Note 169 — Chapter XV · Why Trees and Wells were Worshipped
Reading edition
O'Curry, Manuscript Materials, pp. 426-7.
[170] Professor W. J. Watson says in this connection: "The Celtic clerics stepped in to the shoes of the Druids. The people regarded them as superior Druids."
[171] In old Gaelic the liver is the seat of life.
[172] Mrs. E. Tawse Jollie, Hervetia, S. Melsetter, S. Rhodesia, writes me under October 12, 1918, in answer to my query, that the Boers regard striep muis (striped mice) as a cure for "weakness of the bowel" in children, &c.
[173] In a Roman representation of her at Birrens, in Perthshire, she is shown as a winged figure holding a spear in her right hand and a globe in her left. An altar in Chester is dedicated to "De Nymphæ Brig". Her name is enshrined in Bregentz (anciently Brigantium), a town in Switzerland.
[174] The beithis lay hidden in arms of the sea and came ashore to devour animals.
[175] The Dragon in China and Japan (1913).
[176] Trevelyan. Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales, p. 165.
[177] W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 117 et seq.
[178] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXVI (1897). p. 23.
[179] Laufer, Jade, p. 310.
[180] My Schools and Schoolmasters, Chapter VI.
[181] Rev. W. Forsyth, Dornoch, in Folk-lore Journal, VI, 171.
[182] It has been suggested that "Dane" stands for "Danann".
[183] A text states: "Kindly is she as Bast: terrible is she as Sekhet."
[184] The Gaelic word for "witch" comes from English. Gaelic "witch lore" is distinctive, having retained more ancient beliefs than those connected with the orthodox witches.
[185] The "fairy" Queen (the queen of enchantment), who carried off Thomas the Rhymer, appeared as a beautiful woman, but was afterwards transformed into an ugly hag. Thomas laments: