Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/347

 Reviews. 329

should bear him a son. That son was Conaire, whose mortal descent and immortal origin alike fitted him for the position of supreme King of Erin.

Now on the night before Conaire's mother went to Eterscel, an Immortal in the guise of a bird had visited her, and he had laid upon her the injunction that the boy whom she would bear must never kill birds, because he himself would be of bird descent.^ This passage, as the editor remarks, indicates the existence in Ireland of totems, and of the rule that the person to whom the totem belongs must not kill the totem-animal. It was the beginning of Conaire's ill-luck that on his way to Tara, when he himself was as yet ignorant of the totem-law under which he was bound, he should have slain birds. As in the story of the " Birth of Cuchulainn," and again of " The Sick-bed of Cuchulainn," great white speckled birds of unusual size and colour and beauty fly before him. He was going northward on his way to Tara from the plain of the Liffey, south of Dublin, when the birds appeared. Unable to strike them with his spear, he pursues them to the sea-side and lets fly at them with his sling. The birds quit their birdskins and turn on him with spears and swords. One of them protects him, and addresses him, saying, " I am Nemglan, king of thy father's birds. It hath been forbidden thee to cast at birds, for there is no one here who should not be dear to thee because of his father and mother." " Till to-day," says Conaire, " I knew not this." Then Nemglan directs him to go to Tara naked, with the stone and sling in his hand, as the soothsayer was at that very moment seeing in his dream, when he should be chosen King of Tara. On the night of his election solemn tabus are bound upon him. It was he himself who uttered them as he had been taught by the man of the wave. " Thy reign," Nemglan had said, " will be subject to a restriction, but the bird-reign will be noble. And this is thy restriction or thy ges {i.e. tabu). Thou shalt not go right-hand-wise round Tara and left-hand-wise round Bregia (the plain of Meath). The evil beasts of Cerna must not be hunted by thee.^ And thou

' In like manner Cuchulainn, "the Hound" (as his name signifies), was forbidden under any circumstances to taste the flesh of a dog. The endeavour of the two crones to persuade him to do so prefigured his end.

- These seem in the sequel to have been beasts set upon his track by the elves.