Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/129

Rh a small house where were a man and a woman, and that it was suddenly enlarged, beautified, and filled with all desirable things, for it was one of the gods' magic dwellings, which they could produce on earth by glamour. The man was Lug, the woman Dechtere, though this was known only to Bricriu. Conchobar believed that they were his vassals and demanded his right of sleeping with the woman, who escaped by saying she was enceinte; and in the morning an infant was discovered, the child of Dechtere by Lug, though it had the appearance of Conchobar. The child was called Setanta, but afterward was known as Cúchulainn.

In version b the host told his guests that his wife was in childbed. Dechtere assisted her and took the child to foster him; and at the same time the host's mare gave birth to two foals—a common folk-tale coincidence. In the morning all had vanished, and Conchobar's party returned home with the child, which died soon after. When the funeral was over, Dechtere in drinking swallowed a mysterious tiny animal, and that night Lug appeared, telling her that she was with child by him, for it was he who had carried her off with her companions as birds—an incident lacking in this version. His was the child whom she had fostered, and now he himself had entered her as the little animal. Her child, when born, would be called Setanta. Here Setanta is at once Lug's son and his rebirth; but the two ideas are not exclusive if we take into account ancient ideas. In early Indian belief the father became an embryo and was reincarnated in his first-born son, whence funeral rites were performed for the father in the fifth month of pregnancy, and he was remarried after the birth.$7$ Probably for a similar reason, preserved in Celtic myth after it was no longer believed of mortals, a god who had a child by a mortal was thought to be reborn while still existing separately himself; and this explains why the Ulstermen sought a wife for Cuchulainn so that "his rebirth might be of himself." In various texts Cúchulainn is called son of Lug.