king and bore him out of his chariot, and they first took his sword from him. They afterwards took him as far as the sea, and Fergus perceived them when his feet touched the sea. Whereat he awoke and caught three of them, to wit, one in each of his two hands, and one on his breast. 'Life for life' (i.e. protection), say they. 'Let my three wishes (i.e. choices) be given,' says Fergus. 'Thou shalt have,' says the dwarf, 'save that which is impossible for us.' Fergus requested of him knowledge of passing under loughs and linns and seas. 'Thou shalt have,' says the dwarf, 'save one which I forbid to thee: thou shalt not go under Lough Rudraide [which] is in thine own country.' Thereafter the luchuirp (little bodies) put herbs into his ears and he used to go with them under seas. Others say it is the dwarf gave his cloak to him and that Fergus used to put it on his head and thus go under seas." The words luchuirp and luchorpáin appear to mean literally small bodies, and the word here rendered dwarf is in the Irish abac, the etymological equivalent of the Welsh avanc, the name by which certain water inhabitants of a mythic nature went in Welsh, such as the avanc of the lake killed by Peredur, and that other dragged out of the Conwy by Hu the Mighty and his two oxen: the stories of both imply that they had more or less completely the human form, and that the latter was of a large size.[1] So much by the way; I only wished, however, to point out that the preposition in the foregoing extract rendered by under is always fo, and under seas is fo muirib, that is to say, the very words
- ↑ See R. B. Mab. pp. 223-4, 226; Guest, i. 341, 343, 345; Evans' Dict. of the Welsh Lang. s. v. afanc; Triads, iij. 97.
