the Mersey was called (Ptolemaios, II, iii, 2). He was especially honored at the springs of Aquileia and was often addressed as Fons Belenus (CIL v, 754, 755, 8250); the springs at Bordeaux and Nimes were dedicated to him; and he had rich temples near the warm springs of Toulouse and Antun over which he presided.22 The plant bilinountia or bellinuntia, 'henbane' (Dioskorides, iv, 69; pseudo-Apuleius, de Herbis, 4), probably received its name from him.2

23

BORVO OR BORMO

THE divinity called Borvo or Bormo in Central France, Bormanus in Provence, and Bormanicus in Portugal, was a therapeutic deity who presided over healing springs and health resorts. At Bourbonne-les-Bains (HauteMarne) an inscription was found dedicated "Deo Apollini Borvoni et Damonæ," and he (or his feminine counterpart Bormonia) was associated with this same goddess also at Bourbon-Lancy (Saône-et-Loire); while at Aix-en-Diois (Drôme) he appears together with Bormana, who is again mentioned at Lagnieu (Ain). He had shrines at Borma on the Rhine and at the baths of Bormio in the extreme north of Italy; two inscriptions in honor of Bormanicus have been discovered at the healing springs near Oporto; and Bormanus is mentioned at Aix-en Provence. Other places recalling one or the other of these divinities are Bormanni in Gallia Narbonensis, Bourbon-l'Archambault (Allier), Bourboule (Puy-deDôme), Bourbriac (Côtes-du-Nord), and Bormida (Montferrat). The names of these deities are connected with Irish verbaim, 'I boil,' Welsh berw, 'boiling,' Latin 22 Hopf, op. cit., pp. 51-52.

24

23 Dottin, La Langue gauloise, pp. 232-244.

24 Renel, op. cit., pp. 178-179, 309; Steuding, in Roscher, i, 814, 815.

ferveo, 'I boil, ferment, "25 and hence were peculiarly appropriate to their functions.

BRIGIT, BRIGANTIA, OR BRIGINDO

ACCORDING to Irish myth, one of the Brigit triad was a goddess of healing, the other two being respectively a poetess and seeress and the patroness of smiths. She had a female priesthood and men are said to have been excluded from her cult. In the hymn Brigit be bithmaith she is addressed as 'golden, sparkling flame,' and is invoked to "break before us the battles of every plague." She may have been the goddess identified by Cæsar (op. cit., vi, 17) with Minerva as "giving the beginnings of crafts and arts" and she appears in Gaul as Brigindo (CIL xiii, 2638) and as Brigantia in Britain, where she was the eponymous deity of the Brigantes." Originally she seems to have been a divinity of fire and of fertility, and her name means 'the high one.

928

DAMONA

29

THIS goddess is associated with the therapeutic deity Borvo in inscriptions found at Bourbonne-les-Bains (Haute-Marne) and Bourbon-Lancy (Saône-et-Loire) ;2o but she was, in reality, an animal-divinity, her name being connected with Irish dam, 'ox,' Welsh dafad, 'sheep,' etc. 30

25 Dottin, op. cit., p. 235; Walde, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der lateinischen Sprache, p. 286.

26 Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palæohibernicus, ii, 325.

27 Steuding, in Roscher, i, 819; MacCulloch, op. cit., pp. 68-70.

28 Pedersen, op. cit., i, 100.

29 Steuding, in Roscher, i, 946.

30 MacCulloch, op. cit., pp. 43, 215.

DÍANCECHT

DÍANCECHT (?'Swift-Power'), the Irish god of healing par excellence, was of the number of the Tuatha Dé Danann and was the son of Dagda, the father of another therapeutic deity, Miach, and grandfather of Lug, who also possessed similar powers. His surgical prowess is particularly prominent in the Middle Irish account of the second battle of Moytura (Cath Maige Turedh).1 In this combat, the hand of Nuada being stricken off, Díancecht, with the aid of the smith, Credne, replaced it with a hand of silver which was capable of every motion possessed by a hand of flesh; but Miach, after thrice three days and nights, restored to Nuada his natural hand, whence Díancecht slew his son and confused the healing herbs which grew from the corpse. Díancecht is the leech of the Tuatha Dé Danann; and in the conflict says: "Every man who shall be wounded there, unless his head be cut off, or the membrane of his brain or his spinal (?) marrow be severed, I will make quite whole in the battle on the morrow." In fact, the slain and mortally wounded were cast into a healing well over which Díancecht, his sons Miach and Octriuil, and his daughter Airmed sang incantations; and all were restored to full vigor. In a St. Gall manuscript of the eighth or ninth century we read: "I put my trust in the salve which Díancecht left with his family that whole may be that whereon it goes.

GOIBNIU

9932

GOIBNIU was an Irish divinity of smiths (cf. Irish gobas, 'smith') whose ale preserved the gods from old age, disease, and death.33

31 §§ 11, 33-35, 64, 98-99, 123; ed. and tr. W. Stokes, "The Second Battle of Moytura," in RC, 1891, xii, 56-111.

32 Stokes and Strachan, op. cit., ii, 249. 33 MacCulloch, Mythology, pp. 51-54.

34

GRANNOS

GRANNOS was a healing deity of great renown whose cult seems to have been especially important among the Celts along the upper Danube, where he was equated with Apollo (CIL iii, 5870, 5871, 5874, 5876, 5881) and was associated with Hygieia, with the Nymphs, and with Sirona (ib., 5861, 5873, 5888). He again appears together with Sirona in an inscription from Rome (ib., vi, 36), and epigraphs to him have been found at Musselburgh in Scotland (ib., vii, 1082) and even in Vestmanland in Sweden; while it is possible that certain inscriptions mentioning Sirona and Apollo, as that from Graux in the Vosges, may really refer to her and Grannos. He was likewise associated with the local goddess Avantia and Vesunna, who have given their names to Avenches (Switzerland) and Vesona; while he had a statue in the temple of the Seine-goddess, Sequana. Aix-la-Chapelle was known as Aquæ Granni, and the stream receiving the waters from Plombières in the Vosges is called Eaux Graunnes.

86

35

The name of Grannos is usually connected with Irish grian, 'sun,' gor, 'warmth';" and he and Sirona possibly represent the ever-young sun-god and the old goddess, who may be likened to Apollo and his mother, Leto, of Greek mythology." Apollo Grannos was associated with Esculapius and Serapis by Caracalla, who appealed to them in a second illness when other gods had failed him (Dion Kassios, lxxvii, 15)."

84 I. Undset, "Inscrizioni latine ritrovate nella Scandinavia," in BIA, 1883, p. 237; also M. Ihm, in Pauly-Wissowa, vii, 1826; Steuding and W. Drexler, in Roscher, i, 1739.

35 Renel, op. cit., p. 310.

36 MacCulloch, Religion, p. 43.

37 Stokes, Sprachschatz, p. 114. 38 Barns, in ERE iv, 747.

39 Ihm, in Pauly-Wissowa, vii, 1825.

The memory of Grannos is still preserved in the Auvergne at the festival of the Brands when, on the first Sunday in Lent, fires are lighted in every village, and the ceremony of Grannasmias takes place after a dance. A torch of straw, called Granno-mio, is lighted and carried around the orchards; and in the character of a sun-god the deity is invoked in song as "Granno . . . my friend my father. . . my mother," these processions being followed by feasting. The torches are carried in the fields and gardens wherever there are fruit trees, and the ceremonial is intended to ensure fertility and the sun's heat for the ripening of the fruit."

LUG

LUG, an ancient and important member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, seems to have been in origin a civilization-hero"1 concerning whom many tales are told in Middle Irish literature. In the story of the second battle of Moytura," he is described as the grandson of Díancecht and comes to the Tuatha Dé as they feast at Tara, offering his services in many capacities, including that of physician, only to be told, in this connection, that "we have for a leech Díancecht." He finally wins entrance, however, as being samildánach ("skilled in many arts together"), an epithet which suggests his identification with the Gaulish god described, under the name of Mercury, as, inter alia, "the inventor of all arts" (Cæsar, op. cit., vi, 17). Although no Gallic inscription to him has yet been found, and though it is by no means clear that the Lugoves mentioned in an inscription from Avenches in Switzerland and in another from Osma in Spain are to be considered as plural forms of Lug (it is not even certain whether

40 Barns, loc. cit.

41 MacCulloch, "Celts," in ERE iii, 285-286.

42 §§ 55 ff.