might know more. The tortoise was called forth and after much pondering
recognized the seer, who had formerly built his fire altars on its back.
In the Welsh tale King Arthur sends men to seek Mabon, son of Modron,
who had been taken away from his mother ages before, when he was three
nights old. They go and interrogate the Ouzel of Cilgwri, a bird so old
that it has completely worn away a smith’s anvil with its daily pecking. It
knows nothing of Mabon, but tells them of an older creature who might
know, the Stag of Rhedynfre, and it accompanies them there. The stag again
knows nothing, but takes them to find a still older creature, the Owl of Cwm
Cawlwyd. The owl in turn leads them to the oldest and most widely travelled
creature in the world, the Eagle of Gwernabwy. Even he has heard nothing of
Mabon. But he knows of an equally old creature, the Salmon of Llyn Llyw,
and escorts them to it. The salmon is finally able to tell them where Mabon is
imprisoned, and carries them there on its shoulders.^11
The objects of the two quests are dissimilar, and the series of long-lived
creatures do not agree in detail apart from the presence of an owl in both. Yet
the narrative pattern is so alike and so distinctive that the resemblance is hard
to account for except on the hypothesis of common inheritance. Like the
Hesiodic verses, the stories presuppose a belief that creatures such as deer and
certain birds may live many times longer than we humans. We may refer also
to the Irish legend of Fintan mac Bóchra, a survivor of the Flood who knew
the whole history of the western world and who spent hundreds of years in
the shapes of a salmon, an eagle, and a hawk, and to his coeval, the Hawk or
Crow of Achill.^12
THE FATESIndividual human lives, as anyone can see, differ widely in length and fortune.
For the most part the distribution of longevity and prosperity appears to be
arbitrary; in other words, governed by divine agency. The Indo-Europeans
seem to have believed that it was predetermined, not by a universal, all-
encompassing Destiny that laid things down at the beginning of time, but by
supernatural females attending the birth of each child and establishing the
contours of its life then and there as it lay in its cradle. I do not know of any
Indo-Iranian evidence for this idea, but it is found all over Europe, as well as
(^11) MBh. 3. 191; Culhwch and Olwen 847–919. Cf. H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of
Literature, ii (Cambridge 1936), 572 f.
(^12) R. I. Best et al. (edd.), Anecdota from Irish Manuscripts, i (Halle 1907), 24–39, trs. E. Hull
(as n. 10), 392–402.
- Mortality and Fame 379