)
The legends which narrate scatalogic exploits are numerous in the
literature of all countries. Among primitive peoples they often
have a purely theological character, for in the popular
mythologies of all countries (even, as we learn from
Aristophanes, among the Greeks) natural phenomena such as the
rain, are apt to be regarded as divine excretions, but in course
of time the legends take on a more erotic or a more obscene
character. In the Irish _Book of Leinster_ (written down
somewhere about the twelfth century, but containing material of
very much older date) we are told how a number of princesses in
Emain Macha, the seat of the Ulster Kings, resolved to find out
which of them could by urinating on it melt a snow pillar which
the men had made, the woman who succeeded to be regarded as the
best among them. None of them succeeded, and they sent for
Derbforgaill, who was in love with Cuchullain, and she was able
to melt the pillar; whereupon the other women, jealous of the
superiority she had thus shown, tore out her eyes. (Zimmer,
"Keltische Beitraege," _Zeitschrift fuer Deutsche Alterthum_, vol.
xxxii, Heft II, pp.
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