Dat/i'on — Cromm Cniaich of Mugh Sleackl. 49 



Taking Crom then to stand for the "Sun," and making the other altera- 

 tions indicated, the lines emerge from obscurity, and plainly read : — 



" He was their god, 

 The faded Sun-Ueity with many mists. 

 The people whom he shook over every field, 

 The everlasting kingdom they shall not have." 



On this interpretation Crom would take rank as a genuine solar divinity. 

 But the sun in his dazzling brilliance and majesty Crom Crin, on the 

 Dinnsenchus testimony, cannot pretend to be. At best he can aspire but to 

 the role of a faded sun, shorn of his beams by many gathering mists ; and, 

 in addition to the crux thus presented, how are we to explain " The people 

 whom he shook over every field (or bay) " ? 



The sun himself may help us in these difficulties if we study his behaviour 

 towards our nether globe. The least scientific eye will not have failed to 

 note that the sun functions doubly. In his sublime moods he dispenses the 

 life-sustaining energies of light and heat. But his temper being unstable, 

 he sometimes darkens the heavens with ominous vapour masses, while the 

 thunder-spirit then tali^s possession of the blackened atmosphere, and stalks 

 in unrestrained fury over the quaking earth. The sun, the hidden thunder- 

 sprite, the thunder-god in action, being thus correlated, is it likely that the 

 concept of their unity iu trinity never took shape inside the minds of the 

 keen-witted Gaels ? The faded sun-god of the Dinnseuchus verse is clearly 

 a synonym, a typification, of the power which shook the people " over every 

 field" — a people doomed to perdition because of their spiritual bondage — 

 and that power, I think, was the Cloud-Gatherer and Thurrder-Wielder, 

 Crom. 



Let me now probe this theory at the mythological side. Eoderick 

 OTlaherty, who had ampler opportunities of studying the phenomena of 

 pagan survivals in Ireland than can ever again be enjoyed, informs us that 

 Crom Dubh was an alias for Crom Cruaich, and that Crom's festival, held 

 on the last Sunday of July, was commonly observed throughout the country 

 as Domnach Crom Duibh.' Yet OTlaherty failed to trace this observance 

 to its ultimate source, for he took it to be a commemoration of the destruc- 

 tion of idolatry which St. Patrick had achieved at Magh Sleacht.* Objecting 

 that " the coincidence of the day with the ancient pagan festival destroys this 

 hypothesis," Dr. Todd very justly remarks " that Sundays were not dedicated 

 to saints."^ 



^ " Ogygia," pp. 191-9. In an Irish poem of 28 stanzas, bound up with the "0. S. L.," 

 Mayo (vol. ii, pp. 272-6), Crom introduces himself as " Crom Dubh Cruaich." 

 " Ihid. 

 3 " Life of St. Patrick," p. 129. 



