Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/469

Rh, under another name and in the form of a kind of hoodie, cried out in an upbraiding tone, 'Bad materials of a hero are those there under the feet of phantoms.' Cúchulainn, stung by that taunt, got up again, and struck off the head of his ghost-foe with his hurlbat. Then he drove the ball before him over the field and shouted, 'Is my father Conchobar on this field of slaughter?' The latter answered that he was, and Cúchulainn came and found him all but wholly buried with earth over him on almost every side. He extricated him, and found that he would live if he could get him some food, which he hastened to procure: he then took Conchobar to Emain, whither he carried at the same time a wounded son of Conchobar's on his shoulders. How the latter had got into the position Cúchulainn found him in, we are not told, but it reminds one of the dismal plain to which the traveller's feet would cleave; further, Cúchulainn's coming was so late that the night was then dark, and it looks as though the narrator ought to have told us that the ball he sent over the field was luminous, and that it was by means of it, and not by calling out, that he found the king in the earth: as it stands, the narrative is not very intelligible. Whatever the reason for that may be, there can be little doubt that we have traces here of a primitive and forgotten myth which represented the sun as an apple or ball, after which an infant giant used to run daily across the sky; and the other form, that of a wheel, given to that heavenly body, is of even greater mythological interest, as it offers an Irish instance of a symbolism, the solar origin of which, as mentioned on another occasion (p. 55), has been lately discussed by M. Gaidoz.