“That hound of mightiest deeds, Which was irresistible in hardness of combat, Was better than wealth ever known, A ball of fire every night.
“Other virtues had that beautiful hound (Better this property than any other property), Mead or wine would grow of it, Should it bathe in spring water.”
This marvellous hound, as well as the marvellous spear, and the indestructible pigs of Manannán were obtained for Lugh by the sons of Tuirenn as part of the blood-fine he exacted from them for the murder of his father Cian.[92] A hardly less curious story is that which tells how Lugh got his name of the _Ioldanach_, or the “Master of All Arts”.[93]
These are, of course, only the greater deities of the Gaelic Pantheon, their divinities which answered to such Hellenic figures as Demeter, Zeus, Herê, Cronos, Athena, Eros, Hades, Hermes, Hephaestus, Aesculapius, and Apollo. All of them had many descendants, some of whom play prominent parts in the heroic cycles of the “Red Branch of Ulster” and of the “Fenians”. In addition to these, there must have been a multitude of lesser gods who stood in much the same relation to the great gods as the rank and file of tribesmen did to their chiefs. Most of these were probably local deities of the various clans—the gods their heroes swore by. But it is also possible that some may have been divinities of the aboriginal race. Professor Rhys thinks that he can still trace a few of such Iberian gods by name, as Nêt, Ri or Roi, Corb, and Beth.[94] But they play no recognizable part in the stories of the Gaelic gods.
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1886. Lecture VI—“Gods, Demons, and Heroes”.
De Jubainville: _Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, chap. V.
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, chap. IX.
From the fifteenth-century Harleian MS. in the British Museum, numbered 5280, and called the _Second Battle of Moytura_.
“In Munster was worshipped the goddess of prosperity, whose name was Ana, and from her are named the Two Paps of Ana over Luachair Degad.” From _Coir Anmann_, the _Choice of Names_, a sixteenth-century tract, published by Dr. Whitley Stokes in _Irische Texte_.
Attributed to Cormac, King-Bishop of Cashel.
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1886—“The Zeus of the Insular Celts”.