Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/189

Rh that dragon that will come in the festival of St. John, near the end of the world, in the reign of Flann Cinaidh. And it is of it and out of it shall grow the Fiery Bolt which will kill three-fourths of the people of the world, men and women, boys and girls, and cattle, as far as the Mediterranean Sea eastwards. And it is on that account it is called the Dragon-Mouth Lake."

How closely the story of Aengus and Caer, which in some respects recalls that of Leda and the Swan, corresponds to the Welsh Dream, I leave you to judge; further, the Irish prophecy reminds one to a certain extent of the event termed in Norse literature, the Doom of the Powers; but the reference to the Dragon should be examined in the light of the conjecture that the Welsh Elen's northern stronghold occupied the site of Dinas Emrys, where Llûᵭ in a previous age had imprisoned the dragons that disturbed the peace of his dominions. Welsh story lays it to Vortigern's charge as one of his great crimes that he disturbed them, whereby he brought calamity on his unfortunate country, which was destined to be free from oppression and safe against the sword of the foreigner so long as the dragons continued securely encisted in the subterranean lake in the fastness of Snowdon. Lastly, Caer's 150 companions with their silver chains supply an explanation of the name Elen Lüyᵭawg, that is Elen of the Host: her maiden attendants were her host, and it becomes also clear why her expedition in company with her husband is spoken of as the departure of one of the three Silver Hosts of the Isle of Britain; for the silver was not of the common terrestrial kind, but the ancient metal of a Celtic myth. However, this is no answer to the further question which