Macamstkk — Tomah- Breg : Remains and Traditions of Turn. 33o 



prenatal life of the neophyte. He is tightly folded in a covering thai represents 

 the womb. 1 From this ho shuffles his way oul into the new life that awaits 

 him. This is what appears to be the moaning- of the mantle-rite which we 

 passed over just now. That the candidate went through the proceeding in a 

 state of ceremonial nudity is implied, though not definitely slated, by the 

 description of the horse-rite in Giraldus; the nakedness of Conaire, which is 

 emphasized at the beginning of Togdil Bruidne Da' Derga, is perhaps a 

 reminiscence of this. 



But it will be objected that the document before us asserts that the king 

 drove up to and between the stones in his chariot. If this is to be accepted, 

 it is useless to attempt to explain the ceremonies which are at the moment 

 occupying our attention. It is safe to say that whatever may or may not 

 have happened at the inauguration of a monarch, he did not drive up to 

 certain standing stones in his chariot, expecting them to open before him of 

 their own accord. The writer who reports the ceremonies has misunderstood 

 and naturally has garbled them ; it is only by comparison with similar rites 

 that it is possible to reconstruct their original form. It is easy to understand 

 why our author has intoduced the chariot so awkwardly here. The ceremony 

 begins with a chariot- rite ; the final test, at Fal, is against a wheel, supposed 

 to be the chariot-wheel. The writer who is our authority naturally inferred 

 that the king remained in his chariot the whole time. 



As an alternative explanation it has been suggested to me that the robe 

 might have been a sort of hpog irbrkog by means of which the king was 

 symbolically invested with divinity. The theory is worth putting on record, 

 though I find in it one serious difficulty — such an investiture would not be 

 likely to have taken place before the passage through the stones, if only for the 

 practical reason that it would very seriously hamper the neophyte's progress 

 through the narrow space, and would be sure to get torn. Had the mantle 

 been assumed after the passage through the stones, this would obviously have 

 been the only reasonable explanation of the part which it played in the 

 inauguration. Moreover the explanation offered above explains why the 

 robe was meant to be close-fitting: a mere symbolic robe would be more 

 likely to be full and flowing. 



We have seen that the tract mentions only two stones, omit tin;,' Moel. 

 Groups of two stones are on the whole commoner than groups of three ; and 

 for the purpose of the squeezing rite two stones would be sufficient, and three 

 a superfluity. It is hard to decide which version is correct. The Patrician 



> See some examples in Frazer, Vaboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 118 ; '/'<■• Magic 

 Art,i, 380. 



K.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXXIV, SECT, C. [4''] 



