e number of the victims, but they
certainly attest the existence of the practice. From the _Dindsenchas_,
which describes many archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of
every issue and the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm
Cruaich--a sacrifice of the first-born,--and that at one festival the
prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that three-fourths of
them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic
rites.[808] Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the
mythic tales in the _Dindsenchas_. Yet the tales were doubtless quite
credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly
founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices
in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not
have been offered on other occasions also.

The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in the
poetical version of the cult of Cromm--

"Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily,
In return for one-third of their healthy issue."[809]

The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been two-thirds
of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk[810]--an
obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain
corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,[811] but there can be no
doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice--the offering of an agricultural
folk to the divinities who helped or retarded growth. Possibly part of
the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the god, was
buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote
fertility. The blood was sprinkled on the image of the god. Such
practices were as obnoxious to Christian missionaries as they had been
to the Roman Government, and we learn that S. Patrick preached against
"the slaying of yoke oxen and milch cows and the burning of the
first-born progeny" at the Fair of Taillte.[812] As has been seen, the
Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda story, in which the victim is
offered not to a dragon, but to the Fomorians, may have received this
form from actual ritual in which human victims were sacrificed to the
Fomorians.[813] In a Japanese version of the same story the maiden is
offered to the sea-gods. Another tale suggests the offering of human
victims to remove blight. In this case the land suffers from blight
because the adulteress Becuma, married to the king of Erin, has
pr