Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/267

Rh P. 99. I believe Dr. Pokorny is correct in holding that in the Mongan saga the same mythic being is father of both Mongan and his wife Dubh Lacha, in other words that Mongan, like Arthur and Siegmund, weds his sister.

P. 100. I accept the equivalence of Arthur's wife Gwen-hwyfar and Mongan's, Find-tigernd.

P. 101. The equation of Finn's hound Bran 'of the poison claw' with the venomous hound which Mongan's supernatural father bestowed upon the mortal king in exchange for his wife's favours is ingenious.

P. 101. I regard the explanations of the stories which pictured Mongan as a rebirth of Finn as plausible. The two heroes are originally and essentially one, but, when the variant form had been associated (a) with a third-century champion, Finn, and (b) with a sixth-century kinglet, Mongan, the nevertheless persistent identity had to be accounted for. The rebirth theme afforded an easy explanation.

P. 104. The birth story of Cuchulinn. Of the three variant forms Dr. Pokorny regards the incest one (in which the hero is son of Conchobar and his sister Dechtire) as the oldest. In the Voyage of Bran I allow the possibiUty of this; Dr. Pokorny's explanation of the form which makes Cuchulinn a reincarnation of Lug, swallowed by Dechtire, as being transferred from the hero's grandmother, Ness, to his mother, Dechtire, is ingenious and seems plausible. This would make Conchobar, not Cuchulinn, the hypostasis of Lug. Dr. Pokorny also hints that the third form, that in which Conchobar and his men come to Lug's palace, really involves the incest form.

I now come to the essentials of Dr. Pokorny's theory. Of the four Celtic sagas that of Cuchulinn is the oldest, and the only one in which the hero retains his original name and his bird-like nature. The name is explained,—not, as the Irish themselves explained it, as Cu-chulaind or Culann's Hound,—but as Cuculind or Cuckoo-dragon. As such it is equated with the Esthonian Kukkulind.

As practically all the traits upon which Dr. Pokorny relies appear in a more decided form in the Conchobar-Cuchulinn saga than in the other Celtic variants, I will confine myself