Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/62

 34 The European Sky -God.

belonging to the Gilla Backer {Avallach) would thus be St. Serf's well at Monzievaird in Perthshire, or St. Servan's well at Alva in Stirlingshire, or St. Shear's well at Dum- barton in Dumbartonshire, all of which are accounted miraculous.^ It is noteworthy, too, that at Culross it was a very ancient custom for the young men to go in procession through the streets carrying green boughs on July I, the feast of St. Serf The town cross (.? the descendant of a sacred tree) was decorated with garlands and ribbons, and the procession passed several times round it before disbanding to spend the day in amusements.^

The mention of green boughs suggests an objection that might be taken to the position here assigned to Diarmuid. If he was indeed the foster-child of Manannan, privileged to visit the Otherworld tree, ought he not, like Bran or Cormac or Mael-Duin, to bear a branch in token of the same .■' Now we read in The Piwsiiit of Diarmuid and Grainne"^ that Diarmuid had with him ' the Crann buidhe of Manannan,' which he used as a magic spear. But crann buidhe means literally the ' yellow branch,' the word crann denoting a ' tree ' or ' branch.' It may, I think, be inferred that, just as the shaft of Duach's spear was formed of the yew of Ross,* so the shaft of Diarmuid's spear was formed of Manannan's tree.

But it is time to turn from these Ossianic myths and enquire whether they, like the Ultonian myths, can be paralleled from the Arthurian cycle. Diarmuid fighting Searbhan beneath the quicken-tree of Dubhros, or attacking the Knight of the Fountain that belonged to the Gilla

^J. R. Walker in Proceedings of the Society oj Antiquaries of Scotland Edinburgh 1883 v. 201, Dom Michael Barrett A Calendar of Scottish Saints Fort- Augustus 1904 p. 96.

2 Dom Michael Barrett ib. p. 96 f.

>* Traiisactions of the Ossianic Society for iS^S i"- 87, cp. ib. 91 and 175 the Ga buidhe, or ' Yellow shaft.'

^ Folk-lore xvii. 69.