Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/161

Rh god of the Celtic underworld, which he regarded as a dark region, contrary to all that we can gather of it, while Bran was the Brythonic equivalent of Cernunnos and was slain by a sun-hero, his wading to Ireland representing his crossing the waters to Hades, like Yama, there to reign as lord of the dead.^^ The heads, however, can be explained only conjecturally as heads of Cernunnos. The exigencies of the story demanded that Ireland should be brought in, and as Bran had to reach it somehow, it was easiest to make the gigantic god wade there; if the parallel with Yama were true. Bran should have died before crossing the water of death. Yama's realm was not "dark," but a heavenly region of light, like the Celtic otherworld, even if the latter, unlike the former, was subterranean. Far from being "dark," Bran is bright and cheerful and has Elysian traits. Eighty years are as a day, and men think only of feasting and happiness in the presence of his head, which is as agreeable to them as he himself was in life; it produces an Elysium on earth, which is lost through opening a door, exactly as others lose it and become decrepit through contact with earth. Thus if Bran, sitting on the rock at Harlech or existing as a talking head afterward solemnly buried, like Orpheus's singing head interred in a sacred place, is the equivalent of the squatting Gaulish god Cernunnos, perhaps also represented as a single or triple head, this can only be because both were lords of a bright other-world, whether the region of the dead or a divine land. Bran is certainly not a dark god of blight, but rather the reverse, since his cauldron resuscitates the dead. In crossing to Ireland he carried his musicians on his back, and this may point to his being a divinity of musicians and bards. If so, he, as the Urdawl Ben ("Noble Head"), may be compared to the Uthr Ben ("Wonderful Head") of a Taliesin poem, which boasted of being a bard, harper, and piper, and equal to seven score professionals.$32$ Arthur disinterred Bran's head, not wishing to owe the defence of Britain to it.

Bran was euhemerized into a British king who was confused