Another theory is that every visit of the hero to a strange land signifies a descent to Hades, suggested by the sun sinking in the west.  Scathach’s island may be Hades, but it is more probably Elysium with some traits borrowed from the Christian idea of hell.  But Emer’s land, also visited by Cuchulainn, suggests neither Hades nor Elysium.  Emer calls herself ingen rig richis garta, translated by Professor Rh[^y]s as “daughter of the coal-faced king,” i.e. she is daughter of darkness.  Hence she is a dawn-maiden and becomes the sun-hero’s wife.[478] There is nothing in the story to corroborate this theory, apart from the fact that it is not clear, even to the hypothetical primitive mind, why dawn and sun should be a divine pair.  Emer’s words probably mean that she is “daughter of a king” and “a flame of hospitality” (richis garta.)[479] Cuchulainn, in visiting her, went from west to east, contrary to the apparent course of the sun.  The extravagance of the solar theory is further seen in the hypothesis that because Cuchulainn has other wives, the sun-god made love to as many dawn-maidens as there are days in the year,[480] like the king in Louys’ romance with his 366 wives, one for each day of the year, leap-year included.

Further examples of the solar theory need not be cited.  It is enough to see in Cuchulainn the ideal warrior, whose traits are bombastic and obscure exaggerations of actual custom and warfare, or are borrowed from folk-tale motifs not exclusively Celtic.  Possibly he may have been a war-god, since he is associated with Badb[481] and also with Morrigan.  But he has also some traits of a culture hero.  He claims superiority in wisdom, in law, in politics, in the art of the Filid, and in Druidism, while he brings various things from the world of the gods[482].  In any case the Celts paid divine honours to heroes, living or dead,[483] and Cuchulainn, god or ideal hero, may have been the subject of a cult.  This lends point to the theory of M. D’Arbois that Cuchulainn and Conall Cernach are the equivalents of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, said by Diodorus to be worshipped among the Celts near the Ocean.[484] Cuchulainn, like Pollux, was son of a god, and was nursed, according to some accounts, by Findchoem, mother of Conall,[485] just as Leda was mother of Castor as well as of Pollux.  But, on the other hand, Cuchulainn, unlike Pollux, was mortal.  M. D’Arbois then identifies the two pairs of heroes with certain figures on an altar at Cluny.  These are Castor and Pollux; Cernunnos and Smertullos.  He equates Castor with Cernunnos, and Pollux with Smertullos.  Smertullos is Cuchulainn, and the name is explained from an incident in the Tain, in which the hero, reproached for his youth, puts on a false beard before attacking Morrigan in her form as an eel.  This is expressed by smerthain, “to attach”, and is thus connected with and gave rise to the name Smertullos.  On the