Edward
Pettit
Works authored
Contributions to journals
This article suggests that an iconographic design found on early instances of a series of Iron Age British coins may foreshadow medieval Celtic myths about fantastic boar. Parallels are drawn with traditions about Balar’s boar, Cú Chulainn and Formáel’s boar, and with the Welsh episode of Menw and Twrch Trwyth.
This article suggests that an iconographic design found on early instances of a series of Iron Age British coins may foreshadow medieval Celtic myths about fantastic boar. Parallels are drawn with traditions about Balar’s boar, Cú Chulainn and Formáel’s boar, and with the Welsh episode of Menw and Twrch Trwyth.
This article seeks to show that aspects of the late-attested myth of the origin of Cú Chulainn’s gae bolga ‘spear of the bulge’ illuminate medieval descriptions of another remarkable spear, an extraordinary horse that acts like a spear, and a divinatory rod wielded by a spearman: respectively, the lúin of Celtchar mac Uthechair, the Derg Drúchtach of Conall Cernach, and the flesc of a poet called Lugaid. This finding helps to demonstrate the essential integrity of what might otherwise seem arbitrarily fanciful passages in Mesca Ulad ‘The intoxication of the Ulstermen’, Brislech mór Maige Muirthemni ‘The great rout of Murthemne’ and Sanas Cormaic ‘Cormac’s glossary’. Also included in a footnote is a suggested solution to a crux in Lebor gabála Érenn ‘The book of invasions of Ireland’ concerning Lug’s gae Assail ‘spear of Assal’.
This article seeks to show that aspects of the late-attested myth of the origin of Cú Chulainn’s gae bolga ‘spear of the bulge’ illuminate medieval descriptions of another remarkable spear, an extraordinary horse that acts like a spear, and a divinatory rod wielded by a spearman: respectively, the lúin of Celtchar mac Uthechair, the Derg Drúchtach of Conall Cernach, and the flesc of a poet called Lugaid. This finding helps to demonstrate the essential integrity of what might otherwise seem arbitrarily fanciful passages in Mesca Ulad ‘The intoxication of the Ulstermen’, Brislech mór Maige Muirthemni ‘The great rout of Murthemne’ and Sanas Cormaic ‘Cormac’s glossary’. Also included in a footnote is a suggested solution to a crux in Lebor gabála Érenn ‘The book of invasions of Ireland’ concerning Lug’s gae Assail ‘spear of Assal’.
