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 recognized centre for irregular pagan marriages of short duration.

4.

We can only very briefly abstract all that shows what other rites were celebrated at this great Celtic and pre-Celtic sanctuary. As we saw, the real centre of the ceremonies is the god Lug and his marriage with Eriu. The allegation that children were sacrificed at Tailltiu, it is true, rests on a mistranslation of a corrupt text, “burning of the first fruits, or chief descendants,” being really “burnings of empty steadings.” Prof. Gwynn renders it “The three havocs which Patrick forbade in it (Tailltiu), stealing of oxen in the yoke, killing of cows in milk, burning of empty steadings”—some add “not a primitive tradition” or “round a noble family.” Nevertheless, in face of the exuberance of human sacrifice among the Celts of Gaul and Britain and the cases of it in Ireland —the man sacrificed at Emania; the children at Tara and before the pillar of Crom (or Cenn) Cruach (perhaps a Christian nickname for Lug) and the substituted killing of swine at the foundation of Dun Fidne, about A.D. 580, not to speak of the children given to be devoured by the mountain goddess Echtge, almost necessitates a belief that Tailltiu was defiled by these horrible rites. Such Irish sacrifices, denied so angrily by Dr. Joyce and other advocates in Ireland, and also the allegations that there was