Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/163

Rh as Cronus is disinherited by his youngest son Zeus, so is the Dagda by his Young Son the Mac Óc, excepting that it is brought about in Irish mythology, not by war, but by craft. The story is recorded that the Dagda, as king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, allotted them their respective habitations, but that in so doing he happened to forget the Mac Óc, who presently called on his father to claim his inheritance. The Dagda replied that he had none left, at which his son naturally grumbled, and asked to be allowed to stay at the Dagda's palace till night. The Dagda assented; but at the end of the allotted time he told his son to go. The son replied that he had been granted day and night, which was the sum of all existence. So he stayed on in the palace of his father, who had to move out to seek a home elsewhere. This scene doubtless belonged originally to Irish mythology before any Celts had settled in Ireland, but the story came to be localized in due time in that country, thus associating the name of the Mac Óc with one of the abodes of the happy departed.

How this was brought about may be gathered from the following facts. The Tuatha Dé Danann were regarded, nobody knows how early, as one of the races inhabiting Erinn, so that upon the arrival of the Sons of Mile, or the mythic race from which most of the human dwellers in the island are regarded as derived, a great battle took