of his magic was such that he could be killed neither by fire, by water, nor by weapons of war. One instrument alone could take fatal effect upon him, his own club. By day he watched at the foot of the tree; at night he slept aloft in its branches. But the solar hero, Diarmuid, who is laid under command to fetch some of the quicken-berries by his paramour, the Irish Helen, challenges the giant to a duel. And he makes an end of him with three blows from the predestined club, after which he takes up his abode in the nest from which he has ousted the giant, and scatters the magic berries lavishly.

We cannot fail to perceive here the identity between the tree, the guardian, and the divine fruit, having the hue of fire and all manner of mystic virtues in it, as well as the subterranean nature of this Searbhann, the Bitter One-himself a sort of slave-which justifies him in defending the sacred tree of the light-gods. All this will remind us of the priest who must be slain in hand-to-hand combat by his successor, but not until the golden bough in which his life is wrapped up has been taken from him. Here, indeed, the branch that contains his external soul' is figured as an iron mace; but the idea remains unaltered. How much there is in it! Far away, on the shores of Lake Nemi, in the 'Dark Wood' which no one who has spent a morning under its shade will ever forget, this strange and deadly parable was acted during centuries. In Ireland it has survived only as a fairy tale. But the spirit in which men carried out the parable, or rehearsed the story, was one and the same in Latium as in the 'Sacred Isle.'

Diarmuid, who, on this occasion, plays the part of the new springing fire, and whose solar beauty was so captivating to the women of Erinn, as the folk still remember, is also the Irish Adonis, killed in the prime of life by a sacred boar, on whose existence his own depends; for when a certain dead boy-his foster-brother-was transformed into a cropped green pig,' the charm was laid upon this creature that he should have the same length of life as Diarmuid, and that by him the hero should fall. Whence it was a prohibition,-geasa, which means taboo in this context,-for Diarmuid to hunt swine. Here the mythology lies upon the surface. We need only remind ourselves that the Highlanders used not to eat the flesh of the swine; that inythic animals of this species are common in the Irish tales; that the terrible sow of Mac Datho was reared with malice and venom that it might be the bane of the men of Erinn'; that the cropped black sow' was invoked, within living memory, at Welsh bonfires; and that Diarmuid met his fate on the last day of the year,'-which was probably November

November Eve,-in order to see the points of resemblance between his legend and the ritual of those solemn Eastern funeralia in which women mourned for Thammuz, or Attis, and sang the song of Linus, Osiris, and Lityerses. Mr. Frazer has suggested, that after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter, it may be almost laid down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured a god was originally the god himself.' And Professor Rhys concludes his account of the death of the Irish hero in these words: So the noble Diarmait, beloved of all, and the grisly Boar, were the offspring of one mother: they represent light and darkness.'

Certainly, the dark gods' were depicted as bald, cropped of their ears, deprived of one eye,' as beings deformed and dumb. But we shall move on too hastily, unless we bear in mind that the light and darkness' which the savage typified in his childish imagery, were not universal powers like Ormuzd and Ahriman. They existed in the lower shape of the cornspirit dwelling in every crop brought to harvest, or in the beasts that came and laid waste the fields; they had no personal names, or high majestic sanctity, but were as the Lares and Penates, a plebeian crowd, or grim and monstrous. Yet, as in the case of the Calydonian Boar, or the Boar of Ben Gulbain, they were also animal-gods which kept their proper form.

And thus Grainne, the lady who runs away with Diarmuid, and whose name recalls that of Apollo Grannos, may be a goddess of the dawn and dusk, but was she not once the spirit of vegetation, the May Queen, or the Rose Maiden, celebrated all over Europe with peculiar customs at spring-tide? Her title of the Shining One cannot be straightway transferred to the sun; it has a long history, as we have remarked in the case of Ogma, likewise called the Shining. At all events, when we have seized upon this clue to the old Irish history, which purports to deal with real men and women, we find ourselves at once in the region of folk-lore. If Diarmuid is Adonis, how can we refuse to see in Cuchulainn the 'Culture Hero,' already appearing as Lugh the master of sciences, and destined to reappear under the style and title of Cormac the Wise, King of Erinn? The generations of the gods are as those of mortals. They come and go. The Tuatha De Danann have their Nuadha of the Silver Hand, whom Professor Rhys identifies with Nodens, apparently the Welsh God of the Sea, and a subterranean Zeus. In good old Daghda, whose name is interpreted the good fire,' he finds Cronos, for both alike are driven out by their sons; and Mac-Og, or Aengus, the Divine youth who succeeds him, bears many of the splendid attributes of Vol. 179.-No. 357.

P

Phoebus.

Phoebus. He is known as 'Yellow Mane,' and he travels with a glass-bower, in which the Lady Etain is imprisoned, thus furnishing more than one point of resemblance to Merlin's crystal dungeon. This Aengus it was, dwelling in the fairy palace at the Boyne, whose four kisses were changed into birds that haunted the youth of Erinn.' By and by, Lugh of the Long Hand reigns in his stead. The later divinity has given his name to Lugdunum, or Lyons; it may be traced also in Laon and Leyden, and in the Welsh country wherever Llev was known; while at Osma, in Spain, a Latin inscription tells us that the Lugoves had their worshippers. Now, in 'The Fate of the Children of Tuireann,' Lugh is compared, for the splendour of his countenance, which they were not able to look upon, to the setting sun; his march is like the morning light; and, in the battle which ensues, not only are the monstrous Fomorians from the under-world routed, but their chief, Balor, is slain by a stone from the sling of Lugh, which puts out the giant's evil eye. Lugh was called of the Stout Blows,' and his spear (which must surely be the Glaive of Light, well known in Celtic folk-tales) was laid up among the treasures of the Tuatha De Danann. Moreover, as there were Gardens of Adonis, so too we read of the Gardens of Lugh, in which dwelt the fair maid Emer, daughter of the Coal-black King. Her Cuchulainn bore away after many perils, and made her his wife. According to Professor Rhys, Cuchulainn, the great champion of Ulster against Queen Mab, in the Cattle Raid of Cuailgne, is an avatar of Lugh, and consequently a Culture Hero and Sungod. He must be reckoned with the human divinities, so to call them, such as Indra, Woden, Gwydion, and Odysseus, of whom the general type is Prometheus, the man-loving. Their distinguishing quality is craft, or wiliness. They are great travellers who by experience have bought wisdom; yet their strength is equal to their knowledge, and their labours in subduing the world to be the abode of men entitle them to be worshipped as the much-enduring. When Lugh is asked what he can do, he answers that he is a good carpenter, soldier, harpist, poet, historian, man of law, magician, leach, cupbearer, worker in bronze and in precious metals. In like manner, Cuchulainn boasts that he surpassed all the nobles of Ulster because he had learned all that every one had to teach in his own profession. He knows the arts of Druidism, and may lawfully take his place at the 'feast of visions.' Oghams of potent magic he can write, and so delay the march of the enemy when they come to spoil Ulster. From captain and charioteer, king and 'ollamh,' he has learned alike, and he avenges the

wrongs

wrongs of all as bound to them by ties of fosterhood. Being, however, before all things a strong man armed, he reminds us especially of the might of Hercules; but nowhere in the Greek story do we meet with such an example of the fascination which strength has for beauty, as in the serio-comic Three Blemishes of the Women of Ulster': Every Ultonian lady who loved Cuchulainn made herself blind of one eye when conversing with him,'-for he was known as 'the Distorted One,' and had extremely peculiar eyes with seven gems for pupils in them,- Every one who loved Conall Cearnach, who was crosseyed, appeared to squint; and every one who loved the stammering Coscraidh Menn Macha, laid her speech under an impediment.' The art of flattery is an ancient one in Erinn; and of this point the folk-tales are not sparing in illustration.

Cuchulainn's journeyings to Alba, to Scathach, over the 'bridge of dread' which is the only way to Shadowland,' to the Gardens of Lugh, and to Labraidh's Isle, have their wellknown parallels in the voyages of Odysseus and the descent of Odin. The under-world had many names, and countries lying on the rim of darkness, which seemed beyond the sun, might well be counted among the kingdoms of night and of death. Hence, in the mouth of an Irish story-teller, Spain, or Lochlann, or even Alba, signified no definite country on this side of the Styx, but were resources in the mythic geography which peopled the unseen with gods, demons, and monsters, ascending out of Hades when fate called them. And to Hades the solar hero goes down, as when Cuchulainn, who was struck with his enchanted illness on November Eve,-the beginning of the dark season, -sets out that day year for Labraidh's Isle, being invited thither by Fand, or Undine, who wishes him to carry her off. This goddess was the wife of Manannán, 'the shapeshifting Son of the Sea,' and she corresponds in some degree to the Lady of the Lake, enabling us to identify the world of waters with that of darkness and the dead. Moreover, Cuchulainn's name, which was originally Setanta (a reference may be found in Pliny), came to him from the Cerberus-hound despatched by the hero when a mere child. He is, also, fosterbrother to Ferdiadh, a dark champion, as Diarmuid was to the Boar of Ben Gulbain; and, in one of the most touching and poetical episodes of the Spoil of Cuailgne, they meet, being still friends, in single combat. Ferdiadh is slain at last with the help of the Red Spear that never failed of its aim. It is worth noting that Lugh used to be kept out of battle by reason of his comeliness; that Cuchulainn distorts himself before entering on strife; and that the elder sun-god comes to aid the

younger when he is worn with fighting, puts him into a fairysleep by means of music, and heals his wounds.

Queen Mab, his renowned antagonist, who rode in a chariot to war, and gathered round her the hosts of Connacht, has some deceptive attributes which might lead us to set her down in the group of sun-goddesses. Perhaps we shall be safe in reckoning her as a Lady of the Dawn, who has fled away from her lawful husband, Conchobar, to the princes of darkness. Her allies, however-Fergus, whose name denotes a sea-origin, and Lughaid, son of the Evil Triad, War, Shame, and Hell' -betray their true qualities in the battles with Cuchulainn. Lughaid is not unknown to the Corpus Inscriptionum from which we derive most of our scanty information touching the Celtic gods. At Segovia, one single word 'Luguadici,' occurring as the name of a man, suggests that his worship may have been practised in Spain, as it was in Ireland. He is clearly the opponent of Lugh; and his chief exploit, to be avenged in a most dramatic fashion by Conall Cearnach, was the slaying of Cuchulainn, although they were fosters. Both had lived on the milk of Scathach, nurse of the heroes in Shadowland. This perplexing relation of enemies to one another, which recurs again and again, may be cleared up by setting it in a line with the folk-customs of mourning at harvest, and driving out Death,' or 'the Hag,' or the old Woman,' so large a number of which have been collected by Mannhardt. Thus to take a notable instance,-Professor Rhys, in dealing with the old August festival known as La Lughnassad, or Lugh's Day,' interprets the sports and games at Teltown, where it used to be kept as its chief centre, on the principle of its being a feast of the Sun. But he asks, Why should funeral ceremonies have also been added, when the name itself, 'nassad,' which he illustrates from the Latin nexus, probably means the wedding of the summer-sun with the land of Erinn? To this we may reply, by asking, not one, but many other questions. Why did the Egyptian reapers lament when they were cutting the first sheaf of corn? What signified the weeping for Adonis? How comes it that funeral rites are still practised in the most widely separated corners of Europe, under the name, as we have said above, of 'driving out Death' from field and orchard? The song of Linus, which is echoed in the 'Agamemnon' of the great tragedian, as in the 'Orestes' and the Ajax,' still resounds over the Slavonic and German lands; it has been detected in Devonshire harvest customs; and doubtless in remote Irish baronies it has not died wholly away. But how shall we explain it, unless in the words of Mr. Frazer? The mournful strain which the reapers sang,