mation. Eochaid Garb clears a place for his wife Tailltiu’s grave at Chaille Chuan that her games might be held there, and her foster son Lug, “son of Seal Balb,” made her guba (lamentations) and her nasad (funeral rites, but see later), whence the Lugnasad festival on, or rather round, Aug. 1st,[1] in which month it should be remembered the festival was held at Lug’s sanctuary of Lugdunum Convenorum (St. Bertrand de Commingcs), which all Gaul attended. The fantastic euhemerist chronologers fixed the date of Lug’s reign variously, for a God’s life is hard to date, at b.c 1764-1714 (Giolla Coemhain), 1871-1830 (Four Masters) or even B.C. 500. The Luguasad was also celebrated on Aug. 1st in Scotland and the Isle of Man, and fires were lit in the period (about “a fortnight after” Aug. 1st) in Russia, at Capri, and indeed in Macedonia on Aug. 1st itself.[2]
The Senchas na Relec,[3] telling of “the chief cemeteries of the idolaters,” says there were 50 mounds at Tailltiu, but the number was evidently conventional. The compiler of the Leabhar Gahhala evidently knew that Eochaid Garb was a god, for it calls him “son of Dua the blind, of the Tuatha Dé,”[4] and relates how Cian, son of Diancecht, gave his son Lug, “son of Ethne, daughter of Balor, for fosterage.” Tailltiu “died in Tailltiu, her mourning games used to be performed every year by Lug . . . a fortnight before and a fortnight after.”[5] This is not the only case where Lug is connected with the earthworks of the older race. We have noted his house Cro Loga, near Eochaid’s
- ↑ Sauas Chormaic, ed. W. Stokes, p. 99, and Leabhar Gabhala, ed. R. A. S. Macalister and J. MacNeill, i. p. 151. In nearly all our sources the founder of Lugnasad is Lug, son of Edlenn or Ethniu.
- ↑ “Balder the Beautiful,” ed. 1913, i. p. 220.
- ↑ G. Petrie, “Round Towers,” p. 101. Trans. R.I.Acad, xxx. p. 80, from Leabor na h Uidre, also glosses in last (Archiv für Celt. Lexicog. i. p. 19) and (Revue Celt. xv, p. 293) Cinaed ua Articain’s poem, A.D. 973.
- ↑ i. p. 151.
- ↑ Book of Leacan, f. 200 b 35 (Cuan O Lochain, A.D. 1050), and Rhys, British Acad. 1910, p. 229.
