Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/632

616 Hero, who falls killing Indech, while Nuada of the Silver Hand is killed by Balor of the Evil Eye.

4. Thor the Son of Earth slays the Dragon, walks nine paces, and dies of the venom of the Serpent.

Echaid Ollathair, called the Dagda, dies of the venom of the wound which he received in fighting with Cethlenn the hag-wife of Balor.

5. Swart was disposed of we know not how, while Balder the Sun-god appears as the great figure and inaugurates a golden age.

Balor of the Evil Eye, which it was death to behold, is killed towards the end of the contest by a sling-stone cast by Lug into the Evil Eye; and Lug, after the war is over, is elected king by the Tuatha Dé Danann: he reigns prosperously for many a long year.

This last item of comparison requires a remark or two: Swart carries a fiery sword, and he may naturally be supposed to represent the dark thunder-cloud from which the bright lightning flashes forth; and this fits the case of Scandinavia, where the thunderstorms take place mostly in winter. It would not be safe to go so far as to say that the fiery sword of Swart is not represented in the case of Balor; for the latter's evil eye may be treated as the equivalent. When he wished to make use of the evil eye, the eyelid had, as in the case of Yspyᵭaden (p. 491), to be lifted by an attendant, and when that was done, it was death to those who saw it. The same feature is dimly attested in the name of Goronwy Pevr (p. 240), in which the epithet seems to refer to a peculiar glare of his eyes. Lastly, the silence of the Norse poem as to how