warrior on horseback have a short mallet like that of Thor thrown in front of the horse's head, showing that the idea of the flung hammer was familiar in Gaul (Rev. Celt. i. p. 1, seq).
M. Cerquand has collected a number of classical examples as well as of local traditions connected with the hurling of stones as engines of war and of the transference of the idea of the massive stone flung by hand into that of the thunderbolt hurled from heaven. The idea of destruction by stones or weapons hurled upon the enemy is a familiar one in Gaulish and also in Irish tradition. To the examples he has collected might be added the club of the Dagda, the destruction caused by whose blows was "as the destruction of hail-stones crushed beneath the feet of a herd of horses" (second Battle of Moytura, Rev. Celt. xii. pp. 52, 306-8), or the strokes of Balor of the Mighty Blows; but more especially the Titanic warfare in the Táin bó Cuailnge made by the hero Amargin upon the hosts of Meave, he "lying on the west side of Taillte with his left elbow under him" and pelting the enemy's host with rocks and flags and great blocks of stone.[1] For three days and nights he continues to shower rocks upon the host of Meave, much as the god of Delphi poured down upon the Gaulish host assembled to attack the oracle enormous stones detached from Parnassus which crushed whole companies beneath them. (Pausanias, x. 23.)
In like manner Iliach the aged warrior filled his chariot with "stones and blocks of rock and flags" which he hurled against the men of Ireland (Táin bó Cuailnge, xxxiii, 5, p. 657). Possibly the flinging of sharp-edged shields in combat which was common in Ireland may have been a reminiscence of the throwing of stones in an earlier and ruder age.
- ↑ Táin lbó Cuailnge, Windisch, xxiii. 6, p. 661.
