or two remarks before passing on. It identifies in a manner the world of waters with that of darkness and the dead; for elsewhere Liban is a woman in charge of a magic well, which, neglected by her, overwhelms her and changes her into an otter,[1] while the waters formed the lake now called Lough Neagh. Liban is to be equated with the Llivon or Llion of the Welsh story of the deluge occasioned by the bursting of Llyn Llion[2] or Llivon's Lake, and with the girl accused of neglecting the well, which Welsh legend describes bursting over Cantre'r Gwaelod,[3] or the Bottom Hundred, a country fabled to have flourished where the billows of the Irish Sea now ride at large on the shores of Keredigion. As to Fand, who had her separate apartment at Labraid's abode, she is called in the story the daughter of Aed Abrat, that is the Fire of the Eyelid, which meant the Tear, daughter of the Pupil of the Eye: she was so called, we are told, on account of her brilliancy and comeliness. With this the probable etymology of the name Fand agrees, being, as it would seem, of the same origin as the English word water, Lithuanian vand˚ú of the same meaning, and as the Latin unda, 'a wave:' it recalls De la Motte Fouqué's Undine, who has, however, her more exact counterpart in the Welsh story of the Lady of the Little Van Lake already mentioned (p. 422). Now Fand
- ↑ See the story of Echaid mac Máireda's Death in the Bk. of the Dun, 39a—41b, with a translation by O'Beirne Crowe in the Kilkenny Association's Journal for 1870, pp. 96—112.
- ↑ The Triads, iij. 13 and iij. 97.
- ↑ See the Bk. of Carmarthen, poem xxxviij, Skene, ij. 59; and the Traethodydd (Holywell) for 1880, pp. 479-81, where I have made some remarks on the different versions of the tale.
