Land of Immortality, in the far north (p. 457); while the former's idea of the immortality of the gods is indirectly exemplified by the length of life incidentally assigned, for instance, to the Welsh Mabon (p. 20) and to the Irish Mider (p. 145), in whose lifetime certain events occur severed by a millennium and more.[1] A very comprehensive proof offers itself in the fact that the ordinary Celtic word for a human being means, as already explained (p. 02), a mortal. But it happens that a remarkable expedient for giving expression to the pregnant distinction between mortals and the immortals is adopted in one Irish instance, and it has mainly to do with the Irish counterpart of Heracles, namely Cúchulainn. The latter, together with his father, belong to the court of the king of Ulster, but they differ from the king and his courtiers, and the difference is brought into relief in the following manner. The strange custom of the couvade, found to have existed here and there all over the world, was known in Ireland, at least in Ulster, and when the great invasion of that province took place under the leadership of Ailill and Medb, with their Fir Bolg and other forces, they found, as indeed they had intended to find, that all the adult males of the kingdom of Conchobar mac Nessa were laid up, so that none of them could stir hand or foot to defend his country against invasion, excepting Cúchulainn and his father alone. These two were, for reasons unknown to Irish literature—unless we suppose the foreign extraction of Cúchulainn, originally implied perhaps in calling him Setanta (p. 455), to be one of those reasons—free from
- ↑ Windisch's Ir. Text, p. 131.
