Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/694

678 corresponding Norse war is that in which Swart and the Evil Brood attack and slay the Anses, who, however, re-appear with the advent of Balder. The seasons implied by this more ancient sequence of the events are the middle of summer, the beginning of the winter half of the year, and the beginning of the summer half. So mid-winter is left without any great event, and this falls in, as will have been seen, with the season when Zeus languishes helplessly in a cave, and Nuada, deprived of his right hand, vacates his throne for Bres, his Fomorian supplanter. As represented in the Ultonian cycle, it would be Conchobar and the nobles of his court en couvade. Here also should probably be fixed the grievous incarceration of Llûᵭ referred to in the Welsh Triads (p. 577), and here perhaps we are to look for the reason why the Celts had no great feast in the middle of winter. Such may have likewise been the case with the Teutons before their Yule was shifted to that season. Lastly, the death of Nuada and other chiefs of the Tuatha Dé Danann in the battle with the Fomori is to be regarded as a piece of euhemerism. Treated as historical persons the Tuatha Dé must die some time or other; but, mythologically speaking, they should have survived, like the gods of Olympus when Heracles despatched the Giants for them.

Page 643: before Loeg, on his way with Liban to the other world, comes to the two serpents (p. 641), he is said, in the account in verse (Windisch, p. 219), to have seen Bili Buada or Bile of Victory, whose name possibly meant victorious Death, the same Bile, in fact, that was mentioned at pp. 90-1 above as king of Hades under the name of Spain. But the prose paraphrase (Windisch, p. 217), which is probably later, treats Bili as the Irish word bile, which appears to have signified 'any ancient tree growing over a holy well or in a fort.' This raises a question as to the relation between bile and Bile, and suggests another treatment of the chief tree mentioned at p. 188. According to the R. B. Mab. p. 93, it is doubtful whether one should say in Welsh Beli (pp. 90, 644), or the Beli.\

With regard to Rhiannon, I am now inclined to identify her with the moon rather than with the dawn, and similarly in the case of several others whom I have loosely treated as goddesses of dawn or dusk.