Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/62

34 safe-guards." The other incident tells how Dagda's harp was carried off and was found by Lug, Ogma, and Dagda in the house where Bres and his friends were. No melody would sound from it until Dagda uttered a charm; but then the harp came to him, killing nine men on its way, after which he played the three magic strains of sleep, mourning, and laughter.27 This harp resembles that of Teirtu in the Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen, which played or stopped playing of itself when so desired.28

Thus the Tuatha Dé Danann conquered, and the Morrígan proclaimed the victory to the royal heights of Ireland, its hosts of the side, its chief waters, and its river-mouths—a reminiscence of the animistic view or the personalization of nature. Then she sang of the world's end and of the evils to come—one of the few eschatological references in Irish mythology, though it is most likely of Christian origin.29

This curious story is undoubtedly based on old myths of divine wars, but what these denoted is uncertain. Both Tuatha Dé Danann and Fomorians are superhuman. Vaguely we discern behind the legend a strife of anthropomorphic figures of summer, light, growth, and order, with powers of winter, darkness, blight, and disorder. Such powers agree but ill. There is strife between them, as, to the untutored eye, there is strife in the parts of nature for which they stand; and this apparent dualism is reflected on the life of the beings who represent the powers of nature. All mythologies echo the strife. The Babylonian Marduk and the gods battle with Tīamat and her brood; gods and Titans (or Jötuns), Rê' and 'Apop, fight, and those hostile to gods of light and growth, gods dear to man's heart, are represented in demoniac guise. If Tuatha Dé Danann and Fomorians were both divine but hostile groups of the Irish Celts, the sinister character of the latter would not be forgotten by the annalists, who regarded both with puzzled eyes and sought vainly to envisage them as mortals. Or, again, the two may be hostile sets of deities, because divinities