Note 17 — Chapter XI · Folklore Philosophy

The boasts of Amairgen are characterized by M. d’Arbois de Jubainville as a sort of pantheism, and he detects traces of the same doctrine, among other places, in the teaching of the Irishman, known as Scotus Erigena, at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century: see the Cycle mythologique, p. 248. In any case, one is prepared by such utterances as those of Amairgen to understand the charge recorded in the Senchus Mór, i. 23, as made against the Irish druids or magicians of his time by a certain Connla Cainbhrethach, one of the remarkable judges of Erin, conjectured by O’Curry—on what grounds I do not know—to have lived in the first century of our era. The statement there made is to the following effect:—‘After her came Connla Cainbhrethach, chief doctor of Connaught; he excelled the men of Erin in wisdom, for he was filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost; he used to contend with the druids, who said that it was they that made heaven and earth, and the sea, &c., and the sun and moon, &c.’ This view of the pretensions of the druids is corroborated by the fact that magic, especially the power of shape-shifting at will, was regarded as power par excellence17, and by the old formula of wishing one well, which ran thus: Bendacht dee ocus andee fort, ‘the blessing of gods and not-gods upon thee!’ The term ‘gods’ in this context is explained to have meant persons of power18, and the term ‘not-gods’ farmers or those connected with the land, probably all those whose lives were directly dependent on farming and the cultivation of the soil, as distinguished from professional men such as druids and smiths. This may be further illustrated by a passage from the account of the second battle of Moytura, published by Stokes with a translation, in the Revue Celtique, xii. 52–130. See more especially pp. 74–6, where we find Lug offering his services to the king, Nuada of the Silver Hand. Among other qualifications which Lug possessed, he named that of being a sorcerer, to which the porter at once replied: ‘We need thee not; we have sorcerers already. Many are our wizards and our folk of might’—that is, those of our people who possess power—ar lucht cumachtai. Wizards (druith) and lucht cumachtai came, it is observed, alike under the more general designation of sorcerers (corrguinigh).