Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/501

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
V. THE SUN HERO.
485

'I know,' said she; 'it is the words that passed between him and Aitherne: he said that no man of the Ultonians should carry me away. It is the conflict on account of what he then said, that is what ails the head.' 'Come thou to me to my chariot,' said Conall. 'Wait,' said Buan, 'for me to bewail my husband.' She then raised her cry of lamentation so that it was heard as far as Tara and Aillen: after that she threw herself headlong and died on the spot. Her grave is on the road, and it is called Buan's Hazel from the tree which grows through it.[1] Apart from this incident which recalls the death of Acall, the story of Conall fighting with Mesgegra in the Liffey is so like that of his overtaking Lugaid in the same river, that we may treat them as referring to the same mythic event, and regard Lugaid and Mesgegra as virtually one and the same mythic being. This is countenanced by the allusion to Mesgegra in Emer's lamentation over her husband's death.[2]

  1. Bk. of Leinster, 116b, 117a; Stokes, Rev. Celt. viij. 47—63.
  2. Bk. of Leinster, 116a—117a, 122a—122b, and 123b.