Identifier: mythologyofallra03gray (find matches)
Title: The Mythology of all races ..
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Gray, Louis H. (Louis Herbert), 1875-1955 Moore, George Foot, 1851-1931 MacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott), 1868-1950
Subjects: Mythology
Publisher: Boston, Marshall Jones Company
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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ro holding its tail, it brought them to the Landof Promise, whence Fionn ultimately rescued them. This formsthe first part of a late artificial tale, based upon a mythicfoundation.^^ Other mythical horses came from a water-world,e. g. the steeds which (Cuchulainn captured, one of these beingthe Grey of Macha, out of the Grey Lake. Cuchulainn slippedbehind it and wrestled with it all round Erin until it wasmastered; and when it was wounded at his death, it went intothe lake to be healed. The other was Dubsainglend of theMarvellous Valley, which was captured in similar fashion.^^ PLATE XVI Cernunnos This homed deity with torques on his horns isperhaps identical with the homed god shown inPlate XXV. He was doubtless a divinity of theunderworld (see pp. 9, 104-05, 158, and for otherdeities of Elysium cf. SmertuUos, Plate V; the three-headed god, Plates VII, XII, the squatting god,Plates VIII-IX; Sucellos, Plates XIII, XXVI; andDispater, Plate XIV). From an altar found atNotre Dame, Paris.
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MYTHICAL ANIMALS AND OTHER BEINGS 129 Possibly the rushing stream was personified as a steed, andthe horse-goddess Epona is occasionally connected with streams,while horses which emerge from lakes or rivers may be mythicforms of water-divinities. In more recent folk-belief the mon-strous water-horse of France and Scotland was capable of self-transformation and waylaid travellers, or, assuming humanform, he made love to women, luring them to destruction.Did such demoniac horses already exist in the pagan period,or are they a legacy from Scandinavian belief, or are theyearlier equine water-divinities thus distorted in Christiantimes .^ This must remain uncertain, but at all events theywere amenable to the power of Christian saints, since St.Fechin of Fore, when one of his chariot-horses died on ajourney, compelled a water-horse to take its place, afterwardallowing it to return to the water.^* Akin to these is the Welshafanc, one of which was drawn by the oxen of Hu Gadarnfrom a pond, wh

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