The name appears in several earlier novels by MacGregor including, There and Back Again, Camberwick, and throughout his Arthurian Cycle where Oberion is a father-figure to Merlin. The name has no known antecedents in Scottish folklore but appears in several medieval accounts, including a number of French chanson de geste, or ‘song of heroic deeds’ where the name is variously given as Oberon, Oberyon, Huon or Auberon. In the handful of medieval English texts where Oberion appears he is merely a familiar spirit summoned by an incantation to do a person’s will, whereas the chanson de gest honours him as Le Roi de Féerie, or ‘King of the Faeries.’ It is the latter role he takes in This Iron Race.

A king of the faeries appears under various names in the folklore and legends of Wales, Germany and Scandinavia, but is absent from that of Scotland. In Wales he is Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the Tylwyth Teg or ‘fair folk’. ‘Ap’ is a patronymic indicating Gwyn is the son of Nudd and Nudd may be cognate with the Irish god Nuada, or perhaps both Nuada and Nudd derive from Nodens, the horned god of the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Britannic Isles.

Mythologists have proposed that the deities and beliefs of an invaded and subjugated people are invariably subsumed into or supplanted by those of the invader. The Romans and Romano-British, for example, were willing to accommodate Brythonic deities, such as Sabrina of the River Severn, into their temples, whereas the Anglo-Saxons imposed their Germanic deities onto Anglia and pushed the old Brythonic gods aside. Thus, a deity once worshipped by humans might find himself demoted to king of Faerieland. The Christianisation of the Britannic Isles eventually displaced all the old gods and, with no pantheon in a monotheistic faith to accommodate them, all were condemned to haunt the hills, woods and byways alongside the faerie folk.

In Germanic mythology the king of the faeries is Alberich, ruler (rihhi in Old High German) of the Elben, or elves, with the elven folk being cognate with the faeries, or Beann Sidhe of Scottish legend and folklore. Alberich is often portrayed as a malignant dwarf, in which guise he is guardian of the Nibelungs’ treasure in the Nibelungenlied, or ‘Song of the Nibelungs’, the epic medieval poem later made famous by Wagner’s opera. Whether Alberich ruler of the elves and Alberich the treasure hoarder have been conflated, or whether Alberich’s character has been blackened and diminished by later Christian writers is uncertain.

In Norse mythology Alberich is cognate with the god Freyr, whose name is more accurately given as Yngvi-Freyr; Freyr being an honorific title rather than a given name. Uncommonly, although ruler of the Álfar or elves, Yngvi-Freyr was not elf-born, but son of the sea god, Njörðr (Njord). All the realms in Norse mythology are under the rule of the gods, or Vanir, and Njord shows this by giving Ingvi-Freyr dominion of Álfheimr (elf-home) as a teething present. Unlike the dwarvish Alberich, Yngvi-Freyr is a handsome warrior who had numerous lovers, including his twin sister, Freyja. He is associated with fair weather and virility, and sometimes depicted with an erect phallus.

Njord and the Celtic Nodens are associated with the sea and fishing and it is suggested that both are embodied in the Fisher King, the wounded ruler of a waste land who appears in Arthurian Myth (see “Maimed Heroes”) The Fisher King’s wound is a euphemism for castration – the wasting of his realm being a direct consequence – and there may be an echo of this in Yngvi-Freyr who gave up his magic sword in exchange for marriage to the beautiful Gerthr and as a result was fated to perish at Ragnarok, the End of the Gods.

In Scottish legend and folklore, and to a lesser extent in Eireland (Scotland and Eireland share much of their Gaelic heritage) no single name appears in the role of king of the faeries. This may reflect the powerful and divisive clan systems which dominated both countries until the medieval period and prevented either from uniting under one individual. To put it another way, Scots and Eirish culture no more acknowledged an individual having dominion over the faeries than they acknowledged an individual having dominion over Scotland or Eireland.

MacGregor describes Oberion as having horns like a stag and a similar antlered god appears on the Gundestrup Cauldron discovered in Denmark in 1891. The figure is believed to be the Celtic god Cernunnos and one can hear in the name a distant echo of the Irish gods already mentioned. Other horned gods under various names and guises are found worldwide. Many are styled after bulls—the Minotaur may be regarded as a fallen god—or sometimes goats and often the entire head takes the animal form. It should be noted there is no clear distinction between faith and mythology, other than the latter is more studied than practised and vice versa.

In Christian iconography the Antichrist is often depicted with horns, and this has led to an unfortunate conflation between Satanists and those who revere the old horned gods. Your editor has himself engaged in heated discussion with fellow Christians on this exact point, especially at midsummer eve when Avebury becomes a magnet for Wicca folk. It may well be that early-Christian missionaries deliberately conflated the old gods with the enemy of Christ in their efforts to convert our pagan ancestors, but Herne, Oberion and Cernunnos, along with the other members of the pre-Christian pantheons, are not at all like Satan in nature. He, alas, is a quite distinct entity.