as Merlin was, with having no parents. He went in tears to the god Midir, who took him to Dagda, and the latter acknowledged him as his son, bidding him go to Elcmar's síd and threaten him with death if he would not promise him "the sovereignty of a day and night in his land"—the same trick which Oengus played on Dagda in the first version.7 This story is introductory to the beautiful myth of Etain, to be told later; but here it should be noted that in a poem by the euhemerizing monk, Flann Manistrech, Elcmar slew Midir and was himself slain by Oengus.8 This, however, need be no part of an earlier myth.
Still another account is given in verse by the tenth century poet, Cináed úa hArtacáin. Boann, Nechtain's wife, came to stay with her brother Elcmar, vassal of Dagda, who sought her love in vain. His Druids advised him to send Elcmar on a mission, but the latter bargained that it should not keep him away over night, whereupon Dagda "kept the sun in the lofty ridge of the heavens till the end of nine months." Elcmar thought that only a day had passed, but on his return he saw by the change in the flowers how long the time had been. Meanwhile Dagda and Boann had deceived him, but now they were afraid, and birth-pangs seized the faithless wife. They left her child Oengus by the road-side near Midir's síd, and there he was brought up until his companions jeered at his unknown origin. Taxed by Oengus, Midir told the truth, and taking him to Dagda's síd, obtained it for him for a day and a night, thus tricking him.9
Whether the earliest story told of Dagda's or of Elcmar's dispossession, Oengus is a god who tricks his father or his fosterfather, and perhaps the latter was the sufferer in the primitive form. Rhŷs makes Dagda an equivalent of Kronos and Oengus of Zeus; but apart from the disinheriting incident, which is not exactly parallel in the respective Greek and Celtic stories,10 Dagda and Oengus have no clear traits in common with Kronos and Zeus, nor is there the slightest evidence that Dagda, like Kronos, ruled over the dead, either before or after his expulsion. The possible basis of the story, as the present writer has suggested elsewhere, is a myth explaining why the cult of one god came to supersede that of another.11
CHAPTER IV
MYTHIC POWERS OF THE GODS
As in most mythologies, the Celtic deities have powers which reflect those supposed to be possessed by medicine-men, as well as others peculiar to themselves. These were the subject of myths taught by the Druids, who knew many things concerning the might of the immortal gods.1 The gods were undying, and their abode was that of "the ever-living ones," where none ever died. Caoilte describes the Tuatha Dé Danann to St. Patrick as beings "who are unfading, and whose duration is perennial" in contrast with himself or men;2 or they are "fairies or sprites with corporeal forms, endowed with immortality." Yet immortality is said to have been given them by Manannan through their drinking Goibniu's immortal beer, so that "no disease nor sickness ever attacks them," nor "decay nor old age comes upon them."3 The daughter of Bodb Dearg was asked by St. Patrick what it was which maintained the gods in form and comeliness, and her answer was, "All such of us as partook of Goibniu's banquet, nor pain nor sickness troubles them."4 Elsewhere this immortality seems to be dependent upon the eating of certain fragrant berries, of which it is said that "no disease attacks those who eat them, but they feel the exhilaration of wine and old mead; and were it at the age of a century, they would return again to be thirty years old." Once the Tuatha Dé Danann had played a match with the Feinn and brought from the Land of Promise crimson nuts, catkin apples, and these fragrant berries; but one of them fell to earth, and from it grew a quicken (rowan) tree, whose berries possessed these virtues. The gods sent one of their people to guard the tree—a savage, one-eyed giant, Searbhan Lochlannach, who could not be slain until struck with three blows of his iron club; and around the tree he made a wilderness, sleeping in it by night, and watching at its foot by day. Fionn demanded as eric, or fine, from two warriors either the head of Diarmaid or a handful of these berries; but Diarmaid overcame them, and then asked the giant for the berries. Searbhan refused them, but by skill and strength the hero seized his club and slew him.5
Yet, even in their own immortal land, gods are slain. Perhaps this was not altogether the result of the annalistic view of the gods, for myth may have told of their death, as it did of gods elsewhere—Dionysus, Attis, Balder, Osiris. The analistic view did not hinder the continuance of myths, and divinities whose death is recorded in the Annals are found to be alive long after, while gods and goddesses born in pagan times appear thousands of years later to persons living in the Christian period. In spite of this perennial duration, they remained youthful and beautiful. Yet while the gods' land was pictured as a deathless, peaceful place, men still gave it certain of the traits of human life. War, wounds, and death were there, according to some stories; gods might even be slain by men; and as gods have human passions, so they may also have human weaknesses. Such is always the inconsistency of myth.
Invisibility was another divine power, innate, or acquired by donning a mantle, or from Manannan's spell, Féth Fiada, which was known also to Druids, poets, and Christian saints, who by it became unseen or took other forms. When the sons of Midir, assisted by the Féinn, fought against Bodb, Midir's son and Caoilte went to the síd of Oengus for a physician to heal Oscar's wounds; and then "there arose a Féth Fiada around us, so that we were invisible." In one passage Dagda is invisible, and Midir said, "We behold and are not beheld." When Manannan came to fetch his consort Fand, none saw him but the goddess, and when Lug arrived to assist Cuchulainn, he was unseen by the hero's foes. Divinities sometimes hid in a magic mist, as the Tuatha Dée Danann did on arriving in Ireland; they could appear to such mortals as they pleased, remaining unseen by others. Gods were probably not regarded as spiritual beings. Like the dead in Celtic belief, they had resplendent corporeal forms and ate and drank; but their bodily form differed from men's in that it could become invisible and was not subject to the laws of gravitation. The gods travelled through the air or appeared above men's heads.
How, then, did they appear when visible.? Sometimes in the magnificence of divinity, yet still in anthropomorphic form. Sometimes they were of vast size, like the Morrígan or the Welsh Bran, while a goddess who sought the aid of Fionn was enormous compared even with the gigantic Féinn. Sometimes they appear merely as mortals and are not recognized as gods. Instances of this are found in the story of Cuchulainn's birth, where Lug is seen, as a mortal host in a mysterious house, and in that of Merlin's father; invisible to all but his mother, and later taking human shape. Sometimes a disguise was assumed. Oengus and Midir appeared to Rib and Eochaid in the shape of hospitallers, with a haltered pack-horse, and bade them begone. Gods also took the appearance of particular mortals, as when Midir appeared to Etain as her lover Ailill, or Manannan as Fiachna to the latter's wife, or as when Pwyll and Arawn exchanged forms.6Animal forms were also assumed. Of these one favourite shape was that of birds. Morrigan appeared to Cúchulainn as a bird; so also do Devorgilla and her handmaid, the former being in love with the hero. Llew took the form of an eagle; Bude and his foster-brother that of birds when the former wished to visit his paramour, whose husband Nár slew them. Midir and Etain, Fand and Liban were seen as birds Hnked together. The gods, or síde, appear as deer in one story. Again, I the idea of divine shape-shifting, expressed, however, in the well-known folk-tale formula of the "Transformation Combat,"
PLATE VII Three-Headed God
This triple-headed divinity (cf. p. 8) may possibly be another form of Cernunnos (see Plate XVI). For another representation see Plate XII, and for a three-headed deity of the Elbe Slavs cf. pp. 284–85 and see Plate XXXIV, 3. From a block of stone found at Paris, now in the Musee Carnavalet in that city.
is combined with the Celtic idea of rebirth in Welsh and Irish tales; and the Welsh story, Hanes Taliesin, a sixteenth
