Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/214

134 waters. But huger than one of the hills was the hairy-clawed, bestial lower part which they had beneath." Their song lulled him to sleep, when they flocked round him and tore him limb from limb.$39$ Other sea-dwellers are the luchorpáin— a kind of dwarf, three of whom were caught by Fergus and forced to comply with his wish and to tell him how to pass under lochs and seas. They put herbs in his ears, or one of them gave him a cloak to cover his head, and thus he went with them under the water.$40$

A curious group of beings answered Cúchulainn's cry, causing confusion to his enemies, or screamed around him when he set out or was In the thick of the fight. While he fought with Ferdia, "around him shrieked the Bocánachs and the Banánachs and the Geniti Glinne, and the demons of the air; for it was the custom of the Tuatha Dé Danann to raise their cries about him in every battle," and thus increase men's fear of him. Or they screamed from the rims of shields and hilts of swords and hafts of spears of the hero and of Ferdia.$41$ Here they are friendly to Cúchulainn, but in the Fled Bricrend, or Feast of Bricriu, one of the tasks imposed on him, Conall, and Loegaire was to fight the Geniti Glinne, Cúchulainn alone succeeding and slaughtering many of them."$42$ What kind of beings they were is uncertain, but if Geniti Glinne means "Damsels of the Glen," perhaps they were a kind of nature-spirits, this being also suggested by the "demons of the air" which were expelled by St. Patrick.$43$ As nature-spirits they might be classed with the Tuatha Dé Danann, as indeed they seem to be in the passage cited above.$44$ In one sentence of the Táin Bó Cúalnge, they are associated with Némain or Badb, who brought confusion upon Medb's host; yet on the other hand they dared not appear in the same district as the bull of Cúalnge.$45$