statement, that, when the Mac Óc travelled, he carried the glass grianan about with him, and slept in it at night in order to attend on Etáin while awaiting the return of her former health and vigour. Once more Etáin's rival succeeded in separating her from her protector and in reducing her to a condition of great wretchedness, prior to her entering on a new state of existence. The role of protecting a dawn-goddess is ascribed to the Mac Óc in another story,[1] where she appears under the name of Grainne, daughter of Cormac mac Airt, and the Mac Óc is called Aengus. Grainne declines to wed Finn, the counterpart of the Welsh god Gwyn, king of the fairies and the dead; but she elopes with Diarmait, a solar hero who was Aengus' foster-son; and when Diarmait and Grainne found themselves hard pressed by Finn and his men in pursuit, Aengus repeatedly aided them by throwing his magic mantle around Grainne and carrying her away unobserved by Finn. Here the mantle answers the purpose of the more cumbrous glass grianan.
The latter, however, is of prime importance from a mythological point of view, as it seems to be a sort of picture of the expanse of the heavens lit up by the light of the sun; and in the Mac Óc, going about with this glass structure, we have a representation of the Aryan Zeus in his original character of god of the sun and daylight. Now if the Mac Óc be regarded as a Goidelic Zeus, the Dagda should be a Cronus, and that is corroborated by the peculiar relations in which the two Irish gods are placed with regard to one another. For
- ↑ The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne, already alluded to: see note, p. 135.
