Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/520

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504
V. THE SUN HERO.

eyes. After doing this, Aengus and Corc escaped, and the latter freed himself from his position as a hostage. A war ensued, which is regarded as the beginning of the great movement of the tribes of Leinster usually known as the Expulsion of the Déisi, some of whom came as far as Dyved, in the south-west corner of Wales, and settled there. But the story of Corc makes him, after Aengus' death, accompany another band of the exiles on sea, and sail westwards until they came to Bói's Island (p. 309), to which the narrator at this point gives the name of Tech nDuind iar nÉrinn, or Donn's House behind Ireland. When Corc saw the island where he had been reared, he asked his companions to stay with him there; but his story goes no further, except to state in a general way that he remained in the south of Ireland. His mother's name, as already mentioned (p. 308), was Duben, genitive Duibni or Duibne, so he is usually known as Corc Duibne, or Duben's Cropped One. It is clear at a glance that Duben's twin sons Corc and Cormac are to be compared with Arianrhod's children Dylan and Lleu, and that they may be taken to represent darkness and light respectively. Of Cormac, however, next to nothing is said, but we are left to suppose that he was handed over at his birth to the nobles of Munster to be burnt. But Corc, in whom the interest of the story centres, clearly lends himself to a comparison with Dylan; for as Dylan hies away to the sea as soon as he is christened, so Corc is taken as soon as he is born to a little island in the Atlantic, and in the course of his later wanderings he welcomes the sight of it once more and desires to remain on it. This, it is needless to say, is in keeping with the systematic association of the world of waters