Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/482

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466
V. THE SUN HERO.

of the Fomori, whose king is said to have been Tethra, uncle to Forgall.[1] Much consistency, however, is not to be looked for in these matters; nor is Forgall's connection with Lochlann contradicted by the situation of Luglochta Loga, where Cúchulainn finds Forgall's stronghold and his daughter Emer; for, according to another account, the residence of Forgall was in the side of Lusca, a name which means a cave, and is borne by a place in the present county of Dublin,[2] which is perhaps not too far from the coast for the Sun-god to seem to emerge from the direction of it; not to mention that the Fomori, though belonging to the world of waters, may be encountered anywhere underground, even where the sea is far away: we may compare Undine and her kinsmen, who had access to this world wherever there was a stream or a well. According to one of the foregoing accounts, Derborgaill was about to be given away to the Fomori, her father's foes and oppressors; while according to the other, she was the daughter of a king of the Fomori, who, we may infer, wished to bestow her on one of his own race, when she set out to Cúchulainn. The difference amounts to little, and the damsel is to be regarded as behaving in the same way as a goddess of dawn and dusk. She might, further, be said to combine in her own person the characteristics, to a certain extent, of Emer and Fand; but this requires to be explained with reference to her name Derborgaill, more familiar to most of you in its Scotch form of Dervorgild. It is interpreted in the Book of

  1. Bk. of the Dun, 123a; and the Stowe MS. 82b.
  2. O'Donovan's Battle of Magh Rath, p. 52, note.