how the mythic Celtic king Ambicatus sent not his own but his sister’s sons to found new kingdoms.[756] Irish and Welsh divine and heroic groups are named after the mother, not the father—­the children of Danu and of Don, and the men of Domnu.  Anu is mother of the gods, Buanann of heroes.  The eponymous ancestor of the Scots is a woman, Scota, and the earliest colonisers of Ireland are women, not men.  In the sagas gods and heroes have frequently a matronymic, and the father’s name is omitted—­Lug mac Ethnend, Conchobar mac Nessa, Indech, son of De Domnann, Corpre, son of Etain, and others.  Perhaps parallel to this is the custom of calling men after their wives—­e.g. the son of Fergus is Fer Tlachtga, Tlachtga’s husband.[757] In the sagas, females (goddesses and heroines) have a high place accorded to them, and frequently choose their own lovers or husbands—­customs suggestive of the matriarchate.  Thus what was once a general practice was later confined to the royal house or told of divine or heroic personages.  Possibly certain cases of incest may really be exaggerated accounts of misunderstood unions once permissible by totemic law.  Caesar speaks of British polyandry, brothers, sons, and fathers sharing a wife in common.[758] Strabo speaks of Irish unions with mothers and sisters, perhaps referring not to actual practice but to reports of saga tales of incest.[759] Dio Cassius speaks of community of wives among the Caledonians and Meatae, and Jerome says much the same of the Scoti and Atecotti.[760] These notices, with the exception of Caesar’s, are vague, yet they refer to marriage customs different from those known to their reporters.  In Irish sagas incest legends circle round the descendants of Etain—­fathers unite with daughters, a son with his mother, a woman has a son by her three brothers (just as Ecne was son of Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba), and is also mother of Crimthan by that son.[761] Brother and sister unions occur both in Irish and Welsh story.[762]

In these cases incest with a mother cannot be explained by totemic usage, but the cases may be distorted reminiscences of what might occur under totemism, namely, a son taking the wives of his father other than his own mother, when those were of a different totem from his own.  Under totemism, brothers and sisters by different mothers having different totems, might possibly unite, and such unions are found in many mythologies.  Later, when totemism passed away, the unions, regarded with horror, would be supposed to take place between children by the same mother.  According to totem law, a father might unite with his daughter, since she was of her mother’s totem, but in practice this was frowned upon.  Polygamy also may co-exist with totemism, and of course involves the counting of descent through the mother as a rule.  If, as is suggested by the “debility” of the Ultonians, and by other evidence, the couvade was a Celtic institution, this would also point to the existence of the matriarchate with the Celts.