As we have just considered the Gaelic Divinities in their character as
the Fairy-Folk of popular Gaelic tradition, so now we proceed to
consider the Brythonic Divinities in the same way, beginning with the
greatest of them all, Arthur. Even a superficial acquaintance with the
Arthurian Legend shows how impossible it is to place upon it any one
interpretation to the exclusion of other interpretations, for in one
aspect Arthur is a Brythonic divinity and in another a sixth-century
Brythonic chieftain. But the explanation of this double aspect seems
easy enough when we regard the historical Arthur as a great hero, who,
exactly as in so many parallel cases of national hero-worship,
came--within a comparatively short time--to be enshrined in the
imagination of the patriotic Brythons with all the attributes anciently
belonging to a great Celtic god called Arthur.[266] The hero and the god
were first confused, and then identified,[267] and hence arose that
wonderful body of romance which we call Arthurian, and which has become
the glory of English literature.
Arthur in the character of a culture hero,[268] with god-like powers to
instruct mortals in wisdom, and, also, as a being in some way related to
the sun--as a sun-god perhaps--can well be considered the human-divine
institutor of the mystic brotherhood known as the Round Table. We ought,
probably, to consider Arthur, like Cuchulainn, as a god incarnate in a
human body for the purpose of educating the race of men; and thus, while
living as a man, related definitely and, apparently, consciously to the
invisible gods or fairy-folk. Among the Aztecs and Peruvians in the New
World, there was a widespread belief that great heroes who had once been
men have now their celestial abode in the sun, and from time to time
reincarnate to become teachers of their less developed brethren of our
own race; and a belief of the same character existed among the Egyptians
and other peoples of the Old World, including the Celts. It will be
further shown, in our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, that
anciently among the Gaels and Brythons such heroes as Cuchulainn and
Arthur were also considered reincarnate sun-divinities. As a being
related to the sun, as a sun-god, Arthur is like Osiris, the Great
Being, who with his brotherhood of great heroes and god-companions
enters daily the underworld or Hades to battle against the demons and
forces of evil,[269] even as the Tuatha De Danann battled against the
Fomors. And the most important things in the traditions of the great
Brythonic hero connect him directly with this strange world of
subjectivity. First of all, his own father, Uthr Bendragon,[270] was a
king of Hades, so that Arthur himself, being his child, is a direct
descendant of this Otherworld. Second, the Arthurian Legend traces the
origin of the Round Table back to Arthur's father, Hades being 'the
realm whence all culture was fabled to have been derived'.[271] Third,
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