“He was their god,
   The withered Cromm with many mists... 
   To him without glory
   They would kill their piteous wretched offspring,
   With much wailing and peril,
   To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich. 
   Milk and corn
   They would ask from him speedily
   In return for a third of their healthy issue,
   Great was the horror and fear of him. 
   To him noble Gaels would prostrate themselves."[278]

Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts of corn and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on one occasion the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused three-fourths of them to die.  Again, “they beat their palms, they pounded their bodies ... they shed falling showers of tears."[279] These are reminiscences of orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one.  The god must have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was poured on the image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and folk-survivals, may have been buried in the fields to promote fertility.  If so, the victims’ flesh was instinct with the power of the divinity, and, though their number is obviously exaggerated, several victims may have taken the place of an earlier slain representative of the god.  A mythic Crom Dubh, “Black Crom,” whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in August, may be another form of Cromm Cruaich.  In one story the name is transferred to S. Patrick’s servant, who is asked by the fairies when they will go to Paradise.  “Not till the day of judgment,” is the answer, and for this they cease to help men in the processes of agriculture.  But in a variant Manannan bids Crom ask this question, and the same result follows.[280] These tales thus enshrine the idea that Crom and the fairies were ancient gods of growth who ceased to help men when they deserted them for the Christian faith.  If the sacrifice was offered at the August festival, or, as the texts suggest, at Samhain, after harvest, it must have been on account of the next year’s crop, and the flesh may have been mingled with the seed corn.

Dagda may thus have been a god of growth and fertility.  His wife or mistress was the river-goddess, Boand (the Boyne),[281] and the children ascribed to him were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma.  The euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn’s venom, long after the battle of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.[282] Irish mythology is remarkably free from obscene and grotesque myths, but some of these cluster round Dagda.  We hear of the Gargantuan meal provided for him in sport by the Fomorians, and of which he ate so much that “not easy was it for him to move and unseemly was his apparel,” as well as his conduct with a Fomorian beauty.  Another amour of his was with Morrigan, the place where it occurred being still known as “The Couple’s Bed."[283] In another tale Dagda acts as cook to Conaire the great.[284]