Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/587

Rh names as Lleu and Lug, Cúchulainn and Balder, failed at an early period to tell with distinctness and precision the tale of their origin, and that they ceased to be understood as applying to the sun, so that the stories in which they figured became severed more or less completely, so to say, from their original fountain-head. This being so, the sun under other and familiar names might serve as the source of other myths different from the earlier ones. How ancient those of the earlier order must be will appear from the following brief examination of some of those belonging to the later one; but it may be premised of the latter that they are comparatively poor in point of mythic development; for 'words like Hemera, day, Nyx, night, Helios, sun, Selene, moon, may send out a few mythological offshoots, but it is chiefly round dark and decaying names, such as Kastor and Pollux, Apollo and Athene, that the mythological ivy grows most luxuriantly.' The word for sun is in Irish grian, genitive gréine, of the feminine gender, as it is also in the Gaelic of Scotland and of the Isle of Man. The term is unknown to the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, but it probably means that which shines, glitters or sparkles, for it is related to Irish grian, genitive griin, 'gravel,' which is a masculine represented in Welsh by graean or graian of the same meaning; hence a single particle of gravel is called in Welsh graienyn, and, according to a Welsh proverb, it is its business to shine or sparkle—Tywynnid graienyn ei ran, that is to say, 'A particle of gravel shines its destined best.' Thus the two Irish words grian may be said roughly to represent