that one saw one's own coffin, and many were the pathetic events connected with this pagan survival.[1] In Ireland it was also the time for another custom: it was then that fire was lighted at a place called after Mog Ruith's daughter Tlachtga.[2] From Tlachtga all the hearths in Ireland are said to have been annually supplied, just as the Lemnians had once a year to put their fires out and light them anew from that brought in the sacred ship from Delos.[3] The habit of celebrating Nos Galan-gaeaf in Wales by lighting bonfires on the hills is possibly not yet quite extinct; and within the memory of men some of whom are still living, those who assisted at the bonfires used to wait till the last spark was out, when, unlike Diarmait, the whole company would suddenly take to their heels, shouting at the top of their voices:
|
Yr hwch ᵭu gwta |
The cropped black sow |
- ↑ I may refer to the Brython for 1859, pp. 20, 120; but I have read valuable matter in the folk-lore offered for competition at the London Eisteᵭvod of 1887, especially in the MS. of the writer calling himself Gwerinwr. I am, however, not certain which of the superstitions attached to the eve of the first of November, and which to that of the second, called Dy'gwyl y Meirw or the Feast of the Dead.
- ↑ Tlachtga has been identified by O'Donovan with an ancient ráth on the Hill of Ward near Athboy in the Minister portion of Meath, while the Well of Tlachtga was at the foot of the Hill of Ward, which was probably the Hill of Tlachtga, where she died. According to O'Donovan, the full name of Athboy was Áth Buidhe Tlachtgha, 'the Yellow Ford of Tlachtgha:' see the Bk. of Rights, pp. 3 and 10, note; also p. l, and O'Donovan's Four Masters, A.D. 1172 (iij. 5). Tlachtga was, in the first instance, the name of the daughter of Mog Ruith (pp. 211, 381): see the Bk. of Leinster, 331b; also 331c and 326g, where a man's name Fer Tlachtga is derived from hers.
- ↑ Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 146.
