Dalxon — Qromm Cruaich of Magh Sleacht. 67 



Whence D'Arey Magee got the inspiration of his fine ode on "The 

 Celts " I know not, though I suspect it came to him rather from the lips of 

 some untutored peasant, transmitting a deposit of the unchronicled past, 

 than from any speculative treatise. But I feel assured that he truly 

 rendered the belief of pagan Ireland when he wrote : 



" Cromah, their Day-God and their Thunderer, 

 Made morning and eclipse." 



" Cromah," the name here used, would suggest that the word sometimes 

 took a dissyllabic form ; and the same probability might, I think, be sus- 

 pected from the Dinnsenchus title, Cromm Cruaich. M is the radical of the 

 pronoun in the first person singular; and, viewing the second M here as 

 such, it imparts a subtle distinction to the name. Cromm would thus stand 

 for Cruim'm, or Cruimim — that is, " I wield the thunderbolts," " Behold in me 

 your indubitable thunder-god " ! The massed gatherings of Magh Sleaeht 

 would not have interpreted these phrases as mere figurative language, but 

 rather as the solemn self-announcement of Crom's idol when, gorgeous in his 

 gold and silver panoply, and attended by his twelve sub-divinities arrayed 

 in brazen integuments, he was suddenly exposed to their adoring sight. 



R.I.A. PROC, VOL. XXXVI, SECT. O, [8] 



