The Cauldron of the Dagda
Dis Pater, or the Father of the underworld, was known in Gaul as Sucellos, but in Ireland he is known as the Dagda. The Dagda was fundamentally a tribal god, and the Irish warriors of the Ulster Cycle swear “by the god by whom my tribe swears”. His ritual wife is either the triple goddess the Morrigan or Boann, goddess of the River Boyne. The Dagda was the chieftain of the ancestral Irish tribe known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, “the people of the goddess Danu”. They possessed three magical talismans:
The Stone of Fal, which shrieked beneath a rightful king;
The Spear of Lug, which ensured victory, and
The Cauldron of the Dagda, from which no one could depart without reaching satisfaction.
This cauldron is one of the origins of the Holy Grail. In the Welsh myth of the Mabinogion it appears as the cauldron of regeneration, bringing dead warriors back to life. The Dagda possessed a club with the same power: with one end he slew the living and with the other he resurrected the dead.