green pastures grow, and the latter as occupying the foremost place at the Panathenæa, just as Tailltiu did at the Lugnassad, there being reasons, to be mentioned later, why one should identify the Celtic and the Greek feasts with one another. Such lines of difference as that drawn between Aphrodite and Athene, or between either and such a goddess, for example, as rosy-fingered Eos, is very rudimentary in Celtic; and in that respect Celtic mythology appears to have retained a more ancient and rudimentary form.
In the above-mentioned stories, the Lugnassad feasts and fairs are described as established in honour of the dead, one by Lug himself and the other by the Tuatha Dé Danann. But there is a different account in one of the manuscripts till recently in the possession of Lord Ashburnham, where one meets with an instance of those quaint explanations of place-names so characteristic of old Irish literature. It is to the following effect: "The Refuse of the Great Feast which I mentioned, that is Taillne. It is here that Lug Scimaig[1] proceeded to make the great feast for Lug mac Ethlenn for his entertainment after the battle of Mag Tured \; for this was his wedding of the kingship, since the Tuatha Dé Danann
made the aforesaid Lug king after the death of Nuada. As to the place where the refuse was thrown, a great
- ↑ Scimaig looks like the genitive of a word scimach; but in the MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 21b, it is written scimaig, with a mark of undefined contraction over the m. Another form occurs in the Bk. of Leinster, which identifies this Lug with Lug mac Ethlenn: see 11b and the top margin, which has the following verses:
Cermait mac in dagdæ de rageogain lug scicmaiṅge.
babara broin for sin maig aflaith echach ollathir.
'For sin maig' is glossed '.i. for brug maic [in]doc.'
