58 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and butter. Though Ciom had been dethroned for nearly a millennium and a 

 half, though he had been united in companionship with saints and placed 

 by Colgan on the saints' calendar, the lineaments of him that had got 

 stamped on the national mind in his Olympian days still persisted until our 

 own century in leaving traces among the imagery of the people. 



In the golden period of Crom's power Ireland knew nothing of Christian 

 institutions, and would have rendered no acknowledgment to the Lord's 

 Day. With St. Patrick came a change, and the policy was inaugurated of 

 diverting pagan observances to the service of the Church. Lug was ejected, 

 for his influence had waned ; while Crom was acknowledged as the true hero 

 of the occasion. Complete deposition not being easy to achieve, the Church 

 deheathenized the old potentate, and, placing his festival under religious 

 auspices, allowed him, as tlie attendant of saints, still to participate in its 

 honours. Among remote folk-groups, to whom the faith but slowly 

 penetrated, Crom reigned on, as before, in undiminished majesty; and when 

 such regions were finally reformed their Domnach Crom Dubh celebrations, 

 though inevitably purified, in many cases escaped appropriation by saints. 

 Obsolescent as a name, Lugnasad as an event was transferred from its own 

 initial day, usually — as at Magh Sleacht — to the Sunday before, but in many 

 localities likewise to the Sunday following, or the first Sunday of August. 

 The people of each district, I would suppose, made their own choice of 

 Sunday, and probably in some instances adopted, as each occasion came 

 round, the Sunday nearest to the original date.' 



The older ceremonies of Crom and of Lug having synchronized, the question 

 arises : Would the Gaels have so ordered their religious proceedings that two 

 rival deities should be obliged to participate in a common, unditierentiated 

 anniversary ? The possibility that they might have done so cannot be enter- 

 tained ; and its rejection leads at once to the result that under the dissimi- 

 larity of names lurks a virtual sameness of the entities which they clothe. 

 The personages are really but one, a single primal divinity, conceived as such 

 in the parental womb of Aryan theology, and as such begotten there by the 

 generating idea. 'J'he names, having been evolved by divergent stocks of 

 Aryan wanderers, were eventually brought into collision when the wor- 

 shippers of Lug crossed from Gaul to Erin, and, with superior war-appliances, 

 overthrew the followers of Crom. Compelled to forfeit their lands, the 

 beaten race held fast by their religion. On their altars still reigned the 

 aboriginal solar divinity, not in his alien guise as Lug, but as their own 

 unmetamorphosed Crom. In process of time the names got sundered in 



' In cases known to me this arrangement was adopted foi- patterns that had been 

 changed from the Patron Saint's day to the proximate Sunday. 



