In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings, we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed; and the latter’s name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story, while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand, this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero’s words, De Divinatione, ii. 7, when he says, anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen ipsum. On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name for the dark, inexorable power which the whole universe is conceived to obey, a power before which the great and resplendent Ζεύς of the Aryan race is a mere puppet.
Perhaps I have dwelt only too long on the policy of ‘give and take’ which ought to obtain between mythology and glottology. Unfortunately, one can add without fear of contradiction, that, even when that policy is carried out to the utmost, both sciences will still have difficulties more than enough. In the case of mythology these difficulties spring chiefly from two distinct sources, from the blending of history with myth, and from the mixing of one race with another. Let us now consider the latter: the difficulties from this source are many and great, but every fresh acquisition of knowledge tending to make our ideas of ethnology more accurate, gives us a better leverage for placing the myths of mixed peoples in their proper places as regards the races composing those peoples. Still, we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask: thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic, and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those Aryan invaders found in possession. So the question thrusts itself on the student, to which of these races a particular myth, rite, or custom is to be regarded as originally belonging. Take, for instance, Brân’s colossal figure, to which attention has already been called, pp. 552–3 above. Brân was too large to enter a house or go on board a ship: is he to be regarded as the outcome of Celtic imagination, or of that of a people that preceded the Celts in Celtic lands? The comparison with the Gaulish Tricephal would seem to point in the direction of the southern seaboard of the Baltic (p. 553): what then?
The same kind of question arises in reference to the Irish hero Cúchulainn: take, for instance, the stock description of Cúchulainn in a rage. Thus when angered he underwent strange distortions: the calves of his legs came round to where his shins should have been; his mouth enlarged itself so that it showed his liver and lungs swinging in his throat; one of his eyes became as small as a needle’s, or else it sank back into his head further than a crane could have reached, while the other protruded itself to a corresponding length; every hair on his body became as sharp as a thorn, and held on its point a drop of blood or a spark of fire. It would be dangerous then to stop him from fighting, and even when he had fought enough, he required for his cooling to be plunged into three baths of cold water; the first into which he went would instantly boil over, the second would be too hot for anybody else to bear, and the third only would be of congenial warmth. I do not ask whether that strange picture betrays a touch of the solar brush, but I should be very glad to know whether it can be regarded as an Aryan creation or not.
It is much the same with matters other than mythological: take, for instance, the bedlamite custom of the couvade[8], which is presented to us in Irish literature in the singular form of a cess, ‘suffering or indisposition,’ simultaneously attacking the braves of ancient Ulster. We are briefly informed in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 60a, that the women and boys of Ulster were free from it. So was any Ultonian, we are told, who happened to be outside the boundaries of his country, and so were Cúchulainn and his father, even when in Ulster. Any one who was rash enough to attack an Ultonian warrior during this his period of helplessness could not, it is further stated, expect to live afterwards either prosperously or long. The question for us, however, is this: was the couvade introduced by the Aryan invaders of Ireland, or are we rather to trace it to an earlier race? I should be, I must confess, inclined to the latter view, especially as the couvade was known among the Iberians of old, and among the ancient Corsicans[9]. It may, of course, have been both Aryan and Iberian, but it will all the same serve as a specimen of the sort of question which one has to try to answer.
Another instance, the race origin of which one would like to ascertain, offers itself in the curious belief, that, when a child is born, it is one of the ancestors of the family come back to live again. Traces of this occur in Irish literature, namely, in one of the stories about Cúchulainn. There we read to the following effect:—The Ultonians took counsel on account of Cúchulainn, because their wives and girls loved him greatly; for Cúchulainn had no consort at that time. This was their counsel, namely, that they should seek for Cúchulainn a consort pleasing to him to woo. For it was evident to them that a man who has the consort of his companionship with him would be so much the less likely to attempt the ruin of their girls and to receive the affection of their wives. Then, moreover, they were anxious and afraid lest the death of Cúchulainn should take place early, so they were desirous for that reason to give him a wife in order that he might leave an heir; for they knew that it was from himself that his rebirth (athgein) would be. That is what one reads in the eleventh-century copy of the ancient manuscript of the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 121b; and this atavistic belief, which was touched upon in connexion with the transformations discussed in the last chapter, I need scarcely say, is well known elsewhere to the anthropologist, as one will find on consulting the opening pages of Dr. Tylor’s second volume on Primitive Culture. He there mentions the idea as familiar to American Indians, to various African peoples, to the Maoris and the aborigines of Australia, to Cheremiss Tartars and Lapps. Among such nations the words of Don Diègue to his victorious son, the Cid, could hardly fail to be construed in a sort of literal sense when he exclaims:—
………… ton illustre audace
Fait bien revivre en toi les héros de ma race.
Let us return to Cúchulainn, and note the statement, that he and his father, Sualdaim, were exempt from the couvade, which marks them out as not of the same race as the Ultonians, that is to say, as the Fír Ulaid, or ‘True Ultonians’—presumably ancient inhabitants of Ulster. Furthermore, we have an indication whence his family had come, for Cúchulainn’s first name was Setanta Beg, ‘the Little Setantian,’ which points to the coast of what is now Lancashire, as already indicated at p. 385 above. Another thing which marks Cúchulainn as of a different racial origin from the other Ultonians is the belief of the latter, that his rebirth must be from himself. The meaning of this remarkable statement is that there were two social systems face to face in Ulster at the time represented by the Cúchulainn story, and that one of them recognized fatherhood, while the other did not. Thus for Cúchulainn’s rebirth to be from himself, he must be the father of a child from whom should descend a man who would be a rebirth or avatar of Cúchulainn. The other system implied was one which reckoned descent by birth alone[10]; and the Cúchulainn story gives one the impression that it contemplated this system as the predominant one, while the Cúchulainn family, with its reckoning of fatherhood, comes in as an exception. At all events, that is how I now understand a passage, the full significance of which had till recently escaped me.
Allusion has already been made to the story of Cúchulainn being himself a rebirth, namely, of Lug, and the story deserves still further consideration in its bearing on the question of race, to which the reader’s attention has been called. It is needless, however, to say that there are extant fragments of more stories than one as to Cúchulainn’s origin. Sometimes, as in the Book of Leinster, fo. 119a, he is called gein Loga, or Lug’s offspring, and in the epic tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Lug as his father comes from the Síd or Faery to take Cúchulainn’s place in the field, when the latter was worn out with sleeplessness and toil. Lug sings over him éli Loga, or ‘Lug’s enchantment,’ and Cúchulainn gets the requisite rest and sleep[11]: this we read in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 78a. In another version of the story, Cúchulainn is an incarnation of Lug: the narrative relates how a foster-son was accepted by Dechtere, sister to Conchobar MacNessa, king of Ulster. But her foster-son died young, to the great grief of Dechtere; and her lamentations for him on the day of his funeral having made her thirsty, she inadvertently swallowed with her drink a diminutive creature which sprang into her mouth. That night she had a dream, in which a man informed her that she was pregnant, that it was he who was in her womb, that he had been her foster-son, and that he was Lug; also that when his birth should take place, the name was to be Setanta. After an incident which I can only regard as a clumsy attempt to combine the more primitive legend with the story which makes him son of Sualdaim, she gives birth to the boy, and he is duly called Setanta[12]: that was Cúchulainn’s first name. Now compare this with what Dr. Tylor mentions in the case of the Lapps, namely, that ‘the future mother was told in a dream what name to give her child, this message being usually given her by the very spirit of the deceased ancestor, who was about to be incarnate in her[13].’ If the mother got no such intimation in a dream, the relatives of the child had to have recourse to magic and the aid of the wise man, to discover the name to be given to the child.