Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/659

Rh Blessed to reign over the happy dead. He is found also associated with harvest-time and abundance, the harvest month being called in parts of Greece after Cronus, and there was a harvest feast called  which was celebrated with practices recalling a fabled age of golden prosperity, labourless plenty and social equality. On the other hand, his name was usually identified, especially by comic authors, with all that was antiquated and out of date. The poets sometimes call him and, also , not to mention that Greek philosophers and theologians at length made of him a god of time, and that his name , which is of uncertain meaning, came eventually to be explained as , time.

On the one hand, Cronus is a crafty and cruel Titan of marvellous voracity; and on the other, he is an ancient father, king of the happy departed, and a god of abundance and mature plenty. The same peculiar combination is to be traced to some extent on Celtic ground; for Llûᵭ of the Silver Hand, the Welsh equivalent of the Irish Nuada, is represented as the youngest son of Beli the Great. The latter may, therefore, be taken to be in a sense one of our equivalents to Cronus. The name Beli appears to mean death, and to refer to the sinister aspect of his character; in Irish it is represented by that of Bile king of Spain, that is to say of Hades, and ancestor, through Mile, of the Milesian Goidels (pp. 90-1), while a related form Balor was restricted to what may be regarded perhaps as the same divinity with all his good