Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/619

Rh Every white man or brown, every bold man, Every brave man, hardy in the fray, lively man generous in deed without noise, Is of the Sons of Milè of great renown. Every fair spoiler great on the plain, Every artist, harmonious and musical, Folk wont to resort to tricks of magic, Are of the host of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Every blustering, vicious man. . . . Every gross, lying, unholy fellow— Remnants these of those three peoples, Of Gailióin, of Fir Bolg and of Fir Domnann.

Our business is more especially 'with these last at present, or rather with the Fir Bolg and the Fomori. They have a remarkable feature in common, namely, their hostility to man and their baneful influence on his works; while their pretty general connection with water would seem to suggest that their malevolence is a mythic way of describing the cold mists and baleful fogs that retard the growth of the farmer's crops, the excessive damp that robs living things of their bloom, and last, but by no means least, the subtle processes of corruption to which the dairy is now and then liable without any perceptible cause. The action of bacteria in milk is sometimes strange, and at all times so difficult of explanation that it has been reserved for modern science to detect its nature, while the ordinary peasant can in no way account for its effects, except on the supposition of its being produced by witchcraft or the intervention of Heaven to punish him for his sins. This malevolence towards man will be found an index to the classification of the spirits of the Celtic world; the classification, frequently made by writers on classical mythology, into light and dark divinities, fails entirely to meet the case before us, even