Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/312

Rh 300 CELTIC LITERATURE the heavenly fort of the Acs Side, as Asgard was of the JSsir. The Alna Sidhe, women of the Sidk, or in the singular Sean Sidhe (pronounced Banshee) of modern fairy mythology, represent the goddesses of the Aes Side. As in other mythologies, the same deity was endowed with different attributes and received different appellatives. The mediaeval genealogists who looked upon the Tuatha DC Danann as a real human race, thought it necessary to provide a place in the genealogies which they invented for every different name, and so added confusion to what was before obscure enough. As some of those deities occupy a place in Celtic romance, we shall venture to say a few words about some of them, though at the risk of making one out of several distinct deities, and of making several out of one. In a subject of inquiry which has been hitherto almost entirely uncultivated, and all but unknown, this is nearly inevitable ; but a few mistakes, should we make them, will not seri ously interfere with the object we have in view. One of the chief deities of the Irish pantheon was Ogma, surnamed Griainaincch, &quot;of the sun-like face,&quot; son of Eladan, or Elathan, that is, of knowledge. Ogma had other appellatives, the most important being Dagda, Delbaith Dana or Tuirenn Bicrenn, and Cermait &quot;of the honey-mouth,&quot; though the last sometimes appears as the sou of the Dagda. Under the last appellative his wife is Ana, the mother of the gods, or the Mor Rlgu, or M6r Rigan also known by the appella tives of Badb and Mocha. As the latter, she was the mother of Aed (fire), who is probably the Aed Mawr of Welsh legends, father of Prydain, the first legendary king of Britain, whence the name Ynys Prydain, or the Island of Prydain, and the real origin of the mythi cal Hit, of the mediaeval bards. The Dagda had another son, whose name was Aengus, or the Mac Og, a celebrated personage of early Irish legend, and an equally celebrated daughter, Brigit, the god dess of wisdom and judgment. Under the appellative of Delbaith Dana or Tuirenn Bicrenn (who is represented as the son of Ogma, and not that personage himself), Ogma has two wives, Ana, under that name, and of her other two appellatives, and Emmas, who is s represented as the mother of the first-named wife ; Ana, under her various names, is therefore at once the daughter and wife of Del baith. Ana s sons by Delbaith are Brian, Ittchair, and lucharba, who are called the gods of Ana, and hence she is called the mother of the gods. They are the same as the sons of Cermait &quot; of the honey- mouth,&quot; already mentioned as being an appellative of Ogma himself, or his son under that of the Dagda. These sons are Seit/toir or Mac Cuill, a sea-god, Ttithoir or Mac Cccht, the ruler of the sky and heavenly bodies, to whom the plough was sacred, and Ccithoir or Mac Greine (son of the earth), the god of the earth. Their mother was the Etain of Irish legend ; and as she was the wife of Ogma under that name, it proves that Cermait &quot;of the honey- mouth &quot; was only an appellative for the latter, and not his son, under his appellative the Dagda. The wives of the three gods above mentioned were Banba, Folia, and Eire, names under which Ire land was pereonified. Elcmair was either a son of Ogma as Delbaith, or more probably his brother, and was the same as Tadc Mor, Orbscn, and Lr (the sea). Under the last-named appellative he was god of the sea, and is especially interesting, for in him we have the original of Shakespeare s King Lear, and the father of Manandan of Irish and Welsh romance. It is probable that Ler was the same as Mac Cuill, the sea-god above mentioned. There was also a god of war, jS cit (battle), whose son Escrg (slaughter) was the father of Diancecht Dia na-cecht), the god of the powers (of healing), of Goibniu, the smith, and of other impersonations of the Arts. The god of heal ing had a son Cian or Conn (valour), who is also known under other appellatives, such as Scalbalb, and is sometimes confounded with his wife Ethlenn or Ethne (skill). His daughters were Airmcd, the goddess of physic, and Etain, the wife of Ogma, above mentioned. Ethlenn s son Lug is a prominent figure in Celtic romance, and was known also by the names of Lug Ldmfada, or Lug &quot;the long- armed,&quot; En, and the Sab Ildanach, or pillar of many arts. Abhcan, the grandson of Ethlenn and Conn, was god of music. Conn, under his appellative of Scalbalb, is also made one of the sons of Echaid Garb, son of Breas (power), personages who fill prominent parts in Irish story. Among the other sons of Echaid we must mention Badb Derg, the chief of the Side of Munster, and Uillind Faebar Derg, who kills Manandan Mac Lir in a legend. The deities related to Conn or Cian, husband of Ethlenn, and his son Lug are called the Aes Trebair, while those related to the Dagda or Ogma are the Aes Side of story. The two tribes appear in contention or warfare, but, nevertheless, occasionally associated and intermarry, like the Teutonic Vanir and dlsir ; thus Etain, the daughter of the god of healing, was the wife of the Dagda, and Cermait &quot;of the honey- mouth ;&quot; and Fca and Nemand, the goddess of war, the wives of Neit or Neid, the god of war, were the daughters of Elcmair (great evil), known also as Lfr. Before leaving the subject of the early races of Ireland The we shall say a few words upon a people incidentally men- tioned above, tb.3 Fomorians. In Irish legends they appear as sea-rovers who only occasionally visited the coasts, pillaged and oppressed the people by levying tribute, or rather holding the inhabitants to ransom. One of the principal battles of Irish legendary history is supposed to have been fought between the Tuatha, De Danann and the Fomorians. Even did we not know, as in this instance we do, that one of the contending races was mythical, we should naturally be inclined to regard such ethnic quarrels as imaginary, unless where we had unquestionable physical evidence of the occurrence of the struggle. On the other hand, in the case of mythologies which reach us, not as the recorded living belief of a people, but as the traditions of a prehistoric time, clothing real personages, who lived just at the close of that period, in what we might call the twilight of the historic period, and around whom as lay figures gather and assume definite shape fragments of old beliefs, we should always expect to find some nucleus of fact in legends relating to such ethnic wars. That the Fomorian and Tuatha De Danann contests are mythological there can be no doubt, but the kernel of fact around which the myths have gathered is the contests of the Irish and the Romans ; in other words we believe the Fomoriaus to have been the Romans. The latter never made any settlements in Ireland, but there can be no doubt that they kept a few galleys in the western ports of Britain to pro tect the country from the hostile incursions of the Irish or Scots, and that they often chased these into Irish ports, and forced them to pay ransom. The accounts of the Fomorians in Irish story are just in accordance with this view, which can be supported by other evidence, into which, however, we cannot enter here. The Welsh or Cymric ethnic traditions are not so ela- Welsh borate as the Irish, nor do they in their present form bear the ethnic same appearance of antiquity about them. According to the Triads, a peculiar kind of literature to which we shall return hereafter, four classes of tribes entered Britain the social, the refuge-seeking, the invading, and the treacherous tribes. The social tribes, of which there must have been three to make a triad, were the Cymry, the Lloegrwys, and the Brython, who were all of the same race and closely related. The Cymry like the Irish Firbolgs came from the summer land called Defroloni or Greece, or to speak as precisely as the Triads, from &quot; where is now Constanti nople, by way of the Hazy Sea,&quot; or German Ocean. The Lloegrwys, or Loegrians, came from the land of Gwasgwyn, not Gascony, however, but the country of the Yeneti, about the mouth of the Loire, between whom and the Britons there appears to have been much intercourse in the time of Cajsar. The Brython or Britons came from Llydau&amp;gt;, that is Armorica, or rather that part of France which lies between the Seine and the English Channel, and which, therefore, included Normandy as well as Brittany. The refuge-seeking tribes were the Celyddon in y Gogled, the Gwyddel in Alba, and the men of Galedin. Y Gogled was apparently a general term among early Welsh writers for all the country between the Ribble and the Clyde inhabited by Britons ; but it probably had a more restricted meaning, of which we shall speak presently. The Celyddon can hardly be other, at least in name, than the Caledonians, and w r ere probably a Pictish tribe which. had settled in the great forest district amidst the British people of the Scotch Lowlands. The Gwyddel of Alba, were the Picts, and as the name Gwyddel implies, they were Gaelic. Gwyddel is the Welsh form of the old Irish Goidil, or in its modified later form Gaeidhil, or phoneti cally Gael. The men of Galedin, the present Galloway (Wigtown and Kirkcudbright), were part of the tribe