Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/250

158 a bull's head and two birds—a possible combination of the incidents on the other altar. M. d'Arbois regards this as illustrating the Táin. Esus, the woodman, is Cúchulainn; his action depicts what the hero did—cutting down trees to bar the way of Medb's host; "Esus" is derived from words meaning "anger," "rapid motion," such as Cúchulainn often displayed. The bull is the Brown Bull; the birds are the forms in which Morrígan and her sisters appeared,$49$ though these bird-forms were those of the crow, not the crane; the personal name Donnotaurus is found in Gaul and is the equivalent of the Donn Tarb—the "Brown Bull."$50$ Again, Diodorus says that the Dioscuri, i. e. Castor and Pollux, were the gods most worshipped by the Celts in the west of Gaul,$51$ and M. d'Arbois finds these in Cúchulainn and Conall Cernach, the former being foster-brother of the latter, having been suckled by Findchoém, Conall's mother. He bases this identification on an altar found at Paris, on the four sides of which are represented the Roman Castor and Pollux and two Gaulish divinities—Smertullos attacking a serpent with a club, and an unnamed horned god, perhaps the god Cernunnos (cernu-, "horn"). Smertullos is, therefore, the native equivalent of Pollux, Cernunnos of Castor; and at the same time Smertullos is Cúchulainn, and Cernunnos is Conall Cernach. In the Táin Cúchulainn vanquished Morrígan as an eel—the serpent of the monument—and, again, to hide his youthfulness, he smeared (smérthain, hence Smertullos) his chin with a false beard. As for Conall Cernach, whose epithet means "victorious," M. d'Arbois connects It also with the hypothetical cernu- ("horn"), though Conall is never said to be horned.$52$

Lug, Cúchulainn's father, was a widely worshipped Celtic god, his equivalent in Gaul being a hypothetical Lugus, whose name appears in place-names there. As Lug was called samildánach ("skilled in many arts"),$53$ Lugus may be the Gaulish god equated by Cæsar with Mercury, whom he calls "inventor of all arts" and associates with the simulacra or