Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/667

Rh above the latter. Irish mythography treats Nemed's colonization of Ireland as only the second after the deluge, the first one being that of Partholon of unexplained name; but, as already suggested, there is every reason to regard his story and that of Nemed as very similar to one another, and to treat what is said of the one as mostly applying in a sense to the other likewise. Now in the case of Partholon the reason is given why he left his own land, and why his people died out in Ireland: it was because he had killed his own father. This is undoubtedly an Irish version of Cronus mutilating his father Uranus, and of his having later to wander on the high seas. In the course of these remarks I have set over against Cronus and Saturn no less than four Irish personages, the Dagda, Fergus, Nemed and Partholon, while on the Welsh side allusion has been made chiefly to Nevyᵭ, to whom should be added Vortigern driven out of his realm by the boy Merlin Ambrosius. Both of these characters (pp. 151-5) history misled has been, as already explained, in the habit of claiming as her own.

These remarks would lack completeness without some further reference to the representatives of Cronus and Saturn in Aryan theologies other than Celtic: Thor has already been brought into the comparison, though nothing was said of him in relation to the sea. Perhaps you