Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/176

 164 The European Sky -God.

(2) son of Dechtire and an unnamed Lord of Faery,

so described as to make his identification with Lug certain :

(3) son of Dechtire and Conchobar.

Since Conchobar was one of those kings who bore a silver wand with golden apples on it/ i.e. who posed as the sun-god, — a consideration which explains why he was called ' a terrestrial god ' and his sister Dechtire ' a god- dess ' ^ — it matters little whether Cuchulain was the son of Lug or of Conchobar. The important thing is that he was thought to be Lug re-incarnate. And this re-incar- nation tended to repeat itself; for, as Mr. Nutt points out,^ the warriors of Ulster, anxious that Cuchulain's prowess should be perpetuated, urged him to wed on the ground ' that his re-birth would be of himself If Lug, then, was thus in the habit of re-appearing as a mortal champion, we need not shrink from concluding that the kings of Tara, exercising as they did the sun- god's rights, were themselves but re-imbodiments of the same luminous deity. Well was Tara called Lughadh Lis or Lis Lughach,* a name implying that its real owner was Lug. And well did Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056 A.D., begin his poem on the succession of the Tara kings with the line :

' The Kings of Tara who were animated by fire. ' ^

It is not a little suggestive that, when the Milesians

^ Supra p. 160.

^ Rhys Hibbert Lectures p. 144 cites the Book of the Dun \o\b, where Conchobar is described as a dia talmaide, or ' terrestrial god,' of the Ultonians of his time, and the Book of Leinsier I2^b, where Cuchulain is described as me dea dechtiri, ' of (the) son of (the) goddess Dechtire.'

^ Nutt Voyage of Bran ii, 96 f.

'*0'Curry Manuscript Materials p. 479.

^ Id. ib, pp. 389 f., 622. When Dathi, king of Erin and of Albain, was killed in 428 a.d. by a flash of lightning, his men put a lighted sponge into his mouth in order to make it appear that the fire was nothing but his breath (J. O'Donovan The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy- Fiachrach Dublin 1844 p. 21 ff.).