Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/67

Rh isles learning wizardry, returned to Ireland. The annalists treated them more or less as men; official Christianity more or less as demons; popular belief and romance as a kind of beautiful fairy race with much of their old divine aspect.

D'Arbois translates 'Tuatha Dé Danann as "people of the god whose mother is called Danu";$36$ Stokes renders it "folk or folks of the goddess Danu";$37$ Stern prefers to regard Danann as a later addition and to take the earlier name as Tuatha Dé or Fir Dea—"the divine tribe," or "the men of the god."$38$ Three insignificant members of the group, Brian, luchar, and lucharba, are sometimes called "three gods of Danu"; and hence also, perhaps, the whole group is designated "men of the three gods." Brian, luchar, and lucharba are also termed tri deé dána, or "three gods of dán," i. e. "knowledge," or "fate." Danand (Danu) is mentioned with Béchuille as a separate goddess, and both are called foster-mothers of the gods. Cormac's Glossary knows nothing of Danu, but speaks of a goddess Anu, mater deorum hihernensium—" It was well she nursed the gods"vwhile he refers to two hills in Kerry as "the paps of Anu," which a later glossary calls "the paps of Danu."

Ireland is called lath n'Anann, and Anu is mentioned with Macha, Morrígan, and Badb, the war-goddesses, though other passages give Danu along with these. Possibly Danu is a mistake for Anu, through confusion with dán, "knowledge," knowledge as a function of Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba being personified as Danu, so that they would then be called gods or sons of Danu, though they were actually sons of Brigit. As Stem points out, Danu can scarcely be mother of the whole group, since she herself is daughter of Delbaeth, who was brother of Dagda, Ogma, Bres, etc. If Anu was mother of the group, the likeness of her name to Danu would also lead to the mistake; and Anu as goddess is perhaps a personification of Ireland, a kind of earth mother. On the whole, the general relationship of the euhemerized gods evolved by the annalists is as mythical as the pagan stories themselves.