In a word, the Thorsteinn story, though not corresponding through and through to any of the Celtic ones, shows a general similarity to them, which goes to form evidence of a notion once common to Celts and Teutons as to the nether world; and the outlines of that notion are probably to be ranked among the ancient ideas of the Aryan family.[1]
To return to Cúchulainn, it is right to add that some of the stories give his wife a name other than Emer, namely Ethne Ingubai,[2] wherein we have a discrepancy, probably not to be got over by saying that these were two names borne by one and the same person. For it may be that the myth pictured the Dawn not as one but as many, to all of whom the Sun-god made love in the course of the three hundred and more days of the year. Among those mentioned as his wives or lemans may be included not only Emer and Ethne, but also Uathach and Aife; nay, he seems, as we shall see presently, to have had also loves of a somewhat different description, reflecting the sparkling of the dew-drop in the rays of the sun; but he declines to have anything to say to Dornolla, the big-fisted daughter of Domnall: she was too hideous, and she became his implacable foe.
Another tale[3] of Cúchulainn's doings in the world of darkness and death must now be briefly mentioned, as it
- ↑ On the question of the relation of the Thorsteinn story to other Teutonic stories, see E. Heinzel, Ueber die Nibelungensage (Vienna, 1885), where a great variety of references are given: see also Cerquand's Taranis et Thor in the Rev. Celt. vi. 420.
- ↑ As in the first part of the story of Cúchulainn's Sick-bed.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 43a—50b; Windisch, pp. 205—227; also published, with a translation by O'Curry, in the Atlantis, i. 370—392, ij. 98—124.
