Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/163

 The Idea of Hades in Celtic Literature. 131

once quote) when the whole trend of a literature seems to bear a different interpretation, as it would be to contend that Lugh, who is essentially the Irish sun-god, the " gifted child " with " golden pipes," the possessor of all the arts and of all known science, the radiant one whose face enlightens the world, is a god of darkness and death, because before the battle of Moytura he is represented as hopping round the host " on one foot and with one eye closed " singing a martial chant, just like any dark, ill-constituted deity among the Fomorian giants, who are always represented as ill-shapen and grotesque. It was certainly very unorthodox of Lugh, and very upsetting to our fixed opinions as to what a sun-god ought to do ; but I do not think it warrants us in transforming him, with all the allusions in the literature on the other side, into a "dark divinity." Nor yet does the fact that he is often associated with ravens, and that in a medallion which appears to represent the genius of the town of Lugudunum or Lyons, which may possibly mean the " Fort " or " Town of Lugh," the youthful figure is attended by a raven.^ Yet on some such ground Professor Rhys contends that the Blessed Bran, son of Don, and brother of ManawySSan, whose pagan record was so bright that the British Christians made him the bringer of Christianity to Wales, and the first saint of their country, was a " dark divinity," because his name signifies a " crow " or " raven." ^ We are constantly being reminded that the

^M. W. Froehner, Les Musses de France (PI. XV. 2); and M. de Witte, art. " Le genie de la ville de Lyon" (Acad, des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres ; Comptes Kendus, p. 65, 1877).

^ Rhys, Arthtirian Legend, p, 256. Though the scall-crow or raven was usually connected with death and battlefields in Ireland, it is doubtful whether it had any such meaning in Gaul. In Strabo and in Northern mythology ravens are birds of prophecy and foresight. Odin has two ravens which sit on his shoulders and tell into his ears what they have heard in their flight through the world (A. Holtzman, Deutsche Mythologie, herausgegeben von A. Holder, 1874, pp. 47-54).