360 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



lasting." The herald then utters the words which were probably the 

 established formula — Rigi ocus aircchns hErenni duit, a HI "Thine the 

 kingship and lordship of Ireland. <> king"! Then a remarkable thing 

 happens. The king (a) utters a curse, and (b) makes a cast of a spear 

 at the herald, who (c) defends himself "with an unbound horsewhip" 

 (echlasc gan imiadad). This has every appearance of being an otherwise 

 unrecorded incident in the ritual, which the glossator has adapted to the special 

 case before him. The formula of the curse is " Uodercc ort-sa ! Ai\ tuccais 

 Guthbind let? " " basl thou brought Oonall Guthbind with thee ? " — an 

 inquiry altogether meaningless if read in connexion with the story to which 

 it is fitted; but at least as intelligible as the majority of analogous formulae 

 if we remember that the herald has just been speaking and acting in the part 

 i.i a divine being who is guth-biud, "of melodious voice." As tovodcrec ort-sa, 

 which Kuno Meyer in bis edition of the text has not attempted to interpret, 

 may it ii"t mean "The Red Cow upon thee!" — an invocation of a rival and 

 therefore hostile totemic deity, the - owe of Temair being white. 



But why should the kin_ r attack the herald '. There is a sort of parallel 

 to this singular rite in the inauguration of the kings of Uganda. After the 

 ceremonies there were ended, "two men were brought forward blindfolded, 

 one of whom the king Bhot slightly with an arrow, who was thereupon sent 

 to Bunyoro I ' with the remains of the Bacred fire Erom the royal 



hut ; the second man was liberated." 1 A more complete explanation may be 

 arrived at, however, if we Btarl with the weapon with which the herald 



defends himself. 1 had missed the enornn gn Pica of the horsewhip, 



which I had supposed to be the cord of the bull-roarer. But Mr. Cook 

 reminded mo thai the k _ d iw, after the completion of the rite a 



divine I that th>- horsewhip was an appropriate weapon for the 



herald to use. 



This does not ho\ plain why the herald should be thus called upon 



If. But let the reader now turn back to the skeleton of the 



poem, in which the beliefs underlying tl ■ rites were systematized, and 



he will see that Eochu Ull-athair (or whatever name we may 'boose for the 

 demi-god founder of the monarchy) had, or Beems to have had. aimihei 

 function besides that of a producer of fertility. He was a chthonie deity, 

 Dis Pater, god of the dead. The first thing that the new king does, as soon 

 le a god, is to strike with the devouring speai < i death the nearest 

 living creature that he comes in contact with. The herald so lirituhafiot; 

 subdues the death-horse with the most appropriate weapon, a horsewhip. 



1 Roscoe, 1% p. 200. I am indebted to Sir James Frazer for calling my 



attention t<« this passage. 



