Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/585

Rh however, from a boast of his mother's in one of the Taliessin poems that it was so far resumed that he was enabled to be victorious among his bardic rivals. But I am forced to leave unexplained the discrepancy that, while Amorgen's tutor Aitherne is to be regarded as a Culture Hero, I have hesitatingly to treat Gwion as a form of the Sun-god. A word or two must now be devoted to another Amorgen, for we found Taliessin's extraordinary pretensions and transformations matched in Irish by those only of Amorgen the White-kneed, poet and brehon of the Milesian invaders of Erinn (p. 365). The Tuatha Dé Danann of that time are described as under the rule of three chiefs called Mac Gréine, 'Son of the Sun;' Mac Cuill, 'Son of Destruction;' and Mac Cecht, 'Son of the Plough:' a three-fold arrangement which in some measure recalls the three departments of Zeus, Posidon and Pluto, in Greek mythology. When the Tuatha Dé Danann are defeated by the Milesians, Airem the 'Ploughman' is made the slayer of Mac Cecht, Eber of Mac Cuill, and Amorgen of Mac Gréine, whereby it was meant to oppose Amorgen, so to say, to Mac Gréine; and his solar nature may perhaps be inferred from this as well as from his epithet. He is said to have been an impartial brehon and to have delivered the first judgment in Erinn. In any case, he seems to have had nothing in common, except his name and the attribute of poetry, with the pupil of Aitherne. The latter Amorgen belongs to the Ultonian cycle, and the other occurs in stories, which, connected as they are with the south-west, place