[1204] Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. 116, supra.

[1205] In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form.

[1206] See my Religion:  Its Origin and Forms, 76-77.

[1207] Skene, i. 532.  After relating various shapes in which he has been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received, and that he rested in her womb as a child.  The reference in this early poem from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of the Maerchen formula with a myth of rebirth was already well known.  See also Guest, iii. 362, for verses in which the transformations during the combat are exaggerated.

[1208] Skene, i. 276, 532.

[1209] Miss Hull, 67; D’Arbois, v. 331.

[1210] For various forms of geno-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes, US 110.

[1211] For all these names see Holder, s.v.

[1212] S. Aug. de Civ.  Dei, xv. 23; Isidore, Orat. viii. 2. 103. Dusios may be connected with Lithuanian dvaese, “spirit,” and perhaps with [Greek:  Thehos] (Holder, s.v.).  D’Arbois sees in the dusii water-spirits, and compares river-names like Dhuys, Duseva, Dusius (vi. 182; RC xix. 251).  The word may be connected with Irish duis, glossed “noble” (Stokes, TIG 76).  The Bretons still believe in fairies called duz, and our word dizzy may be connected with dusios, and would then have once signified the madness following on the amour, like Greek [Greek:  nympholeptos], or “the inconvenience of their succubi,” described by Kirk in his Secret Commonwealth of the Elves.

[1213] LL 12_b_; TOS v. 234.

[1214] Rh[^y]s, HL 549.

[1215] Skene, i. 276, 309, etc.

[1216] Sigerson, Bards of the Gael, 379.

[1217] Miss Hull, 288; Hyde, Lit.  Hist. of Ireland, 300.

[1218] RC xxvi. 21.

[1219] Skene, ii. 506.

[1220] D’Arbois, ii. 246, where he also derives Erigena’s pantheism from Celtic beliefs, such as he supposes to be exemplified by these poems.

[1221] LU 15_a_; D’Arbois, ii. 47 f.; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 294 f.

[1222] Another method of accounting for this knowledge was to imagine a long-lived personage like Fintan who survived for 5000 years.  D’Arbois, ii. ch. 4.  Here there was no transformation or rebirth.

[1223] Nutt-Meyer, i. 24; ZCP ii. 316.

[1224] O’Curry, MS. Mat. 78.

[1225] Wood-Martin, Pagan Ireland, 140; Choice Notes, 61; Monnier, 143; Maury, 272.

[1226] Choice Notes, 69; Rees, 92; Le Braz{2}, ii. 82, 86, 307; Rev. des Trad.  Pop. xii. 394.

[1227] Le Braz{2}, ii. 80; Folk-lore Jour. v. 189.

[1228] Folk-Lore, iv. 352.