regarded the sun, not as Woden's offspring, but as Woden's eye. That the plural Lugoves was not exceptional or peculiar to the inscription mentioned, is not to be supposed: there are two reasons for thinking the contrary. In the first place, there is another inscription which reads Lugoves in large bronze majuscules on an epistylium of white marble found at Avenches, in Switzerland,[1] and as the legend consists solely of this word, the name of the Lugoves must have been very familiar to Gaulish ears. In the next place, the inclusion of the two under one name looks like the beginning of a process of running the character and personality of the father and the son into one, with that of the latter on the whole prevailing; this is the case with nearly all the Irish stories about the Sun-god, while that of Gwydion and Lleu is the only one in Welsh which keeps them well apart. The distinction is a small one, but it is of great importance when Lleu is compared with the Irish sun-heroes. The former does next to nothing for himself, since nearly everything is done for him by Gwydion; and Balder is treated much in the same way by his parents. On the other hand, the wily shrewdness which the Welsh story ascribes to the father is passed on by the Irish one to his son Lug, while the father practically disappears; and altogether a view which made the sun a person with a father who took care of him, looks a very primitive one, and the existence of such a father must have at times been very precarious and liable to effacement by the transcendent character of his offspring, who absorbed his chief attributes. There would, moreover, be another tendency to bring the two
- ↑ Mommsen's Inscrip. Helvet. No. 161.
