Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/665

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEROES.
649

in his connection with the sea, as that would be impossible from the lack of data relative to the latter. It is not so, however, in the case of another mythical person, in whom we have, as I wish now to point out, a third representative of Cronus, namely, Nemed, who has been mentioned in the earlier portion of this lecture (p. 580). from which I must now repeat two or three remarks. Nemed was one of the earliest colonizers of Erinn after the flood; he and his fleet set out from the east; but for what reason they left their own country we are, I believe, nowhere told. They wandered, at any rate, so long on sea, and suffered so much from hunger and thirst, that only a mere handful landed with Nemed in Erinn. Now Nemed's Welsh namesake is, as already mentioned, Nevyᵭ, the builder of the ship in which a man and a woman, Dwyvan and Dwyvach, were saved when the rest of the race was drowned. He it is also to whom Welsh poetry ascribes, under the kindred name of Nevwy, a sort of Noachian rôle; and he is likewise called Neivion, which has come to be treated as the Welsh for Neptune. So Nemed and Nevyᵭ taken together fully reflect the naval touch in the story of Cronus.[1] But Cronus is represented

  1. Possibly they might be said to do more, for when one comes to examine their names they prove to be derivatives from nem and nev or nef, the Irish and Welsh respectively for sky or heaven, so that they appear to have described their bearers as in some way connected with the sky or heaven: in what way it would be difficult to decide. But one explanation is readily suggested by such Greek words as οὐράνιος and especially Οὐρανίδαι, which referred to the Titans as the offspring of Οὐρανός. Nevwy will be found in the Black Bk., the Bk. of Taliessin and the Red Bk. (Skene, ij. 39, 147, 206, 301). In the third of these passages Nevwy is seemingly used for the Irish Nemed as it is brought into close contact with Ard-nevon, by which was doubtless