product made mystic and glorious in a
most wonderful manner. The story of the Graal became immensely popular,
and, deepening in ethical, mystical, and romantic import as time went
on, was taken up by one poet after another, who "used it as a type of
the loftiest goal of man's effort."[1292]

In other ways myth told how the gifts of civilisation came from the
gods' world. When man came to domesticate animals, it was believed in
course of time that the knowledge of domestication or, more usually, the
animals themselves had come from the gods, only, in this case, the
animals were of a magical, supernatural kind. Such a belief underlies
the stories in which Cuchulainn steals cows from their divine owners. In
other instances, heroes who obtain a wife from the _sid_-folk, obtain
also cattle from the _sid_.[1293] As has been seen the swine given to
Pryderi by Arawn, king of Annwfn, and hitherto unknown to man, are
stolen from him by Gwydion, Pryderi being son of Pwyll, a temporary king
of Annwfn, and in all probability both were lords of Elysium. The theft,
in the original form of the myth, must thus have been from Elysium,
though we have a hint in "The Spoils of Annwfn" that Gwydion (Gweir) was
unsuccessful and was imprisoned in Annwfn, to which imprisonment the
later blending of Annwfn with hell gave a doleful aspect.[1294] In a
late Welsh MS., a white roebuck and a puppy (or, in the _Triads_, a
bitch, a roebuck, and a lapwing) were stolen by Amaethon from Annwfn, and
the story presents archaic features.[1295] In some of these tales the
animals are transferred to earth by a divine or semi-divine being, in
whom we may see an early Celtic culture-hero. The tales are attenuated
forms of older myths which showed how all domestic animals were at first
the property of the gods, and an echo of these is still heard in
_Maerchen_ describing the theft of cattle from fairyland. In the most
primitive form of the tales the theft was doubtless from the underworld
of gods of fertility, the place whither the dead went. But with the rise
of myths telling of a distant Elysium, it was inevitable that some tales
should connect the animals and the theft with that far-off land. So far
as the Irish and Welsh tales are concerned, the thefts seem mainly to be
from Elysium.[1296]

Love-making has a large place in the Elysium tales. Goddesses seek the
love of mortals, and the mortal desires to visit Elysium because of
their enticements. But the love