, and to be equated with that of the Welsh Neol.^ 1 See O'Curry, iij. 84, 178, and the Four Masters, A.M. 3868, 3872. " That is to say, the Ui Maini, or Descendants of Maine, whose ter- ritory may, roughly speaking, be said to have consisted of the counties of Galway and Eoscommon. 3 Stokes & "Windisch's Ir. Texte, pp. 177, 192; O'Curry, iij. 106. ^ O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 161. ' PuUy described he is Neol cyn Croc, which seems to mean ' Neol before the Crucifixion;' the person so called is spoken of as the father of a lady, Eftylw, said to have lived for three generations. See the story of Kulhwch, B. B. Mab, p. 113; Guest, ij. 212. IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. 375 At any rate his name looks like evidence of th.e two treatments of tlie nine-night week ; for the nine hostages serving as Niall's distinction possibly referred to the nine nights of the ancient week, while they may be sup- posed also represented in the single person of Niall's son Maine. Enough has now been said to suggest that the parallel here lies between Woden's ring and the gold brooch, torque or chain of Maine, and the question then arises, what Maine himself was as a mythological being. It has already been shown that his name was associated with darkness and night. Let us now see what fresh light can be thrown on his character by a further study of his name. To begin, the word Maine, Mane or Mani, is bodily identical with the Menyw of "Welsh literature. The person so called belonged to Arthur's court, but his character is in no wise thereby defined, as it is one of the peculiarities of Arthur that he draws his men from all the Brythonic cycles of mythology ; but Menyw even in Arthur's service preserved a character and role corre- sponding closely to that which might be ascribed to the Irish Maine as a personification of darkness and night. Thus we read that a party of Arthur's men starting on a dangerous quest were ordered by him to be accompanied by Menyw, in order that, in case they came to a heathen land, Menyw might cast glamour and magic over his com- panions, so that they might be seen of nobody while they saw everybody.^ Menyw is called the son of Teirgwaed, a feminine compound meaning Her of the Three Shouts, in which we have a reference to the triple division of the 1 R. B. Mah. p. 114-5; Guest, ij. 271-2. 376 rv. THE CULTURE HEEO. working portion of tke day (p. 141), or else, perhaps, of time into present, past and future. This looks at first sight like a reversal of the Celtic habit of giving darkness precedence over light aind day ; but had we the myth in its original completeness, we should probably find that Teirgwaed had as her husband and father of Meny w a representative ia some form or other of darkness, all reference to him being omitted in favour of the matro- nymic style of naming certain of the oldest Celtic divi- nities. AU this is corroborated by the Triads^ treating Menyw as one of the three chief magicians and glamour- men of the Isle of Britain. It was suggested that the mon in the "Welsh Nawmon was of the same origin as the Irish name Maine, and that is doubtless right, so that Mynach Nawmon may be rendered the Monk of the Nine Tricks ;2 for Irish proves the existence of a Celtic word mon, ' a trick,' from which was derived an Irish adjective monach or manach, ' tricky or dodgy.' This was applied to a notorious Fomorian called Forgall Monach, or Forgall the Tricky, who was an adept at magic and shape-shiftuig. In harmony with a very wide-spread kind of myth, he lost his life in trying to prevent Cuchulainn from carrying away his daughter to be his wife. The "Welsh word mynawg corresponding to monach, however, means a courteous or polite person ; the difference of meaning looks wide, but it is partly to be explained by the fact that the Welsh literature of the Middle Ages treats courteousness or good breediag as 1 i. 31, 32, 33, ij. 20, iij. 90. 2 Some of the Triad versions have Nawmod, which would mean, ' of nine modes or forms.' It is not impossible that the original was Mynaiog Nawmon, with the mynawg explained below. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 377 knowledge, a polite or courteous person being called dyn da ei wyhod, or one wlio is good as to his knowledge, which is paralleled in English when a rude person is excused on the ground of his 'knowing' no better. The meanings of these names may, then, be said to centre around the ideas of knowledge and trickiness, and these admit of being traced in their turn back to the one idea of thought or mental activity, which may on the one hand result in praiseworthy skill, and on the other in ingenuity of the contrary nature. This appears illustrated probably by the "Welsh word mynawg of a good significa- tion, as compared with its derivative mynogan, which may be guessed to have had the reverse ; for it is known as the name of the father of the death-god Beli the Great, the Irish Bile (p. 90). Similarly, Manawydan, a good character in Welsh, is matched in Irish by Mananndn, represented as a very tricky druid or magician.^ Maine or Menyw was a male personification, but Celtic mythology did not confine itseK here to that sex, as it was in possession also of a female personification regarded as of cognate origia and endowed with nine forms ; this 1 Both names are of the same origin as those here in question, and the whole group is to be referred to the same source as the Irish menraa, ' mind,' do-muiniur, ' I mean, think or believe,' and other compounds ; while in English may be mentioned such words as mind, meaning, and probably man as the thinking being. Further may be added such instances as Latin memini, 'I remember;' mens, mentis, 'mind;' com- mentum, 'a lie ; ' moneo, ' I cause to think, I warn : ' Greek, /jtevos, 'courage, sense;' jxeveaivb), 'I desire;' /jtefjiova, 'I wish for;' fiavm, ' a seer or prophet :' Sanskrit, man, ' think;' manas, ' courage, sense or mind;' manman, 'mind.' Among the proper names connected with this group of words may be mentioned such as Minerva, MtVcos, Mevrai/j, the Sanskrit Manu, and the old German Mannus, mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania. 378 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. served not only — perhaps not chiefly — to represent the nine nights of the week, or even the dawns or dusks of the same, so much as that which allowed of being measured by the limits of the week, that is to say, that metaphorical kind of space which we call time, and time for the most part contemplated as the bringer of boons and the teacher of wisdom. It was a sort of Athene with nine forms of beauty ; so in the Ultonian cycle of Irish tales she is the daughter of king Conchobar, and known as Fedelm of the Mne Forms, ^ who will come under our notice later as she who sends her handmaid to comfort Cdchulainn at night and to give him his bath in concealment.^ In Welsh, the nine forms of the mythic beauty have been effaced by the blanching hand of obli- vion ; but one recognizes her person in the Lady of the Fountain who becomes Owein's wife, after her handmaid Lunet had rescued him from death by giving him a Gygean ring to conceal him from his enemies. In the case of Fedelm, the reference to the nine nights of the week is involved in the nine forms of her beauty, and in that of Lunet they are symbolized by the ring which makes its possessor invisible whenever he pleases. The rest of the parallel is still more obvious, for Lunet is described not only giving Owein refuge and food, but also administering to him such services as that of washing his head and shaving his beard, ^ somewhat in the same way that Athene is represented weaving a peplos for her favourite Heracles, or causing springs of warm water to 1 Some of tlie spellings suggest ' Nine Hearts ' rather than ' Nine Forms.' ^ Bk. of the Dun, 57 a; BJc. of Leinster, 58 a. 3 R. B. Mah. pp. 173-6; Guest, i. 55-9. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 379 gush, forth from the ground to supply him at the end of the day with a refreshing bath.^ The ring associated with Lunet becomes in some stories a wheel, as, for instance, in that from which Gwydion's mistress was called Arianrhod, or She of the Silver Wheel ; and the same conception probably entered into the story which made Ciichulainn's sister Dechtere the charioteer of her brother, king Conchobar; while in Norse literature we meet with it in the obscurely mentioned ' deep wheel' of Gefjon (p. 284). In these goddesses and others like them, such as Duben the mother of Cairbre's children (p. 308), we seem to have a group of the mythic beings loosely called dawn- goddesses ; but the location of some of the Celtic ones here in question, on an island or peninsula towards the west, would suggest that they at least would be as cor- rectly designated dusk-goddesses. Neither dusk, how- ever, nor dawn can help us so much to understand their nature as their connection with the ancient week and all it connoted. This gives, among other things, a very pregnant meaning to the intimate relations between them and the Culture Hero, whom the most important versions of the myth treat as the father by them of the Sun Hero, and sometimes of another birth representing darkness and night. It may perhaps seem at first sight somewhat daring to place Athene in the category of goddesses of the kind here discussed ; but I would go further, and add that the name of Athene's Italian counterpart Minerva or, as it is less usually written, Menerva, brings us back again to the group of names which have been already ^ Preller's Gr, Mythologie^, ij. 161. 380 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. touched upon ; for Menerva is supposed to represent an early Menesva, derived from the same stem, menes, which we have in the Greek /^evos, genitive /j^vovs, ' mind, spirit, courage,' Sanskrit manas, genitive manasas, of much the same meaning. But such a name as Menesva would have to became Meneva in the early history of the Celtic lan- guages still living ; and from that name would be formed an adjective Menevjos, Menevja, Menevjon, 'relating to Meneva^^ or the Celtic Minerva ; but in later Welsh all these would be cut down to Menyw or Mynyw. The one representing the masculine Menevjos is mostly written Menyw or Menw, and is the name which has been equated with the Irish name Maine; while the feminine would seem to have been preserved uncurtailed as Menevia, to pass for the Latin name of St. David's, whence also the adjective Meneviensis,^ while in Welsh it has mostly been treated as Mynyw or Menyw? This indirect evidence to a goddess of the name Meneva^ corresponding to that of Minerva in Latin, would mean that the district around St. David's, the western position of which near the sea fits in with other instances, was called after this Celtic Minerva, and treated perhaps as in some sense or other peculiarly hers. This allusion to Minerva will have pro- ^ MeTieviendum episeopo in the Life of St. David, written by Ehygy- varch (Ricemarclius) in tlie twelfth century : see the Lives of the Cam- bro-Brit. SS. (Llandovery, 1853), p. 121. 2 This is attested by the Welsh name of Old Mynyw (a church in the neighbourhood of Aberaeron, in Cardiganshire), which, called Hen Fenyw, just like the words hen fenyw, - an old. woman,' considerably exercises the popular-etymology man, especially when he takes it in conjunction with the name of a church on the other side of the Teivi, called Eglwys Wrw, which could not help striking him as meaning the ' Male Church.' IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 381 bably suggested to you the Greek goddess Athene ; but I may say in passing that one of her Celtic equivalents is possibly to be detected in Tlacbtga daughter of Mog Euith, both of whom have already been mentioned (p. 21 1). Greek religion closely associated Athene with Hepheestus, but Mog Euith's ability to fly forces us to compare him rather with Daedalus than with Hephaestus ; for the lines of classification do not coincide in Greek and Celtic ; and if we followed Dsedalus further, we should find that the story of his jealousy and murder of a too promising nephew and pupil would lead one to compare him with another GoideUc character, namely, Dian Cecht, who made his silver hand for ISTuada : this was improved upon by the son of Dian Cecht, who was so enraged at being excelled, that he slew him.^ It is right, however, to say that ancient authors sometimes went so far as to identify Hephaestus with Dsedalus ;2 and that Volundr, or the Wayland Smith of the Norse Edda, combines the charac- teristics of both in having lost the use of his feet and made himself efficient wings.^ But to come back to Tlachtga, the comparison with Athene turns on the latter's ever -brandished spear, and the attribute of Tlachtga's attested by her name, which seems to refer to a gdi, that is to say a gcesum, or spear. It was possibly the gcesum used in a solemn ceremony of kindling fire in the ancient way by friction. The question of the original identity with one another of the goddesses here alluded to, is too large to be now 1 See O'Curry in the Atlantis, Vol. iv. p. 158 ; Joyce, p. 403. 2 See Preller's Cfr. Myth. i. 148, ij. 497. 3 Gorpus Poet. Bor. i. 173-5. 382 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. discussed at length, and I will only add a word as to an apparent discrepancy between the Celtic and Norse myths about the week : the gold ring in the latter belongs to the Culture God Woden, and it is to him that it is brought back from the Hell-imprisoned Balder by Hermodr, after he had travelled nine nights^ in the dark to find his brother Balder' s place of confinement; whereas in the Irish tale the gold brooch is treated as the property of a very different kind of being, Maine son of Durthacht. On the other hand, it is Aitherne, a likeness, however distorted, of the Culture Hero, that recovers possession of it in the Irish version of the myth, and brings it back to Ulster; so that the two accounts may be said to amount to the same thing, inasmuch as they both associate the week and the alternation of day and night with the action of the Culture Hero. In Hindu mythology, Indra is represented as daily engaged in bringing back the sun and the dawn so as to be seen of men : it is his regular work. But this very primitive notion is not conspicuous in Celtic or in Norse mythology ; it is nevertheless there, but buried beneath the ddbris of sundry metaphors and symbolisms ; and it is to be extricated only as a matter of inference or interpretation. Even so it is valuable, as it serves to strengthen at its weakest point the parallel to be drawn between Indra in the East and Gwydion- Woden in the West. 1 Simrock's Edda, p. 318. Lecture V. THE SUN HEKO. PAET I. Lletj and Lug. Frequent allusions liave already been made to Llew Llawgyffes, and, in fact, most of his story lias been repro- duced : it has also been hinted that in him we have a nature myth about light. It is, however, of capital importance in dealing with the solar mythology of the Celts, and especially of the "Welsh, to bear in mind that the nature myth did not prevent the Solar Hero from being regarded as partly of human descent ; a different account is sometimes implied in Welsh stories, but this is far the most fertile, and it takes us back to a pre-Celtic and Aryan stage of culture, when it was possible for the magician and medicine-man of the tribe to claim the sun as his offspring. So we might here call him the Sun- man, were it not more in harmony with custom to speak of the Sun-god or Solar Hero. In order to establish these views, we have now to examine more closely the literature relating to Llew, and we may begia with the strange story of his birth (p. 306), which need not be repeated. One of the first things in it to strike one is young Llew'a rapid growth; and the vigour with which he scattered 384 Y. THE SUN HERO, the sheet in which he had been wrapped, invites compa- rison with the description of the infant Apollo, whom the goddesses present bathed in a crystal stream of water as soon as he leaped to life. They next proceeded to wrap him in a white robe, fine and newly wrought, and to place a golden band round his body, whUe one of their number touched his lips with nectar and ambrosia. No sooner had he tasted of the food of the immortals, than he burst the bonds of his swaddling clothes and walked forth in the fulness of his divinity, while Delos rejoiced and bloomed at his birth.^ The same sort of precocious growth as in the case of Llew is ascribed to other Celtic personi- fications of the Sun-god, but no less, be it noticed, to personifications of darkness. One might probably regard the account (p. 240) of Llew's death on the side of his bath as referring origin- ally to the sun setting in the sea ; but there is no occa- sion to lay great stress on that, as we have what seems to be better evidence of the nature myth in the marriage of Blodeued to Llew. She was not of the race of men, but created from flowers by Gwydion, with the aid of the master magician M&th : she was as distinguished for her beauty as her classical counterpart, rosy-fingered Eos. The dawn represents the transition from the darkness of night to the light of day, so that, pictured by the primi- tive mind as a lovely damsel, she would be regarded as dividing her love between the Sun-god and the princes of darkness in the mythological sense of the term. This is what we find in the story of Blodeued : Llew goes 1 See the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (in Didot's Homeri Cannina et Cycli Ejpici ReMguim), lines 119 — 139. V. THE SUN HEEO. 385 fortli on a journey ; whether walking or riding we are not told, but probably the latter, for he had been taught to ride, as we read of him and his father once proceeding on horseback towards Axianrhod's castle (p. 238). Be- sides, he is known to have had a famous horse called^ Melyngan Gamre, or the Steed of Yellow- white Footsteps — a most appropriate name for the horse of a Sun Hero. But to proceed with the story : during his absence from home, his wife is visited by another lover, who rests not till he has slain Llew and conquered his dominions. Gwydion brings Llew back to this life, that is, he fetches the sun back to illumine the world once more ; and he chases the faithless wife across the heavens, and, accord- ing to one version, he overtakes her in the lengthening shades which the cliffs were spreading over a dark lake ; that is, the Dawn has become the Dusk or the Gloaming, and he transforms her into an owl, accursed of all the birds that love the light of the sun. Here we have a pretty parallel to Indra's daily struggle to recover the sun from the powers of darkness, and to his remarkable chase of the Dawn when he smashed the wicked woman's chariot and routed her in the sky (p. 299). On the other hand, Llew, brought back, is enabled to vanquish and kill his rival with a cast of his spear, the only one which the story lets him make with his own hand, his father being in the 1 R. B. Mob. p. 306 ; Triads, ij. 50 ; but i. 94 reads Melyngan Mangre, ■which seems less correct : it would mean ' the Yellow-white One of the Habitation,' which looks less probable. The triad describes the three horses as each a ' rhodedig farch,' which can only mean a gift horse ; but I know of no legend to throw any light on the term. Llew's horse is also mentioned in the Book of Taliessin, poem xxv. (Skene, ij. 176) as ' march fteu ftetuegin,' where it is uncertain whether ttetuegin applies to the horse or to his owner. 2c 386 V. THE SUN HEEO. habit of doing most things for him. If it should here be objected, that while Indra brings the sun back every- day, Gwydion is only made to bring Llew back once, our answer would be, that this has already been met, at least in part, and that now its force may be still further broken. For, to begin on Irish ground, we there find stories which mention several births of the Sun-god, that is to say, the Sun-god's father and the Sun-god's son may both be termed Sun-gods as well as he. This agrees well enough with an idea which seems to have once been preva- lent in Ireland, that an ancestor might return in the person of one of his descendants. So far as I know, the ancient Brythons were less familiar with the idea of a series of Sun-gods than that of a group of them ; not to mention that they are found to have less dwelt on the antagonism between day and night than that between the summer and the winter; but Welsh mythology is nevertheless not wholly without a sort of analogue to Indra's daily exploit in bringing back the sun ; for Llew had a twin- brother who reached sudden maturity and rushed off into the sea. The nature of that element became his ; he swam about in it like a fish, and never did a wave break beneath him, whence his name Dylan son of the Billow. He fell by the spear of the Culture Hero Govan- non, Gwydion's brother the smith ; and his deed came to be recorded in a triad ^ as one of the Three nefarious Blows of the Isle of Britain. A pathetic touch, associated with the muse of Taliessin,^ introduces an ^schylean chorus of outraged spectators, consisting 1 R. B. Mob. p. 68 ; Guest, iij. 201 ; but it is not to be found in the ordinary lists of triads. ^ Poem xliij. : see Skene, ij. 199. V. THE SUN HERO. 387 ' Of the Wave of Erinn, of Man, and of the North, And of Britain, of comely hosts, as the fourth.' i Nay, according to another utterance of the same poet,^ the wild waves when they dash against the shore are chafing to avenge the death of Dylan. Another view no less romantic is the one still known in the Yale of the Conwy, that the noise of the waves crowding into that river is nought but the dying groans of Dylan. Strange as it may seem, and in spite of the Mabinogi describing Dylan as a big yellow-haired boy, the study of Irish parallels leaves one in no doubt that Dylan represents darkness, the darkness that hies away to lurk in the sea, so that his name of Dylan has become a synonym for that of the Ocean. But how, it may be asked, came the sym- pathy of the poet to be enlisted on the wrong side, and Govannon's deed to be execrated ? That is a question which is not easy to answer to one's own satisfaction, and the best thing to do is to point out the parallel story in Irish. It occurs in that of the war between the Tuatha D^ Danann and the Fomori : ^ when the battle of Mag Tured (p. 253) had been going on for some time, the Fomori wondered how the Tuatha D6 continued to be supplied with arms ; in order, therefore, to find this out and to procure other information about the enemy, they sent one of their young heroes to visit him. The ^ An Irish instance of the waves of 'the melancholy main' bewail- ing a death occurs in the BJc. of Leinster, 186a j see also the editor's Introd. p. 47 a. 2 Poem ix. : see Skene, ij. 145. 3 The MS. I have consulted is in the British Museum, and is num- bered Harl. 5280 : the portion of the story here in point occurs at folio 68 « (57a of an older paging). 2 c2 388 V. THE SUN HERO. one chosen belonged by race partly to the Fomori and partly to tbe Tuatba D^ ; be was son of Bres the Fomo- rian and Brig dangbter of tbe Dagda, one of tbe leaders of tbe Tuatba D^ in tbe war. He was called Euadan, and be readily got access to tbe camp of tbe Tuatba D6 and visited tbe forge, wbere be found tbeir smitb Goibniu, wbose name makes in tbe genitive case Goihnenn, tbe etymologic and inflectional equivalent of tbe Welsh Govan- non ; be tben gives tbe Fomori a full account of tbe celerity witb wbicb Goibniu and bis fellow -artificers despatched tbeir work. Tbe Fomori send Euadan back witb orders to kill tbe smitb ; so Euadan asks Goibniu to make him a spear, and the smith complies. Euadan receives tbe spear duly finished ; but just as be was start- ing to go away, be suddenly turned round and hurled his new spear at its maker ; Goibniu was wounded, but not so as to prevent his throwing tbe spear back at Euadan in such a way that it sped right through him ; Euadan was nevertheless able to reach his friends, when be fell dead at bis father's feet in tbe assembly of the Fomori. His mother Brig comes and makes for her son a loud lamen- tation, which is specially described as beginning witb a scream and ending with a wail ; for it was tben, we are told, that wailing and screaming were beard in Erinn for the first time.^ Such is the story of Euadan ; and tbe wail and scream, so emphasized in it, refer to tbe ela- borate 'keening,' or peculiar and far-reaching cry which used to be raised on tbe occasion of a death in tbe family 1 Harl. 5280, fol. 68a: Tic Brie 7 caines a.-marhnad (?)egMs ar tds goilis fodeog Cowud and si» roclos gol 7 ege??i artos anerinw Is si di?i anpricli sin roairic feit, &c. T. THE STJN HERO. 389 by Irish women — and Welsli ones also^ — in the Middle Ages. The statement that this was the first time the 'keen' was heard, together with the probable allusion in the name Euaddn to weeping and mourning, ^ admits of our supposing that the death of Euad4n came to be com- pared with that of Abel — a comparison, which, applied in like manner to that of Dylan, would serve to explain why the Welsh story took a turn unfavourable to the reputation of Govanaon. In any case, the Irish ver- sion proves that the Welsh one is very incomplete, and makes it highly probable that Dylan was originally re- presented acting as a spy or assailant on behalf of the enemies of Govannon, when the latter slew him. He is never associated with M^th, Gwydion, Llew or Arianrhod, after the day of his strange birth, and at the last his mourners are the Waves of the British waters, which might pass for a happy expression of the poet's own inspiration : ia reality it is older and probably an integral part of the myth, as is proved by the fact that the Waves in the Welsh story take up the place occupied in the Irish one by Euaddn's friends, the Fomori or the mythic dwellers of the deep. One of the chief points of interest of the story consists for us in the ever-recurring conquest of darkness by the Culture Hero and friend of man, in 1 See B. B. Mab. p. 174; Guest, i. 57. ^ At first sight Ruaddn miglit be thought derived from Ir. ruad, ' red,' a colour here not more out of place than the yellowness of Dylan's complexion ; but the name is probably of the same origin as Sanskrit rud, ' jammern, heulen, weinen ; bejammern, beweinen;' rodana, neut. ' the act of Tveeping, tears ; ' also the name of the god Rudra, together with Rodasi, sometimes given as the fern, of Rudra. The European cognates include among them Latin rudo, ' I roar,' Lith. raudmi, 0. Bulg. rydajq, 'I weep,' A. -Sax. reutan, 'to weep.' 390 Y. THE SUN HERO. the Indra-like repetition of Govannon's interference, which makes Dylan die every day and as often plunges the sympathizing billows in loud grief. But the defeat of darkness means the victory of the sun's light ; so the story of Dylan, in its most modern echo, may be said to give the contest that iteration which Gwydion's action in bringing Llew back to life a second time fails to express. This leads us round to where we were before setting out on this digression ; we were then occupied with the story of Llew, and we must now say something of his Irish counterpart, whom it is impossible not to recognize in Lug Lam-fada, or L. of the Long-hand, though the stories about the two seldom coincide ; but that is owing in a great measure to the important difEerence of treat- ment, which lets Lug act for himself instead of under the segis of his father, as is mostly the case with Llew. The Donegal story of Lug's birth is perhaps the one that comes nearest to that of Llew: according to the former he was, as it will be remembered (p. 314), the son of Mac Kineely and Ethnea, a name more correctly written Ethne, with a genitive Ethnenn^ also written Ethlenn (or Ethlend) ; so that Lug is not unf requently called Lug mac Ethlenn, with the usual predilection for the mother's name. But there is another account of Lug's origiu, which gives him for father one who would seem to have been himself a personification of the sun. His name was Cian, which appears to be no other word than the Irish adjective cian, 'far, distant, remote:' in that case the fitness of the name needs no remark, the Sun-god being not unfre- quently represented as coming from afar. On the subject of Cian's identity there were different opinions, one of which makes him son of Dian Cecht, and says, contrary V. THE STJN HERO. 391 to the modern version, that Balor betrothed his daughter to the latter during a truce between the Fomori and the Tuatha D^ Danann.^ Another story makes Lug's father Cian the son of one Cainte,^ a name which may be iden- tified with that in stories which mention a Cian son of Ailill Aulom ; ^ for Cainte meant a satirist, and Ailill was represented as a poet, there being, in fact, poems extant which are ascribed to him.* He was, however, more than a poet or satirist, being a form, as the name would indicate, of the Celtic Dis, or god of darkness and death. His epithet of Aulom or Olom literally meant ' ear-bare,' which is explained by a story relating how on a November eve one of the Tuatha D^ Danann goddesses stripped the skin and the flesh completely off one of his ears, leaving him ever after under that blemish, which she is said to have inflicted on him in retaliation for injury and out- rage.^ On the other hand, he was possessed of a project- ing tooth, the venom from which was irresistible, and he is said to have treacherously planted it in the cheek of a step-son of his, when he approached to bid him farewell :^ AUill knew it would kill him within nine days, which was his wish. Ailill's wife was called Sadb, and she was a druidess 1 Harl. MS. 5280, fol. 63a. In the same MS. 19a, and in the Blc. of the Dun, 124: b, Lug is called son of Conn son of Ethne — Lug mc Cuind mi'c EttleKd^a pedigree otherwise unknown to me : possi- bly, however, Cuind came in as Cuinn and as a mistake for Cein, the gen. of Cian. Then Ethne would be mother of Cian and grandmother of Lug. 2 Atlantis, iv. 169; Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, p. 43, 3 O'Curry, ij. 139, 149; Four Masters, A.D. 241. * O'Curry, ij. 57-8. * Bk. of Leinster, 288 a. e lb. 291 &, 292a; the Bodley MS. Laud. 610, fol. 9562. 392 V. THE STJN HERO. given to poetry and divination, that is to say, she was a lady of the same class as Arianrhod, who was also a sor- ceress.^ As she was one day sitting by her husband in his chariot, they passed under a thorn which had a good crop of sloes on it : she wished to eat of them, and Ailill shook the branch into the chariot, so that she had as many as she liked. They returned home, and she gave birth to Cian, a smooth, fair, lusty son ; but he had the peculiarity that a sort of ridge of skin or caul extended over his head from ear to ear, and as he grew, that excres- cence also grew. So when he became a man, he did not suffer those who shaved him to live to divulge the secret. At length he had a barber who came to his work prepared for him, and told him so. He undid the covering of Cian's head, and perceived the reason why he had his barbers killed ; then he ripped up the abnormal skin on his head, whereupon there leaped out a worm, which sprang quickly to the top of the house, and subsequently twisted itself about the point of his spear. The barber and Ailill wished to have it killed at once, but Sadb, fearing lest Cian was fated to have the same span of life as the worm, prevailed on her husband to have a place made for it, where it should be supplied with plenty to eat. The worm then, like Fenri's Wolf, grew apace, and its house had to be enlarged for it ; by the end of the year it had a hundred heads, each of which would have swallowed a warrior with his arms and all. Such was its voracity and the ravages it began to commit, that it created consternation, and AiliU obtained Sadb's consent to kill the monster ; so the whole place was set on fire, in the 1 See tlie Taliessin poem, No. 16; Skene, ij. 159. y. THE STO HERO. 393 hope that it would perish in the flames. It was, however, all in vain, for it made its way out of the fire and flew westwards, till it reached the dark cave of Perna, in the district of Corcaguiny, the most western part of Kerry. There it abode, making the country a desert, so that Finn and his men durst not hunt there.^ Now the meaning of this hideous tale is perfectly clear: Cian represents the light of the sun, and the worm born with him is a personification of darkness and winter. The ever-repeated sequence of light and darkness, of summer and winter, is here typified in even a more remarkable manner than by the birth of Llew and Dylan from the same mother ; and it is curious to notice that the story locates the dark cave inhabited by the all- devouring worm, in the country with which the name of Diarmait is also associated. Had the story reached us in a complete and consistent form, we should perhaps have been told that Cian was killed by the worm ; but, as it happens, we have only another account of his death, which brings that event into a sort of connection with the story of Ciichulainn. For one evening, as Cian was tra- versing the Plain of Murthemne, with which Cuchulainn is associated in other stories, he espied the three sons of Tuirenn, his determined foes, Brian, luchair and lucharba. So he changed himself into the form of one of the swine that he saw not far off, and joined them in rooting the ground ; but Brian suspecting this, immediately changed his brothers into two fleet hounds, who soon found out the druidic pig. Brian then wounded the beast: the latter asked to be spared, which Was declined; but he 1 Pursuit of Diarmuid, ij. §§ 3 — 8. 394 V. THE SUN HERO. ■was permitted to change himself back into the human form, when he in vain repeated his previous request. Then he told his foes that he had outwitted them, as they would now have to pay the eric for kHling a man and not a beast, adding that their arms would betray the deed to his son Lug. But Brian said that they would use no arms, so they began stoniag Cian until they had reduced his body to a crushed mass. When they proceeded to bury it, the earth would not retain it ; they tried it six times, and the earth cast it up each time ; but when it was buried the seventh time, it was not cast up. Cian told Brian before he died that there never had been slain, and never would be slain, anybody for whom a greater eric would have to be paid than for him : it turned out so; for Lug discovered the murderers, and cunningly imposed on them, with the approval of the Tuatha D^ Danann, an eric which looked a trifle, but was soon found to involve the sons of Tuirenn in adventures of unheard- of toil and danger, at the close of which they died mise- rably of their wounds. The tale is one of the most famous m. Irish literature;^ but another account ^ makes Lug slay the three with his own hand in Man beyond the Sea. Brian and his brothers are sometimes called tri dee ddna,^ or the three gods of ddn^ that is to say of professional skill or talent, as the term dan is commonly 1 It is known as the Death of the Children of Tuirenn, and will he found edited, with an English translation hy O'Curry, in the Atlantis, Vol. iv. 159, &c. j see also an English version in Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 37 — 96. 2 Only known to me from a verse quoted hy Keating, p. 122. ^ Bk. ufLeinster, 10a; Keating, p. 122; compare Cormae^s Glossary, the Stokes-U'Donovan ed. p. 145. V. THE SUN HERO. 395 interpreted ; but though. Brian is represented as a valiant warrior and skilled as druid and poet, one fails to see why he and his brothers shoTild be assigned a place of pre-eminence in this respect above naany others of the Tuatha D^ Danann ; and I should be inclined therefore to give the word dan, in connection with the former, its other meaning of destiny or fate,^ and to regard the brothers, whose number three reminds one of Mider's three birds and their cognates (p. 332), as the messengers of fate and death. This would explain why they are also found mentioned as the three sons of Danu, the goddess of death, from whom the Tuatha Dd were col- lectively so called. They are sometimes further made to be par excellence the three gods of the Tuatha Dd, and to give that group its common name,^ whereas the role ascribed them in the stories extant fail completely to justify such a distinction : this applies to Brian even when due account is taken of the wonderful feats attri- buted to him as a warrior, engaged in procuring the eric he had to pay Lug; and as to his brothers, they are associated with him mostly as dummies. Moreover, no trace of any such pre-eminence as that here suggested can be detected in the oldest story known to us to mention Brian, namely, that of Ciichulainn wooing Emer daughter of the Fomorian chief, Forgall Monach. There Brian is 1 As, for instance, in the Bh. of the Dun, 39 a : 'bdi indan d6ib orba do gabdil.' The Welsh form is dawn, ' talent, genius,' and com- monly 'the gift of oratory.' The "Welsh and Irish words are nearly related to the Latin donum ; and it is needless to say that the name of the goddess Danu, genitive Danann, has nothing to do with them, though something approaching to a confusion of these words may be found evidenced in a conjecture repeated by Keating, p. 122. ^ See this view quoted by Keating, p. 120. 396 Y. THE SUN HEEO. coupled with Balor^ as one of the stout henchmen of Forgall, and we hare to regard him, like Balor, as a Fomorian ; but as a messenger of fate and death, it was natural to associate him with Danu in her character of goddess of death, and it was also natural that there should be hostility" between him and Lug, who punished him for the death of his father Cian.^ The eric imposed by Lug on the three brothers com- pelled them to procure for him certain fabulous weapons, which he should require in a great battle for which he was busUy preparing. The story euhemerizes the conflict into an important historical struggle ; but in reality the antagonistic parties were the powers of evil and darkness under the name of the Fomori, or the dwellers in the sea,, and the Tuatha D6 Danann. under the rule of Nuada of the Silver Hand, whose connections were of a very dif- ferent kind. His subjects were under tribute to the Fomori, who oppressed them in various ways, until the hero Lug successfully led his host to their attack. But one day previous to that event, the Tuatha Dd Danann happened to be holding an assembly, when they beheld coming towards them Lug and his followers. This is the description given of them : " One young man came in the ^ BJc. of the Dun, 123 a, where they are called 'Briore 7 Bolor.' ^ A different account from the foregoing of the death of Cian was known to the Four Masters, who say that he fell in the year 241 at the Battle of Samhain, which the learned editor O'Donovan would identify with a Cnoc-SamJina near Bruree in the county of Limerick ; but this is quite consistent with the more usual meaning of Samhain as the Irish name for November-eve. A Samhain battle would point to a time notoriously inauspicious to Celtic solar heroes, and such a conflict might obviously rage at more than one spot and in more than one story. V. THE SUN HERO. 397 front of that army, high in command over the rest ; and like to the setting sun was the splendour of his counte- nance and his forehead ; and they were not able to look in his face from the greatness of its splendour. And he was Lugh Lamh-fada, and [his army was] the Fairy Cavalcade from the Land of Promise, and his own foster- brothers, the sons of Manannan."i The story-teller was more correct than he knew in comparing Lug to the sun ; and it was the setting of the same luminary that had given rise to the myth that Lug was brought up at the court of Mananndn, one of the great chiefs of Fairy-land, here called the Land of Promise. It was thence he was sometimes represented coming in the morning, as in this instance, and as in the story of Cuchulainn when he comes to that hero's aid. But to return to Lug's march : on the occasion of his approaching the Fomori's camp later in the day, we read in the same story the following words : " Then arose Breas, the son of Balor, and he said: It is a wonder to me that the sun should rise in the west to-day, and in the east every other day. It were better that it were so, said the druids. What else is it ? said he. The radiance of the face of Lugh of the Long Arms, said they." 2 In the protracted conflict which ensued, not only were the powers of darkness routed, but Balor of the Evil Eye, which it was death to behold, was de- spatched by Lug sending a stone from his sling into the evil eye, so that it came out right through his head. Lug was not only surnamed from his long hands, but he was famous for his mighty blows, and his spear became 1 See O'Curry's Fate of the Children of Tuireann in the Atlantis, Vol. iv. pp. 160-3; also Joyce, p. 38. 2 lUd. pp. 176-7. 398 V. THE STJN HERO. one of the treasures of the Tuatha D^ Danann ; nor is it necessary to point out the parallelism between his slaying of Balor and Llew's transfixing his rival by a cast of his spear, which an intervening rock was not enough to stop in its fatal course. Before proceeding further, it will be well to say some- thing about the names Llew and Lug. The former is in point of sound the same word as the Welsh for lion ; but on looking closely into the passages where the name of the Sun-god occurs, it proves to have been originally not Llew but Lieu ; ^ but as mediaeval spelling did not al- ways carefully distinguish the sounds of u, w and v, it is only the assonances and rhymes that can be thoroughly decisive in this matter. A couple of such instances occur in a poem in the Book of Taliessin ; ^ on the other hand, the Mabinogi of M^th has always Llew, except in one remarkable place.^ It will be remembered that when Gwydion suspected that he had found Llew in the form of a wounded and wretched eagle on the top of an oak- tree, he sang three verses of poetry to him, at each of which the eagle descended a little, so that at last he let himself down on Gwydion's lap, to be changed by the ^ The difference of sound amounts to this : the ew in Llew is sounded like Italian eu in Europa, and somewhat like Cockney ow in ' down town;' while the eu in Lieu consists approximately of German e fol- lowed by German w. ^ Skene, ij. 158, where the instances are lieu, gynJieu, and llni, Jcadeu. I have noted in the same volume an indecisive llev at p. 31, while passages at pp. 176, 190, 211, make for Lieu or lieu. ^ But it is worthy of note that where the scribe first came across the name he began to write fteu, though he ended by making it into fte6, that is to say, Llew. So one may infer that the MS. before him read either lieu or llev: see E. B. Mab. p. 71, and ed.'s note, p. 312. V. THE SUN HERO. 399 toTicli of Ms wand into his former shape. Now the scribe of the Mabinogi gives these verses in a very confused orthography, clearly leaving it to be seen, as he does also in other parts of the tale, that he was copying from an old manuscript which he did not always understand. When restored to what must have approximately been their original form, they require us to read not Llew but Lieu, and they would then run somewhat as follows : ^ 1. Dar a dyf y rwng deulynn, An oak grows between two lakes ; Gordufrych awyr a glynn : Black and speckled are sky and glen : Oni dywettaf i eu, If my speech be not untrue, Eulodeu Lieu pan y w bynn. Here are the members of Ueu. Dar a dyf yn ardfaes Nis gwlycb gwlaw nis mwy tawd tes Naw ugein angerd a borthes Yn y blaen Lieu Llawgyffes Dar a dyf dan anwaeret Mirein medr i'm i welet Oni dywettaf i eu Ef dydaw Lieu i'm harffet An oak grows in a ploughed field — Eain wets it not nor heat melts it more : Nine score pangs have been endured In its top by Lieu Llawgyffes. 3. An oak grows below the slope ; A fair hit that I should see him- If my speech be not untrue, Lieu will come to my lap. * The manuscript reads : ' Dar a dyf y r6ng deu lenn. gorduwrych awyr a glen, ony dy wetaf i eu oulodeu. ne6 pan y6 hynn.' ' Dar a dyf yn ard uaes. nys g61ych gla6. nys m6 y ta6d. na6 ugein angerd a borthes. yn y blaen lle6 lla6 gyffes.' 'Dar a dyf dan anwaeret. mirein medur ym ywet. ony dywedaf i ef. dyda6 lle6 ym harfiet.' See the R. B. Mob. pp. 78-9. Lenn for lynn, and glen for glynn, show the same fashion of spelling as Res for Rhys on a highly ornamented cross at Llantwit, which can hardly be later than the 11th century : see Hiibner's Inscri-ptiones Brit. Christianoe, No. 63, and-Westwood's Lapidarium Wallicb, p. 11, plate 5. The nu of oulodeu, for later eulodeu, more usually written aelodeu, 'limbs, members,' must date, if my translation be right, from the spelling of Old Welsh in the technical sense of the term, let us say of the 9th or 10th century. 400 V, THE SUN HERO. The place referred to in these verses was beyond doubt bard by the deu-lynn, or two lakes near Bala Deulyn, in the valley of Nanttie in Carnarvonshire. The old pro- nunciation of the name Nanttte was Nantfteu, meaning Nant-Lleu, the Valley or Glenn of Lieu ; but when it came to be pronounced as a single word accented on the first syllable, the u was liable to be dropped off, as in other words : compare hore for boreu, ' morning,' and gele for geleu, ' a leech ; ' but we need not rely on this alone, for there is evidence ready to hand in one of the Yerses of the Graves, which, reduced to a consistent spelling, runs thus : ^ Y bed yngorthir Nanttteu Ni wyr neb i gynnedfeu Mabon fab Modron gleu The grave in the upland of Nanttte, Nobody knows its properties : It is Mabon's, the swift son of Modron. The scribe of the Mabinogi makes the valley called after Lieu into Nant y Llew, 'the Lion's Glen,' as he was led to do so by his habit of making Lleu's name into Llew, and confirmed in his error by misinterpreting the Nantllev or Nantlleu of the manuscript he had before him. This incidentally proves that he had no personal acquaintance with the neighbourhood of Snowdon ; and the same want of familiarity with North Wales is suggested by his once making into Cynwael the Ffestiniog river Cynvael, now called the Kynval, in Merioneth.^ From the same lack of acquaintance with the district, he wrote also Dinttef ^ 1 Published in the Myvyrian Arch, of Wales, VoL i. 78, where it is printed as follows : ' T Bed yngorthir Nanllau Ny uyr neb y gynneddfeu Mabon vab Modron glau.' 2 R. B. Mob. p. 74. 3 ^. B. Mob. p. 71. V. THE SUN HERO. 401 for Dintteu, of which more anon. All this is by no means to be wondered at, as the scribe was most likely a native of South "Wales ; at any rate, the Eed Book was probably written at the monastery of Strata Plorida, in north Car- diganshire, and one at least of the scribes had a native's acquaintance with Aberystwyth and its immediate neigh- bourhood.1 It is not altogether improbable that the change of the name Lieu into Llew, which cannot be phonologically accounted for, was similarly originated by the mistake of some scribe or story-teller who was a stranger to the district where the hero's name was fami- liar. Once the example was set, the name Llew, as coinciding with tiew, meaning a lion, might be expected to hold its own ground against the older name Lieu, which either conveyed no sense to the story-teller's mind, or no sense that struck him or his listeners as fitting the cha- racter of his hero, such as they would conceive it to have been. But whatever the time and the cause of the change of Lleu's name to Llew may have been, it exercised some influence on one of the stories about the Sun-god, as it helped to give its form to a portion of the romance of Owein ab Urien, whom we have to mention later as play- ing a role corresponding in several respects to that of Cdchulainn. Owein, in the course of his wanderings near the utmost limits of the inhabited world, happened to pass near a wood, when he heard a loud howl proceed- ing from it. On hearing it repeated he drew near, and found a great knoll in the wood, and ia the side of the ^ I allude more especially to the entry under the year 1113 in Brui y Tywysogion (London, 1860), pp. 130-3. 2d 402 V. THE SXJN HERO, knoll a grey rock with a cleft in it. In tlie cleft there was a serpent, and close by a pure white ^ lion that wished to pass, but the serpent would dart at him to bite him. Owein, judging the lion the nobler animal, approached, and quickly cut the reptile in two with his sword, where- upon the lion followed him, as it were a greyhound. At the approach of night the grateful beast went out to hunt for him, and brought back a fine roebuck, which Owein cooked and duly divided between him and the lion. Whenever Owein fought afterwards and was likely to be hard pressed, the lion would come to his rescue and kill his antagonists : nothing could prevent him. On one occasion he was shut up within the high walls of a castle, while Owein was to fight a duel outside with a brutal giant who devoured men and women; but it was not long ere the lion got on the battlements, and leaped down to deal Owein's antagonist a fatal wound. Another time the lion was confined in a stone prison, while Owein fought against two men who were likely to give him trouble, and the beast never rested till he forced his way out and killed both.^ Some would say that the lion was a proper representative of the sun, and the serpent of darkness, which may do for countries where the lion is at home ; but that the Welsh tale should have fixed on that particular brute form, is due partly, if not wholly, to the name Llew and its ordinary meaning of 'lion.' 1 See the R. B. Mob. p. 186, where it will be seen that the MS. calls the \ioTi. purdu, 'purely black;' but the older MS., called Ehy- derch's White Book (ia the Hengwrt Collection), col. 234, calls the beast purdyn, or purely white, which is mythologically doubtless more correct. 2 R. B. Mai. pp. 186—191; Guest, i. 75—81. V. THE SUN HERO. 403 The story, shaped accordingly, reached the Continent, and was elaborated into a romance called the Chevalier au Lion, the oldest edition of which is ascribed to Chres- tien de Troyes, who lived in the twelfth century : it be- came popular also in Germany, and reached Scandinavia. "Why a wild beast of any kind should have been intro- duced into the story of Owein, especially as it would seem to disturb the symmetry of the myth, is a question of some difficulty, reaching beyond the influence of the name Llew. For a little before Owein came across the white lion, he had been avoiding the haunts of men and living with wild beasts. He had in fact been like one of them, and his body had become covered with hair like theirs. Now this is an incident which has its parallel in the madness of Ciichulainn, and in the pretended dumb- ness of Peredur when he avoids the abodes of Christians ; and it belongs to the hero as a form of the Sun-god, so that to introduce the Sun-god in the form of a wild beast as well would seem to be de trop. To this it might per- haps be answered, that it is useless to expect thorough consistency in such matters ; and one might even quote as a kind of parallel the case, to be mentioned later, of a horse of the Irish Sun Hero, Conall Cernach, follow- ing him to fight with his teeth on behalf of his master. But possibly the story of Cian ofEers a better parallel, when it represents him taking advantage of some swine he saw not far off on the plain, to change himself to the form that was theirs ; and the story of Owein seems to us to suggest that originally it made Owein himself become a beast, and not simply very like one. The strangeness of a story representing the same individual as a knight and as a wild beast successively, would be eliminated by 2d2 404 V. THE SUN HERO. placing the beast by the side of the knight as his com- panion and ally. Add to these sundry points of contact between the stories mentioned, the verse cited as placing the grave of Mabon, the Welsh equivalent of the Apollo Maponos of the Celts of antiquity (pp. 21, 27-9) at Nanttle, where Lieu was at last discovered by Gwydion, and one will hardly be able to avoid concluding, that we here have related stories, handed down to us in a frag- mentary form which leaves it impossible to ascertain in what exact way they were related to one another. At the point which we have reached, one of the chief things wanting is evidence that Owein was at any time called Llew or Lieu. "We have evidence, on the other hand, that Lieu was represented as a wild beast ; in fact, that is the only form with which he is invested by the folk-lore of modern Snowdonia. The following is the substance of what I have been able to learn about him : — The road from Carnarvon to the romantic village of Bedgelert passes pretty close to a lake called Llyn y Gadair, the Lake of the Seat ; and there is a story cur- rent in that part of the country that a long while ago a little knoll between the lake and the road was the seat of a strange beast called the Aurwrychyn, or the Gold-bristle: in fact, the name of the lake in full is explained to have been Llyn Cadair yr Aurwrychyn^ ' the Lake of the Gold- bristle's Seat.' He is said to have been in form some- what like an ox ; but he was covered with gold bristles,* and he appeared one mass of brilliant gold, so that when the sun shone on him nobody could look at him. One day, however, a hunter's hounds, chasing the red deer, came across Gold-bristle and pursued him across through the pass called Drws y Coed, which opens into the V. THE SUN HERO. 405 I'J'anttte valley, and caught Mm near Bala Deulyn. As the dogs were killing him, he gave a cry which made the hills resound, and from this ftef or cry the valley received its name of Nant-ttef, that is to say, Nanttte.i On this I have two or three remarks to make : the bristles of the Aurwrychyn remind one of Cian in his brute form: and the mention of the dying ttef or cry may be regarded as an addition to explain the place- name Nantfl-e, but the correct analysis of that word is into Nant-Lleu, that is to say, the Glen of Lieu. Phonologically, however, both explanations would fit alike, as ISTant-ttef, as well as Nant-tteu, would be cur- tailed to Nant-tte when the accent fixed itself on the first syllable. Lastly, the coincidence which makes the beast die in Nanttte, where also Gwydion discovered his son Lieu in the form of an eagle, makes it probable that the proper name of the beast in gold bristles was originally no other than that of Lieu. As we have been brought to the Nanttte valley, let us follow the river which flows from the lakes in the direc- tion contrary to that taken by Gwydion when searching for Lieu (p. 240) : this stream is called the Llyvni, and it reaches the sea some distance west of the western mouth of the Menai; and between the latter and the ^ The author is indebted for this to the Brython (published at Tremadoc) for the year 1861, p. 252, and to Mrs. Ehys' memory, for when she was a child she often heard talk of the Aurwrychyn as a grand extinct animal at which no man could gaze on account of his mass of gold bristles. The beast was so wild that nobody could get near him. He used to cross the mountains from Cwmglas (between Llanberis and the Pass) to Nantfte, where he was at last caught ; but she has never heard anything said of his death. 406 Y. THE STJN HERO. mouth of the Llyvni is the huge artificial mound called Dinas Dintte, which dates probably before the Eoman occupation, the Eomans being supposed to have made use of it. Its future seems to be gradual demolition by the waves of the Irish Sea, unless it is to experience the still worse misfortune of being desecrated by the builders of so-called watering-places. It was at Dinas Dintte that Lieu spent a part of his boyhood ; and in a poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen (p. 272) it is called eaer lev a gwidion^ or the Fortress of Lieu and Gwydion. The present name, Dinas Dintte, is tautological, and means literally 'the City of Lleu's Town;' the word Jm, 'a town or fortress,' having become obsolete, has here been explained by prefixing its synonymous derivative dinas^ 'a town or city.'^ The reasons for going into these details will appear presently; suffice it for the present to recall the statement that Dintte stands for an older Dintieu derived from Lleu's name, and meaning Lleu's town. This is proved by various facts ; among others, it is indirectly proved by the Dinttef of the scribe of the Mabinogi of M4th, as already hinted ; also by one of the Stanzas of the Graves, which places the grave of Gwydion 1 Skene, ij. 57. 2 Other old names have occasionally been treated in the same way : thus the word tref, ' town,' is sometimes substituted for din, as in the case of DinmeircMon, which has become Tre'meirchion, near St. Asaph in the Vale of Clwyd ; and similarly the mythic town of Arianrhod is no longer spoken of in Arvon as Gaer Arianrhod, but as Tre' Gdr 'An- throd. See the Gymmrodor, vi. 163, where other forms are also men- tioned : 'Anthrod stands for the latter part of Arianrhod, with a th inserted betwen n — rh, as in penrhyn, eynrhon, pronounced penthryn and cynthron in N. "Wales, while in S. Wales they hecome pendryn and cyndron. For the case of Carmarthen, see p. 160. V. THE SUN HERO. 407 in Morva Dintieu,^ or the Marsh of Dintteu. But we have evidence that the shorter form Diafte was also used, especially in the spoken languages, as early as the thirteenth century.^ It is interesting to add that there was another Dintie, called in the Eed Book, where it is mentioned, Dintte Ureconn,^ which meant the Uriconian or Wrekin Dintte, in the present county of Salop ; the longer name served to distinguish it from the one in Arvon. Such are some of the facts connected with the history of the name Llew, which has been traced to the older form Lieu. The next step is to ascertaia how this latter stands with regard to the Irish Lug, genitive Loga. Enough is known of the laws of phonology obtaiaing in the Welsh and Irish languages respectively, to leave us practically in no doubt as to the identity of the two names.* Treating Lieu and Lug henceforth as one and ^ The lines in point will be found printed in the Myvyrian Arch, of Wales, i. 78 ; but, as they there stand they look exceedingly corrupt, Dintteu having been printed Dinften, which can only be explained as here suggested. 2 For the name occurs with English thl for "Welsh ft in the Record of Carnarvon (Record Office, 1838), where the Villa de Dynthle occurs more than once, pp. 20, 21, 22, 24. 3 Red Book, col. 1047; Skene, ij. 288; Ehys, Celtic Britain^ p. 314. * There are other instances of Irish ug or og being represented by eu in mediseval Welsh, such as the case of the Welsh word meu (in meu-dviy, ' a hermit,' literally servus Dei) as compared with the Irish mug, genitive moga, ' a slave.' Compare also the Latin pugillares, ' writing tablets,' which yielded Old Welsh poullor-awr, glossing pugil- larem pagivam (Stokes' Capella Glosses in Kiihn's Beitrcege, vij. 393), together -with. peuUadr, which occurs in a poem in the BJc. of Taliessin in the sense of 'books' (Skene, ij. 141). In Old Welsh, og seems to have occasionally been thus made into ou (later eu and au) much in 408 V. THE SUN HERO. the same name, we have next to try to ascertain its ori- ginal meaning. It is tinfortunate that Irish literature is not known to shed any light on this point, excepting that one vocabulary^ gives it as meaning a hero; that, however, looks too much like a mere guess based on the stories about Lug. So we have to fall back on "Welsh, which supplies related forms in the words lleu-ad, *a luminary, a moon;' lleu-fer (also lleu-er), 'a luminary, a light;' llew-t/ch, 'a light, or lighting;' llewych-u, 'to shine.' I^ay, lieu itself occurs as an appellative meaning light, as, for example, in the Book of Aneuriii,^ a manu- script supposed to be of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, where we meet with the term lieu lalir, used of rush-lights or the light derivedT from the rushes used for lighting, which are in modem Welsh called pahwyr? The term lieu halir also occurs in a poem* ascribed to Eyndelw, a poet of the twelfth century ; but the fact that we have to go so far back for instances of the word lieu, and then only to find it in the single combination lieu habir, only serves to show that it the same way that English has made ' sorrow,' ' tallow,' ' morrow,' out of older forms corresponding to the German sorg, talg and morg-en. For more about the phonology of the change in question, see my Led. on Welsh Phil.^ pp. 66, 67, 412. 1 O'Davoren in Stokes' Tliree Irish Glossaries, p. 103. O'EeiUy's Dictionary gives Logh the meanings of ' God, fire, ethereal spirits, a loosing, dissolving, untying.' ^ Skene, ij. 66. 3 The rush is peeled almost completely and then dipped in tallow, and this forms a common means of lighting rustic homes in Wales. * See the Red Booh, cols. 1165-9; the poem has been published by me in the Montgomeryshire Collections issued by the Powys-Iand Club Vol. xi. p. 171-8 : see more especially pp. 171, 177. V. THE SUN HERO. 409 has long since become obsolete, or at any rate of very rare occurrence. The point of chief importance to us is the fact that lieu meant light, and that there is no reason to suppose the name Lieu to be of a diflferent origin from the appellative ; we are at liberty also to suppose that the Irish Lug meant light, and thus we arrive at a significa- tion of the name, which exactly describes the Sun-god, whom we have identified under these appellations. The widely spread Cult of Lug. We now pass on from the names of the Sun-god to the widely spread cult of which he was the object in all Celtic lands. In Ireland there were great meetings, which con- stituted fairs and feasts, associated with Lug, and called Lugnassad after him. The chief day for these was Lam- mas-day, or the first of August, and the most celebrated of them used to be held at Tailltin^ (p. 148), in Meath. The story of the institution of the fair is thus told by the Irish historian Keating : " Lugh Lamhfhada son of Cian .... took the kingship of Erinn for forty years. It is this Lugh that first instituted the fair of Tailltin, as an annual commemoration of Tailltiu, daughter of Maghmdr, that is to say, the king of Spain ; and she was wife to Eochaidh. mac Eire, last king of the Eir Bolg ; she was afterwards wife to Eochaidh Gharbh, son of Duach Dall and chief of the Tuatha Dd Danann. It is by this woman that Lugh Ldmhfhada was fostered and educated, until he was fit to bear arms. It is as a commemoration of honour to her that Lugh instituted the games of the * The Irish name is Tailltiu, gen. TailUen, ace. and dative Tailltin. It is Anglicized Teltown, the name of a place where the remains of a rath exist near the Boyne. Cancel an n in Tailltinn, p. 148. 410 V. THE STJN HERO. fair of Tailltin, a fortnigM before Lammas and a fortnight after, in imitation of the games called Olympic ; and it is from this commemoration which Lugh made, that the name Lugnasadh is given to the first day or calends of August, that is to say, Lugh's nasadh or commemoration."^ This is in harmony with what is briefly said in Cormac's Glos- sary: "Liignasad, i.e. a commemorating game or fair, thereto is the name nasad^ i.e. a festival or game of Lugh mac Ethne or Ethlenn, which was celebrated by him in the beginning of autumn." ^ These passages do not quite satisfactorily explain the meaning of the word nassad; but let that pass for the pre- sent, and let us add that O'Curry in mentioning this legend says that Lug buried his nurse in a plain in the present barony of Kells, in the county of Meath ; that he raised over her a large artificial hill or sepulchral mound, which remains to this day ; that he ordered there a commemora- tive festival, with games and sports after the fashion of other countries, to be held in her honour for ever, and that they were continued down to the ninth century.^ The games alluded to consisted of a variety of manly sports and contests, but one of their chief characteristics was horse-racing, which reminds one of the racing near the tomb of Patroclus, for which Achilles provided rich prizes.* A fair which appears to have been of the same nature used to be held on the calends of August also at Cruachan, a place mentioned in connection with Ailill and Medb (p. 330); but little is known about the fair there. A 1 Keating, pp. 126-9. 2 Cormac's Glossary (Stokes-O'Donovan ed.), p. 99. 3 Manners, &c. ij. 148 ; M8. Mat. p. 287. * niad, xxiij. 255—270. V. THE SUN HERO. 411 third fair was held triennially at Carman, now called Wexford; and its time was likewise the first day of August. The stories about its institution vary consider- ably, and offer some difficulty of interpretation in as far as regards their mythological meaning ; ^ but, like the TaiUtin fair, it is represented as commemorative of a deceased person, and as having been established after the demons of blight and blast had been overcome. -It was considered an institution of great importance, and among the blessings promised to the men of Leinster from hold- ing it and duly celebrating the established games, were plenty of corn, fruit and milk, abundance of fish in their lakes and rivers, domestic prosperity, and immunity from the yoke of any other province. On the other hand, the evils to follow from the neglect of this institution were to be failure and early greyness on them and their kings. It is not very evident why the stories about the in- stitution of these fairs should give them a funereal interpretation; but it is worth while mentioning that both TaiUtin and Cruachan are mentioned as among the chief burial-places in pagan Erinn;^ and Carman is also alluded to as a cemetery.^ Moreover, Lug, as we have already seen (p. 397), was, when he came, supposed to arrive from the other world, and to be followed by a fairy train consisting of the sons of Mananndn mac Lir. We come next to the association of Lug's name with the fair ; for this there was a special reason : it has already been stated that the Lugnassad corresponded in the calen- dar to the English Lammas — a word which was in A.- Saxon MdfmcBsse, that is, loaf- mass or bread -mass, so 1 See O'Curry, ij. 38 — 47, iij. 521 -il ; also Bk. of Leinster, 215. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 38&, 39a, 51a. ^ Bk. of Leinster, 215a. 412 V. THE SUN HERO. named as a mass or feast of thanksgiving for the first- fruits of tlie com-liarvest. That feast 'seems to have been observed with bread of new wheat, and therefore in some parts of England, and even in some near Oxford, the tenants are bound to bring in wheat of that year to their lord, on or before the first of August,' a day other- wise called the Gule of August.^ In Germany, a loaf of bread had to be given to the shepherd who kept one's cattle.2 rjr^Q Church has assigned the day to St. Peter ad Vincula, which supplies no key to the choice of the day in Teutonic lands as a sort of feast of first-fruits ; so we seem to be at liberty to regard the latter as having come down from pagan times, which enables us to un- derstand the Irish account of the institution of the fairs and meetings held on that day. Thus if we go into the story of the fair of Carman, we are left in no doubt as to, the character of the mythic beiags whose power had been brought to an end at the time dedicated to that fair: they may be said to have represented the blighting chills and fogs that assert their baneful influence on the farmer's crops. To overcome these and other hurtful forces of the same kind, the prolonged presence of the Sun -god was essential, in order to bring the corn to maturity. Why Lug should have made the feast for Taintiu does not at first sight appear; but let us see what can be made out of her. She is strangely described^ 1 This is th.e substance of a part of a note by Thos. Hearne in h.is edition oi Bobert of Gloucester's Chronicles (Oxford, 1724), p. 679. 2 See Leo's Angelsdchsisches Glossar (Halle, 1877), s. v. hldfincesse, col. 543. 3 In tbe Book of Leinster, 9 a, 2006, which is followed in this mat- ter by Keating. V. THE STJN HEEO. 413 as daughter of Mag Mor, king of Spain : now Mag Mdr^ means the Great Plain, one of the names for the other world, which is corroborated by the allusion to Spain, another of the Irish aliases for Hades (p. 90) ; and in the story that she was first the wife of the king of the Fir Bolg, and then of that of the Tuatha I>6, we have an indication that she belonged to the class of dawn and dusk goddesses ; at one time she was the consort of a dark being, and at another of a bright one, while the Sun-god was her foster-child, which recalls the fostering of Lieu by a nurse at Dinas Dintte or some adjacent spot near the sea. That this is the way to regard Tailltiu is proved by a story attributing to her the action of clear- ing a forest and of thickly covering it within the year with clover blossom.^ This, at the same time that it helps us to understand the propriety of associating her with an agricultural feast, recalls the "Welsh myth of Olwen and the white trefoils that sprang up wherever she set her foot.^ Both Olwen and Tailltiu were of the number of the goddesses of dawn and dusk — a class of divini- ties, however, much less differentiated on Celtic than on classic .ground. Thus in the present instance I should claim for comparison both Aphrodite and Athene ; the former, because wherever she walked on landing in her favourite Cyprus, she likewise made roses bloom and 1 It is called Mag M6r an Aonaig, ' the Great Plain of the Assembly or the Fair,' on which the Fomori are attacked by Lug, according to one of the stories about his doings : see the Atlantis, iv. 178-9. Simi- larly, Bres, when driven from the kingship and seeking the aid of his Fomorian kindred, found the latter with their king, his father, holding a great assembly on a Mag Mor : see the MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 64 &. ^ Bk. of Leinster, 9 a : see also 2006. 3 R. B. Mai), p. 117; Guest ij. 276. 414 V. THE SUN HERO. green pastures grow, and the latter as occupying the foremost place at the Panatheneea, just as Tailltiu did at the Lugnassad, there being reasons, to be mentioned later, why one should identify the Celtic and the Greek feasts with one another. Such lines of difference as that drawn between Aphrodite and Athene, or between either and such a goddess, for example, as rosy-fingered Eos, is very rudimentary in Celtic ; and in that respect Celtic mythology appears to have retained a more ancient and rudimentary form. In the above-mentioned stories, the Lugnassad feasts and fairs are described as established ia honour of the dead, one by Lug himself and the other by the Tuatha D6 Danann. But there is a different account in one of the manuscripts till recently in the possession of Lord Ashburnham, where one meets with an iustance of those quaint explanations of place-names so characteristic of old Irish literature. It is to the folio wiug effect : *' The Eefuse of the Great Feast which I mentioned, that is Taillne. It is here that Lug Scimaig^ proceeded to make the great feast for Lug mac Ethlenn for his entertain- ment after the battle of Mag Tured ; for this was his wedding of the kingship, since the Tuatha D^ Danann made the aforesaid Lug king after the death of Nuada. As to the place where the refuse was thrown, a great ^ Scimaig looks like the genitive of a word scimach ; but in the MS. Haii. 5280, fol. 216, it is written scimaig, with a mark of un- defined contraction over the m. Another form occurs in the Bh. of Leinster, which identifies this Lug with Lug mac Ethlenn : see 116 and the top margin, which has the following verses : Cermait mac in dagdse de rageogain lug scicmaiwge. babara broira ior sire maig aflaith echacA ollathir. •For sin maig' is glossed '.i. ior brug mrwo [injdoc' V. THE SUN HERO, 415 knoll was made of it : this was [thencefortli] its name, th.e Knoll of the Great Feast, or the Eefuse of the Great Banquet, that is to say, Taillne, at the present day."i The way in which Lng's personality is doubled in this story is remarkable ; and it is possible that in the vocable Taillne we have a name nearly related to that of Taill- tiQ;2 while the festivities of the Lugnassad are probably referred to ia the allusion to the great feast made by Lug for Lug as a reward for his victory over the powers of darkness ia the great mythical battle of Mag Tured. Further, the mention of his assumption of sovereignty as his act of wedding or marrying the kingdom is curious, and leads to a further examination of the term Lugnassad. It is probable that nassad did not mean either a commemoration or a festival, as might be gathered from Keating and Cormac, since it is a word of the same origin as the Latin nexus, ' a tying or binding together, a legal obligation.' ^ Moreover, a compound ar-nass is used more ^ The manuscript is now in the library of the E. Irish Acaderay, classed D, iv. 2; and the passage here translated occurs on folio 826, which has been kindly read for me by Prof. Atkinson : I have also consulted the British Museum Codex already referred to as Harleian 5280, and especially page 216. The former reads tall ni and taill ni, the latter tailne and taillne, a name which looks like a derivative from Tailltiu, genitive Taillten, as it admits of being treated as a curtailed form of Tailltne. ^ Besides the place called Taillne, and the Tailltin where, according to the Bh. of Leinster, 9a, Lug's foster-mother lived, the forest said to have been cleared by her was called Caill Cuan, the situation of which seems to be defined by 2006. There is a Cuan Teilion, or Teelin. Harbour, in Donegal, and Strangford Lough is Loch Cuan; but see Stokes & Windisch, ij. pp. 242, 248. ^ The Latin term was a most important one, and we have an Irish word of kindred origin in the noun nassad, used in the sense of a legal 416 V. THE SUN HERO. than once in the Ashburnham manuscript just alluded to, in the sense of betrothing one's daughter, or giving her away by solemn contract to a husband;^ and lastly, a participial form nassa occurs of a girl who has been promised or betrothed to a husband.^ These facts, and the curious allusion to Lug's wedding the kingdom, go to prove that the term Lug-nassad originally meant Lug's wedding or marriage, and that this was one of the chief things the festivities on that day were meant to call to mind. We have traces of this idea in a strange story ^ to which allusion has already been made (p. 205). Conn the Hundred-fighter and his druid were one day over- sanction, in a verse in the Book of the Dun, 1186, which treats the death of Loegaire Mac Neill as a punishment for his violating an oath he had sworn by the sun and the moon and the elements : " Loegaire mac N^eill died beside Casse — green is the land ; God's elements by him pledged brought the encounter of death on the king : In the battle of Ath Dara the Swift was Loegaire taken, son of Niall; The just sanction of God's elements, that is what killed Loegaire." The tract in which it occurs has recently been published by the Rev. Charles Plummer in the Rev. Gelt. vi. 163. A different version, in which the word in question does not occur, is to be found in the BJc. of Leinster, 43a (see also Atkinson's Introduction, p. 23). In these words the original meaning of a tying or binding is involved, but it has added to it the idea of what makes the obligation effective or avenges the violation of it. 1 Fol. 836: amaisai sede uile do fsraib remibsium, ' he had betrothed all these to husbands before them;' and further on — arnais iarw)?* 'Sorgall ami ingin dow ri, ' Forgall then betrothed the girl to the king.' 2 See the Bk. of Leinster, 92 a: Ba nassa damsa indiwgen lit uair chiin, ' that girl has been betrothed to me long ago.' 3 Edited with a translation in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 618-22, from the British Museum MS. Harl. 5280. V. THE SUN HERO. 417 taken by a thick mist, whence there issued a knight who took them to a beautiful plain, whereon they saw a royal rdth with a golden tree at its door. They entered a splendid house therein, where they beheld a youthful princess with a diadem of gold on her head, and a silver kieve with hoops of gold standing near her, full of red ale; and they saw seated before them on a royal seat a personage of the other sex, whose like had never been seen at Conn's court at Tara, either as to stature or beauty of face and figure. He explained to them that he was no phantom, but that he was Lug,i and that it was his pleasure to reveal to Conn the duration of his rule, and that of every prince who should reign at Tara after him. This revelation to Conn begins with the crowned lady giving him two huge bones, the ribs of a gigantic ox and of a boar respectively ; she then proceeds to distri- bute the red ale, with the question, ' For whom is this bowl ?' Lug answers, ' For Conn the Fighter of a Hun- dred ;' and the same distribution of the contents of the great vat is repeated in respect of each of Conn's successors ; but I should have said that the queen was described by Lug to Conn as the Sovereignty of Erinn till the day of doom. In this story we have Lug pictured to us as a dweller in the other world, where the Sun-god was sup- posed to spend half his time, and there with him lived as his consort the youthful beauty typifying the kingdom of Erinn. No better proof could perhaps be desired that 1 He describes himself as Lmg mac Edlend, mic Tighernmais, that is to say, Lug son of Edle (better Edne or Ethne), son of Tigernmas, which is noteworthy as virtually identifying Tigernmas with Balor ; but tlio value of the suggestion is reduced by the display of ignorance in treat- ing Edle as Lug's father and not his mother. 2 E 418 V. THE SUN HEEO. the interpretation here suggested of the term Lugnassad is in the main correct ; and it agrees with the fact that after Lug's death — for euhemerized gods must die — ^the husband of Erinn is represented bearing the significant name of Mac Greine, or the Son of the Sun.^ Nor is evi- dence of a more indirect nature altogether wanting, for if the Lugnassad recalled the marriage of Lug, it might also be expected to have been considered an auspicious time for their own marriages by his worshippers. This is borne out by tradition. Dr. O'Donovan, after briefly describing the position of Tailltin or Teltown, goes on to say that there were in his day vivid traditions of the Lugnassad extant in the country, and that Teltown was, till recently, resorted to by the men of Meath for hurling, wrestling, and other manly sports. This is not all, for ' to the left of the road, as you go from Kells to Donaghpatrick, there is,' he adds, 'a hollow called Lag an Aonaigh, i.e. the Hollow of the Fair, where, according to tradition, marriages were solemnized in pagan times.' ^ To sum up these remarks : the Lammas fairs and meet- ings forming the Lugnassad in ancient Ireland, marked the victorious close of the sun's contest with the powers of darkness and death, when the warmth and light of that luminary's rays, after routing the colds and blights, were fast bringing the crops to maturity: this, more mythologically expressed, was represented as the final 1 Bk. of Leinster, 10 a; Keating, p. 130-1. ^ The Four Masters, A.M. 3370, note. Perhaps the marriages at the Lugnassad followed a season of no marrying : in Scotland at least the month of May was a close time in this respect : see Thos. Stephens' Gododin (published by the Cymmrodorion), pp. 125-6, where he quotes Thomas de Quincey in Hogg's Instructor for July, 1852, p. 293. V. THE SUN HERO. 419 crushing of Fomori and Fir Bolg, tlie death of their king and the nullifying of their malignant spells, and as the triumphant return of Lug with peace and plenty to marry the maiden Erinn and to enjoy a well-earned banquet, at which the fairy host of dead ancestors was probably not forgotten. Marriages were solemnized on the auspi- cious occasion ; and no prince who failed to be present on the last day of the fair durst look forward to prosperity during the coming year.^ The Lugnassad was the great event of the summer half of the year, which extended from the calends of May to the calends of Winter. The Celtic year was more thermometric than astronomical, and the Lugnassad was, so to say, its summer solstice, whereas the longest day was, so far as I have been able to discover, of no special account. We have not yet done with the name of Lug and Lieu : the genitive of the former is Loga, so it is known from the analogy of other words that if Lug were put back into its Gaulish form, we should have a noun of the u declen- sion making in the nominative singular Lugus, and in the genitive Lugovos^ with a nominative plural Lugoves. It requires no great stretch of imagination to see also that we have the same word in the Gaulish name which has become in French Lyons ; in Latin authors it is usually Lugdunum; but there is, however, evidence which places it beyond doubt that the older Gallo-Koman form was Lugudunum,^ that is to say, in Gaulish Lugudunon or Lugudounon, which would mean the town of Lug. 1 O'Curry (quoting MS. Harl. 5280), pp. 618, 620. 2 See also Dio Cassius, xlvi. 50 : ro AovyovSowov ij,Iv ovo^acrdlv vvv Se AovySovvov Kokoviiivov : see also tlie Berlin Corpus Inscr. ij. 5912, 3235, iij. 5832, v. 875, 7213, vij. 1334, i. 2 E 2 420 V. THE STJN HERO. Moreover, the Gaulish, compoimd is made up of the self- same elements which we have in Din-tteu; but this latter, not being a compound, would be literally represented in Gaulish by Dunon Lugovos, or Lleu's Town. It is highly probable, however, that it was obtained by analysing the compound name,^ which may be supposed to have been the original in this country as well as in Gaul. Now Lyons was not the only Lugdunum, for there was one in the Pyrenees, distinguished as Lugdunum Convenarum, now called Saint-Bertrand de Comminges, in the depart- ment of the Haute Garonne ; moreover, Laon, the chief town of the department of the Aisne, bore this name ; ^ and so, as is generally known, did Leyden on the Ehine in Holland, for Ptolemy in his Geography gives its old name as KovyoSovvov,^ Look at the positions of these places on the map, and take into account those of Dinlteu in Arvon, and Dintte in the "Wrekin district in Shropshire, also the places where the Lugnassad were celebrated in Ireland, and you will readily admit that the name Lugus, Lug or Lieu, was that of a divinity whose cult was practised by all probably of the Celts both on the Continent and in these islands. In fact, to go more into detail, it may be inferred that the Irish Lugnassad had its counterpart at one at least of the Lugduna of the Continent, namely, the southernmost city of that name, on the Ehone ; for it ' A place-name into which Lug's name enters in the Bk. of the Dun, 82 a, is (in the dative) Modaih Loga, which is there explained to be the same as the compound Lugmod. 2 For this I am indebted to my learned colleague, the Eegius Pro- fessor of History at Oxford, who has directed my attention to Gregory of Tours, Hist. Francorum, vi. 4. 2 Traces of a fifth Lugdunum, in documents belonging to the church of Le Mans, are mentioned in the Rev. Celt. vij. 399. V. THE STJN HERO. 421 is not improbable that the festival held there every first of August in honour of the deified Augustus simply- superseded, in name mostly, an older feast held on that day in honour of Lug.^ What took place in the south of Gaul may have come to pass also in Britaia : the echoes of a feast or fair on the first of August have not yet died out of Wales, where one still speaks of Gwyl Awst, which would now mean only the August festival, though, according to the ana- logy of other names, ^ it should be rendered the Feast of Augustus. Gwyl Awst is now a day for fairs in certain parts of North Wales, and it is remembered in central and southern Cardiganshire as one on which the shepherds used, tUl comparatively lately, to have a sort of picnic on the hills. One farmer's wife would lend a big kettle, and others would contribute the materials held requisite for making in it a plentiful supply of good soup or broth, while, according to another account, everybody present had to put his share of fuel on the fire with his own hands. But in Brecknockshire the first of August seems to have given way, some time before Catholicism had lost its sway ia Wales, to the first holiday or feast in August, ^ M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, in an article in La nouvelle Bevue hisforique de Droit frangais et etranger (see his offprint entitled iiudes sur le Droit eeltique (Paris, 1881), p. 92), was the first to notice this interesting coincidence ; and he suggests that the ludi TniscelU and the tournaments of eloquence, which Caligula ordered to take place there in his presence (Suetonius' Caligula, 20 : see also his Claudius, 2 ; Strabo, iv. 3, 2 [p. 261]), formed simply the Gallo-Eoman continua- tion of a Celtic custom which had its beginning previous to the advent of the Eoman. 2 Such as Gwyl Fair, Gwyl Iwan, Gwyl Fihangel, the feasts respec- tively of SS. Mary, John, and Michael the Angel. 422 V. THE SUN HERO. that is to say, the first Sttnday in that month. For then crowds of people early ia the morning made their way up the mountains called the Beacons, both from the side of Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan : their destination used to be the neighbourhood of the Little Yan Lake, out of whose waters they expected in the course of the day to see the Lady of the Lake make her momentary appearance. A similar shifting from the first of August to the first Sunday in that month has, I imagine, taken place in the Isle of Man. For though the solstice used to be, in consequence probably of Scandinavian influence, the day of institutional significance in the Manx summer, enquiries I have made in difi'erent parts of the island go to show that middle-aged people now living remember, that when they were children their parents used to ascend the mountains very early on the first Sunday in August (Old Style), and that in some districts at least they were wont to bring home bottles full of water from wells noted for their healing virtues. In a word, the memory of living Manxmen retains enough to show that the day was once of great importance, though I have not been able to find anything to connect its associations with Lug and the Lugnassad except the name Lhuanys for the first day of August. The story of the Lady of the Little Yan Lake, whom the Welsh pilgrims used till recently to go forth to see, is too long to be given here,^ and also too modern, in the form we have it, to clear up the details of the myth of which it forms a part. Suffice it to say that she may be regarded as belonging to the numerous 1 The whole is given as the first of my Welsh Fairy Tales in the C/jmmrodor, iv. 163 — 179; but see also vi. 203-4. V. THE SVN HERO. 423 class of dawn-goddesses, that she wedded a husband in the district, and that after a time she left both him and her children. Now and then, however, she returned to converse with the latter, especially the eldest of them, a youth named Ehiwatton, whom she carefully instructed as to the virtues of all kinds of herbs. He afterwards proved the founder of a famous family of physicians, whose descendants are widely spread in South Wales. The Phy- sicians of Mydvai, as they were called, were historical, and attached to the princely house of Dinevor ; but their ancestor was of mythic descent, and his name enables one to identify him in the Welsh Triads, where he is called Ehiwatton of the Broom (-yellow) Hair, and in- vested with a solar character : among other things, he is classed with two other solar heroes as being, like them, famous for his intimate knowledge of the nature of all material things.^ It is impossible to say how far the original myth agreed with that of Lug, but the one thing yearly looked for was the appearance of Ehiwatton's mother, the Lady of the Lake : she occupied on the Welsh holiday the position assigned to Tailltiu at the Lugnassad, and to Athene at the Panathensea. Further, the great 1 See Triads, i. 10 = ij. 21 & = iij. 70, and compare i. 22 = iij. 28, also i. 49 = ij. 43 = iij. 27, which go to prove that our Ehiwatton is to be identified with Ehiwatton son of Urien. Other passages in Welsh literature, such as Triad i. 52, suggest that the Lady of the Van Lake's name was Modron daughter of Avattach, and that among her children are to be reckoned not only Ehiwatton but also the solar heroes Mabon and Owein, with the latter's twin-sister Morvud. Urien, the father, is decidedly to be classed among the dark divinities; and this explains why, after her lover had long wooed the Lady that was wont to row on the Little Yan Lake in a golden boat, the marriage did not take place till New-year's-eve, that is to say, the middle of winter : see the Cymmrodor, iv. 178-9. 424 V. THE SUN HERO. importance once attaching to Lammas among the Welsh, admits of another kind of proof, namely, the fact, for such it seems to be, that the Welsh term, in the modified form of Gula Augusti, passed into the Latinity of the Chronicles,^ and even into a statute of Edward III.^ The widely spread observance of the festival of Augustus would be satisfactorily accounted for on the supposition, that it was a great Celtic feast continued under a new name. It must by no means be supposed that the worship of the Sun-god here in question rests on inferential evidence alone of the kind just indicated, for proof of a more direct nature is not altogether wanting. Witness the following Latin inscription from the ancient Spanish town of Tlxama, a Celtic name now changed into Osma : Lugovibus sacrum^ L. L. Urcico Collegio Sutorum d. d? This seems to tell us that a man whose name was L, L. Urcico built a temple for the Lugoves and made a present of it to a college of cobblers, which at once raises several questions, such as, why Lugovibus and not Lugovi, and why a college of cobblers ? why should they have had charge of the temple? It is a far cry from Spain to Snowdon, but I know of no means of answering these questions except those provided by the Mabinogi of M^th, 1 Annales Gambrim (the Rolls edition, 1860), p. 109 (A.D. 1287). 2 See Duoange, s. v. gula, where he refers to a statute of Edward III. a. 31, 0. 14, and quotes therefrom : Aueragium aestiuale fieri debet inter HoTtedai et gulam Augusti. 3 The Berlin Corpus Inscr. Lat. Hispaniarum, ij. No. 2818. The writer in the Rev. Celt., vij. 399, already referred to, cites Pliny's Hist. Nat. iii. 4, 11, as proving TJxama to have been a Celtic city belonging to the Arevaci. As to the name Uxama, see my Celtic Britain'^, p. 280. V. THE SUN HERO. 425 already cited more tlian once. You will remember how it is there told that Gwydion and his son Lieu assumed the guise of shoemakers, when Gwydion wished to out- wit Arianrhod so as to force her to give her disowned son a name. The stratagem proved a success ; and the passage tells us that on account of that disguise Gwydion was known as one of the Three Golden Cordwainers of the Isle of Britain ; but it does not include his son with him, though he took also an active part in the shoemaking. On the other hand, the triad in question, as it appears in the ordinary lists (i. 77 = ij. 58), excludes Gwydion, the three being Caswatton son of Beli, Manawydan son of Llyr, and Lieu respectively. The story about Caswatton is lost, but that of Manawydan is detailed in the Mabi- nogi that goes by his name. Probably nothing but the restricted nature of the triad is responsible for the fact that Gwydion and Lieu are not both included ; and it is hard to avoid supposing that the father and the son were the Lugoves of the inscription at Osma, as that supposition would explain their association with the cobblers. This, however, raises the question how, in case the name Lug and Lieu have been rightly explained by us, the father and the son could have been called Lugoves, a word which should, according to the view expressed, have meant lights or luminaries. There was probably an inconsistency un- derlying this use of that term ; but how small it practi- cally was will be readily seen when it is considered that Gwydion as the benefactor of man stood in somewhat the same relation to the sun as did Indra in Hiudu mythology, which represents the latter daily recovering the sun for mortals: the Norsemen made the relation- ship a still closer one, for in one of their stories they 426 T. THE SUN HERO. regarded the sun, not as Woden's offspring, but as "Woden's eye. That the plural Lugoves was not exceptional or peculiar to the inscription mentioned, is not to be sup- posed : there are two reasons for thinking the contrary. In the first place, there is another inscription which reads Lugoves in large bronze majuscules on an epistyKum of white marble found at Avenches, in Switzerland,^ and as the legend consists solely of this word, the name of the Lugoves must have been yery familiar to Gaulish ears. In the next place, the inclusion of the two under one name looks like the beginning of a process of running the character and personality of the father and the son into one, with that of the latter on the whole preyailing ; this is the case with nearly all the Irish stories about the Sun- god, while that of Gwydion and Lieu is the only one in Welsh which keeps them well apart. The distinction is a small one, but it is of great importance when Lieu is compared with the Irish sun-heroes. The former does next to nothing for himself, since nearly everything is done for him by Gwydion ; and Balder is treated much in the same way by his parents. On the other hand, the wily shrewdness which the Welsh story ascribes to the father is passed on by the Irish one to his son Lug, while thfe father practically disappears ; and altogether a view which made the sun a person with a father who took care of him, looks a very primitive one, and the existence of such a father must have at times been very precarious and liable to effacement by the transcendent character of his offspring, who absorbed his chief attributes. There would, moreover, be another tendency to bring the two 1 Mommsen's Inscrip. Helvet. No. 161. V. THE SUN HERO. 427 more closely together, arising from the wisdom and kaow- ledge ascribed to the Sun-god, as the result presumably of his position and much travelling ; so far as this would go, it would tend to invest him with the same cleverness as his father, the Hermes or Culture Hero of the race. Some Irish stories^ illustrate this to a nicety in the case of Lug, whom they surname the Ilddnach, or him of many gifts and of many professions. Thus when Lug, coming from a distance, offers the Tuatha Dd Danann his aid against the Fomori at the battle that was going to be fought on the Plain of Tured, he was asked, on presentiag himself at the gates, who he was, whereupon Lug replied that he was a good carpenter. The porter answered that they had a good carpenter, so that they had no need of him. Then Lug said he was an excellent smith, to which the same reply was given. He then went through a large number of professions, including those of soldier, harpist, poet, historian and jurisconsult, magician, physician, cup-bearer, worker in bronze and the precious metals; but he always had the same kind of answer, until he told the porter to ask Nuada the kiag if he had a man who could exercise all these professions and trades with equal skill. The king was only too delighted to engage such a one, and Lug ere long pro- ceeded to pass under review all the king's men of skill, and to ascertain what service each could render in the struggle that was to take place with the Fomori.^ Had we no other account of Lug, we should have certainly had ^ Such as that of the Children of Tuirenn already mentioned. 2 O'Curry, ij. 248-50, iij. 42-3 ; D'Arbois de Jubainville, Etudes sur le Droit celtique, pp. 85-6 ; also the same scholar's Cycle Myth. pp. 176-7. 428 V. THE STJN HEEO. to look at hini as an Irisli Mercury : we should be wrong, no doubt, as a wider view of his character serves to show, but this helps us to see how it was possible to call father and son by the one name of Lugoves. Before leaving this part of the subject, a word more has to be said of the name Lugdunum, and the various ways in which it has been explaiaed. (1) The pseudo- Plutarch De Fluminihus speaks of it in these words : " There lies close by it [namely, the river Arar] a moun- tain called Lugdunos, and it had its name changed from the following cause: Momaros and Atepomaros having been driven from the government by Seseronis, wished to found a city upon this hill according to the direction, and suddenly, while the foundations were being dug, there appeared ravens fluttering about, and they filled the trees all round. Now Momaros was skilled in augury, and named the city Lugdunon ; for ia their idiom they call a raven AoSyos, and an eminence they call Sovvovj as Klitopho narrates in the 13th book of his Foundations."^ Mountain or hiU may do as the translation of the sort of town or acropolis which the Gauls called diinon ; but that they had a word luffos, meaning a raven, is a statement which the vocabularies of the Celtic languages seem to leave open to doubt :^ it was most likely a guess founded on the alleged appearance of the ravens during the found- 1 Plutarch, ed. DiiLner (Paris, 1855),Vol.v. p. 85 {Pseudo-plutarchea de Fluviis, vi. 4) : see also Miiller's (Didot) Frag. Hist. Gr. iv. p. 367. ^ The nearest word known to the alleged lugos, ' a raven,' would be the Irish luch, 'a mouse ;' lugliath, 'grey as a mouse,' Bit. of Leinsier, 120a; lochriina, 'dark secrets,' so rendered in the Stokes-O'Donovan Cormae, p. 100, where locliduh is also translated 'all black;' Welsh, llyg, 'a, shrew or field-mouse;' llygoden, 'a mouse;' llygliw, 'of the colour of a mouse.' V. THE SUN HERO. 429 ing of the city. (2) Some notes to the Bordeaux Itine- rary'^ make Lugdunum mean Mons Desideratus^ which was also probably a guess, like the other. (3) A ninth- century Life of St. Germanus by Hericus devotes to the name the following lines : ^ ^LMcduno celebrant Gallorum famine nomen, Impositum quondam, quod sit mons lucidus idem.' The motive for the spelling Lucduno is doubtless to be sought in mons lucidus ; but it is possible that the latter represents, somewhat inaccurately doubtless, a tradition which had come down from a time when Gaulish had not become a dead language : at any rate it seems to approach the truth more nearly than the other etymologies, and it may be inferred that what underlay the passage in the pseudo-Plutarch was this : the Gauls regarded the raven as the bird of the Lugoves or of one of them ; there was a tradition that ravens appeared while Lugdunum was being founded, and that therefore it was dedicated to Lugus, whence its name of Lugu-dunon. This is of course a mere theory ; but so far as regards the ravens, it does not stand alone; for Oweia son of Urien, who must be regarded as a solar hero, had a mysterious army of ravens ; ^ Cuchulairm, an avatar of Lug, had his two ravens of magic or druidism,* and from hearing them his ^ Otherwise called Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, and cited by Diefenbach in his Origines Europoem, p. 325. ^ Diefenbach, loc. cit. ; but the BoUandists read Lugduno. 3 R. B. Mah. pp. 153-9, 192 ; Guest, ij. 407-15, i. 84. * Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 220 ; Bk. of the Dun, 48 h ; see also .57 a, where the words fiaieJi lughairt are used, meaning, as it would seem, ' ravens that bring Lug or light : ' compare the Welsh lleu-fer, ' light-bearing or light-giving, a luminary.' 430 V. THE SUN HERO. enemies inferred his having himself come; and Greek mythology represents Apollo occasionally attended by a raven, as in the story of Coronis.^ From these parallel instances it would seem that the one of the Lugoves to "whom the ravens strictly belonged was Lugus, and that fits in with the story of the founding of the Lyons Lugdunum. Another conjecture is possible as to the Lugoves, namely, that they were Lugus with one or more solar brothers like himself, and not his father. There would be no lack of parallel instances : witness the three comrades at Arthur's court, namely, Peredur, Owein and Gwalehmai; or the three Ultonians, one of whom, Conall Cemach, avenges Cdchulainn's death, while the third, Loegaire, has no very distinct role assigned him. Similarly, in Norse mythology, Balder had several brothers, one of whom visited him in Hell, and a third avenged his death ; even in Greek we have something of the same kind in the presence together of Apollo and Heracles, whose disputes remind one of the rivalry be- tween Ciichulainn, Conall and Loegaire, which was made the subject of an elaborate tale entitled Bricriu's Banquet. More weight attaches here, however, to the fact that neither Lieu nor Lug is associated with a brother of a nature similar to his own ; the former had an elder bro- ther Dylan, who hied away to the sea as soon as he was christened; and the latter had two brothers who were dropped into the sea, never more to be heard of, whence it may be inferred that they were more like Dylan than Lieu. On the whole, then, it seems more probable that 1 Ovid's Metamorphoses, ij. 542, where the raven's officiousness re- minds one of the role played in the hamlets of Glamorgan by Blodeued as an owl : see p. 241, above. V. THE SUN HERO. 431 the Lugoves of Gaulish religion consisted of Lugus and his father, whatever the name may have been which the latter bore in that connection. Cuchulainn's Birth and EDtrcATioN. Eeference has more than once been made in this course to the Ultonian hero Ciichulainn ; it is now time to speak of him more in detail. Irish literature preserves traces of a belief in the re-appearance of an ancestor in the person of a descendant : in other words, the same person or soul might be expected to appear successively ia different bodies ; and in no case could this seem more natural than in that of the Sun-god who constantly descends to the world of the dead and as often emerges from it. Now Lug seldom appears in the Ultonian sagas ; but in one of them he places himself more than once on the way to be re-born, and more than once the mother is Dechtere sister to king Conchobar. It is hardly necessary to say that the accounts of Ciichulainn' s birth are very confused and inconsistent. This is due partly to his being treated as the son of Lug in the ordinary way of nature, when he is called Lug's lad and his special nurseling ; ^ and partly to his being regarded as Lug himself re-appearing in the flesh after several more or less unsuccessful and obscure incarnations.^ One of these made the nobles of Ulster look with awkward suspicion at Conchobar, as the un- married Dechtere acted as her brother's charioteer^ and ^ Bk. of Leinster, 119 a, gein Loga (voc); 123 &, sainaltram Loga. 2 Windisch, p. 139 (§ 5) and p. 138 (§ 3). 8 She is called his ara, ' charioteer,' in the Bh. of the Dun; but the Egerton MS. says that she sat in his chariot do raith, that is to say, ' to drive or guide' the horses : the verb implied is rdim, which Win- 432 V. THE SUN HERO. shared his ordinary sleeping accommodation : compare the fact that Greek mythology treated Here as sister to Zeus, and also the Greek legend whieh made Zeus the father of Heracles. The oldest account we have of Cuchulainn's birth occurs ia the eleventh-century manuscript called the Book of the Dun ; ^ but a similar version is found in a later one,^ -which adds to the story of the hero's birth the mysterious remark that he was then, as it would seem, a boy of three, ^ which probably refers to his size and strength : compare the rapid growth of Lieu (p. 307). Neither story mentions his mother taking any part in bringiag up the boy, but they speak of another of the king's sisters, who was called Fionchoem, setting her afiection at once on little Setanta, for that was one of the boy's names : he was the same to her, she said, as her own son Conall Cemach, and the king remarked that there was little for her to choose between her own son and her own sister's son. It is not hinted that Dechtere disowned her child in this story, but it describes her, some time before his birth, trying to pass off for what she no more was than Arianrhod when she had the audacity to appear as candidate for the office of foot-holder to king Math (p. 306). The parallel between Dechtere and Arian- disch explains as 'ich befahre (das meer), rudere,' but the original signification must have been wider ; see Windisch, pp. 136, 139. 1 Folio 128 : it is incomplete, and the fragment has been published in Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 136 — 141. 2 Namely, the British Museum MS. Egerton, 1782, fol. 152, which is assigned to the fifteenth century, and published with the other by Windisch. 5 Windisch, p. 141. V. THE SUN HEEO. 433 rhod is, however, brought into much clearer light in another and a second version in the same manuscript, which materially differs from the other two, and retains very old features of the myth that are not reproduced in them. This is the substance of it : ^ — Fifty maidens from the Ultonian court, with Dechtere at their head, ran away from Emain, and their whereabouts could not be discovered for the space of three years ; but in the mean time Emain was visited by wild birds which ate up the grass and every green herb. The Ultonians felt this to be a great scourge, and they resolved to give them chase ; so one day the king and a few of his nobles with their charioteers set out to kill the birds, by which they were allured over the hills and far away to the neighbour- hood of the Brugh of the Boyne, notorious for its fairy inhabitants (p. 171). Mght overtook them, and, haviag lost sight of the birds, they unyoked their horses, while one of their number took a turn to see if he could discover a habitation where they might pass the night. Ere long he rejoined his friends with the news that he had found a small house occupied by a man and his wife, who would welcome them with such hospitality as their means admitted of. Thither they went to pass the night ; but presently one of their number went outside, and was surprised to come across a fine mansion, at the door of which stood the owner of it bidding him welcome to his house : he entered, and was familiarly saluted by the owner's wife. He asked the meaning of this, and was told that she was Dechtere, and that the fifty maidens dwelt there with her : it was they, in fact, that had in 1 Windisch, pp. 140-2 and 143-5, where it has been divided into two pieces. 2f 434 V, THE SUN HERO. the guise of birds devastated Emain, as they wished to bring Conchobar and his men to their habitation. Dech- tere then gave the visitor a purple mantle, with which he returned to his friends; but he, being Bricriu the Ultonian genius of mischief and discord, only told them that he had found a fine house ; nor did he fail to dwell on the superior appearance of its owner and especially the beauty of his consort. Conchobar, reasoning in the way natural to kings and princes, said : ' That fellow is one of my men ; he is in my land ; let his wife come to me to-night.' But no sooner had she been brought than she gave it to be understood that she had been overtaken by the throes of childbirth, whereupon she was allowed to depart. The king and his men in due time went to sleep, and when they woke in the morning, what was their surprise to find thems.elves alone under the clear sky of heaven ! The fairy houses and their fairy inmates had all disappeared, and all they had left behind them was a fine baby-boy in the king's brogue. The baby is handed over, as in the other versions, to the care of the king's sister Finnchoem, who seems now to have been his charioteer; but when she expresses her affection for the baby, it is Bricriu, and not Conchobar, who is made to say that she had little to choose between her own son and her own sister's son. He then relates all that he had learnt the previous day about Dechtere's escapade, which should be compared with the story of Caer (p. 170). What had now become of Dechtere, how- ever, we are not told; but her deserting her son in the manner described^ is not the only parallel between 1 It is right to say that the story of the T4in in the BJc. of the Dun makes his father and mother rear him during his first years at a place V. THE SUN HERO. 435 her and Arianrliod ; for, besides her wish to pass for a maiden as already mentioned, she had been her brother's charioteer, a circumstance in which we have the Irish equivalent of Arianrhod's name, which meant her of the Silver "Wheel, and of Woden's leman Gefjon of the diiip rodul or deeply ploughing wheel, mentioned m a pre- vious lecture (p. 284j. Lug re-born is best known as Ciichulainn, and the place the latter occupies in Irish legend justifies our devoting some of our space to him : he has the additional attraction that what is said of him may, in some instances, be regarded as said of Lug, who has already occupied our attention. Cdchulainn, then, is the sun, but the sun as a person, and as a person about whom a mass of stories have gathered, some of which probably never had any reference to the sun. So it is in vain to search for a solar key to all the literature about him : sometimes he is merely an exaggerated warrior and a distorted man;- sometimes his solar nature beams forth unmistak- ably between the somewhat unwieldy attributes with which he has been invested with utter disregard to con- sistency or the general effect. There is probably nothing usually considered essential to a solar myth which could not be found in the various stories about Cuchulainn, as may be seen from the following things collected at random from among them. After the curious accounts relative to his birth, the in the Plain of Murthemne ; hut the passage in question, fol. 59 a, gives the name of neither parent : ' Altasom. ^m ol Fergus la mathaiV 7 la athair ocond dairggdig iwimaig murt/iemne.' 'Verily he was reared,' said Fergus, ' by his mother and his father at the Eed-house ("?) in the Plain of Murthemne.' 2f2 436 V. THE SUN HERO, next tMng to be noticed is his rapid growth and precocious manhood. When he is only five, he sets off to Emaiii and overcomes all the Ultonian youths at their games in the play-field.^ When he is seven he longs for a warrior's arms ; but at that age he could only get them by a trick, which he explained as a misunderstanding of the words of the druid who was his tutor.^ This reminds one of Lieu, though the obstacle in Ciichulainn's way was not like that which Arianrhod had prepared for Lieu. Arms then he got, namely, from the king, who was induced even to lend him his own war-chariot : he next bade his comrades in the play-field adieu, and compelled the king's charioteer to drive him across the border into an enemy's land, where he performed wonders of valour. He at length returned with his foes' heads in his chariot, a swift-footed stag between its hind shafts, and a string of wild birds fluttering above his head, as the trophies of his achievements in war and his fleetness in the chase, ^ to which no deer's foot, no bird's wing, was equal : other exploits of his childhood might be added. As he rapidly grew to more than a man's strength, he died young, though not too young, perhaps, to have become bearded, but it was a subject of repeated remark that he remained beardless. Sometimes, when warriors would decline to fight with such a stripling, he would put on a beard, or pick up a handful of grass and sing a charm over it, which would convert it into a beard for him for the time.* Ciichulainn's beardlessness reminds one of the youthful ApoUo, and stands in contrast to the conventional 1 Bit. of the Bun, p. 59. 2 j^. p. 61. 3 lb. 61a— 63 a. * lb. 696, 726, 746. V. THE SUN HEEO. 437 solar hero with a beard representing the sun's rays. This deficiency was more than made up for in his case in the matter of hair ; for though he is called at his birth ' he of little hair,'^ he had plenty later, and it was remarkable for its three distinct colours — dark near the skin, blood- red in the middle, and yellow at the top, shiniag like a diadem of gold in front, and streaming behind over his shoulders like so many threads of the precious metal over the edge of an anvil under the hammer of a master gold- smith, or the irresistible brilliance of the sun on a summer's day in the middle of the month of May.^ If this is to be explained in strict reference to the appearance of the sun, the Irish picture would have as much in its favour perhaps as any other ; for it would refer the rays of that body not to its central part, but rather to the circumference of its disk. The three colours would seem to offer more diffi- culty, but not so much as the four dimples which were said to adorn both his cheeks, and to have been yellow, green, blue and red respectively. ^ Possibly the flashes* of his eyes, or the gems serving as pupils iu the middle of them, which are described as seven or eight ^ in number, 1 Windiscli, p. 140. 2 lb. p. 221 ; Bk. of the Dun, 81a; and Bit. of Lsinster, 120a. A different account is to be found in the story of the Phantom Chariot of Ciichulainn, published by O'Beirne Crowe ia the Journal of the Kil- kenny Arch. Ass. for 1870-1 : pp. 376-7, and the Bk. of the Dun, 1136. 3 Windisch, p. 221, from the Bk of the Dun, 486; but 81a givea a somewhat different description; see also 1226. * Windisch, p. 221 : 'fil seeht suilse ar a ruse.' 6 'Seven' is the stock number {Bk. of the Dun, 1216), but it is unnatural to give four pupils to one eye and only three to the other : it was a way of meeting the requirements of the Christian week, while ' eight,' which is the number in the story of Bricriu's Banquet (Win- 438 V. THE SUN HERO. referred to the days of the week respectively, as the three colours of his hair possibly did to the three parts of the day. And a reference to the appearance of the sun shorn of his rays may have been originally involved in the fancy which made Cuchulainn's hair get absorbed into his body, leaving a blood-red drop marking the place of each individual hair, when he was engaged in any great physical effort.^ This was, however, only a small part of the distortion which he underwent when he was hard pressed in battle : he prepared himself for action after sleep or illness by drawing his hand over his face, which had the effect of making him red all over, and of driving his lethargy from him;^ but when he got thoroughly angry with his antagonists, the calves of his legs would twist round till they were where his shins should have been ; his mouth became large enough to contain a man's head ; his liver and his lungs could be seen swinging in his throat and mouth ; every hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and a drop of blood or a spark of fire stood on each; one of his eyes became as small as a needle's, or else it sank back into his head further than a heron could have reached with its beak, while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length. These con- tortions won for him the nickname of the Riastartha, or the Distorted One ; but it was given him by the men of discli, p. 279), was probably the original number, corresponding to the eight days of the pagan week. It would not, perhaps, be refining too much to regard the four dimples as referring to the four days of the noinden or half-week. 1 Windisch, p. 265 j also Bk. of the Dun, 59a, 72a. 2 Windisch, pp. 212, 216; Bk. of the Dun, 78 b. V. THE STJN HERO. 439 Connaught in the west,i whereas the courtesans of Ulster, looking at it in a different light, inflicted on themselves, by way of love for him, one of the so-called Three Blemishes of the Women of Ulster, which were as fol- lows. Every Ultonian lady who loved Ciichnlainn made herself blind of one eye when conversing with him; every one who loved Conall Cernach, who was cross-eyed, appeared to squint ; and every one who loved the stutter- ing Ultonian hero, Coscraid Menu Macha, laid her speech under an impediment ^ — all three instances of very earnest flattery, which one can, however, easily understand by studying cases of acute loyalty in this country. Now when Ciichulainn was distorted with anger and battle- fury, he became gigantic in si^e,^ and made no distinc- tion between friends and foes, but felled all before and behind equally ; so it was highly dangerous to stop him from flghting till he felt that he had enough, and when he stopped it was requisite to have three baths ready for him of cold water : the first he plunged into would instantly boil over, and the second would be too hot for anybody else to bear, while the third alone would be of congenial temperature.* Whether this has any reference to solar heat or not, the same peculiarity of Cdchulainn's is described in another way : during hard weather he would sit down with the snow reaching to his girdle and ' Bk. of the Dun, 59 a, 72 a, and 79 &, where a remarkable passage occurs about 'bis lights' (scoim, Welsh ysgyfaint) and 'his heavies' {tromma, Welsh afu, ' liver') : — Tdncatdr ascoiva. / a tromma combdtdr ar etelaig indbel y mahrdgit. 2 Windisch, pp. 206-7; also Stokes, Rev. Celt, viij, 61. ^ Bk. of Leinster, 86 &; O'Curry, iij. 448-9. * Windisch, p. 220; Bk. of the Dun, 63 a, 72 a. 440 V. THE SUN HERO. cast off his clotlies, including his under-clothing, where- upon the heat of his body would melt the snow for a man's cubit all round him.^ Ciichulainn was unrivalled in all feats of arms and skill, whether he handled his own weapons or performed tricks with the needles ^ of the astonished ladies of a king's court. It is difficult to understand the language in which the list of Ciichulainn's feats is couched, but such a name as the apple-feat would seem to suggest that some of them were of the nature of a juggler's tricks. Others, however, were doubtless of a more serious natiire, as he often brought them into play in his duels with his foes. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about them is that when Cuchulainn went forth in his chariot, he used to practise them above the horses, above his head and that of his charioteer.^ If a basis for this fancy is to be sought in nature, it must be the over- powering play of the sun's rays blinding one's attempts to gaze at its midday orb. Ciichulainn's agility and strength were such that hardly any kind of walls could confine him, however high they might be.* His most usual mode of fighting was to hurl his spear at his antagonist or a stone from his sling, which he did with fatal precision even at an incredible distance ; but in 1 Bk. of the Dun, 68a, 7 Ice; iDut the £k. of Leinster, 706, makes tlie snow melt for thirty feet all round him, which is more like the extravagance to be expected. 2 Windisch, p. 286; Bh. of the Dun, 108 &. ^ Bk. of the Bun, 73 a, 1226; Bk. of Leinster, 120a; and the story- published by Crowe in the Kilkenny Journal for 1870, p. 379 ; also the Bk. of the Dun, 1136, where the number of the feats rises to twenty-seven. For more references, see Windisch, s.v. dess, p. 426. * Windisch, p. 299. V. THE SVN HERO. 441 extreme cases he used with the same efect a barbed weapon called the ffdi lolga^ which he brought to bear on his foe from below or from above.^ He rode forth to battle in a scythed chariot, ^ and his charioteer was Loeg son of Eiangabra, who with his wife and kindred lived in an island which Irish mythology places in the neighbourhood of Hades.^ The chariot was drawn by two horses of no ordinary breed: they were called the Grey of Macha and the Black Saiaglend ; and they gave their names to two Irish lakes whence they emerged when Ciichulainn caught them respectively,* and whither they returned when his career was over.^ They had the peculiarity, that, wherever they grazed, they ate the grass root and stem, licking bare the very soil.^ They were swifter than the cold blasts of spring,^ and the sods from their hoofs as they galloped over the plain looked like an army of ravens fiUing the sky above the chariot,^ the iron wheels of which sank at times so deep into the soil as to make ruts ample for dykes and 1 O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 451; Stokes & Windisch, Irische Texte, pp. 184, 206. 2 Bh. of the Dun, 79 a, 80 a : see also 125 J. 3 Stokes & Windisch, Ir. Texte, pp. 178-80, 196—200. * Windisch, p. 268. « Rev. Geltique, iij. 180-1; Bk. of Leinster, 121a, 121 &. The lake called after the Liath (or Grey) of Macha was Linn LSith, in SUab Fuait or Fuad's Mountain, near Newtown Hamilton, in the county of Armagh ; and the one called after the Duh (or Black) Sainglend was the Loch Dub or Black Lake, in Museraige-Thire, a district consisting of the Baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond, in the county of Tip- perary. 6 Ek. of ike Dun, 57 b. " Windisch, p. 221. « Bk of the Dun, WZa-. 442 V. THE SUN HERO. ditclies for a fortress. Thus Ciicliulainii is on one occa- sion made to describe a heavy course of this kind round the camp of his enemies, and to extemporize a blockade in this way to delay their march until his friends should arrive on the scene.^ Lastly, Ciichulainn was distinguished for his good sense and wisdom, for the sweetness of his speech, and for many excellences or capacities in which he surpassed his cqntemporaries : among others are mentioned his superiority in the matter of intelligence, prophecy, chess- playing, and ability to tell at a glance the number of men in an enemy's camp.^ In fact, two of the three cleverest countings of this kind which Irish memory handed down in the form of a triad, were ascribed to Lug and Ciichulainn respectively.^ But the parallel extends much further than this instance would have led one to expect; for just as Lug excelled all the profes- sional men of the Tuatha De Danann because he knew all their professions himself, so Ciichulainn, when he described* himself to the lady he wooed to be his wife, was made to say that he yielded superiority to the king alone, that he surpassed all the nobles of Ulster because he had learned all that each of them had to teach in his own profession. For besides what appertained to war and valour, he possessed wisdom in legal and tribal matters, and he revised the judgments of the Ultonians ; he could take a part in the administrative work of the king's realm; he had acquired all that the chief /Ze or 1 Bk. of the Dun, 80a, 806. 2 j], 12I&. s n,, gga. * The whole is to be found in the story of the Wooing of Emer, especially on folios 123(2 — 124S; and some of the textual difficulties may be disposed of by comparing with it Windisch, pp. 141-2. V. THE SUN HERO. 443 seer had to impart; and the chief druid had, for his mother's sake, made him a proficieut scholar in the arts of the god of druidism (p. 224), so that he was fit to take part in the vision-feast.^ This is borne out by other parts of the story of Ciichulainn : thus on one occasion he is made to deliver himself of an elaborate charge ^ to his friend Lugaid, who had been chosen king of Ireland, telling him how he was to conduct himself in that ofiice ; and if we turn to another field of his acquirements, we find him more than once writing ogams of potent magic, which thrown in the way of the advanciag hosts of his enemies seriously embarrassed and delayed their march on the Tdin.^ The superiority which he claimed over the nobles of his country he ascribed to his having been educated by every one of them, whether captaia or charioteer, whether king or oUave : so he held him- self bound to them all by the ties of fosterage, and he avenged the wrongs of them all without distinction. ' Verily it is therefore,' he says ia concluding his account of himself to Emer, ' I was called by Lug .... from the swift journey of Dechtere to the house of the great man of the Brugh.' * This in its way reminds one of the rdle which Apollo played in the politics and history of Greece, not to mention the parallel between Dechtere's flight with her fifty maidens to the Brugh of the Boyne ^ The words in point are — conid awifissid foc^mairc hi cerdaib d6 druidec^ta conid ameolac/i!. hi febaib fiss. (Bk. of the Dun, 124 A). I take fiss. to stand for fissi ( = fessi) : compare the tarhfes, or bull-feast, in Windisch, pp. 212-3. 2 "Windisch, pp. 213-4. 3 Bk. of the Dun, 57 a, 57 &, 636. * It is so I venture to translate the words, 1246 — Isser 6m domnm- gartsa 6 lug mac cuiwd maic ethlend dieohtra dian deotiri co tech mbuirr in broga. See p. 391, above. 444 V. THE SUN HEEO. and the -wanderings of Leto before giving birth, to Apollo ; but far the most instructive comparisons are to be made between Cuchulainn and Heracles, as will be seen later. Some of CiioHuiAiNN's AdveittttreSw Thus far the reader has had presented to him a number of miscellaneous particulars about Ciichulainn's person and attributes; let us now say something more about his actions and the foes he had to face. Of these- last, those who claim the first place are Ailill and Medbj. the king and queen of Connaught, who have been men- tioned on previous occasions, as has also their famous expedition, called the Tdin, to Ulster, and especially to the Plain of Murthemne, or the district which was in Ciichulainn's special charge. Ailill may briefly be treated as one of the representatives of darkness, while his queen, who had been Conchobar's wife, belongs to the ambiguous goddesses of dawn and dusk found allied at one time with light and at another with darkness. So Medb did not always show herself hostile to Cxichulaian ; in fact, later instances are mentioned of her displaying considerable partiality for him ; and when he happened to come on business to her court at Cruachan, she would treat him with more than hospitality in the sense given that word by the civilized nations of our day. It was on the Tain she first heard of him, when his wondrous deeds of valour were daily brought home to her by the fall of the great champions of the west, whom she sent forth one after another to duel with him. At length his prolonged attempt to keep the invaders from the west at bay proved too much for him ; and one day, when he was worn out by fatigue and sleeplessness, his cha- V. THE SUN HERO, 445 rioteer beheld a big man witli yellow curly hair on liis head coming from the north-east, and making his ■way towards them right across the camp of his enemies without noticing them or being noticed by any of them, as though he were not seen of them. The charioteer described the dress and equipment of this warrior to Ciichulainn, who observed that it must be some one of his friends from Faery. So it was; for the stranger announced himself to Ciichulainn as his father Lug from Faery, and undertook to occupy his place, at the same time that he sang a kind of fairy music which put Cuchu- lainn to sleep. There he lay sleeping for three days and three nights, in the course of which Lug cured all his woundsi "When at length he woke, he drew his hand over his face as usual, and Lug departed,^ while Cuchu- lainn, refreshed, began again to check the men of Erinn with varying success till his friends arrived, too late, however, to prevent the capture on which they were bent. Ciichulainn was not more famous for his prowess in the field of battle than for his contests with beasts and fabulous creatures of all kinds, and the following story, which has an interest of its own, is told of him when he was as yet only six years of age. King Conchobar, happening one day to visit the field where the noble youths of his kingdom were at their games, was so struck by the feats performed by little Setanta, that he invited him to follow to a feast for which he and his courtiers were setting out. The boy said he would come when he had played enough. The feast was to be at Bh. of the Dun, 776, 78 a, 786. 446 V. THE SUN HERO. the house of a great smith, called Culann, who lived not only by his art of working in metals, but also by the wealth which prophecy and divination brought in. When the king and his men had arrived, Culann asked them if their number was complete, and the king, forgetting the boy that was to follow, answered in the affirmative. Culann explained that he asked the question because when his gates were shut in the evening he used to let loose a terrible war-hound, which he had obtained from Spain to guard his chattels and flocks during the night. So it was done then ; but presently the boy Setanta came along, amusing himself with his hurlbat and ball as was his wont.^ He was hardly aware of the dog bark- ing before it was at him; but he made short work of the brute, though not without rousing the Ultonians to horror at their oversight, for they had no doubt in their minds that the boy had been torn to pieces. The gates were thrown open, and the boy was found unharmed, with the dog lying dead at his feet. Like the rest, Culann welcomed him, for his mother's sake, as he said, but he could not help expressing his regret at the death of his hound ; for he declared that his losing the guardian of his house and his chattels made his home a desolation. Little Setanta, who could not see why so much fuss should be made about the dog, bade the smith have no care, as he would himself guard all his property on the Plain of Murthemne till he had a grown-up dog of the same breed. This was the tract between Cuailgne or Cooley and the river Boyne, and he was subsequently identified with it ; so that he is found called, for instance, the Eider of 1 Bk. of the Dun, 60a— 61a; Bk. of Leivster, 63a— 64&. T. THE SUN HEEO. 447 Murthemne's Plain,i or the Warrior and the Prince of it; and he defended it more strenuously than any other district against the ravages of the Western hosts. When Setanta offered to watch Culann's cattle and other pro- perty, the druid present exclaimed that this should henceforth be his name, Cii-Chulainn, that is to say, Culann's Hound. Such is the old account of the way in which little Setanta obtained the name by which he is best known; but when this tale of the killing of Culann's dog comes to be compared with others in point, it is found that Culann must have originally been a form of the divinity of the other world, and that his terrible hound 2 may doubtless be compared with the Cerberus of Greek mythology. The sun as a person makes war on the powers representing darkness and the inclemency of nature ; but with these last would naturally be associated evil of all description, including death, the greatest of all ills : these then are the demons and monsters, under their many names, with which Cuchulainn repeatedly fights. But none of them can withstand him, and his warfare with them is briefly described in the words : ' Proud is he and haughty, of valour sublime, "Woe to the demons he pursues !'^ 1 Windisch, pp. 216, 221. ^ The Irish is dr-ehu, and dr means slaughter of any kind, including of course slaughter in war ; and Ciiohulainn himself is called Arch ii Emna, or the Slaughter-hound of Emain, in the BTc. of Leinster, 87 h, printed by O'Curry, iij. 452. But while recalling the dogs trained for war which used to be imported by the Gauls from Britain (Strabo, iv. 5, 2), it is to be noticed that the story in the Bk. of the Dun makes the smith's dog an imported one from Spain, a name sometimes used instead of that of Hades (pp. 90-1). 3 This I take to be the sense of a verse in the Bk. of the Dun, 48 h, which reads in the facsimile : uallacA uabrecA ard lagol mairg fri 448 V. THE SUN HEEO. The familiar sight of the sun rising and setting is the key to several things in the Cdchulainn legend. For instance, he is described going away from his post in the evening to visit one who prepares for him a bath before he quits her in the morning ; ^ and another time one of his enemies finds him bathing in a river early at the break of day.^ But the rising of the sun out of the sea in the morning does not appear to have had anything like the effect of simset on the popular imagination, which is to be traced in the Cdchulainn legend in the stories of his visits to the other world, especially in quest of a wife.^ The maiden's name was Emer daughter of Forgall Monach (p. 376), who lived in a place called Luglochta Loga,^ explained to mean the Gardens of Lug, another name for the world whence Lug used to come, and the description of Emer's relatives quite bears this out, as she calls herself daughter of the Coal-faced King,^ siabru se (Windisch, p. 221, prints si). It should be restored thus — Uallach uabrech ard a gal, mairg fri siabru sechefhar. The previous line — Brdenaw fola fota flared latoeb cranA coTwardade — is more difficult, but it should probably end with crand or deehrand : compare Windisch, p. 263, lines 14 and 16. ^ Bk. of the Dun, 57 a, 58 a. « lb. 636. 8 The story is known as the Wooing of Emer : it is to be found in a fragmentary state in the Bk. of the Dun, 121a — 1276. Por the portions of the narrative not to be found there, I have made use of the Ashbumham manuscript already referred to as numbered D, iv. 2, in the library of the E. Ir. Acad. ^ The dative Luglochtaib is glossed in the Bk. of the Dun, 123 a, by gorfaib, ' gardens ;' and the Loga added is perhaps redundant, as the name would seem to be complete either as iMglochtaib or Lochtaib Loga. It is not to be denied, however, that it is possible to give Lug a different explanation in this name. * Jn^'en rig richis garta, with garia glossed einech, ' face,' ibid. 123c!!. V. THE SUN HERO. 449 who is also stated to be the son of a sister of Tethra king of the Fomori. Now the dusky father discovers that his daughter has been wooed by the Riastartha: he is displeased and resolves on compassing the death of his would-be son-in-law. So he sets out in disguise on a visit to Conchobar's court, and he persuades the king to have Ciichulainn's military education perfected by sending him to be instructed by certain friends of his, from whom he expects him never to return alive. The first of these is represented living in Alban or Britain, but his country, though given that name, be- longed to the geography of the other world. He was called Domnall, and was probably the same mythic being as DomnalP the terrible chariot-god, associated with the bards to whom allusion has already been made (p. 323). His name fits in with what is said of him in the story of Cdchulainn ; for Domnall, the genitive of which is well known in the Anglicized form of Donnell, would seem to associate him with the deep ; and in Welsh it is, letter for letter, Dyvnwal^ a name borne by one of the mythic legislators mentioned in the Triads, one of which, iij. 58, associates his name with the beginning of bardism. He has usually the epithet Moel, 'bald,' or Moel-mud, 'bald and mute, or bald -mute,' in harmony with a common habit of representing the dark gods as bald, cropped of their ears, deprived of one eye, or in some way peculiar about the head, and occasionally lacking the power of speech. When Ciichulainn had learned all the feats that Domnall could teach him, he proceeded to leave 1 In the Ashburnham MS., fol. 82 c, he is called Domnall mil de mal, -while Harl. 5280 gives the name as Domnall milde mon. 2g 450 Y. THE SUN HERO. Alban for an island to the east of it, where a goddess lived who bore the name of Scathach, which means Shadowy or Shady : she appears to have been the same who was named Buanann, and described as the nurse of the heroes of Irish mythology.^ Cuchulainn had not gone far when his companions resolved to turn back ; and he felt dejected and uncertain as to the direction to take, when a strange beast came and took him on its back. Thus he travelled for four days, at the end of which the kind beast put him down in an inhabited island, where he received food and drink from a maiden he had met before. He also fell in with a certain Echaid Bairche, who directed him on his way to Soathach's court. Cu- chulainn had to cross the plain, he said, which he saw before him, one-half of which was so cold that the tra- veller's feet would cleave to the ground, and the other half had the peculiarity that the ground cast him on the points of the spear-like grass which grew out of it ; but the friendly stranger gave him a wheel and an apple, which he was to follow across the two dismal tracts respectively.^ He was then to cross a perilous glen, which was a terrible gulf with no bridge but a slender cord stretched across it from one cliff to the opposite one ; and this was not all, for at the end he was to encounter the demons and phantoms sent by Forgall Monach to 1 See the Stokes-O'Donovan ed. of Cormac, p. 17. Compare also the words — 'ac scdtAaig b^uadaig Muanawd' in the BJc. of Lednster, 88a, quoted in O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 454-5, and rendered 'With Scathach, the gifted Buanand.' 2 The story occupies fol. 82 c, and the following ones in the Ashburn- ham MS., and the curious passage about the wheel and the apple, will be fouud at 83 «, while the Harl. MS. 5280 has it at 32b. V. THE SUN HERO. 451 work his destruction. He crossed that ' bridge of dread,' however, in spite of them, and found himself in Scathach's Isle; there were more obstacles to be overcome before reaching Scathach's abode, but he surmounted them also, including a bridge that was low at both ends, high in the middle, and so constructed that, when a man stepped on the one end, the other end would rise aloft, and he would be thrown down. He was received with surprise by Scathach, and with ardent love by her daughter Uathaeh, who instructed him how to force her mother to teach him. There is a general similarity between this journey and the voyage which Ciichulainn undertook in quest of the sons of Doel Dermait, a story now familiar to you; and the parallel extends even to the internal affairs of Scathach's country. We read that Scathach was challenged to battle by another queen of Hades named Aife, and sometimes called Scathach's daughter. The fighting took place in part on the cord over the Perilous Glen,^ and Ciichulainn duels on it with Aife, and succeeds in carrying her away to Scdthach's camp, where she is compelled to give hostages to Scathach. Now Scathach's abode was the land of death ; and the accesses to it are variously described. But before proceeding further, let us recur for a moment ^ The Irish name is glenn ngaibthedh, which appears also in the Vision of Adamnan (Windisch's Iriseke Texte, p, 185), as does also the Vicious Bridge (ib. p. 184), but placed across the Glen, and called droichet analta, or Cliff Bridge, which O'Curry (ij. 369), influenced pro- bably by a slightly different reading, calls the Bridge of the Pupils. I mention these as instances of Irish mythology worked into the religious tales of the converted Irish. The idea of future punishment is intro- duced, and hell-fire liberally borrowed from Christian sources, but the pagan geography of Hades remains little changed. 2 g2 452 V. THK SUN HERO, to the dismal plain crossed by CTicliulainn following for a while a mysterious wheel, and for another while an equally mysterious apple. Why the story should have both a wheel and an apple does not appear, as the two would seem to suggest one and the same interpretation; but before coming to that, I wish to point out that the apple is replaced iu other stories by the ball with which Ciichulainn, when he was a child, used to play a sort of solitary hurley or golf as he went his ways. It was thus, when only five years old, he left his home on the Plain of Murthemne and crossed the mountains to Emain,^ and it was so he was proceeding towards Culann the Smith's stronghold, when he perceived the latter' s Spanish hound making for him, and killed the monster. There is a more curious instance still : ^ young Ciichulainn's slum- bers durst not be disturbed, so he was one day left sleep- ing in-doors at Emain, when a battle was raging between the heroes of Ulster and Eogan mac Durthacht, whose name has already been mentioned (pp. 142, 335) : the victory fell to the share of the latter, and Conchobar and others of the Ultonians were left on the battle-field. When the wounded survivors reached Emain., it was night and already dark, but the lamentation and tumult elicited by their arrival made Ciichulainn wake : he asked at once where the king was, and, as nobody could - tell, he rushed ofE to the scene of the slaughter ; but no sooner had he reached it than he was assailed by one of the demons revelling there, and he would have suc- cumbed had not the Bodb (p. 43), the Morrigu, per- 1 Bk. of the Dun, 59 a, and Bk. of Leinster, 62 a, where the ball is described as being of silver. 2 lb. 59 &, 60a. Y. THE SUN HEEO. 453 haps, under another name and in the form of a kind of hoodie, cried out in an upbraiding tone, ' Bad materials of a hero are those there under the feet of phantoms.' Ciichulainn, stung by that taunt, got up again, and struck off the head of his ghost -foe with his hurl' bat. Then he drove the ball before him oyer the field and shouted, 'Is my father Conchobar on this field of slaughter ?' The latter answered that he was, and Ciichu- lainn came and found him all but wholly buried with earth over him on almost every side. He extricated him, and found that he would live if he could get him some food, which he hastened to procure : he then took Conchobar to Emain, whither he carried at the same time a wounded son of Conchobar' s on his shoulders. How the latter had got into the position Ciichulainn found him in, we are not told, but it reminds one of the dismal plain to which the traveller's feet would cleave ; further, Ciichulaian's coming was so late that the night was then dark, and it looks as though the narrator ought to have told us that the ball he sent over the field was luminous, and that it was by means of it, and not by calling out, that he found the king in the earth: as it stands, the narrative is not very intelligible. Whatever the reason for that may be, there can be little doubt that we have traces here of a primitive and forgotten myth which represented the sun as an apple or ball, after which an infant giant used to run daily across the sky ; and the other form, that of a wheel, given to that heavenly body, is of even greater mythological interest, as it offers an Irish instance of a symbolism, the solar origin of which, as mentioned on another occasion (p. 55), has been lately discussed by M, Gaidoz. 454 V. THE SUN HEEO. Let us now come back to Ciicliulainn's training in Scdthacli's Island : lie went there when he was only six years old,^ and returned as soon as he had learned all that could be taught him there. But the details of his journey homewards are not given; we are, howerer, told that on his way he visited the court of Eed, king of the Isles ; ^ but there must have been a story or stories representing him coming to Erinn, on this or some other occasion, direct from Britain along a more southerly route, and I must now briefly explain why I think this deserving of mention. The Sun-god is a great traveller : thus Lug, for example, arrives from a distance to help the Tuatha D^ Danaan, and Conall Cernach has to be sought for in. foreign lands.® Like them, CTichulainn travels too. Moreover, there was a remarkable difference of race, to be noticed later, between him and the other heroes of the Ultonian cycle. On the other hand, he had the charge of a special district consisting of the Plain, of Murthemne, which, roughly speaking, meant the level portion of the modem county of Louth, In case, then, he was at any time represented to come to his favourite haunts from another land, what land could more natu- rally have been regarded the one he journeyed from than the nearest part of Britain lying in the same lati- tude? This would be the coast from the Mersey to 1 Bk. of the Dun, 586. 2 lb. 126 a : according to O'Curry, p. 280, he returned by way of Cantire and the island of Kathlin. 3 See the Bk. of Leimter, 1716, where, besides Scythia, Dacia, Gothia, &c., we have the remarkahle words : 'icrichaib Idodiis in insXh cadd 7 in insib or.,' ' in the territories of Lewis, in the Islands of Cat and in the Islands of Orkney (?).' V. THE SUN HERO. 455 Morecambe Bay, and it is worthy of remark that this tract once belonged to a people called the Setantii, a name which cannot be seyered from that of the Seteia supposed to be the Dee, or from that of the SeTavrtuv At;it^v,i the Harbour of the Setantii, the position of which corresponds to the mouth of the Eibble.^ Hence the name Setanta. Shortly after his return from Scdthach's Isle, Cuchu- lainn set out for the Gardens of Lug to carry away Emer, according to a promise he had made to her ; but for a whole year he was unable to communicate with her on account of the efficient watch kept over her by Forgall's henchmen ; but at last he succeeded, and appeared all of a sudden in the middle of the stronghold, where he per- formed such marvels of valoui: that Torgall lost his life in leaping terror-stricken over his own walls. Ciichu- lainn then made his way out with Emer and her foster- ^ The readings of Ptolemy's manuscript are various, the river being either "ZerrjCa or Seyijia, and the harbour ^eravriiav A. (or Serai/twi/ A.) and 'SfyavTiwv A., besides less important ones : see Miiller's edition (Paris, 1883), ij. 3 (Vol. i. pp. 84, 85). But if the hypothesis here sug- gested, for which I am indebted to Mr. Henry Bradley, prove well- founded, it will dispose of the alternative readings with y. There is a difficulty in the retention of nt in the Irish Setanta, which it would be hard to account for except on the supposition that the name was not a native Irish word. The original may accordingly be regarded as Setantios or Setantjos, meaning a Setantian, or one of the people called the Setantii. It is worth noticing that a very obscure poem, in which Sc^thach, who was, among other things, a poetess or prophetess, speaks of Ciichulainn when she prophesies for him, alludes to a Setan- tian stream : the words are — cmoch iri srath setimti, ' a coracle against the stream of Setanta:' see the Bk. of the Dun, 125 b. ^ Bradley's Remarks (in the Archseologia, xlviij) on Ptolemy (West- minster, 1884), p. 15. For Bibble, p. 74 above, read Mersey. 456 V. THE SUN HERO. sister.^ In the pursuit whicli took place on the part of Forgall's men, he performed all the deeds of valour he had previously boasted himself capable of to Emer. Now she, though the child of a dusky king, was herself a perfect beauty, and endowed with all the accomplishments of a superior lady. The whole picture is drawn on the lines of the nature myth connecting the Sun with the Dawn: the latter, though the daughter of darkness, is beautiful, and she is the Sun-god's wife. The same idea is brought into relief also in an Icelandic story found in a manuscript of the fifteenth century, but evidently made up of old materials. It relates how one of king Olaf's men landed in the fairy realm of Godmundr. His name was Thorsteinn, and he had met with other strange adven- tures, in one of which he had procured, among diverse articles of great virtue, a small stone which, when con- cealed in his hand, would make him invisible to others. Falling in with Godmundr and two of his men one day, he was questioned as to who he was, and having duly answered, he in his turn inquired after Godmundr's history, when Godmundr told him that he was then on a dangerous journey to the court of a neighbouring king called Geirroedr, who claimed him as his tributary, and who had caused the death of Godmundr's father when he last went to Geirrcedr's court to pay him his tribute. Thorsteinn expressed a desire to accompany Godmundr, but the latter, who was a giant, was amused at the small 1 He brought with them their two erre of gold and silver, which would seem to have meant their two burdens, in allusion possibly to their personal ornaments: the words in the Ashburnham MS. 846, appear to be — ' coiiadib nerrib dior j arcat,' and they recall Elen Liiy dog's Silver Host (p. 173). V. THE SUK HERO. 457 stature of Thorsteinn, though, for a man he was a person of a very powerful frame. When, however, he said that he had a way of making himself invisible, Godmundr consented to take him with him, and Thorsteinn proved the means of rendering Godmundr and his men victors in all the contests in which Geirrcedr made them engage. Finally, Thorsteinn killed Geirrcedr and enabled God- mundr to annex his kingdom; he also found himself a wife there called Godrun, daughter of Agdi, who is described as the most demon-like of Geirrcedr's earls : among other things he had claw-like hands and a dark complexion. The maid was, however, beautiful, and he brought her and her treasures to king Olaf 's court, where she was wedded to Thorsteinn. Old Norse tales make Godmundr the king of a Teutonic Elysium,^ and represent him as a very great personage ; but the Icelandic story gives him an antagonistic neighbour, over whom he is made to triumph by the aid of a stranger, who, looked at in the light of our Celtic stories, should be the Culture Hero, or his son the Solar Hero. The latter would seem best to suit the story of Thorsteinn, who, bringing Gudrun away with him to be his wife, cannot help reminding one a little of Ciichulainn carrying away his bride from her father, the coal-faced king Forgall. As to the rest, the conquest of Geirrcedr and the annexation of his realm to God- mundr's recall the assistance given by Pwytt to Arawn king of Hades (p. 340), while the stone which rendered Thorsteinn invisible challenges comparison with the ring used with the same effect by Owein ab Urien (p. 351). 1 Eafn's Fornaldar Sogur (Copenhagen, 1829), i. 411 ; and tlie Formanna Sogur (Copenhagen, 1827), iij. 175—198, appendix. 458 V. THE SUN HERO. In a word, the Thorsteinn story, though not correspond- ing through and through to any of the Celtic ones, shows a general similarity to them, which goes to form evidence of a notion once common to Celts and Teutons as to the nether world ; and the outlines of that notion are probably to be ranked among the ancient ideas of the Aryan family.^ To return to Cuchulainn, it is right to add that some of the stories give his wife a name other than Emer, namely Ethne Ingubai,^ wherein wp have a discrepancy, probably not to be got over by saying that these were two names borne by one and the same person. For it may be that the myth pictured the Dawn not as one but as many, to all of whom the Sun-god made love in the course of the three hundred and more days of the year. Among those mentioned as his wives or lemans may be included not only Emer and Ethne, but also Uathach and Aif e ; nay, he seems, as we shall see presently, to have had also loves of a somewhat different description, reflecting the sparkling of the dew-drop in the rays of the sun; but he decLLiies to have anything to say to DornoUa, the big-fisted daughter of Domnall : she was too hideous, and she became his implacable foe. Another tale^ of Cuchulainn's doings in the world of darkness and death must now be briefly mentioned, as it 1 On the question of the relation of the Thorsteinn story to other Teutonic stories, see K. Heinzel, Ueher die Nibelunge.nsage (Vienna, ] 885), where a great variety of references are given : see also Cerquand's Taranis et Thw in the Rev. Celt. vi. 420. 2 As in the first part of the story of Ciiahulainn's Siclc-hed. 3 B7c. of the Dm, 43 a— 50&j Windisch, pp. 205—227; also pub- lished, with a translation by O'Curry, in the Atlantis, i. 370 — 392, ij. 98—124. V. THE SUN HERO. 459 brings out the unmistakable features of the mytb very clearly. "While the Ultonians were celebrating the great festival -which marked the Calends of "Winter and the days immediately before and after them, a flock of wild birds lighted on a loch near them. The ladies of Conchobar's court took a fancy to them, and Cuchulainn was disgusted to find that they had nothing better for the men to do than that they should go bird-catching ; but when his gallantry was duly appealed to, with an allusion to the number in Ulster of the noble ladies who were one-eyed out of love for him, he proceeded to catch the birds, which he distributed so liberally that he found when he came to his own wife he had none left for her : he was very sorry on that account, and promised that as soon as ever any wild birds visited the Plain of Mur- themne or the river Boyne, the finest pair of them should be hers. It was not long ere two birds were seen swim- ming on the loch : they were observed to be joined together by a chain of ruddy gold, and they made a gentle kind of music which caused the host to fall asleep. Ciichu- lainn went towards them ; but his wife and his charioteer cautioned him to have nothing to do with them, as it was likely that there was some hidden power behind them. He would not listen, but cast a stone from his sling at them, which to his astonishment missed them. He cast another, with the same result. '"Woe is me!' said he, ' from the time when I took arms to this day, my cast never missed.' He next threw his spear at them, which passed through the wing of one of the birds, and both dived. Cuchulainn, now in no happy mood, went and rested against a stone that stood near, and he fell asleep. He then dreamt that two women, one in 460 V. THE SUN HEEO, green and the other in red, came up to him : the one in green smiled at him and struck him a blow with a whip, the one in red did the same thing, and this horse-whip- ping of the hero went on till he was nearly dead. His friends came and would have waked him, had not one of them suggested that he was probably dreaming, so they were careful not to disturb his nap. When at length he woke, he would tell them nothing, and he bade them place him in his bed. This all took place on the eve of November, when the Celtic year begins with the ascen- dency of the powers of darkness. When Ciichulainn had lain in his bed, speaking to nobody, for nearly a year, and the Ultonian nobles and his wife happened to be around him, some on the bed and the others close by, they suddenly found a stranger seated on the side of the bed. He said he had come to speak to Ciichulainn, and he sang a song in which he informed him that he had come from his sister Eand and his sister Liban to tell him that they would soon heal him if they were allowed. Fand, he said, had conceived great love for him, and would give him her hand if he only visited her land, and treat him to plenty of silver and gold, together with much wine to drink. She would, moreover, send her sister Liban on November-eve to heal him. After having added that his ovm name was Aengus, brother to Fand and Liban, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. Cuchulainn then sat up in his bed and told his friends all about the dream which had made him ill: he was advised to go to the spot where it occurred to him twelve months previously, for such are the requirements of the fairy reckoning of time. He did so, and he beheld the woman in green coming V. THE SUN HERO. 461 towards him : he reproached her for what she had done, and she explained that she and her sister had come, not to harm him, but to seek his love : Pand, she said, had been forsaken by Mananndn mac Lir, and had set her heart on him, Ciichulainn; moreover, she had a mes- sage now from her own husband, Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword, to the efEect that he would give him Eand to wife for one day's assistance against his enemies. Ciichulainn objected that he was not well enough to fight ; but he was induced to send Loeg his charioteer with Liban to see the mysterious land to which he was invited. Loeg, after conversing with Fand and Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword, returned with a glowing account of what he had seen. This revived the drooping spirits of his master, who passed his hand over his face and rapidly recovered his strength. Even then he would not go to Labraid's Isle on a woman's invitation, and Loeg had to visit it again and assure him that Labraid was impatiently expecting him for the war that was about to be waged. Then at length he went thither in his chariot and fought. He abode there a month with Fand, and when he left her he made an appointment to meet her at Ihar Cinn Trachta, or the Tew at the Strand's End, the spot, according to O'Curry, where IS'ewry now stands.^ This came to the ears of Emer, Cuchulainn's wedded wife, and she, with the ladies of Ulster, repaired there, provided with sharp knives to slay Fand. A touching scene follows, in which Emer recovers Cuchulainn's love, and Fand beholds herself about to be forsaken, whereupon she begins to bewail the happy days ' Atlantis, Vol. ij. p. 115. 462 V. THE SUN HEEO. she had spent with her husband Manannan mac Lir in her bower at Dun Inbir, or the Fort of the Estuary. Nay, Fand's position in the unequal conflict with the ladies of Ulster became known to Manannd,n, the shape- shifting Son of the Sea, and he hastened over the plain to her rescue. 'What is that there?' inquired Ciichu- lainn. ' That,' said Loeg, ' is Fand going away with Mananndn mac Lir, because she was not pleasing to thee.' At those words Cuchulainn went out of his mind, and leaped the three high leaps and the three southern leaps of Luachair.2 He remained a long time without food and without drink, wandering on the mountains and sleeping nightly on the road of Midluachair. Emer went to consult the king about him, and it was resolved to send the poets, the professional men and the druids of Ulster, to seek him and bring him home to Emain. He would have slain them, but they chanted spells of druidism against him, whereby they were enabled to lay hold of his arms and legs. "When he had recovered his senses a little, he asked for drink, and they gave him a drink of forgetfulness, which made him forget Fand and all his adventures : as Emer was not in a much better state of mind, the same drink was also administered to her ; and Mananndn had shaken his cloak between Fand and Cuchulainn that they might never meet again. This story of Ciichulainn's Sick-bed calls for one 1 The leaps referred to were places called Leim Concidainn, which were not uncommon in Ireland : so was Luaahair, ' a place where rushes grow,' frequent enough, and is, in fact, so still. The one here in question is placed hy O'Curry south of Emain, with the road of Midluachair from Emain to Tara passing through it : see the Atlantis, ij. p. 122. V. THE SUN HERO. 463 or two remarks before passing on. It identifies in a manner the world of waters with, that of darkness and the dead ; for elsewhere Liban is a woman in charge of a magic well, which, neglected by her, overwhelms her and changes her into an otter, ^ while the waters formed the lake now called Lough Neagh. Liban is to be equated with the Llivon or Llion of the Welsh story of the deluge occasioned by the bursting of Llyn Llion^ or Llivon's Lake, and with the girl accused of neglecting the well, which Welsh legend describes bursting over Cantre'r Gwaelod^ or the Bottom Hundred, a country fabled to have flourished where the billows of the Irish Sea now ride at large on the shores of Keredigion. As to Fand, who had her separate apartment at Labraid's abode, she is called in the story the daughter of Aed Abrat, that is the Fire of the Eyelid, which meant the Tear, daughter of the Pupil of the Eye : she was so called, we are told, on account of her brilliancy and comeliness. With this the probable etymology of the name Eand agrees, being, as it would seem, of the same origin as the English word water ^ Lithuanian vandu of the same mean- ing, and as the Latin unda, ' a wave : ' it recalls De la Motte Fouqud's Undine, who has, however, her more exact counterpart in the Welsh story of the Lady of the Little Van Lake already mentioned (p. 422). Now Fand 1 See the story of Echaid mac Maireda's Death in the Bk. of the Dun, .39a —41 b, with a translation by O'Beirne Crowe in the Kilkenny Association's Journal for 1870, pp. 96 — 112. 2 The Triads, iij. 13 and iij. 97. 3 See the Bk. of Carmarthen, poem xxxviij, Skene, ij. 59 ; and the Traethodydd (Holywell) for 1880, pp. 479-81, where I have made some remarks on the different versions of the tale. 464 V. THE SUN HERO. had been married to the great sea-god Manannd,n mac Lir at the Dun of the Estuary, and the wooing of Ciichulainn by her is the sparkling of the pellucid drop in the sun's rays when he has reached the dark places of the earth ; but that was to last only for a time, and Fand returns to her former love; that is to say, the crystal drop is finally carried back to the ocean. These pretty myth-pictures may date from almost any age in the history of an imaginative race ; but it is probably a touch by the hand of hoary antiquity alone that repre- sents the Sun-god gone mad, and only recalled to the ways in which he should go by the king's magicians and medicine-men. Another tale,^ proved by the names involved to belong to the same class, must now be briefly added : it relates how Ciichulainn, on his way back from Scdthach's country, came on November-eve to a city whose prince, called Ruad or Eed, king of the Isles, had been obliged to expose his daughter as tribute to the Fomori, three of whom were to come from their distant islands to carry her away from the strand, where she sat alone awaiting their dreaded arrival. Her father promised her to wife , to any man who would rescue her, and Ciichulainn hear- ing of it, awaited the Fomori and killed them, wherefore he was entitled to the hand of the daughter of the king ; so the king told him to take her. He excused himself, and told the maiden to come after him to Erinn in twelve months' time,^ but he forgot to fix the place of their meet- 1 Bk. of the Dun, 126 a!; the Ashburnham MS. (D. iv. 2 in the library of the R I. Acad.), 846 ; and the Blc. of Leimter, 125a, 125b. 2 At this point the Bk. of the Dun breaks off without giving the girl's name, but it calls her father Ruad or Eed, king of the Isles; V. THE SUN HERO. 465 ing. On the day, however, which had been appointed, Ciichulainn happened to be careering with a friend near Loch Cuan,^ better known as StrangfordLongh, when they beheld on the water two swans joiaed together by a chain of gold. Ciichulainn cast a stone at them from his sling, which wounded one of them. On hastening to the strand, they found there, not two swans, but two of the finest women they had ever seen. Derborgaill, for that was the name of the maid rescued by Ciichulainn, explained who she was, and how she and her handmaid had come accord- ing to his order, though he had now wounded her with a stone which was lodged in her side. Ciichulainn was very sorry for what he had rashly done, and proceeded to suck the stone out of the wound with the blood around it. He afterwards gave her to wife to Lugaid, his greatest friend, as he declared that one whose side he had sucked could not be his own wife, a touch of refinement overcast with gloom by the sequel, which relates how Derborgaill was savagely mutilated by the women of Ulster under very peculiar circumstances, and how her death was grimly avenged on them by the enraged Ciichulainn. 'Now one version ^ of Derborgaill's story makes her daughter to ForgaU king of Lochlann, which meant a country in or beneath a loch or the sea, the home in fact at the same time the Ashburnham version, 846, speaks of her as the daughter of Euad, and as Derborgaill by name. > The Bk. of Leinster begins the story at this point by introducing Derborgaill in love with Ciichulainn on account of his fame, the stock excuse put into the mouths of all love-sick maidens who take the initiative in Irish tales. 2 The one related in the Bk. of Leinster, 125 J. 2h 466 V. THE SUN HERO. of the Fomori, whose king is said to have been Tethra, uncle to Forgall.i Much consistency, however, is not to be looked for in these matters; nor is Forgall's connection with Lochlann contradicted by the situation of Luglochta Loga, where Cuchulainn finds Forgall's stronghold and his daughter Emer; for, according to another account, the residence of Forgall was in the side of Lusca, a name which means a cave, and is borne by a place in the pre- sent county of Dublin,^ which is perhaps not too far from the coast for the Sun-god to seem to emerge from the direction of it ; not to mention that the Fomori, though belonging to the world of waters, may be encountered anywhere underground, even where the sea is far away : we may compare Undine and her kinsmen, who had access to this world wherever there was a stream or a well. According to one of the foregoing accounts, Derborgaill was about to be given away to the Fomori, her father's foes and oppressors ; while according to the other, she was the daughter of a king of the Fomori, who, we may infer, wished to bestow her on one of his own race, when she set out to Cuchulainn. The difference amounts to little, and the damsel is to be regarded as behaving in the same way as a goddess of dawn and dusk. She might, further, be said to combine in her own person the cha- racteristics, to a certain extent, of Emer and Fand ; but this requires to be explained with reference to her name Derborgaill, more familiar to most of you in its Scotch form of Dervorgild. It is interpreted in the Book of 1 Bk oftlie Dun, 123 a; and the Stowe MS. 826. * O'Donovan's Battle of Magh Rath, p. 52, note. V. THE SUN HERO. 467 Tieinster to mean 'Z)^r, or Tear, daughter of Forgall king of Lochlann,'^ whicli one cannot help comparing with the name of Fand, and associating with Derborgaill's love for Cdchulainn, as an analogous case of the nature myth representing the drop glistening in the sun's rays. ^ Irish dh- means a ' tear,' and is in fact the etymological equiva:lert of that English word and its congeners in other languages, such as Greek SaKpv and Welsh deigr of the same signification, both Irish and English having levelled the path of the voice by removing the guttural consonant. So Derborgaill literally meant Forgall's tear. As to the structure of the name, it is to be observed that it is not a compound, and that, though dSr, ' a tear,' has not yet been met with except as a feminine, the cognates make it fairly certain that it was originally neuter in Irish. It is known that, under the inliuence of neuters of the declension (Latin ij. decl.), other neuters in Irish sometimes take a final nasal, which should correspond, but for this false analogy, to the V of dyaOov and the m of helium, and is found written in Gaulish V or n. Thus, though the Irish muir is of the same meaning, etymology and declension as the Latin mare, it becomes muirn in Muir n-Icht, ' the Ictian Sea,' or the English Channel ; similarly, teg or tech, ' house,' of the same etymology and declension as the Greek reyos, becomes tegn, as in teg n-dagfir, ' domus viri boni :' for more instances, see the Gram- matica Oeltica^, pp. 235, 270. Treated in the same way, der would become rferw, and prefixed to Forgaill would, according to the rule as to M + / (earlier n + v), yield Bervorgaill, with the v prevented from hardening into /, and the n ultimately elided. Dervorgaill would be written in the ancient Irish orthography Derborgaill, which the scribe of the story in the Bk. of Leinster, 1 25, has spelled Derbforgaill, in which he inserted an / with the pundum delens in order to pre- serve the transparence of the etymology which he wished to advocate, and which appears to have been the right one. Accordingly the name should be now pronounced Der Vorgaill, or, in one word, Dervor- gaill with the accent on the middle syllable ; and that it is so, I learn from Prof. Mackinnon of Edinburgh, who recollects this name borne by an old woman in his native isle of Colonsay when he was a child : it was, as he kindly informs me, always accented on the syllable vor. The der here in question is to be distinguished from der, said to mean a oirl ; and it is to be borne in mind in reading this conjecture. 2 h2 468 V. THE SUN HEEO. Why both stories should treat the liquid element as a tear I cannot say : a modem author would in such a case probably prefer speaking of the drop of rain or dew, and it is conceivable that the Tears of Forgall king of Loch- lann were in ancient Erinn the mythic definition of rain or dew;^ but I must confess complete ignorance of any facts that would serve to countenance such a view. CuCHULAINN AND HIS FOES. The epic tale of the Td-in involves Ciichulainn in a quarrel with a goddess of a different description from those hitherto mentioned : I mean the Mdrrigu, or Great Queen of the Mars- Jupiter of the Goidels (p. 43). According to the Book of the Dun^ it happened one day during Ciichulainn's defence of Ulster against the forces of Ailill and Medb from the west, that the Mdrn'gu presented herself to him in the form of a damsel of highly distinguished appearance, clad in a dress of all colours. 'Who art thou?' inquired Ciichulainn. 'I am the daughter of Buan the king,' said she ; ' I am come to thee ; I have loved thee on account of thy fame, and I have brought with me my treasures and my herds.' 'Not good, indeed,' said he, 'is the time of thy coming to us : is not the bloom of our . . . . ^ bad ? Not easy, then, for me is it to arrange a meeting with a woman,' said he, ' while I am in this struggle.' ' I shall,' said she, ' be of assistance to thee in it.' Thereupon he 1 Compare the Old Norse definition of dew in the Corpus Poet. Bar. i. 63 : " Kime-mane is the horse called, which draws the night from east over the blessed Powers. Every morning the foam drops from his mouth ; hence the dew in the valleys." 2 The word ainmgorti used here, 74 a, is obscure to me. V. THE SUN HERO. 469 gave her an insulting reply, which made her completely change her tone, and say: ' It will be hard for thee when I shall come against thee engaged in fighting with the men of Erinn : I shall come in the form of an eel beneath thy feet at the ford, so that thou wilt stumble and fall.' 'That strikes me as a more likely form for thee than that of a king's daughter ; but I shall,' he added, ' seize thee in my hand, causing thy ribs to break, and thou wilt be subject to that blemish till I pronounce sentence of blessing on thee.' ' I shall,' said she, ' ia the form of a grey she- wolf, drive the cattle to the ford against thee.' ' I shall cast a stone,' said he, ' at thee from my sling, and smash one of thy eyes in thy head ; and thou wilt be under that blemish tiU I pronounce sentence of bless- ing on thee.' ' I shall come,' said she, ' to thee in the form of a hornless red heifer at the head of the herd, so that they will rout thee at the mires, at the fords and at the pools, and thou wilt not perceive me meeting. thee.' ' I shall,' said he, ' fling a stone at thee, and break one of thy legs^ under thee, and thou wUt be under that blemish till I pronounce sentence of blessing on thee.' ^ Thereupon she left him for a while ; but, according to her threat, she returned one day when he was engaged in single combat with a formidable foe ; and, in the form of an eel, she gave three twists round his feet, so that he fell at full length across the ford: presently he got up and seized the eel in his hand, so that her ribs broke within 1 I am not sure whether this be correct : the Irish in the Bk. of the Dun, 74 J, is, 'commema do fergara f6t;' but when it is described done at 77a, we have 'ger gara' instead of fergara, which is perhaps to be read mio fergara. The nom. sing, occurs as/is)' gaire at 776. ? Ibid. 74 «, 74 &. 470 V. THE SUN HERO. her. The noise of the strokes dealt by Cuchulainn and his antagonist at one another in the ford was such as to frighten the western army's flocks and herds, so that the latter broke loose and rushed eastwards across the camp with the tents on their horns : this was the Mdrrigu's opportunity, so she came in the form of a she-wolf and drove the cattle in the other direction down upon Cuchu- lainn, whereupon he east a stone from his sliag, as he had promised, and smashed her eye. Afterwards she came down on the ford in the form of the hornless red heifer at the head of the herd, and was lamed by Ciichu- lainn, as he had foretold.^ The Morrigu had now to bethink herself how she might be healed of her triple blemish, for wounds inflicted by Ciichulainn could not be healed without his own intervention. One day, as Cuchulainn felt thirsty after the performance of a fabulous feat of valour against the troops of the west, the Mdrrigu presented herself to him in the guise of an old woman, lame and blind of one eye, engaged in milking a three- teated cow. He asked her for a drink, and she gave him the milking of the first teat, whereupon he wished her the blessing of gods and not-gods, and she was healed of one of her wounds. He asked her again for milk, which she gave him from the second teat, and he repeated the blessing, at which another of her wounds was healed. He had likewise the milk of the third teat, and on his pronouncing his blessing on her a third time, she was made whole, whereupon she reminded him that he had said that he would never heal her. ' Had I only known it was thou,' said he, ' I should never have healed thee 1 Bk. of the Dun, 76 b, 77 a. V. THE SXJN HERO. 471 to the end of the world.' ^ Cuchulainn and the Morn'gu were now, so to say, quits, and the story ends without shedding any light on the later relations between them. Another story,^ however, which describes Ciichulainn's death, makes the Mdrrigu, out of friendship for him, break his chariot on the eve of the fatal day, so as to induce him to stay at home ; how the reconciliation had been effected I cannot say; and I have only entered into these details because they form the Irish counter- part of the hostility evinced by Here towards Heracles, and their final reconciliation. The Mdrrigu, it is needless to say, failed in her friendly effort to keep Cuchulainn at home on the day already referred to, for the warriors of Ulster were again in their couvade, and he alone was left to face the enemy, who was this time under the command of Lugaid king of Erinn, and Ere king of Leinster.^ The former slew Cuchulainn near Loch Ldmraith* in the Plain of Mur- themne on the very day when the Ultonians were able to come out of their confinement; and Conall Cernach, Ciichulainn's foster-brother, pursued Lugaid, and overtook him before the close of the day bathing in the Liffey. A 1 Bk. of the Dun, 77 a, 77b, where the wounds healed are not quite the three inflicted in the previous part of the story : the Mdrrigu here has her head, an eye and a leg healed, whereas, according to the pre- vious account, they should have been her ribs, an eye and a leg respectively. But such inconsistencies are quite common in old versions of Irish tales, showing that the scribes used a variety of older editions. 2 BJc. of Leinster, 119 a — 1236; extracts will be found, published with a translation by Stokes, in the Rev. Celt. iij. 175 — 185. 3 O'Curry, 513-4. * Another name of the same lake given in the Bk. of Leinster was Loch Tondchuil, 1216. 472 V. THE SUN HERO. parley took place, followed by a protracted duel, resulting in Conall slaying Lugaid, wlio surrendered to him both his realm and his head. In this singular combat Conall had the aid of his horse, a beast said to have been pro- vided with a dog's head in order to aid his master in his battles ; so when Conall had been bound by Lugaid to fight with only one hand, as the latter had lost one of his hands that day, Conall's canine horse took part in the conflict by biting a piece out of Lugaid's side, which rendered the rest of the fight easy for his antagonist.^ This, it will be seen, forms a remarkable parallel to Owein ab Urien's lion assisting him in his duels on more than one occasion (p. 402). But to return to Ciichulainn : his slayer was Lugaid, as has just been said, and he is so important a character that his history must here be detailed at some length. He is usually called Lugaid Eiab nDerg, or L. of the Eed Stripes, represented as Ciichulainn's special friend, or else as his foster-son and even as his own son. He is variously known as Lugaid mac Conroi, ' L. son of Ciiroi,' and L. mac na Tri Con^ ' L. son of the Three Cz«s,' or Hounds, and he is possibly to be also identified with Lugaid mac Con, or L. Hound's 1 Bh. ofLeinster, 1226. ^ These are supposed (O'Curry, p. 479) to have been Ciichulainn, Conall Cemach and Ciiroi, the genitives of the names being Con- culainn, Conaill and Con-roi respectively. Oii-roi or Ou-rui (with or ■without the mark of length on the diphthong) seems well attested (Bk. of the Dun, 61a, 69a, 71 &; Bh. of Leinster, 316, 1696), but it must have also had the form Cii-ri, as the genitive occurs in the form Oonvrri in ancient ogam on a stone in his district : this pronun- ciation is again approximated in the Anglo-Irish Caher Conree, which late Irish authors sometimes write Cathair Chonrai or even Caihair Clionrigh. V, THE SUN HERO. 473 Son, whose story, however, differs very widely from the others, owing, it may be, at least in part, to racial reasons. It is also conceivable that Mac Oon or Mac na Tri Con originally meant merely Him of the Hound, or of the Three Hounds, in reference to a simple or triple Cerberus as companion of the Plutonic deity : Gwyn ab Nud had likewise both a horse and a hound of a formidable kind. Now the mother of Lugaid of the Three Hounds was, according to one account, Bldthnat, wife of Ciiroi mac Daire, a great magician associated with the mountain range of Slieve Mis in Kerry, where his stronghold has given a lofty height between Tralee and Dingle its name of Cathair Chonroi, ' Ciiroi's Fortress,' Anglicized Caher Conree. Now Bldthnat's name, derived from Math, ' bloom,' reminds one of that of Blodeued, from Modeu, ' flowers,' and she is herself represented as unfaithful a wife to Ciiroi as Blodeued was to Lieu (p. 239) ; for she is not only said to have loved others, but a tragic tale relates how she became Cuchulainn's wife after he had slain Ciiroi with her aid. Cuchulainn and two other Ultonians had paid a friendly visit to Ciiroi at his abode in the west ; and Ciichulaian, whether then or later we are not told, found opportunity of coming to a treacher- ous understanding with Bldthnat. So at the time fixed upon by her, namely, November-eve, Cuchulainn and his followers stationed themselves at the bottom of the hill watching the stream that came down past Ciiroi's fort ; nor had they to wait long before they observed its waters turning white : it was the signal given by BMthnat, for she had agreed to empty the milk of Mider's three cows from Mider's cauldron into the stream, which has ever 474 V. THE SUN HERO. since been called the Finnghlais or WTiite Brook. ^ The sequel was that Ciichulainn entered Curoi's fort unop- posed, and slew its owner, who happened to be asleep with his head on Bldthnat's lap. Ciichulainn took away Bldthnat, with the famous cows and cauldron; but he was not long to have possession of his new wife, for Curoi's poet and harper, called Ferceirtne, resolved to avenge his master ; so he paid a visit to Ciichulainn and BMthnat in Ulster, where he was gladly received by them ; but one day, when the Ultonian nobles happened to be at a spot bordering on a high cliff, Ferceirtne suddenly clasped his arms round Bldthnat, and flinging himself with her over the cliff, they died together.^ This story may perhaps be regarded as presenting the difficulty, that the treachery more usually characteristic of the dark powers is here ascribed to the Sun-hero, somewhat as if Lieu and Goronwy had changed places in the story of Blodeued's infidelity ; but it is impossible to make Ciichulainn one of the dark beings, among 1 Blc. of Leinster, 1696. What passes as Ciiroi's cairn is known on the shoulder of the mountain ; but no remains of his cathair or fort have ever been found, and O'Curry (iij. 80), looking for the remains of walls, would not identify it with the height now called Caher Conree, which O'Donovan found to be no wall, but ' a natural ledge of rocks' {Battle of Magh Rath, note, p. 212). In 1883, I travelled past the foot of the mountain to Dingle, and returned the same way, but failed both times to get a good view of the top on account of the mist, which seemed to render it a fitting abode for a god resembling the Welsh Gwyn ab Nlid or the Manx Manann4n. 2 With the exception of a short paragraph in the BJc. of Ldnstcr, 169&, the author is indebted for this story to O'Curry. ij. 97, iij. 79-82, and Keating's History of Ireland (O'Connor's ed., Dublin, 1865), pp. 220-5 ; they differ, however, in detail. V. THE SUN HERO. 475 "vvhom Ciiroi, on the other hand, must be classed. For we find him among the allies who gave Ailill and Medb assistance on the Tdin, in which he was ready personally to engage had he not been checkmated. This character of a Dis or Pluto agrees well with the fact that Ciiroi appears as an ancestor in the west, which is attested, among other things, by an ancient ogam,^ on a low cromlech near Caher Conree, commemorating a man described as Son of Ciiroi. Like Mall of the Nine Hostages, and others of the same type, Ciiroi engaged in wars outside Erinn and far away : one story places his exploits even among the Scythians.^ Like the solar heroes, the princes of darkness not only grew to manhood in a short time, but they were also, like them, great travellers, conquering far and wide, the reason being, in the last resort, that wherever the light of the sun shines, there darkness likewise comes in its turn. It is right, however, to add that there is a story which represents Cuchulainn as having a long-standing cause to hate Ciiroi. Ciichulainn and the heroes of Ulster once on a time resolved to go on a plundering expedition to the Isle of the Men of Falga, a fairy land ruled by Mider (p. 145) as its king. Ciiroi, who was a great magician, insinuated himself among the raiders ia disguise, and by means of his arts he succeeded in leading the Ultonians into Mider's stronghold, after they had repeatedly failed in their attempts. He did this on the condition that he 1 Celtic Britain^, p. 263 ; Brash, p. 175, pi. xvi : see note, p. 472. 2 See 'Windlsch's Irische Texte, pp. 294-5 ; compare also the Welsh elegy to Ciiroi in the Bk. of Taliessin (Skene, ij. 198), where he is mentioned as one who ' was wont to hold a helm on the Sea of the South.' 476 V. THE SUN HERO. was to have of the plimder the jewel that pleased him best. They brought away from Mider's castle Mider's daughter Bldthnat, as she was a damsel of exceeding beauty; also Mider's Three Cows and his Cauldron, which were objects of special value and virtues. "When they came to the division of the spoils, the mean-looking man in grey, who had led the victorious assault, said that the jewel he chose was Bldthnat, whom he took to himself. Cuchulaitin complained that he had deceived them, as he had only specified a jewel, which he insisted on inter- preting in no metaphorical sense ; but by means of his magic, the man in grey managed to carry the girl away unobserved. Ciichulainn pursued, and the dispute came to be settled by a duel on the spot, ia which Ciichulaian was so thoroughly vanquished that Ciiroi left him on the field bound hand and foot, after having cut ofi his long hair,^ which forced Cuchulainn to hide himself for a whole year in the wilds of Ulster, while Ciiroi carried away to his stronghold of Caher Conree both Bldthnat and her father's cows and cauldron.^ This story seems to mix up two things, the first of which was the carrying away of the Three Cows and the Cauldron of the king of the fairy island, of which a very different version represents it as Cuchulainn's own doing (p. 261). Now Falga is variously^ supposed to have been the Isle of Man or Insi Gall, that is to say, the Western Isles ; but, according to Cormac's Glossary, the cows, which 1 That was not all, for the Bh. of Leimter, 1696, adds the words: diarfumalt (.i. diarchommil) cacc na?w.b6 moac/iend. ^ O'Curry, iij. 81 ; O'Connor's Keating, loc. eit. 2 See O'Curry, iij. 80, and a gloss on Falga in the Bk. of Leinster, 1696. V. THE SUN HERO. 477 were white cattle with red ears, belonged, not to Mider, but to another king of the other world, who was called Echaid Echbel, or E, Horse-mouth. He Hved in Alban, and his cows used to come to graze in Dalriada, on a head- land, now called Island Magee, in Antrim, ^ where they were appropriated by Cuchulainn and his men, from whom they were then stolen by Curoi and carried away whither Cuchulainn knew not. This, it will be seen, is a Goidelic version of the story of Cacus stealing from Hercules some of the heifers he had taken from Geryon. The other thing confused with the story of Echaid's Cows was that of the contest for the daughter of Mider king of the fairies. This latter story taken by itself is trans- parent enough : it is devoted to the different stages in the usual conflict between the representative of light and da.rkness for the dawn-goddess : in the first engagement the former is vanquished and cropped of his long yellow hair, whereupon his retirement takes place for a time, just as he withdraws distraught from the haunts of men, when Fand is taken away from him by Mananndn, the other great magician of Irish story. At the next stage the Sun-god succeeds in disposing of Ciiroi and carrying away his wife to his own home ; but the powers of dark- ness gain possession of her once more, for that is pro- bably the meaning of her being borne away over the cliff. According to these stories, Lugaid was the son of the 1 The Stokes-O'Donovan Cormac, p. 72 ; also the Four Masters, A.M. 2859, O'Donovan's notes i, t. In the Bk. of Leinster fhese cows are called in the genitive, 'na tri nerc (.i. bd) iuchna,' and 'nanerc niuchma,' and the same word Iuchna, said there to be a proper name, occurs also in Cormac's article j but I have seen no explanation of the term. 478 V. THE SUN HERO. unfaithful Blathnat ; but there seem to have been plenty of diflferent accounts of his parentage, in which other sets of names figure ; and one^ of them is interesting as an instance, to a certain extent, of associating with darkness and death the ideas of guilt and depravity. Medb, queen of the West, had two sisters, called respectively Clothru and Ethne Uathach^ or E. the Horrible. They had three brothers, called na tri Finn Emna, or the Three White Ones of Emain. Why they were so called is a question of the same kind as why the corresponding Welsh name should have been borne by a god of death like Gwyn ab Nud ; he was, however, only one, according to the story of Kulhwch,^ of three Gwyns, who are possibly to be equated with the three Finns of Emain. The indi- vidual names of these last were Bres, N^r and Lothur, which one might perhaps render War, Shame and Hell.^ Now Lugaid is considered the son of this Evil Triad and Clothru or the Horrible Ethne.* The story of his 1 Bk. of Leinster, 124&. 2 R. B. Mob. p. 106, where they are called Gwyn son of Esni, Gwyn son of Nwyvre, and Gwyn son of Ntid : Guest's text and translation, ij. 205, 259, unaccountably omit the two first Gwyns. 3 N4r means 'shame' and 'shameful;' the plural of bres occurs as hressa, meaning 'battles:' see Stokes' Galendar of O&ngus, Prol. 74; and lotJiur is quoted in the Gj: Celtica^, p. 782, with the sense of aloeus, canalis : it seems to be derived from loth, meaning ' coenum, Lerna' (Gr. Celt^- p. 15), ' Mefitis' (Windisch's Ir. Texts, s. v. p. 669), and 'palus' and 'JieW (Stokes' Gvidelica?, p. 69). L6thar or Lothor, gen. L(5thair, was also the name of Medb's herdsman on the Tdin, Bk. of the Dun, 65 a. * According to the Bk. of Leinster, 124&, the mother was Clothru, who became Conohobar's wife after her sister Medb had left him ; but O'Curry, ij. 290, following probably other versions of the story, makes Ethne the king's wife. The name Ethne Uathach occurs also in the story of the Deisi : see the Bk. of the Dun, oia. V. THE SUN HERO. 479 origin, briefly told in the Book of Leinster, forms a pic- ture less colossal but more disgusting tban that sketched by Milton of the relations between Death and Sin and Satan. Now the four provinces of Erinn which were usually hostile to Ulster Avished to choose a king to rule over the kingdom at Tara ; and among those who met together were Ailill and Medb, Ciiroi, and Ere king of Leinster, in whose palace at Tara the meeting was held. The TJltonians were of course not consulted, but the vision of the seer at the bull-feast indicated as the over- king that was to be chosen, a warrior who was then in Ulster, standing, as it happened, by Cuchulainn's sick- bed. Messengers were sent to him, and it was when they announced their errand that Ciichulainn sat up and delivered a charge to Lugaid as to how he was to conduct himself in his office of king.^ This friendship between Ciichulainn and Lngaid is very remarkable ; it is illustrated also in the Tdin epic, where Lugaid is called son of Nos and described as king of Munster.2 Ailill and Medb are represented availing themselves of that friendship to make use of Lugaid as their intermediary when they wish to negociate with their great enemy Ciichulainn. We have had an instance also of it in the story of Ciichulaion giving his own bride Derborgaill to Lugaid to wife (p. 465), and to this may be added one which mentions Forgall Monach betrothing Emer to Lugaid mac N6is king of Mimster, and the latter declining to have anything to do with her as soon 1 Wiudiscb, pp. 212, 213. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 74a : the other Tain references to him are 67 a, 69a, 706, 73a, 73&, also possibly 62a, where we read of Fer VIK mac Lugdach. 480 V. THE STJN HERO. as she explained to him that Ciiehulaimi was to be her husband, whom Lugaid, according to . this euhemerized passage, did not wish to anger.^ On "Welsh ground the possession of the bride would in both cases have only been settled as the result of a battle between the rival suitors, and the friendship and mutual regard ascribed to Ciichulainn and Lugaid is peculiarly Irish. It arises from the story of Ciichulainn' s sojourn in Sedthach's Isle as Scdthach's pupil, that is to say, as her foster-son ; but Scdthach had other foster-sons, who were accordingly Ciichulainn' s foster-brothers there. The foster -brother 2 was, according to Celtic ideas, one's friend par excellence^ and this is the origin of Ciichulainn and Lugaid's friendship, for Lugaid was Ciichulainn's foster-brother in Sc4thach's Isle ; and the same remark applies to the others who were their fellow-pupils there, several of whom, including two called Fer Baeth and Fer Diad respectively, were induced by Medb, much against their inclination, to fight with Ciichulainn on the Tdin. In their case their former friendship with Ciichulainn serves to deepen the tragic tone of the story. The most formidable of all the old friends of Ciichulainn was Fer Diad, and the duel between them lasted a noinden or four days ; the dialogues preceding each conflict turn mostly on the friendly relations between the heroes 1 See the Stowe MS. (R. I. Academy, D. iv. 2), fol. 83 &, which maintains the consistency of the story it relates by not naming Lugaid among Ciichulainn's fellow-pupils in ScAthach's Isle : see 83 a. 2 The word denoting this relation was in Irish comalta, which is as if one had in Latin a word com-alt-ius, meaning ' reared together with,' and so is the Welsh equivalent cyfaillt or cyfaill, the only term in the language for 'friend.' V. THE SUN HEKO. 481 ■when together in Scdthacli's Isle, and they have been elaborated with considerable care, while Cuchulainn's grief when his friend and antagonist fell on the fourth day is very touching. Fer Diad, it may be explained, was a match for Ciichulainn so long as they fought with the same weapons, but Ciichulainn at last called for the Gdi Bolga, which he always held in reserve. This was a missile which he directed that time by means of his feet, from the water in the ford upwards into his antago- nist's body, and it proved at once fatal. ^ What this strange weapon may have been in actual war, one cannot exactly say ; but, mythologically speaking, the direction of it from the water upwards would seem to indicate as its interpretation the appearance of the sun as seen from the Plain of Murthemne when rising out of the sea to pierce with his rays the clouds above. In another instance the Odi Bolga is brought down on the head of Cuchulainn's antagonist with the effect of crushing him,^ which would seem to refer to the action of the sun's rays on the clouds below from his position on high in the heavens. It will now be readily understood how it came about that Irish mythology could treat the Sun-god and certain of the dark beings as at times his bosom friends ; and also how some of them had nevertheless to fight with him and fall by his hand. Lugaid was one of this class, but the euhemerism of Irish tales, in the form we have them, has tried hard to keep Lugaid as the friend of Ciichulainn distinct from Lugaid as his mortal enemy ; 1 For the whole story, original text and translation, see O'Curry, iij. 414_463. 2 Stokes & Windisch, Ir. Texte, pp. 184, 206. 2 I 482 V. THE SUN HERO, and one of the results is, that we cannot, with our imper- fect knowledge of Irish literature, trace how the story originally described Lugaid becoming hostile to Cuchu- lainn. It is otherwise with the correspondiug Teutonic story of Brynhild wooed to be Gunther's wife by Sieg- fried, who some time afterwards falls the victim of a foul murder perpetrated with Gunther's aid ; for the narra- tive tries to account for the change in Gunther's feelings towards his friend and benefactor.^ But ia the case of Ciichulainn and Lugaid we have to make a spring, so to say, from the tenderness of their friendship into the thick of their deadly feud, when the braves of Ulster were again in their couvade, and their land was devastated by their enemies from the other provinces of Erinn. For they were this time under the leadership, not of Ailill and Medb, but of Lugaid and his friend Ere king of Leinster, aided by cunning magicians called Calatin and his Sons, who had also assisted Ciichulainn' s foes on the Tdin.2 The sequel has already been briefly related, how Ciichulainn, trying to make head against them, fell by the hand of Lugaid. Now the stories which treat Lugaid as Cuchulainn's friend do not permit the former to be seen in his character of a personification of darkness and death, of evil both physical and moral. This has to be gathered indirectly from such facts as the following. The flagstones of Lugaid's court, under which his body was said to be buried, appear to have been so well known to Irish folk-lore as to have elicited an explanation which interpreted them to mean blushes and disgrace, or else ^ Cox's Tales of the Teutonic Lands, pp. 96 — 106. '■^ Bk. ofLdnder, 119a— 120&; also 93«. V. THE SUN HEKO. 483 developed them into an odious triad of murder, disgrace and treachery.! All this was doubtless based on the cha- racter ascribed to Lugaid ; and a similar conclusion is to be drawn from the story of Conall Cernach avenging the death of his friend Ciichulainn on Lugaid by slaying him and carrying away his head as a trophy. On his return homewards, Conall, meeting his comrades, laid the head down on the top of a stone, where it was forgotten by him ; and when one was despatched to bring it away, it was found to have corroded its way through the stone : such appears to have been the virulence of its nature. Other accounts make Ere the slayer of Ciichulainn : his name has its explanation in its Welsh equivalent erch^ ' dun, horrible,' Gr. TrepKos, which seems to indicate that he belonged to the same class of dark beings as Lugaid. As the slayer of Ciichulainn, he also is described having his head cut off by Conall, and the tragedy is much deepened by the account given of the grief of Acall, Erc's wife, or, according to another version, his sister, who dies of a broken heart.^ But such a story would have many forms, and one other of those extant makes Conall slay a king of Leinster under circumstances which might be not inaccurately described as those of the deaths of Lugaid and of Ere taken together to make one tragedy. There had been a great battle at the end of Aitherne's unspeakable progress, and in the battle the king of Leinster had slain two brothers of Conall, It should be explained that the king's name was Mesgegra mac Ddtho, who was a decidedly dark personage (p. 330), and that Conall, arriving after the battle had been fought. 1 O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 478-9. ^ n,ia. pp. 49, 483, 5134. 2l2 484 V. THE SUN HERO. set out on the track of the victorious men of Leinster, who, on reaching their own country, disbanded, leaving the king and his charioteer alone. The latter came to the river Liffey, and as the king looked at the water he saw floating down the stream a nut as big as a man's head : he alighted to pick it out of the water, when his charioteer happened to nap and to have a disturbing dream. When he woke he thought the kiag had eaten the whole kernel, so he cut off the king's hand with half the kernel in it ; but, on discovering his mistake, he drove his sword through his own body. This was not all, for now Conall Cernach arrived on the scene ; and the king would not fight unless Conall had one of his hands tied,i so that they might be more fairly matched. That was done, and they reddened the Liffey with their blood; but Conall prevailed, and carried the head of his opponent away with him : the same story is related of it when laid down on a stone as of Lugaid's. On his way back towards the borders of his own country, Conall accidentally met Buan, Mesgegra's wife, going home with her suite. 'Whose art thou, woman ?' said Conall. ' I am the wife of king Mesgegra,' said she. ' Thou hast been ordered to come with me,' said Conall. ' Who has ordered it ?' said the queen. ' Mesgegra,' answered Conall. ' Hast thou brought a token?' asked Buan. 'Here are his chariot and his horses,' said Conall. ' Many,' said she, ' are they to whom he makes presents.' ' Here is his head then,' said Conall. ' I am now free,' said she. Thereupon the king's head was seen to change colour, red and pale white alternately. 'What ails the head?' said Conall. 1 Compare Lancelot fighting with one hand, in Wright's Malory (London, 1866), iij. 263. V. THE SUN HERO. 485