It will also be necessary to discuss separately the remains of the religion of the early Welsh and the early Gaels. The religion of the former we shall name "British," of the latter, “Gaelic." And it must be remembered that the Welsh are doubtless the remnant of the Gaulish population which, about the time of the Roman conquest, must have occupied England (except Cornwall and Wales) and Lowland Scotland. Gaul and England had, therefore, practically the same people and language in the first century of this era, and there now remain of them still speaking the language, the Bretons of France and the Welsh of Wales, from which country they drove out or absorbed the previous Gaelic population in the fifth century of our era, or thereabouts. The "Gaelic Religion" will include the early religion of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.

BRITISH RELIGION.

The gods of Britain suffered what appears to have been the "common lot" of gods; they were changed into the kings and champions, the giants and enchanters, of heroic tales and folklore. In the words of the poet :

"Ye are gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.

In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings." The great deity, "Belinus," appears in the pages of Geoffrey, of Monmouth, as a mere mortal conqueror. In company with his brother, Brennius or "Bran," he marched to the siege of Rome, when "Gabius and Porsena" were consuls! Gargantua appears twice as a British King, under the title of Gurgiunt. Camulus, the war-god, who gave his name to Camulodunum, now Col-chester, is presented as Coel Hen, "Old King Coul" of the song, who gave his name to the Ayrshire district of Kyle. The god, "Nodens," is the Nudd of Welsh, and King Nuada, of Irish story; and Lir, the sea-god, is immortalised in the pages of Shakespeare as an old British king. Some of the gods fight under Arthur's banner, and perish on the battlefield of Camlan, along with him. There is, consequently, a considerable amount of confusion in the Welsh tales, which does not appear in the more consistent tales of Ireland. Probably, there were kings of the names of Beli, Coel, Urien, and Arthur, and there certainly were

kings and chiefs, of the names of Brennus, Cassibelaunus, and Caractacus, but their history is irretrievably mixed up with that of deities and demigods, possessed of similar names. Thus, Bran the Blessed, is a son of Lir, a personage of such gigantic proportions that no house could hold him, and evidently a degraded god, possibly a war-god. He next appears as father of Caradoc for whom he is sent as hostage to Rome, when the latter is conquered by Claudius. In Rome he is converted to Christianity, which he introduced into Britain, and hence his name of "Bran the Blessed." And again he is brother of Belinus, and the same as the Brennus of the Roman historians, who sacked Rome in B.C. 390. It is, therefore, a matter of great difficulty to take either history or myth out of the confusion in Welsh poetry and trádition, caused by a little knowledge of classical and Biblical history, a history which is interwoven with native myths and facts.

The inscriptions of Roman times show that the religious condition of Britain then differed in no respect from that of Gaul. The local deities were assimilated to the corresponding deities of Rome, and we have in Britain combinations like those met with in Gaul the Roman deity has the corresponding British name attached to him on the votive inscription by way of epithet. Thus, at Bath, altars are dedicated to Sul-Minerva, Sul being a goddess unknown elsewhere. On the Roman wall, between the Forth and Clyde, the name of Mars-Camulus appears on the inscriptions, among many others to the "genii" of the places, the spirits of "the mountain and the flood," and to “Sancta Britannia" and "Brigantia," the goddesses of Britain and the land of the Brigantes respectively. The most interesting inscriptions were those found in the temple of a god discovered at Lydney Park, in Gloucestershire, One inscription bears to be to the "great god Nodon," which proves the temple to have been dedicated to the worship of Nodon, a god of the deep sea, figured on a bronze plaque as a Triton or Neptune borne by sea-horses and surrounded by a laughing crowd of Nereids. This deity is identified with the legendary Nudd, known in Welsh fiction only as the father of famous sons and in Irish story, as King Nuada of the Silver Hand, who fought, the two battles of Moytura, and fell in the second before "Balor of the Evil Eye," the King of the Fomorians.

Passing, however, to the Welsh legends and myths preserved in the "Ancient Books of Wales" and in the prose "Mabinogion," we can easily eliminate three principal families of deities, the children of "Don," of " Nudd," and of "Lir." Of these the first are purely Welsh, the second-the children of Nudd-have Irish equivalents both in name and office, while the children of Lir belong equally to both nations. The family of Don is evidently connected with the sky and its changes. He has given his name in Welsh to the constellation of Cassiopeia, called Llys Don, the court of Don. The milky way is named after his son, Gwydion, Caer Gwydion, the city of Gwydion; and his daughter Arianrhod, "silver-circled," inhabits the bright circle of stars which is called the Northern Crown... With the name Don may be compared that of the father of the Irish hero Diarmat, son of Donn, Gwydion is the greatest of enchanters-a prince of the powers of air. He can change the forms of trees, men, and animals, and along with "Math, the son of Mathonwy," his master, styled by Professor Rhys, the Cambrian Pluto, though rather a god of air than earth, he forms a woman out of flowers. "They took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw." Amaethon, the son of Don, is a husbandman-doubtless a god of weather and crops. He has a fight with Arawn, king of Annwn, or Hell, for a white roebuck and a whelp, which he had carried off from the realms of darkness. The battle is known as the battle of the trees," and in it. Gwydion, by his divinations, won the victory for his brother, for he guessed the name of the person in the ranks of his opponents, which had to be guessed before either side won.

Nudd, like Don, is eclipsed by his family. He appears to have been god of the deep and its treasures. His son Gwynn, known always as Gwynn ap Nudd, is the Welsh king of the Fairies in the widest sense of the word. It would appear that Gwynn is no less a person than the god of the next world for human beings. He answers, therefore, to the king of "Tir-nanog,' "" Land of Youth" of the Irish legends, and "Tir-fo-Thuinn" of the Gaelic stories-the land below the waves. The son of the deep-sca god is naturally enough made lord over the happy realm

under the waves of the West.

Christian bias, however, gave Gwynn a more sinister position. We are told that God placed him over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race. A Saint of the name of Collen one day heard two men conversing about Gwynn ap Nudd, and saying that he was King of Annwn and the Fairies. "Hold your tongue quickly," says Collen, "these are but devils." "Hold thou thy tongue," said they, "thou shalt receive a reproof from him." And sure enough the Saint was summoned to the palace of Gwynn on a neighbouring hill top, where he was kindly received, and bid sit down to a sumptuous repast. "I will not eat the leaves of the trees," said Collen; for he saw through the enchantments of Gwynn, and, by the use of some holy water, caused Gwynn and his castle to disappear in the twinkling of an eye. The story is interesting, as showing how the early missionaries dealt with the native gods. Gwynn, according to St Collen, is merely a demon. His connection with the lower world is brought out by his fight with Gwythyr, the son of Greidwal, for Cordelia, the daughter of Lir or Lud. She is represented as a splendid maiden, daughter of the sea-god Lir, "a blossom of flowering seas," at once a Venus and a Proserpine, goddess of the summer flowers, for whom there is a fight between the powers of the worlds above and below the earth respectively. Peace was made between these two deities on these conditions: "that the maiden should remain in her father's house, without advantage to either of them, and that Gwynn ap Nudd, and Gwythyr, the son of Greidwal, should fight for her every first of May, from thenceforth till the day of doom, and that whichever of them should be conqueror then, should have the maiden."

THE CROFTER ROYAL COMMISSION has completed the taking of evidence throughout the Highlands finishing up in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Whatever may be the outcome of its labours, so far as the Report and proceedings thereon in Parliament are concerned, the Commission has already done unspeakable good, by exposing the evils of Highland estate management to the world. The Report will be looked forward to with great interest, but whatever it may recommend, public opinion will assuredly force a very great and early change in the relationship between landlord and tenant in the Highlands, to the advantage of both.

"PEERMEN" AND THEIR RELATIONS.

I

I THINK it may be useful to follow up Mr Linn's delightful paper with the little knowledge I possess on this head. have a right to speak on the subject, seeing that in my very early life-when about six years of age-I acted the "Peerman" often when living at my grandfather's house in Corriebeag. I have held the fir torch in the byre when the servant was milking the cows, and I have accompanied her to the river, holding it when she went for her stoupfuls of water. At the slack time of the year the men of each household went to dig the roots of the fir trees out of the bogs, and they were placed uncut to dry, on what was called a "farradh." When winter came and lights were required, stock after stock was taken down and cut into neat, small candles, and if there was a very knotty stock it was called "stoc suiridhich," and carefully laid aside, to be given to some young man when his patience as a husband was to be tested, by the calmness he manifested over this very trying and difficult ordeal. A "leus," or torch of fir, was a sure protection against ghosts or evil spirits.

When, at that time I referred to, I lived at Corriebeag, Locheil-side, the nearest house to us was occupied by a woman who was considerably above a hundred years old. She had all her faculties and the force of a young woman until within three days of her death.

She was not an amiable woman, her temper was something awful, and she could improvise and compose verses of the most sarcastic and scurillous sort up to the last day of her life. When the centenary of Prince Charles Stuart's raising his standard at Glenfinnan was held at that historic spot, the ladies and gentlemen driving past little dreamed that in a little hut by the roadside a withered old crone lived who actually remembered the gathering they commemorated, and who had seen Bonnie Prince Charlie at the head of his men. This old woman's grandson and his wife lived with her, and when the great-grandchildren were born she was sorely exercised on their account, in case the fairies might steal them, and among the other spells used by her to save her descendants from so sad a fate, she charred a piece of fir in