Indo-European Poetry and Myth

where he could be hit, and his enemy Hagen was apprised of the fact (Nibelungenlied 899, 905, 980–2). Conganchnes (‘Hornskin’) m ...

12 Arms and the Man Armed conflict has been a prominent feature of human history for many thousands of years. Indo-European peop ...

It is true that no recognizable memories of the original homeland or the earliest migrations survived in the later poetries of w ...

Similar enterprises were undertaken later among the Franks and Goths. An ancient common Germanic word for the war-band was druht ...

with only their weapons. Naked warriors still appear here and there in the Táin and other Irish sagas, and are depicted on Celti ...

It may be, as McCone has argued most fully, that this all reflects an Indo-European institution of initiatory character, by whic ...

The cattle raid (táin) is a staple theme of Irish saga –– theTáin bó Cúailnge (Cattle raid of Cooley) is one of several works th ...

sacked πο ́ λz μερο ́ πων qνθρ.πων (Il. 9. 328, 18. 342), we should under- stand the word as referring to fortified places. It ...

There was another Irish hero called Conn Cétchathach, ‘Conn of the hundred battles’. The reduction of a stronghold sometimes, no ...

protective enclosure (Il. 3. 229, 6. 5, 7. 211; cf. 1. 283 f. of Achilles). In another place he is called their π3ργο, their ba ...

stronghold of Emain Macha and threatens to kill everyone inside, they coun- ter him by sending out naked women, so that he hides ...

man’s head would go into his mouth. Every hair on him would be as sharp as a spike of hawthorn and there would be a drop of bloo ...

motions such as wheeling about and whirling on high, and making side-thrusts and jumping forward and leaping on high and running ...

Mimnermus writes of a Smyrnaean hero of recent memory, ‘Pallas Athena never had cause to fault his acid fury, when in the front ...

WEAPONS A man’s tools and weapons are extensions of his limbs. The warrior’s weapons match his own virtues. As traditional narra ...

and origin are described in 2. 3. 5–18. The Nordic hero Orvar-Odd fought with an oaken club (Edd. min. 58). The legendary Danish ...

fortress. A sword is hanging on the gate to bar entry. Sosruquo throws a horse-hair at it, but even that is cut (Colarusso (2002 ...

We noted in Chapter 6 that the thunder-god’s missile returns of its own accord after being thrown. The same useful property is a ...

we have a sense of something wild and pre-Homeric. Euripides has Antigone swear on her sword (Phoen. 1677). The Laws of Manu (8. ...

HORSES The partnership of man and horse goes far back into Indo-European prehis- tory.^60 The two are often coupled, especially ...