The figures beneath each entry give reference numbers for the Bibliography
# 628: (Ker ID wen) The Welsh crone, or goddess of dark prophetic powers, is represented by Cerridwen. Her totem animal is the sow, representing the fecundity of the Underworld, and the terrible strenght of the Mother. Like many Celtic goddesses, she had two children representing dark and light aspects emerging from the One Goddess her daughter Crearwy being light and beautiful, and her son Afagddu being dark and ugly. Cerridwen is keeper of the Cauldron of the Underworld, in which inspiration and divine knowledge are brewed. She brews for her son, and sets little Gwion to guard the cauldron; but three drops fall out upon his finger, and he absorbs the potency of the brew. The goddess then pursues Gwion through a cycle of changing shapes, which correspond both to totem animals and to the turning of the seasons; this theme is related to that of Mabon and Merlin, in which a divine youth is associated with the orders and creatures of Creation. The Welsh legend, however, has a significant ending, for Cerridwen, in the guise of a hen, swallows Gwion, in the guise of an ear of corn. Nine months pass, and she gives birth to a radiant child, known as Taliesin, a title attached to the greatest of Welsh poets. # 156: This story seems far older than the period of the historical Taliesin. It is similar to a tale told about the Irish hero, Finn mac Cumhal, and may enshrine a Celtic divinatory practice involving thumb chewing. This practice was known in early Ireland as Imbas Forosnai and seems to have rested on the notion that chewing the raw flesh of the thumb imparted sagacity.
# 156 - 272 - 628 p 88 ff
She was the first settler in Ireland before the Flood. She came with fifty women and three men. When her father Fintan, disappeared and her husband died she herself died of grief. She was followed by all her women. Forty days after their arrival in Ireland the Flood came. Only Fintan escaped, hiding in a cave.
# 454 - 469
(cet' moc m 'tah) A distinguished Connacht warrior; shames the Ulsterman at Mac Datho's feast; wounds Conchobar with the calcified brain of Mesgegra; according to one tradition brother of Ailill, king of Connacht.
# 166
(ke han)
(ce'hern moc fin'tan)
# 166
(Infinity) The outermost of the three concentric circles representing the totality of being in the Cymric cosmonogy, inhabited by God alone.
# 562
Given in his 'Viking Age', a rude rock-carving showing a number of ships with men on board, and the circle quartered by a crossunmistakably a solar emblem, like a number of Irish examples.
# 562
Test at feast of Briccriu, to decide who is the Champion of Ireland. CuChulain proclaimed such by demon The Terrible.
# 562
The eagerness of fairies to possess themselves of human children is one of the oldest parts of the fairy beliefs and is a specific form of fairy theft. Mentions of the thefts of babies are to be found in the MEDIEVAL CHRONICLES of Ralph of Coggeshall and GERVASE OF TILBURY among others, through the Elizabethan and Jacobean times, and right down to the beginning of the present century. The fairies' normal method was to steal an unchristened child, who had not been given proper protection, out of the cradle and to leave a substitute in its place. This 'changeling' was of various kinds. Sometimes it was a stock of wood roughly shaped into the likeness of a child and endowed by glamour with a temporary appearance of life, which soon faded, when the baby would appear to die and the stock would be duly buried. More often a fairy child who did not thrive would be left behind, while the coveted, beautiful human baby was taken. More often still the changeling would be an ancient, withered fairy, of no more use to the fairy tribe and willing to lead an easy life being cherished, fed and carried about by its anxious foster-mother, wawling and crying for food and attention in an apparent state of paralysis. The 'stock' method was most usually employed when the fairies had designs against the mother as well as the child. A good example of a frustrated attempt at such a theft is the Shetland tale 'Mind (Remember) da Crooked Finger'. The wife of a Shetland crofter had just given birth to her first child, and as her husband was folding his lambs he heard three loud knocks coming from underground. He closed the folds and walked up through the cornyard. As he came through the stacks he heard a loud voice say three times, 'Mind da crooked finger.' His wife had a crooked finger and he had a shrewd notion that the Grey Neighbours were planning an attack on his wife and his little bairn. But the goodman knew what to do. He went quickly to the house, lighted a candle, took down a clasp-knife and a bible and opened them. As he did so a great clamour and wailing broke out in the byre, which was built against the house. He stuck the knife in his mouth with the blade pointing forward, held the lighted candle in one hand and the opened bible in the other, and made for the byre, followed by most of the neighbours who were visiting his wife. He opened the byre door and threw the bible inside, and as he did so the wailing redoubled, and with a great rush the fairies sped past him. They left behind them a wooden stock, carved feature by feature and joint by joint in the form of his wife. He lifted it up and carried it into the house. 'I've won this from the Grey Neighbours,' he said, 'and I'll make it serve my turn.' And for years afterwards he used the image as a chopping-block, and the wife was never molested by the fairies again.
Children were supposed to be stolen into Fairyland either to pay a Teind to the Devil, to reinforce the fairy stock or for love of their beauty. Where older people were stolen it was for specific qualities and they were replaced by some form of the 'stock' and generally seemed to be suffering from a 'stroke', which is indeed 'the fairy stroke', generally given by Elf-Shot. The true changelings are those fairy creatures that replace the stolen human babies. See also: CAPTIVES IN FAIRYLAND.
# 100 - 540 - 700 - 728
Tree- and stone-worship denounced by Charlemagne.
# 562
(1600-49) King of Britain and Ireland. The grandson of Mary Queen of Scots, Charles was well steeped in the misfortunes of the Stuarts. He upheld the Divine Right of Kings, by which the mystical destiny of the king under God gave him sovereign power in governing his country. He was deposed by Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians and executed. His was one of the latest in the role of kingly sacrifices, whose cult was popularly acclaimed and liturgically approved. His remembrance, on 30 January, was ordered by his son Charles II and appears in the Book of Common Prayer as a day of fasting and humiliation. Five churches are named after him.
# 454
In PERLESVAUS, the king of this castle was Perceval's uncle. He seized the Grail Castle but Perceval besieged him and he killed himself.
# 112 - 156
One of Arthur's swords.
# 156
A cheerful wayfarer, a cheerful giver and a cheerful worker are all likely to gain the patronage of the fairies, who dislike nothing so much as grumbling and moaning. See also: VIRTUES ESTEEMED BY THE FAIRIES.
# 100
In Geoffrey, a Saxon leader who brought reinforcements from Germany to Colgrin and took part in the battles of Lincoln, Caledon Wood and Bath (Badon), after which he fled. He was finally defeated and killed by Cador.
# 156 - 243
The wife of Sador, who was the son of Brons.
# 156 - 712
A version of the story of the Fairy Widower, which appears in Hunt's POPULAR ROMANCES OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. It is very closely allied to 'Jenny Permuen', also to be found in Hunt. 'Cherry of Zennor' is a curious story, and throws a number of side-lights on fairy beliefs. Sometimes one is tempted to believe that the story had a naturalistic foundation, and that it is an unsophisticated girl's interpretation of a human experience. On the other hand, it gives one quite a picture of the real traditions of underground Fairyland, such as that which was entered by True Thomas. Cherry was one of a large family living in Zennor, a small village in Cornwall, and when she got to the age of fourteen it was time for her to go out into the world. She set out to be hired at the local fair, but her courage failed her, and on the Lady Downs she sat down and cried. Whilst she was still weeping a handsome, well-dressed gentleman stood beside her, and asked what was troubling her. After some conversation he said that he was going out to hire a neat, tidy girl to look after his little son, because he had recently been left a widower. He praised Cherry's neatly-mended clothes and tidy looks, and hired her to go along with him. They went an immense way, down and down twisting lanes with high hedges closing above them. The gentleman lifted Cherry over several streams and at lenght they came to a gate into a garden where flowers of all seasons grew and flowered together. Birds were singing all round them, and Cherry thought she had never seen so lovely a place. A little sharp-eyed boy ran out to greet them, followed by an old, cross-looking woman. 'That's my wife's mother,' said the gentleman, 'but she will only stay a few days to put you in the ways of the place, and then she shall go.' The old woman looked crossly at Cherry and took her in, muttering that she knew Robin would choose a fool. It was a strange place, with long passages and a big room locked up, into which the old woman led Cherry. It was full of what Cherry thought of as dead people - presumably statues - and there was a coffin-like box in the middle of the room which Cherry was set to polish. When she rubbed it hard it made a strange, groaning sound, and Cherry fell down in a faint. Her master ran in, picked her up and took her out, kissed and comforted her, and sent the old woman away. Cherry's duties were very light and pleasant; she had to play with the little boy, milk a cow who appeared mysteriously when she was called, and anoint the little boy's eyes every morning with green ointment. The pleasantest of her duties was to help her master work in the garden. At the end of every row he gave Cherry a kiss, and she would have been very happy there if it had not been that her master disappeared for many hours together, and when he came back went into the locked room from which strange sounds proceeded. Her little charge would answer none of her questions, but only said 'I'll tell Grannie' if she asked him anything; but she fancied that he saw much more than she did, and his eyes were very bright; so one morning she sent him off to pick some flowers and slyly put a crumb of the ointment in her own eye. This produced a transformation: the garden was swarming with little creatures. Her eyes smarted and she ran to the well to wash out the ointment. At the bottom of the well she saw numbers of tiny people dancing, and to her fury she saw her master among them, as tiny as they were, and on very familiar terms with the little fairy ladies. Soon she saw her master coming back as his normal size. He went up to the locked room and went inside. Cherry followed him and peeped through the keyhole. He lifted the lid of the coffin and a lady came out, sat down, and began to play upon the coffin,and all the statues began to dance. Cherry ran away weeping, and when her master called her to weed the garden with him, she was very sulky. At the end of the first row he tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away saying: 'Go and kiss your little midgets at the bottom of the well.' Her master looked very sad. 'Cherry, you have been using the ointment that you were told not to use. I am sorry, but you must go home, and old Grace must come back again.' Cherry cried and besought, but he made her pack her clothes, and led her back the long uphill way on to the Lady Downs. She never saw him again, and like many people who have visited Fairyland, she did no good in the mortal world, but hung about the Lady Downs hoping Robin her master would come back and see her. This is one occasion on which the seeing eye was not blinded. Cherry's master had shown great restraint. An interesting feature of this story is that old Grace kept the village school. She was evidently a mortal, and therefore Robin's first wife must have been mortal too. The Fairy Ointment would have been necessary to give the little half-fairy fairy sight. It is as yet uncertain if this needed to be used by whole fairies.
# 100 - 331
The ancient oriental game of chess came into Celtic Britain at a very early date, and was much esteemed as the Game of Kings, who learned tactics and strategy from it, and the art of hiding their thoughts when they were in conflicts. It was a game at which the aristocratic fairies, the Daoine Sidhe of Ireland and the Sidh of Scotland, had great skill, and it was the habit of wandering members of the sidhe to win great contests against mortals by challenging them to three games, at each of which the winner was to choose his stake. Invariably the mortal won the first two games and chose rich prizes, but the supernatural stranger won the third, and imposed some almost fatal task or asked for some next-to-impossible gift. It was by such a game that Midhir won Etain from Eochaid. This motif is also common in Highland folktales, as, for instance, in one of McKay's MORE WEST HIGHLAND TALES, 'How the Great Tuairisgeal was Put to Death', in which the Young Tuairisgeal, winning the third game of chess, puts the Young King of Erin under binding spells to find out how the Great Tuairisgeal was put to death and to bring back with him the Sword of Light by which he was slain. The young king succeeds in the quest by the help of the woman and the horse which he won in the first two games. This is a standard pattern in both Highland and Irish tales.
Chess as a sport of kings is illustrated in the tale of Finn, in the episode when Young Finn, serving his stepfather, the King of Carraighe, incognito, displayed both his ingenuousness and his royal blood by winning seven games in succession against the king, who guessed his paternity and sent him quickly away.
# 100 - 464
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