from these special instances there are general references in the oldest Irish literature to the quasi-supernatural nature attributed to the sword. Thus the Leabhar Gabhala, or Book of Invasions, the tenth and eleventh century tract in which Irish mythology was euphemerised into an historical relation of the pre-Christian invasion of Ireland, has a passage relating to the sword of Tethra, King of the Fomori,[1] which spake, and, adds the Christian scribe, the ancient Irish adored swords.[2] This is borne out by a passage in the Seirglige Conculainn, a story belonging to the Ultonian cycle, which Mr. Whitley Stokes has translated (Rev. Celt. I., 260). The men of Ulster, when showing their trophies, had their swords upon their thighs, "for their swords used to turn against them where they made a false trophy."
The Christian transcriber notes that it was reasonable for the pagan Irish to trust their swords "because demons used to speak from out them." To return to the sword of Tethra. The most famous battle of Irish mystic history is that of Mag-Tured, in which the Tuatha de Danann, the gods of light and life, overcome their enemies the Fomori. Ogma, the champion of the Tuatha de Danann, wins the sword of Tethra, and as he cleans it it tells him the many and great feats it had wrought.
It is, however, in the second of the great heroic cycles of the ancient Irish, the Fenian or Ossianic, that we find the sword put to a use which strongly recalls that of the romances. Not until the hero is able to wield the weapon so that it break not in his hand, or to weld it together so that no flaw appears,[3] is he fit to set
- ↑ Powers of darkness and death. Tethra their king reigns in an island home. It is from thence that the maiden comes to lure away Connla of the Golden Hair, as is told in the Leabhar na-h-Uidhre, even as the Grail messenger comes to seek Perceval—"'tis a land in which is neither death nor old age—a plain of never ending pleasure," the counterpart, in fact, of that Avalon to which Arthur is carried off across the lake by the fay maiden, that Avalon which, as we see in Robert de Borron, was the earliest home of the Grail-host
- ↑ Cf. D'Arbois de Jubainville, op. cit. p. 188.
- ↑ When Cuchulainn was opposing the warriors of Ireland in their invasion of Ulster one of his feats is to make smooth chariot-poles out of rough branches of trees by passing them through his clenched hand, so that however bent and knotted they were they came from his hands even, straight, and smooth. Tain bo Cualgne, quoted by Windisch, Rev. Celt., Vol. V.
