i. 42.

[519] Leahy, ii. 6.

[520] _IT_ iii. 203; _Trip. Life_, 507; _Annals of the Four Masters_,
A.D. 14; _RC_ xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced
fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that
herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle
there, and in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato famine
that his fairy banner should be waved.

[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill,
"If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).

[522] See Frazer, _Kingship_; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, 1906, "The European
Sky-God." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic
incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his
inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in his view, a
sky-god; he was more likely to have been the representative of a god or
spirit of growth or vegetation.

[523] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.

[524] Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._ 20.

[525] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin,
_Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater._

[526] Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.

[527] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p.
301, _infra_.

[528] Pliny, xvi. 95.

[529] P. 201, _infra_.

[530] Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough,
and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by
Gramoplanz (Weston, _Legend of Sir Gawain_, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale
of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and
the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its
branches (_TOS_ vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 441.

[531] See Chap. XVIII.

CHAPTER X.

THE CULT OF THE DEAD.

The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or
slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead,
yet when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form
of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in
connection with the reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point
to a worship of ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes.
Heads of the slain were offered to the "strong shades"--the ghosts of
tribal heroes whose praises were sung by bards.[532] When such heads
were placed on houses, they may have been devoted to the family ghosts.
The honour in which mythic or real heroes