Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/451

Rh her and Arianrhod; for, besides her wish to pass for a maiden as already mentioned, she had been her brother's charioteer, a circumstance in which we have the Irish equivalent of Arianrhod's name, which meant her of the Silver Wheel, and of Woden's leman Gefjon of the diúp roᵭul or deeply ploughing wheel, mentioned in a previous lecture (p. 284).

Lug re-born is best known as Cúchulainn, and the place the latter occupies in Irish legend justifies our devoting some of our space to him: he has the additional attraction that what is said of him may, in some instances, be regarded as said of Lug, who has already occupied our attention. Cúchulainn, then, is the sun, but the sun as a person, and as a person about whom a mass of stories have gathered, some of which probably never had any reference to the sun. So it is in vain to search for a solar key to all the literature about him: sometimes he is merely an exaggerated warrior and a distorted man; sometimes his solar nature beams forth unmistakably between the somewhat unwieldy attributes with which he has been invested with utter disregard to consistency or the general effect. There is probably nothing usually considered essential to a solar myth which could not be found in the various stories about Cúchulainn, as may be seen from the following things collected at random from among them.

After the curious accounts relative to his birth, the