Читать книгу Legends & Romances of Brittany - Льюис Спенс - Страница 45

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In the depths of Lake Tegid in our own Wales dwelt Keridwen, a fertility goddess who possessed a magic cauldron—the sure symbol of a deity of abundance.[22] Like Demeter, she was strangely associated with the harmless necessary sow, badge of many earth-mothers, and itself typical of fertility. Like Keridwen, the Korrigan is associated with water, with the element which makes for vegetable growth. Christian belief would, of course, transform this discredited goddess into an evil being whose one function was the destruction of souls. May we see a relation of the Korrigan and Keridwen in Tridwan, or St. Triduana, of Restalrig, 60 near Edinburgh, who presided over a certain well there, and at whose well-shrine offerings were made by sightless pilgrims for many centuries?

Many are the traditions which tell of human infants abducted by the Korrigan, who at times left an ugly changeling in place of the babe she had stolen. But it was more as an enchantress that she was dreaded. By a stroke of her magic wand she could transform the leafy fastnesses in which she dwelt into the semblance of a lordly hall, which the luckless traveller whom she lured thither would regard as a paradise after the dark thickets in which he had been wandering. This seeming castle or palace she furnished with everything that could delight the eye, and as the doomed wretch sat ravished by her beauty and that of her nine attendant maidens a fatal passion for her entered his heart, so that whatever he cherished most on earth—honour, wife, demoiselle, or affianced bride—became as naught to him, and he cast himself at the feet of this forest Circe in a frenzy of ardour. But with the first ray of daylight the charm was dissolved and the Korrigan became a hideous hag, as repulsive as before she had been lovely; the walls of her palace and the magnificence which had furnished it became once more tree and thicket, its carpets moss, its tapestries leaves, its silver cups wild roses, and its dazzling mirrors pools of stagnant water.