216-219.) Rhys considers that Derbforgaill
was really a goddess of dawn and dusk, "the drop glistening in
the sun's rays," as indicated by her name, which means a drop or
tear. (J. Rhys, _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_, p. 466.) It is interesting to
compare the legend of Derbforgaill with a somewhat more modern
Picardy folk-lore _conte_ which is clearly analogous but no
longer seems to show any mythologic element, "La Princesse qui
pisse par dessus les Meules." This princess had a habit of
urinating over hay-cocks; the king, her father, in order to break
her of the habit, offered her in marriage to anyone who could
make a hay-cock so high that she could not urinate over it. The
young men came, but the princess would merely laugh and at once
achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with
himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she
had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she
then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly,
she became his bride. (Kryptadia, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends,
which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have
possessed and have become merely _contes_, are not uncommon in
the folk-lore of many countries.
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