An Comunn Gàidhealach Publications > Gaidheal > Volume 22, October 1926--September 1927

AN GAlbHEAL.
An t-Sauihuin, i92(>.
sentence (which is apparently quite irrelevant to the
result to be obtained, suggesting that some other
incantation has been lost) the lion will shake himself
and become big. At the second utterance, the lion
will assume human shape (lit., will grow or become
as he ever was), but be bedewed with sweat.19
Next, the Widow’s Son is to send the speckled dun
doggie across the strait again to fetch some magic
water from the well, in order that the hero may
rub the former lion therewith. The latter will then
become very beautiful. Thus the lion, who is the
Son of the King of Deirg, undergoes, as far as can
be guessed, two processes of transformation and one
of beautification.
Though the scribe does not say that the Widow’s
Son wooed the King’s Daughter and obtained the
magic doggie, it is clear that these events took
place. For we are next told that the Widow’s Son
arrives at the strait and sends the doggie across for
the lion. The doggie brings the lion over by the
ear, and the hero thereupon utters the prescribed
sentence, with the result that the lion grows big.
The MS. fails to say that the hero reiterated the
sentence, and that the lion thereupon became as he
had ever been, but bedewed with sweat, and I have
therefore inserted paragraphs to this effect between
square brackets, for the sake of connection. The
doggie next fetches across three bottles full of the
magic water of the magic well, and the lion having
been rubbed with the water, becomes beautiful.
The magic or healing water brought from a well
located in an island figures in many stories. The
well is sometimes spoken of as green, and the island
is sometimes spoken of as the Green Isle. The
island is sometimes situated at the other side of a
strait, or may lie out in the Western Ocean, either
alone, or among a group of other islands, the Isles
of the Blest.
Then the Prince of Deirg and the doggie (but
probably not the Widow’s Son) cross the strait once
more to fetch Mary. They bring her back to the
mainland, where they now observe Sheila, Sheila’s
child, and Three-handed Donald waiting for them.
The MS. is confused at this point, and says that it
was Donald, his wife, and child, who were awaiting
them. This must be wrong, seeing that up to this
point Donald has no wife.
Donald’s appearance horrifies his sister, Mary (a
most unusual thing in these tales, in which the
wildest wonders are received without any comment
or astonishment, and are described without epithet
or ornament). But upon Donald’s third arm being
cut off, his hideousness leaves him, and he becomes
a handsome man. They visit Donald’s former
sweetheart, the Daughter of the King of the World.
She fails to recognise the former monster in the
handsome Donald, and is now quite willing to marry
him. So Donald, the now two-handed Son of Erin’s
King, becomes King of the Domain or Demesne or
World, not King of Erin.
The Prince of Deirg, who, as a lion, had forcibly
detained Mary in the magic island, now marries her,
and takes her home to his own kingdom, wherever
that is or was.
The doggie, Son of the King of Town-under-
Waves, goes to his own kingdom, presumably
having resumed human shape.20
The Kingdom of Erin falls to the Widow’s Son,
as the husband of the adopted daughter of Erin’s
King. (The incident of a hero settling among his
wife’s people also occurs in Islay’s Popular Tale*.
II., No. 38, and MS. Yol. XI., No. 171. See also
Dr. Geo. Henderson, Survivals in Belief among the
Celts, 4/t.) Thus Donald, the Prince of Deirg. and
the Widow’s Son, all marry happily. It is to be
observed, however, that the doggie does not.
It is just possible that the Son of the King of
Deirg, who is aided by the little dog divinity, is
connected with the great Munster tribe of the
Deirgthine or Deirgtheine. One of the princes of
this tribe, to wit, Eogan, son of Mogh Neid, was
assisted by Nuada, a marine god (Boy. Soc.
Antiquaries of Ireland, Dec. 1919, 150—Poll-Lore,
XXXI., 118). The Prince of Deirg also occurs in
another singular story, No. 305, Islay’s MS., Vol.
The venomous or dangerous dogfishes are called
in our tale biorai<:he[aii\ nienhe. In Am Faclair,
the singular form, biorach, the sharp-pointed, or
prickly, or piercing thing, is referred to the gobag,
or mouthed, biting thing, sqtialas acanlhias. But
there is another kind of dog-fish, scyllium catulus,
in Gaelic, dallag, or blind thing, which figures in
another tale, called “The reason why the dallag
(dog-fish) is called the King’s-fish.” This story
(No. 83, Islay’s Popular Tales, III.) relates that
the King of Lochlann quarrelled with Fionn one day
over a dallag which they had caught when fishing
together. Fionn was the first to notice that the
dallag had taken his hook, but upon hauling the
fish on board, it was seen that the King of
Lochlann’s hook was also embedded in it. Both
claimed the fish. They went to law, and the law
decided that the fish belonged to Fionn, because he
had been the first to notice that it was “laying”
on his line. The King of Lochlann, annoyed, went
home, and complained to his foster-parents, the
Muileartach or Muireartach (Ibid., No. 73), who is
usually called a Norse Witch, and the Smith of
Songs, to whom she was married. All three came
to Erin in order to be revenged, and ever since then
the dallag, we are (rather inconsequently) told, was
called the king’s-fish.
It should be noted that the late Professor Sir John
Rhys thought that Lochlann, “like the Welsh
Llychlyn, before it came to mean the home of the
Norsemen, denoted a mysterious country in the
lochs or the sea.” Hibbert Lectures, 1886, p. 355.
It is possible, then, that the King of Lochlann, and
his foster-parents, were hostile marine divinities,
who would naturally resent Fionn’s capturing any
of their subjects, or sacred fishes. The dangerous
dog-fishes in our tale were probably subjects, or
messengers perhaps, of the King of Town-under-
Waves, seeing that they do no harm to the King’s
own Son. And the said King may have been con¬
founded with the King of Lochlann in No. 83. In
any case, our story is probably of singular import¬
ance as a contribution towards the reconstruction of
a lost marine mythology, either pre-Celtic or Celtic.
But its place in that mythology, and its inner
meaning, must be left to the learned to settle.
J. G. McKAY.
19 Disenchantment is accompanied by sweating in an Irish tale (West Irish Folk-2Jales, William
Larminie, p. 230). The hero in No. 44 (Campbell of Islay’s Popular Tales of the West
Highlands, II.), when raised from the dead, is said to be “in a burst of sweat.” A Seer, when
seeing a painful vision, also perspired. Rev. J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, p. 180.
20 For a “little dog divinity who goes to the skies,” see Islay’s Pop. Tales, I., No. 12. See also IV.,
index, art. dog, and MS., Yol. X. Nos. 156, 159. In Irish myth, a little fox frequently occurs.
See Ibid., II., No. 46, Var. 4.