version of the myth in question is to be seen in the flitting of the dwellers of Olympus in order to go and enjoy their hecatombs from time to time at the ever-laden table of the dark Ethiopians. According to the opening portion of the Odyssey, these mythic people, with their faces tanned by the scorching rays of the sun, inhabited the two regions of the world which were the most distant from one another: that where the sun rose in the morning and that where he descended in the evening:
Αἰθίοπας, τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶν,
Οἱ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος, οἱ δ' ἀνιόντος
Such a myth requires no explanation; and possibly a veiled reference to the Table of the Ethiopians is to be detected, with an unexplained change of scene, in the story of Hephæstus limping about as cup-bearer to the gods on Olympus; but it is perhaps preferable to regard this as a mere piece of later humour, or else to compare it with the case of the Dagda acting as chef of the kitchen of Conaire the Great, or Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr discharging the duties of chief porter at Arthur's court on great occasions.[1]
It is not evident whether the myth of the imprisonment of the Celtic Zeus, as in the person of Merlin, should be reckoned with that of the inactivity or death of the gods, or else ranked with the flitting of the Olympians to feast at the Table of the Ethiopians; for in some versions of the myth the idea of imprisonment is not expressed, though it admits perhaps of being
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 94; R. B. Mab. p. 103; Guest, ij. 254: see also p. 372 above.
English Eager as the name of the Bore in the Trent and other Anglian rivers; but modern phonologists find a difficulty in the vowels.
