god Ucuetis in Alesia.” Now Eríu was in some tales a daughter of Umor and Tailltiu was daughter of Mac Umoir. The solar god “Mac Greine,” too, had married a goddess (the same, or bearing the same name) Eríu, and was defeated (and “slain”) at Tailltiu by the Milesians. We seem to be hot on the scent of he lost tradition of the goddess who fostered the sun god at the Fir Bolgic sanctuary.
But Nuada, Lug’s predecessor in the “theocracy” (if not, as the Munster druids and genealogists thought, his child), also made a “marriage with Fál,” a well-known alias for “Eríu,” and, add the writher, “there was sporting and making love to the stone of Fál.”[1] As we shall see, there were Fál stones not only at Tara (with its “phallic names,” ancient and modern, Ferp[2] and Bod) but at Tailltiu and at Bruden Da Derg. The So-called “aphrodisiac rites,” symbolizing marriage to a holed pillar, a basin stone, a dolmen, or even, I am told, a high cross, are not unknown in Ireland in late times; some even survived to our time. Cormac’s Glossary tells us, “the marriages of Tailltiu, they were celebrated at the mound of the buying (Tulach an Coibche), where the bride price was paid.”[3] Add the fact that the marriage fees of Tailltiu were paid to the king of Ulad,[4] on whose territory the sanctuary was presumed to stand; the strange, irregular marriages kept up there, if tradition says truly, till 1770; and the coincidence of so many indicators, ancient and modern point
- ↑ The “Roth Rannach” wheel was “Roth Fail,” see Hib. Lect. iv. pp.208 211. Rhys regards Nuada Finn Fail as “Fál,” “Cromm Cruaich” and Lug. Cromm Dubh was a harvest bringer in Co. Limerick folklore, and very probably an eqivalent of Lug (like Cenn Cruaich and Cromm Cruaich), under a libellous Christian nickname “the black crooked one.”
- ↑ “Ferp” stood at the head of the chariot course of the Óenach of Temair (L. Gwynn, Eriu, vi pp. 138-9, see Coir Anm. p. 357, No. 154). For Bod Feargusa, see “Tara Hill,” p. 159, also Prof. Macalister’s “Temair Breg.” Proc. R.I.Acad. xxxiv. p. 339 sqq. He rejects any phallic theory.
- ↑ Three Ir. Gloss. p. 35. The refuse from the feast was thrown on the plain and made the mound “Taillne” whence Tailltiu (ibid. p.99).
- ↑ Probably his stewards collected them (Leabhar na g Ceart, p. 243).
