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Lugus
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Lugus was a deity apparently worshipped widely in antiquity in the Celtic-speaking world. His name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from placenames and ethnonyms, and his nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed to have been identified with Lugus, and from the quasi-mythological narratives involving his linguistic descendants, Irish Lugh and Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes.
name Lugus is not directly attested by inscriptions, but a number of inscriptions with what are interpreted as plural forms of the name (Lugoues in Avenches, Switzerland and Osma, Spain, the latter dedicated by a guild of shoemakers, Lucubo, Locoubu and Lucubo(s) in the Iberian Peninsula) are known.
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Lugus was a deity apparently worshipped widely in antiquity in the Celtic-speaking world. His name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from placenames and ethnonyms, and his nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed to have been identified with Lugus, and from the quasi-mythological narratives involving his linguistic descendants, Irish Lugh and Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes.
Inscriptions
The name Lugus is not directly attested by inscriptions, but a number of inscriptions with what are interpreted as plural forms of the name (Lugoues in Avenches, Switzerland and Osma, Spain, the latter dedicated by a guild of shoemakers, Lucubo, Locoubu and Lucubo(s) in the Iberian Peninsula) are known. An inscribed lead plate found in Chamalières in France includes the phrase luge dessummiíis, which has been tentatively interpreted as "I prepare them for Lugus".
Toponyms and ethnonyms
His name was commemorated in numerous place-names, such as Lugdunum (Celtic *Lugdunon or *Lugudunon, "fort of Lugus"; modern Lyon, France), capital of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis. Other such place-names include Lugdunum Clavatum (modern Laon, France) and Luguvalium (modern Carlisle, England) It is also possible that Lucus Augusti (modern Lugo in Galicia, Spain) is derived from the theonym Lugus, but Lucus in that place may in fact be purely Latin (lucus = "sacred grove/forest").
Other places which are likely named after him include:
Ethnonyms which may derive from Lugus include the Luggones of Asturias, and the Lougei, known from inscriptions in Lugo and El Bierzo/
Gaulish Mercury
Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico identified six gods worshipped in Gaul, by the usual conventions of interpretatio Romana giving the names of their nearest Roman equivalents rather than their Gaulish names. He said that "Mercury" was the god most revered in Gaul, describing him as patron of trade and commerce, protector of travellers, and the inventor of all the arts. The Irish god Lug bore the epithet samildánach (skilled in all arts), which has led to the widespread identification of Caesar's Mercury as Lugus. Mercury's importance is supported by the more than 400 inscriptions into him in Roman Gaul and Britain. Such a blanket identification is optimistic – Jan de Vries demonstrates the unreliability of any one-to-one concordance in the interpretatio Romana – but the available parallels are worth considering.
Iconography
The iconography of Gaulish Mercury includes birds, particularly ravens and the cock, now the emblem of France; horses; the tree of life; dogs or wolves; a pair of snakes (cf Hermes's Caduceus); mistletoe; shoes (one of the dedications to the Lugoves was made by a shoemakers' guild; Lugus's Welsh counterpart Lleu (or Llew) Llaw Gyffes is described in the Welsh Triads as one of the "three golden shoemakers of the island of Britain"); and bags of money. He is often armed with a spear. He is frequently accompanied by his consort Rosmerta ("great provider"), who bears the ritual drink with which kingship was conferred (in Roman mythology. Unlike the Roman Mercury, who is always a youth, Gaulish Mercury is occasionally also represented as an old man.
Triplism
Gaulish Mercury is associated with triplism: sometimes he has three faces, sometimes three phalluses, which may explain the plural dedications. This also compares with Irish myth. In some versions of the story Lug was born as one of triplets, and his father, Cian ("Distance"), is often mentioned in the same breath as his brothers Cú ("Hound") and Cethen (meaning unknown), who nonetheless have no stories of their own. Several characters called Lugaid, a popular medieval Irish name thought to derive from Lug, also exhibit triplism: for example, Lugaid Riab nDerg ("of the Red Stripes") and Lugaid mac Trí Con ("Son of Three Hounds") both have three fathers.
Rübekeil suggests that Lugus was a triune god, comprising Esus, Toutatis and Taranis, the three chief deities mentioned by Lucan (who, at the same time, makes no mention of Lugus), and that pre-Proto-Germanic tribes in contact with the Celts (possibly the Chatti) moulded aspects of Lugus into the Germanic god Wodinaz.
Sacred sites
High places (Mercurii Montes), including Montmartre, the Puy-de-Dôme and the Mont de Sène, were dedicated to him. In Christian times he seems to have been assimilated into the archangel Michael, and many of the former Mercurii Montes became "St Michael's Mounts".
Continuity in later Celtic narratives
In Ireland, Lugh was the victorious youth who defeats the monstrous Balor "of the venomous eye". He was the godly paradigm of priestly kingship, and another of his appellations, lámhfhada “of the long arm”, carries on an ancient Proto-Indo-European image of a noble sovereign expanding his power far and wide. His festival, called Lughnasadh (“Festival of Lugh”) in Ireland, was commemorated on 1 August. When the Emperor Augustus inaugurated Lugdunum ("fort of Lugus", now Lyon) as the capital of Roman Gaul in 18 BC, he did so with a ceremony on 1 August (this may be purely coincidental, however). At least two of the ancient Lughnasadh locations, Carmun and Tailtiu, were supposed to enclose the graves of goddesses linked with terrestrial fertility.
Lugus has also been suggested as the origin not only of Lugh and Llew Llaw Gyffes, but also the Arthurian characters Lancelot and Lot. The relationship with the former is no longer widely accepted.
Foreign parallels
It has been suggested that the Germanic deity Wotan (English Woden) was influenced by Gaulish Mercury (see "triplism" above), and his name is possibly reflected in Germanic Loki. There is no one-to-one correspondence between Germanic and Celtic gods.
Etymology
The standard etymology connects Gaulish *Lugus
to the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, "light", perhaps indicating a sun god.
The *leuk- root is also found in Proto-Celtic *lug-ra ‘moon’ (sometimes proposed as the proto-form behind Welsh lloer, though Peter Schrijver suggests an alternative etymology for lloer, from Common Celtic *lus-ra, where the root would be cognate with that of Latin luridus [earlier *lus-idus] "pale yellow").
The same root is the basis of Old Irish lug "lynx", perhaps denoting an animal "with shining eyes" (compare Greek lunx "lynx", perhaps from a zero-grade form *luk- with infixed nasal).
Another possibility mentioned by Pokorny (1959) is *plo-u?o-, from a root *plo- "to burn".
Proto-Celtic *Lug-u-s may also be related to Proto-Celtic *lug- meaning "oath, pledging, assurance" on the one hand and "deceive" on the other (derived from Proto-Indo-European *leugh- ‘avowal, deception’); Juliette Wood interprets his name as deriving from Proto-Celtic *lug-, oath, which would support this identification of Mercury as a god of contracts.
Another possibility is Proto-Indo-European *leug- meaning blackness, dimness, darkness (thought by Pokorny to be the root of the ill-attested Gaulish word lugos ‘raven’), or *leug- ‘swamp, peat-bog’.
This god’s name may also be related to Latin lugubris "mournful, pertaining to mourning," from lugere "to mourn," from a Proto-Indo-European base *leug- "to break" (cf. Greek lygros "mournful, sad," Sanskrit rujati "breaks, torments," Lettish lauzit "to break the heart").
The standard *leuk- etymology is problematic because Proto-Indo-European *k did not under any known circumstances become *g in Proto-Celtic, but remained *k. The direct descendent of the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk- (‘white light’) in Proto-Celtic is *leuk- as in the name of the Celtic lightning god Leucetios.
See also
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