d.[217]

Many strands went to the weaving of the later conception of the gods,
but there still hung around them an air of mystery, and the belief that
they were a race of men was never consistent with itself.

Danu gave her name to the whole group of gods, and is called their
mother, like the Egyptian Neith or the Semitic Ishtar.[218] In the
annalists she is daughter of Dagda, and has three sons. She may be akin
to the goddess Anu, whom Cormac describes as "_mater deorum
hibernensium_. It was well she nursed the gods." From her name he
derives _ana_, "plenty," and two hills in Kerry are called "the Paps of
Anu."[219] Thus as a goddess of plenty Danu or Anu may have been an
early Earth-mother, and what may be a dim memory of Anu in
Leicestershire confirms this view. A cave on the Dane Hills is called
"Black Annis' Bower," and she is said to have been a savage woman who
devoured human victims.[220] Earth-goddesses usually have human victims,
and Anu would be no exception. In the cult of Earth divinities Earth and
under-Earth are practically identical, while Earth-goddesses like
Demeter and Persephone were associated with the underworld, the dead
being Demeter's folk. The fruits of the earth with their roots below the
surface are then gifts of the earth- or under-earth goddess. This may
have been the case with Danu, for in Celtic belief the gifts of
civilisation came from the underworld or from the gods. Professor
Rh[^y]s finds the name Anu in the dat. _Anoniredi_, "chariot of Anu," in
an inscription from Vaucluse, and the identification is perhaps
established by the fact that goddesses of fertility were drawn through
the fields in a vehicle.[221] Cormac also mentions Buanann as mother and
nurse of heroes, perhaps a goddess worshipped by heroes.[222]

Danu is also identified with Brigit, goddess of knowledge (_dan_),
perhaps through a folk-etymology. She was worshipped by poets, and had
two sisters of the same name connected with leechcraft and
smithwork.[223] They are duplicates or local forms of Brigit, a goddess
of culture and of poetry, so much loved by the Celts. She is thus the
equivalent of the Gaulish goddess equated with Minerva by Caesar, and
found on inscriptions as Minerva Belisama and Brigindo. She is the Dea
Brigantia of British inscriptions.[224] One of the seats of her worship
was the land of the Brigantes, of whom she was the eponymous goddess,
and her name (cf. Ir. _brig_, "power" or "craft"; Welsh _bri