Saint Brendán, Prince Madoc (or the Dog?1), Labrad the Mariner (who is also a dog hero), and Brecán, who has given name to Corryvreckan.

The legend of Saint Brendan begins exactly as the inedited tale of the Ceannaidhe Fionn begins, with the recital of wonderful adventures, and three denials of their truth by one of the company, followed by further voyages undertaken to prove them true. The Sindibad story has also analogies with this. Even so careless a writer as Cæsar Otway suggests (with reason, as we think) that Saint Brendan's three ships and the three swans (or daughters) of Ler are identical. So Colonel Moor, in the midst of much wild speculation, perceives a true relation between the tricolor or trifoliate lotus of the Indian Thumbling and the shamrock, associated with Brendan and the Irish Thumbling, Find.3 S. Brendan's famous "goats" suggest the 360 "swine" of Odysseus. The Belt," Merchant's Rod," or "S. Peter's Staff" recalls both the beggarman's staff of Odysseus and the ffon wen, or white staff, of the Welsh Odysseus, Einion son of Gwalchmai. 4

Odysseus appeared in merchant's garb before King Lycomedes. Einion's white staff is called a pilgrim's staff, and it is owned by the White Man. We might trace the recurrence of these conceptions in romantic legend,-the White Pilgrim, White Merchant (already mentioned), the White Tyrant, the White Fisherman, the Red Fisherman, the Ancient Mariner, Charon, the Wandering Jew, Goodman Misery.

These are, of course, figures differing in many traits; but all seem, in one way or another, to be myths of Time and the eternal march of the daily light. Even the star myths have often such a relation. The hunter Orion may be compared with Time as a hunter in Straparola's riddle; Orion old and blind seems a myth of the darkening year; his unexplained name suggests the course of the seasons (ŵpai); and his Belt figures in time myths. The blinding of Orion is the blinding of another time-devouring giant, the Cyclops.

THE THREE MOTHERS.

The Three Mothers, to whom the western legionaries paid such

1 Compare Pughe, s. v. madawg.

2 Erris and Tyrawley, 101 n.

Matóc is the older form.

• Oriental Fragments. The identity of Find and his magical thumb with Vishnu or Brahma, floating on the pipala leaf and sucking creation or time out of his thumb, was observed by M. Liebrecht (Gerv. von Tilbury, 156). Find or Brendan floats on a flag, sometimes on a leaf.

The Red Indian Eve came out
Iolo MSS. 176.

Compare the three fingers of Ormuzd.

honour, are the Three Fates; and are again the French fairy godmothers, "nos Bonnes Mères les Fées." Now these are often past, present, and future time. So the Good People are, now the souls of dead people, now, as we could show by the plentiful evidence, the dead days (as White Women or the like). When these dead or immortal White Women carry living people with them, or substitute one of themselves for a living person, it seems to be a myth of the stealing away of the living or present days by time.

That here again primitive imagination knew how to coördinate myths of the seven days, or three periods of time or the year, with such starry figures as the seven stars of the Wain, or the three of the Belt, is shown by the following example. The three gift-bringing Fates answer to the dove sisters, Oeno, Spermo, and Elais, who changed what they pleased into wine, corn, and oil. The well of their brother Andros during the Nones of January tasted like wine. Now the Nones of January are the 5th of January, the eve of the festival of the Three Kings (which probably has succeeded to pagan celebrations); and on the night before this festival, according to popular belief in Ireland and elsewhere, the water is changed into wine. The three sisters thus answer to the Three Kings; and these are associated yet with the Belt (les Trois Roys).

THE SPHINX-HER RIDDLE-VIRGILIAN RIDDLE.

Though much has been written on the triform monster, the Sphinx, and her relations, the Chimæra, Cerberus, Hecate, etc., it will not be denied that no satisfactory explanation has been propounded. Yet antiquity seems to have handed down to us the explanation in two forms. One is the Sphinx's own riddle, which, as most readers know, relates to the three ages of man's life. The triform winged devouring creature is swift devouring Time itself, past, present, and future.

The Sphinx is especially an Egyptian monster. Now what explanation does Macrobius give of the Sphinxes or Cerberi of Alexandria? "To the image (of Serapis) they add that of a threeheaded animal, which in the middle and largest head represents a lion; on the right rises the head of a fawning dog; the left-hand neck ends in the head of a ravenous wolf." To these were added 1 Compare the Iliad, ii. 302, where the "Fates of death they go.

carry off men as

2 Thus Bacon explained the Sphinx to be Science. Sir George Cox makes her the storm-cloud (Mythology, I. 222).

the folds of a dragon. "By the lion's head is represented the present time; . . . the past time is signified by the head of a wolf; . . . the image of a fawning hound represents the event of the flattering future." Such an explanation is of the highest value, for it shows that the meaning of the strange symbol was yet known by Egyptian priests in Macrobius's time (the beginning of the fifth century).

The Indian triad (Trimurti) belongs to our class; and has already been explained as signifying "the three periods of human life." 2 If space permitted the inquiry we should find like explanations for the old Gallic three-headed divinity; for Geryon; and probably for the mysterious Three De Danann of the ancient Irish. The Sphinx may from another side be a monster shutting up the waters-as the mythical dragons are, now time, darkness and storm monsters, now water serpents.3

Damoetas, in Virgil's third Eclogue (104-105), sets the following riddle :

Dic quibus in terris-et eris mihi magnus Apollo

Tris pateat caeli spatium non amplius ulnas.

No very satisfactory answer has been found for this, which, looking to Vergilius's name and origin, may really be an old Celtic riddle. The "three ells" in the sky may be compared with several names for Orion's Belt, in which we find a measure of length, sometimes an ell, and sometimes triplicated (from the number three of the stars): "Maui's Elbow" (New Zealand), the "Lady's Ell" (Westmeath), "the Yard," ie. three feet (Westmeath), "Three-make-a-fathom " (Madagascar). The "hand" fancy is triplicated in the three-handed Hecate.

NAMES OF THE THREE KINGS-ANAGRAMS-LES TROIS

MOUSQUETAIRES.

The names of the Dactyles were a safeguard against things feared. In the middle ages the legendary names of the Three Kings were potent in many ways, e.g. as a charm against the falling sickness.

1 Saturnalia, i. 20.

2 "Das ganze Bild stellt die drei Lebensalter des Menschen dar." Rhode, Mythologie der Hindus, I. 311.

The Russian dragon retains his primitive character. Till the hero (a male Cendrillon or Thumbling) killed him, "there was never any day, but always night." On his death "immediately there was bright light throughout the whole land" (Ralston, 67, 68). The Irish time monsters get new life with the beginning of a new week.

The Dutchmen of the Cape swear by the Three Kings of Cologne, elevating the middle finger of the right hand. This suggests the three-fingered hand, Orion's Belt; and we are reminded of the coordination of images in the beginning of the old Alsatian song, recently reprinted by M. Weckerlin, “Es führt drey König Gottes Hand."

In two curious cases the names of the Kings, which are very various, have been disguised in anagrams.

1. The common charm (it sets and keeps people dancing, as elsewhere the names of the Three Kings were potent against fatigue of travel) SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS. With this nonsense (which reads alike back and forwards, and must be written with blood, a quill, etc., from three different animals) compare the names Ator, Sator, and Paratoras or Penatoras, for the Three Kings.

2. Dumas seems to have borrowed the names of his three heroes, “Athos,” “Porthos," and "Aramis," either directly from Dupuis (Origine de Tous les Cultes, iii. 163), who gives the names Athos, Paratoras, Saraim (Aramis), or from some French popular tradition. Although the former is the more likely source, yet we find in Ireland the popular tale of the Three Wise Brothers, servants of Solomon, who suggest the stars called after the Three Wise Kings.

MÉLUSINE.

Our conclusions on this famous myth, the subject of a recent work by M. Desaivre,' would be shortly as follow:

1. In the Icelandic version the name is Melucina. An older French form is Merlusine.3 These suggest Mater Lucina as the original form.

2. The triplications in the romance, three sister witches, three eyes of her son, or the like, must be compared with the three mother goddesses, the Romano-Gallic Fates, the "three Lucinae" of inscriptions, with the triform Hecate (=Lucina), and many Time myths where a triplication occurs. The determinant of this triple conception may very well be the three-starred Belt of Orion.

3. Mélusine's son "Urien" or "Uriens" we shall find to be Orion. His face, we read, was "full short and large in travers, on ey was rede, another grey dyvers."4 This description suggests the

1 M. Desaivre's conclusions are indicated by the title of his interesting book, Le Mythe de la Mère Lusine, &c. (Saint-Maixent, 1883).

2 Partenay, ed. Skeat, p. v.

Keightley cites this (F. M. 481).

Partenay, ed. Skeat, 46.

Cyclops or Trimmatos (Three-eyes),' a time-giant, like Orion himself. Alanus de Insulis explains Orion's name as "Orion quasi Urion," etc.

4. Mélusine's change to serpent shape on a Saturday is the same thing as the dragon claiming, in a Breton popular tale, a victim every Saturday. It is a myth of the death of the week. Mother Lucina may further be compared with "Holy Mother Friday," "Holy Mother Wednesday," 3 "Jack Thursday," "Man Friday," "Chance Sunday," "Saint Monday "-all, we could, we believe, show, personified days.

There may have been a local Gallic fay to whom Mother Lucina succeeded-like Maelán, who lives in a river rock near Newmarket (Cork), "Moll Downey," in an eddy at Malahide, and Líbán at more places than one on the west coast.

OLD WELSH STAR legends.

The explanation of the Arthur, or Artus, or Arth myth is contained in the name, in which we can see nothing but Arktos (the Bear), Arcturus, and the probably cognate or borrowed Celtic word art ("a bear"). It was not forgotten in Wales itself, for Southey quotes the explanation from Owen, "Arthur is the Great Bear, as the name actually implies" (Pref. to History of Arthur, p. 3). This true solution was found also by the author of the article Antiquities of Nursery Literature, in the Quarterly Review (Vol. xxi. No. 41, p. 93); and by Nork in his Mythology of Popular Tales (p. 70); though it seems to have escaped the Welsh scholars of our day.

The bear and ragged staff of the ancient house of Warwick suggest two starry figures, the northern Bear and the "staff" of Saint Peter and many others,-Orion's Belt. Here too we have a link in the chain which "binds the sturdy Bear" (as Drayton says) to Arthur. A writer in the Folk-lore Journal, 1885, cites the tradition "that Arth, the first Earl of Warwick, adopted the bear as a rebus on his name (p. 87). Nor would it be a very hopeless task to identify the multiform animal with the Dun Cow of other old Warwick legends.5

1

Compare the representation of the broad-faced and three-eyed Cyclops in the Greek bronze head in the British Museum, engraved by the latest translators of the Odyssey.

2 Cambry, Finistère en 1794 et 1795, I. 173.

'Ralston, R.F.T 200 sqq.

Hans Donnerstag, Müllenhoff, p. 578.

Compare the Lancashire Dun Horse; and the dun sow (Phaea) of Cromyon, mother of the Calydonian Boar. Dupuis rightly sees in this last another form of the celestial Bear.