Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/447

Rh the Lugoves of Gaulish religion consisted of Lugus and his father, whatever the name may have been which the latter bore in that connection.

Reference has more than once been made in this course to the Ultonian hero Cúchulainn; it is now time to speak of him more in detail. Irish literature preserves traces of a belief in the re-appearance of an ancestor in the person of a descendant: in other words, the same person or soul might be expected to appear successively in different bodies; and in no case could this seem more natural than in that of the Sun-god who constantly descends to the world of the dead and as often emerges from it. Now Lug seldom appears in the Ultonian sagas; but in one of them he places himself more than once on the way to be re-born, and more than once the mother is Dechtere sister to king Conchobar. It is hardly necessary to say that the accounts of Cúchulainn's birth are very confused and inconsistent. This is due partly to his being treated as the son of Lug in the ordinary way of nature, when he is called Lug's lad and his special nurseling; and partly to his being regarded as Lug himself re-appearing in the flesh after several more or less unsuccessful and obscure incarnations. One of these made the nobles of Ulster look with awkward suspicion at Conchobar, as the unmarried Dechtere acted as her brother's charioteer and