Celtic literature, are those of Amorgen, the seer of the Sons of Mile, on the occasion of their invading Ireland.[1] There is, however, a difference between them: when Taliessin asserts that he was present at the great events of all previous ages, that is an intelligible way of magnifying his own importance; but when he states that he had gone through many forms, and specifies that he had been a word, a book, a bridge, a coracle, a sword, a drop in a shower,[2] and the like, one fails to see the point of the brag; whereas Amorgen is clear; for he would not say, 'I was' or 'I have been,' but 'I am:' thus, among other things, he says he is the wind and the wave, a loch on the plain, a spear, a tear of the sun, and the like. Some, doubtless, of the assertions he makes owe their strangeness to a primitive formation of predicate without the aid of a particle corresponding to such a word as 'like.'[3] But even allowing for this, there remains enough to show that we have here to do with the self-glorification of the chief of the initiated, whether you call them bards or seers, poets or prophets; by means of his knowledge and skill in druidism or magic, he can take any form he likes, and command the elements according to his will. It is in this light that I would read a certain class of transformations which Taliessin boasts having undergone. As to his visits to the other world, he not only
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 12b; Trans. of the Ossianic Soc. for 1860, v. 234; M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's Cycle, pp. 244-6, where the author dwells on the parallel and the difference.
- ↑ Skene, ij. 137-44.
- ↑ A remarkable instance of this, with the absence of the definite article, will be found in the poem where Mider describes his own fairy realm: for the text, see the Bk. of the Dun, 131b, and Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 132-3.
