592 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



compels her to rule at his hearth. Usually, however, overcome by the boldness 

 and beauty of the hero, she becomes voluntarily his subject. 



Different is the case with the divine mistress of the Celtic hero. She stays in 

 her own land and entices or compels the mortal lover to seek her. Connia, 

 Bran, Ossian have to leave this earth in order to become united with their 

 beloved. Even Cuchulain, the mightiest of all heroes, is compelled, notwith- 

 standing all resistance, to follow the fairy queen Fand and to dwell with her. 

 The divine beloved always retains the upper liand ; when the mortal becomes 

 tired and returns to the earth she remains bacli, wise and beautiful, to bewitch 

 and receive a new generation of heroes. She chooses whom she lilies, and is no 

 man's slave. She surrenders freely, but she gives up neither her freedom nor 

 her divine nature. Even when the love storj^ plays among human beings, the 

 position of the women is much more emphasized than in the German tales. 

 She is no mere puppet upon a flame-girt rocli wlio is ready to run straightway 

 Into the arms of the hex'o destined for her by fate. The Celtic woman takes her 

 fate into her own hand and chooses herself her husband or names to him her 

 conditions.^ 



It often happens that the woman vvoos the man instead of the 

 reverse. 



In one of the oldest Gaelic chronicles is read : 



But the fairest woman who came with the Milesians to Ireland was Faele, 

 Luaidh's wife who had lived lonely in western Spain till Luaidh wooed her — 

 and people said of Feale she was too beautiful to live. 



The Irish historians used to designate as Milesians the non-Indo- 

 European dark-eyed and black-haired people of Ireland whom they 

 considered, on account of their appearance, as immigrant Spaniards. 



All this makes possible a great influence of the aborigines on the 

 Gaels. Biit before assuming the probability that they have exer- 

 cised such a great religious influence, it is necessary to find an 

 analogy for such an occurrence. 



The aborigines of the British Isles stood, as has been seen, on a low 

 grade of civilization — they were savages. Let us first investigate 

 what conceptions one savage people forms of another. 



The savage fears everything new and believes it bewitched. 



Thus the inhabitants of the Nikobares ascribed the unusual violent rains of 

 1886 to the anger of the spirits because theodolites and other strange instru- 

 ments were put up upon their favorite places.^ The savage obviously considers 

 a foreign country as bewitched. Among the Ovambos the army, when going to 

 war, is preceded by a man who is next to the general in rank, and on the 

 march carries a burning torch. This has probably the object of purifying the 

 air from the evil spirits who inhabit the enemy's country, for when the fire is 

 extinguished it is taken as a bad omen and the army returns.^ 



The inhabitants of a foreign land are the more believed by the 

 savages to be sorcerers, especially when they belong to a strange, less 



1 A. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, London, 1887, p. 231-233. 



2 Internationales Archiv. fiir Ethnologie, vol. 6, p. 13. 



3 H. Schinz, Deutsch-Suedwest-Afrika, p. 320. 



