war-chariots and pursue the western foe in his retreat, Conohobar and Fergus meet face to face in battle, and the former reminds the latter of his having driven him forth from his lands and inheritance to the haunts of the deer, the hare and the fox: we seem to be going to have a wordy description of a mighty combat; but the epic author hesitates, and the combatants are separated.[1] So he leaves unmodified the salient fact of the defeat and banishment of Fergus by Conchobar, who got possession of his kingdom by the craft of his mother. The comparison with the Mac Óc's treatment of the Dagda and Zeus's dealings with regard to Cronus is obvious, though the story of Fergus went further, in that it gave him a second lease of power in Ulster[2] and a second exile in the west, which discloses the secret of the myth as one originally referring to the alternation of day and night. One of the gessa or prohibitions which Fergus durst not violate was to refuse a feast offered him, which may perhaps be set over against Thor's eating three whole oxen at supper,[3] if not against the appetite of Cronus.
In a previous lecture it was suggested that Fergus was the same mythic person originally as Fergus Fairge or the Sea Fergus, and the connection with the sea, to which I wish now to call your attention, is by no means confined to tins instance in the case of the counterparts of Cronus.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 102b; O'Curry, ij. 321.
- ↑ According to the Bk. of the Dun, 22a, he regains only a part of his kingdom, the Plain of Murthemne, which was in Cúchulainn's charge; but two other versions published by Stokes and Windisch in their Irische Texte, ij. 212, restore to Fergus the kingship of Ulster without any qualification, and that is clearly the older story.
- ↑ Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 222; but as to the gess of Fergus, see Stokes & Windisch, ij. 125, 129, 156, 159.
