Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/80

 JO The Europeaji Sky -God.

had a shield made for him by Eohy the druid out of the same tree.^ There is extant also an Irish narrative, which tells how eager the king of Brefney was to secure the famous shield : it was known as Duv-Gilla (' the Black Attendant'), and the possession of it conferred victory in war, since before it all became as feeble as old women.^ A similar belief may underlie the words in which, according to the Fate of tJie Cliildren of Tuirenn^ Brian praised the magic spear of the king of Persia —

It is called King without opposition. May that splendid shaft drive on Yon crowd into their wounds of death.'
 * A yew-tree, the finest of the wood,

This spear was destined to play an important part in Irish tradition, being known successively as the Luin CheltcJiair, that is the * Spear of Celtchair,' a champion of Ulster in the time of king Concobar mac Nessa, as the Crimall, or ' Blood-spotted ' Spear, of king Cormac mac Airt, and as the Gai Buaiftieach, or 'Venomed Spear' of Aengus, the champion who with it put out king Cormac's eye.*

Lastly, bile means ' progenitor ' — which brings us round to our starting point once more. I have but a word to add. With Bile the forefather of the Gaels and Beli the forefather of the Britons should be compared the names Bile, Bili, and Beli, which occur repeatedly in the lists of the early Pictish kings.^

We are left, then, face to face with the following

1 Transactions of the Ossianic Society for i8j7 Dublin i860 v. 153, 258 ff.

2/(5. V. 2ff.

^Squire Mythology of the British Islands p. loi. Lady Gregory Gods and Fighting Men p. 41 renders : ' A yew, the most beautiful of the wood, it is called a king, it is not bulky. May the spear drive on the whole crowd to their wounds of death.'

^See for details O'Curry Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish ii.

325 ff-

^ Skene Chronicles of the Picts and Scots pp. xcv, cxxii, 15, 74, 123, 134,

145. 355-