The people who lived in the world before this had all the weaknesses of
the people of the twentieth century; they were jealous, unfaithful, and
revengeful. But not in the beginning. For untold ages those “first
people” lived in peace and harmony. “No man knows, no man can tell, how
long they lived in that way.” Then, by degrees, a change came.
Gáhga, old, and blind, and jealous, “could have destroyed” (drowned)
“all the people in the world had he so willed.” He was Rain. A similar
character in Gaelic mythology is called “Wet Mantle.” His power was in
his mantle, which was rain itself.