| Page 201 | |
honoured at the thermal springs in Bath (Aquae Sulis). Her counterpart in Ireland would be Brigid, daughter of the Dagda.
See Sulevia.
Heliolatry, or sun worship, was a common practice among the Celts, judging by the abundance of solar motifs, although there is little direct evidence of a sun cult in the myths and sagas. There are references to obvious sun deities such as Mac Gréine (son of the sun), who was the husband of Éire, who gave her name to Ireland. The god Belenos (Irish Bilé) was known as “the shining one,” and his feast on Beltaine (May 1) was obviously connected with a sun cult. On Mount Callan (near Ennis) there stands a sun altar where the Beltaine festival was celebrated on midsummer’s day down to 1895. Near Macroom is a standing stone called “stone of the sun,” while Seathrún Céitinn claimed that many of the dolmens associated with Gráinne were, in fact, originally connected with Gréine (the sun). Among the various sun references in Irish, we have Giolla Gréine, whose mother was a sunbeam.
A favourite form among shape-changers. The children of Lir were turned into swans. Cáer, of whom the love god Aonghus Óg dreamt and went in search, was a human who lived in the form of a swan.
[W] With Bwlch and Cyfwlch, they were three of Arthur’s warriors who possessed the brightest and sharpest weapons.