to the modern version, that Balor betrothed his daughter to the latter during a truce between the Fomori and the Tuatha Dé Danann.[1] Another story makes Lug's father Cian the son of one Cainte,[2] a name which may be identified with that in stories which mention a Cian son of Ailill Aulom;[3] for Cainte meant a satirist, and Ailill was represented as a poet, there being, in fact, poems extant which are ascribed to him.[4] He was, however, more than a poet or satirist, being a form, as the name would indicate, of the Celtic Dis, or god of darkness and death. His epithet of Aulom or Ólom literally meant 'ear-bare,' which is explained by a story relating how on a November eve one of the Tuatha Dé Danann goddesses stripped the skin and the flesh completely off one of his ears, leaving him ever after under that blemish, which she is said to have inflicted on him in retaliation for injury and outrage.[5] On the other hand, he was possessed of a projecting tooth, the venom from which was irresistible, and he is said to have treacherously planted it in the check of a step-son of his, when he approached to bid him farewell:[6] Ailill knew it would kill him within nine days, which was his wish.
Ailill's wife was called Sadb, and she was a druidess
- ↑ Harl. MS. 5280, fol. 63a. In the same MS. 19a, and in the Bk. of the Dun, 124b, Lug is called son of Conn son of Ethne—Lug mc Cuind mic Ethlend—a pedigree otherwise unknown to me: possibly, however, Cuind came in as Cuinn and as a mistake for Céin, tho gen. of Cian. Then Ethne would be mother of Cian and grandmother of Lug.
- ↑ Atlantis, iv. 169; Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, p. 43.
- ↑ O'Curry, ij. 139, 149; Four Masters, A.D. 241.
- ↑ O'Curry, ij. 57-8.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 288a.
- ↑ Ib. 291b, 292a; the Bodley MS. Laud. 610, fol. 95b2.
