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(Fair Shape), and his son by another maiden becomes the famous Cormac Mac Art, patron of Fionn Mac Cumhail and the Fianna. In one tale Conn has taken the goddess Bécuma Cneisgel as his concubine. She had been expelled from the Otherworld, and because of her the country grew infertile and miserable. She was also jealous of Art and, while playing fidchell with him, contrived to force him into a journey involving terrible dangers. Art succeeds in his journey, returns with Delbchaem, and is able to banish Bécuma. Art eventually perishes at the battle of Moy Muchruinne. On his way there he passes the night at the house of Olc Acha, a smith. There he sleeps with the smith’s daughter, Achtan, and gives her his sword, golden ring, and ceremonial clothing for safekeeping so that her child would claim the inheritance. The child is Cormac Mac Art.
A Gaulish god whom the Romans identified as Mercury and who seems to be a pastoral deity.
Gaulish, an epithet for Caesar’s identification of the Gaulish “Apollo.” It means “he who possesses a great horse.” An epithet for Belenus.
Perhaps the most famous of Celtic mythological figures. Arthur was undoubtedly a historical person, living during the late fifth and early sixth centuries a.d. But by medieval times he and his warriors had become firmly embedded in mythology, and they share many of the themes associated with Fionn Mac Cumhail and his Fianna. The first literary reference to Arthur comes in a poem by Aneirin, written in the late sixth century a.d. In Y Gododdin, Aneirin writes of an attempt by 300 picked warriors led by Mynyddawn Mwynfawr, chieftain of the tribe whose capital was at Dineiddyn (Edinburgh), who set out to recapture Catraeth (Catterick) from the Saxons.
References to the historical Arthur can be found in Gildas (a.d. 500–570), the British Celtic monk who wrote De Excidio et Conquesta Britanniae (Concerning the Ruin and Conquest of Britain); Nennius (ca. a.d. 800), another Celtic historian, in his Historia Brittonum, credits Arthur with twelve major victories over the invading Anglo-Saxons; the Annales Cambriae (ca. a.d. 955), a Latin history of the rise of Cymru (Wales), records Arthur’s victory at Mount Badon and that Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) fell at the battle of Camluan in the year a.d. 537.
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