The inhabitants of Elysium are not only immortal, but also invisible at will.  They make themselves visible to one person only out of many present with him.  Connla alone sees the goddess, invisible to his father and the Druid.  Mananuan is visible to Bran, but there are many near the hero whom he does not see; and when the same god comes to Fand, he is invisible to Cuchulainn and those with him.  So Mider says to Etain, “We behold, and are not beheld."[1280] Occasionally, too, the people of Elysium have the power of shape-shifting—­Fand and Liban appear to Cuchulainn as birds.

The hazel of knowledge connects wisdom with the gods’ world, and in Celtic belief generally civilisation and culture were supposed to have come from the gods.  The things of their land were coveted by men, and often stolen thence by them.  In Welsh and Irish tales, often with reference to the Other-world, a magical cauldron has a prominent place.  Dagda possessed such a cauldron and it was inexhaustible, and a vat of inexhaustible mead is described in the story of Cuchulain’s Sickness.  Whatever was put into such cauldrons satisfied all, no matter how numerous they might be.[1281] Cuchulainn obtained one from the daughter of the king of Scath, and also carried off the king’s three cows.[1282] In an analogous story, he stole from Curoi, by the connivance of his wife Blathnat, her father Mider’s cauldron, three cows, and the woman herself.  But in another version Cuchulainn and Curoi go to Mider’s stronghold in the Isle of Falga (Elysium), and steal cauldron, cows, and Blathnat.  These were taken from Cuchulainn by Curoi; hence his revenge as in the previous tale.[1283] Thus the theft was from Elysium.  In the Welsh poem “The Spoils of Annwfn,” Arthur stole a cauldron from Annwfn.  Its rim was encrusted with pearls, voices issued from it, it was kept boiling by the breath of nine maidens, and it would not boil a coward’s food.[1284]

As has been seen from the story of Gwion, he was set to watch a cauldron which must boil until it yielded “three drops of the grace of inspiration.”  It belonged to Tegid Voel and Cerridwen, divine rulers of a Land under the Waters.[1285] In the Mabinogi of Branwen, her brother Bran received a cauldron from two beings, a man and a huge woman, who came from a lake.  This cauldron was given by him to the king of Erin, and it had the property of restoring to life the slain who were placed in it.[1286]

The three properties of the cauldron—­inexhaustibility, inspiration, and regeneration—­may be summed up in one word, fertility; and it is significant that the god with whom such a cauldron was associated, Dagda, was a god of fertility.  But we have just seen it associated, directly or indirectly, with goddesses—­Cerridwen, Branwen, the woman from the lake—­and perhaps this may point to an earlier cult of goddesses of fertility, later transferred to gods.  In this light the cauldron’s power of restoring to life