Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/263

Rh everything save the Lapdog. Cairbre Musc had a wonderful skene, around the haft whereof was adornment of silver and gold. It was a precious jewel. Cairbre put much grease about it and rubbed fat meat to its haft, and afterwards left it before the lapdog. The lapdog began and continued to gnaw the haft till morning, and hurt the knife, so that it was not beautiful. On the morrow Cairbre made great complaint of this, and was sorry for it, and demanded justice for it of his friend. 'That is fair, indeed: I will pay for the trespass,' said he. 'I will not take aught,' says Cairbre, 'save what is in the law of Britain, namely, every animal for his crime.' The lapdog was therefore given to Cairbre, and the name, i.e. Mug-éime [slave of a haft] clung to it, from mug 'a slave' [and éim 'a haft'], because it was given on account of the skene. The lapdog (being a bitch) was then with young. Ailill Flann the Little was then king over Munster, and Cormac, grandson of Conn, at Tara; and the three took to wrangling, and to demand and contend for the lapdog; and the way in which the matter was settled between the three of them was this, that the dog should abide for a certain time in the house of each. The dog afterwards littered, and each of them took a pup of her litter, and in this wise descends every lapdog in Ireland still." The Irish substitution, for such I take it to be, of lapdog for dog, and Britain for the Síd or Fairy-land, in this tale, go both to show that the original signification of the story had been forgotten; but other traces of the Goidel's indebtedness to the terrene powers are to be found in the story of Eehaid Airem, or Eochy the Ploughman, which cannot, however, be gone into at this point.