signification, in which case Nuada Finnfáil should be rendered Nuada of the White Light. This would fit still better as one of the names of a god of the origin which I have ventured to ascribe to Nuada of the Silver Hand, that is to say, to a divinity of the sun and of light. The epithet appears as an independent name in the case of a place called Ath Finnfáil, or Finnfál's Ford, the site of which is not exactly known; but Prof. O'Curry guessed it[1] to have been somewhere not far from Beg Éire, or Little Erinn, an islet in the bay of Wexford, now known as Beggery Island, but anciently called, according to the same authority, Inis Fáil, or the Island of Fál. More usually the designation Inis Fál refers to Ireland itself, which was also sometimes termed Mag Fáil,'[2] 'Fál's Plain or Field.' In these instances I take Fál and Finnfál to be names of the god; nor is it other than natural that the country should be called the island or the plain of its chief god, especially if it be correct to regard him as originally the god of the sun and of light. At the same time his owning or inhabiting an islet on the east coast, such as the one near Wexford, becomes intelligible: from certain points on the mainland, the sun might be fancied to commence his daily journeys from a sea-girt isle; and the complement of that fancy
- ↑ In a note to his text of an ancient poem containing an allusion in point, MS. Mat. pp. 480-1, where he has had printed Ath Finn Fáil, 'the fair (or white) Ford of Fál.' In inis find fáil (Bk. of Leinster, 8a) means 'in the fair Island of Fál,' but were one to read Findfáil, it would be 'in the Island of Finnfál.'
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, p. 131, where Fáil is once written fail and once fáil, but to assonate both times with máir, 'magni.' The passages will be found in Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 132-3, and in O'Curry, iij. 191.
