The European Sky -God. 47
Nuada and his homonyms were connected {a) with fishing; (d) with caU/e and other horned animals, {c) with liberality. Next let us turn to the commonly accepted derivation of their name. Professors Rhys ^ and Thurneysen ^ refer it to a root NEUD appearing in —
Gothic nintan ('to enjoy, get benefit
from '), mita (' catcher, fisher ')
Icelandic naiit (' a head of cattle, a horned
beast ')
Swedish not (' cattle ')
Danish nod (' cattle ')
Anglo-Saxon neotan ('to use, employ'), neat
C cattle ')
Old High German niozan ('to make use of)
Middle High German noz (' cattle ')
Modern German ge-niessen ('to eat, drink, enjoy,
have the use of)
Lithuanian nauda (' use, profit, proceeds, har-
vest, possessions ').
These Germanic and Lithuanian congeners do not enable us to determine the precise meaning of the names Nuada, Nudd, Nodons, Neot; but they certainly point to a god who had within his gift the fish, the cattle, and the crops. Such an one could be rightly represented only by a king who was liberal in like manner.
Here our knowledge of Nuada would have come to an abrupt end, were it not for a brilliant suggestion made by Professor Rhys and accepted by all Celtic scholars. Professor Rhys^ proposed to identify —
Nuada Arget-ldm ('argentea manu ') Lludd Llaw-ereint (' manu argentea ')
^ Rhys Hibbe7-t Lectures p. 128 n. 3.
2 Thurneysen in the Zeiischrift fiir vergleichende Sprachforschung xxxii. 562 ff., cp. De Jubainville in the Revue celtiqtie xiii. 414. ^Rhys Hibbert Lectures p. 125, Celtic Folklore ii. 447 f.
