he cut down all resistance to his rule.[1] This garb of invisibility has its counterpart in the invisible cloak sometimes ascribed to Aengus, perhaps also in his portable glass bower, and even in the pellucid walls of Merlin's prison. So Caswaỻawn clad in the invisibility of his magic, is the Celtic Zeus surrounded with unapproachable brilliance driving away his enemies, among whom we here find Manawyᵭan.
What the enchanted palace of Manannán in Lough Foyle may have resembled, I have nowhere read; but the strangest thing said of Manawyᵭan is, that it was he that caused to be built the Stronghold of Oeth and Annoeth. This is described as a huge prison-house of the shape of a bee-hive, nor was it seemingly much less elaborate in its numerous compartments both above and below the ground. The walls of the dismal edifice consisted wholly of human bones built with mortar. The euhemerist,[2] however, explains it to have been meant for prisoners taken in war and for malefactors, the cells under-ground being specially reserved for those guilty of treason against the state; but we read nothing of the kind in the Mabinogion, where Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr boasts of his having been there; and the Triads only tell us that Arthur was once incarcerated
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 41, 44; Guest, iij. 126, 162-3; see also p. 153 of this volume, where Caswaỻawn should not have been called a solar hero without some qualification; for he seems to combine inseparably the attributes of a Celtic sun hero with those of a Celtic Zeus.
- ↑ I mean the author, in the Iolo MSS. pp. 187, 599, of the only account I know of the Prison of Oeth, &c.; however mistaken he was in his views, the tract is valuable and curious. See also the Gorugiau Triplets in the same volume, pp. 263, 668.
