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Religions Ancient and

Modern

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT

BRITAIN AND IRELAND

ANCIENT AND MODERN.

RELIGIONS:

Price

Foolscap 8vo,

ANIMISM.
By Edward Clodd,

is, ?ief

fer volume.

Author of The Story of Creation.

PANTHEISM.
By James Allanson Pictox, Author of The Religion of

the

Universe.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.

By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professorof Chinese in the University
of Cambridge.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.

By Jane Harrison, Lecturer
Author o{ Prolegomena

ISLAM IN INDIA.
By T. W. Arnold,

to

at

Newnham

College, Cambridge,

Study of Greek Religion.

Assistant Librarian at

the

India Office,

Author of The Preaching of Islam.

ISLAM.
By Syed Ameer Alt, M.A., C.I.E., late of H.M.'s High Court
of Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit oflslatn and The
Ethics of Islam.

MAGIC AND FETISHISM.

By Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at
bridge University.

Cam-

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT

EGYPT.
W, M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.
RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

By

THE

Professor

By Theophilus G. Pinches,

late of the British

Museum.

BUDDHISM.

2 vols.
By Professor Rhys
Asiatic Society.

Davids, LL.D.

late Secretary of

The Royal

HINDUISM.
By

Dr. L. D.

Barnett, of the Department

British Museum.

of Oriental Printed

Books and MSS.,

SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.
By William A. Craigie,

Joint Editor of the Oxford English

Dictionary.

CELTIC RELIGION.
By

Professor

Anwyl,

Professor of

Welsh

at University College,

Aberystwyth.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of
Islands.

the British

JUDAISM.

By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge University, Author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

PR.IMITIVE OR NICENE CHRISTIANITY.

By John Sutherland Black, LL.D., Joint

Editor of the

Encyclopcedla Billica.

SHINTOISM.
ZOROASTRIANISM.

MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY,

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ITALY.

Other Volumes

to follow.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF
ANCIENT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND

By

CHARLES SQUIRE
AUTHOR OF
'the mythology of the BRITISH ISLANDS*

LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO Ltd
i6

JAMES STREET HAYMARKET

1906

Edinburgh

T. and A.

Constable,

Printers to His Majesty

FOREWORD
This

book does not profess in any way to

supplement the volume upon Celtic Religion
already contributed to this series. It merely aims
little

at calling the attention of the general reader to

the mythology of our own country, that as yet
little-known store of Celtic tradition which reflects

the religious conceptions of our earliest articulate

Naturally, its limits compel the writer

ancestors.

to dogmatise, or, at most, to

upon

touch but very briefly

disputed points, to ignore

and

many

fascinating

from putting forward

of
his
But he has based
own.
any suggestions
side-issues,

to refrain

work upon the studies of the leading Celtic

scholars, and he believes that the reader may

his

safely accept

search.

it

as

in line with

the latest reC. S.

CONTENTS
CHAP,
I.

II.

III.

The Celts and Their Mtthology,

The Gods of the Continental

The Gods of the Insular

Celts,

Celts,

IV.

The Mythical History of Ireland,

V.

The Mythical History of Britain,

VI.

VII.

VIII.

The Heroic Cycle of Ancient Ulster,

The Fenian, or

Ossianic, Sagas,

The Arthurian Legend,

Chronological Syllabus,

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT

BRITAIN AND IRELAND

CHAPTER

THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY

'

The Mythology

This

title

of Ancient Britain and Ireland,'

will possibly at first sight suggest to

the reader

who has been brought up

to consider

himself essentially an Anglo-Saxon only a few

dim memories

Wdden, of Thunor
(Thor), and of Frig, those Saxon deities who have
bequeathed to us the names of four of the days of
our week.^ Yet the traces of the English gods are
comparatively few in Britain, and are not found
of

Tiw, of

at all in Ireland, and, at

any

rate,

they can be

better studied in the Teutonic countries to

which

they were native than in this remote outpost of

their influence.

Preceding the Saxons in Britain

the Ancient

vrho themselves possessed a rich mythoBritons

by many

centuries were the Celts

'

'

'

Tiwesdffig,

and Frigedseg.

Wodnesdseg, Thiinresdseg (later, Thunesdaeg),

S3eter(n)esdeg is adapted from the Latin,

Sattirni dies.

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

though obscured, has
In such familiar names as

logy, the tradition of which,

never been quite

'

Ludgate,' called

Lud

'

lost.

after

who was once

'

a legendary good king

the Celtic god Lludd in
;

popular folk and fairy tales; in the stories of

Arthur and his knights, some of whom are but
British divinities in disguise; and in certain of
the wilder legends of our early saints, we have

fragments of the Celtic mythology handed down

tenaciously by Englishmen who had quite as
of the Celt as of the Saxon in their blood.

much

To what extent the formerly prevalent

belief

as to the practical extinction of the Celtic inhands of the

habitants of our islands at the

Saxons has been reconsidered of

late years

may

be judged from the dictum of one of the most

recent students of the subject, Mr. Nicholson, in
the preface to his Keltic Researches} 'There is
good ground to believe,' he says, that Lancashire,
'

West Yorkshire,

Staffordshire,

Worcestershire,

Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part of Sussex, are
as Keltic as Perthshire

and North Munster

Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire,

that

Monmouth-

^
Keltic Researches: Studies in the History and Distribution
of the Ancient Goidelic Language arid Peoples, by Edward
Williams Byron Nicholson, M.A. ; London, 1904.

THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY

Devon,

Gloucestershire,

shire,

Dorset,

North-

amptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire

and equal to North Wales and
are more so
while
Leinster;
Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire exceed even this degree and are on a level

with

Wales and Ulster.

Cornwall, of
more Keltic than any other English

South
is

course,

county, and
or

shire,

much

as

so as

If these statements are

Connaught.'

Teuton must

well founded, Celt and

equally

woven

into

Argyll, Inverness-

the fabric

of

the

be very
British

nation.

But even the

first

Celts themselves were not the

inhabitants of our islands.

found

Their earliest

men

already in possession.
with their relics in the long barrows,'

arrivals

We

meet
and
deduce from them a short, dark, long-skulled race
of slight physique and in a relatively low stage of
'

civilisation.

we think we

Its origin is uncertain,

know

of

it,

and, though

and
it

so

is

all

must have

greatly influenced Aryan-Celtic custom and myth,

it would be hard to put a
finger definitely upon

any point where the two different cultures have

.met and blended.

We know

more about its conquerors. According to the most generally accepted theory,
there were two main streams of Aryan emigra3

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

tion from the Continent into a non- Aryan Britain,

both belonging to the same linguistic branch of the

Indo-European stock the Celtic but speaking

variant dialects of that tongue

and Brythonic, or British.

were the earlier, their first

Goidelic, or Gaelic,

Of these the Goidels

settlers

having arrived

some period between 1000 and 500 B.C., while

the Brythons, or Brittones, seem to have appeared
al,

about the third century

B.C.,

steadily encroaching

upon and ousting their forerunners. With the

Brythons must be considered the Belgas, Avho
made, still later, an extensive invasion of Southern
Britain, but who seem to have been eventually
assimilated

whom
akin.^

to,

or absorbed

they were, at

any

in,

the Brythons, to

rate linguistically,

much

In physique, as well as in language, there

was probably a difference between the Brythons

and the Goidels, the latter containing some admixture of the broad-headed stock of Central
Europe, and

it

is

must have become

thought also that the Goidels

in course of time modified by

admixture with the dark, long-skulled non-Aryan

The Romans appear to have recognised

race.

more than one type

between the

in

Britain,

inhabitants of the

distinguishing
coast regions

*
Rh^s, Celtic Britain, 1904, and Rh^s and Brynmor-Jones,
The Welsh People, 1906.

THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY

nearest to France,

the

who resembled

niddy-haired,

the Gauls, and

large-limbed natives of the

to them more akin to the

North, who seemed

To these may be added certain people

of West Britain, whose dark complexions and
them as
curly hair caused Tacitus to regard

Germans.

immigrants from Spain, and who probably belonged

either wholly or largely to the aboriginal stock.^
have no records of the clash and counter-

We

clash of savage warfare which must,

be taken as correct, have marked,

if

this theory

first,

the con-

and
aborigines by
quest
Goidels
of
the
afterwards the displacement
by
Nor do we
the later branches of the Celts.
of

the

the

know when

or

how

Britain to Ireland.

Goidels,

the Goidels crossed from

All that

we can

state with

approximate certainty is that at the time of the

Roman domination the Brythons were in possession of all Britain south of the Tweed, with the
exception of the extreme West, while the Goidels

had most of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Cumberland,

North and South Wales, Cornwall, and Devon, as
weU as, in the opinion of some authorities, the
West Highlands of Scotland,^ the primitive dark
^

Tacitus, Agricola, chap. xi.

is, however, held by others that the Goidels of Scotland

It

did not reach that country (from Ireland) before the Christian
era.

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

race being still found in certain portions of Ireland
and of West Britain, and in Scotland north of the

Grampian

Hills.

and legends of these

Goidels and Brythons, and their more unmixed
descendants, the modern Gaels and Cymry, which
It is the beliefs, traditions,

make up our mythology.

them by any means

Nor

is

the stock of

so scanty as the remoteness

and obscurity of the age in which they were still

vital will probably have led the reader to expect.
We can gather them from six different sources:
(1)

Dedications to Celtic divinities upon altars

and votive

tablets, large

numbers

of

which have

been found both on the Continent and in our

own

islands; (2) Irish, Scottish,

and Welsh manu-

scripts which, though they date only from mediaeval times, contain, copied from older documents,

legends preserved from the pagan age; (3) Socalled histories

notably that of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, written in the twelfth century

which consist largely of mythical matter

dis-

guised as a record of the ancient British kings;

(4) Early hagiology, in which the myths of gods

and Brythons have been

taken over by the ecclesiasts and fathered upon
the patron saints of the Celtic Church; (5) The

of the pagan Goidels

groundwork

of

bardic

British

tradition

upon

THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY

which the Welsh, Breton, and Norman minstrels,
and, following them, the romance- writers of all
the more civilised European countries founded
the Arthurian cycle; (6)
tales

which,

And

but

although

lastly,

lately

upon

reduced

folk
to

or even older, than

writing, are probably as old,
sources,
of
the
other
any

few lines must here be spared to show the

reader the nature of the mediaeval manuscripts
mentioned. They consist of larger or smaller

just

vellum or parchment volumes, into which the

scribe of a great family or of a monastery laboriwas
ously copied whatever lore, godly or worldly,

deemed most worthy

of perpetuation.

They thus

contain very varied matter portions of the Bible

:

lives

of saints

and works attributed

to

them

as well as the
genealogies and learned treatises
of the bards and the legends of tribal
;

poems

who had been the gods of an earher age.

The most famous of them are, in Irish, the Books

heroes
"

Dun Cow, of Leinster, of Lecan, of Ballyand in

the Yellow Book of Lecan
and
mote,
of
Books
Ancient
Four
so-called
Welsh, the
of the

'

the

Black Book of Carmarthen, the

Book of Aneurin, the Book of Taliesin, and the
Red Book of Hergest together with the White
Book of Rhydderch. Taken as a whole, they date

bales'

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

from the beginning of the twelfth century to the
end of the sixteenth the oldest being the Book
;

Dun Cow,

of the

the year 1106.

far older

seventh

the compiler of which died in

But much of their substance is

can, indeed, be proved to ante-date the

and
century while the mythical
tales

poems must, even

been traditional.

at this earlier age, have long

They preserve

ever distorted a form,

much

for us, in

how-

of the legendary lore

of the Celts.

The

have suffered

Irish manuscripts

tication than the

Welsh.

less sophis-

In them the gods

still

appear as divine and the heroes as the pagans

they were while their Welsh congeners pose as
kings or knights, or even as dignitaries of the
;

Christian Church.

But the more

primitive, less

myths can be brought to throw

the
Welsh, and thus their accretions
light upon
can be stripped from them till they appear in
adulterated, Irish

their

true

guise.

In

gradually unveiling a

this

way

scholarship

mythology whose appeal

not merely to our patriotism.

In

is

is

itself it is often

poetic and

lofty, and, in its disguise of Arthurian

romance,

has influenced modern art and

it

litera-

ture only less potently than that mighty inspirathe mythology of Ancient Greece.

tion

CHAPTER

II

THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL CELTS

But before approaching the myths of the Celts of

Great Britain and Ireland, we must briefly glance
the mythology of the Celts of Continental
Europe, that Gallia from which Goidels and
at

Brythons alike came.

literature

the subject

From
is

the point of view of

barren
for whatever
;

mythical and heroic legends the Gauls once had

have perished. But there have been brought to
light a very large number not only of dedicatory
inscriptions to, but also of statues

and

bas-reliefs

the ancient gods of Gaul. And, to afford us

some clue amid their bewildering variety, a certain
amount of information is given us by classic
of,

writers, especially

by Julius Caesar in his Com-

mentaries on the Gallic War.

He

mentions

five chief divinities of

the Gauls,

apparently in the order of their reputed power.

First of all, he says, they worship
Mercury, as
inventor of the arts and patron of travellers and

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

Next

comes Apollo, the divine

followed
healer,
by Minerva, the teacher
of useful trades, by Jupiter, who rules the sky,
mercliants.

and he

is

and by Mars, the director

mean

not, of course,

of battles.^

This does

that Caesar considered the

gods of the Gauls to be exactly those of the

Romans, but that imaginary beings represented
as carrying out

Roman

much

the same functions as the

Mercury, Apollo, Minerva, Jupiter, and

In practice, too,

Mars were worshipped by them.

the

Romans

readily

conquered peoples

the deities of

assimilated

to their

own hence
;

in the inscriptions discovered in Gaul,

in our

own

islands,

we

find the

it is

that

and indeed

names

of Celtic

preceded by those of the Roman gods

as Mercurius
considered to resemble
were
they
Grannos, Minerva Belisama,
Artaios, Apollo
and
Mars Camulos.
Sucellos,
Jupiter

divinities

Modern

discoveries

quite

out

bear

Caesar's

statement as to the importance to the Gaulish

mind of the god whom he called Mercury.

Numerous place-names

attest

Costly statues stood

of
massive
silver, was dug
one,

France.

it

in

in
his

modern
honour

in the gardens

up
Luxembourg, while another, made in bronze
by a Greek artist for the great temple of the
of the

De

Bello Gallico, iv. 17.

lO

THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL CELTS

Arverni upon the summit of the Puy de Dome, is
have stood a hundred and twenty feet
high, and to have taken ten years to finish. Yet
said to

it

would seem

to

have been rather

for the

war-god

that some at least of the warlike Gauls reserved

their chief worship.

The regard

in

which he was

proved by two of his names or titles

Rigisamos (' Most Royal,') and Albiorix (' King

held

is

Much honour, too, must have

been paid to a Gaulish Apollo, Grannos, lord
of healing waters, from whom Aix-la-Chapelle
of the World').

(anciently called Aquae Granni), Graux and Eaux

Graunnes, in the Vosges, and Granheim, in Wiir-

temburg, took their names, for we are told by

Dion Cassius

that the

Roman Emperor

Caracalla

invoked him as the equal of the better-known

Another Gaulish
Aesculapius and Serapis.
'

Apollo,' Toutiorix

('

Lord of the People

won, however, a far wider,

if

somewhat

')

has

vicarious

Accidentally confounded with Theodoric

the Goth, his mythical achievements are, in all
probability, responsible for the wilder legends
fame.

connected with that historical hero under his

of Dietrich

title

von Bern.^

But the gods

of the Continental Celts are being

Ixxvii. 15.

Rhys, Hibhert Lectures for 1886, pp. 30-32.

II

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

treated in this series

far

more competently than

power of the present writer. For his

and
his readers', the only Gaulish deities
purpose
who need be noticed here are some whose names
is

in the

reappear in the written myths of our own Islands.

In the oldest Irish and Welsh manuscripts we

meet with personages whose names and attributes

identify

them with

divinities

whom we

knoAV to

have been worshipped in the Celtic world abroad.

Ogma combines in Gaelic mythology the char-

and poetry and the

professional champion of his circle, the Tuatha
De Danann, while a second-century Greek writer
acters of the

god

of eloquence

called Lucian describes a Gaulish Ogmios, who,

though he was represented

and lion-skin of Heracles,

as

exponent of persuasive speech.

men

after

armed with the club

Avas yet considered the

He was

him by golden

depicted as
cords attached

drawing
from his tongue to their ears and, as the old
man eloquent,' whose varied experience made his
'

words Avorth Hstening to, he was shown as wrinkled

and bald.
Altogether (as a native assured
Lucian), he taught that true power resides in
wise words as much as in doughty deeds, a lesson
^
Celtic Religion, by Professor E. Anwyl, to whom the writer
here takes the opportunity of gratefully acknowledging his indebtedness for valuable help towards the making of this book,

12

THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL CELTS

In the
not yet quite forgotten by the Celt.'
still
name
whose
Continental Lugus,
clings to the
cities of

Lyons, Laon, and Leyden,

all

anciently

Lugus's town'), we may

claim to see that important figure of the Goidelic
With the
Hand.
legends, Lug of the Long
called

Liigiidimum

('

Gaulish goddess Brigindu, of

whom

mention

is

made in a dedicatory tablet found at Volnay,

near Beaune, we may connect Brigit, the Irish
Minerva or Vesta who passed down into saintThe war-god'^ Camillos
ship as Saint Bridget.
is possibly found in Ireland as Cumhal (Coul),
father of the famous Finn

in Belinus, an apocry-

phal British king who reappears in romance as

Balin of the Morte Darthur, we probably have the
Gaulish Belenos, whom the Latin Avriter Ausonius

mentions as a sun-god served by Druids; while

Maponos, identified by the Romans with Apollo,

we find
Modron

in the

Welsh

(Matrcina), a

stories as

Mabon son

of

companion of Arthur.

by a curious irony that we must now look

for the stories of Celtic gods to two islands once
It is

considered so remote and uncivilised as hardly

to belong to the Celtic world at all.
Rh^s, Hibhert Lectures, pp. 13-20.
Cumulus seems to have been a more important god than his
Roman equation with Mars (p. 10) suggests. Professor Rhjs
calls him a 'Mars- Jupiter.' Cf.pp. 11,20 21, and 63 of this book.
1

13

CHAPTER

III

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

It would be impossible, in so small a space as we
can afford, to mention all, or indeed any but a

swarming deities of ancient Britain

and Ireland, most of them, in all probability,
few, of the

The best we
extremely local in their nature.
can do is to look for a fixed point, and this we
gods whose names and attributes
are very largely common to both the Goidels and
the Brythons. In the old Gaelic literature they
find in certain

are called the

donann), the
in the

'

Tuatha De Danann (Toodha dae

Tribe of the Goddess Danu,' and

Welsh documents, the

and the Children

'

'

Children of

Don

'

of Ll^r.'

Danu or Donu, as
seems to have
spelt

the

name

is

sometimes

been considered by the

Goidels as the ancestress of the gods, who collecWe also find

tively took their title from her.

mention of another ancient female deity of some14

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

what similar name, Ann or Ana, worshipped in
Munster as a goddess of prosperity and abun-

who was

dance,^

of the Irish

likewise described as the mother

Pantheon

Well she used to cherish

'

the gods,' wrote a commentator on a ninth-century

Irish glossary.^
Turning to the British mytho-

we find that some of the principal figures

what seems to be its oldest stratum are called

logy,

in

sons or daughters of Don Gwydion son of Don

Govannon son of Don Arianrod daughter of
Don. But Arianrod is also termed the daughter
:

of Beli,
Beli,

of

which makes

it
reasonably probable that
otherwise appears as a mythical king
Brythons, was considered to be Don's

who

the

His Gaelic counterpart

consort.

the ancestor of the

settlers in Ireland,

is

perhaps

Milesians, the

and though Bil6

Danu in
which have come down

connected with

the
to

first
is

Bile,

Celtic

nowhere

scattered

myths

the analogy

us,

is

Bile and Beli seem to represent

and British soil respectively the Dis
Pater from whom Caesar ^ tells us the Gauls

suggestive.
on Gaelic

believed
^

themselves

Anmann.

to

be descended, the two

The Choice of Names. Translated by Dr.

Whitley Stokes in Irische Texte.
Cormac's Glossary. Translated by O'Donovan and edited
Goir

'

'

'^

by Stokes.
3
De Bdlo

Oallico, vi. 18.

15

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

shadowy

standing for

and Danu, Beli and Don,

divine Father and Mother alike

Bile

pairs,
tlie

of gods and men.

Llyr, the head of the other family, appears in
Gaelic myths as Ler {gen. Lir), both names pro'

bably meaning the Sea.' Though ranked among

the Tuatha De Danann, Ler seems to descend

from a

different line,

and plays

little

part in the

stories of the earlier history of the Irish gods,

though he

is

prominent in what are perhaps

equally ancient legends concerning Finn and the

Fenians.
On the other hand, there are details

concerning the British Llj^r Avhich suggest that

he may have been borrowed by the Brythons

from the Goidels. His wife is called Iwerydd

(Ireland), and he himself is termed Llyr Llediaith,
i.e.
Ll^r of the Half- Tongue,' which is supposed
'

mean

that his language could be but imperHe gave its name to Leicester,
fectly understood.
to

originally Ll^^r-cestre, called in Welsh Caer Lyr,

while, through Geoffrey of Monmouth, he has

become Shakespeare's
in
'

hagiology
Three Chief

as

'

King

Lear,'

the head of the

Holy

Families

of

and
first

the

is

found

of
Isle

the
of

Britain.'

however, better known

to mythology by their sons than from their own

Both Ler and Ll^r

are,

i6

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

exploits.

We

find the Gaelic

Bron mac Lir and

Manannan mac
ab Llyr and

Lir paralleling the British Bran

Manawyddan ab Llyr. Of the Irish

Bron we know nothing, except that he gave his

to a place called Mag Bron (' Bron's Plain '),
but Bran is one of the most clearly outlined

name

figures in the Brythonic

mythology.

He

is

repre-

sented as of gigantic size no house or ship which

was ever made could contain him in it and,
when he laid himself down across a river, an

army could march over him

He

bridge.

though upon a
was the patron of minstrelsy and
as

bardism, and claimed, according to a mediaeval

^
poem put into the mouth of the sixth-century

Welsh poet

Taliesin, to be himself a bard, a

a
harper,
player upon the cr^bth, and seven score
other musicians all at once.
He is a kins: in

whom

Hades with

the sons of

Don

fight to obtain

the treasures of the Underworld, and, paradoxically enough, has passed down into ecclesiastical
legend as the Blessed Bran,' who brought Chris'

tianity

from

Turning

Rome

of the Irish

is

god

'Book

of Taliesin,'

Books of Wales,

vol.

Bron and Bran,

this time that

Manannan mac

fullest account.
^

to Britain.

to the brothers of

i.

poem

xlviii., in

p. 297.

17

it

we have the

Lir has always

Skene's Four Aiicient

MYTHOLOGY OF xVNCIENT BRITAIN

been one of the most vivid of the figures of the
Tuatha De Danann. Clad in his invuhierable mail,
with jewelled helmet which flashed like the sun,
robed in his cloak of invisibility woven from the

and

fleeces of the flocks of Paradise,

sword

'

Retaliator

'

which never

girt

failed

with his
to

slay

whether riding upon his horse Splendid Mane,'

which went swift as the spring wind over land or
'

voyaging in his boat Wave-Sweeper,' which

needed neither sail nor oar nor rudder, he pre'

sea, or

sents as striking a picture as can be found in any

mythology. The especial patron of sailors, he was

invoked by them as 'The Lord of Headlands,'

while the merchants claimed that he was the
founder of their guild.
cally with the Isle of

he was

asserts that

which

is

He was connected especiMan euhemerising legend

;

its first

king,

and his grave,

is still
pointed out at
curious tradition credits him with

thirty yards long,

Peel Castle.

three legs, and it is these limbs, arranged like the

spokes of a wheel, wh\ch appear on the arms of

His British analogue, Manawyddan,

the Island.

can be seen

myth.

On

through the mists of

the one hand he appears as a kind
less

clearly

hunter, craftsman, and agriculon

the other he is the enemy of
while
turist;
those gods who seem most beneficent to man.
of culture-hero

i8

THE GODS OF THE INSULIR CELTS

One

of his achievements was the building, in the

peninsula of Gower, of the Fortress of Oeth and

Annoeth, which

described as a gruesome prison

is

human

made

of

have

incarcerated

bones

no

and in
less

it

he

is

said to

person than the

famous Arthur.

Whether
Llyr to

or not

we may take the children of

sea, we can hardly

have been gods of the

go wrong in considering the children of

having come

Don

as

to be regarded as deities of the sky.

bore

Constellations

their

names

Cassiopeia's

Chair was called Don's Court {Llys Don), the

Northern Crown, Arianrod's Castle {Gaer Avianrod), and the Milky Way, the Castle of Gwydion

{Gaer Gwydion). Taken as a whole, they do not

present such close analogies to the Irish Tuatha

De Danann

as

do the Children of Llyr.

Never-

theless, there are striking parallels extending to

what would seem to have been some of the

In Irish myth we find

greatest of their gods.
and
in
Nuada Argetlam,
British, Niidd, or Lliidd

Llaw Ereint, both epithets having the same meaning of the Silver Hand.' What it signified we
do not know in Irish literature there is a lame
'

story to account for it (see p. 35), but if there

was a kindred British version it has been lost.

But the

attributes

of

both
19

Nuada and Nudd

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

(Lludd) show them as the kind of deity whom
the Romans would have equated with their
Nuada rules over the Tuatha De
Jupiter.

Danann, while Lludd, or Niidd, appears as a

mythical British king, who changed the
of his favourite city from

'New

Troy') to

came London.

Trinovantum

name

(Geoffrey's

Caer Ludd, which afterwards beHe is said to have been buried at

Ludgate, a legend which we may perhaps connect

with the tradition that a temple of the Britons
formerly occupied the site of St. Paul's. However
this may be, we know that he was worshipped
at

Lydney

in

Gloucestershire, for the ruins of

his sanctuary have been discovered there, with

varied inscriptions to

him

NODONTi, and deo nudente

plaque

of

as
m.,

devo nodenti,

bronze, probably representing

which shows us a youthful

d.m.

as well as a small

figure,

with

him,

head

surrounded by solar rays, standing in a four-horse

chariot, and attended by two winged genii and

two

Tritons.^

bably,^

The 'm'

of the

inscription

may

magno, maximo, or, more proMARTI, which Avould be the Roman, or

have read

in full

Romano-British, way of describing the god as the

A monograph on the subject, entitled Roman Antiquities
at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, by the Rev. W. H. Bathurst,
'

was published
-

in 1879.

Professor Rh^'s, following Dr. Hiibner.

20

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

With
warrior he appears as in Irish legend.
him, though not necessarily as his consort, we
must rank a goddess of war whose name, M6rrigu
(the 'Great

attests

Queen'),

her

importance,

and who may have been the same as Macha

Battle '), Badb (' Carrion Crow '), and Nemon
('
whose name suggests comparison
(' Venomous '),
with the British Nemetona,^ a war-goddess to
whom an inscription has been found at Bath.

The

wife of Lludd, however, in

called Gwyar, but her

for it means 'gore.'^

name

Welsh myth

is

also implies fighting,

The children

of both the

Gaelic and the British god play noteworthy parts

Tadg (Teagite), son of Nuada,

in Celtic legend.

was the grandfather, upon his mother's side, of

the famous Finn mac Coul. Gwyn, son of Nudd,
originally a deity of the Underworld, has passed
down into living folk-lore as king of the Tylwyth
Teg, the

Welsh

fairies.

Another of the sons of Don whom we also find

in the ranks of the Tuatha De Danann is the
god of Smith-craft, Govannon,^ in Irish Goibniu
{gen. Goibiienn).

The

Gaelic

deity appears in

^
The two are identified by the French scholar, M. Gaidoz,
but the equation is not everywhere upheld.
^
Rhys, Studies in the Arthurian Legend, p. 169.
^
Also called in Welsh, 'Govynion Hen.' H^n means The
'

Ancient.

'

21

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

mythical literature as the forger of the weapons
of his divine companions and the brewer of an
immortality; and in folk- tales as the
Saer, the fairy architect to whom popular
has
attributed the round towers and the
fancy
early churches of Ireland. Of his British analogue
ale

of

Gobhan

we know

less,

but he

is

found, in

company with

his

brother Amaethon, the god of Husbandry,

engaging in a wonderful feat of agriculture at
the bidding of Arthur,
But, greater than any of the other sons of

Don would seem

to

appears in British

myth

have been Gwydion, who

as a

'

Culture-Hero,' the

teacher of arts and giver of gifts to his fellows.

His name and attributes have caused more than

one leading mythologist to conjecture Avhether
he may not have been identical with a still
greater figure, the Teutonic Woden, or Odin.
Professor Rhys, especially, has drawn, in his

Hihhert Lectures (1886) on Celtic Heathendom,

a remarkable series of parallels between the two
characters, as they are figured respectively in Celtic
and Teutonic myth.^
Both were alike pre-

eminent in war-craft and in the

arts of story-

and magic, and both gained through

painful experiences the lore which they placed
telling, poetry,

Pp. 282-304.

22

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

at the service of

on

the

This is represented
the
poetical inspiration
by

mankind.

side

Celtic

which Gwydion acquired through his sufferings

while in the power of the gods of Hades, and
in Teutonic story by two draughts of wisdom,
one which Woden obtained by guile from Gunddaughter of the giant Suptung, and another
which he could only get by pledging one of his
Giant of the
eyes to its owner Sokk-mimi, the

fled,

Each was born

known father and mother

of a mysterious,
each had a love

Abyss.

name was

little-

whose

associated with a symbolic wheel,

who

posed as a maiden and was furiously indignant at

^
the birth of her children and each lost his son
;

a curiously similar fashion, and sought for

him sorrowfully to bring him back to the world.

in

Still
tell

striking are the strange myths which

each of them could create human out

more

how

of vegetable

life;

woman
a woman from

Woden made

out of trees, while

whom

man and

Gwydion 'enchanted

blossoms' as a bride for Lieu,

mother had laid a

have a wife of
never
should
he
destiny' that
But the equation,
the people of this earth.
on

his

fascinating though it
by the fact that the
^

But

'

unnatural

is,

is

only

much
traces

discounted

we

see note 2 on following page.

23

find

of

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

Gwydion

in Britain are a few stories connected

with certain place-names in the Welsh counties

This
of Carnarvonshire and Merionethshire.

would seem

to suggest that, like so many of

the divine figures of the Celts, his fame was

merely a local one, and that he is more likely to

have been simply the lord of Mona and Arvon,'
'

Welsh bard

him, than so great a deity

as the Teutonic god he at first sight seems to
resemble. His nearest Celtic equivalents we may
as a

calls

find in the Gaulish Ogmios, figured as a Heracles

who won his way by persuasion rather than by

and the Gaelic Ogma, at once champion

De Danann, god of Literature and
Eloquence, and inventor of the ogam alphabet.

force,

of the Tuatha

Don

It is another of the family of

Arianrod,

the goddess of the constellation Corona Borealis,'

which she sometime gave her name, which
'

to

was

who

'

Silver Wheel,'
popularly interpreted as
appears in connection with Gwydion as

the mother of Lieu, or Llew, depicted as the

helper of his uncles, Gwydion^ and Amaethon,
^
The form Arianrod, in earlier Welsh Aranrot, may have been
evolved by popular etymology under the influence of avian
(silver).
^
Lieu is sometimes treated as the son of Gwydion and
Arianrod, though there is no direct statement to this effect in
Welsh literature, and the point has been elaborated by Professor
The fact,
Rhj^a mainly on the analogy of similar Celtic myths.

24

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

Under-

in their battles against the powers of the

Llaw Gyffes, i.e. Of the

Firm Hand,' with which we may compare that
Ldmfada (' Of the Long Hand ') borne by the

world.
(?)

of

Llew's epithet

'

is

This tempts us
Goidelic deity Lugh, or Lug.
to regard the two mythical figures as identical,

Lieu

equating
Lugus.

also

(Llew)

with

the

Gaulish

There are, however, considerable

diffi-

Phonologically, the word

be the exact equivalent
of Lugus, while the restricted character of the
culties

the way.

in

Lieu or Lleiu cannot

place-names and
as a

mythic

legends connected with Lieu

figure

mark him

belonging to

as

much the same circle of local tradition as Gwydion.

Nor do we know enough about Lieu to be able
to make any large comparison between him and
the Irish Lug.

They

are alike in the

meaning

of their epithets, in their rapid growth after birth,

and in their helping the more beneficent gods

But any such

against their enemies.

details are

wanting with regard to Lieu as those which make

the Irish god so clear-cut and picturesque a
figure.

Such was the -radiance

of Lug's face that

however, that Lltu is found in genealogies as Louh6 (Lou Hen),

son of Guitge (the Gwydyen of the Book of Aneuiin and the
Book of Taliesin), seems to show that the idea was not absolutely
iinfamiliar to the Welsh.
For another side of the question see
chap. ii. of The Welsh People (Rh^s and Brynmor-Jones).
'

'

'

'

25

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

it

seemed

the sun, and none could gaze

the acknowledged master

like

steadily at

it.

He was

of all arts, both of

war and of peace. Among

magic spear which sleAv

his possessions were a

of itself, and a hound of

most wonderful qualities.

His rod-sling was seen in heaven as the rainbow,
and the Milky Way was called 'Lug's chain.'
First accepted as the sun-god of the Goidels, it is
now more usual to regard him as a personification

of

fire.

There

a certain

is,

amount

however, evidence to show that

of confusion between the two

great sources of light and heat is a not unnatural

phenomenon of the myth-making mind.^

This similarity in name,

between Bile and

Bron and Bran,

Nuada and Nudd
lAfr,

title,

and attributes

Danu and Don, Ler and

Manannan and Manawyddan,

Beli,

(or

Lludd),

(?)

Nemon and

Nemetona, Govannon and Goibniu, and (?) Lug

and Lieu has suggested to several competent
scholars that the Brythons received them from
the other branch of the Celts, either by inheritance from the Goidels in Britain or by direct

But
borrowing from the Goidels of Ireland.
such a case has not yet been made out convincingly, nor

is

it

necessary in order to account

1
The Rig-Veda, for instance, tells us that 'Agni (Fire)
Sftrya (the Sun) in the morning, Silrya is Agni at night.'

26

is

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

names and myths among kindred
Whatever may be
races of the same stock.
the expkmation of their Hkeness, these names
for

similar

are, after all,

of

divine

but a few taken out of two long

characters.

Naturally,

lists

deities

too,

whose attributes are alike appear under different

names in the myths of the two branches of the
Celts.

in

Specialised gods could have been but few

type;

every

names might vary with

while their

tribe.

Some

of these

it

may

be interest-

ing to compare briefly, as we have already done

in the case of the British Gwydion and the Gaelic

Dagda, whose name (from an

would
seem to have meant the
Dagodevos),
whose
cauldron, called the Undry,'
good god,'
fed all the races of the earth, and who played

Ogma.

The

Irish

earlier

'

'

the seasons into being with his mystic harp, may

be compared with Don's brother, the wise and
just Math, who is represented as a great magician
who teaches his lore to his nephew Gwydion.

Angus, one of the Dagda's sons, whose music

caused all who heard to follow it, and whose
kisses

became

birds

which sang of

love,

would

be, as a divinity of the tender passion, a counterpart of Dwyn, or Dwynwen,^ the British Yenus,
*

Dwynweu means

goddess-saint

is

'the Blessed Dwyn.'

Llanddwyn

in

Anglesey.

27

The church

of this

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

who was, even by
the

'

the later

saint of love.'

Welsh

Brigit, the

bards,

hymned

as

Dagda's daughter,

find her analogue in

of poetry,

may
patroness
the Welsh Kerridwen, the owner of a

'

cauldron

Diancecht (Dianket)
of Inspiration and Science.'
of
the Goidelic god
Healing seems to have no
certain equivalent in Brythonic myth, but Mider,
a deity of the Underworld though his name

would bring him rather into line with the British

romance
Medyr, who, however, appears in Welsh
marksman
a
wonderful
as
may be here
only

considered in connection with Pwyll, the hero

of a legendary cycle apparently local to Dyved
(the Roman province of Demetia, and, roughly

,^

Pwyll, who may perhaps represent the same god as the Arawn who is connected

south-west Wales).

with

him

in

mythic romance, appears as an

Underworld deity, friendly with the children of

and with
Llyr and opposed to the sons of Don,
Rhiannon
him are grouped his wife,
(in older
Celtic RigantSna, or 'Great Queen') and his
son Pryderi,

Annwn

who succeeds

his father as

king

Annwvn

(the British Other World),

He is
son of Llj^r.
jointly with Manawyddan
as the antagonist of Gwydion, who is
of

or

represented

eventually his conqueror and slayer.

But even the briefest account of the Celtic

28

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

gods would be incomplete without some mention
of a second group of figures of British legend,

some

whom may

of

to history, with

These

porated.

Welsh

which

tradition

are

owed

have
local

the

names

their

myths became
characters

who appear

of

incor-

early

afterwards as the

kings and knights and ladies of mediaeval Arthurian romance. There is Arthur himself, half god,

Gwenhwyvar whose
Leodogran, the King of

half king, with his queen

'

father,

Tennyson's

Cameliard,' was the giant Ogyrvan, patron and

perhaps originator of bardism and Gwalchmai

and Medrawt, who, though they are usually called

his nephews, seem in older story to have been
considered his sons.

even

respects

than

greater figure in

Arthur

must

some

have

been

Myrddin, a mythical personage doubtless to be

distinguished from his namesake the supposed
sixth-century bard to whom are attributed the
poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen. Prominent, too, are Urien,

who sometimes appears

as a

powerful prince in North Britain, and sometimes

as a deity with similar attributes to those of Bran,
the son of Llyr, and Kai, who may have been (as
seems likely from a passage in the Mabivogion
story of Kulhwch and Olwen ') a personification
'

of

fire,

or the mortal chieftain with

29

whom

tradi-

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

tion

has associated Caer Gai in Merionethshire

and Cai Hir

in Glamorganshire.

Connected, too,

by a loose thread with Arthur's story are the

to have been the
figures of what is thought
independant mythic cycle of March (King Mark),

and his nephew Drystan,

All these, and many
or Trystan, (Sir Tristrem).
others, seem to be inhabitants of an obscure

his

queen Essyllt

(Iseult),

borderland Avhere vanishing

myth and doubtful

history have mingled.

The memory of this cycle has passed down into
of those
living folk-lore among the descendants

Brythons who, fleeing from the Saxon conquerors,

found new homes upon the other side of the
with
English Channel. Little Britain has joined
Great Britain in cherishing the fame of Arthur,
while Myrddin (in Breton, Marzin), described as
the master of all knowledge, owner of all wealth,

and lord of Fairyland, can only be the

lore representative of a once great deity.

folk-

These

two stand out clearly while the other characters

of the Brythonic mythology have lost their individualities, to merge into the nameless hosts of the
;

(Korrigan), and the

belief.
water-spirits (Morgan) of Breton popular
dwarfs (Korred), the

fairies

^o

CHAPTER

IV

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

According

to the early

monkish

annalists,

who

nullify the pagan traditions against

sought
which they fought by turning them into a pseudoIreland was first inhabited by a lady
to

history,

named
flood.

Cessair and her followers, shortly after the

They describe her as a grand-daughter of

Noah but
;

a tribal

more

it is

or

goddess

likely that she represented

ancestress of the

divine

Whoever she
pre-Celtic people in Ireland.^
have been, her influence was not lasting.
perished, with
her successors.

We

'

say

all

'

field

her race, leaving a free

with intention

may
She

field to

for Ireland con-

then of only one plain, treeless and grassbut watered by three lakes and nine rivers.

sisted
less,

The
set

race that succeeded Cessair, however, soon

to

work
1

Rh^s,

to

remedy

Celtic Britain,

31

this.

Partholon,

Third edition,

p.

288.

who

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

landed with twenty-four males and tAventy-four
females upon the first of May (the Celtic feast of
'

Beltaine '), enlarged the island to four plains

with seven new lakes. The newcomers them-

and multiplied, so that in

three centuries their original forty-eight members
had become five thousand. But, on the three
selves also increased

hundredth anniversary of their coming, an epidemic sprang up which annihilated them. They
gathered together upon the original first-created
plain to die, and the place of their funeral is still

marked by the mound

of Tallaght, near Dublin.

Before these early colonists, Ireland had been

inhabited by a race of demons or giants, described
as monstrous in size and hideous in shape, many
of them being footless and handless, while others
had the heads of animals. Their name Fomor,
which means 'under wave,'^ and their descent
from a goddess named Domnu, or the Deep,' ^
seem to show them as a personification of the sea
waves. To the Celtic mind the sea represented
darkness and death, and the Fomorach appear as
the antithesis of the beneficent gods of light and
Partholon and his people had to fight them
life.
for a foothold in Ireland, and did so successfully.
'

Rhys, Hihhert Lectures,

Ibid., p. c98.

32

p. 594.

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

The next iminigrants were

Nemed

People of

The

less fortunate.

followed the Race of Partholon,

and added twelve new plains and four more lakes

But, after being scourged by a similar

to Ireland.

which had destroyed their forerunners, they found themselves at the mercy of
the Fomorach, who ordered them to deliver up as
tribute two- thirds of the children born to them in

epidemic

to that

every year.

In desperation they attacked the

stronghold of the giants

upon Tory Island, off

and took it, slaying Conann,

the coast of Donegal,

one of the Fomor Kings, with many of his followers.

But More, the other king, terribly avenged this
defeat, and the Nemedians, reduced to a handful
of thirty, took ship and fled the country.
new race now came into possession, and here
we seem to find ourselves upon historical ground,

These were three

however uncertain.
Fir Domnann, the
the

'

Men

'

Men
'

of Gailioin

tribes called

Domnu,' Fir Gailidin,

and Fir Bolg, the Men of
of

'

Bolg,' emigrants, according to the annalists, from

Greece.
They are generally considered as having

represented to the Gaelic mind the pre-Celtic

inhabitants of Ireland, and the fact that their
principal tribe was called the Men of Domnu
suggests that the Fomorach, who are called Gods
'

'

'

of

Domnu,' may have been the

divinities of their

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

At any

worship.
flict,

rate,

we never

find

them

in con-

like the other races, with the gigantic

and

demoniac powers. On the contrary, they themselves and the Fomorach alike struggle against,

and are conquered by, the next people to arrive.

These are the Tuatha De Danann, in whom all
serious students

Celts in

Ireland,

parallel the
Britain.

now

and who,

earlier

They

recognise the gods of the

as

divinities

we have
of

seen,

the Celts in

are variously fabled to have come

else from the north or the south

from the sky, or

came from, they

landed in Ireland upon the same mystic First of
May, bringing with them their four chief treasures
of the world.

Nuada's

Wherever

the}^

sword, whose blow needed no second.

Lug's living lance, which required no hand to

wield it in battle, the Dagda's cauldron, whose
supply of food never failed, and the mysterious

'Stone of Destiny,' which would cry out with a

This
voice to acclaim a rightful king.

human
stone
'

is

said

by some

Coronation Stone

'

to be identical with our

at Westminster,

brought from Scone by Edward

i.,

own

which was

but

it is

more

it still stands upon the hill of Tara,

was preserved as a kind of fetish by the
They had not been long
early kings of Ireland.^

probable that

where

it

See The Coronation Stone.

A
34

monograph by W.

F. Skene.

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

in occupation of the country before their presence
was discovered by the race in possession. After

some parleying and

a battle,

known
'

offers to partition the island,

as that of

Moytura in Irish Mag

was fought near
which the Tuatha De Danann

Plain of the Pillars

Tuireadh,
Cong, in Mayo, in

'

Handing over the province

the
Connaught
conquered race, they took
possession of the rest of Ireland, fixing their

gained the victory.

of

to

capital at the historic Tara, then called

Their conquest, however,

powerful

enemy

Drumcain.

them with a
the Fomorach were

still left

to face, for

by no means ready to accept their occupation of

the soil. But the Tuatha De Danann thought to
find a

Their

means of conciliating those hostile powers.

own king, Nuada, had lost his right hand in

the battle of Moytura, and, although it had been

replaced by an artiiical one of silver, he had,
according to the Celtic law which forbade a

blemished j^erson to sit upon the throne, been

obliged to renounce the sovereignty. They thereElathan, King of the Fomorach,
inviting his son Bress to ally himself with them,
and become their ruler. This was agreed to and
fore

sent

to

a marriage Avas made between Bress and Brigit

the daughter of the Dagda, while Cian, a son of

Diancecht the god of Medicine, wedded Ethniu,

35

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

the daughter of a powerful prince of the

named

Fomorach

Balor.

But Bress soon showed himself in his true

Fomorian colours. He put excessive taxes upon
his new subjects, and seized for himself the conlife, so that the proud
manual
labour to obtain food
forced
to
were
gods
to the
Worse than this even
and warmth.

trol of all the necessities of

Gaelic

mind he

hoarded

all

he

got,

spending

none of his wealth in free feasts and public entertainments. But at last he put a personal affront

upon Cairbre son of Ogma, the principal bard of

the Tuatha De Danann, who retorted with a
broke out upon its
Thus Bress himself became blemished, and was obliged to abdicate, and Nuada,
whose lost hand had meanwhile been replaced
by the spells and medicaments of a son and

satire so scathing that boils

victim's face.

daughter of Diancecht, came forward again to

take the Kingship. Bress returned to his undersea

home, and,

at a council of the

Fomorach, it
upon the Tuatha D6

was decided to make Avar

Danann, and drive them out of Ireland.
But now a mighty help was coming

to the

gods. From the marriage of Diancecht's son and

Balor's daughter was born a child called Lug, who
swiftly grew proficient in every branch of skill

36

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

and knowledge,

he became known as the

so that

He
lolddnach {Ilddmi), 'Master of all Arts.'
threw in his lot with his father's people, and
for a great
organised the Tuatha De Danann
struggle.

blood-fine for the

hands
magic

too,

Incidentally,

murder

he obtained,

as

of his father at the

Ogma, the principal

The story of their
the romance of The Fate of the

of three grandsons of
treasures of the world.

'

quest is told in
Children of Tuireann,' one of the famous

Sorrowful Stories of Erin.'

'

Three

Thus, by the time the Fomorach had comthe Tuatha

pleted their seven years of preparation,

D6 Danann were

also ready for battle.

Goibniu,
the god of Smithcraft, had forged them magic
of Medicine,
weapons, while Diancecht, the god

had made a magic well whose water healed the

wounded and brought the slain to life. But this
well was discovered by the spies of the Fomorach,
and a party of them went to it secretly and filled
with stones.

it

After a few desultory duels, the great fight

began on the plain of Carrowmore, near SHgo,
the site, no doubt, of some prehistoric battle, the

memorials of which
1

still

form the

finest collection

Translated by Eugene O'Curry, and published in vol.

Atlantis.

27

iv. of

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

of rude stone

monuments

in the world, with the

one exception of Carnac.^ It is called Moytura the

Northern to distinguish it from the other Mag

Tuireadh further
on either
the

goddess

to the south.

Great chiefs

fell

killed Indech, the son ol

Ogma

side.

Domnu, while

Balor,

the

Fomor

whose eye shot death, slew Nuada, the King of

the Tuatha De Danann.
But Lug turned the
fortunes of the fray.

With

a carefully prepared
magic sling-stone he blinded the terrible Balor
and, at the fall of their principal champion, the

Fomorach lost heart, and the Tuatha De Danann

drove them back headlong to the sea.
Bress
himself was captured, and the rule of the Giants

broken

for ever.

But the power of the Tuatha De Danann was

itself on the wane.
They would seem, indeed, to
have come to Ireland only to prepare the way for
men, who were themselves

issuant, according to
the universal Celtic tradition, from the same pro-

genitor and country as the gods.

In the Other World dwelt Bile and Ith, deities
of the dead.
From their watch-tower they could

look over the earth and see

Till

now they had not

on account of
^

its

its

various regions.

perhaps

gradual growth but

noticed Ireland

slow and

Fergusson, Rude Stone Momiments,

38

pp. 180, etc.

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

at last Ith, on a clear winter's night, descried it.
Full of curiosity, he started on a tour of inspection

and landed

at the

mouth

of the

Kenmare

Journeying northwards, he came, with

his followers, upon the Tuatha De Danann, who
River.

were in council at a spot near Londonderry

called Grianan Aileach to choose a new king.

Three sons of

Mac

Cuill,

come

Ogma

were the candidates

Cecht, and

to a decision, the

still

Mac

Mac Greine. Unable to

Tuatha De Danann called

upon the stranger to arbitrate. He could not, or

would not, do so and, indeed, his whole attitude
seemed so suspicious that the gods decided to
;

kill

who

him.

This they did, but spared his followers,

returned to their own country, calling for

vengeance.
Mile, the son of Bile, was not slow in answering
their appeal.
He started for Ireland with his
eight sons and their followers, and arrived there
upon that same mysterious First of May on which

De Danann them-

both Partholon and the Tuatha

selves

had

first

come

to Ireland.

Marching through the country towards Tara,

they met in succession three eponymous goddesses of the country, wives of Mac Cuill, Mac
Cecht,

and

Mac

Greine.

Banba, Fotla, and Eriu.

Their

Each
39

names were
demanded

in turn

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

as these

legendary Irish Celts are called that, in the

of Amergin, the driiid of the Milesians

first

event of their success, the island should be called

after her.

Amergin promised

as Eriu asked last,

case of

'

Erinn

')

it is

her

it

name

them

to

all,

but,

(in the genitive

The legend

which has survived.

what are said

probably crystallizes
the three first names of Ireland.

to

have been

Soon they came to the capital and called the

Tuatha D6 Danann to a parley. After some discussion
to

was decided

it

blame

for not

that, as the Milesians

having made due

were

declaration of

war before invading the country, their proper

course was to retire to their ships and attempt
a fresh landing.
They anchored at nine green
'

waves'

'

distance from the shore, and the Tuatha

De Danann, ranged upon

druidical

spells

to

the beach, prepared

prevent their approaching

nearer.

Mananndn, son of the Sea, waved his magic

mantle and shook an off-shore wind straight into

But Amergin had powerful spells of

By incantations which have come down
to us, and which are said to be the oldest Irish
literary records, he propitiated both the Earth
and the Sea, divinities more ancient and more
powerful than any anthropomorphic gods, and in
their teeth.

his own.

40

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

the end a remnant of the Milesians

came

safely

to shore in the estuary of the Boyne.

In two successive battles they defeated the
Tuatha De Danann, whose three kings fell at the

hands of the three surviving sons of Mile.

Dis-

heartened, the gods yielded to the hardly less

divine ancestors of the Gaels. A treaty of peace
was,

however,

made with them, by which,

return for their surrender of the

to

receive

worship and

sacrifice.

soil,

in

they were

Thus began

religion in Ireland.

Driven from upper earth, they sought for new

Some withdrew to a Western Paradise
that Elysium of the Celts called Avallon by

homes.

many poetic names by the

safe seclusion in underfound
Gael.
Others
ground dwellings marked by barrows or hillocks.
From these sidhe, as they are called, they took a
new name, that of Aes Sidhe, Race of the Fairy
the Briton, and by

'

Mounds,' and it is by this title, sometimes

shortened to 'The Sfdhe' {Bhee), that the Irish
peasantry of to-day call the fairies. The 'banshee

'

of popular story

is

none other than the hean-

sidhe, the 'fairy woman,' the dethroned goddess

of the Goidelic mythology.

41

CHAPTER V
THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

When

Heaven's command, arose

from out the azure main,' lier name was Clas
'

Britain

Myrddin,

tliat

at

first,

the Place, or Enclosure, of

is,

In later days, she became known as

'the Honey Isle of Beli,'^ and it was not until
occupied by mankind that she took her
Merlin.

safely

son of Aedd
present designation, from Prydain,
the Great, who first established settled govern-

ment.
it is

All this

is

told us

by a Welsh Triad, and

from such fragmentary sources that we glean

the mythical history of our island.

With these relics we must make what
for the

way

work has not been done

that

it

we can

for us in

the

was done by the mediaeval monkish

annalists for Ireland.

We

find our data scattered

in
through old bardic poems and romances, and
less
and
apocryphal
hardly
pseudo-hagiologies
1
Beli seems to have been sometimes associated in Welsh
of Beli,' and
legend with the sea, which was called the 'drink

its

waves

'

Beli's cattle.'

42

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

Yet, without perhaps using more freewith our materials than an early writer

histories.

dom

would have done, we can piece them together,

and find in them roughly the same story as that
of Ireland the subjugation of the land by friendly
gods for the subsequent use of men.

The

greatest bulk of ancient British

myth

is

found in the Mabinogion more correctly, the Four

Branches of the Mabinogi.

These

tales evidently

fragments of varying myths pieced

together to make a cycle, and Professor AnwyP has
endeavoured with much learning to trace out and

consist

of

disentangle the original legends. But in the form in

which the Welsh writer has fixed them, they shoAV

a gradual supersession of other deities by the gods

especially represent human culture.
first of the Four Branches deals with the

who more
The

leading incidents in the life of Pwyll

became a king in Annwn, the Other

how he

World of
he won his

the Welsh; how, by a clever trick,

bride Rhiannon; the birth of their son Pryderi,
and his theft by mysterious powers the punish;

ment incurred by Rhiannon on the

false

charge

of having eaten him; and his recovery and restoration upon the night of the First of May.

In the second
^

'

'

Branch we

find Pryderi,

grown

See a series of articles in the Zeitschrift fur Geltische Philologie.

43

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

up and married

to a

wife called Kicva, as the

guest of Bran, son of Ll^r, at Harlech. Matholwch,

King of Ireland, arrives with a fleet to request

Branwen of the Fair

and
Branwen sails to
granted,
Ireland.
But, later on, news comes that she is
being badly treated by her husband, and Bran
the hand of Bran's

Bosom.

It

goes with an

sister,

is

army

to

There

avenge her.

is

parley,

submission, treachery, and battle, out of which,

after the slaughter of all the Irish, only seven
of Bran's host

remain

Pryd^ri, Manawyddan, the

bard Taliesin, and four others of less known mythic

Bran himself is wounded in the foot with

fame.

a poisoned spear, and in his agony orders the

others to cut off his head and carry it to the
'

White Mount
is

believed

to

in London,'

by which Tower Hill

They were

have been meant.

eighty-seven years upon the way, cheered all the

while by the singing of the Three Birds of

Rhiannon, Avhose music Avas so sweet that it would

recall the dead to life, and by the agreeable con-

But at last
they reached the end of their journey, and buried
versation of Bran's severed head.

the head with

its

face

turned towards France,

watching that no foreign foe came to Britain,

And here it reposed until Arthur disinterred it,
scorning, in his pride of heart, to

44

'

hold the island

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

otherwise than by valour,' a rash act of which the
Saxon conquest was the result.
third Mabinogi recounts the further adventures of Manawyddan, who married the apparently

The

old, but no doubt ever youthful, Rhiannon, mother

of his friend Pryderi, and of Pryderi himself and
his wife Kicva.
During their absence in Ireland

their

kinsmen had

all

a son of Beli, and

them by the Children

been slain by Caswallawn,

kingdom taken from

their

of Don.

live a

were compelled to

The

four fugitives

homeless nomadic

life,

'

and
by magic of
spiriting away
Rhiannon and Pryderi and their recovery by the
craft of Manawyddan which forms the subject of
it

the

is

'

the

tale.

With the fourth Branch the Children of Don

come into a prominence which they keep to the
end.
They are shown as dwelling together at
Caer Dathyl, an unidentified spot in the moun'

'

and ruled over by Math,

There are two chief incidents of

tains of Carnarvonshire,

Don's brother.
the story.

The

first tells

of the birth of the twin

sons of Gwydion's sister, Arianrod Dylan, apparently a marine deity ,^ who, as soon as he was
'

Professor Rhy's

is

inclined to see in

him a deity

of

Dark-

ness, opposed to the god of Light, Hibbert Lechires, p. 387.

See in this connection p. 32 of the present book.

45

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

born, disappeared into the sea, where he swam as
well as any fish, and Lieu, who was fostered and

brought up by Gwydion; the rage

when she found her intrigue made

of Arianrod
public,

and

her refusal of name, arms, or a wife to her unwished-for son the craft by which Gwydion ob;

tained for

him

those three essentials of a man's

the infidelity of the damsel whom Math and

Gwydion had created for Lieu 'by charms and
illusion out of the blossoms of the oak, and the
life

'

'

blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the

meadow-sweet,' and his enchantment into an
eagle by the cunning of her lover; the wanderings of Gwydion in search of his protege, and his
eventual recovery of him
and the vengeance
;

taken by Lieu upon the man and by Gwydion

upon the woman. The second relates the coming
of pigs to Britain as a gift from Arawn, King
of Annwn, to Pryderi their fraudulent acquisition
;

the war which followed the theft

by Gwydion
and the death of Pryderi through the superior
strength and magic of the great son of D6n.
These Four Branches of the Mabinogi thus
;

'

'

give a consecutive, if incomplete, history of some

of the most important of the Br3^thonic gods.
There are, however, other isolated legends from

which we can add

to the information they afford.

46

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

We

more

learn

the

of

details

In his
struggles with his enemies.
he seems to have been unfortunate.

of

Gwydioii"s

first

attempts

Trespassing

upon Hades, he was caught by Pwyll and

Pryderi,

and imprisoned in a mysterious island called Caer

Sidi. It was the
sufferings he endured there which

made him

a poet, and any one

who

aspires to a

similar gift

may try to gain it, it is said, by sleeping out either upon the top of Cader Idris or
under the Black Stone of the Arddu upon the
side of

he

Snowdon.

from that night of

mad.

for

terrors

will return either inspired or

But Gwydion escaped from

his enemies,

and

him victorious in the strange conflict

Cad Goddeu, the 'Battle of the Trees.'
His brother Amaethon and his nephew Lieu

we

find

called

were with him, and they fought against Bran

and Arawn.
We learn from various traditions

how

the sons of

Don

'

changed the forms of the

elementary trees and sedges

'

into warriors

how

Gwydion overcame the magic power of Bran by

guessing his name; and how, by the defeat of
the powers of the Underworld, three boons were

won

for

man the

whose name

But now
scene

the

dog, the deer, and

is translated as
lapwing.'
a fresh protagonist comes

some

bird

'

upon the
famous Arthur, whose history and
47

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

even existence have been involved in so
doubt.

The word Arthur,

much

of which several vary-

ing explanations have been attempted, is now

held to have been originally Artorius, a recognised Latin

name found on

inscriptions,

and as

Artilrius in Juvenal, which would make him

a Romanised Briton who, like many others of
his

period,

political

traditions

adopted a Latin designation.

His

prominence, implied not only by the

which make him a supreme war-leader

of the Britons, but also

by the

fact that

he

is

described in a twelfth century Welsh MS. as

Emperor (amheraivdyr), while his contempor-

however high in rank, are only princes

(gwledig), may be due, as Professor Rhys has
aries,

suggested,! to his having filled, after the withdrawal of the Romans, a position equivalent to
But his legendary fame
their Corbies Britanniae.

hardly to be explained except upon the supposition that the fabled exploits of a god or gods
is

perhaps of somewhat similar name have become

confounded with his own, as seems to have also hap-

pened in the case of Dietrich von Bern (Theodoric

the Goth) and the Gaulish Touti(5rix. An inscription has been found at Beaucroissant, in the valley
of the Is6re, to Mercurius Artaios, while the
^

Studies in the Arthurian Legend, p.

48

7.

name

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

appears elsewhere within the limits of
These names
ancient Gaul as that of a goddess
from
either
ol
two Celtic
been
derived
have
may
Artio

'

roots, ar,

meaning

to plough,'

which would sug-

gest a deity or deities of agriculture, or art,

signifying a bear, as an animal worshipped at

some remote period in the history of the Celts.

Probably we shall never know exactly Avhat
diverse local myths have been woven into the
story of Arthur, but they would doubtless be of
the kind usually attributed to those divine benefactors

known

be noted

'

as

Culture Heroes,' and

it

is

to

we have
and attributes are extremely

that, in the earliest accounts

of him, his character

like those of another culture hero, Gw3'dion son

of Don.

Like Gwydion, he suffered imprisonment at the

hands of his enemies. He was for three nights
'

in the Castle of

some structure

Oeth and Annoeth'

of

human

the

grue-

bones built by Mana-

of Llyr in Gower
and three nights
in the prison of (?) Wen Pendragon,^ and three

wyddan son

'

nights in the dark prison under the stone,' a

Triad tells us. Like Gwydion, too, he went pigstealing, but he was neither so lucky nor so
1

Professor

originally

Anwyl

suggests that this name may have been

i.e. Bran.
See p. 71.

Uthr Bendragon,

49

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

When he had designs
crafty as his predecessor.
March
son
of Meirchion (the
of
swine
the
upon
'

King Mark

'

romances) which Trystan

of the

herding, he could not get, says another

But in the end he sucTriad, even one pig.

was

An

ceeded wholly.

old

Welsh poem

tells

us of

^
Spoiling of Annwn (Preiddeu Annwn) and
his capture of the magic cauldron of its King,
'

his

'

though,

Bran

like

himself

when he went

to

Ireland, he brought back with him from his exat starting,

pedition only seven of the men who,

had been

'

thrice

enough

to

fill

Prydwen,' his

ship.

But, having accomplished this, he seems to

have had the other, and perhaps older, gods at
his feet.

LlCidd, according to Triads,

War

Knights, and

was one of

Arawn one

his

Three Chief

his

Three Chief Counselhng Knights.

story

of the wild

of the hunting

Trwyth, a quest in the

acquired the
not only by

'

course

of

In the

boar Twrch

of

which

Treasures of Britain,' he

is

he

served

Amaethon and Govannon, sons of

Don, but also by the same Manawyddan who had
been his gaoler and another whilom king in
This tale, like its
Hades, Gwyn son of Nudd.
similar in Gaelic myth, the Fate of the Children
'

'Book

of Taliesin,'

poem

xxx., Skene, vol.

50

i.

p. 256.

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

of Tuireann,'

referred to

is

a long one, and the reader is

Guest's Mabinogion for the full

Lady
which a good judge has acclaimed to be,
"
Arabian Nights,"
saving the finest tales of the

story,
'

the greatest romantic fairy tale the world has

The pursuit of wondrous pigs
ever known.' ^

have been an important feature of

Arthur's career.
Besides the boar Trwyth, he

seems

to

assembled his hosts to capture a sow called Henwen, which led him through the length of Wales.
Wherever she went she dropped the germs of

three

grains of wheat and

three bees, a grain of barley, a little pig, and a
grain of rye. But she left evils behind her as

wealth for Britain

well, a Avolf cub and an eaglet which caused

trouble afterwards, as well as a kitten which grew

the Palug Cat,' famous as one of the

Three Plagues of the Isle of Mona.' ^
Of what may have been historical elements in

up
'

to be

'

his story, the Triads also take notice.

how Arthur and Medrawt

We

learn

raided each other's

courts during the owner's absence, and that the

battle of Camlan was one of the Three Frivolous
'

Mr. Alfred Nutt, in

his notes to his edition (1902) of

Guest's Mabinogion.
"
This creature is also mentioned in an Arthurian
the twelfth century Black Book of Carmarthen.

51

Lady

poem

in

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

because during it the two
antagonists thrice shared their forces, and that
the usual Three alone escaped from it, though
Battles

of Britain,'

'

'

Arthur himself
tion,

added

is,

in spite of the triadic conven-

as a fourth.

So he vanishes, passing to Avilion (Avallon),

and the end of the divine age is also marked by
the similar departure of his associate Myrddin, or
Merlin, to an island beyond the sunset, accom-

panied by nine bards bearing with them those

wondrous talismans, the Thirteen Treasures.
Britain was

now ready

for

her Britons.

Land of Summer
a
name for the Brythonic Other World dwelt the
ancestors of the Cymr}^ ruled over by a divine
hero called Hu Gadarn (' the Mighty '), and the
In Gwlad yr Hav, the

'

'

time was ripe for their coming to our island.

Apparently we have a similar legend to
the story of the conquest of Ireland from the

Tuatha De Danann
there

is

by the Milesians, though

here no hint of fighting, it being, on

the contrary, stated in a Triad that Hu obtained

his dominion over Britain not by war and blood-

He instructed
shed, but by justice and peace.
his people in the art of agriculture, divided them
into federated tribes as a first step towards civil
government, and laid the foundations of literature
52

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAIN

and history by the

institution of bardism.

He

put a stop to disastrous floods by dragging out of

the lake where it concealed itself the dragon-like

monster which caused them, and, after the waters

had subsided, he was the first to draw on British
soil

a furrow with a plough.

called the first of the

'

Therefore he

Three National

is

Pillars of

the Isle of Britain,' the second being the Prydain

who gave her his name, while the third was the

mythical legislator Dyvnwal Moelmud, who reduced to a system the laws, customs, maxims, and
'

privileges appertaining to a country

53

and

nation.'

CHAPTER

VI

THE HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTER

In addition

to

the

myths

Danann, and the not

'

'

Tuatha De

of the

apocryphal stories of
kings, Ireland has evolved
less

her early Milesian

two heroic cycles. The completest, and in some
ways the most interesting, of these deals with the

palmy days of the then Kingdom of Ulster during

the reign of Conchobar (Conahar) Mac Nessa,

whom

the early annalists place at about the beginning of the Christian era. But, precise as this
statement sounds and vividly as the Champions
'

Red

of the

were

called,

tellers,

there

King Conchobar's braves

Branch,' as

are depicted for us by the storyis

probably

of fact in their legends.

genealogies and the

little, if

We may

any, foundation
discern in their

stories of their births the

clue to their real nature.

Their chief figures

draw descent from the Tuatha D6 Danann, and

are twice described in the oldest manuscripts as

54

HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTER

'

One may compare them with

terrestrial gods.'

the divinely descended heroes of the Greeks.

The

which make up the

sagas, or romances,

Ulster cycle are found mainly in three manuof the Dun Cow and the Book
scripts, the Book
of Leinster, both of

which date from the begin-

Yellow Book
ning of the twelfth century, and the
of Lecan, assigned to the end of the fourteenth.

The longest and most important of them is known

as the Tdin Bo Chuailgne (the 'Cattle Raid of
is the famous
Cooley ') the chief figure of which
Cuchulainn, or Cuchullin, the son of Conchobar's
sister Dechtir6 by Lug of the Tuatha De Danann.

indeed, fortissimus heros Scotthe real centre of the whole cycle. It

Cuchulainn,
toritm,

is

had actual
very doubtful whether he ever
His attributes and adventures are of
existence.

is

the type usually recorded

When

heroes.'

'solar

of Avhat are

in his

full

called

strength no

one could look him in the face without blinking.

The heat of his body melted snow and boiled
It

water.
sea.

was geis

('

taboo

')

to

him

to

behold the

The antagonists whom he conquers

are often

of
suspiciously like mythological personifications
the dark shades of night.

He

was

he was

first

still

called

Setanta, but

it

was while

quite a child that he changed his

55

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

name

to

Cu Ghulainn

('

Hound

of

Culann

')

as

the result of an exploit in which he killed the

watch-dog of the chief smith of Ulster, and after-

wards acted as

its

substitute until another could

be procured and trained.

Other stories of his youth

arms

at the age of seven,

tell

how he assumed

and slew three champions

who had set all the warriors of Ulster at defiance

how he travelled to Alba (Scotland) to learn the

skill in arms from Scathach, the WarriorWitch who gave her name to the Isle of Skye;

highest

how he

Emer (Avair)

in the

and how, by success in a

he gained the right to be

called

carried off his bride

teeth of a host
of terrible tests,

series

Head-Champion of Ulster.
But these isolated sagas

are only external to

the real core of the cycle, the Tain Bo Chuailgne.
This is the story of a war which the other four

kingdoms of Ireland Meath, Munster, Leinster

and Connaught made upon Ulster at the bidding
of Medb (Maive), the Amazon-Queen of the last-

named

province, to obtain possession of a magic

bull called

The Brown

of Cualgne.

Its interest

no promiscuous battles in which the deeds

an individual warrior are dAvarfed by those of
his compeers.
For the mythic raid was underlies in

of

taken at a time when

all

56

Conchobar's warriors

HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTER

were lying under a strange magic weakness which
incapacitated them from fighting.
Anthropologists

tend to see in this mysterious infirmity a

memory of the primitive custom of the

distorted

couvade, and mythologists the helplessness of

the gods of vegetation and agriculture during the
winter, while the storytellers attribute it to a

upon Ulster by the goddess Macha.

But when the land seemed most at its enemy's

curse once laid

mercy, the heroic Cuchulainn, who for some unexplained reason was not subject to the same
incapacity as his fellow-tribesmen, stood up to
defend it single-handed. For three months he

held the marches against

all

comers, fighting a

champion every da}^ and the story of the

Tcihi consists mainly of a long series of duels in
which exponents of every savage art of war or
fresh

witchcraft are sent against him,

feated in his turn.

Over

this

each

to be de-

tremendous struggle

hover the figures of the Tuatha De Danann.

Lug, Cuchulainn's divine father, comes to heal his
son's

wounds, and the

battle, is

moved

fierce

Morrigu, queen of

to offer so unrivalled a hero her

A short-lived pathos illumines the story in

the tale of his combat with his old friend and

love.

sworn companion, Ferdiad, who, drugged with

love and wine, had rashly pledged his word to
57

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

take

up the standing

After a three

challenge.

days' duel, during which the courtesies exchanged

betAveen the two combatants are not excelled in

any

tale of

mediaeval chivalry, Cuchulainn gives

the death-blow to the foe

When

who

he sees him at his

passionate lament.
sport until

'

It

was

Ferdiad came

is

feet,
all

the

still

his friend.

he bursts into

game and a
memory of this
a

day will be like a cloud hanging over me for ever.'

But the victory ended his perilous labours for the
;

men

of Ulster, at last shaking off their weakness,

came down and dispersed their enemies.

Other stories of the cycle tell of such episodes

as Cuchulainn's unwitting slaying of his only son
in single combat, an old Aryan motif which we
Teutonic and Persian myth, or his
to the Celtic Other World, and his love

find also
visit

in

adventure with Fand, the deserted wife of Man-

annan son of Ler until at last the mass of legends

which make up a complete story of the hero's
;

career are closed with the tragedy of his death

upon the plain of Muirthemn6.
It

was planned by Medb with the sons and

of the chiefs whom Cuchulainn had

relations

killed in battle,

and no stone was

left

unturned

to

compass his downfall. Three witches who had

been to Alba and Babylon to learn all the sorcery
58

HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTER

of the world deceive

draw him out alone

him with magic

into the

open

shows, and

he

is

tricked

into breaking his tahoo by eating the flesh of a

dog his name-sake, says the story, but perhaps

also

his

satirists

totem]

demand

his

favourite

Aveapons, threatening to lampoon his family if he

refuses and thus, stripped of material and super;

natural

aid,

he

is

attacked

by overwhelming

numbers.

But, though signs and portents announce his doom, there is no shadow of chang'

ing' in the hero's indomitable heart. Wounded

to the death, he binds himself with his belt to a
pillar-stone, so

that he

die standing; and,

his last breath, his

may

even after he has drawn

sword, falling from his grasp, chops off the hand

of the enemy who has come to take his head.

Out of the seventy-six stories of the Ulster

cycle which have come down to us, no less than
sixteen are personal to Cuchulainn.
But the other
heroes are not altogether forgotten, though their
lists are comparatively short.
Most of these tales

have been already translated, and, taken together,

they form a narrative which is almost epic in its
completeness and

interest.^

'
A list of the tales, extant and lost, of the Ulster Cycle will
be found as Appendix I. of Miss Eleanor Hull's GuchuUin Saga,

London, 1898.

59

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

Probably

its

growth was gradual, and spread

Some

over a considerable time.

too,

of the redactors,

have evidently had a hand in recasting the

pagan

myths

of

Ulster

We

Christian edification.

purposes of
are told with startling
for

the

how Cuchulainn,

his last

going to
inconsistency
the angels hymning in Heaven, confight, heard
fessed the true faith, and was cheered by the
'Tragical Death of
Dun Cow relates
the
Conchobar,' in the Book of
how that king died of wrath and sorrow at learncertainty of salvation.

The

Another story from

ing of the Passion of Christ.
the same source, entitled The Phantom Chariot,'
'

shows us Cuchulainn, conjured from the dead by

St. Patrick, testifying to the truth of Christianity

before an Irish king. But such interpolations do

not affect the real matter of the cycle, which
of the Celts of Ireland
presents us with a picture
at an age perhaps contemporary with Caesar's

invasion of her sister

isle of Britain.

60

CHAPTER

VII

THE FENIAN, OR OSSIANIC, SAGAS

The second of the two

Gaelic heroic cycles presents

to the first.
It depicts
contrasts
certain striking
a quite different stage of human culture; for,

while the Ulster stories deal with chariot-driving

chiefs ruling over settled communities from forti-

the Fenian sagas mirror, under a faint

the
lives of nomad hunters in primeval
disguise,
woods. The especial possession, not of any one
fied duns,

tribal
to the

community, but of the folk, it is common

two Goidelic countries, being as native to

Scotland as to Ireland.

Moreover,

it

has the

of
unique among early
tradition.
So
a
rooted
are
living
firmly
being
the memories of Finn and his heroes in the minds
literatures,

distinction,
still

of the Gaelic peasantry that there is a proverb to

the effect that if the Fenians found that they had

not been spoken of

from the dead.

for a day,

6i

they would

rise

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

It

may

be well here to remove a few possible

misconceptions concerning these sagas and their

The word

heroes.
is

'

Fenian

'

in popular parlance

applied to certain political agitators of recent

But those 'Fenians' merely assumed

their title from the tradition that the original
Fianna (Fena) were a band of patriots sworn to

notoriety.

With

the defence of Ireland.

second

title

of

'

Ossianic

'

regard, too, to the

which the romances and

poems which make up the

cycle bear,

it

must not

be taken that the Fenian hero Ossian was their

author, an idea perhaps suggested by the prosepoem of James MacPherson, which, though doubt-

founded upon genuine Gaelic material, was

almost certainly that writer's own composition.
less

Some

of the poetical pieces are, indeed, rightly or

wrongly attributed to Ossian, as some are to Finn

himself, but the bulk of the

poems and

all

the

prose tales are, like the sagas of the Ulster cycle,

by unknown authors. A few of them are found
in the earliest Irish manuscripts, but there has
been a continuous stream of literary treatment of

them, and they have also been handed down as

folk-tales

The

by

oral tradition.

cycle as a whole deals with the history

and

adventures of a band of warriors who are described

as having

formed a standing
62

force, in the

pay of

THE FENIAN OR OSSIANIC SAGAS

the

High Kings

of Tara, to protect Ireland, both

from internal trouble and foreign invasion. The

of their historical
early annalists were quite certain
as a body from
their
existence
and
dated
reality,
300

B.C. to

284

A.D.,

while even so late and sound

Eugene O'Curry gave his opinion

was as undoubtedly historical a
Finn
himself
that
a scholar as

character as Julius Caesar.

Modern
this view.

Celtic students, however, tend to reverse

The name Fionn

or

Finn, meaning

'white,' or 'fair,' appears elsewhere as that of a

His

mythical ancestor of the Gaels.

Cumhal

father's

name

{Coid), according to Professor Rhys, is

and the German Hir)i7nel

is inclined to equate
The
same
writer
(Heaven).
with
Fionn mac Cumhail
Gwyn ab NMd, a
White son of Sky who, we have seen, was a
identical with Camiilos

'

'

god of the Other World, and, afterwards,

king of the Welsh fairies.^ But there may have
been a historical nucleus of the Fenian cycle into
British

which myths of gods and heroes became incorporated.

This possible starting-point would show us a

roving band of picked soldiers, following the
chase in summer, quartered

on

^
Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 178, 179.
tions are contested.

63

the

towns in

But these

identifica-

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

winter, but always ready to march, at the bidding
of the High King of Ireland, to quell any dis-

turbance or to meet any foreign

But

all

foe.

For a time

at last their exactions

goes smoothly.
rouse the people against them, and their pride
affronts the king.
Dissensions leading to internecine

strife

break out

among

themselves, and,

taking advantage of these, king and people

common cause and destroy them.

make

In the romances, this seed of decay is sown

His father Cumhal
before the birth of Finn.
banishes

Morna.

GoU
GoU

{Gaul), head of the powerful clan of

goes into exile but returns, defeats

Cumhal, and disperses the clan of Baoisgne

But Cumhal's posthumous
(BasJcin), his tribe.

and

kills

son

is

feats,

called
'

brought up in secret, is trained to manly

and, as the reward of a deed of prowess, is

upon by the High King

ask only for

youth, and

my

tells his

to claim a boon.

lawful inheritance,' says the

name.

The king

insists

upon

Goll admitting Finn's rights, and so he becomes

leader of the Fenians.
But, in the end, the

smouldering enmity breaks out, and, after the

death of Goll, the rest of the clan of Morna go

High King of Ireland Cairbre, son of

the Cormac who had restored Finn to his heritage.
The disastrous battle of Gavra is fought, in which
over to the

64

THE FENIAN OR OSSIANIC SAGAS

Cairbr^ himself

falls,

while the Fenians are practi-

cally annihilated.

But attached

to this possibly historical

a mass of tales which

is

may

nucleus

well have once been

independent of it. Their actors are the principal

Fionn {Finn) himfigures of the Fenian chivalry

son Oisin (Ossian), and his grandson

Osgur (Oscar) his cousin Caoilte (ii^^f a), swiftestfooted of men, and his nephew Diarmait (Dermat),

self,

his

women

with the proud Goll and his

braggart brother Conan, leaders of the clan of
Morna. They consist of wonderful adventures,
the lover of

sometimes with invaders from abroad, but oftener

upon perilous seas and in faery lands forlorn
'

'

'

'

with wild beasts, giants, witches and wizards, and

De Danann themselves. The Fenians

the Tuatha

have the freedom of the sidhe, the palaces under

the fairy hills, and help this god or that against
his fellows.

Even Bodb Derg (Red Bove) a son

of the Dagda, gives his daughter to Finn

sends his son to enlist with the Fenians.

and

The

culmination of these exploits is related in the

tale called Caih Finntraighe^ (the Battle of
Ventry), in which Dair6 Donn, the High King of
the World, leads all his vassals against Ireland,
^

Translated by P^"ofessor

Kuno Meyer,

Oxoniensia, 1882.

65

in vol.

i.

of

Anecdota

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

and is defeated by the joint efforts of the Fenians
and the Tuatha De Danann,
Ossian takes, of course, a prominent part in the
stories

name.

which are

But he

is

so

much

associated Avith

might be called
which the heroic deeds of Finn and
told in the

his

especially connected with what

the 'post -Fenian ballads,' in
his

men

are

form of dialogues between Ossian and

They hinge upon the legend that

Ossian escaped the fate of the rest of his kin by
being taken to Tir nan Og, the 'Land of Youth,'

St. Patrick.

the Celtic Paradise

land of to-day

by

of old

and the

Celtic Fairy-

the fairy, or goddess,

Niamh

Here
(Neeave), daughter of Manannan mac Lir.
he enjoyed three hundred years of divine youth,
while time changed the face of the world outside.
In the end he longs to see his own country again,
and Niamh mounts him upon a magic horse,

warning him not

But
and

to

put foot upon earthly

soil.

his saddle-girth breaks, Ossian falls to earth,

a blind old man, stripped of the gifts

rises up,

of the gods.
The ballad

'

'

Dialogues recite the arguments

held between the saint and the hero. Saint

new creed and culture upon his

who answers him with passionate

Patrick presses the

unwilling guest,
laments for the days that are dead.

66

Patrick

tells

THE FENIAN OR OSSIANIC SAGAS

God and the Angels, Ossian retorts with tales
It is the clash of two
of Finn and the Fenians.
of

aspects of life, the heathen ideal of joy and strength,

and the Christian ideal of service and sacrifice.
story about Finn,' replies
Ossian to the saint's praises of the heaven of the

'I will tell

elect,

war.

you a

little

and relates some heroic exploit of chase or

Nor is he more ready to listen to Patrick's

exhortations to repent and Aveep over his pagan

I will weep my fill,' he answers, but not
past.
'

for

'

God, but because Finn and the Fenians are

no longer

alive.'

67

CHAPTER

VIII

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

But the Gaelic myths, vital as they are, have yet

caused no echo of themselves in the literatures
of the outside world.

This distinction has been

the legendary tales of the Britons. The

minstrels found the stories which they
heard from their Welsh confreres so much to

left for

Norman

and
from
and
court
camp
dominant race held sway.

their liking that they readil}^ adopted them,

spread them from camp

to court,

wherever their

to

Perhaps the finer qualities of Celtic romance made

especial appeal to that new fashion of chivalry
'

which

growing up under the fosterage

and romance by noble ladies. At any

was

of poetry

rate the Matiere

British gods

were

'

called,

cle

Bretagne, as the stories of the

and heroes, and especially of Arthur,

came

to

be the leading source of

The whole

poetic inspiration on the Continent.

vast Arthurian literature has

Celtic mythology.

68

its

origin in British

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

We

find the

names

of its chief characters,

and

Welsh

can trace the nucleus of their stories, in

outburst of
songs and tales older than the earliest
Arthurian romance in Europe. Arthur himself has,

we have

as

several

of

the

show

in a previous chapter,
attributes and adventures of

tried to

Gwydion son of Don, while the figures most closely

connected with his story bear striking resemblance to the characters which surround Gwydion
in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi,^ a result
'

'

probably due to the same type of myth having

been current in different localities and associated
with different names.
districts
in
different
Arianrod,

who

said to have

is

been the wife of

a little-known and perhaps superseded and half-

seems
forgotten Sky-god called Nwyvre (' Space '),
in
Arthur's
to be represented
story by Gwyar, the
consort of the Heaven-god Lludd, and from comassume
parison with later romance we may fairly
that

Gwyar was

also Arthur's sister.

and Medrawt, the good and

we

In Gwalchmai

evil brothers

born of

union,
probably be right in recognising similar characters to Arianrod's sons,

their

shall

the gods of light and darkness, Lieu (Llew) and

Dylan. This body of myth has passed down
^

See Rhys, Studies in

the,

Arthurian Legend, chap.

Historical and iJythical.'

69

'

i.

Arthur,

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

almost intact into the mediaeval Arthurian cycle.
The wife of King Lot (Lludd) is sister to Arthur
;

Lleu's

counterpart, Gwalchmai,^ appears as Sir

Gawaine, certain descriptions of whom in Malory's

Morte Darthur are hardly comprehensible except

as a misunderstood fragment of a mythology in

which he appeared as a
has scarcely
character, in

changed

at

becoming

'

solar hero

all,

Sir

'
;

either in

Medrawt

name

or

Mordred; while the

stately figure of

Math, ruler of the children of Don,

is
paralleled by the majestic Merlin, who watches
over, and even dares to rebuke, his protege, Arthur.

We

are

attempting

upon uncertain ground, however,

to discover in the

in

Arthurian cycle the

other personages of the Mabinogian stories. Prolessor Rhys, in his Studies in the Arthurian

Legend (1S91), has devoted great ingenuity and

learning to this task, but his identifications of
Pwyll, of Rhiannon, of Pryderi, of Arawn, of

Gwyn, and of Amaethon with characters

in the

mediaeval

romances, whatever may happen to

them in the future, cannot at present be considered as otherwise than hazardous.
The transformations of Bran seem

less

open

to

doubt.

In Welsh legend, Gwalchmai (the 'Hawk of May') has a

brother, Gwalchaved (the 'Hawk of Summer'), whose name
is the original of
Galahad.'
^

'

70

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

King Brandegore may probably be
resolved into Bran of Gower, and of Sir Brandiles
into Bran of Gwales (Gresholm Island) he is perhaps King Ban of Benwyk, and Bron, who brought
the Grail to Britain as Balan, he is brought into

The name

of

contact with Balin,

who seems

to

be the Gallo-

Uther Pendragon himself

may have been originally Bran's Wonderful
Head' (Uthr Ben) which lived for eighty-seven
from its body.
years after it had been severed
British Belenos; while

'

question as to other persurround Arthur both in the earlier

But there can be

sonages

and

who

little

later legends.

Myrddin
Gwalchaved as

as Merlin

March
Kai

Sir Galahad

as

as
King Mark
Sir Kay and Gwenhwy var as Guinevere have obviously been directly taken over from Welsh story.
;

But here we are confronted with a notable

King Arthur's
of
lover
and
the
Queen Guinevere,
peerless knight
that no trace can be found in earlier legend. He
exception.

is

It is of Sir Lancelot,

not heard of

till

the latter part of the twelfth

as a knight who was

when he appears

century,
stolen in infancy,

and brought up

by, a water- fairy

Du

Lac)} but thenceforward

(whence
in
he supersedes
popularity all the others of the
his title of

1
See Miss J. L. Weston's The Legend of Sir Lancelot
Lac.
London, 1901.

71

Du

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

Table Round.

In his role of the lover of the

Queen, he pushes his way

older traditions.

into,

According

and

shatters, the

to early story

it

was

equivalent of the Welsh

who stole Gwenhwyvar, and
Arthur himself who recaptured her. But in the
Morte Darthur, though Melwas, whose name has

Melwas, the Cornish

ab

Gwyn

become

'

Niidd,

Sir Meliagraunce,'

Queen Guinevere,

it

is

is still

the abductor of

Sir Lancelot

who appears

her deliverer.
Nor can Sir Mordred, or
Medrawt, another traditional rival of Arthur's,
hold his own against the new-comer.

as

Probably we shall never solve this mystery.

Some
is lost

literary or social fashion of

may have

It matters less, as

its

all

record

dictated Lancelot's prominence.

it is not the core and centre of

the Arthurian legend.

for

which

What

has given the cycle

enduring interest, as

testified by its attraction

and composer down to the
not the somewhat commonplace

author, artist,

present day, is
love of Lancelot and the Queen, but the mystical
quest of the Holy Grail, And here we can clearty
trace the direct evolution of the Arthurian legend
from the myths of the Celts.^
1

The

chief authorities for the study of the Grail legend in

myth are Profes.sor RhVs's Studies in the

its relation to Celtic

Arthurian Legend and Mr. Alfred Nutt's Studies on

of the Holy Orail.

72

the

Legend

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

Both
ence

is

in Gaelic

and British mythology, prominwhich has wondrous

given to a cauldron

talismanic virtues.

It

was one of the four chief

treasures brought by the Tuatha De Danann to

Ireland
Cuchulainn captured it from the god
;

Mider,
Isle

of

stories.

when he stormed

Man

and

it

stronghold in the
reappears in the Fenian
his

Its especial property in these

that of miraculous food-providing

the world,

we

all

myths

we

men

the

are told, could be fed from

Avas

it

in

and

on British ground as the

basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir. But certain other
such vessels of Brythonic myth were endowed
in this quality

find

it

with different, and less material, virtues. A magic

cauldron given by Bran son of Lljr to Matholwch,
the husband of his sister Branwen, would restore
the dead to life in her cauldron of Inspiration
and Science, the goddess Kerridwen brewed a
;

drink of prophecy while from the cauldron of

the giant Ogyrvan, the father of Gwenhwyvar, the
:

three Muses had been born.

In what

is

perhaps the latest of

all

these

varj''-

ing legends, the qualities of the previous cauldrons

have been brought together to form the trophy
Avhich Arthur, in
'

The Spoiling

the early

of

Welsh poem

called

Annwn,' (see p. 50) is represented

as having captured from the Other World
King.
73

xAIYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

'

Is it not the

'

What

is its

cauldron of the Chief of

fashion

'

Annwn ?

'

asks the bard Taliesin, and

he goes on to describe it as rimmed with pearls,

and gently warmed by the breath of nine maidens.
It will not cook the food of a coward or one for'

sworn,'

he continues, which i\llows us to assume

such vessels as the Dagda's cauldron or

that, like

the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir,

generously

for the

it

would provide
It was

brave and truthful.

kept in a square fortress surrounded by the sea,

and called by various names, such as the Revolving
Castle {Gapv Sidi), the Underworld (JJfern), the
Four-cornered Castle (Caer Pedryvmi), the Castle
of (?)Revelry {Caer

Vedwyd), the

(?)

Kingly Castle

{Caer Rigor), the Glass Castle {Caer Wydyr), and

the Castle of (?) Riches {Caer Golud). This stronghold, ruled over by Pwyll and Pryd^ri, is represented as spinning round with such velocity that
it was almost impossible to enter it, and was in
pitch-darkness save for a twilight made by the
lamp burning before its gate, but its inhabitants,

who were exempt from

old age

and

disease, led

lives of revelry, quaffing the

dently, as

may

bright wine. Evibe ascertained from comparison

with similar myths, it stood for the Other World,

as conceived by the Celts.
This cauldron

of

pagan
74

myth has

altered

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

strangely little in passing down through the

centuries to become the Holy Grail which had

been

filled

Blood.

by Joseph of Arimathea with

It is still

a mysterious king.
this

king

by

In Malory's Morte Darthur

called Pelles, a

is

Christ's

kept in a mysterious castle

name

strangely like
in other

Welsh Pwyll, and though

that of the

versions of the Grail story, taken perhaps from

variant British myths, the keeper of the m3^stic
vessel bears a ditferent

be one

name, he always seems to

Other World, whether

of the rulers of the

he be called Bron (Bran), or Peleur (?Pryderi), or

Goon (? Gwyn), or the Rich Fisher, in whom
Professor

Rhys recognises Gwyddneu Garanhir.^

It still retains in essence

the qualities of

cauldron of the Chief of Annwn.'

'

the

The savage

cooking- pot which would refuse to serve a coward

or perjurer with food, has been only refined, not
altered, in becoming the heavenly vessel which

could not be seen by sinners, while the older idea

is still retained in the account of how, when it
appeared, it filled the hall with sweet savours,
while every knight saw before him on the table
the food he loved best. Like its pagan protot3'pe,
it

cured wounds and sickness, and no one could

grow old while

1

in its presence.

Though,

Arthurian Legend, pp. 315-317.

75

too,

the

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

place in which

it

was kept

is

but vaguely pictured

Thomas Malory, the thirteenth century

by
Norman-French romance called the Seint Greal ^
Sir

preserves all the characteristics which most strike

us in Taliesin's poem. It is surrounded by a
it

great water;
Avind;

and

its

armour can
Avhy, of the

seven,

more

revolves

repel

men

their

shafts,

which explains

that accompanied Arthur,

none returned from Caer

The kingdom of heaven

and the violent take it by
'

spiritualised

swiftly than the

garrison shoot so stoutly that no

meaning

'

except

Sidi.'

sufFereth
'

force

violence,

this is the

of the Celtic myth,

and

in

this has lain the lasting inspiration of the story

which attracted Milton

so strongl}^ that

it

was

almost by chance that we did not have from him

a King Arthur instead of Paradise Lost.
In

own times

it has enchanted the

imagination of
while
Swinburne, Morris, and Matthew
Tennyson,
Arnold have also borne witness to the poetic

our

value of

a tradition

Britain as the

Veda

which

is

to India, or

as

national

to

her epic poems

to Greece.
^
Edited and translated by the Rev. Robert Williams, M. A.
London, 1876.

76

CHRONOLOGICAL SYLLABUS
Historical.

Arrival

Britain

in

of

the

earliest

Celts

(Goidels) about 1000-500 B.C.

Brythons and Belgae, coming
over during the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C., largely sup-

plant the Goidels Belgic settlers still crossing over from

Gaul in the time of Julius Caesar, who made his first invasion
55 B.C. Britain declared a Eoman province under Claudius

A.D.

43

Abandoned
Roman

forbidden to

under Honorius a.d. 410 Druidism

under Tiberius {reigned a.d.

citizens

14-37) and its complete suppression ordered by Claudius

The chief stronghold of the Druids
{reigned a.d. 41-54)
in Britain destroyed under Suetonius Paulinus, a.d. 61

Christianity, introduced under the Roman rule, makes gradual

headway Gildas, writing in the sixth century, describes
paganism as extinct in civilised Britain Era of St. Patrick

in Ireland, fifth century

St.

Columba

carries the gospel to

the Northern Picts, sixth century.

Traditional. Fictitious dates assigned by the Irish compilers of pseudo-annals for all the mythical eras and events

Possibly authentic may be the placing of the heroic age of

Ulster in the first century a.d. and the epoch of the Fenians
in the second

by Geoffrey

and third

of

British gods enrolled

Monmouth

or

made

as early kings
the founders of powerful

or saintly families by Welsh genealogists

The historic Arthur
may have lived in the fifth-sixth centuries.

Literary. The

sixth century a.d.

is

the traditional period

of the bards Myrddin, Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch Hen,

poems ascribed to whom are found in the Welsh mediaeval

77

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

MSS., while Irish legend asserts that the Tain Bo Ghuailgne
was first reduced to writing in the seventh Gradual accumulation of Irish and Welsh mythical sagas, including the Four
Branches of the Mabinogi, eighth-eleventh The Irish Book of
the Dun Cow and Book of Leinster and the Welsh Black

Book

of Carmarthen, compiled during the twelfth the Welsh

of Taliesin during the thirteenth and the
;

Books of Aneurin and

Book of Ballymote and the Yellow Book of Lecan and the

Welsh Red Book of Hergest during the fourteenth About 1 1 36

Irish

Geoffrey of Monmouth finished his Historia Britomim, and

during this century and the one following British mythical
and heroic legend was moulded into the Continental Arthurian

romances About 1470 Sir Thomas Malory composed his Morte

Darthur from French sources The working-up of Gaelic
traditional material ended probably in the middle of the

eighteenth century James MacPherson produced his pseudoOssianic epics,' 1760-63 In 1838-49 Lady C'harlotte Guest
published her Mahinogion, and from this date the renaissance
'

of Celtic study

and inspiration may be said

menced.

78

to

have com-

SELECTED BOOKS BEARING ON

CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
To

list
give in the space that can be spared any adequate
of books dealing Aviili the wide subject of Celtic Mythology
The reader interested in the matter
would be impossible.

can hardly do better than consult Nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, and 14

of the Pojmlar Studies in Mythology Romance and Folklore,
In these sixpenny booklets he Avill
puV)lished by Mr. Nutt.
not only scholarly introductions to the Gaelic Tuatha De
Danann, Cuchulainn and Ossianic cycles, the Welsh Mabinobut also bibUographical
gion, and the Arthurian legend,
appendices pointing out with sufficient fulness the chief works
Should he be content with a more superficial
to consult.
survey, he might obtain it from the present writer's The
Mythology of the British Islands, London, 1905, which aimed
find,

a popular manner, sketches of the different

and retellings of their principal stories, with a certain
amount of explanatory comment.
For the stories themselves, he may turn to Lady Gregory's
Gxichulain of Muirthemne, London, 1902, and Gods and
Fighting Men, London, 1904, which give in attractive
paraphrase all of the most important legends dealing with the
Red Branch of LTlster and with the Tuatha De Danann and
More exact translations of the Ulster romances
the Fenians.
will be found in Miss E. Hull's The Cuchullin Saga in
in Monsieur H. d'Arbois
Irish Literature, London, 1898
de Jubainville's L' Epopee Celtique en Irlande, Paris, 1892
and in Miss
(vol. V. of the Cours de Litterature Celtique ')

at

giving, in

cycles,

'

79

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

W.

L. Faraday's The Cattle Raid of Cualnge, London, 1904.

are best studied in the six volumes of the

The Fenian sagas

in
Ossianic Society, Dublin, 1854-61
H. O'G-rady's Silva Gadelica, London, 1892 and in
the Rev. J. G. Cinipbell's The Fians, London, 1891 (vol. iv.
of Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition ').
Lady Charlotte
Guest's Mahinogion can now be obtained in several cheap
editions, while Monsieur J. Loth's translation, Les Mahinogion, Paris, 1889, forms vols. iii. and iv. of the Cours de Littera-

Transactions of the

Mr.

S.

'

'

ture Celtique.'
Critical studies on the subject in h'indy form are as yet few.
may mention De Jubainville's Le Cycle Mythologique
Irlandais et la Mythologie Celtique, Paris, 1884 (vol. ii. of the

We

Cours '), translated by Mr. R. I. Rest as The Irish MythologiProfessor

Cycle and Celtic Mythology, Dublin, 1903
J. Rh^s's Lectures on the Origin and Oroivth of Religion as
Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom {The Hihbert Lectures for
1886), London, 3rd edit., 1898, with their sequel, Stiidies in the
Arthurian Legend, Oxford, 1891 and Mr. Alfred Nutt's The
'

cal

Voyage of Bran, son of Fehal, 2

vols.,

London, 1895-97.

The

current, research will be found in

the volumes of the Irish Texts
special publications, such as
results of

more

recent,

and

the Zeitschrift
Society, and the numbers of the Revue Celtique,
fur Celtische Philologie, and the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

at the

Edinburgh University Press

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