the country with which Duben's name was more or less closely connected, forms a kind of an indented peninsula between Kenmare River and Tralee Bay, such a position as regards the western sea as one might have considered the special domain of a goddess of dusk or dawn: compare the relation of Duben's Welsh counterpart Arianrhod and others of the same class to the world of waters (pp. 236, 380). With regard to the divinity of the Irish goddess, the reader may naturally ask, how any one about whom there was such a story as that about Duben and her relations with Cairbre Musc could have been the object of respect, not to say of divine reverence, such as may be inferred to have been hers. Here mythology and religion probably went their own several ways, just as readers of the Odyssey do not find the piety of Eumæus much disturbed by the hideous tales of lewdness which Greek story had to relate, not only of the minor divinities, but especially of Zeus, the greatest. The dark side of Duben's character is much less dwelt upon in Irish literature than is that of Arianrhod in the Welsh Mabinogi of Mâth ab Mathonwy; but the faded outline of a flattering picture of the latter has nevertheless come down to us within the narrow compass of a triad, which allows her to rank as one of the Three White or Blessed Ladies of the Isle of Britain.[1] All this means
- ↑ The Triads, i. 73, iij. 107. The word I have rendered 'White or Blessed Ladies' is gwenrïain, consisting partly of gwen, the fem. of gwyn, 'white',' which, though one of the commonest words in my language, I am unable satisfactorily to translate into English; for
Leinster, 326e, and in the Bk. of the Dun, 99a, where we have in the gen. ier diernaib muman, 'Iveri de Ivemiis Momonis:' compare Erp, genitive Hirp, and the Iaripi already referred to; also a dissyllabic genitive Iair in Stokes' Calendar of Oengus, Oct. 26.
