Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/246

 236 The Black Pig of Kiltrustan

by Meave's hounds and killed in various parts of Con- naught.^ It is to be noted that nearly all these enchanted swine were transformed human beings ; that they were connected with the earliest race of deified beings, Manannan, Lugh, Lir and Angus ; and that they were usually slain in Connaught. We recall also the pigs of Manannan in the Irish Elysium, which could never be wholly consumed, and which preserved those who partook of them from decay or death ; ^ the " Pig of Truth," which could not be cooked if any falsehood were uttered while it was in the pot ; and the importance attached to the ceremonial division of the boar at a feast, as in the Story oj Mac Datho's Pig and Hound.

In the late Celtic period the figure of a boar was used as a decoration, and small figures of the animal in bronze have been found in Ireland ; one is preserved in the National Museum, Dublin.^ It was represented on coins in every part of Gaul, as well as on those struck by the cognate races of Britain, Spain, lUyria, and Galatia.*

The connection between magic swine and prophecies is a very old one. In Welsh literature the ancient poems of the Avallenau or " Apple-tree poems " and their later imitations, the Hoianau,=/if?mw or oiayi "to listen," so called from the opening words of each stanza, preserve this idea. The latter poems are also called Porchellanau or " Piglings." Both are found in the Black Book of Caermarthen, and both, among other predictions, foretell the downfall of the Saxon and the triumph of the Cymry. In the Avallenau such lines as these occur :

'"The Metrical Dindshenchas," ed. by Edward Gwynn, Todd Lectures, rol. X. part iii. pp. 438, 404, 150, 386.

It is probably a reminiscence of an earlier ceremonial or sacrificial boar.
 * With this should be compared the " Pig of Preservation " mentioned above.

' See also Horae Ferales, pi. xvi. p. 190, for boar on bronze shield found in the R. Withern.


 * Cf. article by M. de la Saussaye, Rev. Numismatique, 1840, p. 91.