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BY JOHN KHYS, FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, AND LATE FELLOW (IF MF.RTON COLLEGE , PROFESSOR OF CELTIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1888. [All liiyhts reserved.] LONDON : PRINTED BY 0. GREEN AND SON, 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 was 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 ■ i »mprehensively studied from the Celtic point of view. Scarcely h 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 Gallo-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-dozon Lectures. Having thus alluded to the quantity of the materials at my disposal, I would 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. Still 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 archceology and history, of Celtic religion and folk-lore, of Celtic myth and saga. yiil 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 RHYS. GwynvAj Oxford, Christmas Eve, 1887. CONTENTS. Lecture I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. PAQE Part 1 1 Mercury ......... 5 Apollo 20 Mars ......••• 32 Part II. Mars (continued) 49 Jupiter 64 Minerva ......... 73 Die 77 Minor Divinities ......... 99 Lecture II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. Part 1 107 Nuada of the Silver Hand 119 Nodens, NM and Llud 125 Cormac, Conaire, Conchobar . . . . . .133 The Mac Oc and Merlin 144 Merlin Emrys and Maxen . . . . . .ICO 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 Druidisrn 216 CONTENTS. Lecture III. THE CULTURE HERO. PAGE Gwydion Son of Dun ...... 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 CULTURE HERO (continued). Gwydion and Cairbre ....... 305 Gwydion and Aitherne . . . . . . 324 Pwytt and others visiting Hades ..... 337 The Culture Hero and the Nine-night Week . . 360 Lecture V. THE SUN HERO. 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 Tuliessin ......... 543 The Stratification of Solar Myths . . . . .570 CONTENTS. XI Lecture VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEROES. PAOR Irish Mythography on tho Gods and their Foes . . 579 Greek and Norse Comparisons . . . . . G10 The Distress of tho Gods and tho Sun Hero's Aid . 622 Celtic Accounts of tho Aryan Deluge . . . .641 The earliest Creed of the Celts inferred . . . 669 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 675 INDEX OF NAMES AND OTHER WORDS . . 679 Lecture I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. PART I. The inhabitants of ancient Gaul were the 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 propose, 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 : l They worship Mercury, he says, above all others, and of him they have 1 Bellum Gallicum (ed. Holder), vi. 17. B 2 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. very many images. Their traditions make him 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 Borne. This policy took a very definite form under Augustus. He as pontifex max- imus united the religions of the Boman world ; but the I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 6 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 retaining 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 point ; 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 they were not banished or in any way pro- scribed.1 To come to the 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 Allobroges. 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 Isere. To this must be added a certain tract on the other bank of the Ehone as also probably belonging to the Allobroges, and cover- ing at least most of the present department of the Ehone.2 The metropolis of the Allobroges was the city of Vienna, now called Vicnne : their country consisted in part of some of the most fertile land in Gaul, and in part of very 1 For the substance of these remarks I am indebted to an excellent article by M. Florian Vallentin, entitled, Les Dieux de la Cite des Allobroges, in the Revue Celtique, Vol. iv. 1 — 36, to which I shall have frequently to refer in this lecture. 2 Vallentin, ibid. p. 1 ; see also Desjardins, Geogrciphie historique et administrative de la Gaule romaine, ii. 351. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. O 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 Allobrogic confederation formed in its turn a member of the larger one headed by the Arverni.1 Lastly, my principal autho- rities for the inscriptions found in the country of the Allobroges are Allmer's collection of the inscriptions of Yienne,2 and a succinct account of the gods of the Allo- broges by the late M. Florian Yallentin, one of the best known archaeologists of the south of France. Mercury 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 Isere, and it is said to have read : Mercurio Aug(usto) Artaio Sacr(um) Sex(tus) Geminius Cupitus, ex voto.3 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. 2 Inscriptions antiques et du Moyen Age de Vienne en Dauphini; 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. 8 Allmer, 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 of Artio as the name of a goddess in an inscrip- tion in the museum at Berne,1 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 Mercurms Arteritis was the Gallo- lloman title of the god called Mercurim Cultor in an inscription from "Wurtemberg.2 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 Ilieres, also in the department of the Isere, and the first portion of it reads : Aug(usto) Sacr(um) Deo Mercurio Victori Magniaco Yeilauno.3 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, Veilawio, even though it should not prove a misreading of Vellavno, 1 Mommsen, Inscriptiones Helveticae (in Vol. x. of the Mittheilungen der Antiq. Gesellschaft in Zurich), No. 215; Rev. Celt iv. loc. cit. 2 Branibach's Corpus Inse. Rhenanarum, No. 1591. 3 Allmer, 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 Gaulish element in the Hieres inscription is to be read ; that is to say, it makes one compound epithet, Magniaco-vellaunoS)1 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 spots2 in the country of the Allobroges. Some of the twenty-six very possibly be- longed to the Greco-Eoman Mercury of an imported cult ; 1 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 ; Caesarodunum, 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 Railway,' 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. 2 See them enumerated by M. Vallentin in the Rev. Celt. iv. 15. 8 T. 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 Allobrogic 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.1 He mentions the following, but the list might be enlarged : Montmercure, Mercoeur, Mercoiray, Mercoire, Mercoiset, Mercuer, Mercurette, Mercurey, Merourie, Mercurot, Mercury. Several such names occur on Allobrogic 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, 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,2 and I would call special attention to the last two as it is noticed that the Gaulish 1 Esquisse de la Religion des Gauluis (Paris, 1879), p. 10. ' A somewhat shorter one was given by M. Mowat in the Rev. Archrologique (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. V 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,1 near the blue lake of the Bourget, in the land of the Allobroges ; another on Mont de Sene, in the Cote d'Or ; and a third of considerable importance on the Donon, one of the more elevated heights of the Yosges.2 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 Historic* JYaturalis, 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.3 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 Historic/, 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.4 A fragmentary inscription dis- covered on the spot happens to have been set up by certain negotiator cs or men of business, and it serves to 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 15. 2 Jollois, Memoires sur quelques Antiquites remarquables du Departe- ment des Vosges (Paris, 1843), p. 126, &c. 3 Rev. Celt. iv. 15 and ii. 426 ; Bulletin Monumental, 1875, p. 557, et seq. 4 See also Mowat in the Rev. Arch. (1875), Vol. xxix. 31. 10 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. show that one of the names under which the god received honour there, was that of Mercurius Arvernus.1 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.2 With these must be ranked an inscription at Bittburg, in Ehenish Prussia, to — Deo Mercur(io) Yassocaleti.3 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 [Chrocus] Arvernos, delubrum illud, quod Gallica lingua Vasso Galate vocant, incendit, diruit atque subvertit. Miro enim opere factum fuit atque firmatum. Cuius paries duplex erat, ab intus enim de minuto lapide, a foris 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.4 Now 1 Rev. Celt. ii. 426, iv. 15; Rev. des Soc. savantes (1875), Yol. i. p. 249. * Brambach, Nos. 256, 257, 593, 1741, 2029 add. p. xxvii. 3 Kuhn's Beitrcege zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung, iij. 169; Brambach, No. 835; Rev. Arch. (1875), Vol. xxx. pp. 367, 368, where M. Mowat corrects Brambach's Vasso -caleti into Vassooaleti. In the same article, p. 361, he gives facsimiles of the readings of the corresponding form in the chief manuscripts of Gregory's text. 4 Gregorii Turonensis Opera, Historia Francorum (contained in Monumenta Germaniae Historica), Lib. i. c. 32, where the reading preferred by the editors begins with Veniens vero Arvernus, &c, but A 1 reads Arvernos. 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 Khenish inscription.1 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 caleti proves to be the genitive of the adjective which is in modern Welsh caled, 'hard,' in older Welsh calet, Irish calath of the same meaning. The other part of the Gaulish term vasso is to be equated with the Welsh word gtvas? 1 mansion or palace; Irish foss, 'a staying or rest,' of the same origin as the Greek acr™, ' 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 1 Even 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. 2 Much conjecture has been wasted on this term, especially by writers aware only of a Welsh word givas, 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. Vasso-calet,'1 or the god who dwelt in that temple. Be that so or not, the Vasso-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 Ehine. But besides the fragmentary inscription already noticed as found on the Puy 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, Puy de Dome, or as it is called by the inhabitants of the district simply le Doum, 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 eay 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 Maelgivn bychan, ' little Maelgwn.' Put back into an early form, the latter would be Maglocunos biccanos, while the former would be Maglocuno-biccanos ; and it is in this way that I would explain the Gaulish Vasso-caleti as a compound in the genitive case. Compare the Irish genitive na Cr&b-ruadi, in the Bk. of the Dun, 99 b : it was the name of the king of Ulster's palace, and literally meant the Ked Branch, a designation, however, of uncertain connotation. One may also probably compare the Ogmic genitive Neta-Ttrenalugos, with tt for 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 the 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 ; ' 1 but the Irish duma means an early Celtic form, dumjo-s or dumjo-n, and this stem dump 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 Allobrogic 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.2 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 1 Connac'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. dexxxvij, dexxxix. 2 Tbe Berlin Corpus Inscr. Latinarum, Vol. vii. (Inscr. BHtanniae Latinae, edited by Hlibner), 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 very 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.1 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 1 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 you the secret of the painting, 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 with a voice of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom ;a 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. "Nov 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 Aiyos : 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 that I comprehend this allusion to the lily; but here is the original for those who may object to being led astray : /ecu ol dyop-qral twv Tpioiov tv)v oira ttjv \upi6eiu£, while Byzan- tine authors preferred QevStpixos or 0eoSe>x°s ; and Latin writers supply us with Tkeodoricus, whence the form usual in English books, Theodoric, which comes pretty near the Anglo-Saxon sj)elling 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 5 th century : Yerona was one of his head- quarters. But it is found that with his history so much unhistorical matter has been incorporated, that modern 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- 1 Brambach., No. 1529. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 31 torical portions of the story of the Teutonic conqueror;1 but it has never been satisfactorily shown why such and such mythic stories should have attached themselves to this particular man. The inscription alluded to yields the key : the historical Teuton bore one of the names of the Gaulish 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 Yerona was the name not only of a city in Italy, but also one of the ancient names of Bonn,2 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 1 One of the most recent writers on this subject is Wilhelm Muller, in his Mythologie der deutschen Heldensage (Heilbronn, 188G), 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. 2 W. Muller, p. 186; Jahrbucher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreun- den im Rheinlandet i. 12 — 21, xiij. 1. 32 I. THE GAULISH PANTHE0X. in the Nibeltmgen 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.1 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. Val(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 Wiirtemberg, in which Marti Caturigi3 is written in full, and by a third instance, namely, one found in the neighbourhood of Yverdon in Switzerland.4 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, l a battle,' and fix, i a king,' in Welsh rhi and in Irish ri, genitive rig : the cognates of both words are so familiar that I need not enumerate them. The plural Caturigcs was the well-known name 1 See Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1885), iij. 341. 2 Rev. Celt. iv. 10; Mommseu, Insc. Helvet. No. 70; Allmer, iij. 255. 3 Brambach, No. 1588. 4 De Bonstetten, Receuil a" Aniiquites Suisse s (Berne, 1855), pp. 35,37. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 33 of a Gaulish people ; and, transferred to their town, it is now continued in the abbreviated form of Chorges. The Teutonic name of the same etymology was common as that of a man, and in fact is still so : witness the Anglo- Saxon Heactoric, the modern German Hedrich, and other variations of the same compound. Another Allobrogic inscription gives the Gaulish Mars another name : an altar found at Culoz, near Belley, in the department of Ain reads: N"(umini) Aug(usto), Deo Marti Segomoni Dunati, Cassia Saturnina ex vot(o), v(otum) s(oluit) l(ibens) m(erito).1 Segomo is known to us by other inscriptions at Arinthod 2 in the Jura, at Contes3 near Nice, at Lyons,4 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,5 genitive math or niadh, 'a champion or warrior'), it forms the per- sonal name Netta- Scgamonas, which may be rendered Propugnatoris Segomom's, ' (of) Segomo's Champion.' It was a kind of name very congenial to ancient Irish ideas, and it occurs in three6 distinct Ogam inscriptions in the 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 11; Rev. Archcoloyique (1S52), ix. 315. 2 Rev. Celt. iv. 11; Monnier, Annuaire du Jura for 1852, plate 1, which I have not heen able to consult. 3 Mem. de la Soc. des Ant de France (1850), xx. 58-9. 4 Gruter, lviii. 5. 5 Rhys, Lectures, p. 395 ; Stokes, Celtic Declension, which appeared first in Vol. xi. of Bezzenberger's Beitrcege (Gottiugen, 188G), p. 87. 6 Nevertheless, the name is not given by Brash in his book on The Ogam inscribed Monuments of the Gaedhil ; but by correctly reading Brash's copies I had detected it in the case of the Stradbally 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(eyam)- 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.1 The 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, l to hold, restrain, withstand, overpower,' from which such words come as the Greek Zxw, 1 I hold or have,' zvxov, ia-x^, eXvp6s, and the like, also the Gothic sigis and the German sieg, 1 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 archaeolo- 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 duniim, Gaulish dunon, of such names as Augustodumim or Autun and Lugdunum or Lyons. This dun- is of the same etymology as the familiar English word town and the German zaun, ' 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 Segamain 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 SedJiamain (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, 1 1 shut or bar- ricade,' and dunad, ' a camp, an array.' 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,1 in the department of the Nievre, are dedicated to Mars Bolvinnus, and one of them to Marti Bolvhmo et Duna(ti). This is a considerable dis- tance from the place of finding the Allobrogic 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 Cuntinus2 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 Vint to. Vintius, in Gaulish Vintjos, must have meant 'relating to the wind,1 as it is of the same origin as the English word, the Welsh givynt, 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. Celt. iv. 12; Con; /res Arch, de France, 1873, p. 215. Can Bouhy and Bolcumus be of the same origin ? 2 Rev. Celt. iv. 12; Mem. de la Soc. des Ant. de France (1850), xx. 59. D 2 36 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 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 inscription1 on an altar at Seyssel, in Haute- Savoie, reading : Deo Yintio Polluci, Cn. Terentius, Bil- lonis fil(ius) Terentianus, ex voto. Another, in which Vint ins stands alone, was found in the Yigne des Idoles, near the castle of Hauteville 2 in the same department, and reads: Aug(usto) Yin(tio) sacr(um), T. Yalerius ( ) Crispinus, sacer Yinti pra3f(ectus) Pag(i) Dia( ) sedem 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.3 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. Celt. iv. 23 ; Allmer, iii. 243. 2 Rev. Celt. ib. ; Allmer, ii. 345. 3 Rev. Celt. 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. Yallentin1 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 rendering 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 Cocidius2 have been found in this country ; but the meaning of the word Cocidius is unknown, as well as that of a related form Cocosus,3 which also occurs. A more transparent epithet is Belatucadrns, given the god on monuments also found here.4 This is a Celtic compouud 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 25. 2 Hiibner, Nos. 286, 643, 886, 914, 977. 3 Gaidoz, Esquisse, 10. 4 Hiibner, Nos. 294, 333, 369, 745, 873, 934, 935. Belatucadms ends with a word to be identified with the Welsh each; ' 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, l cold weather,' or cold as productive of inconvenience and harm. Again, we have it in ufel, ' fire or conflagra- tion,' Irish oibell, oibel, 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 avo> or of the Latin uro, ' I burn.' Irish supplies us with a strung verb from the stem bel, as in bebla (for be-bela), 'mortuus est,' atbail, 'interit,' atbel, 'peribo.' 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 beta, 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 cioel to correspond to our Celtic bel, and we readily find it, without going out of this country, in the Anglo-Saxon verb cicelan, ' to die or perish,' from which was formed a causative cicellan or cicelian, ' 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 Diisseldorf,1 and others are known elsewhere2 on the Continent, while one is preserved in a museum at Glasgow.3 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.4 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 l curv- ing, vaulting or covering over.' Among other words from this origin have been reckoned the Greek Kapapaf 1 Brambach, 164. 2 At Rome : see the Berlin Corpus, vi. No. 46 ; and a Camido Viro- manduo is reported from Auvergne in the Rev. des Soc. sav. (1875), i. 251. 3 Hiibner, 1103. 4 What is the meaning of the word in the post-Roman personal names Camelvrigi from Pembrokeshire, and Camidoris, Camuloriijlto, fiom Anglesey 1 For some notes on them, see my Lectures, pp. 364, 400. The name Camidogcnus, which Caesar {Bell. Gall vii. 57, 59, 62) gives the defender of Paris against the legions of Rome, would mean the descendant of Camulos, and similarly Camulorpiata. 5 On the difficulties of this etymology, see Kluge's Etym. Wvrtcr- buch des deufsehen >$j>raehe, s. v. Himmel. 40 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 1 anything covered or arched over,' such as a vaulted chamber, a covered barge, or a tester bed ; Lat. camera, 'a vault, an arch, a chamber;' camurus, 'crooked, curved;' Zend kamara, l a vault, a girdle ; ' kamaredha, ' the skull or the head,' with which is connected the Greek {xkXadpov, i the ceiling of a room or the main beam that bears it, the roof, a house : ' this supposes the Greek noun to stand for ttpekadpov, and to be identical with an attested KfjicXedpov^ explained to mean rds Sokovs, c the beams or timber of a house.' As a personal name, Camulos has its etymological equivalent in later Celtic in that of Cumall, king-warrior of Ireland and father of the great Finn, whose doings occupy so much room in Goidelic story. The name is to be compared in the first instance with that of Ovpavos or Uranus and the Sanskrit Yarunas ; but as that of a Celtic Mars one should undoubtedly regard it as a synonym rather of the Greek Zeus or Italian Jove, both of which names were expressive also of the idea of the sky or the heavens. In the light of this explanation it becomes intelligible how the Celtic Mars, associated with the sky, should have to do with the wind, as proved by his Gaulish title of Vintios ; and in answer to the question what a god thus associated with the sky should have to do with war, let it for the present suffice to say that throughout the literatures of Greece and Eome, Zeus or Jove was the supreme arbiter of the for- tunes of war. It may be hazardous perhaps to construe in the same sense the words from the Big- Veda about Dyu or Dyaushpitar as a god of mighty works : I refer to a hymn to his son Indra, who mostly superseded him, and the passage is thus rendered by Prof. Max Mtiller : ' Dyu, thy parent, was reputed strong, the maker of Indra I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 41 was mighty in his works ; he (who) begat the heavenly Indra, armed with the thunderbolt, who is immoveable, as the earth, from his seat.'1 But there can be no such doubt with regard to the Teutonic Tiu, whose name (Anglo- Saxon Tin, gen. Tiues ; old H. German Ziu, gen. Ziives ; old Norse Tyr, gen. Tys) is etymologically identical with Zeus and Dyu, while all the little that is known of him makes him the war-god of the Teutons, before he was surpassed and superseded by Woden : witness the name of the day which Frenchmen and Welshmen call the day of Mars — English Tuesday, Ger. Dienstag, formerly Zies- tay, Old Norse Tysdayr and Tyrsdayr. The only differ- ence, then, between Sky as the war -god of the early Teutons and that of the Gauls, was that the latter chose to render Zeus, Jove and Dyu, by another word meaning equally the sky or the heavens, and that word was Camulos. The Gauls stood between the Eomans and the Teutons : linguistic affinities connect the Celtic lan- guages closely with the Aryan dialects of ancient Italy ; but since I began to write these lectures, I have been repeatedly impressed by the striking similarity between the ancient theologies of Celts and Teutons, and we have here an instance in point. There is, however, further evidence to prove beyond doubt the identity of the Teutonic Tiu with the Celtic war-god under another name than Camulos, but the discussion of it must be postponed. Let it suffice for the present that we have discovered the Jupiter of the Celts, and found that Gaulish theology ascribed to him the discharge of func- 1 Max Miiller's Lectures on the Science of Languages*, ij. 473; Rig- Veda, iv. 17, 4. 42 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. tions wliich the Romans would have regarded as more properly belonging to Mars. Such a god as I have alluded to must have once been the greatest of all the Celtic gods, the chief of the Celtic pantheon, a conjecture which is favoured by the natural interpretation of some of the attested epithets of the Celtic Mars. Take, for instance, the dative Rigisamo,1 which occurs in an inscription found in this country, in the county of Somerset. The word seems to be a superlative, meaning most royal or kingly. A still more remarkable epithet was Albiorix, applied to him in an inscription2 in a museum at Avignon. The compound should mean king or ruler of Albio, a word which may be identified with the Welsh word ;elfyd,' used by Welsh poets in the sense of the world or the universe : so we may suppose that Albiorix signified king of the world. Lastly, the war- god's associate is called Nemetona on the monuments, as, for instance, on one at Bath.3 She has been identified by M. Gaidoz4 with Nemon, the wife, according to Irish tradition, of N&, the war-god of the ancient Irish. Ano- ther tradition, however, gives to the latter as his wife the 1 Hiibner, 61. 2 Orelli-Henzen, Vol. iij. No. 5867; J. de Wal, Mythologiae Sep- tenlriunalis Monumenta epigraphica Latina, No. ccxcij.; L'Institut for 1841, p. 160. 3 Hiibner, 36. 4 Esquisse, p. 10 ; but this is not certain, and the name seems to be the same that was meant by Nidmdn in the Bk. of Leinster, 81 b, printed in O'Curry's Manners, &c, iij. 418-9. The former, I may say in passing, is a MS. of the 1 2th century, and my reference is to the lithographed facsimile published with an introduction by Prof. Atkin- son, Dublin, 1880. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 43 war-goddess called the Morrigu, which is important, as her name means the great qneen. "Why she should have been so called has always appeared a puzzle, but it becomes at once intelligible if we suppose her husband as war- god to have been once the supreme or great god of the Goidels: the role assigned her by Irish mythology is, caeteris paribus, not very unlike that of Here or Juno ; but it is her name that chiefly concerns us at this point. It is further to be noticed that with the Morrigu Irish literature is wont to associate another war-fury called the Bodb (or Baclb) Catha ; nor is it clear that the two names may not have originally referred to one and the same mythological being ; but, be that as it may, one finds a Gaulish goddess who bore inferentially much the same name as the Irish Bodb Catha, as proved by an Allo- brogic altar discovered in the commune of Mieussy in Haute-Savoie. In its present state it reads:1 Athu- bodvae Aug(ustae), Servilia Terentia (votum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito). But as the stone is imperfect on the right side, it is conjectured that the full name was Cathubodvae, which has been supposed to stand for Catubodvae. Although our knowledge of Gaulish does not suffice to enable us to show that Athubodva was an impossible form, still Cathubodva appears to coincide in a manner which can hardly be the result of accident with the Irish Bodb Catha, in which we have the compound name analysed. This last meant the Bodb of war and carnage, to whom Irish literature makes frequent refer- ence. The signification of the word bodva or bodb may readily be guessed from the fact that it corresponds letter 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 19. 44 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. for letter to the Anglo-Saxon beadu and the Norse 'bod,' < war or battle.' This vocable, both in its Celtic and its Teutonic forms, enters freely into the composition of proper names of men ; but it will here suffice to mention the Bodvogenus of another inscription. It would mean a man descended from the goddess Bodva ; and- much the same must have been the import of the Gaulish Bod- vognatus,2 a name to be detected reduced in Welsh to Bodnod. The equation, if well grounded, of the name of the Gaulish goddess with that of the Irish war-fury, would imply that her cult was widely spread, and that she was a considerable figure in the Celtic pantheon, whether she is to be identified or not with the M6rrigu or great queen. Lastly, the poet Lucan makes us acquainted with another important designation of the war -god, in his well known lines in the Pharscdia, i. 444, &c. : ' Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diro Teutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus ; Et Taranis Scythicse non mitior ara Dianse.' The name of the first of Lucan's triad occurs in an inscription found in Hertfordshire, which gives the dative Marti Toutati2 and one cannot help regarding Toutates 1 Caesar, Bell. Gall. ii. 23. 2 Hiibner, No. 84. An inscription found at York, and another at old Carlisle, suggest the respective spellings Totati (Hiibner, Ephemeris Epigraphica, iii. 313, No. 181) and TutaU Cocidio (ibid. p. 128; Hiibner, No. 335) : they are difficult to read, but Totati is countenanced by the name Totatigens borne by a Gaulish soldier in the Cohortes Vigiles at Eome (Rev. Celt. iii. 272 ; Berlin Corpus, vi. 2407), while TutaU must be left doubtful, though not only Toutati, but also Totati and TutaU seem to be perfectly legitimate forms. Here it may also be mentioned that Toutati derives some confirmation from a monument I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 45 as a more usual Gaulish form than the Teutates of the best manuscripts of Lucan. The meaning of the name has never been ascertained, but there is no room for doubt as to the group of words to which it belongs : we have had a closely kindred element in the first part of the compound name Toutiorix, and the principal words in point in the Celtic languages of the present day are the Irish tuathj l a tribe ;' Breton tud, used as a plural in the sense of the English word people; and Welsh tud, which has had its meaning shifted from that of a people to its country. Outside the Celtic area the word appears in Italy as Oscan tauta, touto, and Sabine touta, tota, 'a community : it was also a Lithuanian and a Teutonic word : as the latter it was well known as the term for the German political body called the Diet, and it yields the adjective Deutsch or Dutch, meaning the vernacular language of the Germans as distinguished from the Latin formerly preferred by scholars and pedants : the Anglo- Saxon form was theod, l a people,' and a foreigner or alien was eltheod, just as it is 'atttud' in Welsh : the Gothic was thiuda, Old Norse 'thjud,' 'a people.' In all these lan- guages the word was feminine, and we should therefore probably be right in assuming that the Gaulish word for a people or community was touta : a derived form toutjus is attested by one of the few inscriptions extant in the Gaulish tongue. It was found at Vaison, and is pre- at the other extreme of the Celtic world, namely, one found at Seckau in Styria: see the Berlin Corpus, iii. 5320; but M. Mowat, in the Bull. Epigraph ique de la Gaule, i. (1881), 123, reads, not Toutati, but Tioutati, which has a suspicious look about it. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville is inclined to contest M. Mowat's reading : see his Cycle Mythologique irlandais et la Mythologie celtique, p. 378. 46 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. served in the museum at Avignon. It is to the following effect : Seyo/Aa/Jos OiuAAoveos toovtiovs NafJ.avcra.Tis etwpov BeAr;cra//.i o-oo-iv ve/xv/Tor.1 That is to say, Segomaros (son) of Willo, toutias of Nimes, made Belisama this grove. It is not certain whether toutius meant merely a citizen or some public official among the people of Nimes. Perhaps the latter view is preferable, and I would suggest that Toutates in a somewhat similar way meant king. We have a Teutonic parallel of the same etymological2 origin in the Gothic thiudans, /WiAevs, Norse 'thjodann,' 'a king,' and A.-Saxon theoden, which also meant a king or lord : both the Norse and the A.-Saxon words are found only in poetry, which is an indication that they are very ancient formations, going back probably far behind the time of Ulfilas, as may be shown by approaching the question from another direction : the word touta and its congeners entered into many proper names, and when the Eomans had to write these names they represented the Teutonic dental as they did the Gaulish one, as a simple t: wit- ness Caesar's Teutones, Ammianus Marcellinus' Teutomeres, Eutropius' Teutobodus, and Floras' Teutolochus. Now in Teutones or Teutoni we have the plural as given by Eoman authors of the word 'thiudans,' 'thjodann' and 'theoden;' and that a people should have given themselves such a name as Teutones* meaning kings, will surprise 1 Stokes in Kuhn's Beitrcege, i. 451, ii. 107; Becker, ibid. iii. 1G2. 2 Also a parallel of a different etymological origin in the Old Norse fylkir, a poetic word for king, derived from folk ; and the derivation of the word king itself, Anglo-Saxon cgning, is in point, though it involves several difficulties. See Kluge, s. v. Kihiig. 3 The singular of this word would be the Teutonem, which Holder has preferred, in his recent edition of the Germcmia, to the more usual Tuisconem or Tuistonem. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 47 no one who has noticed such Celtic names as that of the Remi, which signified princes ; those of the Caturiges and Catuvellauni, meaning war-kings or battle-princes ; and that of the Bituriges, which actually meant Wei therr scho- ol' lords of the world. This explanation of the origin of the modern term Teutonic is doubtless open to th'e objection of implying that a natural inclination to brag was not quite confined to the Celt.1 Before leaving Lucan's lines about the Gaulish divi- nities, it is right to quote the following words used by an ancient scholiast in reference to the passage : ' The Gauls believe^ Hesus to be Mercury, since he is worshipped by merchants ; and Taranis, the ruler of wars and the greatest of the celestial gods, him who was accustomed formerly to be appeased with human lives, but now glad of those of animals, to be Jupiter.' 2 The scholiast was utterly wrong in the view he took of Hesus, and not much less so in identifying Taranis with the Eoman Jupiter ; but it was probably the result of no similar blunder on his part, that he represents the Gauls assigning to the king of their gods the superintendence of war as his special province. The chief god of the Celts before the rise of the Celtic Mercury was their god of war : how, then, was a Eoman to express this in terms of Latin theology ? 1 Toutates, which the scanning of Lucan's verse would make into Toutotcs, was apparently formed in the same way as the Gaulish Dunates and Dumiates already cited, to which may be added Baginates, to be mentioned presently. 2 The original note will be found in Usener's Lucani Commenta Bernensia (Leipsic, 18G9), p. 32: ' Hesum Mercurium credunt, si quidem a mercatoribus colitur, et praesidem bellorum et caelestium deorum maximum Taranin Iouem adsuetuin olim humanis placari capitibus, nunc uero gaudere pecorum.' 48 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. To be both intelligible and approximately correct, he must either say that, according to the Gauls, Mars was the chief of the gods, or else that Jupiter was the god of war. The latter was the way in which the scholiast chose to put it, and he is supported by certain statues purporting to be those of a Gaulish Jupiter, which repre- sent him as clad like a Eoman warrior in a cuirass and a paludamentum : one such was found at Yaison, while another of colossal dimensions was discovered some ten years ago at Se*guret in the department of Vaucluse.1 1 See the first of M. Gaidoz's Etudes de Mythologie gauloise (Paris, 1886), pp. 5-6 and plate ; also M. Rochetin's article in the Mem. de VAcad. de Vaucluse, 1883, pp. 184 — 189, which I have not been able to consult. Lecture I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. PART II. Mars f continued). All the facts bearing on the history of the Gaulish war-god conspire to prove that he was once the supreme divinity of the Celtic race ; and though it is found con- venient to term him briefly the Celtic Zeus or Jupiter, it would be more correct to speak of him in terms of Eoman theology as a Mars-Jupiter. But the fact of his occupying only the third position of honour in Caesar's time, is weighty evidence to the great progress in the arts of peace and their ideas of a settled mode of life which the Continental Celts had made since the time of their conquering those portions of Europe which they inhabited when they became subject to Eome. The old god associated with the sky was eclipsed by the younger gods, the Gaulish Mercury and the Gaulish Apollo, just as even before the Wicking period Tyr had been cast into the cold shade by the rude glories of Woden, a younger god of a many-sided character. But there were abundant traces in Caesar's time of the past greatness of Toutates, nay as late as that of Lucan in the first century, unless I am mistaken in regarding the fact of E 50 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. his giving Toutates the first place in the lines quoted to yon as no mere accident. The most important evidence, however, is to be found in Caesar's words, which I take the liberty of bringing under your notice again : ' With regard to Mars,' he says, l it is usual for the Gauls, as soon as they have resolved to engage in battle, to vow beforehand to him all the spoils they may take in the war ; so they sacrifice to him all the animals captured, and they 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 tradi- tional custom as to dare either to hide any of the booty at home or to carry any away that has been set aside : in case such a crime is committed, the offender is tortured and most severely punished.' The meaning of these words is quite clear: the god's aid and sympathy, nay his active co-operation, were to be engaged by giving him the spoils which his worshippers took from their enemies, and he who failed to give the god his due was held to bring the divine displeasure on the state, which the criminal thereby rendered liable to defeat and ravage : in other words, he became guilty of the most heinous crime possible against the community. Plenty of parallels may, doubtless, be found among other ancient nations, but I will only call your attention to the familiar case of the Jahveh of the Hebrews as fully described in the Book of Joshua. We read in the 7th chapter that Joshua, in his distress at finding his men defeated in their attack on a small town called Ai, was addressed by the Lord in the following words : ' Israel hath sinned ; yea, they have even transgressed my cove- I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 51 nant which I commanded them : yea, they have even taken of the devoted thing; and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have even pnt it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel cannot stand before their enemies, they turn their backs before their enemies, because they are become accursed : I will not be with you any more, except ye destroy the devoted thing from among you.' The narrative then proceeds to relate how the Lord assisted in discovering the thief who had defrauded him of the shekels and fine raiment which were his : the transgressor proved to be Achan, a man of the tribe of Judah. The sequel reads as follows, beginning with Achan' s confession : ' When I saw among the spoil a goodly Babylonish mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them ; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. So Joshua sent mes- sengers, and they ran unto the tent ; and, behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them from the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto all the children of Israel; and they laid them down before the Lord. And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them up unto the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us ? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones ; and they burned them with fire, and stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great e2 52 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. heap of stones, unto this day ; and the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called, The Valley of Achor, unto this day.' Thus far of Achan's high treason : whether the Gauls would have involved all the members of his family in his terrible death, one cannot say; but it is clear that they would have regarded his transgression in exactly the same light as the Hebrews did ; and Caesar's words suggest the inference that even in his time, when the war-god had been surpassed in popular esteem by the more genial divinities of trade and health, the former still remained the god of the state in a sense in which no other could well have been. It may help us to under- stand the scrupulous regard for the rights of the god of war entertained by the Gauls, the Hebrews and other nations of antiquity, if we look for a moment at the traces of this feeling which manifest themselves among the civilized nations of modern times : I need only allude to the singing of solemn Te Deums after victory, or to our praying in this country that our Queen ' may be strengthened to vanquish and overcome all her enemies,' and to our adorning our cathedrals with the tattered flags of the foreigner. That l the Lord is a man of war' is a sentiment by no means confined to the Song of Moses : it is found to be still a natural one ; and I need only remind you of the poet Wordsworth's ode for the English thanksgiving on the morning of the 18th day of January, 1816, and more especially the following lines : 'The fierce tornado sleeps within Thy courts — He hears the word — he flies — And navies perish in their ports ; I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 53 For Thou art angry with thine enemies ! For these, and for our errors, And sins that paint their terrors, We bow our heads before Thee ; and we laud And magnify Thy name, Almighty God ! But Thy most dreaded instrument, In Avorking out a pure intent, Is man — array 'd for mutual slaughter. Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter ; Thou cloth'st the wicked in their dazzling mail, And by Thy just permission they prevail; Thine arm from peril guards the coasts Of them who in Thy law delight : Thy presence turns the scale of doubtful fight, Tremendous God of battles ! Lord of hosts !' I am quite aware that these utterances have been made the subject of severe criticism; but has any one ever shown that they do not accurately portray the public feeling in this country at the time ? For the parochial picture of the Almighty they expose to our view, the poet drew not so much on his own imagination as on that of a war-wearied people, and the paints were mixed by the confident hand of a self-commending Pharisaism. That the ancient Celts and Teutons should have agreed at one time in making their war-god their greatest divi- nity, or their greatest divinity a war-god, need, then, astonish no one who will bear in mind the ever-present tendency of their descendants to treat in much the same way a God whom they regard as infinitely greater. There are reasons, however, for thinking that the war- like attributes of their war-god never led the ancient Celts wholly to forget the other aspects of his being, though it is not to be denied that, as long as they retained the original habits of the Aryan warrior, the martial qualities of their supreme divinity would be likely to 54 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. attract undue emphasis ; and this state of things among them continued probably a considerable time after a more settled mode of life in a more genial climate had set the Greek mind at liberty freely to develop the many-sided character of the Hellenic god identified with the heavens, who, as the Zeus portrayed by a few masterly touches in the Odyssey, may safely be regarded as the grandest product of heathen theology. Jupiter. An inscription from Morestel, near La Tour-du-Pin, in the department of the Isere, reads: Iovi Baginati, Corinthus Nigidi Aeliani ex vot(o).1 Unfortunately the epithet Baginates, which may or may not be topical, is of unknown origin ; but compare the Zend bagha, c god,' and the 0. Bulgarian bogu, of the same meaning.2 "We are no better off in the case of our next inscription, discovered on a small altar at Yienne : Deo Sucello, Gellia Iucund(a) v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito).3 The dative is likewise written Sucello^ on a stone found at Yverdun in Switzerland. The name of the god occurs also on a silver ring found at York and inscribed with the words Deo Sucelo.5 These inscriptions identify the god with no Eoman divinity ; but that has at last been 1 Rev. Celt. iv. 21; Allmer, iij. 197. 2 Baginates admits also of being derived from the same root as the Latin word fagus, and in that case one might compare the Dodonian Zeus ^yos or ^vyyovaibs : see Overbeck's Griechische Kunstmyfliologie, i. 4. What did the Phrygian epithet of Zevs Baycuos mean 1 8 Rev. Celt. iv. 13; Allmer, ij. 454. 4 Rev. Celt. iv. 14; Mommsen, Jnsc. Helv. jNo. 140. 5 Hiibner, Ephemeris Epigraphica, iij. 313 (No. 181); Rev, Celt. iv. 446. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 55 compensated for by the discovery of a stone at Mainz reading : I(ovi) o(ptimo) m(aximo) Sucaelo, &C1 In spite of the variations in the spelling, the same divinity is probably meant in all these instances, and he is iden- tified by the Mainz monument with Jupiter. It is needless to add that these data do not enable us to guess in what respect Baginates and the other god were supposed to resemble the Eoman Jupiter; nor is it by any means clear how Caesar fixed on the fourth god in his list, the fourth in the order of importance and popularity from the Gaulish point of view, as the one to be placed over against Jupiter. It has some- times been supposed that the thunderbolt must have been the decisive attribute; but M. Gaidoz2 reasoning from the monuments combats that view, and rightly points out that Caesar confined himself to the words, Iovem imperium caelestium tenere, which tell us nothing direct about the thunderbolt. M. Gaidoz, who has written at great length on the Gaulish God of the Sun and the Symbolism of the Wheel, regards Jupiter originally as the god of light par excellence, and as having become by an expansion of his attributes the god of the sky or the heavens. He entertains the same idea of the Gaulish god represented with a wheel in his hand, while he re- gards the thunderbolt as a Eoman accessory, the Gaulish symbol for thunder being undoubtedly the hammer, as among the Teutons.3 His conclusions, then, are that the wheel represents the sun ; that the Gaulish god with 1 Gaidoz, Etudes, p. 105 ; Jahrbilcher des Vereins von Alterthums- freunden im Rheinlande (1882), lxxiv. p. 189 ; Bull, epigr. de la Gaulet iij. (1883), p. 154; iv. (1884), p. 200. 2 Etudes, p. 96. s lb. pp. 93, 96. 56 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. the wheel, whom he identifies with the fourth god in Caesar's list, was the god of the sun; and that, the Romans having no special god of the sun till after Caesar's time, the latter could not avoid identifying him with Jupiter.1 This view deserves to be carefully studied, and may be expected to lead to a better understanding of the original nature of the chief god of the early Aryans, but I am inclined to doubt its applicability to Gaulish mythology so late as the time of Caesar. On the other hand, it can scarcely be denied that a Roman must have always been ready to identify with Jupiter any Gaulish god associated with the phenomenon of thunder, however symbolized. But no one has more accurately estimated the value of such identification than M. Gaidoz : he tells us, for instance, that it would not be made under the influence of scien- tific comparisons ; that it was not writers like Macrobius that saw it done, but Caesar, the soldiers and the Roman colonists in Gaul ; that it took place as the result of reports which could do justice only to one of the attributes of the god concerned ; that it may have been based even on acci- dental resemblances; and that, in a word, the Gaulish religion as known to us is a palimpsest, in which the new writing allows isolated words of the older hand to be read, but not much more.2 Later, in speaking of the whole passage devoted to the Gaulish gods by Caesar, M. Gaidoz urges the same view in words to which I could not do justice without quoting them verbatim : 3 ' En voulant juger la mythologie gauloise d'apres ce texte, je me suis dit plus d'une fois que nous etions dans la situation des sultanes d'Egypte avcc les lecons de 1 JStudes, p. 98. 2 lb. p. 90. 3 lb. p. 91. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 57 musique de Felicien David. C'^tait au Caire, en 1834, pendant un voyage que douze saint-simoniens faisaient en Orient. Le vice-roi demanda a. Felicien David de donner des lecons de musique k ses femmes ; mais pour observer les convenances inusulmanes, Felicien David devait donner les lecons aux ennuques qui les auraient transmises et re'p^te'es ensuite aux sultanes I' In spite of Caesar's words, then, I cannot help re- garding the Gaulish god whom he equated with Jupiter as far from possessing the importance or rank which that equation would suggest ; nor is it improbable, after all, that the phenomenon of thunder was treated as one of the forms of his activity; and at this point something must be said on that subject. The Welsh word for thunder is tar an, which enables us to identify several god-names in ancient inscriptions. One of them was Taraniicus on a monument from Dalmatia, which reads : Iovi Taranuco, Arria Successa v(otum) s(olvit) : l ano- ther was the related form Taranucnus attested by two inscriptions2 on the banks of the Ehine, neither of which alludes to Jupiter by that appellation, nor indeed need they be supposed to have meant him. Both names seem to be derived from a simpler one, Taranus, borne by a divinity identified with thunder ; and Taranuc- nus, in Gaulish Taranucnos, is formed like the Gaulish patronymics Oppianicnos, l son of Oppianos', and Toutis- sicnos, l son of Toutissos.' Treated analogously, we have to interpret Taranucnos as meaning the Son of Taranus, or Thunder. A curious inscription found at Yienne, 1 Berlin Corpus, iii. No. 2804 ; Rev. Celt. v. 385. 2 Brambach, 1589, 1812; Rev. Celt. v. 386. 58 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. the ancient capital of the Allobroges, identifies Jupiter with his thunder and lightning, since it reads : Iovi Fulguri Fulmini.1 Still more important is one found at Chester many years ago, and now preserved in the Ash- molean Museum at Oxford: it begins with a dedica- tion, I(ovi) O(ptimo) M(aximo) Tanaro.2 The Yienne inscription may perhaps be of Celtic origin, but I doubt the Celticity of the other : it should rather be regarded as a monument of the piety of a German in the army at Chester in the year 154, to which it belongs. To begin with, there can be no grave doubt as to the identity, roughly speaking, of Tanaro with the English word thunder, for the Anglo-Saxon thunor, gen. thunres, German donner (for an older donar), and the name of the Norse god Thor, nom. Thorr, gen. Thors, from a stem thonr-. To have identified the god with his thunder cannot have been greatly at variance with the habits of thought ascribed to the Germans of an earlier time, at any rate if one were to be guided by Caesar's statement, vi. 21, as to their positivism : Deorum numero eos solos ducunt, quos cemunt et quorum aperte opibus juvantur, Solem et Vidcanum et Lunam. In any case, the evidence of the name Thor may be relied on. 1 Allmer, ij. p. 426; Rev. Celt. iv. 21, v. 383, where it is given as I. 0. M. Fulguri, &c. 2 Hubner, No. 168. Since writing the above I have found that M. Gaidoz, Etudes de Myth. gaul. p. 97, suggests the same idea as I do as to the nationality of the inscription : I have again examined the stone, and I am obliged to admit that the reading of the god's name is doubtful ; but one thing is certain, namely, that it was never Tarano, as some will have it : that is out of the question. The alter- native reading which the present state of the stone would suggest would be something like Innaro with nn conjoint. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 59 Now that Thor and a Gaulish thunderer have been brought together, they cannot be allowed to part company at once. The former is known to have been credited with possessing a celebrated hammer called Mjolnir, with which he performed his feats of might, and the word is probably of the same origin as the Welsh main, 'to grind ;' Latin molo, 1 1 grind,' molina, l a mill ;' English meal ; and related words, with a certain option between r and I, occur in the Latin martulus, ' a hammer ; ' Old Bulgarian mlatu, the same, mlaMii, i to hammer or beat.' Moreover, as the lightning was the hammer or the bolt of the thunder-god, several of the kindred vocables had that meaning, such as Old Bulgarian mlumj\ Old Prussian mealde, and Welsh ' ment,' singular ' mettten,' ' a light- ning.' Thor's manner of using his mighty hammer was to throw or hurl it ; and a similar idea underlies the Welsh word 'ffuched,' ' ttucheden,' a lightning, which literally means what is cast or thrown, as it comes from the same etymon as ' ttuchio,' * to cast or throw.' Here may be men- tioned three remarkable terms for thunderbolts, recorded by Dr. Pughe in his Dictionary under the word ' nuched:' they are Ceryg y Lluched, ' the stones of the cast or the lightning;' Ceryg y Cythraul, 'the stones of the devil ; ' and Ceryg y Gythreulies, ' the stones of the she-devil.' Before the thunderer's weapon developed into a hammer, it must have been a stone, more nearly resembling Thor's dreaded weapon.1 It was hard, how- ever, for a Eoman to avoid falling into error in regard to the Gaulish thunder-divinities. Thus the wheel-god, 1 Compare the A. -Saxon reference to the thunder 'with the fiery axe' (mid dsere fyrenan secxe) in the Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, ed. Kenable (London, 1848), p. 118, also 177. 60 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. the Celtic Zeus, was, I take it, the greatest of them ; but the hammer-god was also one of the number, and it is he that we appear to have in the fourth Gaulish god in Caesar's enumeration. But the fact of his calling him Jupiter and of the Dalmatian dedication to Jovi Taranuco belong to the misleading identifications so felicitously estimated at their proper value by M. Gaidoz. Had we more information about the Gaulish hammer -god, we should probably find him resembling Thor still more strikingly. We are told1 of the latter that he was a less complex divinity than Woden, that he had a well-marked and individual character, that he was ever associated with Earth, whose son he was, and whose proudest distinction was to be called the mother of Thor. He figures as the friend of man ; he was the husband- man's god, whose wrath and anger were ever directed against the evil powers that injure mortals : his bolt destroyed the foul thick blights that betrayed the pre- sence of the wicked ones, and smote through the huge cloud-masses that seemed to be crushing the earth. Lastly, he was the husband of the golden-haired goddess Sif, in whom one recognizes the corn-field divinity of Ceres. A good deal of this description of Thor would probably have applied equally well to his Gaulish counterpart, and the name or title I am inclined to identify with the latter is that of the second god in Lucan's triad. To begin with its form and pronunciation, it is to be observed that the poet's verse requires the first syllable to be con- sidered long, while some of the manuscripts read JEsus without the aspirate, and, as there is no reason to suppose 1 By Vigfusson and Powell in their Cuvjjus Poeticum Boreale, ij. 463. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 61 the word in its Gaulish form to have had a right to it, Esus may be taken as a more correct spelling. This is proved by one of the inscriptions on an altar dug up at Notre-Dame in Paris, where we have nouns of the second declension written with 0, such as tarvos, l bull,' and CemunnoSj the name of another Gaulish god, while the one which here concerns us duly appears as Esus of the U declension. The fact strongly corroborates the view of Pictet and others who connect Esus with the Sanskrit asu-s, l the breath of life, life both as a force and as a condition;' Zend afihu-s, l a lord or master, also world and place generally,' an/wa, i one's own self or individual existence, the soul ; ' Old Norse ass, genitive dsar, plural cesir, ' gods generally, but more especially the older group of Norse divinities,' to which may be added the Anglo- Saxon genitive plural esa, i of gods.' This identification is of great interest, and I venture to mention one or two particulars of a nature to confirm it : the Norse word points to an original nominative ansu-s, the former existence of which is countenanced by Jordanis' allusion to the title of Amis,1 which the Goths gave to the deified heroes of their race. On the other hand, Sanskrit and Zend give evidence only to a weakened form, asu-s, and it is with this rather than with ansu-s that Esus seems to go, in so far as con- cerns its phonology. For the Celtic languages, not unfrequently setting out with the combination es, cor- responding to as in Sanskrit, modified it by eliding the sibilant and making the vowel into z, which in Welsh mostly represents a vowel etymologically long : the stages would seem to be es, ez, Tz, 1, i, as in the Irish siur or 1 Jordanis de Orlgiae Acbibunque Getarum (ed. Holder), cap. 13, p. 18. 62 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. fiur, 'sister;' Welsh 'chwior-, chwioryd:,' 'sisters;' San- skrit svasdr-as, the same; or Welsh tei, now tai, 'houses,' for tegi ( = teges-a) of the same formation as the Greek o-Teyos or Teyos, 'a roof, a house,' plural (i-eyea) Teyrj. Ac- cording to this conjecture, the Gaulish god's name may have been pronounced Ezus. The word is not known to survive in the modern languages of the Celts as an inde- pendent name, but Welsh has a remarkable derivative from it. For just as Sanskrit asu-s yields asura-s, ' living, spiritual, said especially of the gods, of Varuna, and of the sky; any spirit or non-material being of an evil nature,' and the Zend ahhu or ahu yields ahura-s, 'lord or ruler,' as in Ahuro Mazdao, Old Persian Auramazdd, the Ornmzd of Milton's great epic, so the Gaulish Esu-s may be regarded as having given rise to a derivative esuro-s, which may be detected in the Welsh tor, a word meaning lord or ruler, but seldom applied to any one but God. The term has been reduced to a monosyllable pronounced jor, with a semi-vowel initial indicating, if this equation be well founded, that the first of the three syllables which originally made up the word was not accented by the ancient Celts. A similar remark applies to another title of God in Welsh, namely, Ion, which is of the same origin and meaning as lor, and reminds one of the Old Norse dsynja, ' a goddess.' We may, then, guess the Gaulish divinity's name to have meant lord, ruler or god ; but why should the ham- merer have been called lord or god k«*t Qoxty ? For the present let it suffice that I cite the analogy of Thor, as he likewise was treated as the lord or Anse1 par excellence. 1 Vigfusson & Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, ij. 464 ; Cleasby & Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Die. s. v. ass, which is the Norse form. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 63 The terms 'Anse,' 'the Anse of the Country,' and 'the almighty Anse/ always refer, we are told, to Thor in the Old Norse carmina of oaths and vows : the Swedish word dska, 'lightning, thunder,' is explained to mean the careering of the Anse ; and the first syllable of such proper names as Norse 'Asleikr,' Anglo-Saxon ' Oslac,' Norse 'Asmodr,' Anglo-Saxon 'Osmod:,' and Norse 'As- biorn,' Anglo-Saxon ' Osbeorn,' mod. English ' Osborne,' referred to Thor, as esu- probably did to his Celtic counter- part in Gaulish proper names like Esunertus,1 ' possessed of the might of Esus,' Esugenus, ' offspring of Esus,' and notably Esugenonertus, which must have meant 'endowed with the might of a descendant of Esus,' a term sug- gestive of a class or group of Esugeni, but whether men or gods must remain undecided, though the singular is found to assume mythological importance in its con- tinuators in Irish and Welsh romance, where we detect it in Eogan and Owein respectively.2 It is uncertain whether the Gaulish people of the Esuvii or Esubii men- tioned by Caesar, ii. 34, iii. 7, v. 24, meant by so calling themselves to claim descent from Esus, since the name may simply be derived from esus as a common noun, meaning a lord or ruler, in which case it would signify 1 Htibner, No. 1334, 61 ; Mommsen, Inscr. Helo. No. 80. 2 In living Celtic the s of Esugen- must, according to analogy, be dropped, and Eugen- becomes in Irish Eogan, now written Eoghan, owing to the shifting of the accent forward leaving the vowel of the last syllable neutral, while in early Brythonic the reverse was more nearly the case, and Eugen- was made the basis of a derivative Exigen- ts, whence the Welsh forms Eugein, Euein and Ywein, of which the colloquial form was Owein, now reduced to Owen : compare Welsh bywyd, ' life,' colloquially pronounced bowyd, and the like. The oldest spelling appears to have been Eugein, which was Latinized as Eugenius, just as Anglo-Irish Eoghans call themselves Eugenes. 64 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. the lordly, princely or ruling race, and supply another instance of the brag underlying names of a type already pointed out. Now where the name Esus occurs, it stands written over a figure of the god, which has been carefully studied by a distinguished French archaeologist, M. Eobt. Mowat.1 He describes the bas-relief as representing the god clad in a short tunic, tucked round his waist so as not to im- pede the free action of the body. He brandishes a square, short-hafted axe, with which he is felling or lopping a tree, the lance-like form of the leaves of which show it to be a willow such as must have grown in abundance on the banks and islands of the Seine. M. Mowat classes this figure with the bronze images and bas-reliefs of the god known by his Latin name as Silvanus. Other repre- sentations make him hold in one hand a branch which he has just cut off a tree with a woodman's bill, while a great many monuments give him as his attributes a hammer and a goblet ; but in some instances the goblet is absent, while in others the hammer has smaller ham- mers growing as it were out of it in tree-like fashion : a remarkable specimen2 of this kind has been discovered at Yienne. The goblet and hammer sometimes accom- pany dedications to Silvanus by name ; but the variations are too numerous to be enumerated. One of the most remarkable is an altar at Lyons, which brings the hammer and the billhook together : it shows the god using a billhook with his right hand and supporting himself 1 Bull. Epigr. i. 62—68. 2 Figured and described by M. Anatole de Barthelemy, in the Musee Archeulogique, ij. (1877), p. 8; and in Melusine, col. 353: see also Gaidoz's Etudes, p. 88. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 65 with, the other on a hammer with a long handle, while the goblet stands at his feet. The reasoning of M. Mowat leaves one in no doubt that the Gauls identified Esus with the Eoman god Silvanus, who presided over woodlands, clearings and gardens, together with the shepherds' interests. But one group of this class of images has been the subject of another attribution, which has the weighty authority of M. Gaidoz and M. Cerquand : they see1 in the per- sonage with the hammer and goblet the god of thunder, whose name they take Taranis to have been, and one of the best preserved specimens is a bronze image found at Pr^meaulx in the Cote-d'Or. It is described2 as representing a bearded figure holding a cup in his right hand, while the other grasps the handle of a hammer which stands taller than his own person. His dress con- sists of a short tunic and some kind of closely fitting trousers : his waist is provided with a thick girdle, which one might be tempted to compare with Thor's so-called belt of strength. The Chester dedication to the German thunder -god shows no trace of the hammer, but only a goblet on one side of the inscription and what appears to have been a rose on the other : the monument is unfortunately in a very bad state of preservation. The museums of the Louvre, Saint- Germain, Lyons and Avi- gnon, says M. Mowat, contain more than a score of images 1 Gaidoz, Esquisse, pp. i, 11; Cerquand, Rev. Celt. v. 386. 2 By A. de Barthelemy, Rev. Celt. i. 1 — 8, where the attempt is made to prove the personage meant to have been Dis Pater ; but that is no longer the way to look at the question, since M. Mowat has succeeded in showing that the infernal deity is to be identified with the Gaulish Cernunnos, as will be shown later. F CG I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. of the same type as that of Pr^meaulx; moreover, he states that one was discovered at Metz, and that a ring found at Yendeuil-Caply (Oise) has the same image cut on it. These serve to show that the cult of the god in question was not confined to the south of Gaul. M. Mowat associates all these with Esus as Silvanus, and adds to them a remarkable altar from Ober-Seebach, near Strasbourg, which represents the god supporting himself with his right hand on a hammer with a long handle and holding a cylindrical vase in the other, while to the left at his feet is seen a dog, the habitual companion of Sil- vanus,1 and on the right a female figure in a long robe, with her hand on a cornucopia. In the next place he calls attention to an inscription found at Carlsburg in Transylvania, which reads : Silvano Dom. Terrae Matri, Herculi, Sacrum.2 Both M. Mowat and M. Gaidoz seem to be in the main right, and the solution of the difficulty is to be sought in the character of the Gaulish god, who was in all probability, like Thor, not only the hammerer but also the friend of the farmer, one most laborious part of whose work consisted in cutting down the woods and forests that confined the domain of the ancient plough and hoe : perhaps it would be more correct to regard him as armed with the thunderbolt or hammer as being, and 1 According to M. A. de Barth61emy, the dog lias three heads, so that he treats it as a Cerberus (Rev. Celt. i. 3), and the same view is adopted by M. Flouest (Rev. Arch. 1885, v. 20). An engraving of the altar will be found in the Rev. Arch. 1879, xxxvij. pi. xii, and another in a previous volume, 1854, where M. Chardin also gives the dog three heads, p. 310. 2 Bull, ejrig. de la Gaule, i. 65; Berlin Corpus, iij. 1152, where Mommsen suggests that the second word was meant to be domestico ; but the reading of the letters originally written is difficult. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 67 because of his being, the protector of the farmer. The hammer, doubtless, symbolized thunder and lightning; and possibly the drinking - cup, goblet, vase, poculum, tircens, or whatever you may choose to call it, which has been explained variously as Tibullus' scyphus faginus, Columella's alveolus ligneus, and Vergil's sinum lactis or milk-pail, was the symbol of rain and rustic plenty. The presence of the hammer and the dog, or of the hammer and the woodman's billhook, appropriately represent the two sides of the god's character as the hammerer and the farmer's friend, while the same idea is the key to the meaning of the multiple sledge or branching hammer. In all the images referred to, the god is said to wear a goodnatured face, and seldom to have the hammer in his right hand ready for action : so it may be inferred that he was chiefly invoked as the protector of the farmer and the friend of the woodman. Though he did not habitually brandish his dread hammer, he was still the owner and wielder of the weapon, which he could handle whenever occasion arose: this was possibly uppermost in the mind of the man who, at the end of a success- ful boar-hunt, dedicated a temple to Silvanus Invictus at Stanhope in the county of Durham ; and possibly the application to Silvanus of the adjective Cocidius, usually reserved for the Celtic war-god, was meant to describe a god more closely resembling Thor in his more warlike moods, a Silvanus such as that described by Livy, Hist. Rom. ii. 7, driving the Sabines to flight by the terrifying voice he caused to issue from the forest of Arsia after a contest between the Eomans and Tarquin. The designa- tion Silvanus Cocidius1 occurs in a dedication at House- 1 Hiibner, No. 642. f2 68 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. steads on the Roman "Wall, and it is noteworthy that it was set up by the prefect of a cohort of Tungrians ; but the fact does not prove the god to have been Teutonic : witness the Germans who honoured the Celtic god Maponos in an inscription at Ainstable near Armthwaite : those ancient warriors could have taught a lesson in religious toleration to some of the fanatics of the Teutonic race at the present day. Another instance showing how another Gaulish god was, so to say, split up into two Eoman ones, was brought under your attention in the case of Vintios; and it is not impossible that Hercules in the Carlsburg inscription was meant to stand for Camulos, Toutates, or Segomo, the strong god equated with Mars, in which case, Silvanus Dom(esticus), Terra Mater and Hercules, would be vir- tually Lucan's triad with the order changed. Be that as it may, the analogy of the treatment of Vintios may, I think, be carried further, and I should be inclined on Italian ground to equate Esus not only with Silvanus, but also with the agricultural god Saturn, whose old- world characteristics remind one of Thor as the ' old Anse.' Allusion has been made to the twofold cha- racter of Thor as a thunderer and the farmer's friend, and similarly to Esus ; but this may possibly be an inexact way of describing him, since it would perhaps be preferable, as already suggested, to regard him as armed with the hammer in consequence and by reason of his being looked to as the farmer's friend and protector, his thunder being his means of vanquishing the evil powers constituting the farmer's foes. This would leave us free to suppose that thunder and lightning originally and naturally belonged to the divinity associated with I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. G9 the sky, the divinity with whom the Gauls continued to connect the wind, and to whom a Latin inscription gives the name of 3Iars Vintius. But the god here in question was associated probably not so much with the sky as with the earth ; and hence it is that some of his attri- butes are common to him and the divinity of the earth par excellence, the Gaulish Pluto : so much so, in fact, that M. A. de Barthelemy1 has tried to prove that the god likened by others to Silvanus should be recognized as the Gaulish Dis Pater of whom Caesar speaks. Some- what the same opinion has since then been advocated by another distinguished French archaeologist, M. Flouest.2 He takes a view which seems to me to be more in harmony with the rapid advance made by Gaulish archaeology within recent years in his country, namely, that the identifications suggested by the other writers mentioned are, from the nature of Gaulish theology, in a great measure compatible with one another. Lucan's Esus is not to be disposed of without noticing his Taranis. Some of the manuscripts read Taranns, and the same form might be inferred from Taranucus and Taranucnas already mentioned ; but the existence of Ta- ranus has recently been placed beyond doubt by the discovery in the south of France of a Gaulish inscription3 1 Rev. Celt. i. 1—8. 2 Rev. Arch. v. (1885), 7—30. 8 I owe my information to the kindness of Dr. Stokes, who states that the inscription I allude to in the text was discovered at Orgon, in the Bouches du Rhone. The Brythonic word for thunder is tarcui, masculine in Breton and feminine in Welsh. This taran does not correspond declensionally to Taranis, but it may either to taranus of the U declension, or else to forms of the 0 declension, such as taranos (masc.) or taranon (neut.), with which the Goidelic ones agree, namely, Irish toru?in, 'thunder;' Sc. Gaelic torrunn, the same. These last lan- guages had also toirn, or tairn, of a dilferent declension, of which more 70 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. in which its dative, Tapavoov of the U declension, occurs as the name of a divinity. I should, however, hesitate to substitute Taranus for Taranis in Lucan's verse, as I believe both to have been real names of a divinity asso- ciated with thunder.1 One or both were also probably the Gaulish for thunder itself, and careful study of the cognate Celtio words inclines me to regard Taranis, or Taranus, not as a god but as a goddess, which is coun- tenanced by Lucan's verse in that it institutes a com- parison with a Diana (p. 44). The corresponding Goidelio form appears in an Ograic inscription on a remarkable stone at Ballycrovane, near a bend of the long sea-arm called Kenmare River, in the west of the county of Cork. It reads : 2 / inn ii mi mi it ii m ///// Maq i De c ced das Aw i T o r a n i as. Monuments commemorative of persons styled Mac Decet have been found not only in Munster,but also in the county of Kildare, in Anglesey and even in Devon. Awi is a genitive like the Latin fili (for filii), and the nominative plural would, as in Latin, be of the same form ; further, Aivi ToraniaSj or better Aivi Toranjas (with,; = Eng. y in yes), would, subject to the known laws of Irish phonology, have to become in later times JJi Torna, and the name was borne by a people so-called in the county of Kerry, anon. The rest of the difference between toim and torunn is paralleled by the Irish iarn, ' iron,' which takes also the form of iarann, of the same meaning. 1 See also Cerquand, Rev. Celt. v. 381-8; Mowat, Bull. £pig. i. 123-9. 2 I examined it in 1883, but could not feel quite certain whether Toranias or Turanias was the better reading, though I was inclined to the former. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 71 in a district where Abbey O'Dorney has perpetuated the ancient designation ; while a certain family called O'Cuirres, connected with the barony of Kerrycurrihy in the connty of Cork, are also styled Claim Torna, 1 Children of Toranis,' in an old poem,1 and the name seems to have been pretty widely spread in the king- dom of Munster.2 The genitive Toranjas implies a nominative Toranis, differing only in its o from Lucan's Tar an is, which with its a is probably less original than the Irish one. Now the later form which Toranis should take in Irish would be Toirn, and that is also the nominative which should have as its genitive Torna. But just as the Welsh word givynt, corresponding ety- mologically to Vintios, the name of the Gaulish god associated with the wind, has lost all reference to the divinity, and become simply a masculine noun meaning wind, so Toirn, the Irish equivalent of the older Toranis, Gaulish Taranis, has ceased to be a proper noun, and come down to modern times in the signification of 'a great noise or thunder ; ' and it is noteworthy that it is feminine.3 1 By O'Huidhrin : see The Topographical Poems, edited by O'Dono- van (Dublin, 1862), p. 102, and note lxiv (555). 2 There was also a poet called Torna supposed by some to have lived in the 4th century, and it has become usual to trace the Ui Torna to him as their ancestor. This is probably an error dating from the time when a nominative Torna would be Torna also in the genitive ; the former would presuppose an early Toranjo-s, an adjectival form of the same origin as the words here in question, but parallel with such Latin formations as Jovius, Martius, Veneria, and the like. However, it would matter little here if one were forced to suppose some of the Torna families descended from the poet alluded to ; the rest may still be regarded as deriving their name from Torna = the genitive of Toranjas. 3 O'Reilly's Irish-Eng. Did. s. v. ; see also Foley's English-Irish Did. s. v. thunder. (I I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. Induced by these and the like considerations to regard Taranis as the name of a goddess, I can of course not identify her with Taranucos or Taranucnos. These names I should regard rather as belonging to Esus, and borne by him as the wielder of the hammer or thunderbolt. Taranis would then take her natural place by his side as his associate ; and the mistake, which this way of looking at the question would suppose the ancient scholiast to have committed when he made Taranis into a Gaulish Jupiter (p. 47), becomes easily intelligible. But Zeus was not the only wielder of the thunderbolt even in Greek mythology; both Here and Athene could on occasion make use of that dread missile; and even Typho is known to have handled it, though not with signal success. That the ancestors of the Welsh once associated thunder and lightning with a goddess as well as with a god, is rendered fairly certain by the fact that one of the terms for a thunderbolt is Careg y Gi/threuUes, the Stone of the She- demon. But when we come to the question of the attributes of Taranis, we are embar- rassed by a lack of information ; the analogy, however, of Thor helps one to form a consistent theory. For, as in his case, it may be supposed that the associate of Esus was either the Earth in the character of his mother, or else, more probably, some personification of the same origin, but conceived more like Thor's wife Sif, the Scandinavian Ceres of the yellow corn-field. If, then, the idea has anything in its favour, that Esus — and likewise Thor — was provided by ancient imagination with thunder as a means of defending his friend the shep- herd and farmer, it would be natural also that his associate should possess the same means of repelling the powers I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 73 of evil that attacked the crops ; and it may here be men- tioned, in anticipation of the remarks to be made on Irish mythology later in these lectures, that it represents the corn-field as the chosen battle-ground where the powers favourable to man make war on those other powers that would blight his crops and blast the fruits of his labour. Possibly one would not be far wrong in supposing Artio to have been the companion divinity of Esus, and Taranis one of her names. The goddess Artio has already been noticed as bearing a name kindred with the epithet Artaius of an Allobrogic Mercury (p. 5), and of the same origin as the English Earth, the Teutonic divinity whom Tacitus, in the Germama, cap. xl, calls Mammun Urth&m, i Terrain Matrem? But the name Artio refers especially to plough- ing, and the bas-relief accompanying the inscription on the statue at Berne represents the goddess standing robed and holding a patera in her right hand and fruit in the left, while close by stand an oak and an altar loaded with fruits.1 Minerva. Caesar, in his too brief list of the divinities worshipped by the Gauls, gives the last place to Minerva, to whom he states that they ascribed the initiation of the various trades and arts. What Gaulish goddess he had in view it is impossible to say, and the land of the Allobroges seems to yield no inscription identifying any Gaulish divinity with the Eoman Minerva. But one found at Saint Bertrand de Cominges, in the Haute Garonne, mentions a temple of 1 Mommsen, Inscr. Helv. No. 215, where the inscription is read: Deae Artioni Licinia Sdbinilla. 74 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. Minerva Belisama;1 and we have the same name in its Gaulish form of the dative case, BeA^o-a^i, in the Yaison inscription (p. 46), which commemorates the making of a grove for the goddess by Segomaros. A trace of the goddess' name is to be detected in the cognomen read Belismius2 in a Eoman inscription at Carleon on the Usk ; and Ptolemy gives a river on the west coast of Britain the name BeAto-a/m : it was probably the Eibble. Compare the case of the Dee, which the Welsh always regarded as a goddess, in all probability a goddess of death and war. "Were one to be guided by the apparent similarity of the name Belisama to the first element in that of the god Belatucadros, one might be led to suppose that Belisama's chief concern was war, and that she only resembled Minerva as a war-goddess; but it must be admitted that Caesar's words — Minervam operum atque artificiorum initia tradere — afford no ground for supposing that it was any such a martial Minerva he had in view. Further, if we only turn to Irish literature, we there find traces of exactly such a Celtic goddess as he too briefly mentions : an article in the Irish Glossary, called after the name of Cormac, king-bishop of Cashel in the 9th century, tells us that there was a goddess called Brigit, poetess and seeress, worshipped by the poets of ancient Erinn ; that she was daughter of the Irish god known 1 Orelli, 1431, 1969. The two entries seem, owing to an oversight of the editor's, to represent one and the same inscription. 2 Hiibner, No. 97. Belismius is the reading adopted by Hiibner, but it is not at all certain: see Lee's Iaca Silurum, pp. 19 — 21, pi. viii. 1, where he reads Belisimnus. What one would expect is Beli- samius, Belisemius or even Belisimius. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 75 as Dagda the Great ; and that she had two sisters who were also called Brigit, the one the patroness of the healing art, and the other of smith- work.1 This means, in other words, that the Goidels formerly worshipped a Minerva called Brigit, who presided over the three chief professions known in Erinn: to her province in fact might be said to belong just what Caesar terms operum atque artificiorum initia. How largely the prestige of the goddess helped to make the fortune of the saint who took her name, St. Bridget or Bride, it would perhaps be difficult to say, and I pass on to the name Brigit, which makes in the genitive Brigte. This implies an early Goidelic nominative Brigenti, and enables us to identify a presumably corresponding goddess in the Brigantia2 of Latin inscriptions found here, namely in the country of her namesakes the Brigantes.3 Add to this that a Gaulish inscription found at Volnay, near Beaune, reads : Iccavos Oppianicnos ieuru Brigindoni cantalon.4 This literally means that Iccavos, son of Oppianos, made for Brigindo something denoted by the accusative cantalon 1 Three Irish Glossaries, ed. by Stokes (London, 1862), p. 8, and O'Donovan's translation of Cormac's Glossary, ed. by the same scholar (Calcutta, 1868), p. 23. 2 Stokes's Three Ir. Gloss, p. xxxiii ; M. d'A. de Jubainville's Cycle Mythol. p. 146; Rhys's Celt. Brit. p. 282. 3 One comes from Doncaster, and one from the neighbourhood of Leeds ; the other two belong to the line of the Roman Wall in Cum- berland, and to Middleby in Scotland respectively : they are numbered 200, 203, 875 and 1062 in Hiibner's volume of the Berlin Corpus. The last mentioned is, unfortunately, the only one which preserves the name of the goddess in full. Thurneysen, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxxviij. 146, equates the name with the Sanskrit 'Brihatf,' 'die hohe.' 4 De Belloguet's Ethnogenie gauloise2, i. 289 ; Stokes' Celtic Declen- sion (Gbttingen, 1886), p. 67. 76 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. a word of unknown meaning. In Brigindo we have the name of a divinity probably the Gaulish counterpart of Brigit. If one may trust these conjectures, we have before us traces of a goddess whose cult was practised in Gaul, in Britain and in the sister island, one whose attributes, so far as we know anything about them, favour the con- jecture that she was the Celtic divinity mentioned by Ceesar. To the threefold name here ascribed her by way of conjecture, should be added that Brigit was also called Brig ; l in fact, this last seems to have been a favourite Irish name for genius personified : thus there was a Brig Brethach,2 whose epithet meant judicial, relating to ver- dicts or the giving of judgment ; while a mythic poet and chief judge of Ulster called Sencha had a daughter Brig, whose business it was to criticize and correct her father's errors : this Egeria closely resembles, it will be seen, one of the Brigits daughters of the Dagda. In brief, the word brig meant in Irish pre-eminent power or influ- ence, authority or high esteem ; while Welsh has reduced the word to bri, ' renown or high estimation.' Among other words related to the names here in question may be mentioned the "Welsh word braint, for an earlier breint, still earlier bryeint, which also occurs, and represents, as it is a feminine, an ancient Brythonic form brigantja, identical with that of the goddess Brigantia of the inscrip- tions. The Welsh braint means prerogative or privilege, which, involving the idea of power not shared in by 1 For instance, in the British Museum MS., Harl. 5280, fol. 68 a. 2 See Sullivan's note, p. clxxi of the introductory volume to O'Curry's Manners, &c. ; O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 46 ; Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 266 (§ 28). A Brig Briuguid is alluded to in the Senclms Mar. i. 144. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 77 all, agrees well enough with the meaning here suggested for Brigantia. The name of the Brigantes was doubtless of the same origin, as was also the old Cornish adjective brentyn or bryntyn, ' noble, free,' a word represented in "Welsh by brenhin, 'king,' for an older breenhin, which would imply an early form brigantinos.1 The idea ori- ginally expressed by all these words was that of power or greatness of some kind, whence the derivative ones of freedom, nobility, authority and prerogative ; and, so far as we can judge, her names of this origin correctly described the goddess in whom the power of initiating and teaching the arts was supposed to reside, the Minerva of the Celts. Dis. Caesar, in his brief list of the gods worshipped by the Gauls, makes no allusion to Dis; but in a subsequent passage he states, vi. 18, that they believed themselves descended from Dis Pater, a doctrine which, according to him, the druids had taught them. For this reason also they measured the lapse of time not by days but by nights, and calculated the dates of their birthdays, together with the beginnings of their months and years, in such a way as to make the night precede the day. It is remarkable that the territory of the Allobroges is not known to supply a single inscription equating any Gaulish god with Dis, and so far it would seem as though one might construe Caesar's silence into evi- dence that the Gaulish Dis was not worshipped. That would, however, be an error, and Caesar's treatment of him is perhaps to be ascribed to the Eoman view of Dis as a sombre and inexorable deity honoured on the coasts 1 See Celt. Britain2, p. 282. 78 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. of the Mediterranean with, comparatively few altars : be that as it may, French archaeology has succeeded in iden- tifying the Gaulish god, and in showing at the same time that his cult had very firm hold on the Gaulish mind. M. Mowat1 is again our guide to the interpretation of another of the early Gallo-Eoman altars dug up in Paris, namely, one with the figure of the god surmounted by his name, which in its perfect state is known to have read Cemun- nos, a kindred form of which occurs on a wax tablet at Pesth in a mention of a funerary college holding its meetings in the temple of a Jupiter Cemenus? In this last one cannot help recognizing a chthonian divinity corresponding to the Jupiter Stygius of the Eomans. The form Cemunnos and the Latinized one Cemenus contain the common stem cern-, which may be assumed to be of the same origin as the native words for the Gaulish horn or trumpet, variously given by Greek writers3 as xdpvov and Kdpwg : the "Welsh and Irish form is corn, of the same etymology and meaning as the Latin comu, English horn. How this name suits the god, a glance at the Paris altar suffices to explain ; for underneath the word Cemunnos is to be seen, bearded and clothed, a central figure whose forehead is adorned with the two horns4 of a stag, from each of which hangs a torque. The 1 Bull. JEpigr. de la Gaule, i. Ill — 116. 2 Ibid. p. 113 j Orelli-Henzen, No. 6087; B. Corpus, Vol. iii. p. 926. 3 Hesychius, Kapvov • rr)v o-aA.7riyya. TaXaTai ; and Eustathius (Leipsic, 1829), ad Homeri II. 1139, 57, K.apw£. 4 With the Gaulish divinities of this kind M. d'Arhois de Jubain- ville would compare, Cycle Myth. p. 384, an Irish Buarainech, which he renders 'a la figure de vache :' the person so called is said to have been the father of Balor. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 79 monument is unfortunately in a bad state of preserva- tion ; but the head and shoulders are on such a large scale as compared with the other figures on the same block, that the god cannot have been represented as standing or even as sitting on a raised seat : in fact there is no alternative but to suppose, with M. Mowat,1 that the god was seated cross-legged on the ground, like Buddha. Granted that posture, we are at once led to connect the whole figure with certain well-known sculp- tures representing a horned, squatting divinity, such as those found at Eheims, at Saintes,2 the chief town of Charente-Infe'rieure, and at Vendceuvres-en-Brenne. The last, which is preserved at Chateauroux, in the depart- ment of the Indre, represents the god holding a follis or sack in his lap, and on either side there stand two figures of a diminutive Genius, with their feet planted on the coils of a serpent, while each grasps with one hand either horn of the central personage : the other hand of the one Genius holds a torque, and that of his fellow a purse. A contiguous face of the block shows an Apollo Citharoedus sitting in the posture illustrated by a colossal statue of him at Entrain,3 in the Mevre. The Eheims monument4 1 Bull. Epigr. i. 111-2. 3 L'Autel de Saintes et les Triades gaidoises is the title of an able and copiously illustrated account of the most important monuments representing the Gaulish Pluto, by the well-known keeper of the museum at Saint-Germain, M. Alex. Bertrand, in the Revue Archeolo- gique for 1880 : I refer here more especially to the offprint, published in Paris in 1880 : see pp. 1, 7, 38; also the Rev. Arch, for 1882, xliij, p. 322, and plate ix. 3 Bull. Epigr. ibid. ; also Les Antiquites d' Entrain, by M. de Ville- fosse, which I have not been able to consult. 4 Bull. Apigr. ibid. ; Bertrand, pp. 7, 8. 80 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. represents the horned god squatting on a seat between Apollo and Mercury, who have to stand : in the bend of his left arm, which rests on his knee, Cernunnos holds a bag, from which he pours forth a profusion of acorns or beech-mast,1 which he helps out with his right hand; they drop down between an ox and a stag, figured below in an attitude of attention ; while a rat has been carved above the god's head on the tympanum of the pediment, a detail thought to be of significance, seeing that it is an animal dwelling underground. Lastly, the block from Saintes2 has the unusual feature of displaying two groups carved back to back on opposite faces of the stone. In both cases the squatting god holds a torque in his right hand and in the other a purse or bag, which is supported on his knee. He appears to be Cernunnos, though the horns are no longer there to prove his identity, as the monument is imperfect. In the principal bas-relief, his associate sits on a seat near him, with a cornucopia resting on her left arm, while a little female divinity stands close to her. The bas-relief on the opposite face of the block shows the god squatting on a base ornamented with two bucrania : to the left, on a base with a single bucranium, stands a naked god, who supports himself on a club ; and on the right, on a base devoid of ornament, stands a goddess in a long robe. It is to be noted that the squatting attitude of the god in these instances has been observed also in the case of a little bronze figure discovered at Autun, now in the 1 Bertrand, p. 7, pi. xi. Why M. Mowat regards the contents of the bag which the god empties as pieces of money (Bull. Epigr. i. 11") I do not exactly understand. 2 Bull. Jipigr. ibid. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON". 81 museum at Saint-Germain, and in that of certain Gaulish coins, on one side of which is seen a squatting figure holding a torque in its right hand.1 Such are some of the principal data for our purpose, and from them I infer that, like Dis and Pluto, Cer- nunnos was the god of the dead or the nether world. As a corollary, we may regard all three as the gods of riches or the lords of the metallic wealth of the world : this role of the classical deities is indicated by their names. Thus Pluto, in Greek UXovrw^ is derived from ttAoutos, ' wealth,' just as Dis, genitive Ditis, is supposed to be a contraction of dives, gen. divitis, 'wealthy ;' though the name Cernunnos did not, at least directly, connote wealth of any kind, the attributes of the god, such as the money-bag and the torques, than which no symbols more expressive of wealth were known to the Gauls, amply made up for it; it appears they also conveyed much the same meaning to the minds of the Germans and the Romans.2 There are at least two questions which will have occur- red to you respecting the Gaulish Dis : why he squatted 1 It is worth mentioning, as bearing on the question of the distribu- tion of the statues of the god, that a mutilated one of him was dis- covered in the department of the Puy de Dome in the year 1833 : if not again lost, it should be now in the museum at Clermont. I owe this information to a notice by M. Gaidoz in the Rev. Arch, for 1880, iv. 299—301. See also the Rev. Arch, for 1882, xliij. 125, where the wide distribution of the tricephal has induced M. Movvat to declare for the improbable hypothesis, that it was after all but the Roman Janus more or less completely naturalized in Gaul. 2 Mowat, Bull. Ejpigr. de la Gaule, i. 114-5, where he gives, besides other authorities, Diod. Siculus, v. 27 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiij. 10, and others ; also sundry coins and inscriptions. G 82 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. and why lie had horns. M. Mowat would answer the first by showing that the squatting position was familiar to the Gauls, as proved by more than one ancient author ;x whence it was that they thought proper to give some of their gods, and especially the one whom they regarded as their universal parent, an attitude which was familiar to them and characteristic of their race; so they also represented him wearing the sagum ; other gods might take to Eoman ways, but he must remain true to old- fashioned Gaul. With regard to the horns, the same archaeologist would account for them by suggesting that the Amalthean horn had, in the form of a cornucopia, single or double, everywhere become the emblem of abun- dance, and further that the Gauls were in the habit of using the cornucopia as an ornament for the head.2 Nei- ther answer can be said to go far enough, for it seems probable that both the squatting posture and the horns had a mythological signification reaching back beyond the history of the Celts as a distinct branch of the Aryan family, though we may never be able to find out its precise meaning. Fortunately there remains one source of light on the genesis and history of Cernunnos which no one, so far as I know, has tried, namely, Teutonic and especially Norse mythology. At the very threshold of the latter, one's eyes light at once on an ancient god, Heimdal, the allusions to whom are, so to say, so scanty that Norse students have never been able to draw a complete or consistent picture of him. This god is briefly described 1 Strabo, iv. 4,3; Diod. Sic. v. 28. 2 Bull. Epigr. de la Gaule, i. 115 ; Diod. Sic. v. 30. T. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 83 by Yigf usson and Powell l as follows : ' An ancient god is Heimdal, from whom the Amals spring. There are strange lost myths connected with him ; his struggle with Loki for the Brisinga necklace ; the fight in which they fought in the shape of seals. He is ' the gods' warder,' dwelling on the gods' path, the Eainbow. There he sits, 'the white god,' 'the wind-listening god,' whose ears are so sharp that he hears the grass grow in the fields and the wool on the sheep's backs, with his Blast- horn, whose trumpet-sound will ring through the nine worlds, for in the later legends he has some of the attri- butes of the Angel of the Last Trumpet. His teeth are of gold ; hence he is ' stud-endowed.' Curious genealo- gical myths attach themselves to him. He is styled the son of nine mothers ; and as Eig's father, or Eig himself, the 'walking or wandering god,' he is the father of men and the sire of kings, and of earls and ceorls and thralls alike. His own name is epithetic, perhaps the World-bow. The meaning of Hallinskidi [another name of his] is obscure.' Such is a summary of the most important pas- sages referring to Heimdal. The classics picture Pluto holding in his hands the keys of the nether world, from whose bourne no mortal returns, and Heimdal survived to be transformed into St. Peter with the keys : previous to this, his last stage, he was the porter, watchman or warder of the gods, and as such Loki, the enfant terrible of Norse mythology, makes fun of him sitting in the rain ; but this view of the northern gods living together and having occasion for a warder at their gates, is a comparatively late one. So it may be inferred 1 In their Corjnis Poeticvm Boreale, ij. 465. g2 84 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. that one of Heimdal's earlier occupations was to sit at the entrance to the nether world, which position, besides partly accounting for his reputation as the most stupid of the gods, might legitimately be compared with the squatting of Cernunnos : Pluto also sat, but it is said to have been on a throne of sulphur. Heimdal was a stud-endowed god, with teeth of gold, which clearly involves an allusion to the metallic wealth of the earth so pointedly symbolized in the representations of Cernunnos. They were both in all probability also the guardians of treasure ; and it is in this capacity, doubtless, that Heimdal fought with Loki in his attempt to steal the Brisinga necklace, which was the property of the goddess Freija. But you will perhaps ask whether the fact that Heimdal was called the whitest of the Anses does not overthrow all these speculations. On the contrary, if we examine Welsh literature, we find the king of the fairies and the hunts- man who fetches to his abode the souls of the deceased, named Givyn, that is to say White. It is known that the ruling families among both Celts and Teutons claimed descent from particular gods, a fact seemingly contradictory of Caesar's statement that the Gauls believed themselves the descendants of their native Dis ; but, as in the case of Heimdal, who was reckoned by the Norsemen to be the father of all classes of men, kings and thralls alike, the two views were in a manner consistent, the special descent of the heads of particular families from particular deities being not so much contra- dicted as covered by the general descent from the god of the nether world. The notion that their Pluto was reckoned by the Gauls thefons et origo of all things, the gods included, is countenanced by Caesar's words, which I. THE GAULISH PAXTHE0N. 85 connected with the god the Gaulish habit of reckoning the night before the day ; but precedence was also given the night by the ancient Germans, as we are expressly told by Tacitus in his Cfermania, cap. xi. ; and they did so most likely for the same reason as the Celts, who considered night and death to have existed before light and life. This would explain the myth describing how Heimdal was in the beginning of days born of nine giant maidens, nine sisters or nine mothers, in whom we may see a reference to a nonary week : thus Heimdal proves to be the first offspring of time. His name must have been epithetic ; but he had other names, which, together with his blast-horn, remind one of the horned Cernunnos : I allude to Hallinskicti and Heimdali, both of which are said to mean a ram, which suggests that Heimdal was originally represented as a ram. That he was horned is implied likewise by a curious term in Norse poetry for a man's head, namely, ' Heimdal's sword : ' Gretti the Strong so speaks : of his own head, and it called forth the explanation that Heimdal had some time or other fought in Samson-like fashion with somebody's head as his weapon; but as it is not called a club or hammer, but hjorr, which meant a sword, also a missile weapon, and even a shield, it is highly probable that the original myth represented him as fighting with no head but his own, the horns on which served him for sword, spear and shield all at once. A jpropos of Heimdal as a ram, the fact should perhaps be mentioned that the Celtic Pluto and his associate frequently have as one of their attributes a serpent or two with a ram's head.2 1 Corpus Pod. Bar. ij. 114. 2 Bertram!, pp. 10, 28—31. 86 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. On the Rheims monument Cernunnos has below him, as we have already seen, a stag and an ox, while the Saintes monument has on it several bucrania : both stag and ox were probably animals sacred to the god, and I am inclined to see a reference to him in the bull repre- sented on the western face of the Gallo-Eoman altar1 in Paris. It bears no god's image or name, but the figure of a bull, with three cranes standing on him, one on his head, one on his withers, and a third on his rump, while above are to be read Tarvos* Teigaranvs*,2 which doubtless mean a ' three-craned bull.' The beast cannot be regarded as exactly representing the god, as he is adorned with a dorsuale.5 which marks him out as a victim to be sacrificed : the cranes were probably viewed in the same light, but it is right to add that their number was presumably not a matter of accident ; for the idea of a triad appears to have played as important a role in ancient Gaul4 as in Ireland and Wales. Now with respect to Jupiter, the bull and the birds occupy on the block exactly the place which they should in case they referred to Cernunnos ; and the reason why his victims take up the room where his own figure might be expected, is probably to be sought in some religious scruple or artistic difficulty which prevented the sculptor from portraying this god, who was so unlike the others as 1 It is the one with the name and figure of Esus on its northern face, while its principal face looking towards the east hears the figure and name of Iovis, and the southern one those of Volcanvs : see the Bull. Epigr. i. pp. 60, 61, 68. 2 See Stokes's reading in the Academy for Sept. 25, 1886, p. 210 a. 3 This also is a discovery of M. Mbwat's, ibid. pp. 68 — 70. 4 Bertrand, pp. 20, 33-9. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 87 regards both form and posture. Possibly the early date of the altar would warrant our supposing that the bold step had not as yet been taken of attempting any kind of image, at least in northern Gaul, of this unwieldy divinity, whom Gaulish theology had hardly succeeded in anthropomorphizing sufficiently to fit him to figure in a group bearing the stamp of Eoman respectability. All the facts at our disposal tend to show that the chthonian deity of Celts and Teutons was held to have the form of a horned beast, such as a stag, bull, goat or ram, and it is now needless to show why one cannot accept the conventional cornucopia as an adequate expla- nation of that idea. At the same time it would be rash to say that they had no connection with one another, for the usual account of the Cornu Copiae, or horn of plenty, traces it back to the Greek Kepas 'A/iaA0«as or horn of the goat Amaltheia, from which Zeus was nourished, and in which was to be found all that one could desire. Here we have also a horned beast older than Zeus, and the form of the myth does not compel us to assume that the goat was originally regarded as a she-goat : so it is pos- sible that the Amalthean goat and the horned deities are to be referred to a common origin. This would, however, not be any answer to the ques- tion whence the idea of a horned god of the nether world was derived ; one might, for example, look for it in a still cruder manner of regarding him not only as the first offspring of time, but also as the first in point of order in space — that is, as the foundation and upholder of the mass of the universe. In that capacity he may have been originally pictured as a huge elk or a gigantic urus sitting quietly under the weight of the 88 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. world, save when he shook himself and produced earth- quakes. Such a piece of cosmogony would not be without a parallel elsewhere, and it calls to mind such a Gaulish proper name as TJrogenonertus^ which may be interpreted to mean a man 'endowed with or possessed of the might of an TJrogen, that is, of a descendant of UrusJ which possibly meant more than the mere beast described by Caesar as living in the great forests of Germany. Having due regard, however, to the god's connection or identity with the earth, that is to say with the solid ground, one should rather suppose the horns, with which the god was endowed, to be the mythical exponents of the hills and mountains which diversify the surface of the globe. After this digression, let us return to the data pro- vided us by French archseology : the monuments I have described associate with Cernunnos certain other and younger gods who cluster round him like children by the side of their father. Among others we have found Apollo and Mercury in his company, and there would be no difficulty in explaining this grouping. Thus the Gaulish Apollo was especially connected with, and wor- shipped near, the mineral springs of the country, those perennial sources of health which poured forth their invigorating volume from the deep realm of Cernunnos ; and as to Mercury, who was, among other things, the genius of commerce and money -making, much of his stock in trade, so to say, belonged to the same chthonian deity as the owner and dispenser of the metallic wealth of the world. Another of the figures associated with Cernunnos is represented with a club, which, if meant 1 Gliick's Keltischen Namen, p. 97. I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. 89 for a Heracles, would remind one of the Greek myth which makes the god of that name assist Atlas in bearing the burden of the superincumbent world ; but it must be confessed that the groupings alluded to are open to the suspicion of having been made in some measure under the influence of classical ideas, including possibly that of the Greek mysteries. There remains the associate of Cernunnos on the Saintes monument, where she is represented sitting in the ordinary way near to the cross-legged god : she has a cornucopia, which implies that she was regarded there as a benignant goddess ; but beyond that, one knows nothing about her, not even whether she should be regarded as identical with the goddess standing on the other face of the stone. But with one or both of these goddesses may perhaps be compared a divinity that figures in the Irish and Welsh pedigrees of the gods. Her Irish name was Danu or Donu, genitive Danaun or Douann 1 (also written with nd for nn). She is treated as a goddess par excellence, in Irish dea, of which the genitive had various forms, such as de, dee, dei, dea and dae. So the Irish gods, who are reckoned her descendants, are promiscuously called Tnatha De Danann, 'the Tribes of (the) Goddess Danu,' Taath Dea or Dei, 'the Tribe of (the) Goddess,' and Fir Dea, ' the Men of (the) Goddess.' In Welsh her name takes the form Don, and the gods descended from her are accordingly called the Children of Don. The more important of them will come under our notice as we go 1 The consonantal declension was always liable to be replaced, so we have Donand and Danann used in the nominative, whence a new genitive, Danainne, was sometimes made. See O'Donovan's note, Four Masters, A.M. 3450 (i. p. 23), A.D. 112-1 (ij. p. 1020). 90 I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON. on: they are Gwydion son of Don, Gilvaethwy son of Don, Amaethon son of Don, Govynion or, as he is more usually called, Govannon son of Don, the smith, whose name is etymologically equivalent to Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, that of the smith of the Tuatha De* Danann, and Aranrod or Arianrhod, daughter of Don. Their father is not usually mentioned, but Arianrhod is called daughter of Beli in the Welsh Triads1 (i. 40 = ii.5), whence it may be inferred that Beli was reckoned Don's husband. He is usually called Beli the Great, son of Mynogan,2 and his name figures as that of the king of the Brythons in the golden age of their mythic history. It is also doubtless to be identified with that of Bile, father of Mile3 and of most of the human inhabitants of Ireland as distinguished from gods and demons. But Bile is fabled to have been king of Spain, so that his descendants are described invading Ireland from Spain : what could that mean ? Now visits by the heroes of the Brythons to Hades are, as we shall see in a later lecture, sometimes repre- sented as made to Ireland, and the heroes of Ireland setting out for a similar destination are conversely said to come to Britain. But in some instances Spain appears to have been substituted for Hades. Thus a mythic dog forming a terrible Cerberus killed by the sun-hero Cuchulainn is 1 The reference is to the Triads published in three versions in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (London, 1801), Vol. ij. pp. 1 — 22. Version ij. is from the Red Book of Hergest, and has been published by me in the Cymmrodor, Vol. iij. 52 — 61 : it now forms an appendix to the R. B. Mabinogion, pp. 297—309. 2 Nennius calls him Bellinus, son of Minocannus, and makes him king of Britain in the time of Caesar, with whom he fights : see San- Marte's Nennius § Gildas, pp. 40-1 (§ 1 9). 3 Bk. of Leinater, 4, llavo,' and the A. -Saxon nicor, 'a water-monster,' Mod. Eng. Nick, Ger. Nix, 'the water-spirit.' 3 Gwawl is the name of a solar hero in the Welsh Mabinogi which is called after Manawydan, son of Llyr : see R. B. Mabiiiogion, pp. 12—16, 57. 124 II. THE ZEUS OF signification, in which case Nnada Finnfdil should be rendered Nuada of the White Light. This would fit still better as one of the names of a god of the origin which I have ventured to ascribe to Nuada of the Silver Hand, that is to say, to a divinity of the sun and of light. The epithet appears as an independent name in the case of a place called Ath Finnfdil, or Finnfal's Ford, the site of which is not exactly known ; but Prof. O'Curry guessed it1 to have been somewhere not far from Beg Eire, or Little Erinn, an islet in the bay of Wexford, now known as Beggery Island, but anciently called, according to the same authority, Info Fail, or the Island of Fal. More usually the designation Inis Fdl refers to Ireland itself, which was also sometimes termed Mag Fail,'1 l Fal's Plain or Field.' In these instances I take Fdl and Finn- fdl to be names of the god ; nor is it other than natural that the country should be called the island or the plain of its chief god, especially if it be correct to regard him as originally the god of the sun and of light. At the same time his owning or inhabiting an islet on the east coast, such as the one near Wexford, becomes intelligible : from certain points on the mainland, the sun might be fancied to commence his daily journeys from a sea-girt isle ; and the complement of that fancy 1 In a note to his text of an ancient poem containing an allusion in point, MS. Mat. pp. 480-1, where he has had printed Ath Finn Fail, 'the fair (or white) Ford of Fal.' In inis find fail (Bk. of Leinster, 8a) means 'in the fair Island of Fal,' but were one to read Findfdil, it would be 'in the Island of Finnfal.' 2 Bk. of the Dun, p. 131, where Fail is once written fail and once fail, but to assonate both times with mdir, ' magni.' The passages will be found in Windisch's Irische Tezte, pp. 132-3, and in O'Curry, iij. 191. THE INSULAR CELTS. 125 would be to call that spot after him the Isle of Fal. It is needless to say more at present on this subject, as the discussion of the myths associated with the name of Merlin will afford us an opportunity of looking at it from another point of view. NODENS, NUD AND LLUD. The god's Irish name Nuada assumes on Brythonic ground the form of Nodens, genitive Nodcntis, to be found in Latin inscriptions, of which more anon. One of the forms in which this survives in Welsh literature is 'Nuct,' but the mythic personage of that name is not known as the subject of any story like that of Nuada, and the more complete counterpart of Nuada is to be recognized in a mythical "Welsh king, called Lluct Llawereint, or Lliict of the Silver Hand, where we detect the story in question compressed into the epithet Llaivereint, or Silver-handed. It is important to observe that the elements of the compound are differently ar- ranged in the two languages : in Irish, an approach is made, as it were, to Argented Manu, but in Welsh rather to Mann Argented. Now the name Lluct Llawereint, put back to its early form, would be Lodens Ldm.argentjos, in which one could not help recognizing a modification of Nodens Ldmargenfjos, subjected to the influence of the analogy of personal names with alliterative epithets. Thus, for the Irish Nuada and the inscriptional Nodens, Welsh has, thanks to alliteration, the two names Nuct and Lluct. This latter is well known in English in the name of ' King Lud,' and from the same ' Lluct,' or rather its antecedent Lodens, come Lothus and the Loth or Lot of the Arthurian romances. 126 II. THE ZEUS OF A few words must now be said of the worship of Nodens in Eoman times. The remains of his temple have been found at Lydney, on the western bank of the Severn, in the territory of the ancient Silures.1 One inscription there calls him Devo Nodenti, in the dative case, while another reads D. M. Nodonti, and a third Deo Nudente 31. Moreover, the mosaic floor of his temple is said to show, besides a variety of figures, an inscription which would seem to have commenced with D. M. ; but it is unfortunate that nowhere has the word represented by the M been found written in full : the consequence is, that it has been differently treated, some making it into maximo or magno, and others into Marti. The former is not duly supported by the analogy of other Eoman inscriptions, while the latter, which is the one suggested by Dr. Hiibner,2 the editor of the Prussian Academy's volume of Latin inscriptions occurring in this country, is probably the correct one. But though it is right to regard the Silurian god as a Mars, most of the remains of antiquity connected with his temple make him a sort of Neptune. The following are worthy of notice : the mosaic floor displayed not only the inscription alluded to, but also representations of sea-serpents or the irfpea. accompanying Glaucus in Greek mythology, and fishes supposed to stand for the salmon 1 The whole has been described in a volume entitled, Roman Anti- quities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, being a posthumous work of the Rev. William Hiley Bathurst, M.A., with Notes by C. "W. King, M.A. (London, 1879), pp. vii, 127, cr. octavo, with numerous plates. 2 Nos. 137 — 141: see also a paper by the same scholar on the Sanctuary of Nodens in the Jahrbuch des Vereius fur Alterthumsfor- schung im Iiheinlande, lxvii. pp. 29 — 46. THE INSULAR CELTS. 127 of the Severn ; moreover, an ugly band of red, within the lines of the inscription, surrounded the mouth of a funnel leading into the ground beneath ; this hole is supposed to have been used for libations to the god.1 Further, a small plaque of bronze found on the spot gives us pro- bably a representation of the god himself. The principal figure thereon is a youthful deity crowned with rays like Phoebus : he stands in a chariot drawn by four horses, like the Roman Neptune. On either side the winds are typified by a winged genius floating along, and the rest of the space is left to two Tritons ; while a detached piece probably of the same bronze represents another Triton, also a fisherman who has just succeeded in hooking a salmon.2 Moreover, the site on a hilly ground near the tidal bed of the Severn makes likewise for the divinity's connection with the world of waters. The temple to whose remains I have alluded was undoubtedly con- structed under Eoman auspices, but it is equally probable that the god was worshipped and consulted on the spot long before the Eomans first crossed the Severn. The oldest form of the god's name known to epigraphy is, as we have seen, Nodens, for which we have in Welsh the two forms Nud: and Llud: ; but "Welsh literature, it must be admitted, recognizes no connection between them. Nevertheless, the original identity of the names warrants us in combining the attributes of the personages called Niid and Llud: respectively, in the attempt to repro- duce the character of the god in something like its original 1 I visited Lydney a few years ago, but I could not see the mosaic floor ; and unfortunately the inscriptions I was anxious to examine happened to be locked up in a glass-case. 2 King, pp. 22-3, 39, 40, and passim ; also plates viii, xiii. 128 II. THE ZEUS OF completeness. Now nothing hardly is known of Nud: except that a Welsh Triad styles him one of the Three Generous Heroes of the Isle of Britain,1 and that, accord- ing to another Triad,2 he had a herd of cattle consisting of no less than 21,000 milch-cows, as to which it cannot be considered certain, whether or not they should be in- terpreted to mean the monsters of the deep ; but Nu&'s generosity is doubtless to be added to the attributes of the god as represented at Lydney. Nor is it improbable that the name Nodens referred originally to that quality, though it would seem as if it were to be interpreted ' the rich or wealthy ' god ; 3 but I should prefer supposing it to have had the causative meaning of one who enabled others to enjoy riches and wealth, especially in the matter of cattle — one, in fact, who was supposed to be the giver of wealth, whence his traditional character for generosity. But all this must be considered highly conjectural until a related Celtic word is identified. The other name representing that of Nodens in "Welsh, as already stated, is ' Llud,' with which, or an earlier form of it, such as Lodens, should be connected the 1 i. 8 = ii. 32 = Hi. 30. 2 iii. 85. 3 Nodens looks like a participle belonging to a strong or primitive verb, but no verb that would satisfy the conditions happens to be known to me in Celtic ; the Teutonic languages, however, supply one, as will be at once recognized in the German ge-niessen, ge-noss, ge-nossen, • to eat, drink, enjoy, or have the use of,' Gothic niutan, naut, nutum, of much the same meaning, as was the case also with the Anglo-Saxon neotan and the Norse njdta; and among the related nouns may be mentioned the Norse naut, 'a head of cattle, a horned beast,' English neat, of the same meaning; also German niitze, 'use;' while outside the area of the Teutonic languages we have a Lithuanian nauda, mean- ing use, profit, proceeds, harvest, possessions or property generally. THE INSULAR CELTS. 129 Loth or Lot of the romances, which make the person so called king of Lodonesia or the Lothians, of the Orkneys and of Lochlann. In all these he is more or less associated with the sea ; and even the Welsh tale, bearing his name in its form of Llud, gives him a fleet. But on the whole the Welsh have been in the habit of regarding him rather as a great and thriving king of their ancestors, as one who delivered his subjects from three or more dire scourges to which they were subject, and as the hero whom Geoffrey makes the builder of the walls of London. The association of Livid, or ' King Lud ' as he has come to be called in English, with London, is apparently founded on a certain amount of fact : one of the Welsh names for London is Caer Lud or Lud's Fort, and if this is open to the suspicion of having been sug- gested first by Geoffrey, that can hardly be supposed possible in the case of the English name of Laclgate Hill. The probability is, that as a temple on a hill near the Severn associated him with that river in the west, so a still more ambitious temple on a hill connected him with the Thames in the east ; and as an aggressive creed can hardly signalize its conquests more effectually than by appropriating the fanes of the retreating faith, no site could be guessed with more probability to have been sacred to the Celtic Zeus than the eminence on which the dome of St. Paul's now rears its magnificent form. The Irish Nuada was the same sort of god as his Welsh namesake : he was king of the Tuatha De* Danann and their leader in war. When the Boyne is called the fore- arm of Nuada's wife, that queen would seem to be a personification of the land of Erinn ; but it is not clear whether Nuada, as her consort, is to be regarded as god K 130 II. THE ZEUS OE of the incumbent air or of the surrounding sea, or else as the god of light, from whom the country derived its name of the Island or Plain of Fal. As compared with Llud, distinguished at most as a king and hero on land and a warrior at sea, Nuada was split into no less then three personages, one of whom was Nuada of the Silver Hand, the martial king, and another Nuada Finnfdil, god of light and of the heavens, while we have a third in Nuada Necht, whose connection with the world of waters has already been hinted at. Thus it appears that the mytho- logy of the Celts was assuming a departmental form as far as regarded their chief divinity, out of whose wide character they specialized a warlike Posidon or Neptune, with a tendency to make that element predominate. This specializing presumably began before the Celts divided themselves into Gallo-Brythons and Goidels or settled in the British Isles ; for it is not improbable that some of them accustomed themselves to a seafaring life long before the time when they began to cross in sufficient numbers to conquer these islands from their ancient inhabitants, and very long before the Parisii sent a colony down the Seine to seek a home on the other side of the Humber. But Nodens, the Celtic Zeus, was not simply a Neptune or a Posidon, in his connection with the sea : he was also a Mars, as the inscriptions at Lydney testify. That the Celts of Britain should have been inclined to transform their Zeus into a marine Mars at so early a date is a remarkable fact : it lends fresh significance to the words of Pomponius Mela1 when he speaks of the two giants eponymous of Britain and Ireland, who fought with the 1 Parthey's ed. pp. 50-1. THE INSULAR CELTS. 131 vagrant Hercules, as two sons of Neptune, while it forms a curious prelude to the history of that composite British people whose merchantmen and men-of-war now cover all the seas. This leads me, however, in a direction contrary to the one I wish to take ; for I am less interested at this point in the way in which the Celtic Zeus was split into several characters, than in the formation of an estimate of his character and attributes before the time of his trans- formation. As a god of the Celts in the earliest period of their existence, he was probably king of their gods, giver of wealth and increase, leader in war, and lord equally of both land and sea, if they then knew the sea. To compare Nodens or the Celtic Zeus with the Greek Zeus, one has to submit the latter to somewhat the same process of collecting his early attributes ; that is to say, Nodens is not strictly to be compared with the classic Zeus, but with the pre-classic Zeus who was Zeus, Posi- don and Pluto all in one ; who also discharged the func- tions of several of his classically so-called sons, such, for example, as Ares. Greek literature usually presents Greek theology in a highly departmental state ; but traces are not lacking of a previous stage. We have a well-knoAvn instance in Pluto, who was always a Zeus, that is to say a chthonian or catachthonian Zeus, with his realm in the deep earth as far below its surface as the sky is above it. This is borne out by the Orphic myth of the union with Persephone of Zeus in the form of a snake, but still as father Zeus ; and by the Pontic cult which did not distinguish between Zews vVaTos and Zeus x^ovios ; l not to mention how near the idea of Pluto, 1 Preller in Pauly's Real-Eiirycl. s. v. Jupiter (Vol. iv. 588). k2 132 II. THE ZEUS OF or IIAot-Twvj as a god associated with wealth, comes to that of Zevs TrAowrtos.1 Similarly with regard to the sea, Zeus is sometimes spoken of interfering with it,2 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 Zeus ovpio^ 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.3 Here should also be mentioned Zeus cbro/Ja-nfcios, 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.4 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 Zeus apeios. This was, however, only one of Zeus's epithets which had regard to him as a god of war : as leader he was Zeus dyrjTup j as possessed of great strength he was 20mos ; as a helper in the conflict he was 'E-n/o-ios ; and as giver of triumph TpoTralos, 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. 3 lb. i. 126. * Pduly, iv. 588. THE INSULAR CELTS. 133 Carians was equipped with a battle-axe and clad in the complete armour of a hoplite,1 which 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 Roman 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. CoRMAC, CONAIRE, C0NCH0BAR. 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 Prellei's Gr. Myth. i. 111-12. 134 II. THE ZEUS OF slight admixture of history. His reign is represented as one of remarkable prosperity,1 and he himself as exceed- ing ' all his predecessors in magnificence, munificence, wisdom and learning, as also in military achievements.'2 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.4 Another, however, found in an older manuscript,5 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 Ddisi, 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 Ddisi, 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 The Bl: of Bally mote, quoted by O'Curry in his Manners, &c, ij. 18. 2 O'Curry, ibid. 3 The Book of Acaill, forming Vol. iij. of the Senrhtis Mot ; see also O'Curry, ij. 27. * O'Curry, ij. 139-40. 5 The Bk, of the Dun, 536, 54a. THE INSULAR CELTS. 135 and successor with his counsel until he was, according to one account, killed by demons.1 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.2 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,3 while Conaire was the subject of one of the most famous epic stories in Irish literature. The plot4 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 Ingcdl, 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.5 The death of 1 Bk. of the Dun, 50b. 2 0' Curry, from the Bk. of Ballymoie, ij. 18. 3 See passim, The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, now available in an excellent edition published by the Soc. for the Preserv. of the Ir. Language (Dublin, 1881). 4 The oldest version is given in the Bk. of the Dun, 83a — 99a, but it is incomplete. 5 Bk. of the Dun, Bib. 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.1 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 Cdt, 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 Ce't 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 JSTuada 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, &c. See also the original, printed (from the Bk. of Leinster, 123b— 124ft) with a literal transla- tion, pp. 636—643. THE INSULAR CELTS. 137 or excitement. But the early history of Conchobar 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 Nessa, after whom he was called Conchobar 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 Eoig, fell passionately in love with Nessa, 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 JNTessa 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 Erinn 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 Cuchulainn, 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 received 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, l an elf or demon,' and Medb's Ailill belongs to a race which is always found ranged against the Tuatha De" Danann.1 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 Eee, on the east side of which 1 It is right, however, to say that an Ailill Find, ' 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. of Leinster, 247 a — -248 a; also O'Curry's Manners, &c, iii. 3l>8-y. THE INSULAR CELTS. 139 there was 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.1 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.2 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,3 and Mugain, who is perhaps most commonly spoken of as Conchobar's queen.4 In Fergus, usually called Fergus mac Eoig after his mother,5 we have a kind of good- natured Cronus of gigantic proportions, endowed with the strength of 700 ordinary men,6 wielding a sword of fairy make, which extended itself to the dimensions of a rainbow whenever he chose to use it.7 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.8 1 O'Curry's Manners, &c, ij. 290-1; but see also the Bk. o/Leinster, 12Ab, 125a, where the story differs considerably from the version given by O'Curry from another source. 2 O'Curry, ib. p. 290. 3 Bk. o/Leinster, 125a. 4 Windisch's Ir. Texte, pp. 255, 258, 259, et passim. 5 O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 483. 6 Bk, o/Leinster, 106Z>. This Fergus is, mythologically speaking, to be identified probably with the Black-toothed Fergus of the story of Cormac : see p. 134. 7 Ib. 102?;. 8 Fergus was son of Ross the Red, who was the father of Fachtna Fathach, said to be tbe father of Conchobar : see Bk. o/ Leinsta; 976, 102 6; also O'Curry, p. 483. 140 II. THE ZEUS OF Given Conchobar king of the Ultonians, 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, writh 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 : 1 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 i Driving' of the Kine of Cooley.3 Ailill and Medb made use of Fergus on the Tain 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- vade4 of the Ultonians, when none of their heroes could stir, excepting Cuchulainn, who accordingly had to face 1 Bk. of Rights, p. 21, O'Donovan's note. 2 O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 269. 3 It is called in Irish Tain Bo Ciiailnge, or simply in Tain, literally ' the Driving' away of the cattle in question. The fragment of the tale in the Bk. of the Dun occupies fol. 55 a — 82 b, and in the Bk. of Leinster it takes up much more space, namely, fol. 535 — 104 b, but neither is that complete. For references to other manuscripts of it, analyses and abstracts, see M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's Eftsai d'un Cata- logue de la Litterature epique de VIrlande (Paris, 1883), pp. 214 — 216. 4 For an account of this strange custom, see Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind, pp. 289 — 297. THE INSULAR CELTS. 141 the invaders single-handed. The principal part of the Tain 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 with his invincible arrows. Conchobar, though he showed himself capable on occa- sions of being, like Zeus, unscrupulous and cruel, is described as an exemplary king of the 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.1 The king's own life at home shaped itself into a routine which divided the day-time into three parts;2 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,3 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 1 Bk. of the Dun, 128&; Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 139. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 59 a. 3 It will be found in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 45-6, 383, and in his Mamiers, &c, iij. 316. 142 II. THE ZEUS OF 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,1 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,2 who more than once in Conchobar's history appears as the representative of darkness and treachery : the Ultonians were beaten, Conchobar was left on the field, and night supervened. The king's life was only saved by the coming of Cuchulainn, 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.3 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 until 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- 1 Bk. of the Dun, 128&; also 124 a, where the Irish word occurs abbreviated in the MS. to each, first explained by Zimrner in bis Keltische Studien (Berlin, 1881), i. 38-9. 2 Durthacht, for which Dairthechta also occurs (see "VVindisch, s. v.), is probably of the same origin as the reduplicate doruthethaig, ' deper- didit,' Gram. Celt. p. 448 (incorrectly rendered celebravit at p. 351), and Stokes' Goidelica, pp. 4, 14; so that Mac Durthacht would seem to have had much the same meaning as the name of another character of the same class : I mean Mac dull, ' Son of Perdition or Destruction.' 3 Bk. of the Dun, 59 b, 60 a. THE INSULAR CELTS. 143 married women and maidens of Ulster sing around him every evening a rhyme, the burden of which was l Fer- loga, my sweetheart.'1 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.2 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 Conchobar Abrad-ruad, 4 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,3 a contemporary of Cuchulainn, 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 1 Bk. of Leinster, 114a; Windiscli's Irische Tezte, p. 106; and O'Curry's Manners, iij. 372. 2 This looks as if Ferloga, though called Ailill's charioteer, should he a sun-god j and the name Fer-loga meaning the ' Man oi' Lug or lug,' a word to be discussed later, would seem to point in the same direction. 3 Four Masters, A. M. 5192. 144 II. THE ZEUS OP Irish pedigrees, which are here quite in point, as they make both Conchobars grandsons of one and the same Boss the Bed.1 Conchobar was doubtless not a man; his sister Dechtere, the mother of Ciichulainn, 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,3 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 Llud in the cycles to which they belong. The Mac Oc 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,4 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,5 from 1 The Four Masters had 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 Ross the Red that is called Fachtna the Poetic, as the reputed father of Conchobar mac Nessa. 2 Bk. of Leinster, 1235, where Ciichulainn is called mc dea dechtiri, ' of (the) son of (the) goddess Dechtire.' 3 Bk. of the Dun, 1016; Fled Bricrenn, in Windisch's Ir. Texte, p. 259. 4 Here, as elsewhere, there is some difficulty as to which form of the name to choose : the modern Irish spelling is Aonglius, while Aengus is older ; but older still is Oengus, while Oingus, or Oinguss, would be the oldest to be found in manuscripts. 5 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, l 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 Etain, another dawn-goddess ; but a fragmentary story3 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 1 In Irish Oengus war ind Oc, or merely Mac ind Oc, 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. 66b; also Dr. Sul- livan's introductory volume to O'Curry's Manners, Sec, pp. dexxxix, dcxl. 3 Bk. of the Dan, p. 129 ; Windiscb, pp. 130—132. L 146 II. THE ZEUS OF statement, that, when the Mac Oc travelled, he carried the glass grianan about with him, and slept in it at night in order to attend on Etain while awaiting the return of her former health and vigour. Once more Etain'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,1 where she appears under the name of Grainne, daughter of Cormac mac Airt, and the Mac Oc is called Aengus. Grainne declines to wed Finn, 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 Finn. 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 in 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 Tlie Pursuit of Diarmuid 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 Oc, 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 De* 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 out1 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 De* 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 1 See the Bk. of Leinster, pp. 2466, 247a. According to a story summarized from the Bk. of Fermoy by Dr. Todd in the K. Irish Academy's Irish MSS. 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 Manannan mac Lir. See also M. d'A. de Jubainville's Cycle Mythol. pp. 276—282. l2 148 II. THE ZEUS OF place between them at Tailltinn, situated between Kells and Navan in the present county of Meath.1 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 Kigh ; of Dowth, near Drogheda; and of Drogheda itself — all of which appear to have been plundered by the Norsemen in the ninth century.2 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 Fairy Mound, of the Brugh, as covering their resting-place. The older account, however, which relates how the Mac Oc got possession of it, says nothing 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. 3 lb. A. M. 3450, & note ; Petrie's Round Towers of Ireland, in the Transactions of the R. Irish Academy, xx. 100-1 ; also O'Curry, iij. 122, 362. It may here be explained, that the word brugh, in older spelling brug or brud, is usually translated a 'palace.' The one in question was on the Boyne, at Broad-Boym Bridge, near Slane, in the county of Meath. THE INSULAR CELTS. 149 term which, betrays the usual identification1 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.2 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 De* 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 1 It was here helped by confounding brug, as applied to the Mac Oc's 'house' (Bk. of the Dun, bib), with some form of bruig, for an earlier mruig (see Windisch, s. v.) of the same origin as the English Marches, Ger. mark, Welsh bro, ' a land or district,' Gaulish AMobrogzs (p. 5). - Bk. of Lei aster, 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,1 a father otherwise obscure. Now we read of a lady called Maistiu, daughter to this Aengus, acting as embroideress to the other Aengus ; 2 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 Umdr, associates him with a mythic people called the Fir Bolg, and brings him and the Clann TImoir3 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 1 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 Dun Oen- gusa (in modern Irish Dun Aonglntis), the Fortress of Aengus : see M. d'A. de Jubainville's Essai d'un Catalogue, p. 244. 2 Bk. of Lecan, fol. 233a, b, quoted by O'Curry, iij. 122. 3 Some more references to Aengus and the other sons of Umur will be found in O'Donovan's note to t\\Q Four Makers, A.D. 1599 (p. 2104), and O'Curry's Battle of Magh Leana, p. 157. THE INSULAR CELTS. 151 that he, like Zeus, figures in 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.' l 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 Givledig. In Nennius' Ilistoria 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.2 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 : 3 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 0 'Curry, p. 478. 2 San-Marte, Gildas et Nennius, pp. 53 — 55. 3 Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. San-Marte, pp. 78-9, &c. 152 IT. THE ZEUS OF versions1 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 Cakdonius, and Merlin Sylvaticus. 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 a id warrior, a great magician and prophet, in a word a Zeus of Brythonic paganism. But if Merlin Emrys be a Brythonic Zeus, then Vortigern 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 6c 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 influence 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 Vortigern. Eor, when leaving 1 Such as Geoffrey's, pp. DO— lOi. 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 Gth century. Further, the district in the north to which Vortigern is made to go is called Givi/nmvcsi,1 a derivative used probably as the plural of Givymvas, which would mean the White or Blissful Abode. The compound, analysed into Givas Gtvi/n,2 of the same meaning, occurs in another story, which represents a solar hero, called Caswallawn son of Beli, going in pursuit of his mistress, Ffltlr daughter of Mygnach the Dwarf, who was carried away by the Eomans, according to one account to Borne, and according to another to Gwasgwyn. He recovered her after a great battle with the Eomans, who, to avenge their defeat, afterwards invaded Britain under Julius Caesar : 3 another reference to the same mythic expedition of Caswallawn's makes him and his host settle permanently in Gwasgwyn.4 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 Givasgivyn, 1 San-Marte, in his Gildas et Nennius, p. 55, adopts the reading Guunnesi, but there are diverse others all consistent with an original Gucnnuessi, which may also have had the shortened form Gunnuessi. 2 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 gwys from a very different origin, as the Latin version has Westimaria, p. 57, and Westmarialanda, p. G6. 3 The Triads, i. 53, 77, ii. 58, iii. 102 : see also San-Marte's Geoffrey, p. 253, note. 4 lb. i. 40, ii. 5. 154 II. THE ZEUS OF in the stories mentioned, originally meant Givas Gwyn, the White Mansion, the mythical abode of the happy dead ; but it was misinterpreted to refer to Gascony, which came to be known in Welsh as Givasgivyn.1 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 Yortigern or supreme king. It may here be remarked that Yortigern 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,'2 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,3 ' 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 1 Gwasgwyn also meant in Welsh a kind of horse for which Gascony was formerly famous. 2 For Dagda the decompounded Dagan also occurs : see the Bl\. of Leinster, 245 b. 3 The form Rowen, or Rowenna, was obtained by a very easy mis- reading of Rvucnn, or Ronuenii, Geoffrey, pp. 84, 86. THE INSULAR CELTS. 155 in the person of Merlin Ermys, 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 Vortigern'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.1 But another story appears to have placed the Glass House in Bardsey,2 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 treasures3 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 poet4 of the 15th century tells us that 1 Triads, iij. 10. 2 The Brython for 1860, pp. 372-3 ; the Greal (London, 1805), p. 188. 3 Enumerated in the Brython, loc. cit. ; also in Guest's Mab. ij. 354, 4 Ieuan Dyfi, 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 why Merlin entered the Glass Honse 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 c 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 thtt 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,1 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 Brettlien, 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.2 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,8 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 Grwendyd:, who is, moreover, not associated with his interment : they address one another as brother and sister,4 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,5 1 See the Early English Text Society's edition of Merlin (1865 — 1869), pp. 680-1; and Southey's Introd. to his ed. of Kyng Arthur, &c. (London, 1817), pp. xlv — xlviij, quoted in Guest's Mob. i. 216 — 218. 2 E. Eng. T. Society's Merlin, pp. 692-3 ; Southey's Introd. p. xlviij. 3 Southey's notes to his Kyng Arthur, ij. 463—468 ; Guest, i. 219. 4 Red Book of Hergest, see Skene, ij. 234, and i. 462—478 et seq. 5 Southey's Introd. p. xlviij, where he refers to Anne Plumptre as his authority. He meant, I find, her Narrative of a "Three Yearn' Residence in France, &c. (London, 1810), iij. 187. 158 II. THE ZEUS OF his 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,1 who cannot die ; his living spirit abides with his dead body, an idea which Ariosto expresses with ghastly vividness in the words — 'Col corpo niorto il vivo spirto alberga.'2 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 l a clos .... nother of Iren, ne stiell, ne tymbir, ne of ston, but .... of the aire with-oute eny othir thinge be enchaunte- mente so stronge, that it may neuer be vn-don while the worlde endureth.'3 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 forest1 of Brecilien, 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 Lliict, Nud, Nodens. 1 The Drython 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 bo, I know not for certain ; but compare the libation funnel in the floor of the temple of Nodens. 160 ii. the zeus of Merlin Emrys 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 Vyrdin,' ' 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, Moridihwn, 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 being 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,1 and to suppose a derivative of a common form made from it, and we have Moridilnjos,2 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 GeograpMa, 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 Muriduno: see his ed. pp. 231, 234. 2 As a parallel to Muridunjos shortened into 'Myrdin,' I may mention the Gaulish toovtiovs (p. 46), which we have in Welsh in the epithet of Morgant Tud in the romance of Gereint and Enid (R. B. Mob. 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. 101 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 El en 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 Oc 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 Given or Gtvennan, Maelan and Elen ; 1 all appear, like Arian- rhod, to have belonged to the class of goddesses asso- ciated with the dawn. So also with an Elen said hy 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 1 See my Fairy Talcs in the Cymmrodor^ vi. 162-3. In Arvon the mythic name Elen becomes, according to rule, Elan ; while the ordinary name Ellen, much usod 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 : a 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 Luyctawg: she is the heroine of an old Welsh saga known as the Dream of Maxen the Gwledig. The following is an abstract of it : 2 — Maxen was emperor of Home 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 1 Howcl is the colloquial pronunciation of what would, in book- Welsh, be Hyivel : compare the note on Owein, p. 63. 2 R. B. Mab. pp. 82—92 ; Guest, iij. 276—290 ; but I have also made use of a copy by Mr. J. Gwcnogvryn Evans of the fragment in the Hen"\vrt MS. numbered 5-1. Till) INSULAR CELTS. 163 in the 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 arc 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 1G4 II. THE ZEUS OF 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 Borne, 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 13eli 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 Eoman 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 Gtvledig took the place of Emrys the Gwledig. The heroine is called Elen Liiyttawg, 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 106 II. THE ZEUS OF Triads1 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 speaks2 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 Nennian Genealogies,3 which make Maxen descend from Constantine the Great : this was because Emrys is commonly represented as the son of Constantine. 1 i. 40 = ij. 5. 2 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 somewhat 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 Gambrice, Preface, p. x. THE INSULAR CELTS. 1G7 The narrator of the Dream of Maxon 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 unusual to find a mountain track in Wales termed Fford Elen, 'Elcn's Eoad,' or Sarn Elen,1 '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,2 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 lions 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. Mab. p. 63), runs the risk of having its name permanently transmogrified into Coed Helen. 2 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 Maxentuis as its starting-point; but in the Nennian 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 cume from pedants and are faulty in point of phonology. 108 II. THE ZEUS OF ■Cantguie and as far as Cruc Ochidient, 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 Brecilien 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,1 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 Myrciin 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 1 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 been ? THE INSULAK CELTS. 1G9 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 : l — 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 the Rev. Celtique, iii. 342 — 350, from the Egerton MS. 1782 at the British Museum, by Dr. Ed. Midler. See also M. J'A. do Jubainville's Cycle Myth. pp. 282-9. 170 II. THE ZEUS OF of Erinn, lie might send word to Bodb the Red, 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 Mac 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 lei draccon occruit cliach, or the Lake of (the) mouths of (the) Dragons, near Cliach's Crowd. Peace Avas accordingly made with Etal, and Aengus betook him to the shore of the lake on the day mentioned. Kccognizing Caer in the form of a swan, he called to her THE INSULAR CELTS. 171 and said, { Come to speak to me, Cacr.' ' Who calls me ?' was the reply. ' Aeugus 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 first runs, in the words of O'Curry's transla- tion, as follows:1 "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 Rosses of Sliabh Ban [in Connacht]. Cliach set out on one occasion to seek the hand in 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 Tho italics and the parentheses are O'Curry's, whose rendering, though not quite accurate or without one 'bull,' will 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 b : the reference is to the lithographed facsimile published by the R. Irish Academy, Dublin, 1876. See also the Bk. of Leinster, L69a. 172 II. THE ZEUS OF any impression on the daughter. However, he 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 Sead." One of the previous names of the lake was Loch Crotta Cliach, or the Lake of Cliach's Harps, as O'Curry 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 Bel Sead : — " Coerabar boeth, the daughter of Etal Anbuail 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 year1 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 Cliach [that is, the Lake of Cliach' '§ Harps], wherefore the people who saw them were in the habit of saying : ' Many is the Sead [that is, a gem, a jewel, or other precious article] at the mouth of Loch Crotta this day.' And hence it is called Loch Bel Sead [or the Lake of the Jewel Mouth]. It was called also Loch Bel Dr again [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 Sead. And it is 1 The original means 'every secund 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 Lluot in a previous age had imprisoned the dragons that disturbed the peace of his dominions. Welsh story lays it to Yortigern'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 Luyotawg, 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 OF 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-chains1 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.2 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 hy Mr. E. Lloyd Jones, of Dinorwig, for a competition at the Eistedvod held at Carnarvon in August, 1 880, THE INSULAR CELTS. 1 t O it readily explains why the flesh of the goose was tapu to the Brythous of Caesar's time : leporcni et gallinam ct 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 Iau,' that is to say Jeadi, or Jove's Day. Lecture II. THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS. PART II. Camulos, Cumall and Nwyvre. 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. G-aidoz has devoted to the Eoman 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,1 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 arc even now nations, such as the Samoans,1 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 nature 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. For the inhabitants of , — «; 1 Turner's Samoa, p. 331. N 178 II. THE ZEUS OF a maritime land this could not fail to present itself in a still more vivid light : he 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 Zeus 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 in Irish THE INSULAR 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 NM, or Gwyn son of Niid ; and in both jinn and gtvtjn 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 Niid would seem to oppose Cumall and Niid to, or equate them with, one another. Further, the story of Kulhwch and Olwen mentions Gwyn son of Niid with two other Gwyns, called respec- tively the son of Esni and the son of Nwy vre ; 2 but the composition of the lists of names in that piece is such as to allow of our supposing Gwyn son of Nuct, 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 f whose name would mean Flame son of Atmosphere : he is probably to be identified with the personage otherwise called in the same story Fjlcwdur Fflam Wlcdicf or Prince Ffleudur 1 See Fotha Catha Cnucha in the Rev. Celt. ij. 89 ; Bk. of the Dun, 42a. 2 R. B. Mab. p. 106 : Lady Charlotte Guest's edition omits these two Gwyns both in the text ami the translation : see ij. 205, 259. 3 R. B. Mab. p. 107 ; Guest, ij. 261. 4 R. B. Mab. p. 1(JG ; Guest, ij. 259. N 2 180 II. THE ZEUS or Fflam, and also Ffleudor mab Naf, or Ffleudor son of Nav ; l 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 in this kind of word, used as a proper name, we seem to have a synonym of Nwyvre or Sky in the sense of Ovpavos and Varuna. 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 Nwyvre and of Arianrhod their mother. With the reference to Ffleudor son of Nav, may be mentioned an allusion in the same story to a Gwenwynwyn son of Nam,2 to be corrected doubtless into Nav ; 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. Mab. p. 110; Guest, ij. 265. The MS. reads fflendor. 2 R. B. Mab. p. 107; Guest, ij. 259: the MS. has na6, while the other, R. B. Mab. p. 110, is naf. 3 R. B. Mab. p. 108; Guest, ij. 262. THE INSULAR CELTS. 181 of Uranus 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 Ntid 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 poiut 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 Zeus. 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 Zevs, genitive Aios, 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 [NSUL'AE CELTS. 183 summit of Olympus in Thcssaly, that land which was the home of the Greeks before they spread further south- 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 Hashes 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.1 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.2 Now there was a story current to the effect 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 1 Bk. of Taliessin, xlviij. : see Skene, ij. 203. 2 Teubncr's Pausanias (cd. Schubart), ij. 153 (Arcadia, viij. 38, 7). 184 II. THE ZEUS OF a sacred spring to which 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.1 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 Brecilien, 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 romancer2 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.3 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); Preller's Gr. Myth? i. 100-2. '2 Huon de Mery (ed. Tarbe, Kheims, 1851), pp. 126-7, quoted in Guest's Mab. i. 220. 3 Gift's Mab. note, i. 219—224. THE INSULAB CELTS. 185 his own, is one of the Brythonic equivalents, as already suggested, of the Mac Oc 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 Urien: 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,1 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 effect:2 1 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. Mnh. pp. 167-9, 171-2; Guest, i. 47-9, 53-4. - The Brytkott for 1859, p. 88; Guest's Mob. note, i. 226; The Great for 1805, p. 285, whero an authority is quoted from the year 17l'1. 180 II. THE ZEUS OF donian 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 allaivr, 1 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 ;l 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, Bis 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 IXSILAK CELTS. 1ST of the surrounding parishes, we are told, go to it in pro- cession, headed by their five great banners and their 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.1 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 Derinot, 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 hitter's men who had been carried away by a wizard chief, and they sailed together towards the west till they came near a steep cliff 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. Joyce2 — "and saw a beautiful country spread out before him : — a lovely, flowery plain straight in front, bordered with pleasant hills, and shaded with 1 lb. i. 225, where Lady Ch. Guest quotes from Villemarque'a charming account of his Visite an Tombean de Merlin, in the Remu de Paris, Vol. xli. pp. 47—58. 2 Old Celtic Romances, translated from the Gaelic (London, 1879), pp. 246—259, 266. 188 ' II. THE ZEUS OF 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 stooj)ed 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, 'I have THE INSULAR CELTS. 180 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 gruagach1 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 in 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. lie 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 well ; and this spot you shall never leave till 3tou have given me satisfaction for the insult."1 Then began a duel which lasted all day ; but when the evening came, the gruagach suddenly sprang outside the range of 1 The word gruagach is usually supposed to mean a longdiaired eiea- 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 yf the West Highh nd< ; but it is also employed of a female : see Campbell, i. 23-4. 190 II. THE ZEUS OF Diarmait's sword, and with a groat 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- gach1 s 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. 101 romancer could make his herb 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 version of the disinheritance of the Dagda by his son the Mao 60 ; and the story comes pretty near a Welsh one, the hero of which is called Pwyll, who is made, as related in the Mabinogion,1 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 ana,2 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 It. D. MaJb. pp. 1—7; Guest, i. 37 — 16. - The Stokixs-O'Donuvan edition, p. 7. 192 II. 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,1 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 Killare,2 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 requales inter se diviserunt : quarum capita in lapide quodam conveniunt apud Mediam juxta castrum de Kilair, qui lapis et umbilicus Hibernise dicitur, quasi in medio et meditullio terrae positus.'3 The stone is described as 1 Sans-Marte's ed. pp. 108-9, 361. 2 Four Masters, A.P. 507, editor's note. 3 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. e. 18, of the latter and the story about Merlin remuving it to this country, and states that it was in THE INSULAR CELTS. 193 a very largo one,1 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 in 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 T 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- tue's, especially for healing : the giants of old had, he said, ordained that bodily ailments might be healed by bathing 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 Stonchenge 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 story3 of St. David splitting the capstone of the Maen Ketti cromlech in Gower, in order, as we are told, to Kildarensi pianitie, non icul a castro Nasensi, where one might sen it in his day. To me, however, the two stories appear to have heen originally one, the error having arisen from the place-names Killare and Kildare. 1 See Cambrensls Eversns (Dublin, 1848), editor's note, i. 416. 2 Ari'i Sanctorum, March 17, Vol. ij. p. 561. 3 Jolo MS3. pp. 83, 473. 0 194 II. THE ZEUS OF 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 follow 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 Merlin. 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.1 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 1 The version here chiefly referred to is that to he found in the Bibliotheea of Diodorus Siculus, ij. cap. 47, where Hecatajus of Ahdera is quoted as one of the writer's authorities. See also Elton's Origins of English History, pp. 88-9, 426. THE IXsl'LAR CELTS. I 95 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 offerings. 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 Stonehengc, 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 Roman might literally say, sub Jove. After all, it is a matter of no great importance whether Stonehengc 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. Allusi< m 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 OF 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.' r 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 Chorographia, ed. Parthey, iij. cap. 6. The best MSS. read GalUzenas vocant, 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 -ras twv Sa/zvi-rcov ywaucas ; while Dionysius Periegetes, Orbis Descriptio (Midler's Geog. Gr. Minorcs, ij. 140), line 571, has dyavdv 'AfiviTawv ; but it is highly probable that the people meant were those whom Caesar, iij. 9, calls Namnites. THE FNSULA.B CELTS. 107 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 durst 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 flame of their fury burnt itself out. It so happened, we are further 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 bo 198 II. THE ZEVS 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. Vigfusson has shown to refer, among other localities, to the island of Guernsey,1 allude to such sibyls as Mela mentions. In the flyting in one of these lays, one of the characters taunts another in words which have been rendered as follows : 2 ' 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 l hardly women.' 3 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.' 4 Such notions as these are distributed by the modern Celt between mermaids,5 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-Arminius, &c. (Oxford, 1886), pp. 28—36. 2 lb. p. 32. 3 Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 121. 4 Sigfred-Arminius, &c. p. 33. 5 Tor some Welsh ideas about mermaids, see my Fairy Tales in the Cyrnmrodor, v. 86 — 92, 119. THE [NSULAB CELTS. L99 ono of the nine priestesses of Sein in the pages of Mela. The Avitcli 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;1 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 in 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 Cassius3 of Boudicca, queen of the Eceni, who, while exhorting her subjects to rise against the rule of Eome, let loose a 1 My nurse belonged to one of these families, ami 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 Tout* in Wales (Carnarvon, 1883), iij. 164. 2 B>U. Gall. v. 12. 3 Historia Romana (Tauchnitz ed.), lxij. Nero, 6, «. 200 II. THE ZEUS OF 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 Andraste1 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 Kev. I). Silvan Evans's Dictionary of the Welsh Language, s. v. Andras and Anras. THE INSULAB CELTS. 20 J thus in sign of the miracle, and he cursed the demon, and banished him to hell."1 This legend is contained in a version of St. Patrick's Life attributed to St. Eleranus,2 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 Coin Oruaichj 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, l 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,3 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 1 The translation is by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Rrr. Celt. i. 260 ; another version will be found in O'Curry's MS. Materials, pp. 538-'J ; and a variety of references are given by M. d'A. cle Jubainville in his Ci/c/r, pp. 10G-8. 2 For references to Colgan and others with regard to the ancient authors of lives of St. Patrick, see T. Duffus Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue (Rolls edition, 1862), I. i. pp. 64-5. 3 Fol. 213/) of the facsimile. 202 II. THE ZEUS OF of their children and of their flocks,1 in order to secure power and peace in all their tribes, and to obtain milk and corn 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 ascertained2 to have been near the village of Bally magauran, in the barony of Tullyhaw, in the county of Cavan ; and St. Patrick is said to have built there a church called Domh- nach Mor,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 Latin4 dominkum, '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 Goiclelic 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.5 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 Britain. For if we turn the 1 O'Conor's Bibliotheca Manuscripta Stowensis (Buckingham, 1818), i. 40-1, and his Eerum Hibernicarum Scriptores (Buckingham, 1814), Vol. I. (proleg. i.) pp. xxii, xxiii ; also the Four Masters, A.M. 3656, note by O'Donovan ; and M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, loc. cit. 2 Four Masters, ibid. 3 Four Masters, ibid. 4 Domhnach has also become the regular word for Sunday, that is Dies Dominions, ' the Lord's Bay,' French Dhnanche. 5 No less than twenty such figure in the index to The Martyrology of Donegal (Dublin, 1864). THE OT81 LAB CELTS. 'Jli:! Irish Cenn ('match, 'Chief of the Mound,' into its etymo- logical equivalents, in modern "Welsh we have Pen Cray,1 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 Pernios Cmci, or else that of a compound Pcnnocruci.2 This last, as the basis of an adjective relating to the god so-called, would yield the forms Pennocrucjo-s, Pennocrucja, Pen- nocruejo-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 Antoninus3 has been variously identified with Stretton and Penkridge, in Staffordshire ; and the name PenJcriilgc, written Pencri/c, 1 This would in its turn admit of two translations, according as one took pen 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 Or&g or Pencrug as a modern Welsh place-name means nothing more than the Top of the Mound, the Mound's End, or the like. 2 This compound is like Vassoccdeti (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 both in Welsh and in Irish, where we should otherwise have had Cenn Chrunich, and not Cenn Oruaick. Neta(-Ttrenalugoa) has been mentioned at p. 12, but considerable irregularity prevails with regard to its later equivalent, nom. nut, gen. mad, as, for instance, in the case of the name Cairbre Nia-fer, Cairbro Champion of Men ; for the nominative nia is found used for the crude form, which should bo niad : thus in two passages cited in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 507, 513, Nia-fer has to be construed as a genitive, while the Bk. qf Lemster, 161 b, has Nia-fer as a dative. 3 Tarthey and Tinder's edition, pp. 224, 368. 204 IT. THE ZEUS OF in an eighth century charter of iEthilheard of Wessex,1 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 Mounds, 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 Crickhoioel, the name of a village near Abergavenny, and the Wt/ddgrug, which seems to have meant the Burial Mound: the town so called is in Flintshire, and it is found formerly named Mons Alius,2 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, 1 Kemble's Codex Diplomatims, No. lxxvi. 2 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. TUE INSULAR CELTS. 205 and us(> (I in the Welsh literature of the Middle Ages in the sense of a mound or tumulus, came to be the word for a throne or a judgment- seat : it may also mean a court or tribunal, and Pen yr Orsed, 'the Gorsed 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,1 that no one ever ascended it without receiving wounds and bodily harm, or witnessing some kind of miracle, which the tale hears 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 gorsed2 of that city in the early morning: in one instance, it is related3 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. Mob. p. 8 ; Guest, iij. 46. 2 The Irish terra used in the story of Echaid Airem (Bk. of the Dun, p. 1307;) is sosta, the plural ofsoesad, 'a station or scat;' but in the story of Conn about to be mentioned in the text, it is n'-raitJi, ' a royal rdih or fortification;' for sometimes the rdths, as may still bo 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 tbe Rhine. 3 Bee <» (/mry in bis MS Mat. p. 618, quoting MS. Hati. 5280 (p. 119) in the British Museum. 206 II. THE ZEUS OF history of Ireland, and to be told the 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 Fail, or Stone of Fal, and Irish legend speaks of it as one of the four precious things brought to Ireland by the Tuatha ~D6 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 scream1 under every king whom it recognized in the sovereignty. From the pos- session of the warlike descendants of Conn, it is supposed by some2 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 English capital;3 and the stone from Scone is believed, 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 Fail, sometimes called the Stone of Destiny, the word Fal is probably to be treated as in the case of Inis Fail 1 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 Netmius (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 Chron. of the Picts and Scots, pp. 196-7, 266, 280, 333, 335; O'Curry'a MS. Mat. pp. 618—621. THE IXSILAK 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 Zens, and set up afterwards b}7" the latter at Delphi. " It was not a large stone," says Andrew Lang,1 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 Fal, but it was first heard of in Erinn at Temair Fail,'2 1 the Temair of FAL/ 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 (Auglicizcd Tarn), 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 be 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 Ilill or Height; and one may compare the case of a warlike people of this country, who called their capital Camulo- 1 Custom and Myt7i, p. 52; Pausanias, x. 24. 2 O'Curry. MS. Mat. p. 179; Book of Rights (ed O'Donovan), p. 56; Book of Fenagh (ed. Hennessy), pp. 322 3. 208 II. THE ZEUS OF clunon or the Acropolis of Camulos, with the name of which that of Fal'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 Finnfail, or the Goidelic Nodens, was the same divinity as F&1, 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 Kome 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 ' gorsect ' sacred to the Celtic god and his asses- sors : in other words, the Irish probably assembled on Mag Slecht, 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 gorsect or court under the authority of which the Eistectvod is held as a sort of session, as its name indicates, for letters and music. The gorsect 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 he is called ; afterwards he 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 Eisteetvod, which it is necessary to have announced at a gorsect held a year at least previously. As regards the gorsect 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 gorsect under cover or at night, but only where and as long as the sun is visible in the heavens." l In the absence of documentary evidence bearing on the history of the gorsect, we have to judge of it as we find it, and it is remarkable that eveiything 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 versions2 of it, and, though not one of them is 1 The original is printed in the Iolo M&S. p. 50, from the manu- scripts of Llewelyn Si6n, who died in the year 161G. 2 Four of these versions are to be found in the Iolo 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 which 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 Fal. 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,1 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 FaM as a name of the god would be incomplete without some allusion to the mythical creation known as Roth Fail, or Fal's Wheel, and Both 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, where the ancient text calls him Lug mac Edlend mic [sic] Tighernmais. 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 hoth oars and shovels or spades (the Cymmrodor, THE INSULAR CELTS. 211 assisted by Mog Ruith, a celebrated Irish druid from the island of Valencia, 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 Ruith's daughter brought certain fragments of it to Ireland, one of which she fixed as the rock or pillar-stone of Cnam- 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.1 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 Ginach of Durlas.2 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; Scnchus M6r, iij. 204, 210); and the reference implied in the adjective must have been to the paddles or iloat-boards of an under- shot water-wheel. 1 O'Curry, MS. Mai. pp. 402-3 ; Irish Nenniut, pp. 264-5 (also editor's note with references to Duald Mac Firbia'a MS. in the Lib. of the Royal Irish Academy, and to the Bk. of Lecan, fol. 133); Stokes- O'Donovan ed. of Cormac, p. 74. 2 O'Curry, MS Mat. pp. 402-3. P 2 212 II. THE ZEUS or wrecked on the pillar-stone of Clegliile, and the warriors would all be cut off in the reign of Flann Ciothach.1 For 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 Cnamchoill, ' 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 Fail 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 Fail anywhere else ; the passage in the Glossary, however, proves the identity of the Roth Fail with the Roth Ramach. 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. 2 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 Euith peribit quod Roth Fail perveniet dicens cori Durluis find iar Foi . i. iar Cnamchaill.' Here dicens refers to the sentence beginning with peribit, which is used in Irish fashion for periturum 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 Fail will come to the king of fair Durlas [Thurles] west of Foi, that is, west of Cnamchoill.' 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. Tie 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.1 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 Avoid drui} 'druid,' had to be rendered by magus, 'a magician.' Vice versa, Simon Magus became in Irish Simon Drui, or Simon the Druid : 2 nay, he was at last claimed as an Irish ancestor,3 and as such he appears as Simeon Brec, or Simeon the Freckled, son of Starn or St aria th, of the family of Nemid, and as ancestor of the Fir Bolg, who, owing to Simon's eastern origin, are made 1 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, &c. i. 112, 113; Reeves, Adam- nan's Vita Columbce, note, p. 350; Stokes's Goidelica (London, 1872), pp. 86, 91 ; Rhys, Celtic Britain^ p. 74. 2 Bk. of the Dun, p. 79a, where mention is made of a garment which had found its way to Ireland, though originally made by Sim6n Drui fur Dair [Darius?], king of the Romans; see Rhys, Celt Brit.\ p. 71, for reference to the name in the T. C. D. MS. (of O'Mulcury's Glos- sary), H. 2, 16, col. 116 ; and //-. Nenniita, p. 266, foi a reference to it in the R. Ir. Ac. MS. (of Duald Mac Firbis), p. 535, and the Bk. of Lean, fol. 133. • l ('Curry, Manner*, &c ij. 213 214 II. THE ZEUS OF to come from the East on one of the motiveless wander- ings so common in the legendary history of Ireland.1 Now the prophecies about the Wheel appear to have consisted partly of an ancient Irish belief in a mythic wheel and a mythic ship,2 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 ;3 but his brief aerial success contrasts most markedly with the ease with which Irish druids, and Mog Kuith in parti- cular, are described soaring in the air by means of a simple pair of wings,4 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.5 The importance attached to the place called Cnamchoill, 1 Cleghile,' which translated would mean the Forest of 1 Bk. of the Dun, p. 16 b ; Keating's Hist, of Ireland, pp. 90-7. 2 Melusine, ij. 134, 159; Gaidoz, Etudes, pp. 99, 100. 3 Arnobius, ij. 12 (in Migne's Patrologia, v. 827-9); St. Ambrose, Hexaem. iv. 8 (Migne, xiv. 205) ; Maximus Taurinensis, Homil. lxxii. ci. (Migne, lvii. 405-6, 488-90) ; and for more authorities, see Herzog's Real-Encyklopddie, s.v. Simon, Vol. xiv. 252. 4 O'Curry's Manners, &c. ii. 214, 215. 6 ittudes, pp. 49, 68, & passim. THE INSULAR CELTS. 2 1 5 (the) Bonos 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 Avith another and ruder figure of Cenn Cruaich, 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.1 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 occupying our atten- tion at present. It meant Servus Motae, 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, 4 Servant of El,' Abdullah, 'Servant of Allah,' and the like, are not unusual in Irish ; and they not unfrequently involve a god's name, as in the case of Mog Niiadat, ' Servus Nodentisf and Mog Neit or Slave of Ndt, this last being a name of the Goidelic god of war, as we are told in Cormac's Glossary.2 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 Calms Patricii,3 or the Tonsured Slave of Patrick, still current as Mulpatrick ; Maelmuiri. ' Marianas,' or the Tonsured Slave of Mary; and GilUcrist^ 'Christ's Servant,' curtailed into Gilchrist; Gillecomded, 'Servus 1 Voigt's Geschiehte Preumeru (Berlin, 1S27). i. 599 — G14. 2 Stokes-O'Don. s.v. Neit, p. 122. 3 Nigra, Rdiquie Celtiche, p. 19 ; Rhys, C-lt. Britain, pp. 73, 202. 21 G IT. 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 Kuith 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 of Druidism. 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, containing among them, as I have seen more than once, coins of the present clay. 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.1 Especially deserving of men- tion is the evergreen tree with wide-spreading branches 1 Deutsche Myth*, i. 53—71. Tin: TXSULAR CELTS. 217 said to have stood in close proximity to the temple of the gods in the ancient town of Upsala,1 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.3 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 in Greek and Roman literature : suffice it to recall the Trojan oak famed in the Iliad, and the words of Virgil in the Georgics, iij. 332, &c. : ' Sicubi magna Jovis antiquo robore quercus Ingentes tendat ranios.' There were also at Dodona, one of the most ancient Greek seats of the Zeus worship, sacred oaks, the mur- muring of the wind among whose branches and leaves was watched and treated as oracular ;4 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 'Aw 7?yo's or «^7/yovaios also at Dodona,5 of which Silius Italicus says, iij. G91: 'Arbor nuruen habet coliturquo tepentibus aria.' In the Celtic instances alluded to, no predilection for 1 Voigt (quoting Schol. to Adam of Bremen, 233), i. 580. 2 Corpus Poet. Dor. i. 79. 3 Prellex in Pauly's Real-EnrykJ. s.v. Jupiter, p. .")90. 4 II). p. G04. 5 Overbeck's Kunstmyth, i. J. 218 IT. THE ZETTS OF 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. For 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 beginning 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 INSULAB CELTS. 219 those to whom lie lias given it. They believe thai 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 Zens, and that the Celtic ayaXfia or image of the god was a lofty oak,1 and that the name of the Gralatian place of assembly in Asia Minor, as given by Strabo,2 was Apwefierov 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;3 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 Romove, 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. (Keiske's ed. i. 142). 2 Meineke's (Teubner) edition, xii. 5, 1 (Vol. ii. p. 79G). 3 Deutsche Myth4, i. 55 et sor|. 220 IT. THE ZEUS OF to Perkunos and his two assessors not unfreqiiently con- sisted of human victims.1 ]Sow Perkunos was, under slightly modified forms of the name, worshipped by all the Litu-Slavic 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 fir gen 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 Fairgwms, 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 Perkunos 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.2 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.3 1 Voigt, i. 582. 2 lb. i. 143 : see also iij. 64. 3 For a comprehensive account of Parjanya, see an article by Biihler in I-ienfey's Orient und Occident, i. 214-29. THE INSULAR CELTS. 2'2 L Whatever the origin of the name of the god Perkunoa 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 tree-; 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 comet one. Pliny, alluding to the druids' predilection for groves of oak, adds the words : ut inde appellati quoque interpreta- tione Graeca possint Druidae vidcri} The necessity lie seems to have been under of interpreting the term by refer- ence to the Greek word &pvs, '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 Druncmcfon, 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, Ned. xvi. Oo ; Diefenbach, [>. 3H. 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 be 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 : l 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 irpofrj-nis 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 Fauly's Real-Encykl. s.v. Jupiter, iv. 601. THE INSULAR CELTS. 223 merit that the name which the Gauls gave their magi- cians was that of druids; and Irish literature teaches ns the like lesson1 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 Irish 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.2 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 1 Celtic Britain'1, pp. 71-2. 2 Book of the Dun, 61a, Gib; Book of Leimter, Gib— 656. 224 II. THE ZEIS OF allusion contained in the term cle driddechta, ' of the god of dmidism,' 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 Goidelic 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.1 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 jdosi- tion in his eyes of the druid *aT e£ox^v.2 Irish druidism absorbed a certain amount of Christianity ; and it would be a problem of considerable difficulty 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. Columbae, ij. 34 (pp. 148-50). 2 See .Reeves' note on Magi, ibid. pp. 73-4. THE INSULAR CELTS. 225 the Welsh counterpart of the Goidelic god of Druidism, namely, in Math ab Mathonwy, also called Math Hen, or M. the Ancient. Besides the meagre references1 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 Cacr Dathal, supposed to have 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;3 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,4 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;5 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 Anc. Bha. of Wales, ij. 142 (i. 281), 147 (i. 269), 303 (i. 28G), where Matheu should be Math Hen. 2 R. B. Mab. pp. 5S— 81 ; Guest, iij. 217-51. 3 R B. Mab. p. 60 j Guest, iij. 219. * Triads, i. 32 = ij. 20 = iij. 90. ■ R /.'. Mab. p. 73 ; Guest, iij. 239. Q 226 II. THE ZEUS OF the kind could render justice to Math's good qualities, among which the Mabinogi 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 Oc — 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.1 For various reasons it is not pretended that Math could compare with the Zeus of the Odyssey at his best ; but he may be distinctly 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 Hacon 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. G5, 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,1 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 Eoman 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 offices 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 II. THE ZEUS OF magicians and medicine-men acting as priests, showed 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 Rome, 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 INSVLAR CELTS. 229 arc both Aiyan ; but both families may be supposed to have largely absorbed other elements aud 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 religion 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 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 ; but Morgen is not to be con- fused with the modern name Morgan, the old form of which was Mor~ 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 II. THE ZEUS OF better known as Pelagius, and that of the Gallic Celt Voltaire, one of the founders of freedom of thought and of the forerunners of the Kevolution in France; or, to 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, you might say, but individual cases, which is not to be denied. But 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 in 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: still 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 Voltaires; 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 tarianism I say of com*se nothing, lest the Calvinism of my early training should prove to have made me inca- pal >le of forming an impartial estimate ; and I need scarcely add, that I am quite willing to leave the conflict of the oreeds 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 arc 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 Rhone and the Roman 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 effect 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 Gaulish 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 in 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 Rig Yeda, sending the other gods away like (shrivelled -up) old men.1 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 1 Max Muller's Eib. Lectures, p. 280. THE INSULAR CELTS. 233 with the more old-fashioned god Thor : l 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 Red 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."3 As to Woden, those who fell in battle were regarded as belonging to him, but it may be doubted that men were sacrificed by the Old Norsemen 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 Ilorsley, 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 hi3 Germania, ix. 2 Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 120. Criminals also of the worst kind were sacrificed to Thor : see the same work, i. 410. 3 See the Eyrbyggia Saga, cited by Vigfusson and Powell in the Corpus, i. 409, where they call attention, by way of comparison, to the Blood-stonea 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 difficulties by dint of genius and persistent effort. Lecture III. THE CULTURE HERO. The great difficulty in studying the religion and mythology of the ancient Celts, is to bridge over 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, hTtho 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 cultuee heeo. Gwtdion Son of Don. He is intimately associated with the district in North Wales, which is somewhat loosely termed Arvon.1 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,2 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 Dinne, 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 till she gave him one her- 1 It is the country looking towards the sea between the Conwy and the Eivl Mountains, or the Rivals, as they are sometimes called by Englishmen ; but the coast from the Conwy to Bangor or thereabouts used to be called Arttechwed, and not included in Arvon. 2 R. B. Mob. pp. 70—81 j Guest, iij. 233-51. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 2-')>7 self, intending that he should ever be nameless. Gwydion went his way, declaring 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 hand1 1 This is a guess at the meaning required by the context; but the real signification of the adjective gxjffes or (in its dictionary form) cyffes has not been ascertained : it must be analysed cyf-hes, otherwise one cannot account for the/, and in that case the syllable hea may possibly be a word of the same origin as hyd, 'length,' and the whole word cyffea might be conjectured to have had the meaning of 'long.' "Wo should then interpret Llaw-gyffes to mean Lnngl-uinnns, as in the caso of Llew's Goidelic counterpart, Lug Ldm-fada. It is scarcely necessary to add that Itew, 'lion,' is entirely out of place here, as the older form of the name was Lieu, the etymological equivalent of Lug and the 238 III. THE CULTURE HERO. (tlawgyffes) the lion (new) 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 Lugtis, Lugoves : it probably meant light, and referred to the sun-god. Ill THE CULTURE IIEU0. 2-°>9 handmaid helped Gwydionto put on his arms, Arianrhod herself put arms on the younger man. When she had done, Gwydion asked if his friend 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 have no wife of the race then inhabiting the earth. Gwydion went away somewhat disconcerted at this, and journeyed to his uncle, the master magician Math, com- plaining bitterly of Arianrhod. They resolved to fashion a woman out of flowers to be Llew's wife : they called her Blodeued,1 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 ah Meirchion ; see poem clxxxiii. p. 365 of the (London) edition of 1789. She is more commonly called Blodeuwcd, which may he 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 Filur, Caawallawn's Ionian (p. 153); but whether Fflur, directly represents fids, fldris, ' flower, blossom,' or Fl&ra, the name of an Italian goddess of no better morals than Blodeued, is not easy to decide, aaffldr occurs in the sense of Uoom. 240 HI. THE CULTURE HERO. By simulating innocent curiosity and concern for his safety, she succeeded in persuading him 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.1 The more common account, given in the 1 See Lewis Morris' Celtic Remains, p. 231, s. v. Clicydion. 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 Blodeucd 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.1 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 off.2 The Culture Hero acquiring certain Animals for Man. The Mabinogi of Math gives another curious tale about Gwydion: the south-western portion of Wales, 1 For this I am indebted to a prize essay on thr F<>1k-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 looke I 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 nol yet been published). 2 Oorptu Poet. Bar. L 1">8. R 242 HI. THE CULTURE HERO. including the counties of Pembroke and parts of those of Cardigan and Carmarthen, 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, hobeu, that is to say, swine; and Gwydion resolved to bring some of them into Gwynect 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 Math 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.1 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 11KU0. 243 great man's house: I will tell a story willingly.' The Mabinogi thereupon remarks as follows : 'Now Gwydion \\as 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 Gwydion 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 being 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 swim1 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 r2 244 III. THE CULTURE HERO. strongholds of Arvon ere Pryderi and his army arrived in pursuit of them; but the war that ensued proved most disastrous to the Demetians, and those of them who regained their country returned without their arms and without their king, who was slain by Gwydion in single combat at the ford called the Velenryd, between Portmadoc and Maen Twrog : in fact, Maen Twrog1 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,2 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- logij 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 Gocteu, 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 Arawn king of Hades, and there was in the engagement [on the side of Hades] a man who could not 1 11 B. Mab. p. 64, where the MS. has Tyuawc instead of Tyryawc, so printed in Guest's Mab. iij. 19G. 2 Skene, ij. 158. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 245 be vanquished unless his name could be discovered; while there was a woman on the other side, called Achrcn, 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 arc the verses alluded to, and they embody Gwydion's guess as to the man's name, which he discovered to be Bran ; 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 cither to be altogether discarded, or else to be ranged, as appears more probable, on Bran's side ; for Gwydion's first verse, in 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.1 The struggle is called in the Triads2 one of the Three Frivolous Battles, as it is said to have been fought on account of a bitch, a roe and a lapwing, at the expense of 71,000 lives. Dogs and deer are anim;;]s useful to man in different degrees and different ways, 1 The anonymous note in tho My vyrian is couched in language which is inaccurate, not to say illiterate; hut 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 emphasizing the frivolity alluded to. Possibly one should take a different view, and regard the lapwing, called in Welsh cornicf/ll, 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 introducing here an animal of the deer kind. But that does not touch the statement in the Mabinogi of Math, 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 found at length in Irish literature, with the important substitution of Albion for Hades and lapdog for dog : thus in Cormac's Glossary1 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 will, for gratitude or friendship. Now at this time the law among the Britons was, Every criminal for his crime such as breaks the law. There was a beautiful lap- dog in 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'Donovan, pp. 11 1-12, 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-etme [slave of a haft] clung to it, from mug 'a slave1 [and vim '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 t<> show that the original signification of the story had broil forgotten; but other traces of the Goidel's indebted- ness to the terrene powers are to be found in the story of Eehaid Airem, or Eochy the Ploughman, which cannot, however, be gone into at thi> point. 248 in. THE CULTURE HERO. To return to the battle of Gocleu ; it is one frequently mentioned in 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.1 that he was with Llew and Gwydion in the battle in question ; but in another poem, usually known by the title of the Harryings of Hades,2 the poet speaks of himself accom- panying Arthur on board his ship Prydwen to a variety of places — more correctly speaking, perhaps, to one aud 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 Fortress, 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 unfrequently 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 was 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. 154. 2 Poem xxx.: see Skene, ij. 181. III. THE CULTURE IIERO. 249 Thrice Prydwen'a freight went wo to Cacr Sidi, Thence but seven did wo regain our country.' The sumo 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 poem1 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 Llud2 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 Red 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. - ij. 49 : see also R. 13. Mab. p. 131 j the other versions have Lhjr, Triads, i. 50, iij. 01. 250 III. THE CULTURE HERO. the same manuscript, where,1 instead of Gtveir son of Giveiryoed, we read Geir son of Geiryoed2 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 Culture 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 1 Triads, ij. 7; R. B. Mob. p. 300. 8 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 in 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 Red 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 be regarded as having the prior claim 1 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 Gioeiryoed of the Triads was Gweirioed. Add to this that the old forms Gweir and Geir become later Givair and Gair. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 251 his coder or scat, one would descend in the morning a bind or a madman ; while on Snowdon the 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 view is untenable in the case of the latter sheltered position; while the dismal tarn of the Arclu was formerly believed to be haunted by a race of fairies,1 and the word Arclu,'2 'black,' found elsewhere applied to the terrene god, suggests that the hardship consisted in 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.3 But in Irish literature, poetry is even more explicitly associated with them, as, for example, in a curious story published by O' Curry,4 to the following effect: "Finn observed a f ivourite 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. Cael answered that he had come from Brugh in the north (that is the fairy mansion of Brugh, on the Boyne). 1 Rhys in the Cymmrodor, iv. 180. " Book of Taliemn, poem xlviij. (Skene, ij. '.203). Rhys in the Cymmrodor, v. 127. 4 MS. Mat. pp. 308-9 : the poem referred to is translated at pp. 309-11, and the Irish text and the rest of the Btory, from the Book of Lismore, foL 206. b. ", 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 Crede, the daughter of Cairbr£, king of Kerry \_Ciaraighe Ltiachrci], 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. 0' 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 ISTuada 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 III. THE CULTURE HERO. 253 (pp. 120, 122). Now this Bros1 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 Bros was in power, " a certain poet and satirist named Cairbre, 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," 0' 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 nobility or royalty of these times (so different arc 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 De Danann, chiefs and people."3 The result was that Bros had to escape and seek the aid of his kinsmen the Fomori : the Tuatha De Danaan came and foughl a great battle with them, in which the Fomori 1 The lit it Bpelling is Breae, and some have attempted to base a distinction of persona on that unstable foundation. 2 O'Cuiry'a Lectures were published in 1860. 3 M8. Mat. pp. 248-?. 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. Gwydion, 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 effort 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.1 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 1 Bk. of Leinstcr, 187 c. III. THE CULTURE HEEO. 255 known as the possessor of a wonderful crowd or Celtic banjo, in which 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 fche setting thereof: his crowd told him everything.1 One may further venture to identify with Cairbre, poet and musician, Cairbre, the father of the poetic lady Credo, 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 Prydcri 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 Minister 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 surnames2 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. 2 O'Donovan, Book of Bights, pp. 42, 45, 48, 83 ; Four Marti r*, A.D. 165, 186. The name Cairbre, Cairpre, C.'oirpri ami (,'orjui, lor it is found spelled in these and other ways, was not an uncommon one; but its etymology is obscure, uor is it evident whether it was in use before it was given to the counterpart of Gwydion. In Welsh it was Corbre, which occurs in the Black Book: sec .Skene, ij. 2'J. 256 III. 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 Manannan mac Lir.1 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 speaks2 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 Bran waged later in Ireland, and on account of this property which it was supposed to have, it is occasionally referred to as Pal?' Dadeni* or the Cauldron of Eegeneration. Now the names both of Bran and Llassar connect the cauldron with Hades, and on Irish ground we meet with 1 Ossianic Soc. Trans, iij. 221-9. 2 R. B. Mab. pp. 31-2, 39, 40; Guest, iij. 110-1, 123-4. 3 D. ab Gwilym, poem exxxviij. (London, 1789, p. 276). III. THE CULTURE HERO, 257 its like as the cauldron of the Dagda, which was one of the treasures of the Tuatha De* Danaan : it was called the Undry,1 as it was never 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 De" Danaan had brought it from a mythical place called 3furias,2 in which we have a reference doubtless to some locality beneath the sea (in Irish muir\ like Caer Sidi in Talics- sin's poems : it was probably one of the objects of their seven years' sojourn in the country called Dobar and Iardobarf 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 Iladcs by Gwydion : I would now refer to another, in which Gwydion is mentioned by that name. The poem is entitled Kat Godeu, or the Battle of GocJeu, which, interpreted, appears to mean the Battle of Trees; and accordingly various trees and shrubs are described as taking part in the fighting; and the whole idea challenges comparison with that of the Battle of the Birds in the popular tales of the West Highlands.4 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 Cormac, p. 45 ; also O'Donovan's Battle of Magh Rath (Dublin, 184-2), pp. 50-3, where, besides the Dagda's, other cauldrons are mentioned of similar virtues. 2 Keating'* History of Ireland (Dublin, 1880), p. 117. 3 Ibid. p. 112; O'Flaherty's Ogyjia, i. 12. 4 Campbell, i. 25, et scq. 258 III. THE CULTURE HERO. have taken no mean part in it : he boasts to the following effect : 1 " 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 beast 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 obscnre to me; but besides the expedient of converting a forest, with 1 Skene, ij. 138, and i. 277-8. rn. the cultube hero. 259 its various kinds of trees, shrubs aud grasses, into an army by enchantment, we have a reference, probably in the resurrection effected for the Brythons by Gwydion, to his having secured the Head of Hades' Cauldron of Eegeneratiou, 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 introduces 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&ll, king of Ireland, was told by the latter that he would not believe unless he called up Ciichulainn from tho dead : this was done, but the unwilling convert cherished doubts as to his identity, and said that he must speak to him ; so Ciichulainn 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 Ciichu- lainn, let him discourse of his great deeds. I should premise that Ciichulainn 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 Ciichulainn complied with the king's wish, and the poem put into his mouth describes, among other things, his expedition to tho stronghold of Scath, iu tho s2 260 III. THE CULTURE HERO. land of Scath: the term Scath means shadow or shade, and is of the same origin as the English word. His story runs thus : x "A journey I made, 0 Loegaire, "When I went to the land of Scath ; There was the fort of Scath with its lock 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 brim2 — 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 lias 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. 2 Somewhat similar adventures are related of Connall Cernach in the story called Tain Bo Frdich : see the Bk. of Leinster, 252 a, and the whole story as published with a translation by O'Beirne Crow in the R. Ir. Academy's Irish MS. Series, i. 136 — 171. III. THE CULTUEE UEKO. -01 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 Until I was in haven." This curious poem tells us why 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 Cuchu- lainn makes them sixty-four, while the sundry attempts of Irish history to give what appeared a more rational I irm to the story has reduced them to exactly thirty — 202 III. THE CULTURE HERO. the crew, as they would say, of one boat that escaped. According to Keating,1 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 Conaing2 held Ireland under a grievous tribute : they had built themselves a stronghold called Tor Conaing, 1 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 Nemed 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 Iobath son of Beothach, who should be the counterpart of Cuchulainn, 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 Iarbhoinel.3 The Four Masters undertook in their Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland to date the event they call the Demolition of Conann's Tower, and to fix on the year 1 Pp. 87—91. 2 He is also called Cunann or Conand, as in the Bk. of Leinsier, 127 a. 3 Also called (in the genitive) Iardonel, namely, in the Bk. of the Dun, fol. 16 b, where, however, the name of Iobuth is not mentioned. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 263 30GG 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, excopt one keel which Buffered 261 HI. THE CULTURE HERO. from shipwreck, and in which 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 overwhelmed 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."1 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 : 2 1 Beyond the Glass Fort, Arthur's valour they had not seen ; Three score hundreds stood on the wall : 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 suffice for the present that I should somewhat vaguely indicate their origin. The Celts, 1 For the original, see San-Marte's Nennius et Gildas, § 13 (pp. 34-6). 2 For the text, see Skene, ij. 182. III. THE CULTUKE HERO. 263 in common probably with all other peoples of Aryan race, regarded all their 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, wThen 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,1 to the effect that the narrator of it had a servant named Te "Wharewera, wl.o related to him that " an aunt of this man [Te Wharewera] died in a solitary hut near the banks of Lake Rotorua. Being a lady of rank she was left in her hut, the door 1 In his Primitive Culture, ij. 50-2, from the seconded, of Short- land's Traditio) of Neva Zealand, p. 150. 2G6 III. THE CI'LTURE 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 sufficiently restored by their timely help, she told her story. Leaving 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. T1IE CULTUBE HERO. 2G7 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 over, 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 poem1 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. Further, by another kind of treatment, the elements of poetry and 1 Skene, ij. 156, i. 260. 208 TIT. THE CULTURE HERO. knowledge came to be themselves called ogyrvens, which 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."1 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,2 which, while obscure throughout and relating in part probably to alchemy, bears the curious title of Angar Kyfyndaivt, 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 Kynctelw, a poet of the twelfth century, calls himself 1 Ibid. ij. 324 (note by Mr. Silvan Evans); Rhys, Lectures on Welsh Phil pp. 302—305. 2 Skene, ij. 132. III. THK CULTUBB HERO. 269 'a bard of the bards of Ogyrven;'1 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 Kerridwen, 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 poem3 makes the terrene god, under the name Uthr 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 cuhemerist of the Mabinogi of Bran wen by simply making Bran, whoso marvellous head was the subject of some remarks in the first lecture (pp. 78, 97), carry on his own shoulders the musicians4 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. 1 Myv. Archaiulogij, i. 230. 2 Skene, ij. 5, 6. 3 lb. ij. 203-4. * It. B. Mab. p. 35 : the original roads, Ac yna ykerd6ys ef ac <> 1 ogerd ar6est 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 :" Bee Guest's Mab. iij. 117. 270 III. THE CULTURE HERO. GWYDION AND OTHER NAMES OF THE CULTURE HERO. Even Taliessin, the most extravagant in his pretensions of all Celtic bards, acknowledged one who took precedence over him, and that was Gweir, whom we have found called also Geir, and whom Taliessin is made to describe as the first to go into Caer Sidi, where he underwent captivity which resulted in 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 under another and a third name. A line occurs in a Taliessin poem1 where Gwydion is called Givydion Seon tewdor, where Seon tewdor is probably to be taken as standing in grammatical apposition to Givydion. To dis- pose of tewdor, suffice it to say that in the Welsh ortho- graphy of the present day it would be written tetvddor, 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 in another of these poems2 to the gtvledig Cuneda. But our interest centres in the vocable Seon; it occurs also in another poem,3 where mention is made of the planets in the fol- lowing verses : lo ' Seith seren yssyd. ' Seven stars are there 0 seithnawn 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 lb. ij. 201. 3 lb. ij. 162. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 271 rally the timbering or material, of the planets. The next reference to be mentioned is to a Taliessin poem called the Ale Song,1 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 unnumbered, 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 Meirchion and the like, not forgetting an instance in the case of the very god in question, namely, that of Givyd Gtvydion,2 to be mentioned presently. There was a place in North Wales called Caer Seon or Scion, that is to say, Scon'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. 470, 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 Duect,' 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. 2 Compound forms also occur, namely, in Cynwyd Oymoydion. 272 III. THE 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 dialogue1 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 Dintre, 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. Se, Seon or Seion, point back to stems aS^- and Segon-, and there is little room for doubt that the name Segontium2 1 Skene, ij. 57. 2 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. 1 9 5 « ; 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 Aber Sein, and the town Kaer Aber Seiv, in Maxeyi s 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 Mabinogi of Branwen (R. B. Mab. p. 34) as Kaer Seint yn Arvon, or 'the Castle of Seint in Arvon.' Seint in ITT. THE CULTURE BERO. 273 itself is formed from that of the god. Further, not only was there a people in the south of this island called Segontiaci, who were of those who sent ambassadors to Caesar;1 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 Segontiaci. This leaves the conjecture that would connect the Segontiaci 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 tile 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 Ilercules. Now there was a remarkable Gaulish god, and a tho- roughly Celtic one, whom we have distinct evidence for modem Welsh Incomes Saint, so that the river is now Afon S>ti>>f, while a late Kyinririzing 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. 1 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 indifferently called ogam. On the other hand, the Welsh word corresponding ety- mologically to Ogmios and Ogma, is ovycl, 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 origin of his knowledge, except indirectly by making him the son of Elatha king of the Fomori, 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 13eli fills the place ascribed in Irish to Elatha, and Don III. TUE CULTURE IIi:i:<>. 'J7:> 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 ~D6 Danann. This story1 has been reduced to sober history by Prof. O'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 ctan, which is homophonous with the name of the poetess Etan, 1 Given at length in the British Museum MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 53 b; for O'Curry's version of it, see the passages in his MS. M"t. pp. 248-9, already referred to at p. 253. - Fox references, Bee Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 521, b.v. elatha; Stok.'~'< Calendar of Oengtu, p. eclvi ; also d' A. de JubainviUe'a c Myth. p. 306. The word seems to have been declined in two ways, Ebitha, gen. Elot/ian, and Elathan, gen. Eluthain. t2 276 III. THE CULTURE HERO. to be identified, probably, with Brigit, goddess of poetry : Cairbre, the first satirist in Erinn, is distinguished us 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,1 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 [cf]wet: liable to be reduced in the later stages of the language to \_g~\wedf as 1 Triads, i. 86 = iij. 116. 2 Triads, iij. 58 j Iolo MSS. pp. 48, 428. The other name, Arawn, is derived from the same source as the Welsh term wraith, ' an oration or speech,' a word represented in Irish by aireclit 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. 3 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 gtvedyd), 1 to say,' is much used: take, for instance, gioed, 'die;' gwedweh, 'dicite;' gwedais, ' 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 dywedyd III. THE CULTURE HERO. 12 7 7 in gwedyd) i to say.' A modification of the same stem gives us the gwyd in Gwydion, and a third form is exem- (redaced also to dytvefyd, d'we'yd, and even d'e'yd) means 'to say, Baying;' dywed, Mir;' dywedaf, Mieam;' flfj{/yd (North Welsh for dyunjd), ' dicet ;' dywawd, also dywod and (now in North Wales) dywad, 'dixit.' The umlaut ?/ in dyfyd (dywyd) is caused by the semi-vowel which once followed, as in Gwyd (Skene, ij. 135) or still follows as in Qwydion (with the i pronounced like English y in yea). The effects of the semi-vowel are perceptible in other words, especially verbs, such as gwyl, ' videbit,' from gwel-ed, ' to see,' or salf, ' stabit,' from sof-ijll, ' 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 Gwyd was called into existence to accompany the ■ other, they may be treated as standing for an ancient nominative Vetjo and genitive Vetjonos respectively. In ilium id or dyicawd, '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-red, ' suc-currere,' Irish fo-reth- of the same meaning ; but the old perfect was gwa-rawt, Irish fo-rdith for *vo-rd(-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, bore, and see, 8->][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 III. THE CTLTl'RE HERO. 281 antiquity as Thucydides, between Aoyo? and ipyov, word and deed, is one of the growths of an age beginning to devote itself to philosophy and conceited moralizings over the hollowness of human nature. Formulae 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 cuhemerist 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 ITeracles. 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, l 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 Se or Scon 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 III. THE CULTURE HERO. Heracles were performed by the charm of speech rather than by the force of arms. But we seem to be again led back to the latter by the name Giveir 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 Givron, which means a great man or hero, and is given as the name of the third of the three originators of bardism.1 GWYDION 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 gicr stands for an earlier giver, which, with the Irish fer, points to an early nominative vivos, 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 Givaredwr, ' Salvator') : compare Vintjos (Welsh gwynt, 'wind') from ventos. Welsh could, however, have other forms, and vptjos might either become vcirjos, which would he our Gioeir, 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 Daftwyr Daftben and Daft- weir Dattben, not to mention a third derivative Dattwaran also applied to him : the former two names would in their early forms be Dallo- verjos Dallopennos, which would seem to mean Blind-bead (son) of Blind-man. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 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 been 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 referred1 to the same origin as the Latin word vatcs by Fick, Vigfusson and others ; further, it is impossible to sever the Irish faith, l a prophet or poet,' from vates on the one hand, and from the Welsh givaivd, l 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 : 2 i. Their family relations. 1. Gwydion's mother was Don, of whom very little is 1 By Fick in his Vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogermemischen Sprachen*, iij. 308, and by Vigfusson in the Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. civ; seo also the Academy for Jan. 1885, p. 46. ■ Excursus i. § 2, in the Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. civ, ij. 458-63 : the references are, where not specified, to that excursus. 284 III. THE CULTURE HERO. known, and his 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,'1 to be interpreted alius rotulus or deep-sinking wheel : she led a 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 Math, made a beau- tiful woman out of flowers. 1 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 Norse 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 ct scmitas common tus 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.1 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 Seon. Woden submitted himself to a course of prolonged 1 Bk. of Taliessin, Skene, y. 1">9. 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.1 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- 1 Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreal e, 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.1 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 Vigf 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. 2 lb. i. civ, ij. 460. 288 III. THE CULTURE HERO. in order to secure a draught of the precious drink. Nor does the 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.1 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. 42. TIT. THE CULTURE HERO. 289 to Hie sea that washed the shores of Germany, visited that country. They went on to specify that Ascibur- gium,1 a town on the banks of the Rhine, 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 Romans, 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 Ilercules 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 him which constituted at once the story of the labours of the Teutonic Ilercules 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 Eesenberg. D 290 III. THE CULTURE 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 untrained 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 Kaetia, 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 conterminous : thus the Gaulish name prevailing there may have been the one corresponding to Welsh Se or Seon, the Silchester Saegon-, IN. THE CULTURE HERO. 291 to which the Teutonic languages would answer with a name beginning with Beg-, 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.1 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 Gundiled ; also the way he disposed of the iron warriors that sprang from the ground in a formidable crop, as compared Avith the expedient adopted by Woden to get rid of the nine hay-mowing slaves of the giant Suptung, 1 Solinus mentions Caledonia or the north of this island as a distant coast visited by the wandering figure of Ulysses. Prima facie there is nothing improbable in the notion implied, that Romans who had visited the north of Britain had found worshipped there a hero or god who reminded them of Ulysses ; hut 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 Germaniaj 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. D 2 292 III. THE CULTURE HERO. when he 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.1 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 Kig-Veda, 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. 4G5. 2 See Lang's chapter on A far-travelled Tale in his Custom and Myth, pp. 87 & seq. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 293 are, however, obliged to admit that in Ins 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.1 His spoils are for men, and it is on their behalf that he fights.2 He is metaphorically a wall 1 I refer to M. Bergaigne ami his work entitled La Religion I d'apres lea Hymnea du Rig-Veda (BibliotJieque de VEcole dea 11 rftudes: Paris, 1878, 1883), i. p. xvi. - Ibid. ij. 172, 178 (Rig-Veda, i. 55, 5, vij. 32, 14, vij. 32, 17, viij. 43, 13, viij. 45, 40-1, x. 120, 4). 294 III. THE CULTURE HERO. of defence, and he is a castle,1 just as Gwydion was a thick door of protection. 2. With regard to wisdom and poetry he is the most sagacious of the wise2 and the most skilled in song;3 he is called an old friend of the poets,4 and he is not unfre- quently associated with an ancient race of singers known by the name of Angiras;5 he has assumed the inspira- tion of prophets,6 and he can take all forms through his magic power ; 7 lastly, he gives his friends faithful gui- dance,8 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,9 which in Sanskrit phraseology are called the cows : 10 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.11 It is right, however, to call attention to the 1 See Rig-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 {Rig-Veda, x. 112, 9). 3 lb. (Rig-Veda, i. 100, 4). 4 lb. p. 188 (Rig-Veda, vi. 18, 5, vi. 21. 5, 8). 5 Bergaigne, i. 150 (Rig-Veda, x. 108, 8), ij. 175, 183; Perry, pp. 140-1 (Rig-Veda, i. 62, 3, i. 83, 4, iv. 16, 8). 6 Perry, p. 196 (Rig-Veda, iij. 36, 5). 7 lb. (Rig-Veda, iij. 53, 8, vi. 47, 18). 8 lb. p. 189 (Rig-Veda, v. 31, 8). 9 Bergaigne, i. pp. xvi, xviii. 10 lb. ij. 179. 11 lb. ij. 180 (Rig-Veda, v. 30, 4, vi. 17, 5, vi. 43, 3, viij. 45, 30, x. 112, 8). III. TIIE CULTURE HERO. 205 fact that India is not said to rain in the sense in which Parjanya, or Zeus and Jupiter, were said to rain;1 and the etymology which was supposed to prove his name to have made him a pluvial divinity has been superseded by a better one which has nothing to do with rain.2 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 giver of cows, horses and women.3 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.4 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.5 And it is a well-known fact that the Aztecs 1 Bergaigne, ij. 184-5. 2 See Bezzenberger in his Beitrcege, i. 342, where he points out the correspondence between Sanskrit indra, Zend andra (indra), and the Teutonic stem (antra-) from which he derives (). H. Ger. antrisc, entrisc, 'antiquus, vetustus;' M. H. Ger. entrisch, 'old;' Upper Ger. Dialects mterisch, enz&risch, 'ungeheuer, seltsam.' He would trace the stem suggested to a simpler one postulated by the A. -Saxon word < id, 'a giant,' and the 0. II. Ger. adjective entisc, andisc, of the same meaning as antrisc 3 Bergaigne, ij. 177-9 (Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 1G & saepc). 4 lb. i. p. xvi, ij. 187-8. 5 Dr. E. B. Tylor tells mo that he has witnessed this ceremony at Zuni ; but be adds that until one Las 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.1 Indra's principal weapon in all his conflicts with the dark powers is his thunder- bolt,2 but he is also very materially aided by his wor- shippers' prayers,3 and in some of his most difficult undertakings he has associated with him Brahmanaspati, the lord of prayer,4 and likewise the Angiras.5 He breaks open the enemies' gates by the spell of song ; 6 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 Aoyo?, 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,7 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 8 and is a means of rejuvenescence generally, which calls to mind the prayer formulae, it would be uusafe to say that the 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). 3 Bergaigne, ij. 235. 4 Perry, pp. 165-6 (Rig-Veda, viij. 85, 15). 5 lb. pp. 141, 143 (Rig-Veda, iv. 16, 8). 6 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). s lb. i. 152 (Rig-Veda, viij. 61, 17, viij. GS, 2). III. THE CULTURE HERO. 207 Welsh Cauldron of Regeneration. The rishis or the sages of Sanskrit tradition carry it in their hearts,1 while India makes rishis, wise men or poets, of those who have drunk 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.3 The soma is theirs, and they made it for themselves,4 but it was brought to this world by an eagle,0 which reminds one of Woden, after (banking 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.6 More usually the one of the dark powers, who conceals the soma coveted by Indra is Tvashtar, a sort of Dis and Vulcan in one. Indra overpowers him in his own house and drinks his soma,7 though Tvashtar was sometimes reckoned Indra's own father:8 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). a lb. i. 86, 90 {Rig-Veda, x. 135. 1, 7). 4 lb. i. 149 {Rig-Veda, ix. 18, 3, ix. 78, 4, ix. 85, 2, ix. 109, 15). s lb. 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) : tlie Sanskrit word is cyena, which Dr. Perry renders by ' falcon ' and M. Bergaigne by 'aigle,' while the definition in the Petersburg Dic- tionary is 'der grbsste und starkete Raubvogelj Adlerj auch Falko oder EabichV 7 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. MS, 149, 177. s lb. iij. 58-9 {Rig-Veda, ij. 17, 6, iij. 48, I I. 298 III. THE CULTURE HERO. 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.1 Another account makes Indra's mother give him the soma to drink,2 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 story3 in the Kamayana, 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 R. B. Mob. pp. 63-5 ; Guest, iij. 224-7. 2 Bergaigne, ij. 165, iij. 58 {Rig-Veda, iij. 48, 2), 104. 3 Ramayana, ed. A. von Schlegel (Bonn, 1829, 1838), Book i. chap, xlviij. III. THE CULTURE HERO. 290 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,1 and, with the taste characteristic of the hymning sages of the Eig-Veda, he is even termed a cask of soma.2 5. Indra is the giver of women,3 and he provides an aged friend of his with a young wife.4 Moreover, he rejuvenates old maids,5 and rescues from death the child of the maiden who had from shame done away with it, and which the ants were gnawing,6 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,7 while the Sun is also treated as the husband and lover of the Dawn.8 But Indra is more than once described making war on the Dawn, who is then called a' wicked woman; 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.9 The meaning of all this is not considered very 1 Perry, p. 165. 2 lb. p. 173 (Big- Veda, vi. G9, 2). 3 lb. p. 187 (Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 16). 4 lb. p. 189 {Rig-Veda, i. 51, 13). s lb. p. 190 (Rig-Veda, iv. 19, 7). t; lb. (Rig-Veda, ij. 15, 7, iv. 19, 9). 7 Bergaigne, ij. 188, 191 (Rig-Veda, iij. 31, 15, iij. 32, S). 8 lb. ij. 2 (Rig-Veda, i. 92, 11, i. 115, 2, vij. 76, 3), 14. » lb. ij. 192, 193 (Rig-Veda, iv. 30, 8—11; also ij. 15, 6, x. 73, 6, x. 138, 5). 300 III. THE CULTURE HEEO. clear, but a reference to the slowness of the Dawn1 is supposed to supply the key to it : in other words, the Dawn Avas 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.2 If this view be approximately correct, we have in it a remarkable parallel to the story of Blodeueet : 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,3 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). 3 Morris' Celtic Remains, p. 231, s.v. Gwydion. III. THE CULTURE HERO. the place of the Aoyos 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,1 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 Eivers, 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 CI wydion- Woden. Some of them are brought into prominence in the following verses2 from the Big-Ycda, with which these remarks may be closed (i. 53. 2, 5, G) : ' Thou art the giver of horses, In- dra, thou art the giver of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth : the old guide of man, dis- appointing no desires, a friend to friends. . . .' 'Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure ami food, in wealth of manifold de- light and splendour. Lei us rejoice in the blessing of the gods, which as the strength of offspring, yives us cows first and horses.' ' Du, Indra, schenkest Rosse, schenk- est Kinder auch, du Bchenkest Korn and hist des Gutes starker Heir, Beschenkst die Manner, Bchmalerst ilnv Wunsche trie, ein Fivund den Freunden. . . .' 1 Lass Reichthum, Indra, lass erlang- en Labung una, BehrglaMendeQenusse,himmelstreb- ende, Und Huld der Gotter, die den Man- nern Kraft verleiht und reich zuerst an Rindern und an Rossen ist.' 1 Perry, pp. 142-6. 2 Tlic English translation is from Mas Mutter's Chips, i. 31-2, and the German ono from Grassmann's Rig-Veda Uebereetzt, 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 sacrificer, thou struckest down irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.' ' Dich haben diese Tranke, diese Kraf tiger, 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 CULTURE IIFRO. 303 nowhere, perhaps, is the criminality of human progress more ostentatiously recognized than in the Latin classics. Witness the qnaint 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 abscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si taraen 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 Aryan 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 thorn 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 whole 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 view 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. GWYDION AND CAIRBRE. 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 Ycnedotian version, was to hold the king's feet in his lap from the time he took his scat at table to the moment when he retired to rest.1 He had also to discharge the more delicate function of scratching his majesty's person whenever the royal skin happened to itch. Now Math ab Mathonwy used to have 1 Ancient Laws owl Institutes of Wales (London, 1841), "Vol. L bk. i. chap, xxxiv. Conaire Mor (p. 135), monarch of Erinn, had also a foot-holder: see O'Curry, iij. 143. X 306 IV. THE CULTURE 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 Math was away in the war with the men of Dyved (p. 244), she was outraged by Gil- vaethwy son of Don, with his brother Gwydion's con- nivance. Math, 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 into deer, wild boars and wolves, forms which they had for three successive years. When the term of their punishment was completed, Math 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 Math, namely, Arianrhod, daughter of Math's sister Don, whereupon Math addressed her as follows : ' Ha, damsel, art thou the maiden ? ' 'I know not, Lord, other than that I am,' was the reply; at which Math took up his magic wand and bent it, saying, l Step over this, and I shall know if thou art the maiden.' That, I ought to state, is Lady Charlotte Guest's translation ; l 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. Math took 1 Guest's Mab. iij. 231. 2 E. B. Mab. p. 68. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 30/ 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 court1 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 firsl sight this looks as if it meant Math's court in the I bourhood of the Conwy, lmt the drift of the story is beal understood apposing the court meant to have been Gwydion'a own court, which was probably al Dinas Dintte or at Caer Seon (p. 271). It was doubtless some place nearer to Caer Arianrliod than Math's court. x2 308 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. finding her child alive, has been told elsewhere (p. 236) : but she is not represented as making any allusion to his 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 Math 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 Cor mac 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,1 and Cairbre was obliged to confess his guilt to the nobles of his realm, who, when the children 1 Rhys, Celtic Britain, 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 Book of Carmarthen : 'An bit ni bluitinet a Mr diev. Ariev enwir edwi fruytheu.' ' 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 CULTUEB 1IEK0. 309 were born, ordered thorn to be burnt, that the incest might not remain in the land. ' Give me,' said Cairbre's druid, 'that Core1 there, that I may place him out>iilc 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 Bdi, 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. Do Bui, or Bui'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 Erinn. Such is the story2 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 River. Now I have only to reproduce, word for word, as it occurs in the Book of Zeinstcr, 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. /.<"/ moramd.' 314 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. however, 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 Duibne. 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:1 In days of yore there were three brothers called Gavida, Mac Samthainn and Mac Kineely, 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 Drumnatinne (Fire-ridge), while Mac Kineely was lord of the district around, com- prising what is now the parishes of Kath-Finan and Tullaghobegly, and he possessed such a valuable grey cow that attempts were always being made to steal her from him. At the same time Tory Island was the head- quarters of a notorious robber called Ealor, 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. 3 I 5 he used to cover it unless he wished to petrify his foes ; and even to this day an evil or overlooking eye is called by the Irish Balor'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. lie 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 >he in her turn put them all to sleep as fairies can ; but when they woke they found that Biroge and her protegee 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 finding 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 mainland, and took Mac Kineely out to a large white stone, and thereon chopped his head off. 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, l 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 sullenness 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. Lng 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- natinne, though others will have it that the scene of Balor's death was at Cnoc na fvl6n ; and it is probably after her that Tnis (.'< ithh nn, or Ceith- liu's [ale, that is, Enniakillen, a town on Lough Erne, has been called; but see M. d'A. de Jubainville's Cycle, p. 2li2. 320 IV. THE CULTURE 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.1 From the foregoing stories and those mentioned in 1 The name Mac Samthainn 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 Mac Legind, 'Boy of Beading;' and there was an old name, Mac Naue, which Adamnan {Vita S. Columbae, ed. Reeves, 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 Chuill, usually rendered ' Son of the Hazel,' but it Avould 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 CULTURE HERO. 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 in such a case. In the first place, Cairbre is, as it were, split up into 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 Minister were called Muscraigc, Anglicized Muscrtj or Muskevry?- The next in importance was Cairbre Niafer, or C. the Champion of Men, and that significant designation2 reminds one of the Culture Hero under his name Ogma, who was repre- sented as the champion of the Tuatha De Danann. Cairbre Niafei was monarch of Erinn and dwelt at Tara of the Kings,3 and he was father of Ere, who survived him at Tara4 to figure in the story of Ciichulainn. This Cairbre is mentioned as one of the avengers of his father Conaire (p. 135), and it was in his reign that the Fir Bolg were 1 See p. 255, above ; also the Bk. of Mights, p. 42, note. 2 The scribe of the story of the Deisi in the Bk. of the Dun, 5 [a, calls hiru Corpri Niad, which should mean Cairbre 'of Champions,' or 'of (the) Champion.' :; See a poem by a poet called OTIartagan in the Bk. of Leinster, 161 a, 161 /<; also O'Curry's edition of it in his MS. Materials, pp. 51 1-6. This clashes with other supposed facts, and it has been repre- sented that Cairbre was only king of Leinster, and that he lived, QOl at Tara of the Kings, but at another Tara : see O'Curry, ibid. p. and (/Donovan's note to his Battle of Afagh Bath, p. 138; but there is no mistaking O'llartagan's meaning. * Winduch, p. :il2; O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 199. Y 322 IV. THE CULTUKE HERO. driven westwards to the islands including Arann.1 The third brother is called Cairbre Eigfota, who is described as assisting his brothers to avenge their father ;2 but he is chiefly known as the ancestor of the Dal Riada, l the division or tribe of Eiada,' better known as the Dalriad Scots of Antrim and Alban, Riada and Rigfota being the same name, which Bseda wrote Reuda? These three Cairbres are usually mentioned together as the sons of Conaire;4 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.5 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 Fomorian being disturbed by the Cairbre who 1 See a poem by Mac Liag in the Bit. of Leinster, 152 a, 152&, and O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 122-3. 2 Bk. of the Dim, 5ia. 3 Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 1, where it is not quite evident whether Baeda 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 Rigfota 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. 4 But there were doubtless plenty of accounts inconsistent with this. For instance, Cairbre Niafer is made son of Bos Baud, or R. the Red, 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 Bk. of Leinster, fol. 311^. 5 O'Donovan's note to the Bk. of Bights, p. 48, and to the Topo- graphical Boems, p. lxxi, note 61C. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 323 composed the first satire in Erinn has been indicated (p. 253). It now only remains to be said that the great ( ulture Ilero 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 De" Danann.1 This is brought into still greater relief in a poetic version of an oath in the epic story of the Tain (p. 140) as told in the Book of Zcinster, where Medb is represented urging a famous champion called Fer-diad to undertake a duel against her mighty enemy Ciichulainn. Fer-diad, wishing to feel certain that Medb's promises would be faithfully kept to his race in case he fell in 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 : 2 Cid domnal na charpat. na niaman an airgne gidi'at lucht na bairddnc rotfi'atsu gid acht fonasc latt ar morand. madaill latt a chomall naisc carpri min 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 (shall 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 would 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 Bh qfLoiiuter, SI A; (/Curry, iij. 418-9. Y2 324 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 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.1 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 in the ancient inscriptions of Gaul and the Celtic portion of the Iberian peninsula. GWYDION AND AlTHERNE. The next group of tales to be mentioned gives us, for comparison with Gwydion and others, a remarkable Ulto- nian poet called Aitherne, who belonged to Conchobar mac Nessa's court at a time when the Ultonians 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. 0' Curry's words,2 " for distinguished poets and bards (who were also the philosophers, lawyers, 1 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 bo called, of visits among the kings, chiefs, and nobles of tlic 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 } nitrons 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 Erinn 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 spear1 when 1 Jin: OH. iij. 177—180. 326 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 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 Ciiclm- lainn's fall. Now Conchobar chose as his emissary to pick quarrels with his neighbours the poet Aitherne, 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 Conchobar and Aitherne are Irish reflexes of Math 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.1 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 Aitherne 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 therein he washed the blood from his face. Hence the lake, so goes the story, was named Loch Dergdcircf or Eed- eye's Lake. In consideration of the value Echaid attached to his honour, 1 Bk. of Leinster, 114 b — 117a; see the whole story, edited with a translation by Stokes, in the Rev. Celt. viij. 47 — 63. 2 It is now more briefly called Loch Derg, and it is situated above Killaloe on the Shannon. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 327 in that lie gave his only eye to save it, Heaven is said to have given him thenceforth two eyes instead of the ono he had parted with. He is, moreover, mentioned as ono 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 Bal< >r 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, Aitherne 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 Brcstine, near Tullow, 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- tlmcht'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 Lugaid1 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, 472. IV. TIIE CULTURE HERO. 329 way with Balder to Hell. It was afterwards retained as ;i token by Balder to his father when the latter sent his son Hermocir to Hell to ask for Balder's release : ] (alder was not allowed to go back with Hermocir, 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.1 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 Cernach.2 I5ut it would be useless to attempt to interpret this story bit by bit ; suffice it to say that Conall Cernach, or C. tin- Victorious, 1 Corpus Poet. Bar. i. 111. 2 Bk. of Leinster, HG/<, 117'/ : compare Rev. Celt. i\j. 1 - 5, 330 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. is to be regarded as a sun-hero, 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 Liffey; as, for example, in the story of Conchobar and Medb, in which ISTaas is made the head-quarters of Ailill, whose wife Medb became after deserting Conchobar, her former husband. Ailill is, so to say, divided between Connaught and Leinster after his marriage with Medb, who possessed Connaught as her inheritance from her mother.1 It is from their capital in the west that Ailill 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 Gailioin, whose superiority over the rest of the troops 1 Bk. of Leinster, 53 b; O'Curry, p. 282. Their capital in the west was Cruachan Ai, a place near Belanagare, in the county of Roscom- mon, where the remains of the earthen forts distinguishing the site go by the name of Rath Croghan : see the Bk. of Rights, O'Donovan's note, p. 20. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 331 so excited his 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 1. at alliens.1 The narrative permits it to be seen that the superiority of the Gailioin is merely an interpretation of the magic arts ascribed to them ;2 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 De* Danann, or the race of the gods. Similarly, Leinster, no less than Connaught and the west, appears to represent Hades in the story of Aitherne. 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- script3 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: "Aitherne 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 should see them would not betake himself to 1 Bl: of the Dun, 56?>, 58a; see also O'Curry's remarks on them in Ins Manners, Sec ij. 259-G1. - Bk. of the Dan, 57a. 3 117a, 117/'. 332 IV. THE CULTUEE HERO. his 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. othor. 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 God 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 who preach heresy.'1 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 tiny were stolen by Aithcrne 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 cram4 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. 80). 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 ho fought with Arawn the king of that country, and beat him in one of the Three Frivolous Battles at the expense of 71,0(M) 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 Adarrmdin (Simla, 1 S7(J), pp. 14, 15; ami Windisch, pp. 187-8 j also B.V. diuflaii/t (p. 185). 334 IV. THE CULTURE HEEO. to be more exact, the Welsh version may have compressed into a triad the stories of several thefts from Hades, so that one wonld 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.1 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 Norns 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 Aitherne 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 Aitherne in pejorem partem. You might now be left to think the best of Aitherne in his reformed character ; but one cannot dismiss him without giving the tale of his death. Irish story 1 See Thornton's Morte Arthurs, ed. by Perry for the E. Eng. Text Society (London, 1865), p. 31, line 1029 : 'Thre balefulle birdez 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 CULTURE HERO. 335 represents Coneihobai marrying several times (p. 139), mid 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 Ilelen-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 Roig undertook on their behalf to conciliate the king, and he thought that he had succeeded (p. 137) ; but no sooner had the sons of Usnech 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 Avas, '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 mosl tragic manner.1 Conchobar after that event was Wmdisch, 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 instigation 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 ; 1 and it comes very close to that of Gwydion and Goewyn (p. 305) in the "Welsh Mabinogi of Math. Here Conchobar, though not por- trayed so noble a character, takes the place of Math, and the former's young and beautiful wife that of Goewyn, Math's virgin 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 jDroceeds 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 Bk. of Balhjmote and another Dublin manu- script which unfortunately I have not yet seen. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 337 liis hand more heavily on the Irish narrative than on the Welsh one. For, while Conchobar and his Ultonians annihilate Aithernc and his house, Math 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 Goewyn 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. Pwyll 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 Ilero, 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 tin-so lectures ; but the arrangement about to be here followed has in its ddb IV. THE CULTURE HERO. favour the desirability of keeping them 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 Pwylt Prince of Dyved, other- wise known as Pwylt Head of Hades, who has hitherto been treated exclusively in the latter capacity. He forms the subject of one of our Welsh stories,1 but it is too long to be reproduced here word for word. The follow- ing extract will suffice for the present purpose. Pwylt 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 clay was still young, the horn was blown and the dogs were let loose under the wood which filled the Cuch valley, and Pwylt, 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 i?. B. Mai. pp. 1—25; 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.' 'Ah, prince,' said Pwyfl, 'what else?' 'By my faith,' said he, 'it is thy bad manners and ungentlemanly conduct.' 'What ungentlemanly conduct, prince,' said Pwylt, '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.9 'Ah, prince,' said Pwytt, 'if I have done wrong I will purchase thy good- will.' ' In what way,' said he, k wilt thou purchase it ?' 'According to thy rank,' said Pwytt : ' I know not who thou art.' ' I am,' said he, ' a crowned king in the country from which I come.' 'Lord,' said Pwytt, ' good day to thee, and what country is it from which thou comest?' 'From LTades,' 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 Ilavgan, a kiDg of Ilades. 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 z 2 340 IV. THE CULTURE 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 Pwytr, '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 shoulclst 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 Pwytr the way to his court in Hades, and then hastened in Pwytt's form to Arberth to rule over Dyved. Pwytr 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. Pwytt returned to his kingdom to find that it had been governed better than usual that year. Arawn likewise was pleased with what Pwytr" 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 fidelity1 with which Pwytr 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 CULTURE HERO. 341 nant. In fact, this proved the means of stamping the friendship between Pwyti 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 Pwytt'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 Dyved 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. latum (Vol. iij. pp. 42 and 45), which makes the tale cuii.seipiently uninlel!i;'ihle. 342 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. The first to claim our attention relates to Cuchulainn's relations with Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword, king of an Irish Hades or Elysium.1 His wife's name is given as Liban, and she had a sister Fand, who had been deserted by her husband Manann&n mac Lir. Fand fell iu love with Ciichulainn on account of his fame, and she and her sister the queen tried to induce Ciichulainn 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. Ciichulainn, 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 Pwytf 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 hand2 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 effect3 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. 3 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 Ey-Many iu Connaught, haying 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 Duel 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 ( Yichulainn's fury, but he craved for mercy, which he obtained with the question, whether he knew what had taken the Sons of Duel Dermait out of their country. The prince replied that he could not tell, but that if Ciichulainn would step iuto 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 Lee--. In answer to his question about the Sons of Duel Der- mait, he was told he should presently find it all out, as he would be directed to the next island, which was inhabited by the daughter of Duel Dermait and her husband: the name of the former was Aehtlann, and of 344 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. the latter Conclla Coel Corrbacc. When they 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 D6el 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 D6el 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 Pwytt. 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 Duel 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 CULTUItE HERO. 345 enabled to return to their own land. In passing, it may be suggested that the Sons of Doel Dermait, which means the Beetle of Forge tfulness,1 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 Doel 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 Con- 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'2 1 The name may be compared with the Norse Omirmis hegri, or the Heron of r^urgetfulness, said to hover over banqueta ami to steal away t lie minds of men : see Vigfusson and Powell's C<>rj>//s I'm I. /;,,/•. i. 23, - Windisch, Irische Taste, p. 210. 346 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. that 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.1 Finally, as to the geography of Cuchulainn's voyage, the two first islands he reaches are not exactly Hades, but they are near it, especially the one occupied by C. C. Corrbacc and Achtlann his wife ; for not only does this latter name betray itself by its likeness to Talies- sin's Ochren and the Achren2 with which the latter has 1 Windisch gives them thus : Erich co ro bi im slmidhi-se ind Emain Macha corris, and translates, Much dich auf, bis dass es an meinem Sitze in Emain Macha ist, dass da 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 Acthlem (for Aethlenl), said to have followed Twrch Trwyth into the sea to be never heard of afterwards : see the R. D. Mob. pp. 125, 141. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 347 already been compared (p. 248), but Corrbacc is unmis- takably to be identified with Welsh K/jrrach, the sous of (iwawrrtur Kyrvach from the confines of Hell1 being among the strange personages enumerated in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen. All the visits of Ciichulainn to Hades were not of the same description as the one just mentioned. In the one previously detailed he proceeded more like Gwydion than IVytt, and obtained the king's cauldron from the hand of the king's daughter. The same poem (p. 261) from which that was taken also relates how 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 differ 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 Ciichulainn's quest of Duel Dermait's three Sons. The following is an abstract of it : 2 I\Vi son of Kynyr, Owein son of Urien, Kynon son of Klydno, and others of the knights of Arthur's court, were sitting together at Carlcon, when it became Kynon1 s turn to entertain his comrades with a story. So he related 1 R. /A Mob. p. 106 ; Guest, ij. 259. - It. B. M«h. pp. 163-92 j for Lady Charlotte Guest's translation, i Muh. i. :jy — 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 staff in his hand and struck a great blow with it at a stag, so that he gave a loud bell. At that bell there nocked 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. Alter 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 CULTUEE 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- haired, curly-headed maiden, with a diadem of gold on IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 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 friend of the Black Knight's wife, and her name was Elunct, 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 Gyges' 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 volcns 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, OwehTs wile, if she would permit hi in 352 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. to take Owein with him in order to show him for three months to the nobles of Britain. Mnch 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 Arthur'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 lived. 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 Tratvs, 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 CULTURE IIHRO. 353 they lamented his coming among thorn, 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,1 one should possibly regard it as connected with Owein's first stay with his wife in 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 kill in order to release the three Sons 1 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 db4 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. of Doel Dermait. The latter probably represent, as al- ready suggested, the tripartite day of the ancient Goidels ; in Welsh they are three brothers slain every day by the Avanc of the Lake,1 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 Pwylr and Arawn as a parallel through- out, one would have to set the Perverse Black Bobber over against Havgan or Summer-white, which forms a difficulty. There is also another difference, namely, that Pwyit 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 : 2 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 Cuchulainn'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 liberation 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. TV. THE CULTURE HERO. "V. of captives1 will be found to figure also in tho Arthurian romances in various forms, as, for example, in the account of Arthur's intervention between Gwyn and (iwvthur; 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 belonging to the same mythi<: 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 1 I hope to return to this in my treatment of the Arthurian L< . for the present it will sufliee to refer t<» M- Gaston J 'aris' allusion to the captives, in the Romania, xij. 47G-7, 479. 2 a 2 356 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. the following effect : 1 Once on a time the Tuatha De" Danann played a game of hurley against the Fe'ni on the plain near the Lake of Lein 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 De* Danann saw that they could not prevail, they went away and journeyed northwards in a body. Their food during the contest and during 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. From 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 De" 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 Diarmuicl, &c. ij. §§11, 13 — 18 : I have freely used in this abstract Dr. Joyce's wording in his Old Celt. Rom. pp. 313 — 322. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. oG7 eye in the middle of his black forehead. lie 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 Mas 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 Feni to hunt in the neighbourhood, so that it was a wilderness for many miles around the tree. Therefore Diarmait, when pursued by Finn, 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 Grainne, Diarmait's wife, hearing of the berries, was seized 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."1 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 l»y the Irish tchular, Mr. Standish II. O'Grady, ij. § 15. 358 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 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 stoiy of the berries, in which the brief allusion to the crimson nuts forming part of the food of the Tuatha De' Danann, seems to refer to the same mysterious fruit that used to fall from the nine 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 in 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 regarding it as a preservative against the malignant influence of witches and all things uncanny. The English name1 appears to be of Scandinavian origin, the Old Norse being reynir, Danish ronne, Swedish r'onn ; 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-ash, 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 books cerddm, singular cerddinen ; but 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.1 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 {infrequently 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. 29G), 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 1 See Grimm's Deutsche Myth,4 ij. 101G; and Yigfusson's Icelandic- Eixj. Die. s. v. reynir. 3 GO IV. THE CULTURE 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 be said in explanation of that term. The Celts reckoned Dis the father of all, and regarded darkness and death as taking precedence over light and life ; so in their computation of time they began with night and win- ter,1 and not with daylight and summer. The Teutons reckoned similarly, and probably for the same mytho- logical reason.2 In ancient Italy we have a trace of the same idea in the Roman 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 tvythnos, 'a week,' which literally means 'an eight- 1 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. Mab. p. 102). The habit appears to have been also English and Gothic, not to mention that it is Icelandic to this day. 2 The words of Tacitus, in his Germania, chapter xi., are worth quoting : Nee dierura numerum, ut vos, sed noctium com/futant, sic comtituunt, sic ccndicunl ; nox ducere diem uidetiir. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. ?>C,\ night,' where an Englishman might use 'sennight;' similarly, a fortnight is in Welsh pythewnos, 'a fifteen- night,' and the Irish coicthigcs (genitive c6icthigm\ 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.1 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 Roman nundince or markets held every ninth day : the word is supposed to represent an older and longer form, novendincBj 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 book 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 inditl'eiv.ntly 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; 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. 3G2 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. is explained by means of the Brythonic word notation,1 which would, in modern Welsh, be newidieiu, the plural of netvid, l 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 new 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,2 explained to have meant an assembly,3 and a compound ard-noenden, 1 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 nine- 1 It occurs in the Bodley MS. Auct. F. iv. 32, fol 7b, 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. Celtica2, p. 1054. 2 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 publishing (with a translation) two versions of the story accounting for the Ultonian couvade. 3 Such is the meaning in a line in the Bk. of the Dun, 81 b, where in noindin seems to mean the oenach or fair at which the men of Ulster used to meet. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 303 night week, that is to say, five nights and four days, which is given as the length of the Ultonian coavade.1 This was called cess noinden Ulad, which, if we call noinden a week, would mean ' (the) Ulster men's sickness or indisposition 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 Ulad, ' the Ultonians' week' — a term, however, which did not necessarily refer to the couvade.2 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 Leinster, 125/;) 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 fust, may readily be supposed to have introduced the alternative ex- planation. '-' Noinden Ulad is applied, for instance, to the raiding into tho other provinces, which was arranged at a feast given to Conchobai and his braves by one of theii number called Bricriu : see Stokea and Windisch'a TriacJu Texts, pp. 174, 188. 8 Windisch, ibid. p. 330, is inclined to this view. 364 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. literature is exactly the length of the nine-night week, the term used being nomad, 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. 3G5 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.1 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 jrc/Mrofw, '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 Horse 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 woidd be served on a Tuesday, as no court sat on Sundays.2 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, HeimdaPs nine maiden - mothers have been men- tioned as symbolic of time under its weekly aspects (p. 85), and Woden's gold ring Dranpnir, regarded as 1 Bh o/Leiruter, 12b. 2 For this and further details relating to thajimt, see Vigfusson's Dictionary under that word. 366 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. matched 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, 1 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 baili in the Tribes and Customs of the Hy-Many, ed. O'Donovan (Dublin, 1843), p. 13 ; and in the Bh. of Leinster, 256 a, with the same word written bah', which now means ' a place,' but originally ' an enclosed place,' as in the bally 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 Ballium, 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 Ballium, to which he gives three meanings : ' propugnaculi species, seu locus palis munitus et circum- septus;' also 'custodia, career, quia locus munitus.' IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 307 whose name we have already met with (p. 142), and that the group is usually treated as the offspring of Ailill and Modb. Accordingly, the brothers always fight against tlie sun-hero Cuchulainn on the Tain.1 Similarly, in another story, that of the death of Conaire M6r (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.2 While the Latin word septimaiia, and the Irish scchtmain 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 arc the Maini in the order and with the surnames given to them by him in the Tain : (1) Maine Mathremail, or M. like his Mother; (2) Maine Athremail, or M. like his Father; (3) Maine Mnrgor, or M. very Dutiful; (4) Maim Mingor, or M. little Duti- ful ; (5) Maine mo Ej>ert, or M. greater than Said ; 1 See the Tain, passim ; but 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, t>4 /». 368 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. (6) Maine Milscothach, or M. of Honey - bloom ;l (7) Maine Andoe, the meaning of whose surname I cannot find ; (8) Maine cotageib TJle, or M. that contains them All. This last name has called forth from the scribe of the Tain 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 Upert, which I interpret, with some diffidence, 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,2 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. 1 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 Milbel, ' 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 evrj koX vka, 1 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 CULTURE HERO. 300 Tho importance of this conjecture consists in the fad that, in ease 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.1 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 in 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.2 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 Tain by Cuchulainn wearing his gala dress and paus- ing for a while from harassing the enemy's camp. In the story of Conaire the Maini arc dealt with in a third way, differing from both treatments in the Tain; for here3 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 (he Dim, 64 b. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 74 b ; Rhys's Celtic Britain, p. 65. 3 Bk, of the Dun, 84ft, where the passage giving their names runs thus: Batax a»d iarsin ffallacA batar dallcAu .i. uii. mate a.Uella jy inedba .7 mane for cac/t fir dib .7 forainm for cat// mini I. i. mani gt/iremail.7 in. mat///-, mnil .7 in. mfagOT.7 in. niorgor./ .m. anddo .7 m. milacotacA .in. cotageib uli .7 m. as /mo epert 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,1 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.2 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 Moro3 or the Black of Moro, the horse of Elidyr Mwynvawr, 1 This, however, could not be said of the scribe of the Tain in the Bk. of Leinster, who mentions, at 55a, Mane Condamoepert last, though his group consists, owing probably to his carelessness, of only six, no mention being made of M. And6e or M. Milscothach. 2 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 Tain (Bk. of the Dim, 56 b), and the nine doors of the palace called Bruden Da Derga (ib. 91&), 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. 3 In the Bed Book version (see B. B. Mob. p. 300), this horse is called Du y Moroed, 'the Black One of the Seas;' but the older and IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 371 said to have carried seven and a half persons on his back from Penllech in the North to Penllech in Mona : they Mere, to wit, Elidyr and his wife Eurgein ; Gwyn da Gyuetf, or White the good Drink-mate, and Gwyn da Eeimat,1 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 shall 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.2 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 Man-// Moro Oeruedawc, ' Black, the Horse of Moro Oervectawc,' in the story of Kulhwch (JR. />'. Mab. 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 Tuatlia De Danann brought the Undry Cauldron of the Dagda (p. 257) ; the name Afttreif, borne by a district in the north, given to Urien, also belongs here, as I hope to show in my Arthurian Legend. 1 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 Book ; most of the other MSS. have Pryddaw, Pryiehr, or the like, which I cannot explain. 2 r2 372 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. however, that place must have been reserved for another. Ko 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 Naivmon, where Mynach is the Welsh for 'monk,' and Natvmon is a word partly derived from naw, the Welsh for ' nine ;' while the remainder of the word Nawmon challenges comparison with the Irish Ifaiiie, so that Kawmon 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 Gletvlwyd Gavaelvawr, 'Brave Grey of the Great Grip.'1 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 j)ersonincation with the attribute of nine in some way attaching to it. Of the former, one may give as an instance the nine porters at 1 M. B. Mab. p. 245 ; Guest, ij. 6 ; but in two other passages (R. B. Mab. pp. 103, 138; Guest, ij. 254, 312) lie and Lis make only five, representing the half-week. IV. THE CULTURE HERO. 373 the nine gates of the dark being described as Yspadadeu Pencawr, 'Hawthorn chief of Giants,' in the story of Kulliwrh and Olwen;1 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 Feredur, who afterwards completed his military education under the care of one of their number.2 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. 25G), 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 Aitherne set such value, and in that brooch some nincly characteristic like that of Woden's Draupnir may be supposed to have resided. Moreover, the manner in which Maine son of Ailill is mentioned by himself in the Tain epic,3 would suggest that under that name the myth originally contemplated but one personage, who was only multiplied into seven or eight under the influenco of the Christian week and its Latin name, the Maine of the older treatment being made into a Maine said to contain 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 Rich Neck, as O'Curry has suggested, the surname being explained by 1 R. 11 M'U>. p. 118; Guest, ij. 277. - ft /;. Mob. pp. 210-1 j Guest-., i. 323; sec also i. 3G0. :: See more especially pp. GGb, 67'/, G9", of the We. oftlie 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 ; l 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 M6r was the mythic ancestor of the Hy-Many,2 whose prince was caught by Cuchulainn, 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 Cuchulainn'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.3 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 originally characterized by the number nine in the tales to which they belonged. One more Maine may be mentioned: he is called Maine son of Mall of the Nine Hostages.4 Mall is fabled to have reigned over Ireland in the fifth century of our era, and to have con- quered Britain, France 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 JVeol.5 1 See O'Curry, iij. 84, 178, and the Four Masters, A.M. 3868, 3872. 2 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 Roscommon. 3 Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, pp. 177, 192; O'Curry, iij. 106. 4 O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 161. 5 Fully described he is Neol cyn Croc, which seems to mean ' Neol before the Crucifixion;' tbe 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, JR. B. Mab. p. 113; Guest, ij. 212. IV. THE CULTURE IIERO. 37 -J At any rate his name looks like evidence of the two treatments of the 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 Maiu<\ Mane or JLaii, 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.1 Menyw is called the son of Teirgwaeci, a feminine compound meaning Her of the Three Shouts, in which we have a reference to the triple division of the 1 ft B. Mob. p. 114-5; Guest, ij. 271-2. 376 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. working portion of the 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 and day ; but had we the myth in its original completeness, we should probably find that Teirgwaed: had as her husband and father of Menyw a representative in 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. All this is corroborated by the Triads1 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, l a trick,' from which was derived an Irish adjective monach or manach, l 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-shifting. In harmony with a very wide-spread kind of myth, he lost his life in trying to prevent Ciichulainn 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 breeding as 1 i. 31, 32, 33, ij. 20, iij. 90. 2 Some of the Triad versions have Naivmod, which would mean, 'of nine modes or forms.' It is not impossible that the original was Mynawg Nawmon, with the mynawg explained below. IV. THE CULTURE 1IER0. 377 knowledge, a polite or courteous person being called ilyn da ci wybod, or one who 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 mynatvg of a good significa- tion, as compared with its derivative mynoyoi, 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, Manawychm, a good character in Welsh, is matched in Irish by Manannan, represented as a very tricky druid or magician.1 Maine or Menyw was a male personification, but Celtic mythology did not confine itself here to that sex, as it was in possession also of a female personification regarded as of cognate origin 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 menma, '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;' eom- mentum, 'a lie;' moneo, 'I cause to think, I warn:5 Greek, fievos, '•courage, sense;' /HrwiVw, 'I desire;' (it/iova, 'I wish for;' ftdiTis, ' a seer or prophet :' Sanskrit, >ihi», ' think ;' manas, ' courage, sense or mind;' manman, 'mind.' Among the proper names connected with this group of words may be mentioned such as Mint n-,/, Mmos, Mevtiap, the Sanskrit Manu, and the old German Manniu, mentioned by Tacitus in thf Qi rmania. 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 Nine Forms,1 who will come under our notice later as she who sends her handmaid to comfort Cuchulainn at night and to give him his bath in concealment.2 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,3 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 the spellings suggest ' Nine Hearts ' rather than ' Nine Forms.' 2 Bk. of the Dun, 57a; Bk. of Leinster, 58 a. 3 R. B. Mab. pp. 173-6; Guest, i. 55-9. IV. TIIE CULTURE HERO. 379 gush forth from the ground to supply him at the end of the day with a refreshing bath.1 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 Cilchulainn'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 1 Preller'a Or. Mythciogu ■; ij. 161. 380 IV. THE CULTURE HERO. touched upon ; for Mcnerva is supposed to represent an early Menezva, derived from the same stem, menes, which we have in the Greek /«vos, genitive ^evov?, l mind, spirit, courage,' Sanskrit manas, genitive manasas, of much the same meaning. But such a name as Menezva 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, Mencvjon, 'relating to Meneva] or the Celtic Minerva ; but in later Welsh all these would be cut down to Memjw or Mynyw. The one representing the masculine Menevjos is mostly written Menyw or Memo, 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- 1 Meneviensium episcopo in the Life of Sf. Davit! , written by Rhygy- varch (Ricemarchus) in the twelfth century : see the Lives of the Cam- Iro-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 IIKRO. 381 luihly 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 Tlachtga daughter of Mog Ruith, both of whom have already been mentioned (p. 21 1). Greek religion closely associated Athene with Hephaestus, but Mog Ruith's ability to fly forces us to compare him rather with Daedalus than with Ilephoestus ; for the lines of classification do not coincide in Greek and Celtic ; and if we followed Daedalus 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 Goidelic character, namety, Dian Cecht, who made his silver hand for Nuada : this was improved upon by the son of Dian Cecht, who was so enraged at being excelled, that he slew him.1 It is right, however, to say that ancient authors sometimes went so far as to identify Hephaestus with Daedalus;2 and that Yolundr, or the Way land Smith of the Norse Edda, combines the charac- teristics of both in having lost the use of his feet and made himself efficient wings.3 But to come back to Tlachtga, the comparison with Athene turns on the lattcr'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. 103. 2 See Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 148, ij. l'J7. 3 Corpus Poet. Bur. i. 173-j. 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 nights1 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 uight 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 debris 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 HERO. PAET I. Lleu axd Lug. Frequent allusions have already been made to Llew Llawgyffcs, and, in fact, most of his story has 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 begin with the strange story of his birth (p. 30 G), which need not be repeated. One of the first things in it to strike one is young Llew's rapid growth; and the vigour with which he scattered 384 V. 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, while 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.1 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 Math : 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 Carmina et Cydi Ejjicl Beliquzcn), lines 119 — 139. V. THE SUN HERO. 385 forth on a journey; whether walking or riding wc 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 Arianrhod's castle (p. 238). Be- sides, he is known to have had a famous horse called1 Melyngan Gamre, or the Steed of Yellow- white Footsteps — a most appropriate name for the horse of a Sun Ilcro. 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, w lack 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 tkrow any light on the term. Llew's horse is also mentioned in the Book of Taliessin, poem xxv. (Skene, ij. 176) as ' march lieu ftetuegin,' where it is uncertain whether ftetuegin applies to the horse or to his owner. 2 C 386 V. THE SUN HERO. habit of doing most tilings 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 1 as one of the Three nefarious Blows of the Isle of Britain. A pathetic touch, associated with the muse of Taliessin,2 introduces an iEschylean chorus of outraged spectators, consisting 1 R. B. Mab. p. 68 ; Guest, iij. 201 ; but it is not to be found in the ordinary lists of triads. 2 Poem xliij. : see Skene, ij. 199. V. THE SUN HERO. 381 'Of the Wave of Erinn, of Man, and of the North, And of Britain, of comely hosts, as the fourth.' ' Nay, according to another utterance of the same poet,'2 the wild waves when they dash against the shore arc. chafing to avenge the death of Dylan. Another view no less romantic is the one still known in the Vale 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 De Danann and the Fomori : 3 when the battle of Mag Tured (p. 253) had been going on for some time, the Fomori wondered how the Tuatha De* 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 1 An Irish instance of the waves of 'the melancholy main' bewail ing a death occurs in the Bfa of Leinster, lSGa; 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 Haiti. 5280: the portion of the story here in point incurs -it folio OS a (57 a of an older paging). 2c2 388 V. THE StTN HERO. one chosen belonged by race partly to the Fomori and partly to the Tnatha Dd ; he was son of Bres the Fomo- rian and Brig daughter of the Dagda, one of the leaders of the Tnatha De* in the war. He was called Euadan, and he readily got access to the camp of the Tuatha D6 and visited the forge, where he found their smith Goibniu, whose name makes in the genitive case Goibnenn, the etymologic and inflectional equivalent of the Welsh Govan- non ; he then gives the Fomori a full account of the celerity with which Goibniu and his fellow -artificers despatched their work. The Fomori send Euadan back with orders to kill the smith ; so Euadan asks Goibniu to make him a spear, and the smith complies. Euadan receives the spear duly finished ; but just as he was start- ing to go away, he suddenly turned round and hurled his new spear at its maker ; Goibniu was wounded, but not so as to prevent his throwing the spear back at Euadan in such a way that it sped right through him ; Euadan was nevertheless able to reach his friends, when he fell dead at his father's feet in the assembly of the Fomori. His mother Brig comes and makes for her son a loud lamen- tation, which is specially described as beginning with a scream and ending with a wail ; for it was then, we are told, that wailing and screaming were heard in Erinn for the first time.1 Such is the story of Euadan ; and the wail and scream, so emphasized in it, refer to the ela- borate 'keening,' or peculiar and far-reaching cry which used to be raised on the occasion of a death in the family 1 Harl. 5280, fol. 68a : Tic Brie 7 cai??es amarbnad (l)eghis ar t<5s goilis fodeog Conud and si?j roclos gol 7 egem artos anerimi Is si di» anprich sin roairic feit. &c. V. THE BUN HERO. 389 by Irish women — and Welsh ones also1 — in the Middle Ages. The statement that this was the first time the 1 keen' was heard, together with the probable allusion in the name Ruadan to weeping and mourning,2 admits of our supposing that the death of Buadan 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 Govannon. 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 Math, 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 : in 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 Euadan'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 R. B. Mob. p. 174 ; Guest, i. 57. 2 At first sight Ruaddn might be thought derived from Ir. ruad, 'red,' a colour here not more out of place than the v llownesa of Dylan's complexion ; but the name is probably of the same origin as Sanskrit . ' jammern, henlen, weinen j bejammern, beweinen;' rodana, neut. ' the act of weeping, tears ;' also tin-, name of the god Rudra, together with Rodcuij sometimes given as the fern, oi Rudra. The European Mtes include among them Latin rudo, lL roar,' Lith. raiidmi, 0. Lulg. rydajy, 'I weep,' A.-Sax. rtdian, 'to weep.' 390 V. THE SUN HERO. the Inclra-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 difference of treat- ment, which lets Lug act for himself instead of under the aegis 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 unfrequently called Lug mac Ethlenn, with the usual predilection for the mother's name. But there is another account of Lug's origin, 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. TTIE SUN HERO. 301 to tin* modem version, that Balor betrothed his daughter to Hie Latter during a truce between the Fomori and the Tuatha De Danann.1 Another story makes Lug's father Cian the son of one Caintc,2 a name which may be iden- tified with that in stories which mention a Cian son of Ailill Aulom ;3 for Caintc meant a satirist, and Ailill was represented as a poet, there being, in fact, poems extant which are ascribed to him.4 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 De 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.5 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 check of a step-son of his, when he approached to bid him farewell :6 Ailill 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. 63 a. In the same MS. 19 a, ami in the Bk. of the Dan, 1246, Lug is called son of Conn .son of Ethne — Lug mc Cuind m/c EtAlend— a pedigree otherwise unknown to me : possi- bly, however, Cuind came in as Ouinn and as a mistake for Ciin, tho gen. of Cian. Then Lthne would be mother of Cian and grandmother of Lug. - Atlantis, iv. 169; Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, p. 43. 3 O'Curry, ij. 139, 149; Four Masters, A.D. 241. 4 O'Curry, ij. 57-8. 5 Bk. of I. ' r, 288a. 6 lb. 29U, 292a; the Bodley MS. Laud. 610, fol. 9562. 392 V. THE SUN 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.1 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 Ailill obtained Sadb's consent to kill Hie monster ; so the whole place was set on fire, in the 1 See the Taliessin poem, No. 16; Skene, ij. 159. V. TTIE SUN IIERO. 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 Ferna, 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.1 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 I Harmait 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 Ciichulainn is associated in other stories, he espied the three sons of Tuirenn, his determined foes, Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba. 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 1 itter 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 killing 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 stoning 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 De* 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 in Irish literature;1 but another account2 makes Lug slay the three with his own hand in Man beyond the Sea. Brian and his brothers are sometimes called tri dee ddnaf or the three gods of dan, 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 be found edited, with an English translation by O'Curry, in the Atlantis, Vol. iv. 159, &c. ; see also an English version in Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, pp. 37 — 96. 2 Only known to me from a verse quoted by Keating, p. 122. 3 Bk. of Leinster, 10a; Keating, p. 122; compare Cormac'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 should be assigned a place of pre-eminence in this respect above many others of the Tuatha De* Danann ; and I should be inclined therefore to give the word dan, in connection with the former, its other meaning of destiny or fate,1 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 De were col- lectively so called. They are sometimes further made to be par excellence the three gods of the Tuatha D6, and to give that group its common name,2 whereas the rule 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 Cuchulainn wooing Emcr daughter of the Fomorian chief, Forgall Monach. There Brian is 1 As, for instance, in the Bk. of the Dun, 39a: 'boi indan d6ib orba do gabail.' 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 aeedless to say tli.it 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 Bleating, p. 122. - See this view quoted by Keating, p. 120. 396 V. THE SUN HERO. coupled with Balor1 as one of the stout henchmen of Forgall, and we have to regard hirn, 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.2 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 busily 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 De* 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 1 Bk. of the Dun, 123 a, where they are called 'Brio;i 7 Bolor.' 2 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 Cuoc-Samhna 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 Liigh Lamh-fada, and [his army was] the Fairy Cavalcade from the Land of Promise, and his own foster- brothers, the sons of Manannan."1 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 Manannan, 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 Ciichulainn when he comes to that hero's aid. Put 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 Preas, the son of Palor, 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 Palor 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 ho was famous for his mighty blows, and his spear became 1 See O'Curry's Fate of the Children of Tuireann in the Atlantic, Vol. iv. pp. 160-3 ; also Joyce, p. 38. - Ibid. pp. 176-7. o'Jb V. THE SUN HERO. one of the treasures of the Tuatha De 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 ; l but as mediaeval spelling did not al- ways carefully distinguish the sounds of u, iv 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 ; 2 on the other hand, the Mabinogi of Math has always Llew, except in one remarkable place.3 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 1 The difference of sound amounts to this : the ew in Llew is sounded like Italian eu in Europe^ and somewhat like Cockney ow in 'down town;' while the eu in Lieu consists approximately of German e fol- lowed by German il. 2 Skene, ij. 158, where the instances are lieu, gynheu, and lieu, 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. 3 But it is worthy of note that where the scribe first came across the name he began to write lieu, though he ended by making it into tle6, that is to say, Lleiv. So one may infer that the MS. before him read cither lieu or llev: see R. B. Mab. p. 71, and ed.'s note, p. 312. V. THE SUN HERO. 309 touch of his wand into his former shape. Now the scribe of the Mahinogi gives these verses in a very confused orthography, clearly leaving it to be seen, as he docs 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 Zlcu, and they would then run somewhat as follows : l 1. Dar a dyf y rwng deulynn, Gordufrych awyi a glynn : Oni tlywettaf i eu, Eulodeu Lieu pan y\v hynn. An oak grows between two lakes ; Black and speckled are sky and glen If my speech be not untrue, Here are the members of Lieu. Dar a dyf yn ardfaes Kis gwlych 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 — Rain wets it not nor beat 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. 1 The manuscript reads : ' Dar a dyf y r6ng deu lenn. gorduwrych awyr a glen, ony dywetaf i eu oulodeu. Ile6 pan y6 hynn.' ' 1 >ai 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 medux ym ywet. ony dywedaf i ef. dyda6 lle6 ym harffet.' See the R. B. Mab. pp. 78-9. Lenn for lynn, and glen for glynn, Bhow the same fashion of spelling as Res for Rhys on a highly ornamented cross at Llantwit, winch can hardly be later than the 11th century : see Hiibner's Inscriptiones Brit. Christiana, No. 03, and Westwood's Lapidarium WaUiat, p. 11, plate 5. The on of oulodeu, for later (■///"deu, more usually written aelodeu, 'limbs, members,' most date, if my translation be right, from the spelling of ( >ld 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 hard by the deu-It/nn, or two lakes near Bala Deulyn, in the valley of Nanttte in Carnarvonshire. The old pro- nunciation of the name Nanttte was Nantifeu, meaning JSTant-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 bore for boreu, l morning,' and gele for gelcu, i a leech ; ' but we need not rely on this alone, for there is evidence ready to hand in one of the Verses of the Graves, which, reduced to a consistent spelling, runs thus : 1 Y bed yngorthir Nantffeu Ni wyr neb i gynnedfeu Mabon fab Modron gleu The grave in the upland of Nantite, 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.2 From the same lack of acquaintance with the district, he wrote also Dinttef 3 1 Published in the Myvyrian Arch, of Wales, Vol. i. 78, where it is printed as follows : ' Y Bed yngorthir JSanllau Ny uyr neb y gynneddfeu Mabon vab Modron glau.' 2 R. B. Mob. p. 74. 3 R R Mfdh p 7L V. THE SL'N HERO. 40] for Dinttcu, of which more anon. All this is by no means to be wondered at, as the scribe was most likely a nat i \ e of South Wales ; at any rate, the Bed Book was probably written at the monastery of Strata Florida, 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 Lleiv, 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 Llcw, as coinciding with new, 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 Llcu'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 in the side of the 1 I allude more especially to the entry under the year 1113 in Brut U Tywysogion (London, 18G0), pp. 130-3. 2d 402 V. THE SUN HERO. knoll a grey rock with a cleft in it. In the cleft there was a serpent, and close by a pure white1 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 jDrison, 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.2 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. Mah. p. 186, where it will be seen that the MS. calls the lion purdu, 'purely black;' but the older MS., called Rhy- derch's White Book (in the Hengwrt Collection), col. 234, calls the beast pur6yn, or purely white, which is mythologically doubtless more correct. 2 R. B. Mah. pp. 186—191; Guest, i. 75—81. V. THE BUN 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 Chrcs- 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 Owcin, 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 Llcw. For a little before Owcin came across the white lion, he had been avoiding the haunts of men and living witli wild beasts. lie 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 Perediu* 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 Ilero, Conall Ccrnach, follow- ing him to fight with his teeth on behalf of his master, lint possibly the story of Cian offers 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 2 d 2 404 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 Xantlie, 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 Beclgelert 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 Atcnvrychyn, l 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 N . THE SIX HERO. Ill") Nantiie valley, and caught him near Bala Dculyn. As the dogs were killing him, he gave a cry which made the hills resound, and from this tief or cry the v.illey received its name of Nant-iief, that is to say, Kant tic.1 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 lief or cry may be regarded as an addition to explain the place- name Kanttte, but the correct analysis of that word is into Nant-Lleu, that is to say, the Glen of Lieu, rhonologically, however, both explanations would fit alike, as Kant-tief, as well as Nant-tieu, would be cur- tailed to Kant-tic when the accent fixed itself on the first syllable. Lastly, the coincidence which makes the beast die in NanthY, 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 Xantlie 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 Mcnai; and between the latter and the 1 The author is indebted for this to the Bnjthnn (published at Tremadoc) for tin; year 1861, p. 252, and to Mis. Rhys' 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 (bet\ Llanberis and the Pass) to Nanttte, where he was at last caught; but she has never heard anything said <>f his death. 40 G V. THE SUN 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 caer lev a gwidion,1 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 din, 'a town or fortress,' having become obsolete, has here been explained by prefixing its synonymous derivative dinas, 'a town or city.'2 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 Dintteu 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 Math, 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 Dinmeircliiun, which has become Tre'ineirchion, near St. Asaph in the Vale of Clwyd ; and similarly the mythic town of Ariaurhod is no longer spoken of in Arvon as Caer Arianrhod, but as Tre' Ga'r 'An- throd. See the Cymmrodor, vi. 163, where other forms are also men- tioned : 'AntJirod stands for the latter part of Arianrhod, with a th inserted betwen n — rh, as in penrhyn, cynrhon, pronounced pentJiryn and cyntliron in N. Wales, while in S. Wales they become pendryn and cyndron. For the case of Carmarthen, see p. 1 (JO. V. THE SUN HERO. 407 in Morva Dintteu,1 or the Marsh of Dinlleu. But we have evidence that the shorter form Dintte was also used, especially iu the spoken languages, as early as the thirteenth century.2 It is interesting to add that there was another Dintte, called in the Eed Book, where it is mentioned, Dintte Urcconn,3 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 Lletv, which has been traced to the older form Lieu. The next step is to ascertain how this latter stands with regard to the Irish Lug, genitive Loga. Enough is known of the laws of phonology obtaining in the Welsh and Irish languages respectively, to leave us practically in no doubt as to the identity of the two names.4 Treating Lieu and Lug henceforth as one and 1 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 It in the Record of Carnarvon (Record Office, 1838), where the Villa de Dynthh occurs more than once, pp. 20, 21, 22, 24. 3 Red Book, col. 1047; Skene, ij. 288; Rhys, Celtic Britain*, p. 314. 4 There are other instances of Irish ug or orj being represented by eu in mediaeval Welsh, such as the case of the Welsh word meu (in meu-dwy, 'a hermit,' literally servus Dei) as compared with the Irish mug, genitive moga, 'a slave.' Compare also the Latin "pugUlares, 'writing tablets,' which yielded Old Welsh poullor-ator, glossing \pugil- larem paginam (Stokes' Capella Glosses in Kiihn'a Beitrcege, vij. 393), together with peuffa6r, which occurs in a poem in the Bk. of TaliesHn in the sense of 'books' (Skene, ij. 141). In Old Welsh, og seems to have occasionally been thus made into ou (later eu and att) much in 408 V. THE SUN HERO. the same name, we have next to try to ascertain its ori- ginal meaning. It is unfortunate 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 llcu-ad, 'a luminary, a moon;' lleu-fer (also lleu-er), 'a luminary, a light;' lleiv-ych, 'a light, or lighting;' llezvych-u, 'to shine.' Nay, lieu itself occurs as an appellative meaning light, as, for example, in the Book of Aneurin,2 a manu- script supposed to be of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, where we meet with the term lieu babir, used of rush-lights or the light derived from the rushes used for lighting, which are in modern Welsh called pabivyr? The term lieu babir also occurs in a poem4 ascribed to Kynctelw, 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 babir, 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. M, 67, 412. 1 O'Davoren in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries, p. 103. O'Reilly's Dictionary gives Logh the meanings of ' God, fire, ethereal spirits, a loosing, dissolving, untying.' 2 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. 4 See the Red Booh, cols. 1165-9 ; the poem has been published by me in the Montgomeryshire Collections issued by the Powys-land Club, Vol. xi. p. 171-8 : see more especially pp. 171, 177. V. THE SIN NERO. 409 has long sinco become obsolete, or at any rate of very rare occurrence. The point of chief importance to us is the faol that lieu meant light, and that there is no reason to suppose the name Lieu to be of a different 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 Tailltin1 (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 Maghmor, that is to say, the king of Spain; and she was wife to Kochaidh mac Eire, last king of the Fir Bolg ; she was afterwards wife to Eochaidh Gharbh, son of Duach Dall and chief of the Tuatha Do* Danann. It is by this woman that Lugh Lamhfhada 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 1 The Irish name is Tailltiu, gen. TaUIten, 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 Tailltin^ p, 1 18. 410 V. THE SUN HERO. fair of Tailltin, a fortnight before Lammas and a fortnight after, in imitation of the games called Olympic ; and it is from this commemoration which Lngh made, that the name Lugnasadh is given to the first day or calends of August, that is to say, Lugh's nasadh or commemoration."1 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."2 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.3 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.4 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 ; MS. Mat. p. 287. 4 Iliad, 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 ;is regards their mythological meaning;1 but, like the Tailltin 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 tish in their lakes and rivers, domestic prosperit}7, 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 Tailltin and Cruachan are mentioned as among the chief burial-places in pagan Erinn ; 2 and Carman is also alluded to as a cemetery.3 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 Manannan 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 hlafmcesse, that is, loaf-mass or bread-mass, so 1 See O'Curry, i.j. 38—47, iij. 527-17 ; also Bk. of Leinster, 215. 2 lik. of the Dun, 3SA, 39a, 51a. 3 IU;. of U imtt r, 215a. 412 V. THE SUN HERO. named as a mass or feast of thanksgiving for the first- fruits of the corn-harvest. 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.1 In Germany, a loaf of bread had to be given to the shepherd who kept one's cattle.2 The Church has assigned the day to St. Peter ad Yincula, 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 beings 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 Tailltiu does not at first sight appear; but let us see what can be made out of her. She is strangely described3 1 This is the substance of a part of a note by Thos. Hearne in his edition of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicles (Oxford, 1724). p. 679. 2 See Leo's Angelsachsisches Glossar (Halle, 1877), s. v. hldfmcesse, col. 543. 3 In the Book of Leinster, 9 a, 200ft, which is followed in this mat- ter by Keating, V. THE SIN HERO. 413 as daughter of Mag M6r, king of Spain : now Mag ^l.'.r1 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 Pe, 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 Dinfle 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.2 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.3 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 mi Aonaig, 'the Great Plain of the Assembly or tho 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, hi- father, holding a great assembly on a M ■ j M r: see the MS. Hart. 52S0, iul. Gib. 2 Bk. of Leinster, 9" : see also 200 b. 3 B. B. Mab. p. 117; Guest ij. 276. 414 V. THE SUN HERO. green pastures grow, and the latter as occupying the foremost place at the Panathenrea, 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 in honour of the dead, one by Lug himself and the other by the Tuatha De 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 instance of those quaint explanations of place-names so characteristic of old Irish literature. It is to the following effect : " The Eefuse of the Great Feast which I mentioned, that is Taillne. It is here that Lug Scimaig1 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 kingshij), since the Tuatha De* Danann made the aforesaid Lug king after the death of Nuacla. As to the place where the refuse was thrown, a great 1 Scimaig looks like the genitive of a word scimach ; but in the MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 21 b, it is written scimaig, with a mark of un- defined contraction over the m. Another form occurs in the Bk. of Leinster, which identifies this Lug with Lug mac Ethlenn : see lib and the top margin, which has the following verses : Cermait mac in dagclse de rageogain lug scicmai?'*ge. babara bvoin for si?i maig aflaith eehac/i ollathir. 'For sin maig' is glossed '.i. for brug maic [in]doc.' v. the sun 111:110. 415 knoll was made of it: this was [thenceforth] its name, the Knoll of the Great Feast, or the Refuse of the Great Banquet, that is to say, Taillne, at the present day."1 The way in which Lug'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- tin ; 2 while the festivities of the Lugnassad are probably referred to in the allusion to the great feast made by Lug for Lug as a reward for his victory over the powers of darkness in the great mythical battle of Mag Tared. 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.'3 Moreover, a compound ar-nass is used more 1 The manuscript is now in the library of the R. Irish Academy, classed D, iv. 2; and (he passage here translated occurs on folio 82 A, 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 21 b. The former reads tall ni and taill ni, the latter tailne and taillne, a name which looks like a derivative from TaiUtiu, genitive Tailltcn, as it admits of being treated as a curtailed form of Tail line. 2 Besides the place called Taillne, and the Tailltin where, according to the Bk. of Leinster, 9a, Lug's foster-mother lived, the forest said to have been cleared by her was called Cnill Qdan, the situation of which seems to be defined by 200h. There is a Cuan TeUion, or Teelin Harbour, in Donegal, and Strangford Lough is Loch Cuan; but see Stokes & Windisch, ij. pp. 242, 248. 3 The Latin term was a most important one, and we have an Irish word of kindled 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 ; l and lastly, a participial form nassa occurs of a girl who has been promised or betrothed to a husband.2 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 story3 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, 1185, 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 Neill 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 Kev. Charles Plummer in the Rev. Celt. vi. 163. A different version, in which the word in question does not occur, is to be found in the Bl\ 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. 83/;: arnaisai sede uile do feraib remibsium, 'he had betrothed all these to husbands before them ;' and further on — arnais iaram Forsall ami mgin dore ri, ' Forgall then betrothed the girl to the king.' 2 See the Bk. of Leinster, 92 a: Ba nassa damsa i?idi?2gen ut uair c//ei?i, ' that girl has been betrothed to me long ago.' 3 Edited with a translation in O'Curry's MS. Med. 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 rath 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,1 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 Z,?/t7?nrtc/v //'»'/, mic Tighemmais, that is to say, Lug son of Edle (better Edne or Ethne), son of Tigernmas, which is noteworthy as virtually identifying Tigornmas with Balor ; but the value of the suggestion is reduced by the display of ignorance in treat- ing Edle as Lug's father and not his mother. "J E 418 V. THE SUN HERO. the interpretation here suggested of the term Lugnassacl 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 Greinc, or the Son of the Sun.1 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.'2 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. 2 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 SUH HERO. 119 crushing of Fomori and Fir Bolg, the death of their king and tlic 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.1 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 Lugovcs. 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-Roman form Mas Lugudunvm? 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 : to AovyovSovvov fiev 6vo[j.aa0iv vvv Si AorySowov Kakox/itvov : see also the Berlin f/un'>/>ir it'- Droit frangau et '/ranger (sec his offprint entitled Etudes but I, Droit cdtique (Paris, 1881), p. 92), was the first to notice this interesting coincidence; and he suggests that the ludi miscelh and the tournaments of eloquence, which Caligula ordered to take place there in his presence (Suetonius' Caligula, 20 : see also his Claudiw, 2 ; Strabo, iv. 3, 2 [p. 2G1]), formed simply the Gallo-Roman continua- tion of a Celtic custom which had its beginning previous to the advent of the Roman. 2 Such as Qvryl Fair, Ghoyl Iwan, Choyl Fihangel, the feasts respec- tively of SS. Mary, John, and Michael the Angel. 422 V. THE SUN HERO. that is to say, the first Sunday in that month. For then crowds of people early in 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 different 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 Lhuamjs 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,1 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 Cymmrodor, iv. 1G3 — 179; but see also vi. 2034. V. THE SUN IIF.rtO. 4_!o class of dawn-goddesses, that Bhe 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 Khiwatton, 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 Myttvai, 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 Khiwatton 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.1 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 Khiwatton' 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 Panathenaea. Further, the great 1 See Triads, i. 10 = ij. 216 = iij. 70, and compare i. 22 = iij. 28, also i. 49 = ij. 43 = iij. 27, which go to prove that our Khiwatton is to be identified with Rhiwafton son of Urien. Other passages in Welsh literature, such as Triad i. 52, suggest that the Lady of the Van Luke's name was Modron danghter of Avattach, and that among her children are to be reckoned not only Rhiwafton but also the solai heroes Mabon and Owein, with the latter^ twin-sister fcforvnd. Urien, the father, is decidedly to be classed among the dark divinities; and this explains why, after her lover had long wooed the Lady thai was wont to row on the Little Van Lake in a golden boat, the marriage did not take place till New-year's-eve, that is to say, the middle of wintei : 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 Gala Augusti, passed into the Latinity of the Chronicles,1 and even into a statute of Edward III.2 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 Uxama, a Celtic name now changed into Osma : Lugovibus sacrum, L. L. Urcico Collegia 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 Math, 1 Annales Cambrics (the Eolls edition, 1860), p. 109 (A.D. 1287). 2 See Ducange, s. v. gala, where he refers to a statute of Edward III. a. 31, c. 14, and quotes therefrom: Aueragium aestiuale fieri debet inter Hokedai 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 Uxama 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 move than 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, Manawychm son of Llyr, and Lieu respectively. The story about Caswatton is lost, but that of Manawychm 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 ( I wydion 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 thai Gwydion as the benefactor of man stood in somewhat the same relation to the sun as did India in Hindu 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 V. THE SUN HERO. regarded the sun, not as Woden's offspring, but as Woden's eye. That the plural Lugovcs 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 epistylium of white marble found at Avenches, in Switzerland,1 and as the legend consists solely of this word, the name of the Lugoves must have been very 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 prevailing ; 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 the 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 know- 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 stories1 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, coining from a distance, offers the Tuatha Do Danann his aid against the Fomori at the battle that was going to be fought on the Plain of Tured, he was asked, on presenting 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 king 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.2 Had we no other account of Lug, we should have certainly had 1 Such as that of the Children of Tuirenn already mentioned. 2 O'Curry, ij. 248-50, iij. 42-3; D'Arhois de Jubainville, Etudes mr ' Droit celtique, pp. 85-6; also the same scholar's Cycle Myth. pp. 176-7. 428 V. THE SUN HERO. to look at him as an Irish Mercury : we should be wrong, uo 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 Lugdununi, and the various ways in which it has been explained. (1) The pseudo- Plutarch De Fluminibus 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 in their idiom they call a raven AoCyos, and an eminence they call SoiW, as Klitopho narrates in the 13th book of his Foundations."1 Mountain or hill may do as the translation of the sort of town or acropolis which the Grauls called dunon ; but that they had a word lnyos, meaning a raven, is a statement which the vocabularies of the Celtic languages seem to leave open to doubt :2 it was most likely a guess founded on the alleged appearance of the ravens during the found- 1 Plutarch, ed. Diibner (Paris, 1855), Vol. v. p. 85 (Pseudo-plutarchea de Fluvlia, vi. 4) : see also Midler's (Didot) Frag. Hist. Gr. iv. p. 367. 2 The nearest word known to the alleged lugos, ' a raven,' would be the Irish luch, 'a mouse ;' lugliath, 'grey as a mouse,' Bk. of Leinstcr, 120a; loc?m/na, 'dark secrets,' so rendered in the Stokes-O'Donovan Cormac, p. 100, where lochdub is also translated 'all black;' Welsh, ////;/, 'a shrew or field-mouse;' llygoden, 'a mouse;' Uygliw, 'of the colour of a mouse.' V. THE SIX IIHI;o. 429 ing of the city. ('2) Some notes to the Bordeaux Itine- rary1 make I/ugdunum mean Mom Desideratum, 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:2 'Lucduno celebrant Gallomm famine nomen, Impositum quondam, quod sit mom 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 Owein son of Urien, who must be regarded as a solar hero, had a mysterious army of ravens ; 3 Ciichulainn, an avatar of Lug, had his two ravens of magic or druidism,4 and from hearing them his 1 Otherwise called Itinerarium Hierosolymiianum, and cited by Diefenbach in bis Originea Europcece, p. 325. 2 Diefenbach, loc. cit. j but the Bollandists read Lugduno. 3 R B. Mob. pp. 153-9, 192 ; Guest, ij. 407-15, i. 84. 4 Windisch'a Iruche Texte, p. 220 ; Bk. of ike Dun, 48fr; see also 57«, where the words fCoicJi Ittgbairt are used, meaning, as it would seem, 'ravens that bring Lug or light:' compare the Welsh lleu-fert ' 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.1 From these parallel instances it would seem that the one of the Lugoves to whom the ravens strictly belonged was Lugns, 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, Pcrcdur, Owein and Gwalchmai; or the three Ultonians, one of whom, Conall Cernach, avenges Cuchulainn'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 hy Blodeued as an owl : see p. 241, ahove. V. THE SUN HERO. 431 the Lugovcs 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 Education. 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 in 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 Bay 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 ; 1 and partly to his being regarded as Lug himself re-appearing in the flesh after several more or less unsuccessful and obscure incarnations.2 One of these made the nobles of Ulster look with awkward suspicion at Conchobar, as the un- married Dechtere acted as her brother's charioteer3 and 1 Bit. of Leinster, 119a, gein Loga (voc.) ; 123?;, eainaltram Loga. - Windisch, p. 139 (§ 5) and p. 138 (§ 3). 3 She is called his ara, 'charioteer,' in the Bk. of tin Dun ; but the Egerton Ms. .says that she sat in his chariot do raith} that is to '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 Zens, and also the Greek legend which made Zeus the father of Heracles. The oldest account we have of Ciichulainn's birth occurs in the eleventh-century manuscript called the Book of the Dun;1 but a similar version is found in a later one,2 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,3 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 bringing up the boy, but they speak of another of the king's sisters, who was called Finnchoem, setting her affection 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 Cernach, 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 Dechterc 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. Egrrton, 1782, fol. 152, which is assigned to the fifteenth century, and published with the other by Windisch. 3 Windisch, p. 141. V. THE 8TJN HERO. rliod is, however, brought into much clearer lighf 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 : l — Fifty maidens from the Ultonian court, with Dechtere at their head, ran away from Emain, and their whereabouts could uot be discovered for the spare 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 Boyue, notorious for its fairy inhabitants (p. 171). Night overtook them, and, having lost sight of the birds, they unyoked their hoi- 3, 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 U3-5, where it has been divided into two pieces. 2 r 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 themselves 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 described1 is not the only parallel between 1 It is right to say that the story of the Tain in the Bk. of the Dim makes his father and mother rear him during his first years at a place V. THE BUN HERO. 43 ~> her and Arianrhod ; for, besides her wish to pass for n 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 tin* Silver Wheel, and of Woden's leman Gefjon of the diup rodul or deeply ploughing wheel, mentioned in a pre- vious lecture (p. 284 J. Lug re-born is best known as Cuchulainn, 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. Cuchulainn, 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 seeu from the following things collected at random from among them. After the curious accounts relative to his birth, the in the Plain of Murthemne ; luit the passage in question, fol. 50-/, gives the name of neither parent : 'Altasom em ol Fergus la mathatr j la athatr ocond dairggdig immaig mnrt/tewme.' 'Verily ho was reared,' said Fergus, 'by his mother and his father at the Red-house (() in thu Plain of Murthemne.' ° r 2 436 V. THE SUN HERO. next thing to be noticed is his rapid growth and precocious manhood. When he is only five, he sets off to Emain and overcomes all the Ultonian youths at their games in the play-field.1 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.2 This reminds one of Lieu, though the obstacle in Cuchulainn'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 neetness in the chase,3 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.4 Cuchulainn's beardlessness reminds one of the youthful Apollo, and stands in contrast to the conventional 1 Bk. of the Dim, p. 59. 2 lb. p. 61. 3 lb. 61a— 63a. * lb. 6»b, 72 b, lib. V. THE BUN TTERO. 43l 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,'1 he had plenty later, and it was remarkable Eor its three distinct colours — dark near the skin, blood- red in the middle, and yellow at the top, shining 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.2 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.3 Possibly the flashes4 of his eyes, or the gems serving as pupils in the middle of them, which are described as seven or eight5 in number, 1 "Windisch, p. 140. 2 lb. p. 221 ; Bk. of the Dun, 81 a; and Bk. of Leinster, 120 a. A different account is to be found in the story of the Phantom Chariot of Cuchulainn, published by OBeirne Crowe in the Journal of the Kil- kenny Arch. Ass. tor 1870-1 : pp. 376-7, and the Bk. of the Dun, 1 136. : Windisch, p. 221, from the Bk. of the Dun, 486; but 81a gives a somewhat different description; see also 122/-. * Windisch, p. 221 : \fi/ aecht tuilse air « ruse.' ■' '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 o£ Bricriu's Banquet (Wiu- 488 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 Ciichulainn'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.1 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;2 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 Biastartha, or the Distorted One ; but it was given him by the men of disch, 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; also Bk. of the Dun, 59 a, 72 a. 2 Windisch, pp. 212, 216; Bk. of the Dun, 78b. V. TUT- SUN ITERO. 439 Connauglit in the west,1 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 Ciichulaiun 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 impediment2 — 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 size,3 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 fighting 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.4 Whether this has any reference to solar heat or not, the same peculiarity of Cuchulainn's is described in another way : during hard weather he would sit down with the snow reaching to his girdle and 1 Bk. of the Dim, 59 a, 72a, and 79h, where a remarkable passage occurs about 'his lights' (scoim, "Welsh ysgyfaint) and 'his heavies' (tromma, Welsh ; O'Curry, iij. 448 '.». 1 Windisch, p. 220; Bk. of the Dan, 63a, 72a. 440 V. THE SUN HERO. cast off his clothes, including his under-clothing, where- upon the heat of his body would melt the snow for a man's cubit all round him.1 Cuchulainn was unrivalled in all feats of arms and skill, whether he handled his own weapons or performed tricks with the needles2 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 nature, 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.3 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.4 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, 68«, 71 a; but the Bk. of Leimter, 7 Oh, makes the snow melt for thirty feet all round him, which is more like the extravagance to be expected. 2 Windisch, p. 286; Bk. of the Dun, 108 ft. 3 Bk. of the Bun, 73 a, 122 h; Bk. of Leinster, 120a; and the story published by Crowe in the Kilkenny Journal for 1870, p. 379 ; also the Bk. of the Dun, 113ft, where the number of the feats rises to twenty-seven. For more references, see Windisch, s.v. cless, p. 426. 4 Windisch, p. 299. V. THE SUN 11EK0. -M I extreme cases he used with the same effect a barbed weapon called the gdi bolya, which he brought to bear on his foe from below or from above.1 lie rode forth to battle in a scythed chariot,'2 and his charioteer Mas Loeg son of Riangabra, who with his wife and kindred lived in an island which Irish mythology places in the neighbourhood of Hades.8 The chariot was drawn by two horses of no ordinary breed: they were called the Grey of Macha and the Black Sainglend ; and they gave their names to two Irish lakes whence they emerged when Ciichulainn caught them respectively,4 and whither they returned when his career was over.5 They had the peculiarity, that, wherever they grazed, they ate the grass root and stem, licking bare the very soil.6 They were swifter than the cold blasts of spring,7 and the sods from their hoofs as they galloped over the plain looked like an army of ravens filling the sky above the chariot,8 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 Maimers, &c. iij. 451 ; Stokes & Winclisch, Irische l\xte, pp. 184, 206. - Bk. of the Dun, 79 a, 80a : see also 1257>. 3 Stokes & Windiach, Ir. Texte, pp. 178-80, 196—200. * Windiach, p. 268. 5 Rev. Critique, iij. 180-1 ; Bk. of Leinster, 121a, 121 h. The lake called after the Llath (or Grey) of Macha was Linn Lri/h, in Sliab Fua.it or Fuad's Mountain, near Newtown Hamilton, in the county of Armagh ; and the one called after the Dub (or Black) Sainglend was the Loch Dub or Black Lake, in Mvseraige-Thire, a district consisting of the Baronies of Upper and Lower Orniond, in the county of Tip- prrary. '- Bk. of the Dun, 57 />. 7 Windiach, p. 221. * Bk. of Un Dun, 113a. 442 V. THE SUN HERO. ditches for a fortress. Thus Ciichulainn 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 inarch until his friends should arrive on the scene.1 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 contemporaries : 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.2 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.3 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 described4 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 file or 1 Bh of the Dun, 80a, 806. 2 lb. 1216. 3 lb. 58a. 4 The whole is to be found in the story of the "Wooing of Emer, especially on folios 123a — 1246; and some of the textual difficulties way be disposed of by comparing with it Windisch, pp. 141-2. V. THE SUN HERO. 1 ! 3 seer had to impart; and the chief druid had, for his mother's sake, made him a proficient scholar in the arts of the god of druidism (p. 224), so that ho was fit to take part in the vision-feast.1 This is borne out by other parts of the story of Ciichulainn : thus on one occasion lie is made to deliver himself of an elaborate charge2 to his friend Lugaid, who had been chosen king of Ireland, telling him how he was to conduct himself in that office ; and if we turn to another field of his acquirements, we lind him more than once writing ogams of potent magic, which thrown in the way of the advancing hosts of his enemies seriously embarrassed and delayed their march on the Tain.3 The superiority which he claimed over the nobles of his country he ascribed to his having been educated by every one of them, whether captain or charioteer, whether king or ollave : 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 in 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.'4 This in its way reminds one of the role 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 1 The words in point are — coftid amfissid focAmairc hi cerdaib de drnidccAta comd ameolac// hi febaib fiss. (Bk. of the Dun, 124/>). 1 take fise. to stand for y/W ( = fessi) : compare the tarbfea, or bull-feast, in Windisch, pp. 212-3. 2 Windisch, pp. 213-4. 3 Bk. of the Dun, 57'/, 57 b, G3f>. 4 It is so I venture to translate the words, 124 6 — ls*r em domrim- gartsa 6 lug mr/c enfold maic et/de»d diec^tw dian dectiri co tech mbuiir in broga. S« p. 391, above. 444 V. THE SUN HERO. and the wanderings of Leto before giving birth to Apollo ; but far the most instructive comparisons are to be made between Ciichulainn and Heracles, as will be seen later. Some or Cuchulainn's Adventures. 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 Medb, the king and queen of Connaught, who have been men- tioned on previous occasions, as has also their famous expedition, called the Tain, to Ulster, and especially to the Plain of Murthemne, or the district which was in Cuchulainn'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 Ciichulainn ; 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 BUM HERO. 1 I •"> riotcer beheld a big man with yellow curly hair on his 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 Ciichulaiim, 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 Ciichu- lainn to sleep. There he lay sleeping for three days and three nights, in the course of which Lug cured all his wounds. When at length he woke, he drew his hand over his face as usual, and Lug departed,1 while Ciichu- 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 least for which he and his courtiers were setting out. The boy said he would come when he had played enough. The feast was to lie at 1 Bk. of the Dun, 776, 78«, 78/'. 446 V. THE SIN HEPvO. 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.1 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 clog 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 Rider of 1 Bk. of the Dun, 60a— 61a; Bk. of Leivskr, 63a— 64 6. V. THE SUN HERO. 447 jVIurthemne's Plain,1 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-Ohulainn, 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 hound2 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 Ciichulainn 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 !'3 1 YVindisch, pp. 216, 221. - The Irish is dr-cku, and dr moans slaughter of any kind, including of course slaughter in war; and Cuchulainn himself is called Archil Emna, or the Slaughter-hound of Emain, in the Bk. 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 /)»» maki a the smith's 'log 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 />7,\ of the Dun, 18ft, which reads iu the facsimile : uallac/i uabrec/f ard lagol maiig in 448 V. THE SUN HERO. The familiar sight of the sun rising and setting is the key to several things in the Cuchulainn 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 ; 1 and another time one of his enemies finds him bathing in a river early at the break of day.2 But the rising of the sun out of the sea in the morning does not appear to have had anything like the effect of sunset on the popular imagination, which is to be traced in the Cuchulainn legend in the stories of his visits to the other world, especially in quest of a wife.3 The maiden's name was Emer daughter of Forgall Monach (p. 376), who lived in a place called Luglochta Loga,4 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,5 siabru se (Windisch, p. 221, prints se). It should be restored thus — Uallach uabrech ard a gal, mairg fri siabru sechethar. The previous line — Br6ena?j fola fota flared latoeb crawd cowardade — is more difficult, but it should probably end with craud or dechrand : compare Windisch, p. 263, lines 14 and 16. 1 Bk. of the Dun, 57a, 58 a. ? lb. 63 b. 3 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 — 127/). For the portions of the narrative not to be found there, I have made use of the Ashburnham manuscript already referred to as numbered D, iv. 2, in the library of the R Ir. Acad. 4 The dative Luglochtaib is glossed in the Bk. of the Dun, 123 a, by gortaib, ' gardens ;' and the Loga added is perhaps redundant, as the name would seem to be complete either as Luglochtaib or Lochtaib Loga. It is not to be denied, however, that it is possible to give^Lug a different explanation in this name. 5 Ingen rig Hchis garta, with garta glossed einech, ' face,1 ibid. 123a. V. THE BUN HERO. I 111 who is also stated to be the sou 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 lin- king to have Cuchulainn'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 Domnall1 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 Ciichulainn ; 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, Dyvnival, 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 Mod, ' bald,' or Moel-miul, '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 Afihlmrnham MS., fol. 82c, he is called Domnall mil d mat, 'while ILn-l. 5:!S0 gives the name as Domnall miide mon, 2g 450 V. 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.1 Ciichulainn 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 Scathach's court. Cii- 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.2 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 scatAaig b/madaig b/zuanared' in the Bk. of Leinster, 88a, quoted in O'Cuny'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 found at 83 a, while the Harl. MS. 5280 has it at 32 b. V. THE SUN HERO. 1 5 I 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, higli 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 Uathach, 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,1 and Ciichulainn duels on it with Aife, and succeeds in carrying her away to ScatharhV 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 1 The Irish name is glean ?igaibthech, which appears also in the Vision of Adamnan (Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 185), as does ale o the Vicious Bridge (ib. p. 184), but placed across the Glen, and called droichet analta, or Cliff Bridge, which O'Curry (ij. 309), influenced . bably by a slightly different reading, .alls the Bridge of the Pupils. I mention these as instances of [riah 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 change 1. 2 g 2 452 V. THE SUN HERO. to the dismal plain crossed by Ciichulainn 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 in 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,1 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 : 2 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 off 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 Dim, 59 a, and Bk. of Leinster, 62 a, where the ball is described as being of silver. 2 lb. 59 b, 60 a. v. the sen hero. 453 haps, under another name and in the form of a kind of* hoodie, cried out in an upbraiding tone, ' 13ad 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 over 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. lie 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. IIow 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, CYichulainn's coming Avas 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 HERO. Let us now come back to Ciichulainn's training in Scathach's Island : he went there when he was only six years old,1 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, however, told that on his way he visited the court of Eed, king of the Isles;2 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 De Danaan, and Conall Cernach has to be sought for in foreign lands.3 Like them, Ciichulainn 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 modern 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, 58b. 2 lb. 126 a : according to O'Curry, p. 280, he returned by way of Cantire and the island of Eathlin. 3 See the Bk. of Leinster, 171b, where, besides fScythia, Dacia, Gothia, &c, we have the remarkable words : ' icrichaib leodiis in insib cadd J in insib or.,' 'in the territories of Lewis, in the Islands of Cat and in the Islands of Orkney ('?).' V. TUT': six HERO. lo-J Morecambe Bay, and it is worthy of remark that this trad once belonged to a people called the Setantii, a name which cannot be severed from that of the Seteia supposed to be the Dee, or from that of the ScTai/nW Ai/^1 the Harbour of the Setantii, the position of which corresponds to the mouth of the Eibblc.2 Hence the name Setanta. Shortly after his return from Scathach's Isle, Ciichu- 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 valour that Forgall lost his life in leaping terror-stricken over his own walls. Cuchu- laiun then made his way out with Emer and her foster- 1 The readings of Ptolemy's manuscript are various, the river being either Serbia or ^ey^'a, and the harbour ^ctcivtiW A. (or 2eTavtu>i' A.) and ItyavrLuiv A., besides less important ones : see Midler'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 S.tantii. It is worth noticing that a very obscure poem, in which Scathach, who was, among other tilings, a poetess or prophetess, speaks of Cuchulainn when she prophesies for him, alludes to a Setan- tian stream : the words are — curoe// in srut// setiwti, 'a coracle against the stream of Setanta:' see the BJc of the Dun, \'2r>/>. *-' Bradley's Remarks (in the Archseologia, xlviij) on Ptolemy (West- minster, 1884), p. 15. For Ribble, p. 74 above, read Mersey. 456 V. THE SUN HERO. sister.1 In the pursuit which 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 Geirrcedr, 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. 84b, appear to be — ' conadib nerrib dior j arcat,' and they recall Elen Liiy dog's Silver Host (p. 173). V. THE SUN 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, Gochnui un- consented to take him with him, and Thorsteinn proved the means of rendering Godmundr and his men victors in all the contests in which Geirrcectr made them engage. Finally, Thorsteinn killed Geirrocdr and enabled Goct- 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 tilings 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,1 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 Gudriin 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 Goct- 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 Fomahlar Sdgw (Copenhagen, 1829), i. 411 ; and the Formanna Sogur (Copenhagen, 1827), iij. 175 — 108, 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.1 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,2 wherein we 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 Aife ; 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 declines to have anything to say to Dornolla, the big-fisted daughter of Domnall : she was too hideous, and she became his implacable foe. Another tale3 of Ciichulainn'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 E. Heinzel, Ueber die N ibelunyensage (Vienna, 1 885), where a great variety of references are given : see also Cerquand's Taranis et Thor in the Rev. Celt. vi. 420. 2 As in the first part of the story of Oiiclmlainris Sick-bed. 3 BJc. of the Dun, 43a— 50b; 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 myth 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- tliemne 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, lie cast another, with the same result. 'Woe is me!' said he, c 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 4 GO V. THE SUN HERO. 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 Cuchulainn, and he sang a song in which he informed him that he had come from his sister Fand 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 own 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 BUN IIKRO. 4G1 towards him: lie reproached her for what she had done, and she explained that she and her sister had come, imt to harm him, but to seek his love : Fand, she said, had been forsaken by Mananmin 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 effect that he would give him Fand 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. lie abode there a month with Fand, and when he left her he made an appointment to meet her at Ibar Chin Trachta, or the Yew at the Strand's End, the spot, according to O'Currv, where Xewry now stands.1 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 Ciichulainn's love, and Fand beholds herself about to be forsaken, whereupon she begins to bewail the happy days 1 Atlantis, Vol. ij. p. 115. 4G2 V. THE SUN HERO. she had spent with her husband Manannan mac Lir in her bower at Dim Inhir, or the Fort of the Estuary. Nay, Fand's position in the unequal conflict with the ladies of Ulster became known to Manannan, 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 Manannan mac Lir, because she was not pleasing to thee.' At those words Ciichulainn 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 Manannan had shaken his cloak between Fand and Ciichulainn that they might never meet again. This story of Cuchulainn's Sick-bed calls for one 1 The leaps referred to were places called Leim Conculainn, which were not uncommon in Ireland : so was Luachair, ' a place where rushes grow,' frequent enough, and is, in fact, so still. The one here in question is placed by 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 SUM BEEO. 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,1 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 Llion2 or Llivon's Lake, and with the girl accused of neglecting the well, which Welsh legend describes bursting over Cantre'r Gtvaelod* 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 Fand agrees, being, as it would seem, of the same origin as the English word water, Lithuanian vandit of the same mean- ing, and as the Latin unda, i a wave : ' it recalls De la Motte Fouque's Undine, who has, however, her more exact counterpart in the Welsh story of the Lady of the Little Yan Lake already mentioned (p. 422). Now Fand 1 See the story of Echaid mac Maireda's Death in the Bk. of the Dun, 39 a —41 h, 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 CarmartJien, poem xxxviij, i^kenc, ij. 59; am] the Traethodydd (Holywell) for 1880, pp. 479 81, where 1 have made sumo remarks on the different versions of the tale. 464 V. THE SUN HERO. had been married to the great sea-god Manannan mac Lir at the Dun of the Estuary, and the wooing of Cuchulainn 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 Fancl 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,1 proved by the names involved to belong to the same class, must now be briefly added : it relates how Cuchulainn, on his way back from Scathaeh'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 Cuchulainn 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,2 but he forgot to fix the place of their meet- 1 Bk. of the Dun, 126a; the Ashburnham MS. (D. iv. 2 in the library of the R I. Acad.), 846; and the Bk. of Leimter, 125a, 125 b. 2 At this point the Bk. of the Dun breaks off without giving the girl's name, but it calls her father Ruad or Red, king of the Isles ; V. THE SUN HERO. 4G5 ing. On the day, however, which had been appointed, Ciichulainn happened to be careering with a friend near Loch Cnan,1 better known as Strangford Lough, when they beheld on the water two swans joined 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 Lngaid, 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 version2 of Derborgaill's story makes her daughter to Forgall king of Loehlann, which meant a country in or beneath a loch or the sea, the home in fad at the same time tlie Ashburnham version, 84 b, speaks of her as the daughter of Ruad, and as Derborgaill by name. 1 The Bk. of Letruter 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. - The <>nc related in the Bk. of Leinster, 125& 2 h 4GG V. THE SUN HERO. of the Fomori, whose king is said to have been Tetlira, nncle to Forgall.1 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,2 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, of the Dun, 123 a; and the Stowe MS. 82 b. 2 O'Donovan's Buttle of Magli Math, p. 52, note. V. THE SUN HERO. 467 I-einstiT to mean '/Ar, or Tear, daughter of Forgall king of Lochlann,'1 which one caunot help comparing with the name of Fand, and associating with Derborgaill's love for Ciichulainn, as an analogous case of the nature myth representing the drop glistening in the sun's rays. 1 Irish der means a 'tear,' and is in fact the etymological equivalent of that English word and its congeners in other languages, such as Greek Sdnpv 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 cb'r, ' 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 influence of neuters of the O 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 ayafloi' and the m of bellum, 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 Mnir n-Iclit, ' 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 Celtica2, pp. 235, 270. Treated in the same way, der would become dern, and prefixed to Forgaill would, according to the rule as to n + / (earlier n + v), yield Dervorgaill, 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, 125, has spelled Uerbforgaill, in which he inserted an /with the ptmetum delem 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 VorgaiU, or, in one word, Derwr* gtill with the accent on the middle syllable ; and that it is so, I learn from Prof. Mackinnon of Edinburgh, who recollects this name home 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 c The der here in question is to be distinguished from dert said to mean a girl ; and it is to be borne in mind in reading this conjecture. 2 h 2 4G8 v. the sun hero. Why both stories should treat the liquid element as a, tear I cannot say : a modern 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 ; l but I must confess complete ignorance of any facts that would serve to countenance such a view. CllCHULAINN AND HIS FOES. The epic tale of the TAin involves Ciichulainn in a quarrel with a goddess of a different description from those hitherto mentioned : I mean the MxSrrigu, 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 Mdrrigu 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 . . . . 2 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. Bor. 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. lG'J gave her an insulting reply, which made her completely change her tone, and say : c 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 Avilt 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, ' in the form of a grey she- wolf , drive the cattle to the ford against thee.' 1 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 till 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 legs1 under thee, and thou wilt be under that blemish till I pronounce sentence of blessing on thee.' 2 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 tin Dun, 74A, is, ' cowmema do fergara i6t;' but when it is described done at 77a, we have 'ger gara' instead of fergara, which is perhaps to be read into fergara. The nom. sing, occurs BBfer gain at 776. - Ibid. 71", lib. 470 V. THE SUN HERO. her. The noise of the strokes dealt by Ciichulainn 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 M6rrigu's opportunity, so she came in the form of a she-wolf and drove the cattle in the other direction down upon Ciichu- lainn, whereupon he cast a stone from his sling, 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.1 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 Ciichulainn felt thirsty after the performance of a fabulous feat of valour against the troops of the west, the Morrigu 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 J Bk. of the Dan, 76 b, 77 a. V. THE SIN HERO. 171 to the cud of the world.'1 Ciicliuluhm and the Morrigu were now, so to say, quits, and the story ends without shedding any light on the later relations between them. Another story,2 however, which describes Cdchulainn's death, makes the Morrigu, 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 Morrigu, it is needless to say, failed in her friendly effort to keep Ciiehulainn 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.3 The former slew Ciiehulainn near Loch Lamraith4 in the Plain of Mur- themne on the very day when the Ultonians were able to come out of their confinement; and Conall Cernach, Ciiehulainn's foster-brother, pursued Lugaid, and overtook him before the close of the day bathing in the Liffcy. 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 Morrigu hero 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 arc quite common in old versions of Irish tales, showing that the scribes used a variety of oldei editions. 1 Bk. of Leinster, 119a — 123//; extracts will be found, published with a translation by Stokes, in the Rev. Cell. iij. 17a — 185. 3 O'Curry, 513-4. 4 Another name of the same lake given in the LA: of Leinster was Loch Tondchuil, 1216. 472 V. THE SUN HERO. parley took place, followed by a protracted duel, resulting in Conall slaying Lugaid, who 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 Lugaicl's side, which rendered the rest of the fight easy for his antagonist.1 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 Cuchulainn's special friend, or else as his foster-son and even as his own son. He is variously known as Lugaid mac Conrot, 'L. son of Ciiroi,' and L. mac na Tri Con,2 1 L. son of the Three Cws,' or Hounds, and he is possibly to be also identified with Lugaid mac Con, or L. Hound's 1 Bk. o/Leinster, 1226. 2 These are supposed (O'Curry, p. 479) to have been Ciichulainn, Conall Cernach and Ciiroi, the genitives of the names being Con- culainn, Conaill and Con-roi respectively. Qu-roi or Gti-rui (with or without the mark of length on the diphthong) seems well attested (Bk. of the Dun, 61a, 69 a, 71 b ; Bk. o/Leinster, 31b, 169 b), but it must have also had the form Cii-ri, as the genitive occurs in the i'orm Conu-ri 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 Cathair ChonrigJi. V. THE SUN HERO. I V ,) 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 Con 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 Niid: 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, Blathnat, 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 BUithnat's name, derived from bl&th, 'bloom,' reminds one of that of Blodeued, from blodeu, 1 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 Ciichulainn's wife after he had slain Ciiroi with her aid. Ciichulainn and two other Ultonians had paid a friendly visit to Ciiroi at his abode in the west ; and Ciichulainn, whether then or later we arc not told, found opportunity of coming to a treacher- ous understanding with Blathnat. So at the time fixed upon by her, namely, November-eve, Ciichulainn 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 Blathnat, 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 White Brook.1 Tho sequel was that Ciichulainn entered Curoi's fort unop- posed, and slew its owner, who happened to be asleep with his head on Blathnat' s lap. Ciichulainn took away Blathnat, 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 Blathnat 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 Blathnat, and flinging himself with her over the cliff, they died together.2 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 Cuchulainn one of the dark beings, among 1 Bk. ofLeinster, 1696. What passes as Curoi's cairn is known on the shoulder of the mountain ; but no remains of his cathalr 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 Nud or the Manx Manannan. 2 With the exception of a short paragraph in the Bk. of Leinstcr, 169&, the author is indebted for this story to O'Curry. ij. 97, iij. 7'»-82, and Keating's History of Ireland (O'Connor's ed., Dublin, 1865), pp. 220-5 ; they differ, however, in detail. V. THE SUN 1IEH0. 475 whom Ciiroi, on the otlicr hand, must be classed. For fore find him among the allies who gave Ailill and Medb jissistance on the Tain, in which he was ready personally to engage had he not been checkmated. This eharacter of a His 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,1 on a low cromlech near Caher Conree, commemorating a man described as Son of Ciiroi. Like Niall 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.2 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 Ciichulainn 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 in 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 Britain2, p. 263; Brash, p. 175, pi. xvi : see note, p. 472. 2 See "Windisch's Irisrhe Texte, pp. 294-5 ; compare also the Welsh elegy to Ciiroi in the Bk. of 7bliesnn (Skene, ij. 198), where he is mentioned as one who 'was wont to hold a holm on the Sea of the South.' 476 V. THE SUN HERO. was to have of the plunder the jewel that pleased him best. They brought away from Mider's castle Mider's daughter Blathnat, 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 Blathnat, whom he took to himself. Ciichulainn 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, in which Cuchulainn was so thoroughly vanquished that Oriroi left him on the field bound hand and foot, after having cut off his long hair,1 which forced Cuchulainn to hide himself for a whole year in the wilds of Ulster, while Curoi carried away to his stronghold of Caher Conree both Blathnat and her father's cows and cauldron.2 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 Ciichulainn's own doing (p. 261). Now Falga is variously3 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 Bk of Leinster, 169&, adds the words: diarfumalt (.i. diarchommil) cacc nambo" moac/iend. 2 O'Curry, iij. 81 ; O'Connor's Keating, loc. cit. 3 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, hut to another king of the other world, who was called Echaid Echbel, or E. Ilorsc-mouth. lie lived in Alban, and his cows used to come to graze in Dalriada, on a head- land, now called Island Magee, in Antrim,1 Avhere they were appropriated by Ciichulainn and his men, from whom they were then stolen by Ciiroi and carried away whither Ciichulainn 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 kint^ 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 darkness 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 Manannan, 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 /•'<-///• Masters, A.M. 2859, O'Donovan's notes i, t. In the Bk. of Leinster these cowa are called in the genitive, ' na t/-i nerc (.i. b<5) iuchna,' and 'nancrc much//",' and t lie same ■word Iuchna, said there to be a proper name, occurs also in Cormac's article; but I have seen no explanation of the term. 47S V. THE SUN HERO. unfaithful Blathnat ; but there seem to have been plenty of different accounts of his parentage, in which other sets of names figure ; and one1 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,2 of three Grwyns, who are possibly to be equated with the three Finns of Emain. The indi- vidual names of these last were Bres, Nar and Lothur, which one might perhaps render War, Shame and Hell.3 Now Lugaid is considered the son of this Evil Triad and Clothru or the Horrible Ethne.4 The story of his 1 Bk. o/Leinster, 124 ft. 2 R. B. Mob. p. 106, where they are called Gwyn son of Esni, Gwyn son of Nwyvre, and Gwyn son of Nud : Guest's text and translation, ij. 205, 259, unaccountably omit the two first Gwyns. 3 Nar means 'shame' and 'shameful;' the plural of bres occurs as bressa, meaning 'battles:' see Stokes' Calendar of Oengus, Prol. 74; and lothur is quoted in the Gr. Celtica-, p. 782, with the sense of alveus, canalis : it seems to be derived from loth,, meaning ' coenum, Lerna' (Gr. Celt2, p. 15), ' Mefitis' (Windisch's Ir. Texte, s. v. p. 669), and 'pains' and 'hell' (Stokes' Goidelica2, p. 69). L6thar or Lothor, gen. Ldthair, was also the name of Medb's herdsman on the Tain, Bk. of the Dan, 65 a. 4 According to the Bk. o/Leinster, 124ft, the mother was Clothru, who became Conchobar'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 Dan, 54 a. V. THE SUN" HERO. 179 origin, briefly told in the Book of Leinster, forms a pic- ture less colossal but more disgusting than 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 wished 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 Ultonians 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 Ciichulainn'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.1 This friendship between Ciichulainn and Lugaid is very remarkable ; it is illustrated also in the Tain 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 Ciichulainn 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 Nois king of Munster, and the latter declining to have anything to do with her as soon 1 Windiscl., pp. 212, 213. 2 Bk. of the Dun, 74a : the other Tain references to him are G7 a, 69 or, 70/', 73'/, 73/', also possibly G2a, where we read of Fer I'M mac Lugdach. 4 SO V. THE SUN HERO. as she explained to him that Ciichulainn was to be her husband, whom Lugaid, according to this euhemerized passage, did not wish to anger.1 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 Sc&thach's Isle as Sc&thach's pupil, that is to say, as her foster-son ; but Sc&thach had other foster-sons, who were accordingly Ciichulainn's foster-brothers there. The foster-brother2 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 Scdthach'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 Tain. 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. 836, which maintains the consistency of the story it relates hy 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 BUN BEBO. lv 1 when together in Scathaoh's Isle, and thoy have been elaborated with considerable care, while Chichnlainn'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 wag 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.1 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 Gdi Bolga is brought down on the head of Cuchulainn's antagonist with the effect of crushing him,2 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 k Windisch, Ir. T>.rtr, 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 Crichu- lainn. It is otherwise with the corresponding 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.1 But in the case of Cuchulainn 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 Cuchulainn's foes on the Tain.2 The sequel has already been briefly related, how Cuchulainn, trying to make head against them, fell by the hand of Lugaid. Now the stories which treat Lugaid as Ciichulainn'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 1 Cox's Tales of the Teutonic Lands, pp. 96 — 106. 2 Bk of Leinster, 119a— 1206; also 93a. V. THE SUN HERO. -\s:', developed them into an odious triad of murder, disgrace and treachery.1 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 lii> 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 erc/i, ' dun, horrible,' Gr. tt^kos, 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.2 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 Dtitho, who was a decidedly dark personage (p. 330), and that Conall, arriving after the battle had been fought, 1 O'Cuny'a MS, Mat. pp. 478-9. - Ibid. pp. 49, 483, 513-4. Q . O _ 1 -j 484 T. 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 king 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,1 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, 0 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, 18GG), iij. 263. V. THE SUN HERO. 485 'T know,' said she; cit is the words thai passed be- tween him and Aitherne: he said that no man of the Ultonians should cany me away. It is the conflict on account of what he then said, that is what ails the head.9 'Come thou to me to my chariot,' said Conall. 1 Wait,' said Buan, 'for me to bewail my husband.' She then raised her cry of lamentation so that it was heard as far as Tara and Aillen : after that she threw herself headlong and died on the spot. Her grave is on the road, and it is called Buan's Hazel from the tree which grows through it.1 Apart from this incident which recalls the death of Acall, the story of Conall fighting with Mesgegra in the Liffey is so like that of his over- taking Lugaid in the same river, that we may treat them as referring to the same mythic event, and regard Lugaid and Mesgegra as virtually one and the same mythic being. This is countenanced by the allusion to Mesgegra in Emer's lamentation over her husband's death.2 1 Bk. of Leinster, 116b, l\7 a ; Stokes, Rev. Celt. viij. 47 — 63, 2 Bk. of Le insler, 1 1 G a— 1 1 7 a, 1 2 2 a— 1 2 1' b, and 1 2 3 b. Lecture V. THE SUN HERO. PAET II. KlJLHWCH AND GwRI OF THE GOLDEN HAIR. Up to this point we have used the various forms of the Sun-god's name, Llew, Lieu, Lug and Lugus, as our finger-posts ; but we have now to pass from the range of their guidance to consider some other versions of the solar myth. "We may begin with one of those connected with the Arthurian legend, but not so closely connected with it as not to be readily treated by itself : I mean the story of Kulhwch and 01 wen.1 Now Kulhwch's mother's name was Goleudyd, ' Light-as-day or Day- bright,' and she was daughter to a prince called AnlawcT, who was also the father of Eigr or Igrayne, Arthur's mother.2 His father's name is given as Kilyd, which meant a companion, fellow, and, perhaps, a husband; and his grandfather's name is represented as being Kelyeton Wledig, which might possibly be regarded as meaning 1 R. B. Mob. pp. 100—143; Guest's Mob. ij. 247—318. 2 R. B. Mab. pp. 100, 102, 106; Guest, ij. 198, 252, 258; also Brut Tysilio in the Myv. Arch. ij. 289, where Eigr is said to have Leen dau&hter of Amb.i6d 6hdic. V. THE SFN HERO. 4S7 Prince Kelydon, with the latter word taken as the equi- valent of a Caledo, in the sense of one of the Caledonea or Caledonians; but there is no evidence for the existence of either Caledo or KclycTon as a masculine singular. So it is preferable to treat Kelycton Wledig as an archaism for Gwledig Kelycton, which would mean Prince of Caledonians or of Caledonia. The story is chiefly inte- resting as a kind of parallel to Ciichnlainn wooing and marrying Emcr, daughter of Forgall king of Lochlann, as will be seen from the following abstract of it. Previous to the birth of Kulhwch, his mother lost her senses, and wandered Leto-like on the mountains : it was the fright caused her by a herd of swine that was the immediate cause of her being delivered. The swine-herd took the baby to his father's court, where men called him Kulhwch, or Him of the Pig-sty, because he had been found in a pig-sty. He was nevertheless noble ; and when he was yet a stripling, his father, who had been for some time a widower, married a woman who had a daughter of her own. The step-mother wished Kulhwch to marry her daughter, but he excused himself on the score of his youth, whereupon the mother was much angered, and swore him a ' destiny ' that he was to have no woman to wife but Olwen the daughter of Yspydaden Pencawr, or Hawthorn Head-giant. The step -mother had every reason to believe that uncanny father likely to put an end to Kulhwch's life as soon as he came to him with a request for his daughter's hand; for it was known to her that no suitor ever returned from Yspydaden's castle, as its giant-owner was to lose his life the day his daughter married. Kulhwch told his father what his step-mother had said as to his marrying 488 V. THE SUN HERO. Olwen, and the father said that nothing was easier if he would only go to the court of his cousin Arthur, and follow his instructions : these were, that he should ask Arthur to cut his hair, and, when it was done, that he should demand Olwen as his hjvanvs or boon; for the ceremony of hair-cutting by the king meant his mak- ing him one of his men, and his acquiring the right to demand a boon of his lord. Kulhwch complied, and Avent to the court of Arthur, who took his golden scissors and cut Kulhwch's hair, whereby he discovered that he was of his kin ; so he made him tell him who he was. Kulhwch, as instructed by his father, asked as his boon that he should have Olwen to wife. Arthur had no objection ; but neither he nor his knights had ever heard of Olwen, and, though they were by no means unused to travel, they had not the remotest idea where YspycTaden's abode might be. When a considerable time had been vainly spent in the search, and Kulhwch was beginning to grumble that he was still without his boon, he was chal- lenged to go himself on the search with a small party of Arthur's knights, selected with special reference to their skill in such undertakings. He accordingly went with them, and it was not long ere they arrived near a great stronghold, on the way to which they came across an endless flock of sheep, watched by a shepherd sitting on the top of a mound. He was a remarkable person clad in skins, and he kept at his side a shaggy mastiff bigger than a stallion nine winters old; nor was it his habit to lose even a lambkin from the flock, or to allow any- body to pass that way unharmed ; nay, the plain was covered with tree-stumps and clumps, the green of which had been scorched away to the very soil by the breath of V. THE SUN HERO. 489 liis nostrils. Gwrhyr Gwals'awt Ieithoed,1 who knew all languages, even those of some of the animals, Mas asked to address the shepherd on behalf of the party; hut he protested that he was under no obligation to go a step further than the others ; so they all advanced together, and the more fearlessly as their magician Menyw son of 'IVirgwaed:, strengthened their failing courage with the assurance that he had laid the mastiff under a spell which rendered him harmless. The shepherd told them that he was Custennin, brother to Yspydaden, whose castle they sought and could now see not far off; but on learning what their business was, he tried to persuade them to go back the way they had come, as no one who went on such an errand to Yspy claden's castle was ever known to return. They would not listen, and Ivulhwch, as he took leave, gave Custennin a ring of gold; but it would not go on any one of his fingers, so he put it in one of his gloves, and when he reached home he handed it to his wife. 1 The name (R. B. Mab. pp. 115, 126, 129, 137, 265) means Gwrhyr, Interpreter of Languages, the word Gwalstaict, -which occurs written also in other ways, mostly less correct (R. B. Mab. pp. 112, 114), heing the A. -Saxon icealhstdd, 'an interpreter.' The oldest "Welsh form seems to be gwalstot in Rhonabwy's Dream (R. B. Mab. p. 160), a story in a somewhat older hand than the other Red Book ones to which the page references have just been given. The Irish etymological equivalent of the name Gwrhyr was Ferghoir, borne (in The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gfrainne, i. § 17 ; also Joyce's (>/d Cdt. Romances, p. 288), by the Stentor of Finn's party, whose every shout was audible over three cantreds. Qwrhyr ami Ferghoir are pro- bably derived from the Celtic root gar or ger, 'to call,' and the meaning of the "Welsh name suggests a time when the herald had to shout from the advanced post of his own men to that of the enemy. Add to this that Arthur's court had the services of another accomplished interpreter of human speech in a person called Kadyrieith, R. B. i p. 160 ; Guest, ij. 417. 490 V. THE SUN HERO. This gave her occasion to extract from him all the news about Kulhwch and his party, when Cnstennin said she would see them very shortly. She was filled with two feelings, one of joy at the coming of Kulhwch, whose mother she stated to have been her sister; and the other of sadness at the thought that the youth was not likely to escape alive from Yspyctaden's hands. Custennin's wife was a fit consort for that mighty herdsman, and at the coming of Kulhwch she rushed, overjoyed by their approach, to embrace him ; but Kei, who as the leader of the party had his eyes open, adroitly reached her a bundle of fire-wood he found close by : the woman's fond hugging instantly reduced it to the dimensions of a withy. ' Ah, lady,' said Kei, ' had it been I that were so squeezed, nobody else would ever have a chance of loving me.' In the course of their stay at Custennin's house, she opened a stone chest near the fireplace, and out came a yellow-haired, curly-headed youth. This, she said, was the only one left of her twenty-four sons, who were one by one destroyed by Yspydaden, and she had no hope of his escaping any more than his brothers ; but Kei advised her to let this her surviving son cling to him and his friends. She then prayed them not to go to Yspy- claden : they would not be dissuaded, but would wait until Olwen herself arrived, for they had learned that it was her habit to come to wash herself every Saturday at Custennin's house, where she and her maid always left behind them all their rings and jewels. Then follows a curious description of Olwen, in which it is stated, among other things, that her hair was yellower than the flower of the broom, and her skin whiter than the foam of the billow ; that wherever she trod there sprang up four white V. THE SUN HERO. 401 trefoils, whence her name Olwen, meaning Her of the White Track. Kulhwch wooed her; but she proceeded to explain to him, that he must ask her father, who had obtained her word of honour that she woidd not marry without his consent. She advises him what to say to Yspyctadcn, and how to answer him ; so Kulhwch and his friends set out to call on Yspydaden, and on their way they kill his nine porters and his nine mastiffs without any ado. They make their way to the giant and salute him : then they tell him their business. 1 Where are my servants and those blackguards of mine ?' said he, referring to his porters. ' Lift the supports under my eyebrows that have fallen over my eyes, that I may Bee the form of my son-in-law.' When that was done, he promised them an answer on the morrow, and, as they were departing, he cast a poisoned javelin at them, which was caught by one of the party and hurled back through the giant's knee-socket, which he resented in strong terms. The next day they returned for his answer, but he put them off with the excuse that he must consult the girl's four great-grandfathers and four great-grandmothers, who were, he said, still alive. As they were going away he cast the second poisoned javelin at them, which was caught by one of the party as on the previous day, and hurled back with such effect that it went through Yspy- daden's chest and out through his spine : this annoyed him greatly, for, as he said, it was likely to occasion him a difficulty of breathing when walking up-hill, and possibly to interfere with his stomach. They returned on the third day, and had a javelin cast at them as before, which Kulhwch himself caught and sent back through the apple of Yspydaden's eye and out through the back 492 V. THE SUN HERO. of his head : that annoyed him rather more than the woundings on the previous days ; so on the fourth day he thought it proper to sit down with his would-be son-in- law and go into details. He stipulated that Kulhwch was to have Olwen to wife provided he could fulfil certain conditions which he named : these last involved so many apparent impossibilities and the intervention of so many mythic heroes, that their chief interest may be said to consist in their forming a catalogue of the subjects of so many tales, most of which have been lost. With the aid of Arthur and his men, Kulhwch procures all the impossibilities ; Yspydaden's castle is stormed by Goreu, the only one surviving of Custennin's twenty -four sons ; the giant himself, like Forgall on a similar occasion, loses his life ; and the marriage of Olwen is consummated. This tale, which I have been compelled to abridge very considerably, contains a number of things of interest to the student of mythology; but I need only allude to one or two of them. The clover-blossoms that were wont to spring up in Olwen's track recall the roses that grew where Aphrodite trod, and the former's giant- father's name Yspydaden, meaning 'hawthorn,' reminds one of the thorn of winter, the pricking of which makes Sigrdrifa fall asleep, and of the mistletoe which, thrown by his blind brother, gives Balder his fatal wound ; but the story of Kulhwch is to be read briefly in the Norse Lay of Skirni, which relates how Gerdr Gymir's daughter was successfully wooed for the love-smitten Frey by his messenger ; how the latter had asked of the shepherd that ' sat on the ho we watching all the ways,' which he should take in order to visit Gerdr in spite of her father's hounds ; and how the shepherd thought him a V. THE SUN HERO. 403 fey person or a ghost to think of attempting such a thing.1 Still more to our purpose is it to notice the parallel between Knlhwch and Ciichulainn, excepting always a difference, already indicated between the former and Lieu, namely, that while Ciichulainn does almost everything for himself, Kulhwch achieves all he does by obliging others to toil for him: the only time he is described acting of his own initiative is when he receives Yspychidcn's poisoned javelin and sends it back with the greatest precision through the apple of the giant's eye, which, as it decided Yspydaden to come to terms with Kulhwch, forms the turning-point of the story, and invites comparison with Lleu's one hurl of his spear when he transfixed his foe. The parallel is still further pretty close : Kulhwch was born in a hovel belonging to a swineherd, or in a sty used by his pigs, as Ciichulainn, according to some of the accounts, was born in the bothie of the man in the Brugh of the Boyne. Both were of noble blood, and grew to be greatly admired on account of their personal charms ; Kulhwch had, so far as we are allowed to judge, the same unerring hand that characterized Ciichulainn in the use of his spear; Ciichulainn's marrying was a matter of great importance to the nobles of Ulster, and so was the marriage of Kulhwch one of great interest — a forced interest, it is true — to the knights of Arthur's court. Their respective brides were similar, and this extends to the difficulty of visiting them. Of the brides' mothers we read nothing ; but the general resemblance between their fathers Forgall and Yspydaden is too obvious to need discussion in detail, and both lose their 1 Corpus Poet. Bur. i. 111-7. 494 V. THE SUN HERO. lives when their daughters marry. But I pass over this to make a remark or two on the mothers of the heroes respectively. Now Kulhwch' s mother was daughter of Anlawd Wledig or Prince Anlawd, of whom we know nothing, and she was sister to the wife of Custennin, brother and herdsman to Yspy&aden: her own name was Goleudyd, or Light-as-Day, and her sister was the mother of the twenty-four youths slain all but one by Yspydaden. The number twenty-four points pretty clearly, in my opinion, to the twenty-four hours of the day, and we equate the twenty -four sous of Custennin with the twenty-four ladies liberated from the strong- hold of the Perverse Black Knight by Owein ab Urien.1 This last description of them as imprisoned ladies is more in harmony with Greek mythology, which also made them such and called them the Hours, keepers of heaven's cloud-gate and ministers of the gods. It is not likely that twenty-four was the original number in "Welsh mythology; and the Irish story of the three Sons of Doel Dermait opposes to it those three and their sister. The latter, whom I take to represent night, was not brought back by Cuchulainn, who released her three brothers from captivity, just as Kulhwch was the means of saving the life of the only surviving son of his aunt's two dozen children, who thus lived to see the wedding of Kulhwch and Olwen, that is to say, the time when the sun was about to rise to illumine the world for another day. The Irish myth was consistent in not making Cuchulainn bring back the hours of darkness, but only those of light ; and the fixing their number as three refers probably to 1 It. B. Mob. pp. 191-2; Guest, i. 82-3. V. THE SUN HERO. l'.»") the division of the day into three parts — morning, noon and afternoon or evening. In any case, three is also the number of the Hora3 as given by Ilesiod,1 who calls them Eunomia, Dike and Eirene respectively ; and I am not sure that the XapiTts or the Graces2 of Greek mythology were not, in point of origin, the same as the Hone : be that as it may, the latter were supposed to watch over men and prosper their works, presiding chiefly over the changes of time and the seasons. Whether they were not confined originally to the narrow limits of the day I cannot say, but we have no grounds in Celtic litera- ture for extending their domain beyond it; and after the analogy of myths relating to the sun and to light, we may naturally expect them, whether three or twenty-four, to have been regarded as the offspring of parents more or less allied with darkness. This is borne out on Irish ground by the description already alluded to, of Duel Der- mait's daughter and brother, and by that of Custennin's wife in the Welsh story, not to mention that the father of the twenty-four sons was brother to Yspychiden, the chief of the giants of the dark world. Now Kulhwch's mother was sister to the wife of Custennin ; what then are we to make of her name, with its unmistakable reference to the light of day ? The only answer which would seem to satisfy these conditions is, that she was a representative of either the dawn or the gloaming. In case we fix on the dawn, the Sun-god, whose spouse is a dawn-goddess, is himself the son of a dawn -goddess, 1 Theog. 902. - The relation between the Charites and the Sanskrit Harits will be found discussed in Max Midler's Lectured uii the iSc. of Language?, ij. •108-11, 418. 496 V. THE SUN HERO. which cannot be regarded as an objection in a nature myth of the kind in question here. However, I am dis- posed, on the whole, to suppose the gloaming or dusk to suit our tales better — that light which, for some time after the sun himself has sunk out of sight, continues to illumine the skies in these latitudes, and to tip the moun- tains and the clouds with colours which are now and then of indescribable beauty. Out of that blaze of de- parting light the Sun is obscurely born during the hours of darkness to begin his career anew ; but before he has made love to the rosy-fingered Morn, he has lost his mother. This hypothesis would help us to assign a pos- sible meaning to Cuchulainn's mother's name by referring it to her as the dawn, or better, perhaps, as the gloaming. The story of her escape from Emain to the fairy house to give birth to her son during the night, which was so arranged by Lug that the infant should be brought up by the nobles of the Ultonian court, need not be further gone into as a parallel to the mad wanderings of Goleudyct and the bringing home of her son by the swineherd to his master's court; and I wish to dwell only on her name as suggesting how to explain that of the goddess Dechtere. The "Welsh word dyd", 'day,' which enters into the composition of Ivulhwch's mother's name, is not to be found in that of Dechtere ; but her name has a partial resemblance to the English word in its old form of dwg : the kindred German word tag still retains the guttural. This brings one to a group of well-known words1 which incline me to consider the name Dechtere 1 Sanskrit dak, ' burn/ dagdha, ' burnt ;' Lithuanian degu, ' I burn,' degti, ' to burn,' degta-s, nu-degta-s, ' burnt, destroyed by fire,' daga, 'hot weather, harvest-time, harvest;' 0. Prussian dagJHt 'summer;' V. THE SUN HERO. 497 to belong to the same mythical category as that of Goleudycr, and to refer to the goddess as the mother of the blazing sun, or else, more probably, to her as a personification of the light that overspreads the sky before the sun appears above the horizon, or after he has just sunk below it. Originally, however, it may have alluded more particularly to the hot days of summer ; for myths about the sun may have to do with the seasons of the year as well as with the landmarks within the narrower space of a day. It is unfortunate that classical scholars have nothing certain to say as to the meaning of the name of Apollo's mother Leto or Latona, in whom we undoubtedly have one of the Ilcllenic counterparts of the Celtic figures which we have been trying to examine. In the foregoing stories the Sun-god is, as a rule, not brought up by his mother, and in the next to be men- tioned the separation between mother and son is brought about in a remarkable way. The following is the purport of the tale : l — Pwytt Prince of Dy ved had taken to wife 0. Norse dag-r, Gothic daga-s, German tag. Having got thus far, ono at once recognizes the equivalent of Sanskrit dagdh- or of the Litli. degt- in the "Welsh word godaith, formerly godeith or gwodeith (for an early Celtic ivo-de\t-) , 'a blaze, especially the burning of a p] overrun with brakes, brushwood or furze.' Similarly Glodaith, the name of a place near Llandudno, is probably to be analysed into Glo- daith and interpreted as the place for burning glo or charcoal : it is spelled Olodeyfh in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 1. It may be con jectured that we have the element deith, deyth or daith in a noun cdeithor, which occurs in the probable sense of 'burner, scorcher or blazer,' in the Bk. of Taliessin (Skene, ij. 203); and edeithor without the prefix would b<> deit/ior, of possibly much the same meaning, and involving a base corresponding to that from which Derhtere has been derived by adding the ja termination. Windisch, p. 13S, gives unce the shorter form Dertir. 1 R. B. Mob. pp. 17—25; Guest, iij. 59—71. 2k 498 V. THE SUN HERO. Ehiannon daughter of Hyveid: the Old, and when they had lived together two years without any issue, the nobles of the land began in the third year to demand that he should choose another wife that he might have an heir. He persuaded them to wait another year, in the course of which a son was born to Ehiannon. But the night he was born his mother slept, and so did the six nurses who had been engaged to watch, and when they woke in the morning the boy was nowhere to be found, for it was the eve of the Calends of May, when all evil spirits and uncanny things roam at large. The nurses, to avoid being burnt alive for their negli- gence, conspired to swear that Ehiannon had devoured her son, so they smeared her face with the blood of some puppies they found in the house. This could not be concealed, and it went forth to the country that Ehiannon had destroyed her own baby, and the nobles again wanted Pwylr to put her away; but he replied that they could not demand this, unless she continued with- out offspring, which was not the case, and that if she had done wrong she should be punished. Ehiannon sent for doctors and wise men, so that rather than con- tend with the lying nurses she might undergo penance. The penance fixed was, that she should remain for seven years sitting daily by the horse-block near the gate, that she should tell her story to every one who came or was thought by her to be ignorant of it, and that she was to offer to all guests and strangers to carry each of them on her back to the hall : it was, of course, a rare thing for anybody to accept such an offer. This was at a place called Arberth, in the present county of Cardigan, where Pwyft held his court. At that time, Nether Gwent, V. THE SUN HERO. 499 ov the country, roughly speaking, between the lower courses of the Wye and the Usk, was ruled over by a prince whose name was Teyrnon Twrv Bliant, and he is said to have been the best man in the world. Now Teyrnon had a highly prized mare that foaled on the eve of every First of May, but nobody knew what became of the foals ; and the year Ehiannon gave birth to her son, Teyrnon was determined to find out what happened to the foals ; so he had the foal then born, together with its mother, placed in-doors, while he pro- ceeded to watch over them himself that night. It was not long ere he heard a great noise, and after the noise he saw a claw protruding through the window and seiz- ing the colt by the mane. Teyrnon quickly drew his sword and cut the claw off at the elbow, so that he had the colt and the claw by him in the stable. Then he heard a great tumult and noise outside, whereupon he opened the door and rushed for some distance in the direction of the noise, but the night was too dark for him to see who caused it ; so remembering that he had left the stable-door open, he hastened back, and found on the ground close by it a baby in swaddling clothes, with a sheet of satin wrapped round it. He fastened the stable-door and took the baby to his wife's bed-room ; when she had been told of the adventure, she examined the baby's clothes and found that it must have been the son of gentle parents. Moreover, as she had no children, she arranged to make people believe that the baby was her own : so they had the child baptized with the bap- tism that was usual at that time,1 and they called him 1 This charming catholicity of the story-teller has heen completely snuffed out in Lady CI). Guest's translation, iij. p. Gf», wluch is as fol- 9 TT O a JL -j 500 V. THE SUN HERO. Gwri Gwalft Eurin, or Gwri of the Golden Hair, for what hair he had was as yellow as gold. Before he was a year old he could walk vigorously, and he was bigger than any three-year-old child though it were good of growth and stature ; and in his second year he was as big and strong as a child of six. Ere he was fully four he would contend with the servants to be let to take the horses to water, and Teyrnon, at his wife's suggestion, had the colt of the same age with the boy broken in for him to be his own. In the mean time, the news about Ehiannon reached Teyrnon, and he had begun to scrutinize the boy's looks, for he had formerly been one of Pwytr's men ; and he came to the conclusion that the lad was exactly like Pwyif, that in fact he must be Ehiannon's lost child. After consulting his wife and agreeing with her that it would be the right thing to restore him and release his mother from her penance, he took him to Arberth. When they arrived, Ehiannon offered to carry them to the hall, which they very naturally declined; but in the course of the feast that was going on, Teyrnon gave the history of the boy, and followed it up with an appeal to all those present to say whether they did not think he was Pwytt's son : nobody had any doubt in his mind on the matter ; and Ehiannon observed that if that were true, she would be rid of her pryderi (the "Welsh for anxiety). ' Lady,' said Pendaran Dyved, one of the chief nobles present, 'well hast thou named thy son lows : ' and they caused the boy to be baptized, and the ceremony was performed there.' How this very bald statement could have been extracted from the Welsh words I do not quite understand : they are, 'Peri a wnaethant bedydya6 y mab or bedyd awneit yna:' see the R. B. Mab. p. 21. V. THE SUN HERO. bUl Pryderi, and Pryderi son of Pwytt Head of ITadcs is the name that suits him best.' ' Consider,' said Rhiannon, 'whether his own name be not more suitable to him.' 'What is the name?' said Pendaran. 'Gwri of the Golden Hair is the name we gave him,' said Teyrnon. 'Pryderi,' said Pendaran, 'shall be his name.' 'It is best,' said Pwytt, ' to take the boy's name from the word his mother uttered when she got joyful tidings of him.' This was agreed upon, and Teyrnon was thanked for his behaviour in the matter and offered presents of all kinds to carry away. Pryderi was given over to Pendaran Dyved to be educated. In the course of years Pwytt died ; Pryderi succeeded him, and chose as his wife Ivicva, daughter of Gwyn Gohoyw, son of Gloyw Watt t- lydan, son of Prince Casnar of the nobility of this island. So ends this branch of the Mabinogi. Considerable complication arises out of Pwytt and Pryderi's relations with Hades, and, so far as concerns the present story, we have to distinguish between Pwytt Prince of Dyved and Pwytt Head of Hades, and between Gwri of the Golden Hair and Pryderi son of Pwytt Head of Hades. In Gwri we have a sort of parallel to Ciichulainn and Lieu. Gwri's rapid growth recalls both Lieu and Ciichulainn, in common with whom he was also remarkable for his golden hair. We cannot compare his life with Ciichulainn's, as no action of his is described besides his taking his father's horses to drink, which reminds one of Shakspear's classic picture of Phoebus watering his steeds. The allusion also to the colt born at the time of Gwri's own birth deserves special notice, as it has its counterpart in the story of one of the obscure incarnations of Lug before he was bom Setanta or Ciichu- 502 V. THE SUN HERO. lainn. It is to the effect1 that when Conchobar and his party, including his charioteer Dechtere, were over- taken in the fairy neighbourhood of the Brugh of the Boyne, they came across a solitary new house there, the owner of which bade them enter. They hesitated, both on account of the smallness of the building and of its probable lack of provisions and sleeping accommodation : in, however, they went, and they had not been there long when they suddenly2 espied a kitchen door. In due time they had food and drink of the most varied and luxurious description brought them, and they had never, they thought, found themselves better served. But when they had become merry and rather more, their host informed them that his wife in the kitchen was overtaken by the pains of childbirth. Dechtere went to her, and a boy was born, at the same time that a mare at the door gave birth to two colts. In the morning the Ultonian party found themselves alone in the open air with their horses, the baby and the two colts. The colts were kept as a present for the baby, and the latter was reared by Dechtere for some time ; but one day the child fell ill and died, to her profound grief; but for the next avatar of Lug, Dechtere found herself chosen to be the mother, as she was informed by him in a dream, when he took the opportunity also of charging her to keep the colts for the boy that was to be born and to be called Setanta. The coincidence is not seriously lessened by the colts being two in the one story and only one in 1 Windisch, pp. 138-40, from Egerton, 1782, and the Bk. of the Dun, 128 a, 128b. 2 Windisch's talmi [A. iarsin) dv is to be corrected into talmidu (i. iarsin), p. 137; see Bk. of the Dun, 128 a. V. T1IE SUN HERO. <303 the other, as that is a consequence of the fact that a man who tights on horseback in the Mabinogion would be made to ride forth in a chariot drawn by two horses in the epic tales of Ireland. Herein Irish would seem to have antiquity on its side, since the chariot and chargers associated with the Irish Sun-god find their counterpart in those of Helios in Greek mythology.1 CORC AND D I ARM AIT. Various allusions have been made to Diarmait, and now something more must be said of him, especially as both his parentage and his death have an important bearing on the view here taken of the Sun-god. Diar- mait was the son of Core and grandson of Duben, so the story of Core has now to be briefly resumed where we left it off (p. 309). It will be remembered that after Core had been completely purged of the paganism of his nature when he was a year old, he was taken back to Erinn : the next thing we read of him is that, years later, his father Cairbre, as provincial king, sent him as a hostage to Cormac mac Airt king of Erinn, who had his court at Tara. Cormac entrusted Core to a mighty warrior called Aengus of the poisoned Spear, and Aengus treated him as his foster-son, and he was with him on the occasion of a hurried visit by Aengus to Tara to avenge an insult to his family. Aengus then killed a son of Cormac's, and in so doing he put out one of the king's 1 On the other hand, it is not to bo forgotten that Conall Cernach, when pursuing Lugaid, had his chariot drawn by a single charger, the canine horse to which allusion has already been made (p. 403), as pos- sibly the Irish counterpart of the brute auxiliary of the Chevalier au Lion and oi' Uwein ab Orien. 504 y. THE SUN HERO. eyes. After doing this, Aengus and Core escaped, and the latter freed himself from his position as a hostage. A war ensued, which is regarded as the beginning of the great movement of the tribes of Leinster usually known as the Expulsion of the Deisi, some of whom came as far as Dyved, in the south-west corner of Wales, and settled there. But the story of Core makes him, after Aengus' death, accompany another band of the exiles on sea, and sail westwards until they came to BoTs Island (p. 309), to which the narrator at this point gives the name of Tech nDuind iar nErinn, or Donn's House behind Ireland. When Core saw the island where he had been reared, he asked his companions to stay with him there ; but his story goes no further, except to state in a general way that he remained in the south of Ireland. His mother's name, as already mentioned (p. 308), was Duben, genitive Duibni or Duibne, so he is usually known as Core Duibne , or Duben's Cropped One. It is clear at a glance that Duben's twin sons Core and Cormac are to be compared with Arianrhod's children Dylan and Lieu, and that they may be taken to represent darkness and light respectively. Of Cormac, however, next to nothing is said, but we are left to suppose that he was handed over at his birth to the nobles of Munster to be burnt. But Core, in whom the interest of the story centres, clearly lends himself to a comparison with Dylan ; for as Dylan hies away to the sea as soon as he is christened, so Core is taken as soon as he is born to a little island in the Atlantic, and in the course of his later wanderings he welcomes the sight of it once more and desires to remain on it. This, it is needless to say, is in keeping with the systematic association of the world of waters V. THE SUN HERO. 505 with that of darkness, as suggested more thai) once already. Further, the identification here suggested of Core with darkness has in its favour the important evidence of the story how his brother deprived him of one of his ears. That seems in some way to typify the action of the sun on the dark shades of night, and it is impossible to avoid seeing that it refers to the same attribute of the dark being as that which gave Ailill Aulom, or A. Bare- ear, his surname (p. 391). Further, Core Duibne may bo shown, in a round-about way, to have had another name, Donn, ' brown or dark.' For Core had a famous son called Diarmait O'Duibne, or D. grandson of Duben. But the accounts given of his parentage vary, some calling his father Core, and some others, not to say most others, being wont to give him the name Donn ; l but there was probably no contradiction between them, as his name may be inferred to have been in full Core Donn, or the Brown Cropped One. This would exactly explain why Boi's Isle, where Core was reared for the first year of his life, appears in the same story under the more usual name of Donn's House behind Ireland. Of course Donn 1 The story of Tlie Pursuit always calls Diarniait's father Donn ; but the editor quotes at some length, ij. 84 — 92, a poem which he thinks the production of some Munster poet of the thirteenth or the following century, and in this the father is called Core and the grandfather Cairbre (ij. 85, 89). This can hardly be a late invention, as the modern tendency seems to have boon to ignore the Core and Duben legend in favour of a pedigree such as that quoted by the editor of The Pursuit, ij. 93, from O'Flaherty's 0; also 331c and 326y, where a man's name Fer Tlachtga is derived from hers. 3 Preller's 67. Myth. i. 146. O r •) a Ju A 516 V. THE SUN HERO. This version, which comes very near the English saying, 'the devil take the hindmost,' and means that originally one of the company became a victim in real earnest, is current in Carnarvonshire, where allusions to the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to frighten children. In the upper part of the vale of the Dee, the doggerel takes the following form : Hwch du gwta Ar bob camfa, Yn nydu a cbardio Bob nos G'langaea'. A cutty black sow On every stile, Spinning and carding Each November-eve. Nos Galan-gaea' Bwbacb ar bob camfa. Here a stile takes the place of the cross-roads, which are apt to figure in English folk-lore ; and we have it again in the corresponding but less specific rhyme from my native part of north Cardiganshire, which runs thus : On November-eve A bogie on every stile. Add to this that the Scotch Gaels have formed from the word Samhain, 'All-hallows,' a derivative Samhanaeh, meaning an All-hallows demon or goblin, supposed to steal babies as well as perpetrate other atrocities then.1 Now the Irish story makes it clear what all this means, and why the night in question was regarded as the saturnalia of all that was hideous and uncanny in the world of spirits. It had been fixed upon as the time of all others when the Sun-god, whose power had been gradually falling off since the great feast associated with him on the first of August, succumbed to his enemies the powers of darkness and winter. It was their first 1 The Cymmrodor, vi. 176-7 : see also the first number of the Scottish Celtic Review, where one should read samhanaeh for lamhanach in the introductory remarks. V. THE 81 N HERO. 517 hour of triumph after an interval of subjection, and the popular imagination pictured them stalking abroad with more than ordinary insolence and aggressiveness; and, if it conies to giving individuality and form to the deform- ity of darkness, to describe it as a sow, black or grisly, with neither ears nor tail, is not perhaps very readily surpassed as an instance of imaginative aptitude.1 Outside Celtic we have parallels in the Norse smith Volundr (p. 381) and the German Wieland, but with the deformity reduced within the narrow limits of lame- ness. So also in the case of the Greek god Hephaestus, who was, however, the father of the dragon form of Erichthonius, one of the early kings of Athens. Hephaes- tus and Athene were closely associated in the ugly story of his origin and in the pious cult of which they were both the objects in Attica. On the Celtic side, the latter association recalls the Irish mythic magician Mog Ruith and his daughter Tlachtga (p. 211), whose name is connected, indirectly, it is true, with the annual distribution of fire to the hearths of Erinn at Samhain or the first of November. For at Athens that was the time of the Chalceia, an ancient feast in honour of Hephiestus and Athene, the exact date being the ivy ko.1 vU of the month of Pyanepsion, that is approxi- mately the last day of October. This feast was preceded, immediately preceded, as it is supposed, by the Apaturia, which was the meeting -time of the phratriie or the tribes, both at Athens and in most of the Ionian commu- 1 With tlie Welsh instances already mentioned Bhonld also be ranged the 'grimly boar all black in a cloud' seen by Arthur in a dream, ami interpreted to refer to the Spanish giant (p. 331) he was to overcome : sec Malory, i. 173-1, and Geoffrey, x. 3. 518 V. THE SUN HERO. nities. It lasted several days, and was partly devoted to civic business, such as the adopting of new members into the tribes, and more especially to the registering, subject to close scrutiny, of the names of all the legiti- mate children born during the year then ending. When the sacrificing and feasting on the last day were over, the children's fathers and other representatives of the tribes went forth in a procession, after lighting their torches at the state hearth. Then the Chalceia began with a torchlight race engaged in by the younger men ; and altogether the part played by the torch in the doings in honour of Hephaestus on those festive days is very noticeable. The nearest Celtic parallel is to be found in the racing away from the bonfires in Wales and the dis- tribution of fresh fire in Ireland ; but it is to be added that the Samhain feast in the latter country was, like the Greek Apaturia, partly devoted to business, namely, to a public scrutiny of the trophies which the Irish braves claimed to have won during the year then ending ; other- wise the feast, which occupied, not only Samain or the first of November, but also the three days before and the three days after it, was given up to the usual games and the fair, to pleasure and amusement, to eating and banqueting.1 Having digressed so far, I can hardly 1 See Windisch, Irische Texte, p. 205, and Stokes in the Rev. Celt. v. 231 ; but for details about the Apaturia and Chalceia, see Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 146-7 ; A. Moinmsen's Heortologie, pp. 302-17, also table i. ; and Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des Antiq. grecques et romaines (Paris, 1887), s.v. Apaturia and Chalceia, also calendrier, where it is shown, in connection with the Macedonian calendar, exclu- sively adopted (with modifications) in the East, that the year was treated in more than one reckoning as beginning with what we should call the end of October or the beginning of November : see especially pp. 829 £, 831//. V. Till-: SIN HERO, 519 turn back without searching whether the Greek calendar docs not offer something to match the other two great feasts of the ancienl ( Vlts at the beginning of the months of August and May ; for I have never been able to find that they held any remarkable feast in winter, a lacuna which, if not more apparent than real, must have had a meaning. But however that may be, it follows from the coincidence between the Goidclic Samhain and the Greek Chalccia, that the Panathensea, with its great variety of games and contests in honour of the goddess Athene,1 who used to be then presented with a splendid peplos, must have taken place at the same time as the Lugnassad, said to have been established by Lug in honour of Tailltiu or Taillne his foster-mother. The parallel in other respects between the great festival of the Greeks and the feasts held at the same date in all Celtic lands (pp. 409 — 424) would take up too much time to discuss here; but having proved two-thirds of my case, so to say, I must now continue my digression to the remaining third. At this point, however, I must confess to some- what less success, as the Greek calendar shows nothing occurring just three months before the Panathenaea. So one has to be content with an approximation in the Athe- nian Thargelia, centring on the sixth day of the month of Thargelion.2 This is at least six days later than one could wish for a feast to match the Goidclic Beltaine, or the first of May ; but it was also about the time of the Delia in the island of Delos. Both were held in honour of the Sun-god Apollo; and further the Thargelia commemorated 1 See Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 173, &c; A. Mouimsen's Hcortologie, pp. 11G— 205. - Pi-ollcr, i. 209; A. Mummscn, p. 122. 520 V. THE SUN HERO. his slaying the dragon Pytho ; but it had another feature which encourages one to equate it with the Goidelic feast in spite of the discrepancy of date, namely, that it was considered the regular occasion for all kinds of purifica- tion in order to preserve the city from plague and pesti- lence. Among the peculiar rites that characterized it was the leading about of two adult persons, as it were scapegoats, excepting that at the end they were sacrificed and burnt, so that their ashes might be dispersed. With this may be compared Cormac's account of the ancient lMtaine, when he says that it was so called from two fires which the druids of Erinn used to make with great incantations ; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires and driven between them as a safeguard against the diseases of the year. The regretable brevity of Cormac is made less serious by what is known of the practices connected with the First of May in Scotland ; since we clearly learn from them how one man originally became a victim for his companions, and how the selec- tion was made : they did not choose him for his ugliness, as the ancient Greeks seem to have done.1 The parallel which has been roughly drawn here between the Celtic and the Greek calendar suggests that at one time the Greeks regarded the old year as ending with the Apaturia, and the new one beginning with the Chalceia in honour 1 As to the Thargelia and Delia, see Preller, i. 209-10, and A. Momni- sen, pp. 414-25; Cormac's statement will be found in the Stokes- O'Donovan edition, pp. 19, 23 ; but for an account of the Scotch Beltaine, see Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, Vol. xi. p. 620; also Pennant's Tour in Scotland in 1769 (3rd ed., Warring- ton, 1774), i. 97, 186, 291; Stephens' Gododin, pp. 124-6; and an interesting monograph on the subject by Dr. Murray in the New English Diet. s. v. Beltane. V. THE SUN HERO. 521 of Hephaestus 011 the o'>/ kuI vka of Pyanepsion. Lastly, a year which was common to Celts with Greeks is not unlikely to have once been common to them with some or all of the other branches of the Aryan family. Diarmait's Home and Duben's Name. After this digression, I must now return to Diarmait and Core, since the remarks already made on them would be incomplete without devoting some little space to the name of the lattcr's mother. It is given in the Book of the Dim1 as Duibind in the accusative, which might, as nd and nn have in that manuscript much the same value, be written Duibinn, were it not more probable that it ought to be corrected into Duibin,2 as the genitive there given is Dutbm, more normally written Didbne, in modern spelling Duibhnc. This helps to fix the declension of the name in Old Irish, and we may treat it as nom. Dubcn, gen. Duibnc, dative and accusative Dubin ; but it seldom occurs except in the genitive, which is common enough ; for there was not only Core Duibne, but also a people called Corco3 Duibne, a name Anglicized into Corcaguinny 1 See the facsimile, pp. 53 b, 54 a. 2 This agrees with the form used by Keating, namely, Duihhin, which he would probably use both as ace. and nom. : O'Connor's edition, p. 273. It is not difficult to see how the mistake would arise, it wu suppose the scribe to have converted nn into nd, and to have found Duibin ningin eonairi, 'D. daughter of C.,' written or spaced inexactly in the copy before him. 3 What relation, if any, the word corco or corca bears to Core's name, I am unahle to say; but here are a few notes bearing on them. Cure makes in the genitive Cain; and the lord of a territory called Muacraighe, after Cairbre Muse, Core's father, used in the eleventh century to give himself the name O'Cuirr, or Core's Descendant : virr i, one of the districts called Muscraiyhe wafi distinguished later 522 V. THE SUN HERO. in that of a barony situated on the Dingle peninsula in Kerry. But the descendants of Duben were at one time much more widely spread, and the island of Valentia is found called Dairbhre of the Ui Duibne,1 or the D. of Duben's Descendants ; and, according to O'Donovan, the principal families of the Corco Duibne, which were the Ui Failbhe or OTalvys, the Ui Seagha or 0' Sheas, and the Ui Congaile or O'Connells, were in possession of the following lands shortly before the English inva- sion : the O'Falvys, of Corcaguinny ; the 0' Sheas, of the territory of Ui Rathach, now called the Barony of Iveragh, as Core's, namely, the barony of Clanwilliam in county Tipperary. See the Four Masters, A.D. 1043, 1044, 1100, 1503. Cuirc is written Quirk in English, while in early Irish it was Curd, attested by an ogarn in the neighbourhood of Dingle. As to corco or corca, the dative plural 6 na Corcaibh, 'from the Corca,' is given in the Book of Rights, p. 97, and the genitive plural na (g-) Core, 'of the Corca,' p. 104, in reference possibly, as O'Donovan suggests, to clans called Corca Acblann, Corca Firtri and Corca Mogha ; a plural Cuirc is treated in the same way as meaning the Corca in a note by Prof. Hennessy to his edition of the Book of Fenagh, pp. 30, 31 ; but these last seem to have been so termed as the descendants of a Core Ferdoit son of Fergus, and the term might be Englished ' the Cores.' The late tendency was very decidedly to prefer corca to corco, as in Corcaguinny and Corkaree, a barony in the county of Westmeath, supposed to be the tribe-name given in Adamnan's Vita S. Columbce as Korkureti (Reeves's edition, p. 89). So I am on the whole inclined to see in korku and corco a word like the Old Irish mocu, moco or mitco (treated later as maccu and even mac-u), to which Stokes, in Kuhn's Beitrcege, i. 345, would give the sense of grandson or descendant. It entered with a collective meaning into clan-names, such as Mocu-Dalon, Mocu- Sailni and Mocu-Runtir, Latinized ' genus Runtir :' see also the remarks on the word in Rhys' Lee. on Welsh Phil} pp. 407 — 412, but cancel the suggestion there made that the word involves ua or o, 'grandson.' Perhaps neither corco nor muco is a word of Celtic origin. 1 The Bk. of Rights, O'Donovan's note, p. 47. V. THE SUN HERO. 523 iii the south-west of the county of Kerry; and the O'Connells, of that of Magunihy, in the south-east of the same.1 Add to this that Core Duibne was supposed to have left descendants of his settled near Kinsale,2 in the county of Cork, and one may infer that most of the ancient inhabitants of Kerry and a good deal more con- sidered themselves descended from Duben. However, the survival of the name Corco Duibne as Corcaguinny f allows us to infer that the traditional descent from an ancestress Duben continued more vigorously accredited on the Dingle peninsula than anywhere else, and it so happens that this can be corroborated in a remarkable manner ; for the barony of Corcaguinny is richer in Ogam inscriptions probably than any other Irish district of the same area. Two of them are of special interest to us here, as they seem to refer to the mythic ancestress. For if you put Duben, genitive Duibne, back into the form Avhich the name should, according to analogy, have had in early Irish, you will have some such a name as Dubina or Dobina, genitive Dubinins or Dobiriias : this is exact enough to enable you at once to recognize the name in its attested forms in Ogam. One of the stones 1 Ibid.; also p. 76, and the same scholar's notes to the Four Masters, A.D. 1095 (Vol. ij. 950), 1495 (Vol. iv. 1220), 1581 (Vol. v. 1756); also his edition of the old Topographical Poems (Dublin, 18G2), pp. 108-9, and notes 594-9. 2 The Bk. of Fenagh, note by the editor, 32. 3 The change of sound is not a very unusual one : Corco Duibne was softened down to Corco Dhuine ; but the spirant sound which analogy would indicate the (/// to have once had, has long since been generally superseded by that of gh. The pronunciation represented by the spelling Corcaguinny was evolved in consequence of a tendency, discernible here and there, to reduce the spirant git into a correspond- ing mute g. 524 V. THE SUN HERO. I allude to lies in a disused burial-place called Ballin- taggart, near Dingle, in the barony of Corco Duibne or Corcaguinny, and it reads : Maqqvi Iaripi Maqqvi Moccoi Dovvinias ; that is to say ' (The Grave or the Stone) of Mac Erp,1 son of Dovvina's Descendant. Mocco Dovvinias was probably the standing designation of the head of the clan to which Mac Erp belonged, and with it may be compared the fashion in use now of speaking of the O'Donoghue or the 0' Conor Donn, meaning respectively the Descendant of Donchadh and of Conchobar. In any case, the pedigree implied in the inscription is made to end with the distant ancestress whose name in the geni- tive is given as Dovvinias. The final sibilant was very precarious even in early Irish, and no trace of it occurs in the other inscription to be mentioned. This latter occurs on a stone in the same neighbourhood, which stands on a small headland near Dunmore Head in a wild situation arguing no lack of sentiment on the part of him who chose the site : the legend is the following : — Ere Ma qv i Ma qv i MoDov i n i a 1 This is a guess ; but Erp would be the name whose genitive occurs as (H)irp in the Bodley MS. Laud. 610 ; see fol. 95 b\ where we read of a Cathmol mc Hirp, who was buried with Lugaid mac Con in Cuil m-Broclwll, somewhere in South Munster. The name occurs in the Welsh Triads, i. 40 = ij. 5, as that of Yrp Lluydawg, who obtained a vast host from the Welsh by outwitting them in arithmetic. He was possibly a Pict ; the name Erp was borne by several persons also in Norse literature : see the Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 51, 56, 58, also ij. 2, 6, where a poet Erp Ljutandi is mentioned. V. THE SUN HERO. 625 We are hero mot by a difficulty as to whether MoDovima is to be construed with the legend on the other edge of the stone or by itself, as the writing is not continuous. On the whole I am inclined to the former view, and to render the inscription thus : ' (The Grave or Stone) of Ere, son of the Son of Erca,1 (daughter or descendant) of MoDovina.' It is possible that a word meaning daughter or descendant has been effaced by the weather before MoDovima on the right-hand edge of the stone ; but that is not essential, nor would the construction in the absence of it be more abrupt than in the case of Core Duihne, or Duben's Core, in the Book of the Dun. I have, however, failed to detect any more traces of writing on that part of the angle,2 but the existence on the stone of this little word mo, to be identified possibly with Irish mo ' my,' is one of its peculiarities. It marks the mythic ancestress as the object of special endearment and respect, probably of divine reverence. The same thing occurs in the case of other such mythical personages as Ailill Aulom or Olom (p. 391), who is sometimes called Ailill Mo- haulum, and in that of Mo-Febis,3 whose sons were Mog 1 Erca would be the early nominative feminine corresponding to the, genitive Erc'ias of the inscription. One reads of Clann Erci, so-called from their mother, in Scotland : see the Bk. of Fenagh, pp. 330-1. 2 It is right to say that Mr. Brash, p. 179, omits the particle mo or mu — for the vowel is not certain — after quoting an inaccurate reading of Mr. Windele's; while in his posthumously published work on Ogham Inscriptions, Sir S. Ferguson, whose, recent death I deeply deplore, calls (p. 41) the scorings here in question 'characters not now Legible ;' but the examination of the stone by my wife and myself, under more favourable circumstances, in the summer of 1883, led us to the unex- pected conclusion which has just been stated. 3 For Mfi/t'ii/fitii>, see the Bodley MS. /., genitive Hirp, and the Iaripi already referred to ; also a dissyllabic genitive lair in Stokes' OaU ndar of Oengus, Oct. 26. 1 The Triads, i. 73, iij. 107. The word I have rendered 'White or Blessed Ladies' is gwenriain, consisting partly of gwen, the fern, of ijinjii. ' whit t',' which, though one of the commonest words in my language, I am unable satisfactorily to translate into English ; for 528 V. THE SUN HERO. that there was a distant time when religion and mytho- logy were at one as to the character of such divinities as Duben and Arianrhod. Even Lugaid appears to have been once the object of worship : you may take the name Mo-Lugaid as evidence, and note the fact that the ancient centres of Irish paganism, left ' waste without adoration,' are compared to the site of Lugaid's house.1 In connection with my attempt to show that Diarmait, Core and Duben were intimately associated with Kerry, it is worth while to observe that the inhabitants of that part of Ireland were probably among the least purely Celtic and the most thoroughly Ivernian in the island. Though nothing conspicuously different from the legends of other districts seems to characterize those of Kerry, it is not impossible that a closer examination of them would result in the discovery of non-Celtic traits. That is, perhaps, the light in which one should "regard the attribution to Diarmait of a mole, described as a love- spot, on his face, and curly hair on his head of a dusky black colour,2 the Ivernian race being, as it is supposed, itself of a dark complexion. besides 'white,' it may mean 'respected, holy, felicitous, blessed,' with a variety of nuances which no single English word will convey : thus the poets speak of Dmv gwyn, ' holy or blessed God,' and nef wen, 'the blessed or blissful heaven,' while their lemans have not unfrequently been addressed by them as fy nyn wen, 'my heavenly maid;' and my father used to call his respected step-mother mam wen, a term in common use in parts of Mid- Wales, and best rendered by the French belle mere. These and the like uses of the adjective are paralleled by the Lithuanian treatment of baltas, 'white:' see Nesselmann's Did. p. 319. 1 Stokes, Calendar of Oengus, Prolog, lines 205-8. 2 See Tlie Pursuit, i. § 5, and pp. 61-2 ; also the poem referred to in my note, p. 504, which seems to give Core or Diarmait the epithet V. THE SUN J1K110. 02! I The Celtic Sun Hero and the Norse Balder. It is proposed at this point to give you the means of comparing the story of the Sun-god of the Celts with that of Balder. The latter, as given in old Norse literature, is approximately as follows:1 — Balder was one of the sons of Woden and Frigg: he was the best of the Anses and praised of them all. He was so fair of face and so bright that rays of shining light issued from his body. The whitest of all plants was compared to Balder' s brow and known by that name, whence an idea may bo formed, says one author,2 of the beauty of his hair and of his body. lie was not only the whitest, the sweetest-spoken and the mildest of all the Anses, but it was a property of his nature that he could not go wrong in his judgments. He dwelt in a place in heaven called Breicfablik or Broad-gleam, the most blessed of all lands, where nought unclean or accursed could abide. But once on a time Balder began donn, ' brown or dark,' ij. 85 ; bnt the words are separated by the artifice or the straits of the poet, and the editor, taking a view dif- ferent from mine, treats Donn as a separate name, ij. 89. The con- jecture that Diarmait is to be reckoned as belonging to the Ivernians, is in some measure corroborated by the fact that hitherto no successful attempt lias been made to explain his name as Celtic, and that the same remark applies to that of Duben. 1 The sources which I have consulted are the following : the Prose Edda in Edda Snorronis Sturlcei (Copenhagen, 1848), i. 90-2, 102, 104, 172-8G ; Vigfusson & Powell, Corptis Poet. Bor. i. G9, 71, 104, L08, 114, 181-3, 197, 201, 574-5, ij. 23, G23-4, 628, 637, 641-8; Simrock, £He Edda (Stuttgart, 1855), pp. 292-3, 295-6, 299, 316-20. 2 What plant or flower he referred to is not quite certain ; the cofida foetida, pyretkrum inodorum, and the eye-bright or euphrasy, an; men- tioned in Vigl'ussun's Icelandic Dictionary, s.v. Baldr. 2 31 530 V. THE SUN HERO. to be disquieted by dreams of ill-omen ; and when he told the Anses of it, they took counsel together how to ensure his safety. The result of their deliberation was, that Woden went down to the nether world to consult a dead sibyl about the dreams that haunted Balder ; and Frigg, who dwelt in a house called Fensalir or the Hall of the Fen, sent to make all things swear that they would not hurt her beloved son Balder : the oath was exacted from fire and water, from iron and all metals, from stones and earth, from the trees of the forest, from dis- eases and poisons, from four-footed beasts and from birds and serpents : the mistletoe alone was deemed by Frigg too young a thing to be asked to swear. But Loki, the brewer of mischief and the sire of a bestial triad consisting of the Fenri Wolf, the Leviathan of the deep, and Hell the witch of Mnheim or the Home of Fog, was by no means pleased to see that Balder could not be hurt like others ; so one day when the Anses were amusing them- selves by throwing their spears and arrows at Balder, since they knew they could not hurt him, Loki went, dis- guised as an old woman, to where Frigg lived in the Hall of the Fen. When the hag was asked what the Anses were doing, she replied that they were throwing missiles at Balder, and she inquired if it was true that nothing would hurt him. Frigg answered that everything had been bound by oath not to hurt him except the mistletoe. On hearing this, Loki found excuse to depart, and went to the spot where Frigg said the plant called mistletoe grew, a little to the east of Walhalla ; and he brought a twig of it to where Hoctr stood in the outskirts of the assembly ; for that was the name of a blind god of great strength. Loki asked Hddr why he did not join the V. THE SUN HERO. 53] others in honouring Balder, to which he replied that he could not see where Balder was, and that he had besides no arms : then Loki cunningly handed him the mistletoe, and directed him whither to throw it. So Hottr hit Balder, who fell dead on the spot. The Anses were shocked, hut they could do nothiug, as the spot was a sanctuary or asylum. Frigg, however, asked who would earn her goodwill and love by hastening to Hell to treat with her for the release of Balder. * Hcrmodr the Swift, another of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on his father's horse Sleipnir on that perilous journey. But first of all the Anses brought Balder's body down to place it in his ship called Einghorn, which, as it surpassed all other ships in size, they could not move an inch towards the sea. So they sent for a giantess called Ilyrrokin, or Fire-smoke, to come from Giant-land to launch it for them, which she did at the first push, with such effect that the rollers under- neath it struck fire and all the earth trembled, a perform- ance which struck Thor as so like his own that he was with difficulty restrained from smashing Hyrrokin's head with his hammer Mjolnir. Balder, after Woden had wh i s- pcred in his ear, was then placed on the funeral pile in his ship, a sight at which the heart of his wife Nanna broke : so her body was placed on the pyre by his : the fire was lit, and Thor hallowed it with his hammer and threw a dwarf into it called Lit. Moreover, Balder's horse, with all his harness, was burnt with his master, and Woden laid on the pyre his gold ring Draupnir or Dropper, which from that time forth had the peculiarity that every ninth night eight gold rings of the like weight with itself dropped from it. Not only the Anses assisted at the funeral, but also a multitude of mountain 2 M 2 532 V. THE SUN HERO. giants and rime- ogres. Vengeance was wreaked on the slayer of Balder ; for Woden was told when he went to the sibyl about the dreams that haunted his son, that Hoctr bearing the fatal branch would be his death, but that Woden's son Yali, born of Vrindr in the Halls of the West, would avenge his brother when he was only one night old ; ' He shall neither wash his hands,' was the reply, ' nor comb his hair, till he has borne the murderer of Balder to the funeral fire.' Such was the horror in which Balder' s murder was held among the Anses that they never wished to hear the name of Hoctr ever mentioned afterwards. The vengeance in- flicted on Loki was very terrible : when he saw how angry the Anses were at what be had done, he fled, and finally sought refuge in the form of a salmon in a waterfall ; but the Anses made a net and caught him. They then took him into a cave, where they left him bound with bonds of iron on three jagged pieces of rock, one under his shoulders, one under his loins, and the third under his knee-joints, while a terrible serpent hangs over his body distilling venom in his face. Loki's wife stands by with a cup to receive the venom, and when it is full she empties it ; but while she is doing that, the venom drips on Loki's face and then he writhes, causing what men call earthquakes ; and this goes on till the doom of the gods. That is one account ; but another makes Loki, before his doom, appear among the Anses to bandy words with them, and even to boast to Frigg that he was the cause why Balder no longer rode into the hall. He is then reminded by Woden that he had already undergone dis- grace eight winters underneath the earth in the form of a Woman and milkmaid, and another of the Anses told him V. THE SIN HERO. 533 that they were about to bind liim on swords with the intestines of his rime-cold son, the punishment already mentioned; for the intestines turned into bonds of iron, lie then left the Anses as he was threatened by Thor, of whom he went in bodily fear. As to Hcrmodr, he pursued his journey for nine nights without interruption through glens deep and dark, till he came to the river called Gioll or Yell, when he was questioned as to his errand by the maid who had charge of the Yell-bridge. On he rode until he came to the fence of Hell's abode, which his horse cleared at full speed, and on entering the hall he found his brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let him ride home with him to the Anses. He urged her to consider the grief which everybody and everything felt after Balder; to which she replied that she would put it to the test by letting him go if everything animate and inanimate wept for him, and by detaining him if any- body or anything declined to do so. Hermodr was accom- panied to the gate by Balder, who gave him the gold ring Dr< ipper to take to Woden as a token, while Nanna gave him a mantle and other gifts for Frigg, and a gold ring for Fulla, Frigg's maid and confidante. With these pre- sents Hermoctr reached home, to announce to the Anses the answer which Hell had given to his request. Mes- sengers were at once sent forth to the world to bid all be weep Woden's son out of the power of Hell. Tin's was done by all, by men and animals, by earth and stones, by lives and by all metals, as you have doubtless seen these things weep, says the Trose Edda, when they pass from frost to warmth ; but as the messengers were on their way home after discharging their duty, they chanced to 534 V. THE SUN HERO. come across a cave occupied by a giantess called Thokk, whom they ordered to join in the weeping for Balder with the rest ; but her answer was — ' Thokk will weep dry tears at Ealder's balefire. What have I to do with the Son of Man quick or dead? Let Hell keep what she holds.'1 The ogress was suspected of being Loki in disguise ; for this happened before his punishment had overtaken him. But be that as it may, the refusal prevented Balder's return just then. Eeturn, however, he did at the proper time; for the story would be incomplete without the prophecy put into the mouth of the third and last sibyl of the Volospa, to the following effect : "I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the deep ; the waters fall in rapids ; above hovers the eagle, that fisher of the falls. The Anses meet in Ida-plain ; they talk of the mighty Earth-serpent, and remember the great decrees and the ancient mysteries of Fimbul-ty. There shall be found in the grass wonderful golden tables, their own in days of yore. The fields unsown shall yield their increase. All sorrows shall be healed. Balder shall come back. Balder and Hodr shall dwell in Woden's mansions of bliss, in the holy places of the blessed gods. . . . Then shall Hoeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the Twin-brethren shall inhabit the wide world of the winds. ... I see a hall brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, standing on Gem-lea. The righteous shall dwell therein and live in bliss for ever." Lastly, Balder had a son called Forseti, meaning a judge, and he dwelt in heaven in a house called Glitnir or the Glistener, 1 Corpus Poet. Bur. i. 126. V. THE SUN HERO. 535 buill on pillars of gold and thatched with silver, where ho sat all day giving judgment in all cases of law: his was the hesl tribunal for both gods and men, for every - body quitted it having had his due. The foregoing is a summary of the most important passages bearing on Balder in old Norse literature; but I should not have thought it needful to give it at such length had there been any work to which one might refer as reproducing the substance of the various allu- sions to Balder, without omitting particulars of impor- tance to the line of argument here adopted. The myth, when detailed in a fairly complete form, has the advan- tage of telling with so much clearness its own tale as to the solar nature of the hero, that it needs no exposition beyond an incidental remark or two by way of com- paring or contrasting it with some of the Celtic stories which have been passed in review in my previous remarks. It is needless to observe that the prophetic form, in which alone a part of the story is preserved, is due to Christian and Biblical influence, and especially to the idea of those who saw in Balder a type of Christ, who was to come to make all things new in a new heaven and a new earth ; and as Malachi .prophesied that 'the sun of righteous- ness' should 'arise with healing in his wings,' so Balder was to come back and all sorrows were to be healed. It is important to notice Balder's compulsory delay, as it follows from the fact that Balder was not simply the sun, but the summer sun, whose return is witnessed by the dwellers in the North only after protracted waiting. Balder's obscurer brother descends after him to the abode of Hell, and leaves it the next morning; and his other brother and avenger Vali is of more rapid growth even 536 V. THE SUN HERO. than the Celtic representatives of the sun, since he is born in the Halls of the West during the night, and rises in the morning to conquer the power of darkness to which Balder had succumbed. These less illustrious brothers of his have their counterparts in Celtic, not so much perhaps in Lug's more obscure incarnations, as in Cuchulainn's comrades and rivals, Loegaire and Conall, the latter of whom, second only to Cuchulainn himself in valour, survived to be the avenger of his death. It is remarkable that Balder has a dwelling-place in the heavens, and this seems to refer to the arctic summer, when the sun prolongs his stay above the hori- zon. The pendant to the picture would naturally be his staying as long in the nether world. At length a general weeping for Balder takes place — a tender touch which the writer of the Prose Edda seems to have correctly interpreted by a reference to the tears, as it were, with which most objects are bedewed when warmer weather follows a hard frost. Of course Frigg's messengers, who are the unnamed suns of the days between winter and summer, can with their increasing warmth make most things weep, but not the ogress Thokk1 who dwells in a cave penetrated neither by the light of day nor by the frost of winter, and her tearlessness is artistically made the obstacle to Baldcr's return. In other words, it was still too soon ; but in due time he fails not to come back, and then follow the happy results described by the sibyl. The latter makes his murderer Hodr be his brother 1 The giantess is probably not to be regarded as a form of Loki, but rather as a personification of fate or destiny ; and I suggest with diffidence that her name is of the same origin as the Welsh tynghed, 1 destiny,' Irish tocad: see Nigra's Reliquie CeUlche, p. 43. V. THE SUN HERO. 637 and come back with him; for the Norse nature myth pictured darkness as brother to light, and death as fol- lowing in the track of life ; but the touching picture of the murdered and his murderer returning together to live in peace and amity in the new order of things, betrays the influence of the notion that the story of Balder's death was a sort of account of Abel's and the first fratricide. As to Hocir, he was a blind god of great might; and taken in conjunction with these two attri- butes, his name Hodr, genitive Iladiir, is a remarkable one, as it is the same word which we have in the Anglo-Saxon head'u, ' war or battle,' also in Irish and Welsh cath and cad respectively of the same meaning. From this it seems to follow that he was chiefly a per- sonification of promiscuous death, such as would be sug- gested to the primitive mind by the startling incidents of battle, in which it was frequently thought that the wrong man fell, while he who ought to succumb escaped ; and with this agrees the fact also that there was a femi- nine Hod, who was a Valkyria or chooser of the slain. This approach to a blending in the god Hoctr's person of Mars and Pluto has its parallels in Celtic myths, where the god of death, always present in the battle-field, may be easily mistaken for a god of battle in the proper sense of the word : witness, for example, a poem1 in the Black Book of Carmarthen, where Gwyn ab Niid is made to enumerate the great battles in which he had been present ; but Gwyn is not so much a war-god as a god of the dead and king of the other world, who fetches the fallen to his own realm. 1 Skene, ij. 54, 55. 538 V. THE SUN HERO. The story of Balder, in the only form we have it, makes Hodr the innocent slayer of that god, by giving the genius of mischief which guides him in his act a separate personality bearing the distinct name of Loki ; and it must have been a nice question who murdered Balder ; for it might be argued that it was not Hodr, as he could not see, and that it was not Loki, as he did not throw the fatal twig. Norse law would treat him as murdered by them both, by Hodr as the hand-bani, or the one whose hand committed the deed, and by Loki as the rad-bani, or the one who contrived it. But who slew Cuchulainn ? The stories vary ; for we found one stating that it was Ere,1 and one that it was Lugaid, a discrepancy which one might be at first inclined to put down to the carelessness of Irish story-tellers ; but the Norse tale allows one to suppose that it is to be traced to a different origin; and the Irish accounts as they stand are best explained on the theory that they were both his slayers.2 Now Ere and Lugaid appear in them as warriors, but there is no more reason to regard them as originally and essentially war-gods than in the case of Hodr and Loki, though Ere at least came sooner or later to be invested probably with that character, — a view which derives indirect corroboration from the fact that Irish hagiology makes a saint bearing the name of Ere resemble St. Martin,3 an assimilation which I should trace to a probable equivalence of the names Ere and Mars. I should, therefore, venture to regard the Ere 1 See the Bk. of Ballymote, quoted by O'Curry, pp. 513-4. 2 The view of O'Curry at p. 507, where he tries to derive it from Tigernach. 3 Mart, of Donegal (Dublin, 1864), pp. 292-3. V. THE SUN HERO. 539 who had a hand in the slaying of Cdchulainn, as cor- responding closely enough in his character of a quasi Mara to Hodr. The avenger of Ciichulainn was his foster-brother Conall Cernach, or C. the Victorious, who, according to different stories, slew both Lugaid and Ere, and carried away their heads. In Conall we have, as already hinted, another personification of the sun; for he was the son of the sister of Ciichulainn's mother; and her name Finnchocm, meaning white and lovely, would seem to point to her as a dawn or gloaming goddess : she was Ciichulainn's foster-mother as well as the mother of Conall. Further, the latter's name is Cynwal in Welsh, which is more conservative of con- sonants, and this represents an early Celtic form Cuno- valos or Cuno-tvalo-s, the genitive of which occurs as Cvnovali on an old inscribed stone1 in the neighbourhood of Penzance in Cornwall. The correspondence between Conall and the slayer of Hodr suggests the inference that in the latter's name Vali we have the remains of a full name answering to Cuno-valos reduced and modified in a way not uncommon in old Norse. Moreover, as the Anses caught Loki in the waterfall of Franang, so Conall overtook Lugaid bathing in the Liffey and beheaded him, leaving his body, with the exception of the venomous head, for others to bury beneath the notorious Three Flags of Lugaid's court (p. 483). It is needless to point out how this recalls the three stones of torture on which Loki was laid in bonds of iron. One might at first sight be tempted to regard Lu