Allusion has already been made to the story of Cúchulainn being himself a rebirth, namely, of Lug, and the story deserves still further consideration in its bearing on the question of race, to which the reader's attention has been called. It is needless, however, to say that there are extant fragments of more stories than one as to Cúchulainn's origin. Sometimes, as in the Book of Leinster, fo. 119a, he is called gein Loga, or Lug's offspring, and in the epic tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Lug as his father comes from the Síd or Faery to take Cúchulainn's place in the field, when the latter was worn out with sleeplessness and toil. Lug sings over him éli Loga, or 'Lug's enchantment,' and Cúchulainn gets the requisite rest and sleep [249]: this we read in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 78a. In another version of the story, Cúchulainn is an incarnation of Lug: the narrative relates how a foster-son was accepted by Dechtere, sister to Conchobar MacNessa, king of Ulster. But her foster-son died young, to the great grief of Dechtere; and her lamentations for him on the day of his funeral having made her thirsty, she inadvertently swallowed with her drink a diminutive creature which sprang into her mouth. That night she had a dream, in which a man informed her that she was pregnant, that it was he who was in her womb, that he had been her foster-son, and that he was Lug; also that when his birth should take place, the name was to be Setanta. After an incident which I can only regard as a clumsy attempt to combine the more primitive legend with the story which makes him son of Sualdaim, she gives birth to the boy, and he is duly called Setanta [250]: that was Cúchulainn's first name. Now compare this with what Dr. Tylor mentions in the case of the Lapps, namely, that 'the future mother was told in a dream what name to give her child, this message being usually given her by the very spirit of the deceased ancestor, who was about to be incarnate in her [251].' If the mother got no such intimation in a dream, the relatives of the child had to have recourse to magic and the aid of the wise man, to discover the name to be given to the child.
Here let it suffice to say, that the similarity is so close between the Irish and the Lapp idea, and so unlike anything known to have been Aryan, that it is well worth bearing in mind. The belief in rebirth generally seems to fit as a part of the larger belief in the transmigration of souls which is associated with the teachings of the ancient druids, a class of shamans or medicine-men who were probably, as already hinted, not of Celtic or Aryan origin; and probably the beliefs here in question were those of some non-Aryan people of these islands, rather than of any Aryans who settled in them. This view need hardly be regarded as incompatible with the fact, that Lug's name, genitive Loga, would seem to have meant light, and that Lug was a sun-god, very possibly a Celtic sun-god: or more correctly speaking, that there was a series of Lugs, so to say, or sun-gods, called in ancient Spain, Switzerland, and on the banks of the Rhine, Lugoves [252]. For one is sorely tempted to treat this much as a rescue from the wreckage of the solar myth theory, as against those who, having regard mainly to Lug's professional skill and craft as described in Irish story, make of him a kind of Hermes or Mercury. In other words, we have either to regard a Celtic Lug as having become the centre of certain non-Celtic legends, or else to suppose neither Lug nor his name to be of Aryan origin at all. It is hard to say which is the sounder view to take.