curious list of gods and heroes (perhaps interpolated) in the Taín bo Cualnge[1] we also find Oengus, Cimb, Mod and Lathrach, along with the undoubted gods Lug, Ogma, Macha, the Morrigu, Ane and Roth. If gods, we can understand how they were granted the chief sanctuaries of Meath by the king of Tara; if a little band of fugitives (as in MacLiac’s poem), the statement is in the last degree absurd. In the list in the Taín we also find an “Amairgen of Tailltiu,” a little-known hero who, in the same poem, fought a battle on its site.[2]
Eochaid, husband of Tailltiu, was chiefly remembered for having made the Dumha na n Giall, the great “Mound of the hostages” at Tara.[3] How Lug came to be sent for fosterage to Tailltiu is not explained in our accessible sources.
Lug’s pedigree calls for a moment’s notice. He was son of Cian (son of Diancecht, the divine physician) and Ethliu, daughter of Bilé, ancestor of the Milesian race. “Beil” was the god of Uisnech[4] and gave his name to the Beil tinne or sacred fire of the Belltaine rites; he is a shadow of the great Gaulish god Belinus. As Sir John Rhys[5] shows, the Welsh pedigrees of Lieu, grandson of Beli, and the Torry Island story making Lug grandson of the horrible demon god, Balor “of the deadly eye” (which Lug, in old Irish legend, dashed out with a sling-stone in the Battle of Magh Tured), closely agree. Now Beli was father of Nudd and Arianrhod, and Lug is father of Nuada in the legendary
- ↑ Trans. J. Dunn, p. 303. The strange name “Diabul Ard” is a place, like “Diabul Muscraige” (Onomasticon Goedelicum, p. 344).
- ↑ Táin, p. 293-5.
- ↑ “Rennes Dind. S.” Rev. Celt. xvi. p. 51, there called “Dun na n Giall.”
- ↑ Also called Balor’s Hill (“Fate of Children of Tuireann,” Atlantis, iv. p. 16). Martin tells how “Bel” was reverenced in the Scottish Islands (Western Islands, 1716, p. 105). “Sanas Chormaic” says he is “an idol god.” His sacred fire at Belltaine was restored at Uisnech by Tuathal Techtmhar.
- ↑ “Hibbert Lect.” iv. p. 90, also p. 319; also De Jubainville’s Irish Myth. Cycle, pp. 126-9.
