Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/391

Rh At any rate his name looks like evidence of the two treatments of the nine-night week; for the nine hostages serving as Niall's distinction possibly referred to the nine nights of the ancient week, while they may be supposed also represented in the single person of Niall's son Maine.

Enough has now been said to suggest that the parallel here lies between Woden's ring and the gold brooch, torque or chain of Maine, and the question then arises, what Maine himself was as a mythological being. It has already been shown that his name was associated with darkness and night. Let us now see what fresh light can be thrown on his character by a further study of his name. To begin, the word Maine, Mane or Mani, is bodily identical with the Menyw of Welsh literature. The person so called belonged to Arthur's court, but his character is in no wise thereby defined, as it is one of the peculiarities of Arthur that he draws his men from all the Brythonic cycles of mythology; but Menyw even in Arthur's service preserved a character and rôle corresponding closely to that which might be ascribed to the Irish Maine as a personification of darkness and night. Thus we read that a party of Arthur's men starting on a dangerous quest were ordered by him to be accompanied by Menyw, in order that, in case they came to a heathen land, Menyw might cast glamour and magic over his companions, so that they might be seen of nobody while they saw everybody. Menyw is called the son of Teirgwaeᵭ, a feminine compound meaning Her of the Three Shouts, in which we have a reference to the triple division of the