knoll was made of it: this was [thenceforth] its name, the Knoll of the Great Feast, or the Refuse of the Great Banquet, that is to say, Taillne, at the present day."[1] The way in which Lug's personality is doubled in this story is remarkable; and it is possible that in the vocable Taillne we have a name nearly related to that of Tailltin;[2] while the festivities of the Lugnassad are probably referred to in the allusion to the great feast made by Lug for Lug as a reward for his victory over the powers of darkness in the great mythical battle of Mag Tured. Further, the mention of his assumption of sovereignty as his act of wedding or marrying the kingdom is curious, and leads to a further examination of the term Lugnassad. It is probable that nassad did not mean either a commemoration or a festival, as might be gathered from Keating and Cormac, since it is a word of the same origin as the Latin nexus, 'a tying or binding together, a legal obligation.'[3] Moreover, a compound ar-nass is used more
- ↑ The manuscript is now in the library of the R. Irish Academy, classed D, iv. 2; and the passage here translated occurs on folio 82b, which has been kindly read for me by Prof. Atkinson: I have also consulted the British Museum Codex already referred to as Harleian 5280, and especially page 21b. The former reads tall ni and taill ni, the latter tailne and taillne, a name which looks like a derivative from Tailltiu, genitive Taillten, as it admits of being treated as a curtailed form of Tailltne.
- ↑ Besides the place called Taillne, and the Tailltin where, according to the Bk. of Leinster, 9a, Lug's foster-mother lived, the forest said to have been cleared by her was called Caill Cúan, the situation of which seems to be defined by 200b. There is a Cuan Teilion, or Teelin Harbour, in Donegal, and Strangford Lough is Loch Cuan; but see Stokes & Windisch, ij. pp. 242, 248.
- ↑ The Latin term was a most important one, and we have an Irish word of kindled origin in the noun nassad, used in the sense of a legal
