Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF THE CELTS 71reckoning of the twenty-four hours of the day with the oncomingof night. 71 The name of this deity is not given. D'Arbois deJubainville considers that, together with Æsus, Teutates, Taranus,and, in Irish mythology, Balor and the Fomorians, he representsthe powers of darkness, death, and evil, and Celtic mythologyis thus interpreted as a variant of the universal solar myth,embodying the conception of the eternal conflict between Dayand Night.The God of LightThe God of Light appears in Gaul and in Ireland as Lugh,or Lugus, who has left his traces in many place-names such asLug-dunum (Leyden), Lyons, &c. Lugh appears in Irish legendwith distinctly solar attributes. When he meets his army beforethe great conflict with the Fomorians, they feel, says the saga, asif they beheld the rising of the sun. Yet he is also, as we shall see,a god of the Underworld, belonging on the side of his motherEthlinn, daughter of Balor, to the Powers of Darkness. [89]The Celtic Conception of DeathThe fact is that the Celtic conception of the realm of deathdiffered altogether from that of the Greeks and Romans, and, asI have already pointed out, resembled that of Egyptian religion.The Other-world was not a place of gloom and suffering, but oflight and liberation. The Sun was as much the god of that worldas he was or this. Evil, pain, and gloom there were, no doubt, andno doubt these principles were embodied by the Irish Celts intheir myths of Balor and the Fomorians, of which we shall hearanon; but that they were particularly associated with the ideaof death is, I think, a false supposition founded on misleadinganalogies drawn from the ideas of the classical nations. Herethe Celts followed North African or Asiatic conceptions ratherthan those of the Aryans of Europe. It is only by realising that71 To this day in many parts of France the peasantry use terms like annuit,o'né, anneue, &c., all meaning “to-night,” for aujourd'hui (Bertrand, “Rel. desG.,” p. 356).