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122 king of Annwfn. In general, however, every síd had its own ruler, and if this is an early tradition, it suggests a cult of a local god on a hill within which his abode was supposed to be. Manannan is chief, par excellence, of the island Elysium, and it was appropriate that a marine deity should rule a divine region including "thrice fifty isliands." In that land he had a stone fort with a banqueting-hall. Lug, who may be a sungod, was sometimes associated with the divine land, as the solar divinity was in Greek myth, and also with Manannan; and he with his foster-brothers, Manannan's sons, came to assist the Tuatha Dé Danann, riding Manannan's steed before "the fairy cavalcade from the Land of Promise."$19$ He also appeared as owner of an Elysium created by glamour on earth's surface, where Conn the Hundred-Fighter heard a prophecy of his future career,$20$ this prophetic, didactic tale doubtless having an earlier mythic prototype.

The Brythonic Elysium differed little from the Irish. One of its names, Annwfn, or "the not-world," which was is elfydd ("beneath the world"), was later equated with Hades or Hell, as already in the story of Gwyn. In the Mabinogi of Pwyll it is a region of this world, though with greater glories, and has districts whose people fight, as in Irish tales. In other Mabinogion, however, as in the Taliesin poems and later folk-belief, there is an over-sea Elysium called Annwfn or Caer Sidi —

"its points are ocean's streams"—and a world beneath the water—"a caer [castle] of defence under ocean's waves."$21$ Its people are skilled in magic and shape-shifting; mortals desire its "spoils"—domestic animals and a marvellous cauldron; it is a deathless land, without sickness; its waters are like wine; and with it are associated the gods. The Isle of Avalon in Arthurian tradition shows an even closer likeness to the Irish Elysium.$22$

Thus the Irish and Welsh placed Elysium in various regions —local other-worlds—in hills, on earth's surface, under or oversea; and this doubtless reflects the different environments