The figures beneath each entry give reference numbers for the Bibliography
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Animals and birds were closely involved with the ancient and universal practice of divination, which assumes that deities, or powers other than human, can and will communicate with humanity and express their desires. Divination also sought to reveal hidden secrets, to foretell future events or discover the probable succes or failure of undertakings. It was largely the province of priests, shamans and magicians but also affected everyday life in the occurence of personal omens. Innumerable methods were employed but the use of sacrificial animals was one of the most usual. This was called 'exispicy' and was the means of augury from the entrails of the sacrifice. Augury involved the flight of birds, or a bird; the posture when settled or any movement while settled; if they are scattered it means ill-luck and enmity, if together it signifies good luck and peace. The croak of a raven repeated three times when flying over a house is an omen of death; a crow settling on a roof and cawing is the same. The laugh of a woodpecker denotes intrigue, if against one, will fail, or that one could succeed in intrigue oneself; the laugh to the left has the opposite significance. Numbers are also important: one or two croaks of a crow or raven are favourable, three means death. Magpies are well-known for number symbolism. A crowing hen is 'neither good for God nor men'. The Roman College of Augurs distinguised between bird prophets as either OSCENES, or 'talkers', and ALITES, or 'flyers'; among the talkers were ravens, crows, owls and magpies; the flyers were eagles, vultures and migratory birds, although the latter could come into both categories as some talked as they flew, such as geese and swans. Patterns of migration were also of great significance. The way a cat faces when washing itself shows which way the wind may be expected to blow. The howling of a dog at night portends death and was associated with Hecate.
# 161
# 156: (DUR nach) An Irishman who refused to give Arthur his cauldron for Culhwch. Arthur led an expedition to Ireland, Diwrnach was slain and the cauldron appropriated. See: THIRTEEN TREASURES.
# 454: The possessor of a magical cauldron which would not boil the food of a coward. Is variously described as the steward of the King of Ireland and also as a giant. Finding of the cauldron is the subject of the early Welsh poem, the 'Preiddeu Annwn'. Also described in 'Culhwch and Olwen'.
# 104 - 156 - 272 - 439 - 454
A forester of Uther and the father of Griflet and Lorete. His own father was called Ares.
# 156
One type of brownie, but, according to William Henderson in FOLK-LORE OF THE NORTHERN COUNTIES, he is not nearly so acute as a brownie, and people are often heard saying, 'She's but a Dobie,' or, 'Ye stupid Dobie!' It used to be the custom in unsettled times on the Border to bury one's valuables and commit them to the charge of a brownie. If no brownie was to be had, people used to fall back on a dobie, which was always willing, but very gullible. There was, however, another use of the name as a tutelary family ghost. It will be remembered that the Cauld Lad of Hilton, who behaved like a brownie and was laid in the traditional way by a gift of clothes, was supposed to be the ghost of a stableboy killed by one of the Lords of Hilton. In the same way the silkie is often described as a ghost, and Lady Wilde describes the Irish Banshee as the spirit of some beautiful girl of the family, dead long ago but still concerned with its fortunes. In something the same way, the Dobie of Morthan Tower, Rokeby, is said to be the ghost of a long-past wife of the Lord of Rokeby, who was murdered by her jealous husband in the glen below. It is said that the blood which dripped from his dagger left indelible stains on the stairs. This dobie was more of a ghost than a hobgoblin, for it seemed to haunt the house in a ghostly way, and neither keened nor undertook domestic duties. In the end it was laid, not by a gift of clothes but by exorcism.
# 100 - 302
A Knight of the Round Table, called 'the Savage', perhaps originally identical with Perceval. He used to hunt game in wild forests, hence his sobriquet. He was the son of Belinant and Eglante (# 44). Another version of the story made the Lady of Malehant his mother.
# 156 - 418
# 701: Dogs were the usual attendants of the Celtic Mother Goddesses. When a god accompanied the Mother, he often took the form of a dog. The Celtic healer god Nodens took on his zoomorphic aspect as a dog.
# 161: The dog is important in Celtic myth and appears frequently with hunter-gods, such as Sucellos, the 'Good Striker', and with the Horse-goddess Epona. Dogs are associated with the healing waters and Nodens, God of Healing, could manifest a dog. Dogs are also psychic animals and connected with divination and they are frequently metamorphosed people in Celtic lore. There are endless accounts of ghost, supernatural or enchanted dogs who could be either helpful or malevolent.
# 454: The dog or hound has ever been a faithful servant of humanity and this is reflected in British myth and folklore where the dog is frequently one of the helping animals of the hero's search. Arthur's Cabal is one such dog, and Fionn's Bran and Sceolan are others.
The hounds of the Otherworld or Underworld are always white with redtipped ears, and these are the pack which ride with the Wild Hunt. CuChulain was named after he overcame Culainn's hound and it was geise for him to eat dog's flesh - a proscription he broke just before his death, since it was also his geise never to refuse hospitality offered to him: the Morrighan invited him to eat of a roasted dog.
# 454 - 701
There is a theory that they were related to the Conchind (Dogheads), a legendary people who ruled Ireland. There may be some connection with the Cunesioi, a tribe whom Herodotus places beyond the Celts in the Iberian Peninsula, and the Concani who, according to Horace, lived in Spain.
# 156
The wife of Arthur in Fielding's TRAGEDY OF TRAGEDIES (1730). This was a parody and consequently Arthur's queen had a ridiculous name.
# 156
Dolmens, Cromlechs and Tumuli. A dolmen is a kind of chamber composed of upright unhewn stones, and roofed generally with a single huge stone. They are usually wedge-shaped in plan, and traces of a porch can often be noticed. The primary intention of the dolmen was to represent a dwelling-place for the dead. A cromlech is properly a circular arrangement of standing stones, often with a dolmen in their midst. The dolmens proper gave place in the end to great chambered mounds or tumuli, as at New Grange, which we also reckon as belonging to the Megalithic People. They are a natural development of the dolmen. The early dolmen-builders were in the neolithic stage of culture, there weapons were of polished stone. But in the tumuli not only stone, but also bronze, and even iron, instruments are found at first evidently importations, but afterwards of local manufacture. See also: MOUNDS.
# 562
# 454: The Blow accidentally struck by Balin which wounded the Grail King, Pelles, and caused the Wasteland.
# 59: The ESTOIRE places it earlier when King Varlan (or Brulens) killed King Lambor with David's Sword.
# 156: The stroke which caused the Waste Land to be rendered barren making the Grail Quest necessary. In Malory it occured when Balin stabbed Pellam with the Lance of Longinus, destroying three countries as a result.
# 156 - 418 - 454 - 604
# 562: Don, or Dôn (o as in 'bone'). A Cymric mother-goddess, representing the Gaelic Dana; Penardun, a daughter of Don; Gwydion, son of Don, genealogy set forth.
# 454: The mother of the Welsh pantheon as projected within the four branches of the MABINOGION. She has been associated with the Irish Danu. Her life and deeds are unrecorded, so antique is her origin. She represents the Celtic Magna Mater as the mother of the sacred tribe, the genetrix of all peoples. In star-lore she is remembered in the constellation, as Llys Don, or Casseopeia.
# 100: The Welsh goddess Don was the equivalent of the Irish goddess Dana, and it seems likely that she was an immigrant from Ireland, for the Children of Don correspond closely in character and functions to the Children of Dana. Govannan the smith was the British equivalent of the Irish Gobniu, Ludd or Nudd of Nuada, for both had silver hands and Gwydion was a many-skilled god like Lugh. The Children of Don were in frequent conflict with the Children of Llyr, who were the British equivalents of the Irish Children of Lir.
# 100 - 272 - 454 - 548 - 562
The father of Carduino, he was killed by poisoning.
# 156
# 562:
# 454 - 562
(down koo ile nyeh) The Brown Bull of Cuailgne was owned by Daire and became the object of much strife. He was the eternal enemy of a swineherd; both of them went through time in different shapes animals, dragons, demons and birds - until the Cattle Raid of Cooley, when his rival was the White Bull of Connacht. The two bulls killed each other in combat. See also: QUELGNY.
# 454
Da Derga's hostel at Donnybrook.
# 562
Ailill slain in church of Doocloone; Maeldun (Maeld-n) at Doocloone.
# 562
(dunya-oi) or the 'Night-Man'. A kindly spirit who gave warnings of storm, sometimes by a voice shouting, sometimes by a misty appearance of a man who spoke and gave warning, and sometimes by the blowing of a horn, which must have sounded rather like a Swiss alpen-horn. Gill mentions the Dooinney-Oie in A SECOND MANX SCRAPBOOK, and gives a longer account of various warnings received in A MANX SCRAPBOOK without mentioning the Dooinney-Oie by name. An amusing story of a Dooinney-Oie who got too fond of playing his horn is told in Dora Broome's FAIRY TALES FROM THE ISLE OF MAN. Howlaa seems almost indistinguishable from Dooinney-Oie, except that he never speaks, but only howls before storms.
# 100 - 105 - 250
A Scottish variant of the Northumberland Dunnie. Like the Dunnie, the Doonie appeared in the form of a pony, but often as an old man or woman. It was far more benevolent than the Dunnie; the stories about it are of guidance or rescue. Hannah Aitken quotes one published in the GALLOVIDIAN ANNUAL (V 1903) in which a school-boy, climbing the steep rock that overhangs Crichope Linn in Dumfriesshire to take young rock-doves, slipped and fell right down the precipice. He caught hold of a hazel bush, but it only gave him a few moments' grace. He looked down to see if he would be drowned in the Linn or dashed to pieces on the rocks - there seemed no other choice - when he saw a strange old woman standing on a ledge some way beneath him, who held out her apron and told him to jump into it. He jumped, for he had no choice. The apron gave way and he fell into the Linn, but as he rose to the surface the old woman pulled him out by the scruff of his neck, and led him to safety by a hidden path which he never found again. Then she told him to get home and never to harry the doves again, 'Or mayby,' she said, 'the Doonie'll no be here tae keep ye.' With that she was gone.
# 100
The son of Claudas who was killed in a fight with Lionel and Bors.
# 156
A son of King Pellinore and a Knight of the Round Table.
# 156
See: CO-WALKER.
The name of a river in Linnuis (Lindsay?) where four of Arthur's battles were fought.
# 156 - 494
A history of Dover Castle in Kent could be a history of England, if not of Britain. It is not without significance that in a 20-mile compass of coastline are still found four of the most marvellous fortifications from periods as far apart as the ancient British, the Roman, the Norman and the Tudor, for the coastline which hinges on Dover has been the subject of constant invasion threats throughout the history of Britain. The oldest of these fortifications is from the Iron Age, being the Belgic fortifications at Bigbury to the west of Canterbury, the earthworks contouring some 25 acres of land. Among the many interesting finds from this site is a virtually intact slave chain of iron, with a fascinating barrel padlock, a reminder of the slave-centred communities which existed in Britain even before the Romans brought their own extensive slavery system to this country. In the first century the Romans of Claudius landed at Richborough, where the smooth green walls of the fortification ramparts are still curled like some enormous serpent among the few remains of the enormous marble monumental building set up to honour Domitian and his general Agricola for their conquest of Britain. The Normans built Dover Castle mainly on Roman foundations, but the Romans appear to have used the earlier fortifications of the ancient Britons for their own guidelines.
Deal Castle was more free in its construction, for when Henry III decided on his break with the Pope he constructed a number of artillery forts along the coastline, the most famous surviving (and, indeed, originally the best) being that at Deal, which has a ground-plan of six conjoined lunettes or 'petal' bastions as symbolic of the Tudor Rose. Something of the Iron Age fort is still visible in the wide swing of the Dover Castle enclosures, while considerable remains from Roman times are eclipsed by the justified fame of the Roman 'pharos' or lighthouse in the grounds of the Castle, next to the Saxon church of St Mary-in-Castro. Substantial remains of Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Plantagenet and other dynasties, right through to remains eloquent of the tragedies of the First and Second World Wars, are found in and around the Castle or City. It is not surprising that with such a long and complex history beneath its belt, Dover Castle should be able to claim its ghosts. The oldest of its ghosts is the Roman soldier who is said to be seen near the Pharos, while another ghost is a thousand years nearer our own time, belonging to the period in which Peverell's Tower was constructed. It is said that the ghost of an old woman and her dog appear outside the walls; presumably this is the couple supposedly immured within these great walls for magical purposes, because the stones would not stay in place during construction. A much later ghost - yet almost two hundred years from our own time is the drummer boy, whose headless spirit is seen wandering the grounds of the castle and who is said to have been murdered in a brawl during the Napoleonic wars. Whether the material is historical or mythological, Dover really consists of a series of stratifications, built one upon the other, often with only little destruction of what went before.
When a trench was being dug in Market Street in 1955, a hoard of coins, presumed to have been buried in 1295 when Dover was sacked by 10,000 Frenchmen, was revealed; what was significant about this collection was that the money came from seven different nations in the medieval world. These coins, so symbolic of Dover's place in history, are now on display in the local museum (Dover Town Hall). The walls of Dover Castle are in parts 20 feet thick and attained their full girth under Henry II, though it is known that the Castle has had continuous military occupation from Saxon times until the present century; they were nominally handed over to the Ministry of Works in 1958, but still used for military ceremonial functions. Nowhere in Britain is it possible to find so substantial a building which is so redolent with history and so intimately woven into British mythology. When in the days of the bad King John the rebellious barons invited the Dauphin of France to England, he first besieged Dover Castle, demanding that the Constable in charge, Hugh de Burgh, hand over the keys to this guest of the barons. Defiantly, and with some prescience, de Burgh shouted back that he would never hand over the key to aliens, for 'it is the very key of England'. Perhaps the story is a nice piece of mythology, though it has the ring of truth about it and is undoubtedly spiritually true; for sure, it is a tale which could be told only of Dover Castle, for no other place is the key to England. The Dauphin failed to gain entry, and eventually his troops were defeated, but years later, in 1295, the French, tired of English raids on their own northern ports, arrived in full strength and completely destroyed Dover itself, though they obviously regarded the castle as beyond their military purchase.
# 702
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