Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/400

384 the sheet in which he had been wrapped, invites comparison with the description of the infant Apollo, whom the goddesses present bathed in a crystal stream of water as soon as he leaped to life. They next proceeded to wrap him in a white robe, fine and newly wrought, and to place a golden band round his body, while one of their number touched his lips with nectar and ambrosia. No sooner had he tasted of the food of the immortals, than he burst the bonds of his swaddling clothes and walked forth in the fulness of his divinity, while Delos rejoiced and bloomed at his birth. The same sort of precocious growth as in the case of Llew is ascribed to other Celtic personifications of the Sun-god, but no less, be it noticed, to personifications of darkness.

One might probably regard the account (p. 240) of Llew's death on the side of his bath as referring originally to the sun setting in the sea; but there is no occasion to lay great stress on that, as we have what seems to be better evidence of the nature myth in the marriage of Blodeueᵭ: to Llew. She was not of the race of men, but created from flowers by Gwydion, with the aid of the master magician Mâth: she was as distinguished for her beauty as her classical counterpart, rosy-fingered Eos. The dawn represents the transition from the darkness of night to the light of day, so that, pictured by the primitive mind as a lovely damsel, she would be regarded as dividing her love between the Sun-god and the princes of darkness in the mythological sense of the term. This is what we find in the story of Blodeueᵭ: Llew goes