solar hero with a beard representing the sun's rays. This deficiency was more than made up for in his case in the matter of hair; for though he is called at his birth 'he of little hair,'[1] he had plenty later, and it was remarkable for its three distinct colours—dark near the skin, blood-red in the middle, and yellow at the top, shining like a diadem of gold in front, and streaming behind over his shoulders like so many threads of the precious metal over the edge of an anvil under the hammer of a master goldsmith, or the irresistible brilliance of the sun on a summer's day in the middle of the month of May.[2] If this is to be explained in strict reference to the appearance of the sun, the Irish picture would have as much in its favour perhaps as any other; for it would refer the rays of that body not to its central part, but rather to the circumference of its disk. The three colours would seem to offer more difficulty, but not so much as the four dimples which were said to adorn both his cheeks, and to have been yellow, green, blue and red respectively.[3] Possibly the flashes[4] of his eyes, or the gems serving as pupils in the middle of them, which are described as seven or eight[5] in number,
- ↑ Windisch, p. 140.
- ↑ Ib. p. 221; Bk. of the Dun, 81a; and Bk. of Leinster, 120a. A different account is to be found in the story of the Phantom Chariot of Cúchulainn, published by O'Beirne Crowe in the Journal of the Kilkenny Arch. Ass. tor 1870-1: pp. 376-7, and the Bk. of the Dun, 113b.
- ↑ Windisch, p. 221, from the Bk. of the Dun, 48b; but 81a gives a somewhat different description; see also 122b.
- ↑ Windisch, p. 221: 'fil secht suilse ar a rusc.'
- ↑ 'Seven' is the stock number (Bk. of the Dun, 121b), but it is unnatural to give four pupils to one eye and only three to the other: it was a way of meeting the requirements of the Christian week, while 'eight,' which is the number in the story of Bricriu's Banquet (Win-
