Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/457

Rh extreme cases he used with the same effect a barbed weapon called the gái bolga, which he brought to bear on his foe from below or from above. He rode forth to battle in a scythed chariot,' and his charioteer was Loeg son of Riangabra, who with his wife and kindred lived in an island which Irish mythology places in the neighbourhood of Hades. The chariot was drawn by two horses of no ordinary breed: they were called the Grey of Macha and the Black Sainglend; and they gave their names to two Irish lakes whence they emerged when Cúchulainn caught them respectively, and whither they returned when his career was over. They had the peculiarity, that, wherever they grazed, they ate the grass root and stem, licking bare the very soil. They were swifter than the cold blasts of spring, and the sods from their hoofs as they galloped over the plain looked like an army of ravens filling the sky above the chariot, the iron wheels of which sank at times so deep into the soil as to make ruts ample for dykes and