Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/75

Rh Scythian noble expelled from Egypt, who came to Spain, where his descendant Bregon built a tower and was father or grand- father of Mile, whose father is sometimes called Bile. Another son, Ith, gazing one evening from the tower, saw the coast of Ireland. With ninety followers he sailed thither and was wel- comed by the Kings, who begged him to settle a dispute. Very different was his fate from that of folk-tale heroes called in to adjust quarrels. While bidding the Kings act according to jus- tice, he so praised the fertility of the land that they suspected him of designs upon it and slew him. His followers carried his body to Spain, and the chiefs of the Milesians, resolving to avenge him, sailed to Ireland, but the Tuatha De Danann made a magic mist, so that the island appeared like a hog's back — hence its name Muic-Inis, or "Pig Island." At last they landed, and the poet Amairgen, son of Mile, sang:—

Some see in this a species of Celtic pantheism, but if so it is pantheism of a curious kind, for it is, rather, the vain-glorious bombast of the Celt, to which there are parallels in Welsh poems, where Taliesin speaks of the successive forms which he has assumed. The comparison should not be made with the pantheism of the Irishman Erigena, but with the bragging utterances of savage medicine-men.

The Milesians met in succession Banba, Fotla, and Ériu, each of whom asked that they would call the isle after her name. The Kings then begged an armistice, ostensibly to