seer had to impart; and the chief druid had, for his mother's sake, made him a proficient scholar in the arts of the god of druidism (p. 224), so that he was fit to take part in the vision-feast.[1] This is borne out by other parts of the story of Cúchulainn: thus on one occasion he is made to deliver himself of an elaborate charge[2] to his friend Lugaid, who had been chosen king of Ireland, telling him how he was to conduct himself in that office; and if we turn to another field of his acquirements, we find him more than once writing ogams of potent magic, which thrown in the way of the advancing hosts of his enemies seriously embarrassed and delayed their march on the Táin.[3] The superiority which he claimed over the nobles of his country he ascribed to his having been educated by every one of them, whether captain or charioteer, whether king or ollave: so he held himself bound to them all by the ties of fosterage, and he avenged the wrongs of them all without distinction. 'Verily it is therefore,' he says in concluding his account of himself to Emer, 'I was called by Lug . . . . from the swift journey of Dechtere to the house of the great man of the Brugh.'[4] This in its way reminds one of the role which Apollo played in the politics and history of Greece, not to mention the parallel between Dechtere's flight with her fifty maidens to the Brugh of the Boyne
- ↑ The words in point are—conid amfissid fochmaire hi cerdaib dé druidechta conid ameolach hi febaib fiss. (Bk. of the Dun, 124b). I take fiss. to stand for fissi; ( = fessi): compare the tarbfes, or bull-feast, in Windisch, pp. 212-3.
- ↑ Windisch, pp. 213-4.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 57a, 57b, 63b.
- ↑ It is so I venture to translate the words, 124b—Især ém domrim-gartsa ó lug mac cuind maic ethlend diechtra dían dectiri co tech mbuirr in broga. See p. 391, above.
