File:The Mythology of all races (1918) (14785274023).jpg

Identifier: mythologyofallra03gray (find matches)
Title: The Mythology of all races ..
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Gray, Louis H. (Louis Herbert), 1875-1955 Moore, George Foot, 1851-1931 MacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott), 1868-1950
Subjects: Mythology
Publisher: Boston, Marshall Jones Company
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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or Manannan as Fiachna to the latters wife, or as when Pwyll
and Arawn exchanged forms.
Animal forms were also assumed. Of these one favourite
shape was that of birds. Morrigan appeared to Cuchulainn as
a bird; so also do Devorgilla and her handmaid, the former
being in love with the hero. Llew took the form of an eagle;
Bude and his foster-brother that of birds when the former
wished to visit his paramour, whose husband Nar slew them.
idir and Etain, Fand and Liban were seen as birds linked
together. The gods, or side, appear as deer in one story. Again,
the idea of divine shape-shifting, expressed, however, in the
well-known folk-tale formula of the Transformation Com-

PLATE VII
THREE-HEADED GOD

This triple-headed divinity (cf. p. 8) may possibly
be another form of Cernunnos (see Plate XVI).
For another representation see Plate XII, and for a
three-headed deity of the Elbe Slavs cf. pp. 284-85
and see Plate XXXIV, 3. From a block of stone
found at Paris, now in the Musée Carnavalet in that city.
Text Appearing After Image:

MYTHIC POWERS OF THE GODS 57

bat", is combined with the Celtic idea of rebirth in Welsh and
Irish tales; and the Welsh story, Hanes Taliesin, a sixteenth
century tale, is based on earlier poems in which this formula is
already prefixed to the rebirth incident. Shape-shifting is so
commonly ascribed to Taliesin that it is no wonder that the
formula was attached to his story, as it also was to the Greek
myth of Proteus and the Hindu story of Vikramaditya: In the
poem Taliesin describes his transformations and adds,<br
"I have been a grain discovered
Which grew on a hill . . .
A hen received me
With ruddy claws and parting comb.
I rested nine nights
In her womb a child."⁷

The Hanes Taliesin represents earlier myths about the hero
and Cerridwen, the latter being a Brythonic goddess. Cerrid-
wen, who dwelt below a lake, became hostile to Gwion Bach
because he obtained the inspiration which she had intended for
her son. The goddess pursued him, but he changed himself to
a hare, and she took the form of a greyhound, after which the

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