Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/452

 436 The European Sky-God,

divine king. If we may venture to regard Derg Corra as such, he will provide a parallel to the rex Nemorensis, inasmuch as the former, like the latter,^ was a run-away slave.

Another run-away, though no slave, was Diarmuid, whose father, according to one account was Core,^ accord- ing to another Donn.^ It must be premised that Finn had wooed and won as his bride Grainne, daughter of King Cormac. The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne ^ states that Oisin and Diorruing were sent by Finn to Tara that they might ask Cormac for the hand of his daughter, and that Grainne, who had refused all other suitors, at once gave her consent. Another version ^ has it that Finn chose Grainne as his wife because she out- stripped all other women in a race up a certain high hill in Munster thenceforward called Slienanion, i.e. Sliabh na Bhan Fionn, the ' Hill of the Fair Women.' Or again, it was because she proved herself the wisest of women by answering all his hard questions.^ Yet another form of the legend '^ says that, when Finn went to Grainne, she, wishing to escape him, demanded as a bridal-gift a couple of every wild animal that was in Ireland, to be brought in one drove until they were on the rampart of Tara, — a task that Cailte performed on

and endured, among other metamorphoses, one hundred years as a stag (J. Bon wick Irish- Druids and Old h'ish Religions London 1894 p. 53 . without citing sources).

^Serv. in Verg. Aen. 6. 136. ^ Rhys Hibbert Lectures p. 505 n. I.

35. H. O'Grady Silva Gadelica ii. 179.

Lady Gregory Gods and Fighting Men p. 343 f., P. W. Joyce Old Celtic Romances p. 274 ff.
 * Transactions of the Ossianic Society for iSj^ Dublin 1857 iii. 41 fif.,

^ P. Kennedy Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts p. 223.

^ J. F. Campbell Popular Tales of the West Highlands iii. 36 ff.

''Book of Lecan p. 181 a, 2, published by Prof. K. Meyer in the Zeit- schrift fiir celtische Philologie 1897 i. 458 ff.