king of Annwfn. In general, however, every síd had its own ruler, and if this is an early tradition, it suggests a cult of a local god on a hill within which his abode was supposed to be. Manannan is chief, par excellence, of the island Elysium, and it was appropriate that a marine deity should rule a divine region including "thrice fifty isliands." In that land he had a stone fort with a banqueting-hall. Lug, who may be a sungod, was sometimes associated with the divine land, as the solar divinity was in Greek myth, and also with Manannan; and he with his foster-brothers, Manannan's sons, came to assist the Tuatha Dé Danann, riding Manannan's steed before "the fairy cavalcade from the Land of Promise."19 He also appeared as owner of an Elysium created by glamour on earth's surface, where Conn the Hundred-Fighter heard a prophecy of his future career,20 this prophetic, didactic tale doubtless having an earlier mythic prototype.
The Brythonic Elysium differed little from the Irish. One of its names, Annwfn, or "the not-world," which was is elfydd ("beneath the world"), was later equated with Hades or Hell, as already in the story of Gwyn. In the Mabinogi of Pwyll it is a region of this world, though with greater glories, and has districts whose people fight, as in Irish tales. In other Mabinogion, however, as in the Taliesin poems and later folk-belief, there is an over-sea Elysium called Annwfn or Caer Sidi —
"its points are ocean's streams"—and a world beneath the water—"a caer [castle] of defence under ocean's waves."21 Its people are skilled in magic and shape-shifting; mortals desire its "spoils"—domestic animals and a marvellous cauldron; it is a deathless land, without sickness; its waters are like wine; and with it are associated the gods. The Isle of Avalon in Arthurian tradition shows an even closer likeness to the Irish Elysium.22
Thus the Irish and Welsh placed Elysium in various regions —local other-worlds—in hills, on earth's surface, under or oversea; and this doubtless reflects the different environments
