Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

303the original community of Gaelic and Cymric mythology. 220 Weare, in each literature, in the same circle of mythological ideas.In Wales, however, these ideas are harder to discern; the figuresand their relationships in the Welsh Olympus are less accuratelydefined and more fluctuating. It would seem as if a numberof different tribes embodied what were fundamentally the sameconceptions under different names and wove different legendsabout them. The bardic literature, as we have it now, bearsevidence sometimes of the prominence of one of these tribalcults, sometimes of another. To reduce these varying accountsto unity is altogether impossible. Still, we can do something toafford the reader a clue to the maze.The Houses of Dōn and of LlyrTwo great divine houses or families are discernible—thatof Dōn, a mother-goddess (representing the Gaelic Dana),whose husband is Beli, the Irish Bilé, god of Death, andwhose descendants are the Children of Light; and the Houseof Llyr, the Gaelic Lir, who here represents, not a Danaandeity, but something more like the Irish Fomorians. As inthe case of the Irish myth, the two families are allied by [349]intermarriage—Penardun, a daughter of Dōn, is wedded to Llyr.Dōn herself has a brother, Māth, whose name signifies wealthor treasure (cf. Greek Pluton, ploutos), and they descend from afigure indistinctly characterised, called Māthonwy.The House of ArthurInto the pantheon of deities represented in the four ancientMabinogi there came, at a later time, from some other tribalsource, another group headed by Arthur, the god Artaius. Hetakes the place of Gwydion son of Dōn, and the other deities ofhis circle fall more or less accurately into the places of othersof the earlier circle. The accompanying genealogical plans are220 Mr. Squire, in his “Mythology of the British Islands,” 1905, has broughttogether in a clear and attractive form the most recent results of studies on thissubject.