Celtic Mythology. John Arnott MacCulloch

young bulls, as stallions, and as birds, until one was slain, his body falling on the other and killing him. The rebirth incident is lacking here.¹¹

      In the story which narrates how King Mongan recovered his wife from the King of Leinster his feats were originally those of a divine namesake. Taking the form of a cleric, he gave that of another cleric to his attendant and won entrance to the King's fort and to his wife. He kissed her, but when the attendant hag cried out, he sent a magic breath at her, and what she had seen was no longer clear in her mind, after which he shaped a sharp spike on which she fell and was killed. His attempt to recover his wife failed, however, and at a later time he took the guise of Aed, son of the King of Connaught, transforming a hag into the shape of Aed's beautiful wife, Ibhell. The King of Leinster fell in love with her.and exchanged Mongan's wife to the pretended Aed for her; but the pair escaped, and great was the King's disgust to find Ibhell in the form of a hag. Mongan also made a river with a bridge over it, where none had ever been before, and in it he set the two clerics whose shapes he had borrowed.¹²

      The gods could likewise transform each other. Etain was changed by Fuamnach into an insect, as a preliminary to her rebirth, and we have seen how the children of Ler were transformed into swans by their jealous step-mother. Ler heard them singing, yet god though he was, he could not disenchant' them, just as Manannan was unable to change Aoife from the shape of a crane into which the jealous luchra had turned her.¹³ The gods remained for three hundred years listening to the music of the swans, which caused happiness to all who heard it; and after many sufferings the birds met the sons of Bodb, who spoke to them of the divinities, while Fionnghula sang of her former happiness when she enjoyed the guileless teaching of Manannan, the convocations of Bodb, the voice of Oengus, and the sweetness of his kisses. We have seen how the children, after their disenchantment, died in the Christian faith. This old and touching myth has received a Christian ending: how it originally told the further fate of Ler's children is unknown.

      The gods also transformed mortals. Morrígan brought a bull to a cow over which Odrus watched, and which followed the bull when Morrigan went into the cave of Cruachan. Odrus pursued through the cave to the síd within, but there she fell asleep, and the goddess awoke her, sang spells over her, and made of her a pool of water.¹⁴ This is partly paralleled by another story in which elves, or siabhra, transformed Aige into a fawn and sent her round Ireland. Later she was killed, and nothing remained of her but a bag of water which was thrown into a river, thenceforward named after her.¹⁵ A more curious transformation is that by which the god Oengus changed his four kisses into as many birds, in order that they might satirize the nobles of Erin, until a Druid by a stratagem stopped them.¹⁶ As has been seen, the kisses of Oengus were dear to Fionnghula. The souls of the righteous appear sometimes as white birds, and those of the wicked as ravens, in Christian documents—a conception which is probably of pagan origin.¹⁷

      Finally, to show how the memory of the Tuatha Dé Danann and their powers survived into later centuries the story of O'Donnel's Kern may be cited. In this, Manannan appears as a kern, or serving-man, at the houses of historic personages of sixteenth century Ireland. He plays such music as never was heard, bewitching men to slumber; he is a marvellous conjuror, producing out of his bag hound, hare, dog-boy, and lady, who all climb a silken thread which he tosses upward to a cloud; he performs miracles of healing; he takes off a man's head and puts it on again; and from each place where he goes he suddenly disappears from human sight, none knowing whither he has vanished.¹⁸ Folk-memory thus preserved much of the old conception of the gods.