Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/59

Rh regarding his amour with Indech's daughter, who agreed to practise magic against her father's army.16

Before the battle each chief promised Lug prodigies of val- our, craftsmanship, or magic — weapons, and armour in unfail- ing abundance, enfeeblement and destruction of the enemy, the power of satire upon them, magical healing of wounded or slain. Lug's two witches said, "We will enchant the trees and the stones and the sods of the earth so that they shall become a host under arms against the foe"; but Lug was prevented from going to the fray, because "they feared an early death for the hero owing to the multitude of his arts." Preliminary combats occurred in which the superior magic of the Tuatha Dé Danann was apparent. Weapons were restored or new ones made in a twinkling by Goibniu, Luchtine, and Creidne. Goibniu (cf. Old Irish goba, "smith") had promised that though the battle lasted seven years, he would replace every broken sword or spear-head; no spear-head forged by him would miss, and none whom it pierced would continue in life. He kept his promise, making weapons by three turns in his forge, and renewed the blunted or broken instruments of war. Elsewhere we learn that Goibniu's immortal ale, like nectar and soma, made the divinities immortal,17 so that he is the equivalent of the Greek Hephaistos, god of craftsmen, who poured out nectar for the gods at their banquet, and of the Vedic deity Tvastr, who made the cup from which the gods drank.18 Why divine smiths should be associated with the drink of the gods is not clear, but probably we have here different forms of a myth common to the Indo-European peoples. Goibniu is still remembered in Irish folk-tales.

Creidne, the cerd, or brazier, promised to supply rivets for the spears, hilts for the swords, and bosses and rims for the shields; he made the rivets in three turns and cast the rings to them. Creidne, whom euhemerizing tradition described as having been drowned while bringing golden ore from Spain to Ireland, may be compared with Len Linfiaclach, cerd of the