as daughter of Mag Mór, king of Spain: now Mag Mór[1] means the Great Plain, one of the names for the other world, which is corroborated by the allusion to Spain, another of the Irish aliases for Hades (p. 90); and in the story that she was first the wife of the king of the Fir Bolg, and then of that of the Tuatha Dé, we have an indication that she belonged to the class of dawn and dusk goddesses; at one time she was the consort of a dark being, and at another of a bright one, while the Sun-god was her foster-child, which recalls the fostering of Lleu by a nurse at Dinas Dinỻe or some adjacent spot near the sea. That this is the way to regard Tailltiu is proved by a story attributing to her the action of clearing a forest and of thickly covering it within the year with clover blossom.[2] This, at the same time that it helps us to understand the propriety of associating her with an agricultural feast, recalls the Welsh myth of Olwen and the white trefoils that sprang up wherever she set her foot.[3] Both Olwen and Tailltiu were of the number of the goddesses of dawn and dusk—a class of divinities, however, much less differentiated on Celtic than on classic ground. Thus in the present instance I should claim for comparison both Aphrodite and Athene; the former, because wherever she walked on landing in her favourite Cyprus, she likewise made roses bloom and
- ↑ It is called Mag Mór mi Aonaig, 'the Great Plain of the Assembly or the Fair,' on which, the Fomori are attacked by Lug, according to one of the stories about his doings: see the Atlantis, iv. 178-9. Similarly, Bres, when driven from the kingship and seeking the aid of his Fomorian kindred, found the latter with their king, his father, holding a great assembly on a Mag Mór: see the MS. Harl. 5280, fol. 64b.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 9a: see also 200b.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 117; Guest ij. 276.
