Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/213

Rh wife of Enna, of the síde, caused the drowning of his other wife, Aide, and her family.$35$ The personality of the sea is seen also in the story of Lindgadan and the echo heard at a cliff: enraged at some one speaking to him without being asked, he turned to the cliff to be avenged upon the speaker, when the crest of a wave dashed him against a rock.$36$ So, too, the sea was obedient to man, or perhaps to a god. Tuirbe Trágmar, father of the Goban Saer, used to hurl his axe from the Hill of the Axe in the full of the flood-tide, forbidding the sea to come beyond the axe,$37$ an action akin to the Celtic ritual of "fighting the waves." The voices of the waves had a warning, prophetic, or sympathetic sound to those who could hear them aright, as many instances show.

As elsewhere, personalized parts of nature came to be regarded as animated by spirits, like man; and such spirits gradually became more or less detached from these and might be seen as divine beings appearing near them. Some of them became the greater gods, while others assumed a darker character, perhaps because they were associated with sinister aspects of nature or with the dead. The Celts knew all these, and some still linger on in folk-belief. Fairy-like or semi-divine women seen by streams or fountains, or in forests, or living in lakes or rivers, are survivals of spirits and goddesses of river, lake, or earth; and they abound in Celtic folk-story as bonnes dames, dames blanches, fées, or the Irish Bé Find. Beings like mermaids existed in early Irish belief. When Ruad's ships were stopped, he went over the side and saw "the loveliest of the world's women," three of them detaining each boat. They carried him off, and he slept with each in turn, one becoming with child by him. They set out in a bronze boat to intercept him on his return journey, but when they failed, the mother killed his child and hurled the head after him, the others crying, "It is an awful crime."$38$ In another tale Rath heard the mermaids' song and saw them"grown-up girls, the fairest of shape and make, with yellow hair and white skins above the