***
The Daghda in this myth is
seemingly all powerful with
much less need for the subterfuge
which eventually outwitted the Fomorians.
*
Except, even here, he is compelled
to hold back time to get his own way!
*
Is this myth, then, earlier or later?
*
The tenor of the text would suggest later
but that is certainly no guarantee of anything.
*
If this were a creation myth
it would mean that the original inhabitants of Ireland
were descended from a cow,
which for a cattle-herding people would make perfect sense,
and is the sort of claim often made by such folk.
*
And yet the offspring of the union,
although undergoing the human gestation period,
before being born, is not to be conceived as human
but instead, as a personification of the day!
*
Before humans can live out their days
the day too has to be ‘born’.
***
*
France & Vincent 