probably early in the form in which we have it, the fact of their containing nothing distinctively Christian is all the more remarkable, and it favours the belief in the antiquity of their origin.
I may explain that in the remarks to which the name Cenn Cruaich has here given rise, the Celtic Zeus or Mars-Jupiter has been regarded as standing before us in his character of a god of light and the sun, but that at a very early stage in his history, his attributes expanded themselves to such an extent that he ceased to be in any very strict sense of the term a sun-god: other sun-gods of a far simpler and narrower nature grew up, and one of them appears in the story of Conn and the Stone of Fál. For at the same time that the name Fál seems to have referred to the more ancient god of light, the fairy prince (p. 205) who disclosed the future history of his country to Conn is stated to have been called Lug,[1] who as a sun-god occupies a distinguished place in Irish legend. When the connection of the other god with light had been forgotten, the name of Lug as a sun-god was still familiar, and the story shaped itself accordingly.
The observations made in reference to the term Fál as a name of the god would be incomplete without some allusion to the mythical creation known as Roth Fáil, or Fál's Wheel, and Roth Rámach, or the Wheel with Paddles.[2] It is said to have been made by Simon Magus,
- ↑ O'Curry's MS. Mat. p. 618, where the ancient text calls him Lug mac Edlend mic [sic] Tighernmais. Edlend was his mother's name.
- ↑ O'Curry in his MS. Mat. pp. 385, 401-3, 423, speaks of it as a 'Rowing Wheel;' and at p. 428 he calls it also an 'Oar Wheel,' which is likewise correct enough, since rámach means 'provided with ráma,' which signified both oars and shovels or spades (the Cymmrodor,
