wag to a seer and poet, to see if the latter could find whose it was, and that, by a process of divination familiar to him, he discovered that it was the skull of the dog imported by Cairbre. That the seer should have been no other than Móen son of Etan, looks quite an accident. In reality it was probably nothing of the kind, and it just serves to show how the legends centring around Cairbre's name must have originally hanged together. This is not all; for the father's name in the one story was Cairbre Cinnchait, or C. (son) of Cat's Head, while in the other he was Mac Kineely,[1] or Son of Wolf's Head. This parallel between Cenn-cait and Cenn-faelad or Kineely can hardly be considered an accidental coincidence of no significance, but rather a result of the original identity of the two tales; and it may be surmised that in an older version of the Donegal one, Mac Kineely's full name was Carpri mac Cinnfaelad, or C. mac Kineely.
Looked at from another point of view, Mac Kineely and his brother Gavida just exactly match Gwydion and his brother Govannon. Gwydion was the principal character and father of Llew; so Mac Kineely was lord of the country round his home and father of Lug, who will be shown later to have been the counterpart of Llew[2] in
- ↑ In later Irish orthography, Mac Cinnfhaoladh, 'the Son of Cennfhaoladh,' or, as it was written in mediæval Irish, Cennfaelad, which meant Fael's Head; but fael is explained to signify a wolf, Rev. Celt. iv. 415. That fáelad was the genitive of fáel is proved by the occurrence of the accusative as fóelaid in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, i. pp. 45, 114. Cenncait occurs independently in Clochan Chinnchait, where the Gilla Dacker lands, Joyce, pp. 272, 417.
- ↑ Treating the Welsh Beli as the consort of Dôn (p. 90), and regarding Irish Balor as well as Irish Bile as etymologically related
