to the dismal plain crossed by Cúchulainn following for a while a mysterious wheel, and for another while an equally mysterious apple. Why the story should have both a wheel and an apple does not appear, as the two would seem to suggest one and the same interpretation; but before coming to that, I wish to point out that the apple is replaced in other stories by the ball with which Cúchulainn, when he was a child, used to play a sort of solitary hurley or golf as he went his ways. It was thus, when only five years old, he left his home on the Plain of Murthemne and crossed the mountains to Emain,[1] and it was so he was proceeding towards Culann the Smith's stronghold, when he perceived the latter's Spanish hound making for him, and killed the monster. There is a more curious instance still:[2] young Cúchulainn' s slumbers durst not be disturbed, so he was one day left sleeping in-doors at Emain, when a battle was raging between the heroes of Ulster and Eogan mac Durthacht, whose name has already been mentioned (pp. 142, 335): the victory fell to the share of the latter, and Conchobar and others of the Ultonians were left on the battle-field. When the wounded survivors reached Emain, it was night and already dark, but the lamentation and tumult elicited by their arrival made Cúchulainn wake: he asked at once where the king was, and, as nobody could tell, he rushed off to the scene of the slaughter; but no sooner had he reached it than he was assailed by one of the demons revelling there, and he would have succumbed had not the Bodb (p. 43), the Mórrígu, per-
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V. THE SUN HERO.
