Blair Collection > Beside the fire

PREFACE. XXXVÍÍ
is the remains of a (probably Aryan) sun-myth, and
personifies the action of the warm sun in drying- up a
lake and makingit a marsh, killing the fishes, and leaving
the boats stranded. But this story, like many others, is
suggestive of more than this, since it would supply an
argument for those who, like Professor Rhys, see in
Hercules a sun-god. The descent of our hero into hell,
and his frightening the spirits with his club, the impos-
sible tasks which the king gives him to perform in the
hopes of slaying him, and his successful accomplishment
of them, seem to identify him with the classic Hercules.
But the Irish tradition preserves the incident of drying
the lake, which must have been the work of a sun-god, the
very thing that Hercules — but on much slighter grounds —
is supposed to have been.* If this story is not the remains
of a nature myth, it is perfectly unintelligible, for no
rational person could hope to impose upon even a child
by saying that a man drank up a lake, ships, and all ;
and yet this story has been with strange conservatism
repeated from father to son for probably thousands of
years, and must have taken its rise at a time when our
ancestors were in much the same rude and mindless
• Prof. Rhys identifies Cuchulain with Hercules, and makes them both
sun-gods. There is nothing in our story, however, which points to Cuchulain,
and still less to the Celtic Hercules described by Lucian.