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110

The Marriages of the Gods

Febra, Echtge, Mís, Clíu and others, and river goddesses like Sinann, Segais and Boand, also the mound gods, viros side,^[1] like Oengus of the Brug and Bodb Dearg. Under this term Síd were eventually included a swarm of gods, also, unlike the former classes, adored in Britain and on the continent of Europe. Such were Lug, Béli, Nuada, Net, Ogma, Segomo, Nemed, Ana or Dana, and Brigid or Brigendo. There are even as in the epithet of Lug, “master of sciences” and patron of shoemakers; Nuada, “silver arm,” “Lord of the Wolf,” and the warrior catching the salmon in presence of Nuada)^[2] hints of common tradition and ritual in Ireland and abroad, though ritual was probably the feature, next to images, least tolerated by the otherwise wonderfully patient, tactful and tolerant Church of Ireland, as founded by Patrick in the fifth century. To show how the ritual of the marriage of the gods. Lug and Nuada, with personifications of Ireland, Eriu and Fál, was continued by the irregular, temporary marriages celebrated in the Telltown “Fair,” is the object of this essay.

the holy boar of the Torcraige tribe, cf. Twrch Trwyth (see Book of Leinster, f 9b), and the Donn Bull (Gaulish Donnotaurus), Banba the pig, and the steeds of Cuchulaind and the cat-headed god of Cairbre Chinnchait (Coir Anmann, Irische Texte, iii. p. 385).

↑ Tirechan’s annotations (A.D. 656) in Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (ed. Whitley Stokes, ii. p. 315). Hymn of Fiacc, “the tribes lay in darkness and worshipped the side” (ibid).
↑ I refer to the catching of the marvellous salmon for Eogan, “foster son of Nuada,” as told in the “Battle of Magh Leana” and the “Tochmarch Momera”; the votive wolves in the temple of Nudens, his successor Bress was “wolfman”; the Welsh and Spanish assertion of Lug’s interest in shoemaking; the carrying of the image of Brigendo (see Gregory of Tours) round harvest fields and of those of Brigid in Ireland till at least 1850; the identification of Neto with Mars by the Aquitani and his position as war god in Ireland. Had we the hymn to Brigendo named in the inscription at Beaune (“Celtic Inscrip. France and Italy,” Rhys, Brit. Acad. 1905) we might have parallels to Irish myths as in Caesar’s “inventor of all the arts.” If “Lougos” in Gaulish meant “raven,” we see in the ravens of Lugdunum Covenarum and Lyons (on its coinage) and his raven spies on the Fomore in Irish myth another parallel. The name Lugbrann is perhaps another evidence for the Lug-raven.

[1] Tirechan’s annotations (A.D. 656) in Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (ed. Whitley Stokes, ii. p. 315). Hymn of Fiacc, “the tribes lay in darkness and worshipped the side” (ibid).

[2] I refer to the catching of the marvellous salmon for Eogan, “foster son of Nuada,” as told in the “Battle of Magh Leana” and the “Tochmarch Momera”; the votive wolves in the temple of Nudens, his successor Bress was “wolfman”; the Welsh and Spanish assertion of Lug’s interest in shoemaking; the carrying of the image of Brigendo (see Gregory of Tours) round harvest fields and of those of Brigid in Ireland till at least 1850; the identification of Neto with Mars by the Aquitani and his position as war god in Ireland. Had we the hymn to Brigendo named in the inscription at Beaune (“Celtic Inscrip. France and Italy,” Rhys, Brit. Acad. 1905) we might have parallels to Irish myths as in Caesar’s “inventor of all the arts.” If “Lougos” in Gaulish meant “raven,” we see in the ravens of Lugdunum Covenarum and Lyons (on its coinage) and his raven spies on the Fomore in Irish myth another parallel. The name Lugbrann is perhaps another evidence for the Lug-raven.

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