Part 53 (1/2)

67 The Irish Mythological Cycle, by dArbois de Jubainville, p. 6l.

The Dinnsenchus in question is an early Christian doc.u.ment. No trace of a being like Crom Cruach has been found as yet in the pagan literature of Ireland, nor in the writings of St. Patrick, and I think it is quite probable that even in the time of St. Patrick human sacrifices had become only a memory.

68 A representation of human sacrifice has, however, lately been discovered in a Temple of the Sun in the ancient Ethiopian capital, Mero.

69 You [Celts] who by cruel blood outpoured think to appease the pitiless Teutates, the horrid sus with his barbarous altars, and Tara.n.u.s whose wors.h.i.+p is no gentler than that of the Scythian Diana, to whom captive were offered up. (Lucan, Pharsalia, i.

444.) An altar dedicated to sus has been discovered in Paris.

70 Mont Mercure, Mercur, Mercoirey, Montmartre (_Mons Mercurii_), &c.

71 To this day in many parts of France the peasantry use terms like _annuit, on, anneue_, &c., all meaning to-night, for _aujourdhui_ (Bertrand, Rel. des G., p. 356).

72 The _fili_, or professional poets, it must be remembered, were a branch of the Druidic order.

73 For instance, Pelagius in the fifth century; Columba, Columba.n.u.s, and St. Gall in the sixth; Fridolin, named _Viator_, the Traveller, and Fursa in the seventh; Virgilius (Feargal) of Salzburg, who had to answer at Rome for teaching the sphericity of the earth, in the eighth; Dicuil, the Geographer, and Johannes Scotus Erigenathe master mind of his epochin the ninth.

74 Dealgnaid. I have been obliged here, as occasionally elsewhere, to modify the Irish names so as to make them p.r.o.nounceable by English readers.

75 See p. 48, _note_ 1.

76 I follow in this narrative R.I. Bests translation of the Irish Mythological Cycle of dArbois de Jubainville.

77 De Jubainville, Irish Mythological Cycle, p. 75.

78 p.r.o.nounced Yeohee. See Glossary for this and other words.

79 The science of the Druids, as we have seen, was conveyed in verse, and the professional poets were a branch of the Druidic Order.

80 Meyer and Nutt, Voyage of Bran, ii. 197.

81 Moytura means The Plain of the Towers_i.e._, sepulchral monuments.

82 Shakespeare alludes to this in As You Like It. I never was so be-rhymed, says Rosalind, since Pythagoras time, that I was an Irish ratwhich I can hardly remember.

83 Lyons, Leyden, Laon were all in ancient times known as _Lug-dunum,_ the Fortress of Lugh. _Luguvallum_ was the name of a town near Hadrians Wall in Roman Britain.

84 It is given by him in a note to the Four Masters, vol. i. p. 18, and is also reproduced by de Jubainville.

85 The other two were The Fate of the Children of Lir and The Fate of the Sons of Usna. The stories of the Quest of the Sons of Turenn and that of the Children of Lir have been told in full by the author in his High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances, and that of the Sons of Usna (the Deirdre Legend) by Miss Eleanor Hull in her Cuchulain, both published by Harrap and Co

86 OCurrys translation from the bardic tale, The Battle of Moytura.

87 OCurry, Manners and Customs, iii. 214.

88 The ancient Irish division of the year contained only these three seasons, including autumn in summer (OCurry, Manners and Customs, iii. 217).]

89 S.H. OGrady, Silva Gadelica, p. 191.

90 Pp. 104 _sqq._, and _pa.s.sim_.

91 OGrady, _loc. cit._