CHAPTER XI
MYTHS OF ORIGINS
SAVAGE and barbaric peoples possess many grotesque myths of the origin of various parts of nature. In recently existing Celtic folk-lore and in stories preserved mainly in the Dindsenchas conceptions not unlike these are found and doubtless were handed down from the pre-Christian period, whether Celtic or pre-Celtic, while in certain instances a saint takes the place of an older pagan personage. In Brittany and elsewhere in France natural features—rivers, lakes, hills, rocks—are associated in their origin with giants, fairies, witches, or the devil, just as in other Celtic regions and, indeed, in all parts of the world. Many traditions, however, connect them with the giant Gargantua, who was not a creation of Rabelais' brain, but was borrowed from popular belief. He may have been an old Celtic god or hero, popular and, therefore, easily surviving in folk-memory, and may also be the Gurguntius, son of Belinus, King of Britain, mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis. Many hills or isolated rocks or erratic boulders are described as his teeth, or as stones thrown, or vomited, or ejected by him; and rivers or lakes were formed from his blood or urine, numerous traditions regarding these being collected by Sébillot in his book on Gargantua.1
In Irish story similar traditions are found and are of a naïve character. Manannan shed "three drops of grief" for his dead son, and these became three lochs, as in the Finnish Kalevala a mother's tears are changed into rivers. Again, a king's daughter died of shame when her lover saw her bathing, and her foster-mother's tears made Loch Gile. In other instances
