CELTIC MYTHOLOGY (Illustrated Edition). T. W. Rolleston

By a fairy well Jeanne d'Arc had her first vision.

558. Greg. Tours, Vita Patr. c. 6.

559. See Reinach, Catal. Sommaire, 23, 115; Baudot, Rapport sur les fouilles faits aux sources de la Seine, ii. 120; RC ii. 26.

560. For these tablets see Nicolson, Keltic Studies, 131 f.; Jullian, RC 1898.

561. Sébillot, ii. 195.

562. Prologue to Chrestien's Conte du Graal.

563. Sébillot, ii. 202 f.

564. Ibid. 196-197; Martin, 140-141; Dalyell, 411.

565. Rh^ys, CFL i. 366; Folk-Lore, viii. 281. If the fish appeared when an invalid drank of the well, this was a good omen. For the custom of burying sacred animals, see Herod, ii. 74; Ælian, xiii. 26.

566. Gomme, Ethnol. in Folklore, 92.

567. Trip. Life, 113; Tigernach, Annals, A.D. 1061.

568. Mackinley, 184.

569. Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, 416; Campbell, WHT ii. 145.

570. Old Stat. Account, xii. 465.

571. S. Patrick, when he cleared Ireland of serpents, dealt in this way with the worst specimens. S. Columba quelled a monster which terrified the dwellers by the Ness. Joyce, PN i. 197; Adamnan, Vita Columb. ii. 28; Kennedy, 12, 82, 246; RC iv. 172, 186.

572. RC xii. 347.

573. For the water-horse, see Campbell, WHT iv. 307; Macdongall, 294; Campbell, Superstitions, 203; and for the Manx Glashtyn, a kind of water-horse, see Rh^ys, CFL i. 285. For French cognates, see Bérenger-Féraud, Superstitions et Survivances, i. 349 f.

574. Reinach, CMR i. 63.

575. Orosius, v. 15. 6.

576. LU 2a. Of Eochaid is told a variant of the Midas story—the discovery of his horse's ears. This is also told of Labraid Lore (RC ii. 98; Kennedy, 256) and of King Marc'h in Brittany and in Wales (Le Braz, ii. 96; Rh^ys, CFL 233). Other variants are found in non-Celtic regions, so the story has no mythological significance on Celtic ground.

577. Ptol. ii. 2. 7.

578. Campbell, WHT iv. 300 f.; Rh^ys, CFL i. 284; Waldron, Isle of Man, 147.

579. Macdougall, 296; Campbell, Superstitions, 195. For the Uruisg as Brownie, see WHT ii. 9; Graham, Scenery of Perthshire, 19.

580. Rh^ys, CFL ii. 431, 469, HL, 592; Book of Taliesin, vii. 135.

581. Sébillot, ii. 340; LL 165; IT i. 699.

582. Sébillot, ii. 409.

583. See Pughe, The Physicians of Myddfai, 1861 (these were descendants of a water-fairy); Rh^ys, Y Cymmrodor, iv. 164; Hartland, Arch. Rev. i. 202. Such water-gods with lovely daughters are known in most mythologies—the Greek Nereus and the Nereids, the Slavonic Water-king, and the Japanese god Ocean-Possessor (Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 148; Chamberlain, Ko-ji-ki, 120). Manannan had nine daughters (Wood-Martin, i. 135).

584. Sébillot, ii. 338, 344; Rh^ys, CFL i. 243; Henderson, Folk-Lore of the N. Counties, 262. Cf. the rhymes, "L'Arguenon veut chaque année son poisson," the "fish" being a human victim, and

      "Blood-thirsty Dee

       Each year needs three,

       But bonny Don,

       She needs none."

585. Sébillot, ii. 339.

586. Rendes Dindsenchas, RC xv. 315, 457. Other instances of punishment following misuse of a well are given in Sébillot, ii. 192; Rees, 520, 523. An Irish lake no longer healed after a hunter swam his mangy hounds through it (Joyce, PN ii. 90). A similar legend occurs with the Votiaks, one of whose sacred lakes was removed to its present position because a woman washed dirty clothes in it (L'Anthropologie, xv. 107).

587. Rh^ys, CFL i. 392.

588. Girald. Cambr. Itin. Hib. ii. 9; Joyce, OCR 97; Kennedy, 281; O'Grady, i. 233; Skene, ii. 59; Campbell, WHT ii. 147. The waters often submerge a town, now seen below the waves—the town of Is in Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh^ys, CFL i. 379). In the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified (O'Grady, ii. 184, 265).

589. Roberts, Cambrian Pop. Antiq. 246; Hunt, Popular Romances, 291; New Stat. Account, x. 313.

590. Thorpe, Northern Myth. ii. 78.

591. Joyce, PN ii. 84. Slán occurs in many names of wells. Well-worship is denounced in the canons of the Fourth Council of Arles.