October 5, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



511 



has been called the couvade, to which the 

 other adult braves of Ulster succumbed for 

 a time every year. Then I may mention 

 that Cuchulainn's baby name was Setanta 

 Beg, or the Little Setantian, which points 

 to the country whence Clichulainn's father 

 had probably come, namely the district 

 where Ptolemy mentions a harbor of the 

 Setantii, somewhere near the mouth of the 

 Eibble, in what is now Lancashire. At the 

 time alluded to in the story I have in view, 

 Ctichulainn was young and single, but he 

 was even then a great warrior, and the ladies 

 of Ulster readily fell in love with him ; so one 

 day the nobles of that country met to con- 

 sider what was to be done, and they agreed 

 that Cdchulainn would cause them less anx- 

 iety if they could find him a woman who 

 should be his fitting and special consort. 

 At the same time also that they feared he 

 might die young, they were desirous that 

 he should leave an heir, ' for,' as it is put 

 in the story, ' they knew that it was from 

 himself his rebirth would be. ' The Ulster 

 men had a belief, you see, in the return of 

 the heroes of previous generations to be born 

 again ; but we have here two social systems 

 face to face. According to the one to which 

 Cuchulainn as a Celt belonged, it was requi- 

 site that he should be the father of recog- 

 nized offspring, for it was only in the per- 

 son of one of them or of their descendants 

 that he was to be expected back. The story 

 reads as if the distinction was exceptional, 

 and as if the prevailing state of things was 

 wives more or less in common, with descent 

 reckoned according to birth alone. Such 

 is my impression of the picture of the society 

 forming the background to the state of 

 things implied by the conversation attrib- 

 uted to the noblemen of Ulster. Here 

 again one experiences difficulties arising 

 from the fact that the stories have been 

 built up in the form in which we know 

 them by men who worked from the Chris- 

 tian point of view, and it is only by scruti- 



nizing, as it were, the chinks and cracks 

 that you can faintly realize what the orig- 

 inal structure was like. 



Among other aids to that end one must 

 reckon the instances of men being desig- 

 nated with the help of the mother's name, 

 not the father's ; witness that of the King 

 of Ulster in Cuchulainn's time, namely, 

 Conchobar mac Kessa, that is to say, 

 Conor, son of a mother named ISTessa ; 

 similarly in Wales with Gwydion son of 

 Don. Further we have the help of a con- 

 siderable number of ancient inscriptions, 

 roughly guessed to date from the fifth or 

 the sixth century of our era, and com- 

 memorating persons traced back to a 

 family group of the kind, perhaps, which 

 Caesar mentions in the fourteenth chapter 

 of his fifth book. Within these groups the 

 wives were, according to him, in common 

 {inter se communes). Take, for instance, an 

 inscription from the barony of Corcaguiny 

 in Kerry, which commemorates a man de- 

 scribed as ' Mac Erce, son oiMuco Dovvinias,^ 

 where Muco Dovvinias means the clan or 

 family group of Dovvinis or Duhin (genitive 

 Duihne), the ancestress after whom Cor- 

 caguiny is called Corco-Duibne in Medieval 

 Irish. We have the same formula in the 

 rest of Ireland, including Ulster, where as 

 yet very few Ogams have been found at all. 

 It occurs in South Wales and in Devon- 

 shire, and also on the Ogam stone found at 

 Silchester in Hampshire. The same kind 

 of family group is evidenced also by an in- 

 scription at St. ISTinian's, in Galloway ; 

 and, to go further back — perhaps a good 

 deal further back — we come to the bronze 

 discovered not long ago at Colchester, and 

 dating from the time of the Emperor Alex- 

 ander Severus, who reigned from 222 to 

 235. This is a votive tablet to a god Mars 

 Medocius, by a Caledonian Pict, who gives 

 his name as Lossio Veda, and describes 

 himself further as Nepos Vepogeni Caledo. 

 He alludes to no father, and Nepos Vepogen 



