Continent. The divinities of culture, crafts, and war, and of departments of nature, must have slowly assumed the definite personality assigned them in Irish religion. But, doubtless, they already possessed that before the Goidels reached Ireland. Strictly speaking, the underground domain assigned later to the Tuatha Dé Danann belongs only to such of them as were associated with fertility. But in course of time most of the group, as underground dwellers, were connected with growth and increase. These could be blighted by their enemies, or they themselves could withhold them when their worshippers offended them.273
Irish mythology points to the early pre-eminence of goddesses. As agriculture and many of the arts were first in the hands of women, goddesses of fertility and culture preceded gods, and still held their place when gods were evolved. Even war-goddesses are prominent in Ireland. Celtic gods and heroes are often called after their mothers, not their fathers, and women loom largely in the tales of Irish colonisation, while in many legends they play a most important part. Goddesses give their name to divine groups, and, even where gods are prominent, their actions are free, their personalities still clearly defined. The supremacy of the divine women of Irish tradition is once more seen in the fact that they themselves woo and win heroes; while their capacity for love, their passion, their eternal youthfulness and beauty are suggestive of their early character as goddesses of ever-springing fertility.274
This supremacy of goddesses is explained by Professor Rh^ys as non-Celtic, as borrowed by the Celts from the aborigines.275 But it is too deeply impressed on the fabric of Celtic tradition to be other than native, and we have no reason to suppose that the Celts had not passed through a stage in which such a state of things was normal. Their innate conservatism caused them to preserve it more than other races who had long outgrown such a state of things.
147. HL 89; Stokes, RC xii. 129. D'Arbois, ii. 125, explains it as "Folk of the god whose mother is called Danu."
148. RC xii. 77. The usual Irish word for "god" is dia; other names are Fiadu, Art, Dess.
149. See Joyce, SII. i. 252, 262; PN i. 183.
150. LL 245b.
151. LL 11.
152. LL 127. The mounds were the sepulchres of the euhemerised gods.
153. Book of Fermoy, fifteenth century.
154. LL 11b.
155. IT i. 14, 774; Stokes, TL i. 99, 314, 319. Síd is a fairy hill, the hill itself or the dwelling within it. Hence those who dwell in it are Aes or Fir síde, "men of the mound," or síde, fairy folk. The primitive form is probably sêdos, from sêd, "abode" or "seat"; cf. Greek (edos) "a temple." Thurneysen suggests a connection with a word equivalent to Lat. sidus, "constellation," or "dwelling of the gods."
156. Joyce, SH i. 252; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 505.
157. "Vision of Oengus," RC iii. 344; IT i. 197 f.
158. Windisch, Ir. Gram. 118; O'Curry, MC ii. 71; see p. 363, infra.
159. Windisch, Ir. Gram. 118, § 6; IT iii. 407; RC xvi. 139.
160. Shore, JAI xx. 9.
161. Rh^ys, HL 203 f. Pennocrucium occurs in the Itinerary of Antoninus.
162. Keating, 434.
163. Joyce, SH i. 252.
164. See p. 228. In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a fairy. "Elf" and síde may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the síd or mound, have a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 413 f.
165. Tuan MacCairill (LU 166) calls the Tuatha Déa, "dée ocus andée," and gives the meaning as "poets and husbandmen." This phrase, with the same meaning, is used in "Cóir Anmann" (IT iii. 355), but there we find that it occurred in a pagan formula of blessing—"The blessing of gods and not-gods be on thee." But the writer goes on to say—"These were their gods, the magicians, and their non-gods, the husbandmen." This may refer to the position of priest-kings and magicians as gods. Rh^ys compares Sanskrit deva and adeva (HL 581). Cf. the phrase in a Welsh poem (Skene, i. 313), "Teulu Oeth et Anoeth," translated by Rh^ys as "Household of Power and Not-Power" (CFL ii. 620), but the meaning is obscure. See Loth, i. 197.
166. LL 10b.
167. Cormac, 4. Stokes (US 12) derives Anu from (p)an, "to nourish"; cf. Lat. panis.
168. Leicester County Folk-lore, 4. The Cóir Anmann says that Anu was worshipped as a goddess of plenty (IT iii. 289).
169. Rh^ys, Trans. 3rd Inter. Cong. Hist. of Rel. ii. 213. See Grimm, Teut. Myth. 251 ff., and p. 275, infra.
170. Rh^ys, ibid. ii. 213. He finds her name in the place-name Bononia and its derivatives.
171. Cormac, 23.
172. Cæsar, vi. 17; Holder, s.v.; Stokes, TIG 33.
173. Girald. Cambr. Top. Hib. ii. 34 f. Vengeance followed upon rash intrusion. For the breath tabu see Frazer, Early Hist. of the Kingship, 224.
174. Joyce, SH i. 335.
