ron which satisfied all comers,
his unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
vessel of ale, and three trees always laden with fruit. These were in
his _sid_, where none ever tasted death;[274] hence his _sid_ was a
local Elysium, not a gloomy land of death, but the underworld in its
primitive aspect as the place of gods of fertility. In some myths he
appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D'Arbois suggests that he may
thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god with the mallet.[275] This is
probable, since the Gaulish god may have been a form of Dispater, an
Earth or under-Earth god of fertility.

If Dagda was a god of fertility, he may have been an equivalent of a god
whose image was called _Cenn_ or _Cromm Cruaich_, "Head _or_ Crooked One
of the Mound," or "Bloody Head _or_ Crescent."[276] Vallancey, citing a
text now lost, says that _Crom-eocha_ was a name of Dagda, and that a
motto at the sacrificial place at Tara read, "Let the altar ever blaze
to Dagda."[277] These statements may support this identification. The
cult of Cromm is preserved in some verses:

"He was their god,
The withered Cromm with many mists...
To him without glory
They would kill their piteous wretched offspring,
With much wailing and peril,
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for a third of their healthy issue,
Great was the horror and fear of him.
To him noble Gaels would prostrate themselves."[278]

Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts of corn
and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on one occasion
the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused three-fourths of them
to die. Again, "they beat their palms, they pounded their bodies ...
they shed falling showers of tears."[279] These are reminiscences of
orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one. The god must
have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was poured on the
image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and folk-survivals, may
have been buried in the fields to promote fertility. If so, the victims'
flesh was instinct with the power of the divinity, and, though their
number is obviously exaggerated, several victims may have taken the
place of an earlier slain representative of the god. A mythic _Crom
Dubh_, "Black Crom," whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in
August, may be another for