explained as stated, but no word like λουγος in either at all approaches the appellation of any bird of the crow species. Had there then been only one town in Gaul so designated, we might have supposed that its name had been given from such a cause, and the original word become lost in either language, without being compelled to believe the cause assigned a mistake. But when we find three towns bearing that same name, we cannot possibly believe them all called after any crows, and would rather imagine the author had mistaken his information. He had heard of the augury having been taken, as usual in such cases, and he too hastily concluded that the word λουγ signified a crow. He had heard that the name was taken from two Gallic words, as loug and doun, and being correct with regard to the one, might easily fall into an error respecting the other. If it had not been for the direct statement of this author, and considering the position of the several places, we should have had no difficulty in deducing the name from llwch or loch, a lake or morass, and the common termination dun, signifying together a hill fastness in a lake or morass. Such we know to have been the places of security chosen by the Gauls for their towns or villages, and from such causes they would probably take their names. In the same way with regard to Novidunum, by which name three other cities were called, together with the usual termination dun, we might understand the Cymric nodfa, a sanctuary, a place of refuge and protection from their enemies, or even a city of refuge, if Celtic scholars will insist on the Druids having such sanctuaries.
The Druids seem to have been an institution of the Cymric rather than of the Gaelic people, though undoubtely their tenets had also spread extensively among the latter. Though Cæsar supposed them to have originated in Britain, their remains prove them to have flourished in an equal degree on the western shores of mid-France, as found especially in Brittany in our day. They had not advanced into Belgic Gaul, nor to any extent into Aquitania or Spain, and their deities may thus be understood by the Cymric rather than by the Gaelic language. Thus their god of eloquence, Ogmius, whom the Romans assimilated to Mercury, has his title explained by Irish scholars from their Ogam, "a secret letter," or "the secret of letters." If I might venture a suggestion, it seems to me better explicable from the Cymric Ogmi, from Og, "what is apt to open or expand, what moves or stirs, or is full of motion and life," and mi, the pronoun, or "what is identic." See the Welsh Dictionaries.
