The terms 'Anse,' 'the Anse of the Country,' and 'the almighty Anse,' always refer, we are told, to Thor in the Old Norse carmina of oaths and vows: the Swedish word åska, 'lightning, thunder,' is explained to mean the careering of the Anse; and the first syllable of such proper names as Norse 'Ásleikr,' Anglo-Saxon 'Óslác,' Norse 'Ásmóᵭr,' Anglo-Saxon 'Ósmóᵭ:,' and Norse 'Ásbiörn,' Anglo-Saxon 'Ósbeorn,' mod. English ' Osborne,' referred to Thor, as esu- probably did to his Celtic counterpart in Gaulish proper names like Esunertus,[1] 'possessed of the might of Esus,' Esugenus, 'offspring of Esus,' and notably Esugenonertus, which must have meant 'endowed with the might of a descendant of Esus,' a term suggestive of a class or group of Esugeni, but whether men or gods must remain undecided, though the singular is found to assume mythological importance in its continuators in Irish and Welsh romance, where we detect it in Eogan and Owein respectively.[2] It is uncertain whether the Gaulish people of the Esuvii or Esubii mentioned by Caesar, ii. 34, iii. 7, v. 24, meant by so calling themselves to claim descent from Esus, since the name may simply be derived from esus as a common noun, meaning a lord or ruler, in which case it would signify
- ↑ Hübner, No. 1334,61; Mommsen, Inscr. Helv. No. 80.
- ↑ In living Celtic the s of Esugen- must, according to analogy, be dropped, and Eugen- becomes in Irish Eogan, now written Eoghan, owing to the shifting of the accent forward leaving the vowel of the last syllable neutral, while in early Brythonic the reverse was more nearly the case, and Eugen- was made the basis of a derivative Eugenjos, whence the Welsh forms Eugein, Euein and Ywein, of which the colloquial form was Owein, now reduced to Owen: compare Welsh bywyd, 'life,' colloquially pronounced bowyd, and the like. The oldest spelling appears to have been Eugein, which was Latinized as Eugenius, just as Anglo-Irish Eoghans call themselves Eugenes.
