discussed at length, and I will only add a word as to an apparent discrepancy between the Celtic and Norse myths about the week: the gold ring in the latter belongs to the Culture God Woden, and it is to him that it is brought back from the Hell-imprisoned Balder by Hermoᵭr, after he had travelled nine nights[1] in the dark to find his brother Balder's place of confinement; whereas in the Irish tale the gold brooch is treated as the property of a very different kind of being, Maine son of Durthacht. On the other hand, it is Aitherne, a likeness, however distorted, of the Culture Hero, that recovers possession of it in the Irish version of the myth, and brings it back to Ulster; so that the two accounts may be said to amount to the same thing, inasmuch as they both associate the week and the alternation of day and night with the action of the Culture Hero. In Hindu mythology, Indra is represented as daily engaged in bringing back the sun and the dawn so as to be seen of men: it is his regular work. But this very primitive notion is not conspicuous in Celtic or in Norse mythology; it is nevertheless there, but buried beneath the débris of sundry metaphors and symbolisms; and it is to be extricated only as a matter of inference or interpretation. Even so it is valuable, as it serves to strengthen at its weakest point the parallel to be drawn between Indra in the East and Gwydion-Woden in the West.
- ↑ Simrock's Edda, p. 318.
